Sisters in Story Discuss: Spinning Silver

This quarter, for our second book club pick, we are discussing Spinning Silver, a Rumpelstiltskin retelling by Naomi Novik. We’ve already shared our individual reviews (find Mary’s here & Elizabeth’s here), and now it’s time for us to discuss the book and respond to the six questions we cover with each book club discussion.

Remember that you can join in this discussion, whether by commenting here or on YouTube, or by joining our Enchanted Garden Book Club Facebook group!

Mary:
Hi everyone! Welcome to the Enchanted Garden, our Fairy Tale Book Club for Briarbook Lane. My name is Mary W. Jensen and I’m here with my sister and co-founder of Briarbook Lane.

Elizabeth:
Hi, I’m Elizabeth Wilcox and today we’re here to discuss this quarter’s book club pick: Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik. Whenever we discuss a book for our book club, we have six questions that we go through, and we’ll answer these questions and discuss them as we go.
​
The first question we always ask is:

​So, if you want to start, Mary?

Mary:
All right. So, I think, you know, it’s based off of Rumpelstiltskin, and it definitely does go with all the bargains and the importance of names, I think is its main triggers from the same tale.

Elizabeth:
Yeah, definitely. It has that element where it plays around with the idea of taking something and spinning it into something that’s worth more—instead of straw into gold like you get from Rumpelstiltskin, it’s more like it’s silver into gold—and it’s definitely playing with how that happens with the whole moneylending and actual trade and engaging in that kind of exchange of goods, but the whole power of name and having some fairy kind of creature that’s making a bargain with you that has really powerful benefits and also dangers. It was interesting to see, I guess this plays into the second question more, but question number two:

​I think, for me, one of the biggest things that felt really different is that the character that would probably be considered the Rumpelstiltskin character would be the Staryk king whose name we never do get, and he’s both the character who’s making the bargain—that Rumpelstiltskin figure—but he’s also, for the main character, the king that’s holding out a reward for the bargain, and there’s no fairy creature interfering to actually do the task. That’s all on the protagonist. So, instead of that miller’s daughter having a, you know, little magical person help her turn straw into gold, it’s the magic of turning the silver into the gold is in Miryem, the main character, the whole time. And that figure with the magical nature and the powers and the mysterious ‘you don’t know my name and I’ll never tell you’ is the person who’s saying ‘you’d better turn this into gold or else, but if you do I’ll marry you.’

Mary:
Yeah, it’s like the original tale: You do have the marriage versus death which, at that point, neither of them seem like a good option, but…[laughs]

Elizabeth:
It’s a lose-lose situation for sure, and that’s something I really appreciate because in the original tale, it’s definitely not framed as a lose-lose situation for the miller’s daughter; it’s definitely a lose-win like, well, why wouldn’t she want to marry the king who definitely threatened to kill her if she didn’t do something impossible? That’s a great reward. But, they make it really clear that, you know, Miryem very much knows, ‘I don’t care how powerful or rich this enchanted wintery Staryk king is; I don’t want to marry someone who doesn’t want to marry me and who’s threatening to turn me into ice. That sounds like a bad thing, for sure.’

Mary:
So, what I really liked was it felt like she took the base concept of the bargains and it felt like it played out three different times throughout the story because Miryem herself had that initial, you know, three times changed the silver into gold, which she did by normal means, you know, with her skills and connections go into town and market. But then you had after that, you have actually having the rooms of silver to turn into gold, but also the tsar and his demon because that was kind of, in the past, we essentially found out, his mother made a bargain for power with a demon and gave up her firstborn kind of like the original tale, except for her got stuck with the demon with the firstborn. She didn’t get a way out of that one.

Elizabeth:
Yeah, that’s something that I’m only just now as you’re saying it really piecing together. There’s very much this emphasis on the power of three. The Staryk king comes right out and says something that has been challenged and proven three times becomes true. So, you claimed you can turn silver into gold, I challenged it; if you can turn silver into gold three times, you will actually have that power back in my magical kingdom. And, you know, that’s something when he comes right out and explains when Miryem’s like, why on earth would you want to marry me, what is wrong with you.

