But how else readers will understand that she's a good girl now?! There's literally no other way to go about it, obviously, we all know that the only feminism there is - is about thin young conventially attractive women with good (preferably royal) heritage being badass, not about treating women in general like human beings with different faces, bodies and thoughts, duh /s
@@joyachill damn, fair enough. I kinda forgot that claiming that character is badass (on back cover) while refusing her any agency more then in any old bodice ripper is usually good enough for that type of feminist retelling.
Really seems like every time a retelling of a classic gets the 'feminist retelling' tag it's always a story that reads like the author read the cliffnotes alone and the female characters are either background cheerleaders or shallow Buzzfeed era girlbosses but always worse than their counterparts in the source material. It's baffling how often this keeps happening.
Well you see in Macbeth she was a bad guy, and as you know women can do no wrong, therefore no matter stupid it may be, no matter how little sense it will make, Lady Macbeth must be a girl boss
my first thought was "why do you even need a feminist retelling, she's already a strong and distinct character that the play gives significant stage time, as she literally drives the plot" my second thought was "how did you manage to make all that unfeminist!"
The same way the many "feminist" retellings of The myth of Persephone make Demeter an obstacle for her daughter Persephone to become Queen of the Underworld, as in it's a bad thing that Demeter wants her daughter back from the realm of the dead. Cause you know Demeter should just let her daughter become a powerful queen and get the god of the underworld wrapped around her little finger, like a supportive mother would. Nevermind the fact the original myth was an allegory for child death and for kidnapped brides and how a mother would do anything to save her child from such fates, that's not feminist at all, bossing around the old guy who kidnapped you now that's feminist.
@@Prototype-357 the irony is that all you actually need to do a modernised feminist retelling is have persephone go willingly instead of getting kidnapped, since we simply view kidnapping differently to how the ancient greeks did. a skilled writer could even still keep it as an allegory for kidnapping, but considering how most of these retellings make the mistake of interpreting persephone as the goddess of spring when the original myths just describes her as "dread persephone: queen of the underworld" maybe tallent is too much to expect.
why did she change the names of Duncan’s sons? they have explicit names in the play-Malcolm and Donalbain. it feels like she skimmed over less than half a plot summary of Macbeth before writing this
A modern-ish retelling of a classic story about a damsel with unexplained but ultimately pointless magical powers rings more of a Disney princess than girlboss feminism
@@sheila19954 Yes! People forget that for its time, (Sleeping Beauty) The three fairies are active protagonists (All middle aged appearing women as well!) who orchestrate a plan to save Aurora from Maleficent (One of the most evil and well known female villains of all time). If anything those three are the main characters since their actions drive the plot. I really think we as a society might have treated Disney Princess movies too harshly, which is why Disney keeps trying to do the girlboss pop feminism of (How do you do fellow kids?) which feeds into the problem of not understanding that every story, even simple ones has some degrees of nuance.
I tried to read this book. But i dnfed so quickly. 1. How all the women were described ugly, but Rosaline 2. The rampent Xenophobia to Scottish People 3. Should have been a Bluebeard 4. I am mentally tired of how misogynistic these feminist retellings are. I think Ava Reid is distancing herself from this book. I know she won't, but I wish she would at least apologize for the Xenophobia in the book. I only read a Study of Drowning by Ava Reid that was inspired by Zelda Fitzwillian's works being stolen by her husband I think she thinks only burly men SA and twink boys don't.
I love the implication that patriarchy is the "natural order of the world". That's definitely a thing feminists actually believe and not something incredibly misogynistic if you think about it for a few seconds!
I’m gonna push back on this a little by saying that I get the author’s intentions of that (esp when it relates to why there are so many patriarchal societies around the world and how it ties back to pregnancy, childbirth, and child rearing) but “natural state” is a fallacy to begin with. Neither an egalitarian society nor a patriarchal or matriarchal one is “naturally occurring” they are all products of societal interactions
I mean in a round about way they do. Thinking that, if you're not hyper vigilant, an oppressive patriarchy will string up from seemingly the ground does check with their logic.
Okay so I get imprisoning arguably the most powerful women in McBeth as an allegory and all but like.. Why wouldn't you chain the witches up in the basement to, like, tell prophecies forever? So the king doesn't have to think for himself but just uses the "ideas" of "women close to him" instead?
There’s something very telling about giving her this magical persuasion power. In the original play, she persuades people to do things by arguing, convincing, scheming, etc. This version of the character seems to be basically incapable of wielding power (I guess because Lady Macbeth wielding power in the original story makes her a bitch and therefore cannot be allowed? #Feminism) so the only way for her to affect the story is through magic.
Lady MacBeth *could* have been an interesting lens to explore how historically women in positions of power had to derive said power from men(usually their husbands). Make Lord MacBeth an ambitious bungler who has to unwittingly rely on his wife’s talent for diplomacy and subterfuge, and how he ends up getting all the credit anyway because that’s just how society worked (and arguably still does). There’s undoubtedly a few examples of that throughout history we’ll just never know about because the woman in question was simply too good/subtle in her machinations.
