Interview with Joanne Harris (Runemarks and Runelight), Part Four

Click here for the previous installment of the interview.

Joanne Harris & the Doors of Perception – Photograph by Jennifer Robertson

KS – There are elements of contemporary pagan practice that appear in Runemarks and Runelight – including the use of runestones for divination (as opposed to the wooden strips of Tacitus) and the importance placed on reversed runes. While runologists agree that historical rune usage made no distinctions regarding the direction a runic text was written in – or even the orientation of any given rune in relation to its neighbors – some pagans today have worked up a complex system of rune-orientation based more on tarot divination and the I Ching than on what little is known of northern pre-Christian divinatory practice. You have written, “I don’t belong to any gang, political, religious or otherwise. And I’m allergic to words that end in –ist.” Understood. I’m just curious about your relationship to historical and modern paganism as a creative artist. Are your ideas about rune magic inspired more by ancient or modern conceptions? Are you more interested in how the runes were used in pre-conversion Europe or how they’re used in the modern world?

JH – I don’t think we can truly know how the runes were originally used. We can try to guess – and there are clues to be found, both in ancient texts and in the original languages – but my view is that belief in magic, like belief in religion, is a very personal thing. Blind adherence to rules set out a thousand or two thousand years ago is as pointless as trying to pretend that scientific advancement has not changed our perception of the Divine. My attitude is this: if it works for you, then that’s the way to do it for you. It may not work for anyone else, but that isn’t your problem. To paraphrase Siddharta, everyone follows his own path. If you’re following anyone else – even me – you’re going the wrong way.

"Fava Bean Elder Futhar Rune Set" Seriously. "Futhar" runes made from fava
beans. Sold as "perfect for those practicing Italian witchcraft." What.

My interest in runes spans both the ancient and modern beliefs. I included rune-casting in the “modern pagan” sense because, regardless of its usage (or not) in earlier times, it has been assimilated into modern practice to fit changing times and attitudes. This I think is perfectly acceptable; we should not feel constrained to think backward in terms of spirituality, but to build on whatever wisdom we have inherited.

KS – At one point in Runemarks, Maddy thinks through the various explanations of earthquakes she’s been given. One ties them to the writhing of the World Serpent at the root of the World Tree; one connects them to a semi-Christian idea of the struggles of wicked souls in the underworld as they wait for the End of Days. Odin provides a third explanation, telling Maddy about “rivers of fire under the earth and avalanches of hot mud and mountains boiling over like kettles; but this seemed to Maddy to be the least likely explanation of all, and she was inclined to believe that he had exaggerated the tale, as he did so many things.” This can be read as fairly accurate representation of the struggle between religious belief and scientific understanding here in the United States, unfortunately! Religion offers simple answers and eternal truths; science asks for complex thought and constant questioning. How would you describe the relationship between religion and science in the United Kingdom today?

Earthquakes are actually caused by the
Amazing Lava Man. Everybody knows that.

JH – I guess we have the same conflicts as in the US. We in the UK tend to inherit the US’s social problems somewhere along the line, including some of the more extreme manifestations of religious mania. We have not yet gone so far as to teach creationism in our schools, but it’s only a matter of time. Already a number of Catholic schools have refused to allow their female pupils to take a vaccine that protects them against cervical cancer on the grounds that it would “encourage immorality.” The heart sinks at such stupidity. But . . .

I don’t believe the role of religion should be to offer “simple answers.” Like Goethe’s Faust – as opposed to Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus – I think that the human condition is to strive, and that as soon as we stop striving (to explore, to understand, to create, to live in harmony with each other), then we have lost our way. In ancient times, our perception of the divine was limited by our limited knowledge of the world around us. At that time, it was perfectly acceptable to believe in such things as a flat earth or a physical Hell, to see perfectly natural phenomena as part of a supernatural universe.

Doctor Faustus making a deal with the Devil

The God of the Old Testament (and elsewhere) is a very primitive depiction of the divine – as represented by some very primitive people living in a primitive time, who see him as a kind of vengeful warlord with a mentality as barbaric as their own. The God of the New Testament is very different. Two thousand years later, even aspects of the New Testament (the Immaculate Conception, etc.) are being disputed by the church, and many parts of the Old Testament (e.g., stoning your son for drunkenness, not wearing mixed fibers, human sacrifice, etc.) have been dismissed by most as no longer valid in a modern context.