And if you look at it, I did notice that Novik does a wonderful job where she sets that up, and then later sets up another three-task thing that just kind of slips in one of her conversations with the Staryk when Miryem is already married to him, in effect, where she’s like, what does a Staryk queen do? Like, what do, what am I supposed to do here? And he says, you can’t be a true Staryk queen until—and he lists three different things, and I’m trying to remember what all three things were. It’s like fixing the mountain, so that—there’s a big hole in the Staryk mountain that’s where it’s got the waterfall and stuff, so: you have to fix the mountain, you have to be able to get the white trees, the Staryk’s magical winter white trees, a fresh grove of them to grow. And you have to be able to do one other thing that I’m totally spacing on.

Mary:
That’s a very valid point because she did the other two, so she probably did all three by the end.

Elizabeth:
Yeah

Mary:
Like, tasks like these are impossible, but…

Elizabeth:
She did all three of the ‘impossible, but a true Staryk king could do it’ things. She has the, helps the tree to grow when they need to get back into the Staryk kingdom to defeat the demon/tsar. She fixes the mountain in the very end. And there’s one other thing she does, I need to find

Mary:
Yeah, I’m like flipping through

Elizabeth:
I swear I jotted this down because this was, uh, it struck me as an important moment.

And all of the three things she does, she only really does with help from other people, but they still come down to Miryem having done something.

Mary:
I love how for changing the rooms to gold she kind of found a loophole in that and got the help of the servants. Well, if it’s not in the room, then it doesn’t count, so we’re just going to haul out as much as we can. She was very practical in her choices; instead of letting magic do everything for her.

Elizabeth:
Yeah, and that’s something that I appreciate. Even though, and this is something we both mentioned in our book reviews for this, this novel is based off of a short story of the same name that Novik went back and expanded into a full novel, one of the main things that changed between that short story and the novel is, in addition to just fleshing out and adding these extra characters, is the ending changed because in the short story Miryem doesn’t marry the Staryk king; she comes up with an alternate solution that makes her more valuable to him and she’s like, look, you can get even more of what you want if you leave me here trading things for you because I can do twice as much. I can turn silver into gold, but also have as much silver—like, I can just make gold out of nowhere. And that kind of spirit of Miryem being able to find an outside solution to the impossible task holds up.

It’s still driving me nuts that I am not remembering that third thing. I genuinely thought that I wrote it down.

Mary:
I think I’m getting close.

Elizabeth:
I don’t know, I should have kept better notes is what I’m learning.

Mary:
Oh, there’s so many things like, I thought I’d written that down…

Elizabeth:
Yeah, exactly. I could have sworn I saved that, but apparently I didn’t. I’m shocked with myself.

Mary:
Oh, here we go! Let’s see. So, asking essentially: now, what are the duties of a Staryk queen? They depend upon her gifts, of which you have but the one. Occupy yourself with it. I might get bored. It’s like, will you make a hundred years of winter in a summer’s day or wake new snow trees from the earth? Will you raise your hand and mend the mountain’s wounded face?

So, yeah, it was the hundred years of winter in a day

Elizabeth:
The hundred years of winter in a day is that she gave him enough gold—like, he’s using the power of that gold and that fulfilled task to spread the winter and turn summer into winter. Yeah, so she did…

Mary:
…Wake new snow trees from the earth and mended the mountain’s wounded face…

Elizabeth:
Yep, she did all three of the things and then in the end she actually did become a true Staryk queen. She was accepted by the people. She found her place there. So, she mirrors that three tasks to prove myself several times herself, and then there’s also the three primary—I think of them as the three primary protagonists. I know we have scenes from other characters, too, but I think that they’re Miryem and–

Mary:
They’re more supporting story, yeah

Elizabeth:
Yeah. The three women in the story, young women

Mary:
Three daughters

Elizabeth:
Exactly

Mary:
Miryem, Wanda, and Irina

Elizabeth:
Yeah. Miryem, Wanda, and Irina are those three primary figures, and they each have their own tasks, in a way. For me, I think, Wanda’s kind of come down to the moment she chooses to save her brother from the Staryk by appealing to her mom’s tree, and then that to me feels like a really significant turning point in her character that also engages with that Staryk magic in an interesting way. And then there’s the moment when they accidentally in self-defense kill Wanda’s father, her and her brothers, and set off on their own, and the littlest gets that little gift of the acorn from the mother, and that seems like a really significant moment. And then that transitions over to when she does all of those tasks because she feels like she owes something to this magical cottage she found in the woods, and it’s because they were in there doing those tasks that they were able to plant that tree that fulfills Miryem’s task of growing the tree that gets them to go back and save the Staryk country.