It was actually common in medieval eras for the lady of a fiefdom to be the actual manager (due to the Lord commonly being commanded to court or war) and person who organizes defense the castle when the lord is away. So could work very well
I gotta say the fact that this book flopped so hard is a massive disappointment to me as someone who is incredibly interested in the original Lady Macbeth. From what's stated in this review, the book reads like the author didnt want any chance of the reader perceiving Lady Macbeth as a potentially bad or morally grey person (hence making her a stereotypically innocent, virginal teenager and giving her a cartoonishly cruel patriarchy to struggle against), but in the process just ended up assassinating her character. There is so much in the original chatacter that could be explored in the hands of a writer who cared. Sidenote: I thought at first that the hot description of Lysander was actually a description of King Duncan and i was like "Didnt lady macbeth in the play say he reminded her of her father???? Sigmund freud has entered the chat."
What happened to Duncan’s son Malcom? Malcolm is the one who becomes king at the end of the play, there is no Lysander in Macbeth, Lysander was a character in Midsummer nights dream! Does she not know who is in Macbeth? Fleance was a child and is alive at the end of the play, how old is she making him in this book? Lady Macbeth was one of the strongest and powerful Shakespeare character, either male or female. From what I’m gathering from your summary, the author has completely destroyed this character. I now know never to read this book.
A "retelling" for people who have never looked at the play text or seen it on film or on stage before. The first time I read the play, I was 16. even then when I'd be more open to the girlbossification of feminism, I don't remember thinking "hm, I wish the female character were less demure". the tragedy may arguably be about Macbeth, since it's named after him and he is sort of pulled around by external forces, but Lady Macbeth has more memorable moments and is both one of the catalysts of his downfall but also her own in more ways than one. She is the one who ends up alienated from the man that based on the actual text she has a strong bond with and the loss of that bond is what contributes to her final demise. It's such an interesting characterization and relationship. There is so much already there in the text. To do *this* to a character that cool is ridiculous.
Honestly this was probably the worst book I’ve ever read. Don’t know what we did to offend Ava Reid but it was clearly something I’m Scottish and I love Scottish history, honestly I’d rather reread Outlander than this. The book messes with history, geography and spelling. Yeah, that author’s note where she claims to use historically accurate spelling is garbage, I checked four different languages. But honestly I could tell because she sticks to using English adjacent spelling, Gaelic works completely differently, so Duncan in Gaelic is spelt Donnchadh, no idea where she got Duncane. Changing the spelling of Glamis to Glammis was daft, it’s pronounced Glams, which I understand you not knowing, the audiobook narrator has no excuse. One of the reasons I don’t like MacBeth is the treatment of Gruoch (it’s pronounced Groo-uch btw), I hate the loss of her name and that she’s turned into a villain there’s no evidence she really was. But this was so much worse than that.
I'm genuinely so sorry that Northern European minority languages are continually fucked over by writers these days. First it was Fourth Wing and now this... :/ I filmed this on somewhat short notice as a side project, but as I was editing I started regretting not doing my research. When I pronounce Grouch the second and third time, you'll notice I pasted the IPA phonetic transcription of the correct pronunciation over my mouth. But obviously, most viewers won't get anywhere with IPA and I'm sorry for not looking it up properly
Lady MacBeth is one of the female characters with the most power and agency in all of Shakespeare (Only Cleopatra comes out on top of her, by my reckoning). She is cast as a villain precisely because of this, so there IS potential for a retelling and there IS misogyny in the play, even though she does many legitimately evil things. But making her "sympathetic" by stripping her of her power and agency is just hitting the exact same misogynistic spot from the other side.
some people think "feminist retelling" and decide that means "female protagonist whose only obstacles are wholly evil and outside of their control and not any result of their own actions". Which, shocker, strips any character in that scenario of agency
It's a weird delusion in feminist literature that women seem to be purely faultless external entities that the evils of the world are being inflicted upon.
There’s another book, Lady Macbethad , by Isabelle Schuler. . Schuler’s book seems more grounded in history and Shakespeare , as it’s written as a prequel to Shakespeare’s play. I’d recommend it for those wanting read about Gruoch before she got married to Macbethad (they were actually in love by the way)
She has sex with him and she thinks he’s under her spell???? That’s still weird, even if he did it of his own volition Like,,, in her mind she’s basically forcing a guy to do it with her
damn, if only there was a pre-existing tragic Shakespeare heroine who's married off at a young age to a stranger from another kingdom for reasons related to a conflict with her father whose perspective is largely missing from the bulk of the play and would certainly lend itself to a novel-length character study... i say like that wouldn't have risked some version of King Lear where Cordelia runs off into the sunset with the courtier who stabs Cornwall, and he's also a werewolf now for some reason
10:39 Half-something Half-fae, half-witch, half-dragon whatever. He has some magical bloodline that gives him magical powers. 14:56 Weredragon. A fucking weredragon what?! Why? How? So apparently this world has weredragons. How is anyone else any form of a threat? What are there a bunch of other weredragons in the background? How the fuck did he keep it hidden and why? I would think “don’t piss me off or I will transform into a dragon” would be an effective threat.
@@Bread_bread01 The only reason Achilles and Agamemnon come to blows in the Iliad is because Achilles wanted to grape Briseis himself, Miller is essentially demonizing an actually accurate portrayal of one for not living up to her ridiculous faultless whitewash of the other.
insane book. i kept reading it because, if nothing else, i felt like anything could happen. since so-called feminist retellings are so marketable these days, i genuinely felt like this was some kind of writing assignment Reid didn’t want.
Love that they took Lady M’s intelligence, ambition, and skill at manipulation and changed it to “oh she actually just has a magic power to make people listen to her.” Very feminist, very cool and normal thing to do to a famously interesting and deep female character.
