Does 'Black Chalk' by Christopher J Yates pass the Bechdel Test?
well, no, it's doesn't at all
Am I surprised that it doesn’t? No, but I am surprised by how spectacularly it doesn’t pass the Bechdel Test.
In case you’re not familiar with the Bechdel test, it was a test that became a mainstream measurement of the representation of women in media. In order to pass the test, there must be a conversation between two named women that does not involve or mention a man. Though this test doesn’t give a widespread comment on the representation across that piece of media, it is an indication of it.
The conversation about the female representation came up in our main podcast episode for ‘Black Chalk’ which you can listen to below:
‘Black Chalk’ has two named female characters who independently exist on the page, Dee and Emilia, and even though they are two of the six main characters, they do not pass the Bechdel Test.
The lack of female representation in this book wasn’t a surprise to us, but we didn’t realise how dire it was until we started discussing it during the episode.
Emilia and Dee are side notes in a lot of the novel, accessories to the male characters, and usually referred to in reference to their sexual and/or romantic relationship to the men. They have no agency or personality outside of this connection and their (secondary) involvement in the game is less self-motivated and more akin to being dragged along for the ride.
This treatment of women could be expected from a dark academia novel from the 80s or the 90s, but ‘Black Chalk’ was published in 2013 and there’s just no excuse for it. As we’ve explored dark academia as a genre, we’ve encountered more modern dark academia with a strong focus on women reclaiming their voice and their powerful in the traditionally male space of academia and ‘Black Chalk’ is definitively not that.
Welcome to Footnotes
We have an extra nugget of podcast content where we talk about some of the things that don’t necessarily fit into dark academia discussions, but need to be talked about and are often brought up by other readers and reviewers.