I feel like there’s a lot around the tree. It feels like Wanda is kind of this take on Cinderella to me, only she didn’t need any sort of evil step parent because her dad was quite bad enough, but she has the dead mother whose spirit lives on in a mystical magical tree that helps her out and gives her gifts, which harkens back to that original version of the fairy tale for Cinderella. She’s doing these servant tasks, she’s taking care of the household, in a very Cinderella way, only she’s caring for her brothers instead of any step siblings.

Mary:
And Miryem’s household as well

Elizabeth:
Exactly. She’s working in that kind of kitchen help position in a way like you could see her as that, you know, servant girl, but then what I really like about her story is that, whereas, you know, both Miryem and Irina do really wind up in this position where they get married and have a romance (although their romance develops in a very atypical way for a fairy tale romance), Wanda is all about ‘I don’t want to get married; I don’t want to get trapped in that’ and it’s all about her finding happiness and her own household without having to get married and learning to be able to love her brothers, which I thought was a really powerful, different take on that story.

And I’ve strayed quite a bit, but it’s hard to stick with the questions on this one because, unlike our previous book, this…Like, Mirror Mirror was Snow White all the way through, like, just a Snow White story.

Mary:
For better or worse

Elizabeth:
Exactly. Spinning Silver is like, let’s see how many folklore elements we can shove into this one book that is built around that kind of Rumpelstiltskin-y bargain of a fairy tale, and so when you’re saying it’s…You want to answer how are the two stories different, but then there’s way more than two stories happening here, um, so I think we’re already starting to kind of stumble into that third question. So, let’s just formally move there.

Mary:
Like, traditionally, if you look up the Rumpelstiltskin tale, it’s like the big thing is always about the name and, you know, learning the name. And I thought it was interesting that that was like the big element that this one doesn’t have. Yes, the names are important, and we learned the demon’s name, but we never actually learned the Staryk’s name—the, you know, the helper.

Elizabeth:
Right. And it’s not even like a tricky thing that Irina or Miryem do that learns the demon’s name; it’s just that the Staryk king already knows this guy, and so that felt really different to me, too. It felt like Novik very easily could have chosen to have a plot element be that, you know, Irina and Miryem need to learn the demon’s name to have power over the demon. And, instead, it’s just a demonstration that they kind of learn, oh, maybe that’s why no one in the Staryk kingdom will tell me their name because knowing the demon’s name helped the Staryk king out a lot when they were fighting just then. And I kept waiting—this is one element where I’m not sure whether it was satisfying in that it counteracted my expectations or unsatisfying in that I had all these unfulfilled expectations—I kept waiting for a moment when all the humans’ like very open willingness to just share their names and name people would be penalized somehow. Like, the Staryk were constantly shocked when Miryem was like, ‘hi, I’m Miryem. I’m going to give you a name if you don’t tell me your name’ and then Irina shows up and does the very same thing, and the Staryk are still just dying of shock; they’re just like, stop telling me your name, don’t ask me, and are you naming me? I don’t know how to feel about it. And it was funny to me, like, I kept waiting for like the demon to have extra power over them because they just throw their names around. And there’s this distinction between like the true name that no one knows but you, and just what people happen to call you, and part of me wonders… wanted there to be something about, you know, for humans, is the name they just banter around all the time not really their true name? Is a true name more symbolic? Is it like…? Like, what is going on? I wanted there to be something going on there.

Mary:
Like, as mere mortals, do they just not have…

Elizabeth:
Do we not have magical name power? Because a lot of fairy tales, that is the case. It’s like, either names only matter to the fae creatures or, if you’re in their country or names are just powerful for everybody. And I think that there was an element of….I think what tricked my brain into not being fully satisfied is that the Staryk otherwise seemed to be really smart when it came to the differences between humans and Staryk and other magical creatures…

Mary:
It’s hard to blame it on just a cultural difference

Elizabeth:
Yeah. Like, if names are only super powerful for those magical creatures that inhabit that kind of magical world of the Staryk kingdom or wherever demons come from or, you know, they briefly reference some sort of like dark underland with gnomes or dwarves in it; like, if that kind of space is where having your true name known gives someone power over you, then who cares if the humans tell you their names? They’re not special. So. And that was one thing where I felt like it was almost a plot hole to me, but it’s really subtle and it doesn’t actually impact any of the actual plots, so it’s a very minor criticism, if it even is one. It is just something that stood out as a little odd to me. So, that was my little slightly-unsatisfied moment, I guess, for ‘how did you feel in terms of satisfaction compared to the original?’