Correction: Alan II, Duke of Brittany wasn't a Frenchman, not even a bit and Brittany was free at this point in time, not becoming part of France until several hundred years later. Bretons weren't French back then and aren't French now (depending on how -based- nationalist someone is). That's like saying that a Sioux or Cherokee from the 15th century was an US-American.
im convinced they did not read anything shakespeare wrote. like... this was the opposite of what Shakespeare wrote 😅😅😅😅 they didnt even keep Duncan's sons names the same... which is just weird?
My best guess is that Macbeth was chosen because there's a market for retellings of thinks we teach in schools but why Macbeth over other classics that might fit this better? What if you picked Tess of d'Ubervilles!!!
Damn.. I thought this video will be about "Lady Macbeth of Mzensc" By Leskov, but I never thought that there is another retaling (even though, the book I've mentioned is not a retaling technically..). And yet I'm happy to get this vid recommended tho
Holy hell, for a sec I thought you were talking about Lady Macbeth, aka, Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District, the terrific novella by Leskov. A lot of people call it Lady Macbeth these days due to the film adaptation. Anywho, cool, I'll avoid this book.
I thought you were talking about a Russian "Lady Macbeth" by Nikolai Leskov. Jokes on me 😅 Fun fact, in the Russian retelling Lady M killed her husband and father-in-law because she was done with them.
‘Don’t eat the mushrooms!’ was an inside joke in my friend group for a while because we watched a recording of the Shostakovich opera during 2020 and that’s how my username originated, because Katerina is my first name.
The worst part is that I liked it until halfway. Then we met the witches. Then she got rage FOR other women when she hadn’t done jack while watching horrible things? And then she used that made up “I’m acting out lady fantasies” to go and completely ruin the plot and the point of the book. I also cannot stress how awful it is that Rosalie HAD potential, and then it got way overboard.
Imperious Eyes sounds like the Geass of Kings hehe (was that what it was called?) Ahh yes, the sexy teenager, she sleeps with the hot guy who wants her 'as a man would' and 'will not hurt her'unlike her husband......and she finally makes her super move only after she has the POWER OF *_FOUR_* WOMEN......peak feminism Absolutely not incredibly regressive actually I feel like the people who genuinely believe this this is feminist are the one who'll buy into anything derogatory and dehumanizing as long as the instagram ad calls it #girlboss #girlpower
Nope! I reread that part and Reid is very clear on this: it's the "wood" he carries on him. It's true that he's not fully human, but both his parents are, and the dragon thing is a curse bestowed on him because of his father's assaulting a witchy deer lady. She specifically phrases it as "stealing the natural form of your firstborn sons". But I'm afraid nothing in the text suggests an explanation cleverer than "the guy's got leaves on him"
same lmao. it’s not that ava reid is a bad author per se, when she wants to do a good retelling or original story she knows how to do it well (juniper and thorn, a study in drowning… yeah I have issues with those books but overall they were good)…. What was thisssss
Hey, just wanted to let you know it’s pronounced Gru-och, Grr Oo Ah ck. It does look like grouch though! Names that are Britannic, Gaelic, Celtic, ect can be tricky if you’re not familiar with them. I hope this helps!
It does! I'm really sorry about fumbling this - I filmed this video on my phone as a side project and only realised how much my pronunciation was lacking during edits. "grʌu:ːħ" is the phonetic transcription I came up with after my own research, and I did end up pasting it over my mouth later in the video. But obviously, most people won't know what to do with phonetic transcription and I really should have checked beforehand... Thanks for the guide tho, I appreciate it!
10:40 my prediction is that he's only half human because Duncan was secretly a vampire and after the regicide he'll end up rising again from his coffin. maybe
Like…at least read the original media that you’re trying to ‘rewrite to suit your own fantasies.’ Lady Macbeth is a villain in the original story. Man, Shakespeare is rolling in his grave.
This author should've just retold the story of Melusine (a dragon fairy from medieval Aquitaine) or St Trephyne (deceived into marrying a serial killer according to legend), because firstly these two figures are bigger feminists than freaking Lady Macbeth, and secondly the author clearly has a fascination for early medieval France
How does Lady MacBethaf by Isabelle Schuler compare? I saw it in every book shop a couple years ago, but I never read it. Is it better than this retelling? Does it also suck?
I was really hoping to like this book because I really loved Juniper & Throne by Ava Reid. Which was critical about xenobia so to find that Lady Macbeth was not it...was disappointing
What's annoying is I can see some really interesting concepts in what you've described - specifically, I would love to read a character study on a young woman with similar powers being pressured to use them for someone else's advantage, and how that affects her and her environment over time - but instead we got this.
haven't liked a video as fast as i did this one in a while lmaoooo thank goooooood someone finally talked about itttttttttt!!!!!!!!! ahhhhhh i've been dying to say all of this the whole time i was reading the book, i felt like i was not reading a macbeth retelling
i'm honestly kind of glad that ava reid is getting so much backlash as a writer. juniper and thorn was easily one of my most dissappointing reads of last year, and it got lots of praise. i found a lot of issues in that book to be common with the ones joy talks about here. mainly, it was marketed as a adult feminist fantasy, but had a pathetic 20-something woman who acted like an immature 14 year old as the protagonist, and her love intrest was some twink who was also supposed to be an adult, but acted like a child. it felt like a mediocre YA fantasy with SA scenes added to make more "mature" or something. maybe i'm just misremembering it though, it has been almost two years since i read it (i don't even remember if i finished it lol).
