Sometimes a doll isn't just a doll:
Considering Colonialism & Oppression in Dorothy Tse's "Owlish" [Graywolf, June 2023]
I’ve started reading advance review copies without any preparation - even ignoring the author’s name & bio - in hopes I can somehow read a text “as is” without any preconceived notions. I’m hoping this will allow me to enter into a text without a framework other than the varied lenses I always already have (intersectional feminist, anti-racist, embracer of critical race theory, anti-homophobic, anti-transphobic, animal liberationist, anti-agist, editor, writer, poet, musician, and so on). I’m considering identity a lot lately - not just because of the many horrific oppressions against identities in this country and - it seems - the entire world, but also because identity is how we read. I realize this repeatedly whenever I read someone else’s review of a book I’ve read - none of us read books in the same way. When I began to read Dorothy Tse’s “Owlish” I avoided reading anything about the book in advance. I even avoided reading the author’s name or anything about her. Because of this, the book “felt” reminiscent of much of the Latin American fiction (in translation) I’ve read - a dryness to the prose, an academic male protagonist positioned as hero/anti-hero, a frigid and controlling woman as his wife, an amorphous and oppressive bureaucracy that had already marginalized our “hero” before he had a chance to fulfill his dreams.
Professor Q teaches at Lone Boat University in the “cultureless city” of Nevers. Professor Q is a refugee - since childhood - and lives in a sort of liminal state - never belonging anywhere: not at his University (where he continually fails at the promotion review process) and not even in his loveless and sexless marriage to Maria - an accomplished civil servant. Nevers is written as a colonized space: “built up by the kind of Valeria and ruled by her for over a hundred years.” Valerians have blonde hair and blue eyes but well before the events in the novel, Nevers was handed over “like a gift to the Vanguard Republic.” The political and physical geography of the novel - if I’d read the author’s name and bio before reading the novel - would of course have pointed me toward Hong Kong. In her afterword, Tse makes the connection clear. But this novel is much more than an easy metaphor for the oppression by first the English and then the Chinese of the small peninsula and group of islands that comprise Hong Kong. For Tse, Hong Kong is a city that exists “at the intersection of dreaming and being awake” and much of the novel exists in that space. It’s never clear whether or not Professor Q’s extramarital adventures are happening in the “real” physical world or if he’s participating in an elaborate fantastic delusion where dolls are real and shadows become revolutionaries become shadows. Professor Q’s love/sexual obsession is with Aliss - a life-size music box doll he is lured into “owning” by a shadowy magician. As is so often the case with novels heavily focused on a male protagonist, we only have Professor Q’s view of his relationship with Aliss “The love affair between Aliss and Professor Q existed outside the bound of the common world. There was nothing transactional about it: in all that he did for Aliss, Professor Q asked for nothing in return.” But it’s possible - and I hope - that Tse is doing more here: using the relationship between Professor Q and Aliss as another metaphor, one where the oppressed (Professor Q) is also the oppressor - in this case of Aliss, a self-aware “doll” he has a sexual relationship with, a doll he locks in her music box whenever he’s not using her - to voice his opinions at, to dress up, to continually use for his sexual fantasies. And the suggestion that this is what Tse suggests - a terrible oppression enacted on the powerless Aliss by her “owner” the oppressed Professor Q - in the rest of the quote describing their relationship as non-transactional: “Consider the ballerina doll, used to spending her days inside the dark, quiet confines of her music box, which the professor now opened up whenever he pleased, thrusting her into the realm of his wildest fantasies. Think of it from her perspective. Imagine the upheaval!”
Professor Q moves Aliss and the entire contents of his home office into a disused church on a small island. The path to the island, the minivan he uses to transport Aliss on repeated trips to and from the island, and perhaps even the opportunity to meet and then own Aliss - all of these are provided by a shadowy figure from Professor Q’s past known only as “Owlish.” Professor Q revels in his new freedom (intellectual and sexual) and is completely unaware the harm he causes - to Aliss and to his wife Maria. Maria is written as a frigid woman - refusing to participate in a sex life with her husband starting with a disastrous wedding night. Professor Q is a sensitive and passionate man, crushed under his wife’s sexless efficiency. The misogyny is glaring but it’s a misogyny enacted by the professor and the state - a systemic misogyny that’s a brilliant example of how patriarchy works - by making us hate Maria for her hyper-efficiency, her failure to provide her husband with a sex life that on a surface level can be read as the “why” in Professor Q’s perverse behavior with Aliss.
While Professor Q is busy avoiding his wife, shirking his teaching duties, and playing out fantasies in his “love nest,” the social culture of Nevers is under threat. Students are protesting in the streets, refusing to go to class, threatening the system. And the state pushes back with typical brutality until protest exists only in a sort of shadow realm - a space where Aliss can eventually escape the Professor and where perhaps creativity, real love, and social equity might survive. Eventually, Professor Q’s world collapses - Maria discovers the affair (and we finally see her show some feelings), and the University accuses him of participating in the protests. It seems a painting given him by Owlish has transformed into a pornographic painting of him with Aliss and this has replaced a painting of a University leader. It’s a bit obtuse but of course, that’s how the State gets you - a small action that you never did but that can somehow be linked to you. When Professor Q is summoned before University authorities he at first confusedly thinks he’s finally going to get his promotion - instead, his life dips into the nightmare of life under the authoritarian regime that rose to power while he was off in his “love nest.” With the rise of the Vanguard Republic, any hope for freedom seems lost and we have to cheer when Aliss manages to slip out of her box - without Professor Q’s knowledge - and disappear into a crack in the wall of the church. There are metaphors within metaphors here - the doll becomes “real” only when she escapes her oppressor, the path to freedom is through a crack in a wall made by the weight of an abandoned crucifix on the wall of the church, the only freedom exists in a sort of shadow realm, and so on. While the novel ends on a dark note - there is no successful rebellion, we do finally discover who “Owlish” really is, and we can perhaps hope that somehow, somewhere, Aliss is enjoying her freedom.