What I’m saying is that, as our knowledge of the universe has expanded, so should our appreciation of the divine. I don’t see science and religion as mutually exclusive. The world is changing constantly. So must our assumptions.

KS – Your novels contain several clever examples of folk etymology. Æsir is linked to Seer-Folk, which is reminiscent of Snorri Sturluson’s idea that the Æsir came from Asia. This is an interesting take on oral transmission and transmutation. You’ve written that “no-one had written [the Norse myths] down at the time, and the fullest accounts came from Christian chroniclers centuries later, and were at best, incomplete, and at worst, badly distorted.” In Runemarks, Loki says that “there’s rather a lot the Oracle didn’t foretell, and old tales have a habit of getting twisted.” The tagline for Runelight is “Never trust an Oracle,” and there’s a suggestion that Völuspá simply contains the untrustworthy words of a prophetess, not a statement of fact or religious dogma. I really like your idea that the myths may not tell the whole truth, which ties in with the debate (among both scholars and heathens) about the trustworthiness of the surviving mythology as an actual record of pre-Christian belief. Many of your characters were worshiped as living gods in the ancient North (and in modern pagan revivals), and we know that at least some actual religious belief is recorded in the myths. How do you personally see the relationship of religion, myth and literature? How does it affect you as an author to know that some readers literally worship the characters your write about?

How much can we trust the Völuspá prophetess?
Faroe Islands postage stamp by Anker Eli Petersen

JH – I don’t see the gods of Runemarks as my characters or my property, and I hope I’ve left enough leeway in my fiction for my Ásatrú readers to understand that I am not in any way trying to make fun of the gods they worship. What I’m trying to do in my way is to demonstrate how stories evolve and how heroes – be they religious figures, historical figures or both – cast long shadows in their wake. These shadows become part of the oral and written tradition and, as centuries pass, are embellished, rewritten and re-interpreted by successive generations. Thus a hero can become a god or a god dwindle into legend. I hope I haven’t offended anyone who truly believes; that was never my intention.

Some selected Norse gods on the Runemarks cover

KS – Your portrayal of the Order – the new religion that basically takes over after Ragnarök – is pretty grim. You write that the Order’s “temples were built on the ruins of springs and barrows and standing stones that once were sacred to an older faith” and that its members kill animals born with runemarks, take babies born with runemarks away from their parents, empty pagan barrows and reconsecrate them, and hang and burn pagans as people “who were in fact the servants of the enemy, and therefore had no souls to save.” You have written that you don’t hate Christians or “the Catholic Church, organized religion or any other kind of religious group. What I do hate is intolerance, repression, moral superiority, the concepts of original sin, holy war and eternal damnation, plus the various acts that certain individuals are willing to perpetrate in the name of their religion, certain that God is on their side.” Without ever mentioning Christianity in your novels, it’s pretty clear that the Order is a mythologized version of the Church, since so many of your examples parallel the actual (and often violent) history of northern conversion. There are a vast number of ways to turn Norse mythology into modern fiction (cf. J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, M.D. Lachlan’s Wolfsangel, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s Thor, etc.), but you chose to focus on the (literarily transformed) clash between paganism and Christianity. Why did you choose this particular aspect?

JH – Because it is the closest thing to what really happened to our indigenous beliefs. In Pendle, not far from where I live, there are still gibbets where witches were hanged. In Europe, the early Christian church was responsible for centuries of gruesome persecution – as well as the destruction of many precious ancient texts – in the attempt to stamp out all previous beliefs. There’s a reason they’re called the Dark Ages. And to think that certain people are trying to take us back there . . .

Today, there's a lot of talk about a war on religion and a war on women.
Way back in 1612, the ladies of Pendle really had it rough.

However, I still dispute that the Order is a mythologized version of Christianity. For a start, no mention of Christ, or any Christ-figure is ever made. In parenthesis, can I say that I do believe in the historical figure of Jesus, though not in his divinity? To me, he is a marvelous example of a truly wise man whose excellent advice – to be good to each other – has been shanghaied throughout history by people who have twisted his words to fit their twisted agenda. Christianity is not the only patriarchal religion in the world, and – as far as I’m concerned – they are all equally to blame for the spread of intolerance, hypocrisy, religious hatred and holy war.

