No but guys, GUYS, we need to talk about how important this scene is. Because the commonly accepted lore about unicorns is that they are so good and pure that they’ll only appear to young virginal girls. Because Molly Grue is a middle-aged woman who has been living with bandits for most of her life and is as far from innocent and virginal as you’re likely to get. Because she’s so angry that this creature, embodying everything that society tells her she’s lost, everything she’s thrown away through her own choices, is here now when all that The Unicorn represents is long since behind her. Because she knows, in a way that only someone who’s been steeped in an oppressive system her entire life can ever know, that she’s missed her chance and doesn’t deserve to be seeing a unicorn now.
And you know what? The Unicorn doesn’t give two fucks about her virginity, about her supposed loss of innocence and purity. She’s not repelled by Molly being older, being experienced, being a full human person. None of that has ever mattered to unicorns, only to the people telling stories about them. Not only does she step in to physically comfort her here, but before long this bandit’s wife becomes her friend, closer to her in most ways than Schmendrick.
This story is fucking revolutionary, you guys, and I just have a lot of feelings about it.
The prose is also fantastic, like truly I have never taken that much pleasure in the prose in ANY book. It’s pretty, it’s all like this. Here’s some favs:
Strung on the loom of iron bars, the web was very simple and almost colourless, except for an occasional rainbow shiver when the spider scuttled out on it to put a thread right. But it drew the onlookers’ eyes–and the unicorn’s eyes as well–back and forth and steadily deeper, until they seemed to be looking down into great rifts in the world, black fissures that widened remorselessly and yet would not fall into pieces as long as Arachne’s web held the world together. The unicorn shook herself free with a sigh, and saw the real web again. It was very simple, and almost colourless.
‘It isn’t like the others,’ she said.
‘No,’ Schmendrick agreed grudgingly. ‘But there’s no credit due to Mommy Fortuna for that. You see, the spider believes. She sees those crat’s-cradles herself and thinks them her won work. Belief makes all the difference to magic like Mommy Fortuna’s. Why, if that troop of witlings withdrew their wonder, there’d be nothing left of all her witchery but the sound of a spider weeping.
Like I cannot emphasise enough there’s so much you can learn about the craft by reading this book. Not to mention there’s punch-in-the-gut wisdom, like this one, which is my very favourite:
Real magic can never be made by offering up someone else’s liver. You must tear out your own, and not expect to get it back.
The movie is really great, certainly I adore the design of the unicorn, and the strangely and eerily detailed animation, but the book has so much amazing prose that the movie had to leave out.
This is the best part of the animated film, I think, and it’s actually not as effective in the book, as it is in the film. The actress really gave it such depth and emotion! I really love this story everyone and I highly recommend you experience both the book and the film at some point in your life.
