The Ten Thousand Doors of January

Throughout the novel, Harrow highlights 20th-century gender roles and racial discrimination to show how those in power gain and keep superiority by silencing and oppressing others. Through January’s transformation over the course of the story, and her relationship with Locke, Harrow underscores how a person can and should resist such oppression and fight to assert one’s value as a human being. While Locke and his aptly named “Society” cloak their hunger for power under promises of bringing “order and stability” (79) to the world, they don’t genuinely care about the world, but only people like them—powerful, wealthy, and white. Locke uses January as an example of a savage he has civilized, showing he cares nothing about her identity or innate value as a human; he only wants to have control over her. In contrast, Julian says, “there are no such things as savages” (79), showing that although people are different, one person does not have more value than another. Locke’s Society and his “civilization” of January acts as an example in miniature of American society and political ideologies such as imperialism, racial discrimination, and gender inequality.  

Harrow uses several examples of how one’s race determined one’s place in society in the 20th century. For instance, when people see January’s odd-colored skin alongside Locke, they aren’t sure how to treat her. In January’s words, “Should the poor manager serve me tea or toss me in the kitchen with the maids?” (6). This shows that the way people treated others depended on the color of their skin, as well as their social status. January’s non-white skin suggested her inferiority, but her place next to Locke showed she was wealthy, or at least under the protection of a wealthy man. When January travels alone later in the novel, she notices a marked change in the way people treat her. Few people offer her a ride, and she knows that without Locke’s whiteness and wealth, society views her as beneath their notice. Harrow’s representation of racial discrimination shows the way oppression of non-white people has historically allowed whites to preserve their dominance in society. 

Harrow also shows examples of how the world would be different if traditional societal roles changed. In other worlds, the laws of society and nature are different. Julian observes, “There are places where men and women are winged and red-skinned, and places where there is no such thing as man and woman but only persons somewhere in between” (132). Cultural norms are relative; what one society sees as “normal” can be completely foreign to another, but these cultural differences don’t mean that some people have more value than others. Furthermore, in Jane’s forest world, women are the hunters and leaders of the community, while the men stay home with the children. Similarly, in Arcadia, Molly Neptune leads the community as chieftainess. Also, white people are the minority in Arcadia, where people from different countries live together like a big family. These examples of role reversals and racial equality show the relativity of the laws enforced in society. They also demonstrate how those in power have historically used differences among people groups as a means of defining which people receive acceptance and power, and which groups they consider inferior. Harrow’s commentary on the relationship between power and oppression shows the importance of questioning societal norms and, just like January, asserting one’s identity as a valuable human being with an important voice.