Rant over. Moving on . . .

KS – In Runelight, Maggie (at least at the beginning) is a dedicated believer in the Order. She wears “a white headscarf of the type World’s Enders called the bergha,” which seems clearly connected to the burqa worn by traditional Muslim women. She has been trained to be unimaginative, to be obedient – and she responds emotionally to language “of sacrifice, and power, and mysteries.” You also mention “wealthy Outlanders with their strings of wives, veiled from head to foot in black, dark eyes modestly lowered.” Given your statements about religious intolerance and repression, was this meant to point out commonalities in the treatment of women in Christian and Muslim societies?

JH – Absolutely. And remember, traditional Muslim dress is not so different to the way in which women in Europe traditionally dressed,or the way modern nuns still veil their heads and shoulders. Remember too that – during the first part of the Middle Ages – a woman wearing men’s clothing was punishable by death; the charge was, officially, heresy. It’s one of the reasons they burnt Joan of Arc, who also casts a long shadow. Throughout history, there have been religious taboos over male and female clothing; the Koran and the Sunnah are filled with rules about what men and women can and can’t wear. I have simply transferred some of this to my story.

Stuck in the middle with you . . .

To be concluded in Part Five.

Interview with Joanne Harris (Runemarks and Runelight), Part Three

Click here for the previous installment of the interview.

KS – Fenris, Skoll and Haiti all appear as nasty teenage boys that dress and talk like dumb metalheads. Two of them have a swastika tattoo, “not a runemark, exactly, but a sign of allegiance to Chaos in one of its darkest, most sinister forms.” The teenage boys in the novels (including Adam Scattergood) are all delightfully disgusting, which got me wondering about the target audience for these books. I remember reading Tiger Eyes by Judy Blume as a teen and thinking, “Whoot! I don’t think boys are meant to be reading this!”

Runemarks and Runelight seem aimed at smart tomboys – Maggie is “too tall; too boyish; too clever; too pert; unwilling to play the seduction games played by other girls of her age.” This is totally understandable (and welcome), given the adolescent male fantasy of so much genre fiction (I’m looking at you, DC Comics editors and Game of Thrones producers). Aside from your daughter, were you writing with a specific audience in mind? What sort of response have you gotten from young women? From young men?

Speaking of adolescent male fantasy… A sexed-up
version of Maddy on Russian edition of Runemarks

JH – I rarely think about my target audience. In this case I did – but my audience was an audience of one [my daughter], and I wasn’t thinking further than that. Later I began to receive fan mail, and realized that my audience is too diverse to be easily categorized.

I get a lot of letters from young people, of course, although some of my most persistent fans are women in their fifties. Boys write to me, as well as girls, and I’m glad to see that my publishers haven’t tried to direct the readership by suggesting that this is a “girl book” rather than a “boy book.” I don’t like the book apartheid that has sprung up over the past few decades or the ridiculous marketing of books with glittery pink covers – sometimes with a little free necklace or bracelet, as if a book needed to come with some kind of jewelry to appeal to girls – designed to indoctrinate little girls into conforming early.

Runemarks and Runelight author Joanne Harris – Photo by Jennifer Robertson

My young readers, male or female, are Loki fans to a man (or woman). I think that, in many ways, Loki is the true hero of the books – even more so than Maddy. I’ve already spoken a little about Loki’s appeal, but I sense that my young readers see him as a reflection of themselves; they understand his feelings of alienation, so common in adolescence, and they enjoy his sense of humor and his irreverence towards authority. They like Maddy, too; but most of the time, it is Loki who has their heart.

KS – Early on, Maddy works rune magic by drawing runes on the ground with a stick. The rune-shapes are not magical in themselves; they need to be activated with a spark: “That was the only true magic involved. Anyone familiar with the runes – which were only letters, after all, taken from an ancient language – could learn to write them. The trick, Maddy knew, was to set them to work.” This usage of runes echoes the practice attested in Norse mythology, like Odin carving and staining the runes in Hávamál. The more striking rune-magic in the novels, though, is the casting with finger-shapes. You have a great demonstration of runic fingerings on your website. What were the influences on your development of the fingering system?