Its draining when an author does the whole "badass character is so clever and sly, no one can best them its all so easy" yet at most of the conflicts someone does indeed best them and the character is quite dumb. Funniest bit was the thanos dissolve look of disbelief at the camera, it was too much! Had to come back and finish the video another day XD
if it isn't too painful, i'd love to hear a review of that new book by any other name by jodi picoult. from what i've read it's "feminist" because it basically makes the claim, "shakespeare's plays must have actually been written by a rich woman because he was way too poor to understand greek mythology + write compellingly". and now people who haven't read shakespeare since school are on goodreads saying "huh, this is really good evidence! i guess shakespeare was a woman", it's driving me MAD. oh also apparently her "feminist retelling" includes many graphic, eroticised sex scenes between her child protagonist and a 60 year old dude? yeah
I actually really liked the book but maybe thats just because i didn‘t go into reading it thinking of it as a feminist retelling of the play. Also english isn‘t my first language so maybe i didn’t get some of the nuance of the text but i thought it was quite entertaining. Edit: ok so i will just clarify that i bought the book because i really liked ava reids other books so i didn’t really search up anything else about it beforehand and completely missed that this was so supposed to be a feminist retelling 😂 and yes i agree it‘s not very feminist but i still liked it. I understand your critisms though
I know this isn't a great comment, because I just started the video and it's not about the video at all, but I just have to say: Your makeup is to _die_ for!! I'm jealous lol
I'm SO glad I'm not the only one. I thought I was going crazy when I saw the synopsis. Since when did she ever need a "feminist retelling"? This is the kind of shit that make us look bad
lmao, how is the first move in writing your "feminist retelling" making Lady Macbeth a sexy teenager???
But how else readers will understand that she's a good girl now?! There's literally no other way to go about it, obviously, we all know that the only feminism there is - is about thin young conventially attractive women with good (preferably royal) heritage being badass, not about treating women in general like human beings with different faces, bodies and thoughts, duh /s
@@phrok This is hilarious because even if you were serious, there isn't a single part of the book where Roscille is "being badass" 💀
@@joyachill damn, fair enough. I kinda forgot that claiming that character is badass (on back cover) while refusing her any agency more then in any old bodice ripper is usually good enough for that type of feminist retelling.
@@phrok😊
Really seems like every time a retelling of a classic gets the 'feminist retelling' tag it's always a story that reads like the author read the cliffnotes alone and the female characters are either background cheerleaders or shallow Buzzfeed era girlbosses but always worse than their counterparts in the source material. It's baffling how often this keeps happening.
How is stripping Lady Macbeth of all her agency and her influence on her husband a “feminist retelling “?
Well you see in Macbeth she was a bad guy, and as you know women can do no wrong, therefore no matter stupid it may be, no matter how little sense it will make, Lady Macbeth must be a girl boss
Protagonist is better than interesting character, of course!
@@franciscoruiironically in the original play, she was already a girlboss BECAUSE she manipulated macbeth
@@Lemoncakelover678 true true. But again, women can do no wrong, so she was made to have done nothing wrong
"Terrified of her warrior husband..." No. No. No. Incorrect. False.
*loud incorrect buzzer noise*
I don't remember that, did we see the same play?
@@sarascarpati887Entirely convinced this author has only skimmed the notes of the play.
my first thought was "why do you even need a feminist retelling, she's already a strong and distinct character that the play gives significant stage time, as she literally drives the plot"
my second thought was "how did you manage to make all that unfeminist!"
The same way the many "feminist" retellings of The myth of Persephone make Demeter an obstacle for her daughter Persephone to become Queen of the Underworld, as in it's a bad thing that Demeter wants her daughter back from the realm of the dead.
Cause you know Demeter should just let her daughter become a powerful queen and get the god of the underworld wrapped around her little finger, like a supportive mother would. Nevermind the fact the original myth was an allegory for child death and for kidnapped brides and how a mother would do anything to save her child from such fates, that's not feminist at all, bossing around the old guy who kidnapped you now that's feminist.
@@Prototype-357 the irony is that all you actually need to do a modernised feminist retelling is have persephone go willingly instead of getting kidnapped, since we simply view kidnapping differently to how the ancient greeks did. a skilled writer could even still keep it as an allegory for kidnapping, but considering how most of these retellings make the mistake of interpreting persephone as the goddess of spring when the original myths just describes her as "dread persephone: queen of the underworld" maybe tallent is too much to expect.
why did she change the names of Duncan’s sons? they have explicit names in the play-Malcolm and Donalbain. it feels like she skimmed over less than half a plot summary of Macbeth before writing this
THIS IS WHAT I WAS THINKING ABOUT. Like, there was absolutely ZERO reason to do that
because it's sexier I guess?
Justice for my guys seriously
Didn't even check the sparknotes probably
I can't even imagine having this much contempt for your own medium, how do these people even get up in the morning.
"after that twink" is an amazing phrase i just imagine a king yelling that to his guards like "GUARDS AFTER THAT TWINK"
*Ganon to link
I DIED
A modern-ish retelling of a classic story about a damsel with unexplained but ultimately pointless magical powers rings more of a Disney princess than girlboss feminism
Even Disney Princess did better
Disney Princesses, especially in Disney's Golden Era, are unironically very feminist
Hell, even Cindrella and Sleeping Beauty are feminist
Its the Mulan remake in Scotland?
