Angela Barrett: Rocking Horse Land and Other Classic Tales of Dolls and Toys

Oh dear, I see it’s been a while since I’ve posted one of these. Never mind, I’m back to take a deeper look at the colours and compositions of some of my favourite Angela Barrett illustrations.

Rocking Horse Land and Other Classic Tales of Dolls and Toys was a book I only vaguely recall checking out of the library as a child, but I’ve recently managed to nab my own copy through Trademe. As the title attests, it’s an anthology of toy-related stories, which include the obvious candidates for any such collection: “The Steadfast Tin Soldier” by Hans Christian Anderson and editor Naomi Lewis’s own retelling of “Vasilissa, Baba Yaga and the Little Doll,” but also contributions from some lesser-known late eighteenth/early nineteenth-century writers for children: E. Nesbit’s “The Town in the Library,” Laurence Housman’s “Rocking Horse Land,” Ruth Ainsworth’s “Rag Bag,” and an excerpt from Mrs Fairstar’s “Memoirs of a London Doll.”

The illustrations are of three kinds: silhouetted frontispieces at the start of each story, very small bordered pictures within the text itself, and full-page spreads, all of which naturally show off Barrett’s talent for tiny detail; a trait perfectly suited for this particular subject matter.

After much consideration, the illustration I want to draw attention to is the cover itself (which is also featured on the inside cover as a two-page spread). It is fascinating in several ways, firstly that it combines several elements from the stories found within the collection: a flying rocking horse from “Rocking Horse Land,” the tin soldiers from “The Steadfast Tin Soldier,” and (most obviously) the magical doorway from “The Town in the Library,” in which two children are shrunk down to doll-size in order to explore their Christmas toys from a diminutive perspective.

Image source

The work is also notable for filling up every corner, like a jigsaw puzzle or a Tetris screen, with items from a nursery. Everything you see is either a book, a block or a clasped box, perfectly interlocked, reaching right up to the edges of the book itself. As a result, we cannot see a wider perspective of where these objects actually are; they block out any sign of a window or door or larger room.

The effect is to make us feel as small as the children, for our viewpoint is as limited as theirs. By denying us any indication of the larger “real” world around them, the strangeness of their size is emphasized. Are the books and blocks and box abnormally large, or are the children abnormally small? We don’t know, as the objects, wedged as they are into the small space of the cover’s physical edges, encompass the entirety of the world as we see it.

The decision also serves to better highlight the glimpse of the outside world that we do see; which is not portrayed around the items, but in their center, disconcertedly framed by books. Through that portal are tall trees and an immense night sky filled with stars, but it’s caught within a comparatively tiny space. Again, are we looking at something big, or something small?

The children that approach it face away from us, an old trick that invites the viewer to subconsciously project their own identities onto the concealed features. I also like the detail of them having to climb a few stairs to reach this magical portal; the girl still mid-step, and the boy’s hair ruffled by an unseen night breeze. Those stairs are the only thing in the picture that seem like they might belong to the ordinary world instead of this miniature doll-world, which adds to the mystery and mixed-upness of size and perspective at work here.

I’m also rather fond of the soldier on the far left, looking down at his own feet, deep in thought. What could a tin soldier be so contemplative about? I’ve no idea, but who’s to say he’s not pondering the mysteries of the universe?

Links and Updates

SO MUCH HAS HAPPENED since my last Links and Updates post. Let’s roll up our sleeves and get into it...

Woman of the Month: Milady de Winter

Milady de Winter from The Three Musketeers

I must start this entry with a confession: I have never read Alexandre Dumas’s The Three Musketeers in its entirety – though I am aware that his Milady de Winter is a much darker character than how she’s portrayed in more modern takes on the source material. In fact, I was rather shocked to read the Wikipedia page on her character and realize just how softened she’s become across various film and television adaptations – while still remaining an assassin-for-hire for a corrupt cardinal, of course.

In the book, her worst crime is murdering Constance in cold blood, largely out of spite. Although many adaptations like to depict her love affair with Athos as a romantic tragedy (as well as the impetus for her malice after he turns on her when her history is discovered) the book makes it more of an opportunistic match to advance her fortunes. And it can be very disconcerting to learn that she’s ultimately beheaded without trial by our “heroes” in the original text.

It’s no wonder that adaptations go a little easier on Milady, as it’s difficult to justify her treatment in the novel – Athos discovers a convict brand on her shoulder while they’re out riding one day and promptly hangs her from a tree. Dude! No trial? No opportunity to explain herself? No benefit of the doubt? To your own wife?? No wonder she hates you! Unsurprisingly, modern adaptations try to moderate all this with some tweaks to her backstory: the 2023 films show us the convict brand was administered at the hands of her abusive first husband, while the 2014 series has her claim she killed her brother-in-law in self-defense after he assaulted her.

Plenty of other films and shows have also alleviated her fate, whether it’s letting her survive the film (2011) or allowing her to take her own way out (1993). I’ve no complaints – think of all the male villains, from Dracula to Judas to Loki to Hannibal Lector, who have been humanized across the decades. It’s nice that we’re capable of doing the same thing to a villainess.