Maddy practices rune fingerings as red-bearded Thor looms behind
Art by Les Kanturek

JH – I owe a huge debt of gratitude to Jan Fries and his book, Helrunar. It was my main starting-point for developing the runes, interpreting their meanings and developing the “fingering” system that Maddy uses. The original source material of the Norse legends never explains all the methods in which runes are used, although study of Old Icelandic tells me that there are many, many different uses.

In Runemarks, I needed something simple and graphic enough to be easily visualized. Jan Fries puts heavy emphasis on “rune stances” – almost like yogic postures – to recreate the rune-shapes, but although a physical expression of the rune-shape seemed like a good idea to me, I found whole-body rune-shapes impractical. And so I decided on finger-shapes, a shorthand form of the rune stance, partly because as a child I remember my great-grandmother making the sign against the evil eye with her fingers – the same sign I’ve used for the rune Yr in Runemarks – and explaining that it was for protection against bad spirits.

You can find a lot of weird stuff on the internet

KS – I’m curious about your use of the Bjarkan rune. The source poems all agree that the rune simply means “birch” or “birch twig,” and their verses are clearly about the tree or shrub. In the world of your novels, however, the fingering of this particular rune is peered through to gain “truesight” – to see the hidden trails of magic that light up the world when seen through the rune-shape, to see the “true colors” of the beings that surround you. It’s one of the most distinctive runes in your books, and many characters use it to gain insight. Why did you choose this particular rune to invest with this ability?

JH – I’m going with the connection between Beorc/Bjarkan and the Old High German word bar (Old Icelandic berr) meaning naked, open, bare – as well as the fact that birch trees are so immediately visible among the trees in the forest. It’s a tenuous link, I know, but it’s a possible interpretation.

Mystic moonlight, bright birch

KS – Each section of the novels has a bind-rune frontispiece. Did you design these yourself? Do they have specific meanings related to the events they precede?

JH - I designed them with my editor, who has become a very enthusiastic participant. They can be deconstructed to make a kind of shorthand accompaniment to the chapter. Some of my young readers are also very enthusiastic in decoding these bind-runes and send me their various interpretations of what they mean, which makes me very happy.

KS – The bind-runes preceding each section of the novels are accompanied by quotes from Lokabrenna, Invocations, Prophecy of the Seer, Proverbs, Apocalypse, Book of Mimir, Fabrications – imaginary lost poems of the Eddas and sections of the Order’s Good Book. The quoting of works from within the world of the novel reminded me of Frank Herbert’s use of imaginary quotations (like passages from “The Collected Sayings of Muad’Dib” in Dune). I didn’t see Herbert in your lists of influences, but he seems a simpatico persona, given his creation of worlds built on complicated internal logic and investigation of the meanings of religion to those involved in their mystical heart (his Paul Atreides, your Maddy Smith). Herbert left Catholicism for Buddhism, and questions of religious belief play a major role in his works. Does Maddy’s journey reflect your own spiritual experiences in any way?

Frank Herbert and his awesome Viking beard

JH – I don’t subscribe to any organized religion. I never have, although all belief systems interest me and I’ve spent most of my life studying aspects of belief. I didn’t want the Good Book to be the Christian Bible – although a number of people have assumed that it was – which is partly why I included the quotes. But patriarchal ideologies in general have overlapping areas of belief. My intention was not to portray one existing religion, but to draw on the concept of the evolution of religions in general and how they shape society.

KS – The books freely mix Norse myth and Christian myth in a very interesting fashion. Ragnarökkian imagery intersects with Christian Apocalyptic visions, and the power of rune magic overlaps the power of the Word. The two traditions even join together physically in the final scenes as Maggie – daughter of Thor and follower of the Order – names her unborn son Adam, of all things. This both highlights differences between the two religious traditions and underscores how much Christianity took from the Old Way as it developed in the North. Your knowledge of the source texts of Norse myth rings through throughout your work, but I’m curious about your background in regards to Christian tradition. Were you raised in a believing family?

Norse Ragnarök meets Christian Apocalypse
on England's 10th century Gosforth Cross

JH – No, but I was raised in a family with a strong Catholic background. I never intended the Order to be seen as Christianity, although it has some things in common with the early Christian church – most of all its ability to naturalize and assimilate native beliefs. The Elder Edda itself shows how this works, retelling the myths from a different point-of-view [that is] biased towards Christianity.

