Gender Inequality In Neverwhere By Neil Gaiman

In Neverwhere, Neil Gaiman uses the relationships between characters in a feudalistic system to illuminate gender, social, and power inequality by reversing the thematic roles generically given to males or females to promote equality and reduce prejudice stemming from inequality in society.
Furthermore, common role placement is usually riddled with inequality, so role reversal is used to identify those places of inequality and create a vision for how society could be with multiple strong female characters and typical female roles being embodied by males. Door, Hunter, Anaesthesia, and Jessica are all characters coming to mind when considering characters who exhibit emotional, physical, social, and economic strength. Generic commercial fantasy …show more content…
Gaimons choice to include propositions of a feudalistic system has an interesting effect on how Door’s character has any societal power. Generally in this system, women have little to no power and are instead relegated to keep the house of the lord. Instead, Door has the full authority of her family’s household name paired with magical gifts to create doorways. For example, “ subway quote”. This really shows the influence Door has over much older and powerful male characters. Intriguingly, the character who ends up being the main protagonist is gender neutral. Gaiman's refusal to assign a gender to Islington renders all generic male/female conflict mute. The angel’s lack of a gender role opens up the conflict to each protagonist and allows characters like Door to make a more meaningful impact to the reader. Instead of creating assumptions and caricatures of common stereotypes, a genuine plot emerges with more ambiguous plot twists such as the role the Marquis really plays. Undercurrents of mischief often takes place when the marquis is involved, and his interactions with other characters are always interesting especially with his customers. For example, “the coin man in the subway”, the marquis warns the man …show more content…
Often Door throws her social weight around to achieve certain objectives, “ part where Door summons the marquis on debt”, this is more of an exchange between the two, but the marquis is only involved because of his debt to Door’s family. Honoring favors/debt is a feudalistic idea that even the shady marquis de carabas subscribes to. He also recognizes the factions and the floating marketplace peace accord even though he walks the metaphorical moral line. Accordingly, everyone in the floating market adheres to the no violence rule without question. Even Mister Croup and Mister Vandemar doesn’t act up while inside the boundaries of the market. Strangely, everyone uses societal power and domain as currency in London Below, “trading in the floating market”, showing that the archaic system relies on bartering and using social status for gains. In fact, the reader can see where a minor character gains a bartering chip and increasing his status as a valuable, trustworthy, and friendly businessman, “marquis owes old bailey after dying”. It is clearly shown that the man, who usually is the banker of favors, requires a loan from Old Bailey, therefore Old Bailey has power over a more powerful character. Similarly, Hunter built up status from her heroics and uses them to trade for favors. She bargains with Islington to get the spear and fulfill her purpose, but she wouldn’t