Uh, both Miryem and Irina end up getting married to someone who’s basically their enemy, and they are forced into that marriage and are forced to do things to preserve their own lives in direct combat with the magical powerful king creature they’ve married. Irina with the tsar that’s possessed by the demon and Miryem with the Staryk king. And yet, in the end, they both end up being genuinely in a relationship with their respective king creature person.

Mary:
I thought that was a really interesting twist that really took away—because it starts out so clear, good versus evil: the Staryk are bad; demon, evil magic, darkness sorcerer is bad. But they really show their different perspectives of why both the Staryk king and the tsar were in their positions, and…Yeah. I thought it was—And still, even with the forced marriages, both of the women still found ways to control their situation and take control of, you know, their lives in that point. So, in the end, it felt still like it was their choice to stay in that.

Elizabeth:
Yeah. And I thought it was a really interesting take, and it felt at once kind of romantic/idealized, but also very realistic at the same time. But, you know, Miryem honestly has more in common with this Staryk king, who cares so much about his people who are being treated poorly and are in danger, that he, you know…But I think it calls back to when Miryem is described as her heart like turning to ice

Mary:
Yeah

Elizabeth:
And she’s just freezing her emotions inside because she loves her family so deeply that she will harden her heart in order to do whatever she has to do to take care of her family at the expense of other people who she views as having wronged her family. So, she’ll go out and she will be the hard-line moneylender for her neighborhood and she’ll claim whatever she has to do. The Staryk very much represents, I think, that same thing, but he’s literally this cold magical figure, but he’s also doing it because he, in his view, this kingdom with a demon king that’s running it, that broke his mountain and stuff, it’s their fault they put a demon on the throne, what’s wrong with them…And so of course he’s going to freeze them and he’s going to do whatever he can to make up a bargain with Miryem to get power to defend his kingdom. Like, he’s doing the same thing she’s doing; he’s doing it on this grand magic kingdom scale, and she’s doing it on this small family scale, and I think they both realize that about each other, and that forms the basis for their mutual respect and that relationship, which I think is really lovely.

And then, for Irina and…you know, she never liked the emperor, the tsar. She always, from when they were kids, she was like, this guy’s a creepo. He’s got weird magic, he killed animals, I hate him. But then as soon as she learns like he’s actually through no fault of his own been possessed by a demon his entire life

Mary:
That is wasn’t his bargain that got, you know, his family killed

Elizabeth:
And that he’s not actually power hungry. Like, he’s genuinely a really bad tsar, but he didn’t ever want to be tsar, but that was all demon

Mary:
All the result of his mother’s bargain, not his own.

Elizabeth:
Yeah, I think her learning that, she got the sympathy for him. And then, he’s obsessed with ‘she’s not pretty, why does everyone think she is?’ because he’s not affected by the magical jewelry she’s wearing that makes everyone obsessed with her. I really did like the moment at the end where Irina’s nurse notes that the no-longer-inhabited-by-a-demon for the first time tsar is looking at Irina like she’s the most beautiful thing in the world, but he has that change of heart where what makes him recognize she’s beautiful isn’t like magical Staryk silver jewelry

Mary:
Yeah, it’s now that the magic is gone

Elizabeth:
It’s that she’s the first person who treated him like he mattered and not just the demon or his position, and she did this self-sacrificial thing for him. Like, his mother only demonstrated selfishness and the demon only demonstrated selfishness, and this is his first moment of having someone do something selfless for him. And so I felt like Irina, the basis for her relationship with the tsar was pragmatism and pity, not all…You know, there are worse things, I guess, but I feel like hopefully she grows to love him instead of just pitying him and feeling like it’s good for her position to be, you know, tsarina. Which is…

Mary:
Yeah

Elizabeth:
She’s a very pragmatic, good at politics, intelligent woman. So, good for her, she’ll fill that role. I hope that she does get something out of it other than that. I think that’s the only sad element I had in the romances at the end is, you know, he has every reason to love her forever because she did this great thing for him, but she just kind of is like, oh, you poor soul. Also, I would be way better at ruling the country than you, so we’re staying married. Like…

Mary:
Well, it’s still more of a choice for her than most of the nobles and people getting married.

Elizabeth:
Absolutely. It’s a better thing for her

Mary:
She even arranged some.

