Fantasy Dissertation

by Faune Vita


I imagine myself as a warrior, a woman dressed all in black, sharp heels on her boots, a flaming dagger in her hand.

I will travel across time and space, fight demons and monsters in the name of all that is good. I will have courage in the face of the unknown. I will strike fiercely and never look back.

***

When I defended my dissertation, I carried a fiery sword in my hand, its power radiating through me, allowing me to be in that moment, unafraid.

In actuality, I was barefoot upstairs in my office in front of a computer screen. It was March 31, 2020, two weeks after the Covid shutdown, and I’d barely left my house in that time.

The world was stuck in a kind of holding pattern. None of us were sure how serious this would get or what it meant. At the time it seemed inconceivable that the lockdown could last much beyond a few weeks. But then again, the inconceivable had already happened, was happening all around us.

***

The doctorate had not been an easy road. I don’t think it is for anyone, but my experience was prolonged due to chronic illness, addiction, depression and anxiety, and the realization more than midway through that maybe this wasn’t the right path for me after all, that maybe instead of analyzing books I wanted to analyze people. By that point, I had invested so much—both financially and emotionally—that I couldn’t imagine quitting, but it was equally difficult to imagine finishing. I had what I call a ‘lost year,’ where I made next to no progress. But somehow, I kept going.

After eight years of teaching on a graduate assistantship, I began working full-time in a 9-5 type editing job, and this actually helped my progress. It enabled me to put the dissertation in perspective, to understand it as just one piece of my life rather than the only thing giving me value.

That last year I worked on it with a dedication and determination that I’d never been able to access before. I wrote on my lunchbreaks, and after work each day I’d go to the café near my office and revise for hours before heading home.

There, exhausted, I’d slip into bed next to my sleeping partner and lose myself in a fantasy novel.

***

I grew up in a cabin in the forest where I spent my days playing with the fairies and elves that inhabited the mossy stump by the creek. I listened in rapture as my mother read to me from The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe and The Rats of Nimh, and when I learned to read, I devoured tales of princesses and witches. The Princess and the Goblin was one of my favorites. I still remember vividly the images this story conjured, Princess Irene stealing along dark stone caverns in search of her beloved Curdie. She was a force to be reckoned with, smart and quick and ceaselessly brave. I lay awake at night and fantasized about being her. I wanted to be all of them, these wild, courageous heroines whose lives were filled with adventure, who traversed mountains and plains, oceans and skies in order to fulfil their destinies.

After I read The Mists of Avalon at summer camp during middle school, I lay on my top bunk and sobbed for hours, weeping for the passage of time, for generations, for love and loss and the lady in the lake. I wanted to stay in that story forever, in that time of myth and beauty, not to have to return to my own turbulent world of adolescence, the day-to-day routines of camp, first loves and kisses that, while intense, did not touch the depths of my soul like the loves at Arthur’s court.

These stories lived inside me, shaping my imagination, my sense of what was possible.

***

When I reached high school and later college, I became interested in different kinds of fantasy, in the strange world of Herman Hesse, the internal lives of Virginia Woolf, the ghosts of Toni Morrison. I learned to appreciate what is often called great literature. But, by the same token, I learned to devalue work written in the spirit of adventure and fantasy, work ostensibly written for teenagers, which I was no longer.

I gave myself up to the world of seriousness. And there was much to explore there. I died and was reborn again reading Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s 100 Years of Solitude. I became entranced with magical realism and dove into stories that examined the inner lives of troubled women, the works of Clarice Lispector, of Gayl Jones.

I started, too, to learn the language of critique, to think about the ways in which a text or author represented—that is, how they transferred what existed in the world onto the page—complex emotions and identities. How they represented race and gender and sexuality, places and other people. I was learning what books could do, and being confronted by their limitations.

***

Eventually, I went to graduate school, where I studied southern literature and tried to navigate the mess I felt myself to be.

The thing about English PhDs, at least for most of us, is that you’re often drawn to the profession for a love of reading and imagination. But this gets stamped out as you develop into a critic. You become trained to look at everything with a critical eye. If you’re like me, a relentless perfectionist with procrastination tendencies, you might find yourself no longer being able to read for pleasure. Everything I read felt like it needed to be for the dissertation, like it needed to have some use value. If I could take the time to read, it better be worthwhile.

My imposter syndrome ran deep, and graduate school is not a very self-affirming place. My peers and I learned to measure our self-worth through our productivity and intellectual prowess, which was judged on the work we produced.

I felt the fear curling inside me. And I sought escape through pot and booze, through experiences that brought me outside of myself and allowed me to let go.

***

It wasn’t until the last year of my dissertation, when I had begun to reclaim myself—with the help of therapy and a full-time job outside of academia—that I also began to read for pleasure again.

Something else likely also contributed to this, which is that I decided to get sober. This wouldn’t have been noteworthy except that I had been smoking regularly for many years. It hadn’t always been a problem for me, but at some point, it had become a source of shame and anxiety, something I didn’t even consciously want to do but which I didn’t seem to be able to stop. I was addicted, dependent on the feeling that the high gave me, the way that it blurred the edges just enough for me not to feel pulled under by the pressures I was putting on myself. It was a self-perpetuating cycle, but one which I felt powerless to stop.

