Gennifer Albin talks Crewel world, which is sometimes a cruel world – especially if you’re a girl

 

Hi everyone! I’m so excited to be on TLT today, showing you some exclusive notes that I’ve only shared with my editor and agent before. Sometimes when you are editing a book, you can choose not to change something, but my editor asks, very nicely, to know why. So last year when I was working on edits for Crewel I wrote a 5 page paper, detailing how certain elements functioned and why I made specific decisions. Lucky for you, I’m only going to show you highlights.

 

Suffice it to say, I was an academic in a past life.

 

“Beauty as a means of control has been achieved by making cosmetics and beauty treatments only available to girls past the age of testing. Sold as a right of passage, girls look forward to being assigned and being allowed to use cosmetics and begin courtship appointments. Since these things are taboo before that age, naturally young girls idealize these experiences and eagerly anticipate them, ensuring they fall into the role of woman as an object of the male gaze easily after testing has ended. Beauty is thus esoteric.”

 

“Adelice’s background growing up with parents who did not wish her to become a powerful Spinster, a mother who disliked the obvious chauvinism in her workplace, and a father who clearly loved and respected his wife, allow her to have a more balanced approach to her own life. She is not dissuaded by cosmetics, clothing, and parties, because she has more self-respect than most girls her age. Her parents showing that they valued each other as well as her and her sister, helped to create this anomalous attitude, which filters into her personality. Whereas someone like Pryana has been groomed to be an ideal Eligible to the point of fostering ruthless ambition in her, Adelice sees herself as an equal to those around her. This causes her problems in interactions with people like Maela and Cormac, who don’t share this belief, but it also enables her easy interactions with boys, whom she doesn’t fear or idolize.”
 

“…It simply comes down to one thing: the Guild could never leave a group of women to their own devices.”

 

“Likewise we will continue to see more information regarding her family and the strange circumstances of their failed escape. Where were they running to? Why were her parents so anti-Guild but seemingly pacifist until the end? What were her parents really up to? Adelice’s need to ensure her own safety takes precedence over the need to figure out these questions, although she is clearly concerned with them, and until she is out of the Guild’s clutches, she can’t seek these answers.”
 

I think my editor just wanted to make sure I had a reason to do these things and that I had thought ahead through plot issues. Instead she got a dissertation. Once an academic, always an academic.

 

 

Libba Bray
YA Lit and Body Image: A Discussion