@@sheila19954 Yes! People forget that for its time, (Sleeping Beauty) The three fairies are active protagonists (All middle aged appearing women as well!) who orchestrate a plan to save Aurora from Maleficent (One of the most evil and well known female villains of all time). If anything those three are the main characters since their actions drive the plot.
I really think we as a society might have treated Disney Princess movies too harshly, which is why Disney keeps trying to do the girlboss pop feminism of (How do you do fellow kids?) which feeds into the problem of not understanding that every story, even simple ones has some degrees of nuance.
@@papermr.magolorguy7957 Aurora herself also went through an emotional ringer in the film, and people seem to just like to ignore that.
I tried to read this book. But i dnfed so quickly.
1. How all the women were described ugly, but Rosaline
2. The rampent Xenophobia to Scottish People
3. Should have been a Bluebeard
4. I am mentally tired of how misogynistic these feminist retellings are.
I think Ava Reid is distancing herself from this book. I know she won't, but I wish she would at least apologize for the Xenophobia in the book.
I only read a Study of Drowning by Ava Reid that was inspired by Zelda Fitzwillian's works being stolen by her husband
I think she thinks only burly men SA and twink boys don't.
I love the implication that patriarchy is the "natural order of the world". That's definitely a thing feminists actually believe and not something incredibly misogynistic if you think about it for a few seconds!
I’m gonna push back on this a little by saying that I get the author’s intentions of that (esp when it relates to why there are so many patriarchal societies around the world and how it ties back to pregnancy, childbirth, and child rearing) but “natural state” is a fallacy to begin with. Neither an egalitarian society nor a patriarchal or matriarchal one is “naturally occurring” they are all products of societal interactions
@@erinkatrina4201 I completely agree on the 'natural state' being a fallacy, and it was what I was attempting to point to! :)
Isn't that a radfem belief
@@negative6442 not as far as i am aware, no.
I mean in a round about way they do.
Thinking that, if you're not hyper vigilant, an oppressive patriarchy will string up from seemingly the ground does check with their logic.
The anti Scottish thing is so weird... What is this supposed to mean
my irish ancestors are laughing from heaven 😂😭 their anti-scottish propaganda worked
Okay so I get imprisoning arguably the most powerful women in McBeth as an allegory and all but like.. Why wouldn't you chain the witches up in the basement to, like, tell prophecies forever? So the king doesn't have to think for himself but just uses the "ideas" of "women close to him" instead?
congratulations you already thought more about the plot than ava reid did
Ah! Tis is the reason for it is immoral!
There’s something very telling about giving her this magical persuasion power. In the original play, she persuades people to do things by arguing, convincing, scheming, etc. This version of the character seems to be basically incapable of wielding power (I guess because Lady Macbeth wielding power in the original story makes her a bitch and therefore cannot be allowed? #Feminism) so the only way for her to affect the story is through magic.
Yeah I would have peaced out the moment they tried to give shakespeare a hard magic system
Lady MacBeth *could* have been an interesting lens to explore how historically women in positions of power had to derive said power from men(usually their husbands). Make Lord MacBeth an ambitious bungler who has to unwittingly rely on his wife’s talent for diplomacy and subterfuge, and how he ends up getting all the credit anyway because that’s just how society worked (and arguably still does). There’s undoubtedly a few examples of that throughout history we’ll just never know about because the woman in question was simply too good/subtle in her machinations.
It was actually common in medieval eras for the lady of a fiefdom to be the actual manager (due to the Lord commonly being commanded to court or war) and person who organizes defense the castle when the lord is away. So could work very well
@ Yes, and it was not unheard of for them to be so practiced/skilled at it that they continued to do so even when he was home.
"Macbad." Classic.
Aaah! Hot potato, yadda yadda, cut by loosened ends!
I think they're saying...?
I don't get why the author had to go out of her way to make a "realistic" setting (women being inferior to men) to then just have a fuckin dragon
It almost feels like an incels retelling rather than a feminists
There's a joke about horse shoe theory in there
Femcels.
I gotta say the fact that this book flopped so hard is a massive disappointment to me as someone who is incredibly interested in the original Lady Macbeth. From what's stated in this review, the book reads like the author didnt want any chance of the reader perceiving Lady Macbeth as a potentially bad or morally grey person (hence making her a stereotypically innocent, virginal teenager and giving her a cartoonishly cruel patriarchy to struggle against), but in the process just ended up assassinating her character. There is so much in the original chatacter that could be explored in the hands of a writer who cared.
Sidenote: I thought at first that the hot description of Lysander was actually a description of King Duncan and i was like "Didnt lady macbeth in the play say he reminded her of her father???? Sigmund freud has entered the chat."
Lady Macbeth consoling herself about murdering a bunch of people by telling herself “they’re just men” is so funny to the pointy of parody
What happened to Duncan’s son Malcom? Malcolm is the one who becomes king at the end of the play, there is no Lysander in Macbeth, Lysander was a character in Midsummer nights dream! Does she not know who is in Macbeth? Fleance was a child and is alive at the end of the play, how old is she making him in this book?
Lady Macbeth was one of the strongest and powerful Shakespeare character, either male or female. From what I’m gathering from your summary, the author has completely destroyed this character. I now know never to read this book.
