Female Empowerment

The author uses Mare, Evangeline, and Iris to show how strong women can become if they focus on their needs and learn not to depend on what others want from them.

Of the three women, Iris is the one who is most confident in what she wants and spends most of the novel unwillingly confined by Maven’s madness. From the very beginning. It is clear what Iris wants; a united world under the Lakeland banner. The wishes to let foreigners “face the flood” (66) of her gods and decides early on to “use Maven against them” (66) because “He’ll pursue them to the ends of the earth if need be, and spend all his strength doing it” (67). Iris never falters from this plan. She betrays Maven the second he is no longer useful to her. She continues to plan an invasion of Norta, even after...