Hypocritical Bene Gesserit Witches
Written: Jan 24 '02
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Product Rating:
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Pros: I truly enjoyed the depictions of Duncan Idaho and Miles Teg.
Cons: The book was largely about the Bene Gesserit and not Duncan Idaho and Miles Teg.
The Bottom Line: If you've come this far with the Dune books, why not go all the way.
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| CPXB's Full Review: Frank Herbert - Chapterhouse Dune Books |
I don't feel that it's worth the effort to review Heretics of Dune seperately from Chapterhouse Dune, so I'm not going to. Chapterhouse Dune finishes the story started in Heretics of Dune, so in most ways my review of Chapterhouse Dune is a review of both novels.
The last two Dune novels are about the Bene Gesserit and how they deal with an invasion of the "Honored Matres," which is a perversion of their own secret society. The last two Dune novels are set fifteen hundred years after the death of Leto II.
While with the first four Dune novels, when I have considered writing them, what first came to mind was their virtues. With Heretics of Dune and Chapterhoue Dune, what first comes to mind are the flaws. To discuss the flaws, I'm going to assume that people have a good working knowledge of the Dune books.
The Bene Gesserit in the first four books was, basically, a sorta creepy secret society. The used and manipulated people and not once in those four books was anyone given reason to suspect that the Bene Gesserit did it for anything other than preserving their existence or increasing the power of their society. They came off as a bunch of manipulative cretins.
Indeed, they also come off as manipulative cretins in the last two Dune books. However, Frank Herbert goes through a really serious and intense effort to have you believe that they're a bunch of egalitarian folk who are trying to perfect humanity. It gets most amusing when it's revealed that the Bene Gesserit are actually democrats!
I'm going to give some refutations of Bene Gesserit democracy, taken from the last two Dune books and with an emphasis on Chapterhouse Dune.
The "democratic" Bene Gesserit don't allow men into their society and do not give them votes. Despite having literally millions of men ruled by them, men have no legal say in Bene Gesserit society. This extends so far as refuting the skills and abilities of their legendary military commander, who happens to be a man. He has no say whatsoever in the governance of the political body to which he belongs.
The "democratic" Bene Gesserit are completely comfortable reviving corpses for their own use and "imprinting" them to insure their loyalty to the Bene Gesserit, intentionally creating a condition of psychological dependance in the person. This is done both knowingly and explicitly.
The "democratic" Bene Gesserit see it as their place to "educate" humanity -- even if humanity hasn't asked for such education. The Bene Gesserit see nothing anti-democratic in foisting off their social lessons on people who have no say in what is being done to them.
So, the Bene Gesserit enforce their rule over people who don't want it and have no say in it, and exclude half of the human population from their government on grounds of sexism, but this is supposed to be a democracy? No, it is not. It is clearly an oligarchy.
Another mental pit the Bene Gesserit fall into is their assertion that they're trying to "perfect" or "mature" humanity. This is one of the most dangerous ideas known to humanity! The Bene Gesserit go around "making people pay," and "teaching their lessons," with the idea of shaping the universe to their standard of perfection. They insist on having the right to enslave and murder whosoever objects to their plans -- as they nearly do several times to Duncan Idaho -- because they know best.
In short, everyone except the Bene Gesserit are infants and they need the Reverend Mommies to take care of them.
This is ridiculous, of course. The Bene Gesserit aren't particularly mature. Oh, sure, they're witty and subtle and perceptive. But their definition of immature is anything they don't like -- and they're willing to kill you to insure that your immaturity doesn't inflict others. Indeed, they're willing to kill you -- without judge, jury or trial -- if you annoy them too much.
No character in the novels seems to be able to notice these hypocrisies.
Another issue I have with the last two Dune novels is their treatment of the Tleilaxu in general and Scytale in particular.
Scytale, as a character, is introduced in Dune Messiah as a Face Dancer. As a Face Dancer, he was able to have the Bene Gesserit and Spacing Guild dancing to his strings. In terms of political savvy, Scytale whipped Reverend Mothers like they were red-headed stepchildren at K-Mart. He was smart, subtle and creepy as all get out.
In Chapterhouse Dune, he's sorta a stupid religious fanatic. Oh, sure, I grasp that it is five thousand years between Dune Messiah and Chapterhouse Dune and its possible that Scytale has changed from being a brilliant manipulator every bit the equal of a Bene Gesserit Reverend Mother to a twerp . . . but I didn't like the change, not at all. (For full disclosure, Scytale was easily my favorite character in Dune Messiah.)
More generally, too, the Tleilaxu get portrayed as sorta nebbishes in the last two Dune novels. Indeed, I'm going to generalize this to be a problem with the last two Dune novels, and Chapterhouse Dune in particular.
The Bene Gesserit are smug. They're intensely arrogant, walking around giving these lordy pronouncements about everything. Often, I can see the flaws of their thoughts and words -- like with the whole ridiculousness of a Bene Gesserit democracy -- but the books carefully avoid having a Bene Gesserit character meet someone capable of fighting back.
This strongly distracted me. They'd spout off some philosophical nonsense and I'd go, "Wow. They're lucky they've never discussed this with a Taoist. Lao-tzu would spank them and make them feel silly." Which the Bene Gesserit frequently were.
This is a trait that Herbert brought over from God Emperor of Dune. There it worked because, well, it was Leto II -- he was an intensely controlling person and a virtually mythological figure in the eyes of everyone he met. The Bene Gesserit, on the other hand, don't have that sort of authority. Sure, the Bene Tleilax would be wary of them -- but the Tleilaxu have gotten the upper hand on the Bene Gesserit, before. And the Honored Matres have no reason, at all, to be fearful of the Bene Gesserit. Why everyone took the drubbings the Bene Gesserit handed out is unfathomable to me.
Equally annoying is that . . . in the last two Dune novels, no one calls a Bene Gesserit bluff or ultimatum. Furthermore, the Bene Gesserit always seem to know when to call someone else's bluff, and always do so successfully. This is, again, a pretty radical change from the first four Dune novels where it was revealed time and again that calling a Bene Gesserit bluff most certainly can work.
Anyway, that's the majority of my gripes.
The book is also good in several ways -- usually when it avoids the Bene Gesserit or, occasionally, remembers they're not infallible. Which is, granted, a fair bit of the novel. The best parts uniformly revolve around Miles Teg and Duncan Idaho -- though I must admit that my preferences are in large part due to my liking of mentats.
My personal gripes aside, too, the book is a complex and richly detailed novel that does a good job of creating suspense. The ending, while not particularly a surprise in so philosophical a set of novels as this, is nevertheless clever and believable. There could be more action. Both the Bene Gesserit and Honored Matres are martial arts experts and I would have liked to have seen more direct confrontation between them. The book does not suffer greatly for this, however; the political machinations are delightful to watch.
Still, its a tricky issue for me to say whether someone should read Chapterhouse Dune or not. To understand it, a person has to have read five other books . . . but, since a person has already read that far, why not go all the way? So, I guess I'm saying that despite the flaws and pet peeves I have about Chapterhouse Dune I'm provisionally endorsing it. If you've come this far, why not go all the way.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
CPXB
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Member: Christopher Bradley
Location: Bangor, ME
Reviews written: 54
Trusted by: 34 members
About Me:
Visionary epic anti-hero out to radically transform society through laziness.
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