A "retelling" for people who have never looked at the play text or seen it on film or on stage before. The first time I read the play, I was 16. even then when I'd be more open to the girlbossification of feminism, I don't remember thinking "hm, I wish the female character were less demure".
the tragedy may arguably be about Macbeth, since it's named after him and he is sort of pulled around by external forces, but Lady Macbeth has more memorable moments and is both one of the catalysts of his downfall but also her own in more ways than one. She is the one who ends up alienated from the man that based on the actual text she has a strong bond with and the loss of that bond is what contributes to her final demise. It's such an interesting characterization and relationship. There is so much already there in the text. To do *this* to a character that cool is ridiculous.
Honestly this was probably the worst book I’ve ever read. Don’t know what we did to offend Ava Reid but it was clearly something
I’m Scottish and I love Scottish history, honestly I’d rather reread Outlander than this.
The book messes with history, geography and spelling. Yeah, that author’s note where she claims to use historically accurate spelling is garbage, I checked four different languages. But honestly I could tell because she sticks to using English adjacent spelling, Gaelic works completely differently, so Duncan in Gaelic is spelt Donnchadh, no idea where she got Duncane. Changing the spelling of Glamis to Glammis was daft, it’s pronounced Glams, which I understand you not knowing, the audiobook narrator has no excuse.
One of the reasons I don’t like MacBeth is the treatment of Gruoch (it’s pronounced Groo-uch btw), I hate the loss of her name and that she’s turned into a villain there’s no evidence she really was. But this was so much worse than that.
I'm genuinely so sorry that Northern European minority languages are continually fucked over by writers these days. First it was Fourth Wing and now this...
:/
I filmed this on somewhat short notice as a side project, but as I was editing I started regretting not doing my research. When I pronounce Grouch the second and third time, you'll notice I pasted the IPA phonetic transcription of the correct pronunciation over my mouth.
But obviously, most viewers won't get anywhere with IPA and I'm sorry for not looking it up properly
Lady MacBeth is one of the female characters with the most power and agency in all of Shakespeare (Only Cleopatra comes out on top of her, by my reckoning). She is cast as a villain precisely because of this, so there IS potential for a retelling and there IS misogyny in the play, even though she does many legitimately evil things.
But making her "sympathetic" by stripping her of her power and agency is just hitting the exact same misogynistic spot from the other side.
7:00 wait a minute…this is the plot of Barbie and the Magic of Pegasus what the hell
The idea of making a "feminist retelling" and then removing the actual ability and skill of a woman in favor of magic control magic is... a choice!
some people think "feminist retelling" and decide that means "female protagonist whose only obstacles are wholly evil and outside of their control and not any result of their own actions". Which, shocker, strips any character in that scenario of agency
It's a weird delusion in feminist literature that women seem to be purely faultless external entities that the evils of the world are being inflicted upon.
"like a slavic goldfish" threw me way back into my childhood fairytales, by God that joke was better than the plot of the book
Rybičko zlatá, přeju si...
There’s another book, Lady Macbethad , by Isabelle Schuler. . Schuler’s book seems more grounded in history and Shakespeare , as it’s written as a prequel to Shakespeare’s play. I’d recommend it for those wanting read about Gruoch before she got married to Macbethad (they were actually in love by the way)
I WAS ABOUT TO RECOMMEND LADY MACBETHAD
I feel like this book would have made way more sense as a bluebeard retelling lol
I suggest this author walk into a theatre and scream “Macbeth” at the top of their lungs …. You never know
More like Lazy Macbeth
She has sex with him and she thinks he’s under her spell???? That’s still weird, even if he did it of his own volition
Like,,, in her mind she’s basically forcing a guy to do it with her
damn, if only there was a pre-existing tragic Shakespeare heroine who's married off at a young age to a stranger from another kingdom for reasons related to a conflict with her father whose perspective is largely missing from the bulk of the play and would certainly lend itself to a novel-length character study...
i say like that wouldn't have risked some version of King Lear where Cordelia runs off into the sunset with the courtier who stabs Cornwall, and he's also a werewolf now for some reason
10:39
Half-something
Half-fae, half-witch, half-dragon whatever. He has some magical bloodline that gives him magical powers.
14:56
Weredragon. A fucking weredragon what?! Why? How? So apparently this world has weredragons. How is anyone else any form of a threat? What are there a bunch of other weredragons in the background?
How the fuck did he keep it hidden and why? I would think “don’t piss me off or I will transform into a dragon” would be an effective threat.
between books like this and circe and tsoa, im burned out as an anthropologist and classics enthusiast
lol do Circe and tsoa also have issues? I've read both but don't know how accurate it is
Circe as a tragic figure who can do no wrong was so weird to me, like pls be serious
@@Bread_bread01 The only reason Achilles and Agamemnon come to blows in the Iliad is because Achilles wanted to grape Briseis himself, Miller is essentially demonizing an actually accurate portrayal of one for not living up to her ridiculous faultless whitewash of the other.
insane book. i kept reading it because, if nothing else, i felt like anything could happen.
since so-called feminist retellings are so marketable these days, i genuinely felt like this was some kind of writing assignment Reid didn’t want.
Love that they took Lady M’s intelligence, ambition, and skill at manipulation and changed it to “oh she actually just has a magic power to make people listen to her.” Very feminist, very cool and normal thing to do to a famously interesting and deep female character.
wait wait she’s not even the one who wanted duncan dead first WHAT??