However, I do believe that this is the nature of religion. No belief system stands alone. All are part of a long process of evolution and re-invention, and however much believers may reject this idea, all are ultimately related to one another.

To be continued in Part Four.

Interview with Joanne Harris (Runemarks and Runelight), Part Two

Click here for the previous installment of the interview.

Joanne Harris travels through the Nine Worlds

KS – Your novels hint at lands beyond the area your characters inhabit. Traders bring “glass and metalware from the Ridings; persimmons from the Southlands; fish from the Islands; spices from the Outlands; skins and furs from the frozen North.” You mention Wilderlanders, “all painted in blue woad,” and write that “[b]eyond the One Sea . . . there were men and women as brown as peat, with hair curled tight as bramble-crisp; and these people had never known Tribulation or the Good Book, but instead worshipped gods of their own – wild brown gods with animal heads.” Clearly, the action of the book only takes place in one small corner of the world you’ve created, with its reimaginings of real lands and peoples.

I’ve always wondered about the localization of Big Important Mystical Events. Gods with the power to shape existence and travel throughout the universe only seem to appear to very small groups of people in very specific locales. Yahweh never holidays in Alaska; Njord doesn’t seem to notice that there are some really nice beaches in California. How do you imagine the inhabitants of your world reacting to the fact that the disagreements of a bunch of Anglo-Saxon godly types bring all of existence to the edge of destruction? In the world of Runemarks, do other lands have gods as physically real as Odin and Loki? If so, are these other gods secretly observing the battles between the Northerners?

JH – I’ve often wondered that myself. It’s one of those non-linear folkloric suspensions of disbelief I was talking about earlier. In fact, I’ve been thinking about trying to write a Rune book in which world belief systems interact, just to see if my gods would survive, say, in South America, amongst all those bloodthirsty Aztec gods.

Of course, in the Rune books, the concept of “world” is limited to the world we know. This has been true throughout history, and religions – which tend to adapt to local conditions – reflect this pattern too. That’s why Jesus is traditionally shown as very Anglo-Saxon-looking in Europe and America, and the Nativity is most often depicted under snow.

Little blond baby Jesus in the snow

I’ve touched on a tentative explanation of this, both in my Rune books and in some of my short stories, by suggesting that gods are not all-powerful, and that the word “god” – like the concept of “world” – is open to massive historical and regional interpretation. Loki – whose voice I often use to voice these subversive theories – says as much in Runemarks: “In my time I’ve seen theatre gods, gladiator gods, even storyteller gods – Maddy, you people see gods everywhere. Gives you an excuse for not thinking for yourselves.” And again: “God is just a word . . . Reverse it and you get dog. It’s just as appropriate.”

I’ve also touched on the idea that gods might appear in different aspects to suit the time and place. Therefore the god of thunder, for instance, might have multiple personae – appearing as Thor in one place, or Tlaloc in another, or Jupiter – to suit the current perception of what a thunder god should be. Even the figure of Jesus, I would argue, has borrowed a number of aspects from previous religions, from Osiris to Mithras – all of them aspects of the same archetypical figure sacrificed at Easter and later reborn into godhood.

Tlaloc, Aztec god of thunder (& etc.)

KS – Given the large role of giants in both Norse myth and British folklore, I was surprised they didn’t appear in your books. When Surt shows up, he’s “a black bird shadow with a corona of fire,” not the Edda’s sword-wielding giant. Your imagery reminded me of some lines from the Kalevala, the epic poem from Finland:

The sky’s bird struck fire
made a flame flare up.
The north wind burnt the clearing
the north-east quite consumed it:
it burnt all the trees to ash
reduced them to dust.

Skadi is listed as “of the Ice People” in your character list, not specifically as a giant. Why did you choose to leave the big fellas out of the story?

My Little Pony wielding the flaming sword of Surt
Awesome painting of Rainbow Dash by ColinMLP

JH – The word most often translated as “giant” in Old Icelandic is open to a number of other interpretations, including “demon.” That started me thinking about the relationships between gods and giants/demons, and how little we hear about the actual physical size of these “giants.”

In some stories they are indeed of giant size. The giant Skrymir, for instance, is large enough to house four people inside his glove, but Loki, supposedly half-giant, is of normal size – perhaps even a little shorter than average. Many others – Skadi, Gerd – are of similar size to the gods, able to intermarry without difficulty.

