Book Review: Virago - a heroic term for women, explored in many nuances

Margaret Atwood and other writers contribute to a 50th-anniversary collection of short stories from the stalwart feminist publishing house

Part of the cover of the Furies compilation

• Furies: Stories of the wicked, wild, and untamed
• Margaret Atwood et al 
• Virago €21 pb €23.80hb

Virago, the feminist publisher, is 50 years old and has published Furies, a collection of short stories to celebrate, rather than bemoan, her age. 

The imprint was founded by the late Carmen Callil and was, from the start, worthy and witty. 

The word ‘virago’ means a heroic, warlike woman, but has many negative synonyms from which, as Sandi Toksvig explains in her introduction, each writer has chosen one for her title.

Toksvig mentions that Virago has published work by all the contributors, and comments in particular on Margaret Atwood whose story, ‘Siren’ opens the book. 

The eponymous mermaid is chairing the ‘Liminal Beings’ knitting group’ and the tale, which focuses to some extent on the narrator’s tail, is hilarious, as it explores the ludicrous outcomes of radical inclusivity. 

Atwood has been tiptoeing between the two polar positions on transgender issues, publishing and stating views which seem, sometimes, to contradict each other.

Here she presents a mocking and sardonic fable in which votes are taken, by raising a hand, wing, claw, fin, or tentacle, as to which liminal beings may join the knitting circle: vampires, zombies, and fungi? 

Francine, a platypus, emerges as the heroine because she can identify as mammal or bird, and she is lauded for having forced categorisers to sort differently. Atwood’s sense of humour does not, however, overlay the serious issues which she seeks to illuminate.

CN Lester’s contribution ‘Virago’ follows ‘Siren’ and it is a very different kettle of fish. 

Lester describes themselves as a trans/queer/feminist researcher whose Trans Like Me, also published by Virago, ‘shows us how to strive for authenticity in a world which often seeks to limit us by way of labels’. Not so much sort differently, as do not sort at all?

This piece, heavily influenced by the work of Richard von Kraft-Ebbing, the psychiatrist author of Psychopathia Sexualis, uses the male voice of a late 18th-century medic. 

The case in question, here indicated as that of Nicholas, is based on the life of Sándor Vay, born with female sexual characteristics but who functioned within society as a man; duelling, graduating from university, and even marrying a woman.

Lester’s account, interesting though it is, stands out as an example of ‘masculine writing’ in that its style is objective. 

The assistant doctor, who gives his account, is constantly preparing his pen and paper, while his mentor, based on Kraft-Ebbing, makes ‘decisive scratches in a margin’.

One cannot help but feel that these men, in working with, or on, Nicholas, have been, in a way,
confronted by a platypus. How to categorise? How to sort?

The third yarn, ‘Churail’, is by Kamila Shamsie and introduces the concept of a Pakistani harpy. 

A woman can become a churail by dying in childbirth or when pregnant or during lying-in or on-her-period or in bed or abused or unfulfilled sexually. 

There are plenty of churail in Pakistan, fewer in Europe as they like to hang out in humidity-loving peepul trees. 

According to men, these creatures are evil and sexually incontinent, according to Shamsie this liminal being is ‘much older than the myths men wove around her, desperate to be the centre of her story’.

The 15 stories fall into place like domino tiles connected to each other in a straightforward or lateral manner until the labyrinthine structure is completed by Stella Duffy’s ‘Dragon’. 

They address the full panoply of ‘isms’ such as racism, ageism, heroism, terrorism, and classism, all congregated under feminism. The ideas are current, but the pieces may not stand the test of time as their creators’ best endeavours.