Yet, as I entered into those last months of intense revision on the dissertation, I knew I needed to be clear-headed. I wanted it so badly. And so, I stopped. I told myself I wouldn’t consume any drugs or alcohol. Instead, I would pour all of my energy into revision. But I still needed something to give me that escape, a pressure valve to undo each day when I’d had enough of my brain and needed permission to unwind.

***

That’s how fantasy came back into my life. Just as it left, I don’t quite remember how it reappeared, but suddenly there it was—the world of YA (young adult) fantasy (specifically Cassandra Clare, but there’s plenty to choose from!).

It was the escape that I’d been seeking, the perfect antidote to my inability to read for pleasure. I could lose myself in the stories again, in these vast and magical worlds. It was reading I could do without feeling the pressure to somehow use it for my studies—because it couldn’t be used for my studies. I didn’t need to read it with a critical eye, only the willingness to get lost. And in doing so, I found again the limitless bounds of my imagination.

Each night I lay in bed after spending so many hours in front of the computer screen and I let my mind roam far and free. I gave myself up to these worlds, where demons and angels existed, where fairies and elves lived and waters parted to reveal hidden kingdoms.

***

The thing is, it wasn’t just about escape. These stories were teaching me something about myself. They were teaching me something about bravery, something about what it means to be a warrior.
It’s not necessarily something I can put into words. It was the way these characters, often young, often women, often people (even if not exactly human) who didn’t fit into the mold their society expected from them, channeled that perceived weakness in order to rise up. It was the goodness that they carried, a belief in themselves and a deep care for those around them. It was their willingness to sacrifice, the courage that they found within themselves.

And yes, sometimes the real traumas that they underwent seemed too easily forgotten, and yes of course there were all kinds of issues the critic in me could hold onto if I chose, but instead I felt their light descend upon me. They taught me to have faith in myself.

As a teenager you’re learning how to be a person, how to differentiate yourself from others but also how to connect, how to believe in yourself and what you have to offer the world. YA books hold these lessons, offering wisdom to their readers, helping them grow into young adults.

But grown adults also struggle with these challenges. You might have a stronger sense of who you are after several more decades on this planet, but it doesn’t mean you can’t be filled with doubt sometimes. So many of us are still learning how to love, how to be vulnerable, how to take down our walls and be brave.

***

When I went to the café each day after work, bone tired, feeling like giving up, and I sat at my table drinking my tea, I became in my mind one of these warrior women. My sword was my pen, and I had no choice but to write.

And I did, and I kept on writing. Every evening, I imagined myself again this way. And as the defense date grew closer, and the voice inside me, that inner critic, said again and again, ‘you’re not good enough, you’ll never get there,’ I imagined it as the evil demons from my books.

‘You’re wrong,’ I said, ‘I will,’ and I held my weapons high. I am strong enough, I told myself. If these women can go into battle, so too can I, and I can overcome.

***

Those last months, I lived my life divided between the world of my dissertation and the world of my fantasy books. The fantasy was an escape, but it was an escape that carried through to the ‘real’ world, that helped me make it through.

Soon enough, my defense date was upon me. It felt as if the world was crumbling all around, but I was lost in my anticipation. My chest grew tight as it drew closer, and I imagined myself holding my sword atop my head rushing into battle. I would face it head on like the warrior I knew I could be. 

And I did, and it was brilliant, and for a second everything shone bright.

I had many plans for after the dissertation: hang out with all the friends I’d been neglecting, go on trips, apply to a million jobs. But as anyone reading this will know, the pandemic didn’t end soon after; it only became worse. I finished my defense and went downstairs and did the dishes. I Zoomed with friends while they tried to corral their small children as they worked. I drank a glass of champagne with my partner and ordered pizza, which would be delivered to the bottom of our stairs. I tried to hold onto the glory of that moment, even as graduation was cancelled and people I knew passed away, and all the excitement of finally finishing dissipated in the post-partum dissertation glare.

***

I thought that I’d give up fantasy novels after my defense. That had been the plan. I wouldn’t need them anymore. I’d be ready to go out and conquer on my own. Instead, I held to them ever tighter.

As the world that I knew was turned upside down, I remained immersed in these fantasy worlds, which were built upon uncertainty and precariousness. These worlds were constantly in danger, the young protagonists always fighting to change them for the better. As the pandemic raged, the fantasy novels were teaching me something else—how to accept uncertainty.

They also taught me that it’s okay to seek refuge in fantasy. Sometimes it’s all you can do to stay sane. Fantasy helped me find hope and courage. It helped me feel connected to myself when everything around me was unsteady, reminding me that things are always more than they seem.

Eventually, as life began to settle into some semblance of new normalcy, and I got the job I had been waiting for, I found myself reading less and less fantasy. I simply didn’t have enough time, and maybe, the truth was, I didn’t need them as much as I had. I had become stronger, more resilient. The lessons I had learned through reading these books stayed with me.

But still when I need to feel brave, I channel the characters. I imagine a glowing sword in my hand and feel the power of myself coursing through my body.


* * * * *

Faune Vita is a writer and artist from the Ozark Mountains who teaches writing at a college in Massachusetts.