Elizabeth:
Exactly

Mary:
Like, I think they’re better politically for us…

Elizabeth:
I think that the really great relationship growth for her was with her and her father, where her father finally respected her and realized, oh, I’ve been thinking badly of my daughter because I only viewed her as it’s only as beautiful as she is that is as valuable as she is. Like, if I can’t marry her off because she’s so pretty, then she’s completely useless to me. But actually, oh, she was reading all those books and observing me, and she knows politics, and she’s good at it. And he started to see that and to communicate with her on that level of mutual respect, and I think that’s for her the big relationship development, is getting that respect as a person instead of just like you’re not pretty enough so I’m gonna put you in the room up there and tell you to be sick when the tsar visits.

Mary:
Yeah

Elizabeth:
That was so sad. And she just took it because she agreed. She’s like, no, yeah, you’re right. I’m not pretty enough to tempt the tsar. He’d be stupid to marry me. Plus, I don’t like him.

Mary:
Yeah.

Elizabeth:
Uh, do you have a—I know this isn’t one of our questions or anything, I’m just curious—do you have a favorite from the three main characters, the three daughters?

Mary:
I think probably Wanda, just because she fought so hard and did so much for herself. And she had all those tasks that she was trying to do in the cottage and she was just, I guess, the very relatable person for us commoners.

Elizabeth:
Yeah. I thought it was actually incredibly poignant and powerful to see Wanda’s reaction when she first entered the house of the moneylender’s family and, to her, this house that Miryem’s complained about for the whole opening of the book is a magical realm of awesomeness. And it’s pretty clear, as hungry as Miryem was and as cold as Miryem was and as shoddy as her house was, they had nothing on Wanda’s shoddy, cold, sad, hungry life

Mary:
And these numbers and words, it’s like magic

Elizabeth:
Yeah, the idea that, you know…

Mary:
Writing, yeah…

Elizabeth:
It really showcased, I think, the idea of privilege in a very interesting way where you can empathize with every level, but Irina’s problems are problems Miryem could only dream of having; Miryem’s problems are problems that Wanda could only dream of having; and Wanda’s problems are so inescapably bad and just everyday problems for survival, that they’re problems that Irina and Miryem might be able to take pity, but they wouldn’t even—it wouldn’t occur to them to worry about having that problem. You know, they’re not getting beaten by an abusive father. They’re not struggling to take care of siblings who like with a … they’re, they’re not in that position at all. And she’s there trying desperately to survive and finding, you know, like even having one penny is more than she’s ever had.

Like, it’s…I found Wanda’s story to be the most poignant and powerful, I think, so I agree with you there.

Mary:
It’s one that didn’t require a romance

Elizabeth:
Yeah. She’s got her little farm all to herself

Mary:
And then they made plans to make use of that and get it so big by the end of the expiration that they could have so much land

Elizabeth:
Yeah. Like, she learned enough that she could set herself up and take care of herself and take care of her brothers and take care of Miryem’s parents.

Mary:
Yeah, she immediately, like, we are bringing them in as part of our family

Elizabeth:
Yeah, she goes from just so bitter and trying so hard to just survive day to day to being able to open up her heart to first to care about her brothers and then to care about Miryem’s family. And she…it’s like her heart grows ten sizes, but it’s not because she was a bad person before; it’s because she literally didn’t have the fuel in her body to be able to have that kind of a heart. And it’s just such a great story, and she learned such great skills—accidentally being taught how to make a really cool embroidered like mattress cover because the nurse is just like quietly doing the embroidery and she’s like, oh no, but the fairies want me to do better.

I admire Wanda a lot.

Mary:
And even when they had that Staryk king captures, she wanted nothing for herself.

Elizabeth:
Exactly. It’s…yeah.

Mary:
Even though she was the one that probably had the most to gain out of everybody

Elizabeth:
I feel like Wanda and her family constantly broke my heart and I love all of them

Mary:
Yeah

Elizabeth:
Yeah.

Well, do you have anything to add to question number three? To, ‘did the retelling retain enough of the original to be satisfying to you?’

Mary:
I think we covered that pretty good.

Elizabeth:
Yeah.

​So:

Mary:
Well, I do like that it really gave weight to the ‘we are marrying the guy that’s making us do this’ for one.

Elizabeth:
Yeah, it addressed that incredibly problematic element. I feel like it filled in a lot of pieces, but it also changed so many of them that I don’t know if I could say it did it better than the original or it just, you know, did a cool thing based on the original. Like, I think it would still be interesting to see something that more closely mimics the original fairy tale, but does some interesting things with it.

