>>I haven't read the novels, but I saw the elaborate BBC
production of _Gormenghast_, which didn't impress me
at all. My understanding was that Peake was supposed
to be a "progressive" writer, but all I got from the
BBC production was this: "Jealous and resentful prole
kitchen boy takes unjust revenge on the monarchy, and
threatens the wholesome national order of Gormenghast;
he is defeated by an heir to the throne and the
rightful Order of Society is re-instated much to
everyone's happiness and security." Didn't strike me
as very progressive -- in fact it came off as very
reactionary. The prole kitchen boy seemed to be a
ruling class caricature of the "resentful" worker.
It's as if Ben Stein could have written it as an
elaborate argument against the death -- sorry, I mean
the estate -- tax.>>
Peake was certainly an iconoclast, but his fiction could be seen as reactionary if one is looking for something of a socialist nature (especially in its treatment of female characters, though the characters Fuschia and Keda, one aristrocracy, one proletarian are satisfying but sad).
In the first two books of the trilogy (never envisioned as a trilogy but cut short by Peake's declining health), Steerpike is the dominant character who nearly destroys the thing is attempting to take over (so I assume the BBC production draws only on the first two books, and not the third). Titus, the heir to the throne, comes into his adulthood in the fight against Steerpike, though it would seem his mother and the banished servant, Flay, do as much to defeat Steerpike's usurpation. However, the defeat of Steerpike, rather than restore the order, throws everything out of balance.
Titus, the heir, upon reaching the status where he can now take over his birthright, renounces Gormenghast and leaves it for the rest of his life. Peake only wrote one volume (highly edited by someone else) and a short story about Titus away from Gormenghast, but to be sure, in the volume 'Titus Alone', it is Titus who is a rogue and usurper, and he his humiliated everytime he tries to proclaim his aristocratic status.
BTW, I still stand by my recommendation of the works of Alan Garner for adolescents, and his fiction for adults is also astounding, although it doesn't really fit with the fantasy genres (genres which I can hardly read as a middle aged adult anyway).
F
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