When Women Were Dragons

Much like any grassroots movement, building communities despite oppression is an effective way to build hope—and power. That’s just what dragons and their allies begin to do in the novel. The choice of “allow” Beatrice to transform serves as the floodgate that opens and allows for the rest of the novel to show the widespread beneficial effects of such freedoms on society as a whole. When everyone is allowed to choose who they are and who they want to be, peace spreads throughout the fabric of society. Barnhill takes particular pains to emphasize this point as Beatrice becomes the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, for throughout the novel, the girl has in many ways stood as one of the most progressive individuals of her family. For her, becoming a dragon is something she embraces from a very young age; unlike Alex or even Marla, she is never spiritually hindered by the social proscriptions against acknowledging the very existence of dragons. Although such proscriptions will prevent her physical transformation for a time, she never goes so far as to deny herself or forget her dreams of what she wants to become.

In sharp contrast to Beatrice, Alex herself chooses not to dragon—even when her beloved Sonja pleads with her to transform and fly away with her. Once again, Barnhill confronts the many complexities of Personal Agency and the Expression of Unconditional Love, for in order to truly love each other, as Alex and Sonja undoubtedly do, they must ultimately let each other go, for their inner drives to embody their most authentic selves have set them on very different paths. To stay together, one or the other must deny who she truly is, and such an act of fundamental self-denial would prove to be physically and spiritually fatal, as Bertha’s demise has long since proven. Thus, the women’s ultimate expression of love for each other is to give each other the freedom to be who they truly wish to be.

By the end of the novel, Alex and Beatrice finally embrace the freedom of a world in which they can pursue what they’ve always dreamed of doing or being (or both): a world that was denied to their mothers. In this, Barnhill’s novel also reflects the essence of real-world feminist issues, for such works of speculative fiction wield a special power to imagine what the real world might be like if it were to follow the metaphorical patterns that the story suggests. In this case, if individuals are allowed to determine for themselves how their lives will unfold, then societal connections like family and duty no longer have to be a spiritual prison, and community itself, being born as a collective of wholesome individual choices, can also come to hold a different meaning. Such a dynamic is demonstrated with the new homeschooling communities that form around the young dragons of Beatrice’s age. Just as Beatrice’s decision to dragon does not deprive her of the right to community, the very concept of community must grow and shift in order to accommodate the needs of the individual. Thus, both the individual and the community simultaneously gain authenticity and become truer reflections of reality. Such progress does not eliminate conflict, however, and thus Barnhill does not presume to eradicate war—but she does render it futile. Similarly, Barnhill’s experimental transformation of the definition of motherhood does not render the term obsolete; instead, the various ways in which the protagonists choose to nurture bring to the world a variety of definitions. In the end, femininity, family, and freedom are dynamic concepts tied to individual choice, and in Barnhill’s world, most of her characters are ultimately given the privilege of choosing what is best for themselves.