If I wanted to sit down and read a Rumpelstiltskin retelling, I might be dissatisfied with Spinning Silver. If that’s what I was looking for is, I need that Rumpelstiltskin hit. But, if I wanted to read just a really excellent fairy tale/folklore-inspired and steeped in it novel, I 100% would love Spinning Silver.

Mary:
Yeah, it definitely has that.

Elizabeth:
As an aside, I feel like, uh, I want to say Jane Yolen? No. There is a Rumpelstiltskin retelling that I am struggling to remember the name of the author, and it’s going to drive me nuts. It’s the same author who wrote Crazy Jack. Uh. Donna Napoli. Donna Jo Napoli. Uh, what… Spinners. She wrote a very much more direct retelling of Rumpelstiltskin called Spinners, and I think if you’re looking for, ‘I am the Rumpelstiltskin story through-and-through, but I’m a very interesting take on it’, then I would recommend Spinners. But, if you just want a really, truly excellent book that happens to have that inspiration, Spinning Silver is really good.

Um, so, question number five.

Mary:
Let’s see. I just read it this morning so I could have contrast. I did like that it also takes it further than, it’s not just they get married, here’s a year later, we’re coming for the baby; we actually got to see consequence after consequence.

Elizabeth:
Yeah, and that’s one of the biggest differences, I guess, that we didn’t touch on. No babies. No firstborn at play anywhere.

Mary:
Other than for the Chernabog.

Elizabeth:
Oh, that’s true.

Mary:
And he did tear himself apart in the end, essentially.

Elizabeth:
He did. I feel like Chernabog is more of the traditional

Mary:
More of the traditional Rumpelstiltskin

Elizabeth:
Yeah, it feels like the tsar’s mother is the one that made the deal with the Rumpelstiltskin demon figure

Mary:
But didn’t find his name

Elizabeth:
And he took her firstborn by possessing him

Mary:
Yeah, which I though was a very interesting twist.

Elizabeth:
Yeah

Mary:
It never says in the original what they want the baby for, whether it’s more as a changeling or to raise for their own or like for in this case, possession.

Elizabeth:
Yeah, so that did fill in why would a creature like this want the firstborn; if they’re possessing the firstborn so that they get to have that power and consume it and use it, that makes a lot of sense.

I feel like, that’s probably…Like, so much is so different from the original tale, like it’s so loosely inspired by so many different tales in so many ways…

Mary:
It’s hard to say like that’s a gap, it’s just this whole new thing

Elizabeth:
Yeah

Mary:
But different

Elizabeth:
Yeah. And I think, uh, I’m trying to think of another kind of gap. Um, I guess another potential gap in the original tale is really just, why would the miller’s daughter be making such an outrageous claim?

Mary:
So, it was the miller, not the daughter, who made the claim.

Elizabeth:
That’s true. That’s true.

Mary:
He was wanting to make his family sound more important.

Elizabeth:
Yeah

Mary:
But it doesn’t go into how she feels about anything until she’s, you know, I’m crying because I can’t do this

Elizabeth:
Yeah

Mary:
Does she want power?

Elizabeth:
It gives that miller’s daughter figure an actual character

Mary:
Yeah, it didn’t really go into much on…

Elizabeth:
Yeah, and it also fleshes in that area of how could that kind of a claim be taken seriously enough that you would make that kind of promise. Like, it feels in the original story, the king really does just want to penalize the miller for making such an outrageous claim by killing his daughter, but is like, what the heck, if she can give me that much gold, great.

Mary:
Also, why didn’t he keep asking her to do it?

Elizabeth:
That’s a big gap, yeah. There’s no story. Once they’re married, he just never wants her to spin straw into gold ever again.

Mary:
In Spinning Silver, it’s I want you to keep doing this. If you can do this, why doesn’t he keep asking for it? Instead, it’s like, yeah, I got enough now. He wanted it that badly…

Elizabeth:
That makes me feel like I kind of want to see a version of the Rumpelstiltskin tale where he does want her to keep making gold and she can’t, but he’s already married her because of the bargain and he’s just pissed. He is mad. He’s deceived and she’s already married a guy that only wanted her for the ability she doesn’t have, and did it under threat of death if she didn’t. Like, can you imagine being in that position? As the now queen who you know you can’t keep doing this and you know you have to give up your baby, the firstborn that’s probably the next only valuable thing you have to offer your husband is your ability to procreate. Like, it’s not good for her at all. That’s a hot mess is what that is. And Novik did address all of those different possibilities and thoughts just by making the characters involved more realistic and giving them motivations and feelings.

So, do you have, as our final question: