Giantess

 
Giantess
The Story of a Girl Who Traveled the World in Search of Freedom
by JC Deveney
art by Nuria Tamarit
Magnetic Press

2022

 

 

I purchased Giantess from Kickstarter. It's a recent French graphic novel that tells a fairy-tale-like fantasy story about Celeste, a giantess who goes on a long adventure trying to learn about the world, find a place in it, and live in a gender-egalitarian community.

 
The story opens with a family of farmers with six sons finding a giant infant and adopting her. As they grow up, the sons all go off to take their place in the world. Celeste wants to see things too, but her parents want to protect her. As a young woman she's already 20 or 30 feet tall, and I think she may keep growing throughout the book.

 
So, Celeste sneaks off with a traveling peddler to see a festival. She damages a building and runs away. She meets a knight sent to arrest her, who takes her to his castle. During the months of her pre-trial imprisonment, he falls in love with her. She decides to go home, and repels a foreign invasion along the way. She's rearrested, and placed in a dungeon with other woman, who are all being punished by a cruel inquisitor, who believes they all serve a witch. The inquisitor tries to burn them all at the stake, when they are saved ... by the witch!

 
The witch leads the women to the swamp, where she teaches them medicine and encourages them to teach others. Eventually Celeste leaves with an actress and joins her troupe. She falls in love with the tightrope walker. The troupe is invited to perform in a Venice-like city, then to stay. Celeste falls in love with the prince, and marries him, but cannot give birth to an heir. To save the royal face, she's sent to a convent, where she temporarily loses herself to religious fervor.

 
Eventually she escapes again, and goes to live on Greek-like island. She hears of a shipwreck, and goes to investigate the rumors of mermaids. She finds an island of women, but eventually learns it's as unequal as the wider world, in its own way. She escapes with the men and children, and they go to make their new home in an inaccessible valley near her original home.

 
Throughout the book, Celeste is portrayed as curious about the world, fond of books, and profoundly respectful to the tiny people around her. She learns medicine and uses her knowledge to help the poor. She observes the ways men and women are treated differently in traditional society, and longs for equality. In each of the places she stops, it's easy to imagine her becoming legendary, because she disrupts the local customs and forces them to do something new.

 
Celeste's movements through tbe world are often prompted, not just by her curiosity, but by love and her family. In each place she goes, she eventually re-meets one of her brothers, and their familial loyalty to each other is part of what prompts the changes she sets in motion in each place.

 
The art is very pretty, and the story feels at once classic and contemporary. Perhaps 'timeless' would be the right word. There are a lot of details that make Celeste's world feel like a playful reimagining of the real one, like almost Venice, or the mention of 'The Ulyssiad' as a source of mermaid stories right before Celeste sets of for the Themyscira-like island of women. Buying this one was probably the only way I was going to get to read it, and I'm glad I did.