She Who Remains and Twisted Cultural Norms

This is not a review. See why.

Context

In the mountains of modern Albania, villagers still live under the ancient code of the Kanun—a set of practices that enshrine the importance of honor and dictate everything from what constitutes proper hospitality to the terms of blood feuds between families. The parents of one young woman, Bekija, betroth her to a man she barely knows. To escape the marriage, she becomes a sworn virgin and takes on a man’s name (Matija) and clothing. But according to the Kanun, this dishonors her former fiance, so to regain his honor, he must kill a man from her family. The novella explores how she comes to the decision to become a sworn virgin, how the resulting blood feud destroys her family, and how she eventually claws back some of what she lost. Part of the novella is told through the framework of Bekija being interviewed by a journalist because she may be the last sworn virgin in the country.

Key Ideas (Evaluation: Mixed)

• Blind obedience to codes that devalue individual lives and agency is destructive

• “All desperately desired things materialize one way or another” (130)

Blind obedience to codes that devalue individual lives and agency is destructive

The lives of Bekija, her family, and those around her are shaped by the Kanun. Her father teaches her to obey it unquestioningly; for instance, he once slapped her for killing a stag when they were out hunting because it is a sacred animal. When Bekija asks why it is okay for them to kill rabbits but not deer, he says “that’s nature, nature is bound by rules you don’t question” (71). But it is not nature, it is how a subset of human beings have decided to interact with nature. And ironically, the Kanun imposes harsh penalties on natural behavior such as having sex before marriage—brides who are found to not be virgins are killed. Between this and the various reasons for blood feuds, murder is so common that some men consider it dishonorable to die any other way.

All this bloodshed cuts lives short, ruins families, and causes heaps of unearned pain and suffering. Bekija and others like her find themselves caught between being chained to miserable lives and potential early death or triggering a blood feud that will lead to the deaths of others. When people treat the Kanun as a fact of nature and not as a chosen, changeable, fallible set of principles, they believe themselves to be unworthy if they can’t live up to it. But elements of the Kanun, if not its basic premises, are at war with what human beings need to live, as evidenced by the glorification of murder. Bekija carries around crushing levels of guilt as a result, as do others around her. One person confesses to her that “I don’t deserve to know happiness. It must be written for you and me. . . to shoulder the responsibility before God for every indirect murder we’ve committed” (137). The only thing Bekija is guilty of is not rejecting the destructive code she was raised with earlier—not for murders she didn’t commit. But this is the problem with authoritarian systems; they keep their power by manipulating subjects into depriving themselves of their own agency.

“All desperately desired things materialize one way or another” (130)

One consequence of the Kanun’s laws is codified sexism. Men are killed more often than women, so many parents value sons more than daughters. Bekija’s father desperately wanted a son and made no secret of this fact. We eventually learn that Bekija had a male twin whom she absorbed in the womb, a phenomenon called fetus in fetu. She thinks of this as her father’s desire manifesting in physical reality; none of them had ever realized her mother had conceived a son as well. But the biological reality does not reflect this. There is no connection between a father’s desire and the sex of the embryo or embryos he fertilizes; desire alone does not change reality—only actions do. The incident could be seen as symbolic—the father devaluing his future daughter for reasons out of her control was twisted and anti-life, so one of the developing fetuses’s lives was cut short. But Bekija does not interpret it this way, instead taking on the guilt for yet another “indirect murder.”

Execution

The novella is written almost entirely in a stream-of-consciousness style, with haphazard use of punctuation. A randomly selected example:

your father wanted a son, but out came you

shush, mother, Matija appeared on the same day, I just waited for him to undress me, to dress me in his clothes, to put his watch on my wrist, there’s no more Bekija, her hair floats in the river, do you know what, Mrs. Journalist, we, us people, need rules and boundaries, I think it’s precisely what we need, I don’t know what it’s like where you’re from, but here freedom is a dangerous thing (18-19)

This style makes it incredibly difficult to distinguish between flashbacks and the primary timeline, between thoughts and dialogue, and at times between speakers in a conversation. Reading it was a valuable reminder that grammar is a valuable tool for clarity, not a set of arbitrary rules. By contrast, a work that relies so heavily on disconnected thoughts and memories makes distinguishing the truth within a work remarkably difficult. Writing that demands a reader think is valuable; writing that rewards a reader who thinks with a headache rather than clarity is disincentivizing and hindering deep engagement with literature.

The Vibe

The setting feels rustic, and the illiterate narrator’s voice somewhat contributes to the sense of being in a place trapped in the past. The stream-of-consciousness narration made me feel perpetually off-balance as I read. And the crushing grief and guilt she felt gives the whole story a downtrodden, despairing air.

Conclusion

She Who Remains explores the vital issue of how ancient, patriarchal, repressive laws tear apart lives, but it does so through a style that’s hard to follow and consequently the story is hard to connect to. It has some interesting elements, but overall I would not recommend it.