Correction: Alan II, Duke of Brittany wasn't a Frenchman, not even a bit and Brittany was free at this point in time, not becoming part of France until several hundred years later. Bretons weren't French back then and aren't French now (depending on how -based- nationalist someone is). That's like saying that a Sioux or Cherokee from the 15th century was an US-American.
how is your feminist retelling less feminist than a man in the 17th century
Seriously!
the audacity to call that "feminist"... thank you for your well considered analysis
wait who tf is lysander???? weren't the king's sons named malcolm and donalbain????
Lysander is from an entirely different play.. A Midsummer Night's Dream if I remember correctly. I have no idea what he's doing here.
im convinced they did not read anything shakespeare wrote. like... this was the opposite of what Shakespeare wrote 😅😅😅😅 they didnt even keep Duncan's sons names the same... which is just weird?
My best guess is that Macbeth was chosen because there's a market for retellings of thinks we teach in schools but why Macbeth over other classics that might fit this better?
What if you picked Tess of d'Ubervilles!!!
Damn.. I thought this video will be about "Lady Macbeth of Mzensc" By Leskov, but I never thought that there is another retaling (even though, the book I've mentioned is not a retaling technically..). And yet I'm happy to get this vid recommended tho
Holy hell, for a sec I thought you were talking about Lady Macbeth, aka, Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District, the terrific novella by Leskov. A lot of people call it Lady Macbeth these days due to the film adaptation.
Anywho, cool, I'll avoid this book.
if the real lady macbeth read lady macbad she would probably....perhaps.....not really sure.....will add another victim to her murder spree
oh my god no booktok got macbeth
10:03 Oh no poor her the man who kissed her did it of his own free will!
I thought you were talking about a Russian "Lady Macbeth" by Nikolai Leskov. Jokes on me 😅
Fun fact, in the Russian retelling Lady M killed her husband and father-in-law because she was done with them.
‘Don’t eat the mushrooms!’ was an inside joke in my friend group for a while because we watched a recording of the Shostakovich opera during 2020 and that’s how my username originated, because Katerina is my first name.
I just came here to say that if you squint the preview looks like Hatsune Miku
I honestly started watching thinking that the video was about Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District.
at least in the end you fell sorry for katerina, not cringe like with this book
Oh hey
At first I thought it's about Leskov's story...
The worst part is that I liked it until halfway.
Then we met the witches.
Then she got rage FOR other women when she hadn’t done jack while watching horrible things?
And then she used that made up “I’m acting out lady fantasies” to go and completely ruin the plot and the point of the book.
I also cannot stress how awful it is that Rosalie HAD potential, and then it got way overboard.
Imperious Eyes sounds like the Geass of Kings hehe (was that what it was called?)
Ahh yes, the sexy teenager, she sleeps with the hot guy who wants her 'as a man would' and 'will not hurt her'unlike her husband......and she finally makes her super move only after she has the POWER OF *_FOUR_* WOMEN......peak feminism
Absolutely not incredibly regressive actually
I feel like the people who genuinely believe this this is feminist are the one who'll buy into anything derogatory and dehumanizing as long as the instagram ad calls it #girlboss #girlpower
10:39 he’s half fae or forest thing and that’s how the tree part of the prophecy plays in
Nope! I reread that part and Reid is very clear on this: it's the "wood" he carries on him.
It's true that he's not fully human, but both his parents are, and the dragon thing is a curse bestowed on him because of his father's assaulting a witchy deer lady. She specifically phrases it as "stealing the natural form of your firstborn sons". But I'm afraid nothing in the text suggests an explanation cleverer than "the guy's got leaves on him"
@@joyachilldamn i like my version better
I flew to the comments to suggest he was fae, because the only thing this book needs to be more of a shit show is a hot faerie boy
Fools be like: Wow!!! The retelling of an old book but from HER POV!!???? 🤯 GOTTA BUY IT IMMEADIATELY!!!🤤🤪
see i understand you were gonna say buy it. but "gotta boy it" sure is apt kjsdfhjk
@@cariad.w8468 I typed the wrong letter and didn't notice it until now 😅
Rampant xenophobia against the Scottish and feminism so bad it loops back around to misogyny, are we sure this wasn't written by Garth Merenghi?
I think her being french is lifted from the Justin Kurzel film where Lady Macbeth is palayed by Marion Cotillard with a slight french accent.
So sad that this book ain't it, i really liked Juniper & Thorn by the same author
same lmao. it’s not that ava reid is a bad author per se, when she wants to do a good retelling or original story she knows how to do it well (juniper and thorn, a study in drowning… yeah I have issues with those books but overall they were good)…. What was thisssss
Hey, just wanted to let you know it’s pronounced Gru-och, Grr Oo Ah ck. It does look like grouch though! Names that are Britannic, Gaelic, Celtic, ect can be tricky if you’re not familiar with them. I hope this helps!
It does! I'm really sorry about fumbling this - I filmed this video on my phone as a side project and only realised how much my pronunciation was lacking during edits. "grʌu:ːħ" is the phonetic transcription I came up with after my own research, and I did end up pasting it over my mouth later in the video.
But obviously, most people won't know what to do with phonetic transcription and I really should have checked beforehand... Thanks for the guide tho, I appreciate it!
10:40 my prediction is that he's only half human because Duncan was secretly a vampire and after the regicide he'll end up rising again from his coffin. maybe
This was cathartic 😅
Haha I was blissfully unaware this book existed, thought you were talking about “Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District”. The more you know I guess 😅
Did... did she read Macbeth?