Though of course, the reason why Milady is spared in so many adaptations is obvious: in any kind of franchise that has its eye on sequels or multiple seasons, why would you do away with a character who is as much fun as Milady de Winter? She’s a master of disguise, an expert manipulator, a cunning thief, a crack-shot… you can’t just have her executed halfway through the story! She has to be kept around to cause more trouble and torture Athos in a rare example of a bad girl/good man pairing.

(Likewise, adaptations can’t resist leaning into the portrayal of a genuine love affair between Athos and Milady, for who could resist the glorious toxicity of two messed-up people who tried to destroy one another, only to discover that the other still lives? It’s a dynamic infused with the potential for all sorts of drama, though like Scarlett O’Hara and Rhett Butler, they can never be fully reconciled in front of the audience. If it ever happens, it must occur off-screen, in secret, and out of sight).

Milady de Winter is also one of pop-culture’s quintessential Femme Fatales. The debate over whether a woman using her feminine wiles to get what she wants is to be condemned as anti-feminist or celebrated as sexual empowerment continues to this day, but it can’t be denied that it’s a lot of fun to watch. Milady is a classic example of the archetype, charming and seducing her way across France – though of course, there’s a downside. Whenever power and unbridled sexuality are mingled in a female character, there’s bound to be at least some subtextual commentary on mankind’s fear of both those things existing in a woman.

In that sense, Milady reminds me of so many other wronged women who are also highly sexualized: Lilith, Morgan le Fey, Medea of Colchis, Isabella from the BBC’s Robin Hood – women who end up committing terrible crimes as retribution for how they’ve been treated. Men may be afraid of her, but I’m sure more than a few women are silently egging her on, as the moral of the story shouldn’t be to beware of her, but to not push her into villainy through cruelty and neglect in the first place! 

As befits a mutable figure, who at times can appear vicious and cruel, at others pitiable and ambiguous, Milady has been played by dozens of different actresses across the years: Barbara La Marr, Dorothy Revier, Margot Grahame, Binnie Barnes, Lana Turner, Mylène Demongeot, Faye Dunaway, Rebecca De Mornay, Emmanuelle Béart, Milla Jovovich, Ekaterina Vilkova, Maimie McCoy and Eva Green to name a few.

In the hands of these performers, Milady slinks in and out of the shadows until the next adaptation comes along – to evade execution, to be avenged by her son, to find new outlets for her range of talents, to defy her book fate and survive whatever’s thrown at her. She’s an amorphous figure that’s impossible to pin down – even the original text contains several inconsistencies in her backstory and never even definitively decides on her real name.

Milady’s true self is unknown to all.

Reading/Watching Log #111

You know, I really did try to get this one done on time. Whenever I finished watching or reading something, I immediately wrote down my thoughts on it, and yet I still ended up posting this a week late. My time is so limited at the moment, I don’t think I’m going to be able to go into as much detail with these entries in the future – it’s just too much of a time commitment.

But why didn’t anyone ever tell me that rereading your favourite books puts you in a great mood? For my birthday season I’ve been rediscovering the works of Meredith Ann Pierce, Patricia McKillip, Garth Nix, Philip Reeve and Frances Hardinge and I feel SO GOOD. If you’re in a bad mental place right now (and let’s face it, most of us are), I’d definitely advise you to a. stop watching the news, and b. track down the work of a favourite author.

Due to a couple of GIF-sets passing through my dashboard recently, I ended up watching several films starring or featuring (or cameoing) Holliday Grainger – which meant quite a few period films. Likewise, I finally tracked down those two Musketeers films that both came out in 2023, and finished up the third and final season of the BBC’s Robin Hood with my long-suffering friend. 

It’s been a couple of years since we started that particular project, but I’m going to hold off talking about it in this post since I’m working on a retrospective which will probably be completed within the next decade or so.

Women of the Year: A Retrospective 2024

This post comes a little later than usual, as I feel like I’ve been running behind on practically everything for an entire year. Still, I always get there eventually, and so here is my retrospective on the female characters of 2024: not the twelve I selected as Woman of the Month, but the ones I discovered, enjoyed or was impressed with over the course of the entire year, who didn’t get the chance to be spotlighted. 

Looking back, we actually had a pretty good stretch of female characters throughout pop culture in 2024. The problem is, I didn’t watch any of shows or films in which they appeared. Tired of committing to new projects only for them to get cancelled almost immediately, I stared watching (or rewatching) media that I knew wouldn’t disappoint me.

As such, a lot of the women featured below are from stories that aired or were published some time ago. Two inclusions have admittedly more to do with how the characters are presented in their given narratives rather than the characters themselves, as I’ve noticed some interesting changes in how women are being portrayed across fiction recently, brought on by authors becoming more self-aware about certain gender-specific clichés and tropes (though this isn’t always a good thing).

In any case, you get to read my half-formed thoughts on the subject. I’ve tried to keep my stream-of-consciousness blathering under control, but no promises.

