A Court of Silver Flames

All the work of Sarah J. Maas draws heavily from classic fairy tales and mythology, which she then changes to subvert the original material’s patriarchal message. In the case of the series, A Court of Thorns and Roses, the central character plays many familiar roles. Feyre starts out as a Cinderella character—the youngest sister of three, who shoulders heavy responsibilities for the entire family. Feyre’s cruel biological mother plays the role of the wicked stepmother. After entering the Fae world, Feyre becomes identified with Beauty from Beauty and the Beast. Her further adventures with the High Lord of the Night Court place her in the role of Persephone to his Hades.

In the original tales mentioned above, the heroine’s passivity is her defining trait. Cinderella does little more than make a wish and wait for a shoe that fits. Beauty “keeps sweet” and tames the Beast with smiles. Persephone pines in the underworld for six months every year until she returns to the upper world in the spring. It is important to remember that mythology and fairy tales are meant to express a culture's values and teach people how to behave in the real world. The message in all these instances is that docile females must wait to be rescued and will be rewarded for their passivity. This ideal of feminine behavior is the cornerstone of the patriarchal system, which places males at the top of the social order, with dependent women deriving their status and value from the men who own them.

Maas’s work flips these role models upside down by restoring agency to her heroines. Feyre rescues the males in her world rather than the other way around. She is elevated to the role of High Lady, not as Rhys’s consort, but as his co-ruler. Since Maas’s books are set in a medieval fantasy world, female power is something of a novelty. While there are formidable queens and witches, most political control remains in male hands.

A Court of Silver Flames, the final book in the series, pushes patriarchal privilege to the breaking point when Nesta bests the male warrior elite of Illyria. Maas once again resurrects patriarchal fables to illustrate this concept by using the female warriors known as the Valkyries. In Norse mythology, these females function as little more than handmaidens who transport male warriors to Valhalla. In contrast, Maas associates her Valkyries much more closely with the mythical female Amazons. Nesta, Gwyn, and Emerie learn Valkyrie battle techniques and the confident mindset of females who refuse to be defeated by male warriors.

The author creates a cultural clash between Illyrian male warriors and the reborn Valkyries personified by Nesta and her friends. Throughout the novel, Maas describes many male abuses that parallel patriarchal behavior in the real world. Rape and torture are routinely used to keep females in line in the novel and send them into hiding in the House of Wind’s library. Emerie’s father breaks her wings so she cannot fly, an indirect allusion to the practice of female genital mutilation still current in patriarchal cultures in Africa and Asia. The metaphor of wings and flying has often been associated with female sexuality. That Emerie’s wings are damaged by her father indicates that abusive male authority begins at home.

The Valkyrie victory over the Illyrian male warriors during the Blood Rite indicates how much Maas wishes to shift cultural values away from male dominance to a partnership model of male-female interdependence. The popularity of her assertive heroines and their supportive male love interests suggests that the broader culture finds this much-needed ideological change an appealing alternative to patriarchy’s outmoded archetypes.