Thor, Loki, and Thjalfi emerge from the glove of the giant Skrymir

I came to the conclusion, then, that the word “giant,” like the word “god,” might be metaphorical – closer to the concept of “hero” or “superhuman.” We do, after all, refer to “literary giants” and “gods and goddesses of the screen.” Because of that, I wanted to use a word that didn’t necessarily convey monstrous size in every case, reserving the word “giant” for the actual “big fellas.”

KS – When in Aspect (her mystical appearance), Maddy’s hair is “loose instead of being sensibly braided, and in the place of her usual clothes she now wore a belted chain mail tunic of what she judged to be immodest length.” This reads like a description of 19^th-century artistic depictions of Valkyries. For novels that center around some very powerful female characters (and butt-kicking teenage girls), the Valkyries are notable by their absence. Why did you choose not to use these mystic warrior-women in your books?

JH – I was never entirely taken by the image of the Valkyries. They always seemed to me tainted by those 19th-century depictions – more the manifestations of some teenager’s wet-dream than actual symbols of female empowerment. They exist en masse, with no characterization or real means of telling them apart – like the chorus of We Will Rock You, rewritten by Wagner after a particularly dissolute Oktoberfest. I didn’t know what to do with them or how they would contribute to my story. And so I chose to leave them out altogether, concentrating instead on re-inventing the (somewhat male-dominated) Norse pantheon to include some kickass female characters.

Peter Nicolai Arbo's 1869 Valkyrie shows a bit of leg for the lads

KS – At the beginning of Runemarks, Maddy is fourteen years old – the age you were when you first began imagining new tales of the Norse gods and the age your daughter was when you finished the novel. You’ve described Maddy as “a mixture of myself at fourteen and of my daughter as she is now. In fact, we’re pretty similar personalities.” How do you think things have changed for strong-minded young women from your generation to hers? Is there a difference in the way today’s real-life Pippi Longstockings interact with peers and adults?

JH – I think, if anything, that things have changed for the worse for imaginative teenagers since then. When I was fourteen, there was far less pressure to conform, and our role models were actresses, sportswomen, musicians and writers instead of TV “celebrities.” There was much less pressure on teenage girls to focus on clothes and makeup; most of us lived in t-shirts and jeans, and although we were interested in boys (of course we were – who isn’t?), we were far more interested in fictional heroes and stars of the screen. Contrast that with my daughter being bullied at school at the age of twelve because didn’t shave her legs or because she didn’t like the same music as her peers.

Pippi Longstocking, matinee idol

In the Seventies, we felt that feminism was on the rise. We felt that women were coming of age; we were optimistic. Now, I think that feminism has lost its way. So many girls nowadays seem to think that laddishness is “empowering,” rather than just childish. So many of them seem to think that marrying a footballer, or becoming a reality TV star, or getting a boob job and becoming a pole dancer, or just winning the Lottery counts as “living the dream.” I remember when dreams were better than this.

KS – I once took an art history course with a girl who would make completely original observations on the material, yet always begin her statements with “I think I read somewhere in the textbook that . . .” There was a boy in the class who would repeat passages from the book almost verbatim, but always present the concepts as his own ideas. The idea of a creative young woman feeling that she has to hide her gifts appears near the beginning of Runemarks: “For Maddy’s deepest secret . . . was that she enjoyed working magic, however shameful that might be. More than that, she thought she might be good at it too and, like anyone with a talent, longed to make use of it and show it off to other people.” Did you intend a connection between Maddy’s relationship to her magical knowledge and talents and the continuing external and internal struggles of today’s “wise women” – whether students, professionals or creative artists?

Maddy on cover of "The Secret Words," the Italian edition of Runemarks

JH – Yes. Maddy’s magic is something of a metaphor for the imagination of women generally. For too long, women have been judged primarily on their looks rather than their abilities, and, even now – in a world in which we can hardly move for political correctness – men and women are still viewed slightly differently in the world of music, literature and the creative arts. There is a patronizing smirk from the world of literature when a woman writes a romantic novel; but when a man does the same thing, he is being sensitive and insightful, making a valuable statement on the nature of relationships. In Runemarks, the same thing happens; a boy who reads is intelligent and will go a long way; a girl who reads is “clever,” which is useless in a girl – even potentially dangerous.

To be continued in Part Three.