Woman of the Month: Princess Azula

Princess Azula from Avatar: The Last Airbender

Looking back, it’s amazing to think that aside from two brief, silent cameos, Princess Azula of the Fire Nation did not appear at all throughout season one of Avatar: The Last Airbender. Amazing because she is one of the most memorable parts of the show in its entirety, and an iconic villain in her own right.

Her first true appearance is one for the annals of best Character Establishing Moments, in which she’s depicted onboard a seafaring vessel, directing its captain to pull into shore despite the tide preventing them from doing so safely. The following conversation commences:

Captain: Princess, I’m afraid the tides will not allow us to bring the ship into port before nightfall.

Azula: I’m sorry captain, but I do not know much about the tides. Can you explain something to me?

Captain: Of course, your highness.

Azula: Do the tides command this ship?

Captain: Ah, I’m afraid I don’t understand.

Azula: You said the tides would not allow us to bring the ship in. Do the tides command this ship?

Captain: No, Princess.

Azula: And if I was to have you thrown overboard, would the tides think twice about smashing you against the rocky shore?

Captain: No. Princess.

Azula: Well then, maybe you should worry less about the tides, you have already made up their mind about killing you, and worry more about me, who’s still mulling it over.

Captain: I’ll pull us in.

It conveys so much of her psyche: her cruelty, her insouciance, her power games, and ultimately, her madness. The captain knows it’s not sensible to pull into shore at that time, but it’s unclear whether Azula does. All she cares about is getting what she wants, at the precise moment she wants it – common sense be damned. And anyone trying to thwart her is in for some public humiliation.

This need for control ends up being her undoing. Generally I’m not a fan of stories in which female villains are defeated after losing their minds, but in this case it was all painstakingly seeded across the course of Azula’s arc, from her emphasis on never having one hair out of place, to the flashbacks that depict her as a prodigy, to her intense sibling rivalry with Zuko. She has to be the best; there is no room for imperfection.

The writers pulled off a massively impressive feat when it came to her as the show’s central antagonist (yes, Fire Lord Ozai is the Big Bad, but Azula is the true face of the narrative’s villainy). She’s loathsome, awe-inspiring, terrifying, ruthless... but ultimately pitiable. That she’s drawn from the narcissist’s playbook is undeniable, ticking every box on the checklist: a sense of self-importance, a preoccupation with power and success, entitlement issues, arrogance, interpersonally exploitative/manipulative for her own gain, a lack of empathy, a need for admiration and praise, and a deep-seated sense of insecurity despite her supposed confidence.

Of course, living in a fantasy world where people can command the elements, Azula can back up her sense of superiority with very-real power: not only the honour and privileges that come with being a princess, but the fact that she can shoot fire from her hands. Blue fire in fact, which burns hotter than red, orange or white flames, demonstrating her absolute mastery over the art of fire-bending.

For most of the show’s duration, she’s always one step ahead, always in complete control, always maintaining the upper hand... which means the only person who could ultimately defeat her was Azula herself. Several crucial missteps put her off her game: she underestimates Mai’s loyalty to Zuko, grows increasingly threatened by her father’s dismissive behaviour, and experiences several visions of her lost mother.

The last we see of her on the show is confronting: she’s been laid low by Katara, a mere “peasant,” whose water-bending prowess exceeds her own. Rendered powerless after being chained to an iron gate, Azula’s mind breaks, and all she can do is scream and sob over the fact her entire worldview has crumbled. Wringing a sense of pity from the audience was a masterful final move on the behalf of the writers, reminding us that this was ultimately a fourteen-year-old girl raised in a way that gave her very little recourse to be anything else than what she became.

Her story continues a little into the graphic novels, but I’m not entirely sure whether they’re meant to be considered canon, and I’m ambivalent over the prospect of whether or not she should be redeemed (however you want to define that). How she’ll be handled in the upcoming animated films is another mystery – if she’s even featured at all.

Personally, I think her story is perfect just the way it is, and Azula is truly one of the most remarkable antagonists in all of fiction. Not just in the category of “female villains” or “animated villains” – but ALL villains.

Reading/Watching Log #110

That felt like an uncommonly long January; usually they’re over and done with before you can blink.

I decided to continue in my theme of last month’s viewing, which involved picking things out of all the categories I selected in the previous year: eighties fairy tales, historical epics and Shakespeare productions, mainly. I also managed a few graphic novels from the library (I haven’t read any in a while) and more of Philip Reeve’s Mortal Engines series, which is just as good as I remember it.

More Babysitters Club books, more Apple paperbacks, another Robin Hood movie, and I finally get started on Hustle, which I’ve been meaning to watch since... well, back when it first aired in 2004.

I’m looking forward to February, as I’ve decided to read something from each of my favourite authors: Frances Hardinge, Patricia McKillip, Philip Reeve, Garth Nix, Susanna Clarke and Meredith Anne Pierce – it’s my birthday month, so I may as well enjoy it. I’ve also finally found the most recent Musketeers film on DVD! After so many attempts to find a subtitled copy on-line, it turns out we had one at the library the whole time.