Contraception, Consent, and Community in Kristin Cashore's Graceling Trilogy

What is "seabane"? The first Google search result brings not an explanation, but a declaration: "Seabane Isn't Real" (Cashore). In this blog post, young adult author Kristin Cashore explains that while seabane works as a contraceptive in her young adult fantasy Graceling trilogy, it is nonetheless "a fictional herb. I made it up." Why is such a clarification necessary? When writing Graceling (2008), the first installment in the trilogy, Cashore did her level best to choose a term that was "not a known plant name in the real world in any language, because I didn't want to confuse my fantasy world with the real world and I didn't want to muddle readers ('What? Oregano doesn't prevent pregnancy!')" (parenthesis in original). However, Cashore later discovered "a very few tiny online conversations to the effect of one person asking, 'What is seabane?' and another person answering as if it's an actual contraceptive" ("Seabane"). In response, Cashore wrote this blog post so that if any other muddled readers ask the internet about seabane, it comes up first. As this incident demonstrates, although seabane may not be real, Cashore's concern for her readers' well-being and sexual education is quite real.¹ Her careful intentionality, resulting from her awareness of the influence small details of her secondary world can have on real world readers, extends beyond birth control in and of itself to the behaviors and attitudes of the characters who use it.

Since young adult fantasy authors rarely include contraception in fantasy—even if they include sexual activity—Cashore's thoughtful, nuanced inclusion of birth control in Graceling (2008), Fire (2009), and Bitterblue (2012) sets her trilogy apart. In these novels, Katsa, Fire, and Bitterblue, the respective female heroes^2,3 of each installment, are all sexually active—or become so—as they learn how to wield and maintain power on personal and political levels. Cashore portrays each character affirmatively consenting⁴ to have sex, a rhetorical move that emphasizes the significance of mutual consent to healthy romantic relationships. Each woman's choice to use birth control serves as an integral component of her consent to sexual activity. By making contraception and consent fundamental components of their decision-making processes, Cashore enables these characters to make fully informed decisions about whether or not to have sex. Access to contraception grants them a measure of control over what the consequences of that sex will be, but only when the use of birth control is based on informed consent does it grant agency to the characters who use it. By including different experiences with birth control, a deep concern for consent, and supportive communities in the stories of three very different characters, Cashore diversifies the stories about birth control that she tells. Supportive communities of women and other marginalized characters who provide Katsa, Fire, and Bitterblue both with birth control and other kinds of support are key to their increased agency and provide a stark contrast with the abusive, patriarchal characters who try to control them.

Cashore's trilogy builds on and extends the methods that progressive YA fantasy uses to address pressing sociopolitical issues, issues that have become even more urgent since the rise of the #MeToo⁵ and #TimesUp movements. Cashore's depiction of the interdependence of contraception, consent, and increased agency for female heroes highlights missed opportunities in existing scholarship to attend to these topics. While scholars like Brian Attebury, Lori Campbell, Farah Mendlesohn, and Michael Levy have addressed the recent increase of female heroes in fantasy, that analysis has only rarely considered sexuality and does not address birth control.⁶ And while scholars like Roberta Trites and Lydia Kokkola have tackled questions of sexuality, agency, and power in young adult literature,⁷ they address questions of contraception only tangentially. Jeanne McDermott has attended to birth control: in "Getting It On: An Examination of How Contraceptives Are Portrayed in Young Adult Literature." McDermott surveys thirty-two realist novels published between 1995 and 2010 to determine whether their portrayals of contraception are "positive, negative, or neutral." She defines a positive depiction...