In highschool maybe
Like…at least read the original media that you’re trying to ‘rewrite to suit your own fantasies.’ Lady Macbeth is a villain in the original story.
Man, Shakespeare is rolling in his grave.
He's a vampire! ...I'll be back when you let me know if I'm right.
That was dumber than I could ever have imagined. I am speechless.
I was squinting in disbelief through pretty much the entire second half of your video
This author should've just retold the story of Melusine (a dragon fairy from medieval Aquitaine) or St Trephyne (deceived into marrying a serial killer according to legend), because firstly these two figures are bigger feminists than freaking Lady Macbeth, and secondly the author clearly has a fascination for early medieval France
Not sword art online 😭😭
This...this has nothing to do with lady Macbeth. A DRAGON SHIFTER? Really? This is a MacBeth wall paper over cheap modern day romance.
How does Lady MacBethaf by Isabelle Schuler compare? I saw it in every book shop a couple years ago, but I never read it. Is it better than this retelling? Does it also suck?
I dnfed this book at 30% and I'm so glad I did lmao because sounds like it got insanely ridiculous
I was really hoping to like this book because I really loved Juniper & Throne by Ava Reid. Which was critical about xenobia so to find that Lady Macbeth was not it...was disappointing
Great, I also hated The Wolf and the Woodsman so I’ll continue to avoid her brand
What's annoying is I can see some really interesting concepts in what you've described - specifically, I would love to read a character study on a young woman with similar powers being pressured to use them for someone else's advantage, and how that affects her and her environment over time - but instead we got this.
haven't liked a video as fast as i did this one in a while lmaoooo thank goooooood someone finally talked about itttttttttt!!!!!!!!! ahhhhhh i've been dying to say all of this
the whole time i was reading the book, i felt like i was not reading a macbeth retelling
My guess at 10:45... like maybe he's a witch? Part-witch??
I didn't expect to get a SAO Abridged reference in here LMAO
THANK YOU! i received an arc of this earlier this year (feb/march i think) and i absolutely hated it. almost didnt even finish it.
youtube is reading my mind I literally saw this book at the store today and pondered buying it bc I dressed up as lady Macbeth for halloween
I took this out from the library and couldn’t get past the first few pages. Thank you for confirming my decision.
I am a scottish woman and am very excited to watch this with fury
I literally cackled when I heard the term "were-dragon"; I get that there were fantasy elements in Macbeth already, but come on 😂
I assumed this was about Lady Macbeth of Mtensk and was wondering why it’s popping up on book tube
One of my friends right now is obsessed with Macbeth and somehow this appeared on my feed
i'm honestly kind of glad that ava reid is getting so much backlash as a writer. juniper and thorn was easily one of my most dissappointing reads of last year, and it got lots of praise. i found a lot of issues in that book to be common with the ones joy talks about here. mainly, it was marketed as a adult feminist fantasy, but had a pathetic 20-something woman who acted like an immature 14 year old as the protagonist, and her love intrest was some twink who was also supposed to be an adult, but acted like a child. it felt like a mediocre YA fantasy with SA scenes added to make more "mature" or something.
maybe i'm just misremembering it though, it has been almost two years since i read it (i don't even remember if i finished it lol).
Studied the play and was in a college production - already preparing to be mad.
Its draining when an author does the whole "badass character is so clever and sly, no one can best them its all so easy" yet at most of the conflicts someone does indeed best them and the character is quite dumb. Funniest bit was the thanos dissolve look of disbelief at the camera, it was too much! Had to come back and finish the video another day XD
if it isn't too painful, i'd love to hear a review of that new book by any other name by jodi picoult. from what i've read it's "feminist" because it basically makes the claim, "shakespeare's plays must have actually been written by a rich woman because he was way too poor to understand greek mythology + write compellingly". and now people who haven't read shakespeare since school are on goodreads saying "huh, this is really good evidence! i guess shakespeare was a woman", it's driving me MAD. oh also apparently her "feminist retelling" includes many graphic, eroticised sex scenes between her child protagonist and a 60 year old dude? yeah
Did you design the thumbnail yourself bc that was literally the whole reason i clicked
I actually really liked the book but maybe thats just because i didn‘t go into reading it thinking of it as a feminist retelling of the play. Also english isn‘t my first language so maybe i didn’t get some of the nuance of the text but i thought it was quite entertaining.
Edit: ok so i will just clarify that i bought the book because i really liked ava reids other books so i didn’t really search up anything else about it beforehand and completely missed that this was so supposed to be a feminist retelling 😂 and yes i agree it‘s not very feminist but i still liked it. I understand your critisms though
I know this isn't a great comment, because I just started the video and it's not about the video at all, but I just have to say:
Your makeup is to _die_ for!! I'm jealous lol
*Sad bagpipes sounds*
he’s definitely the kelpie from earlier in human form, gotta be so obvious.
I'm SO glad I'm not the only one. I thought I was going crazy when I saw the synopsis. Since when did she ever need a "feminist retelling"? This is the kind of shit that make us look bad
Well, I did not, in fact, see that twist coming. So, great job? 😂
“like he’s a slavic goldfish” don’t you slander zlatá rybka by connecting it to this book 😤
Did Ava even read the original Macbeth story...
character in a play not a book.
I would guess that Lysander is revealed to be secretly a witch who wants to do laundry for all eternity
Edit: A WEREDRAGON IS SO CORNY 😂😂