On Malcolm - the rose field spoilers
disclaimer: ofc I was not happy with any of the Malcolm/Lyra moments and grieve for 2017-19 when we thought they’d have a sibling dynamic, but now that evil’s been 100% defeated, I’d like to take a more nuanced view on him rather than just dismiss him as a creep and blame Philman for how “problematic” the storyline was
To begin with, as much as we readers were made very uncomfortable by most scenes, especially the one in TSC when Malcolm talks about being conscious of Lyra’s “warm body” as a teenager, no one was more uncomfortable than Malcolm himself. And then we have to think of all the trauma he must still be carrying from Bonneville, a predator on young girls who would talk to a 12yo Malcolm as if he were complicit in the manhood of being unable to control themselves before attractive girls. I can only think that the encounters with Bonneville as a pubescent boy made Malcolm have a very repressive subconscious attitude towards his own sexuality, which then fought back through increased desire. Even when looking at the witch in TRF, Malcolm cannot help but think of how he’s attracted to her, feel hyper conscious of that, and then have to repress it without acceptance or any sort of working through his feelings that would allow for it to go away.
So when it comes to Lyra, I think the most important is how he never ever acts on it. He is suffering for something he cannot control and that began when Lyra was the same age Alice was when she got raped, hitting that point of prohibition/desire that festered in reaction to repressing what he was told by a predator when aged 12. From a psychoanalysis point of view, it’s quite a natural reaction. So Malcolm is not at all like Bonneville, nor is he “inherently” a creep, but is dealing with how he repressed and never dealt with the trauma of too early an encounter with sexual violence. It goes to such an extent that maybe he never would’ve fallen in love w Lyra at all had it not been for the subconscious association with Bonneville. When all the characters defend him and tell him it’s okay to be in love with Lyra, or when Alice reacts to the police’s story of student/teacher rape, I see it as attempts to balance out Malcolm’s own symptomatic repression. It’s absurd for them Malcolm’s sense of guilt or the idea that he might get charged with rape because they know 100% he’s not a predator, but his repression cannot let him convince himself of that, and fosters a type of self torture that only increases desire for Lyra. His decision to remain silent and not act on it is the final proof that he never was a predator, though I believe his trauma re Bonneville by the end of TRF is far from worked out.
It’s also fascinating to me how, from all the characters, Malcolm is the one most closely associated with fairy tale logic. He devotes himself to Lyra, placing himself as her eternal servant, as proceeds to be the one who crowns her in TRF. He’s “made of gold” because of his migraine, a daily life issue typical of the ones used to trick fairies through a forced metaphor they don’t get. He’s also got the “heart of gold”, which is absolutely true in his goodness, whose reinforcement I saw less with annoyance and more as a continuation of his fairy-tale-like character, as well as a contrast to his own assessment of himself. So the character who best fits into a fairy tale is also the one who best fits a Freudian divan. In terms of storytelling, I love these kinds of contrast, the play between the adult and the childish, and I think it also perfectly mimics Malcolm’s own trauma - having been taken away from innocence too early on.
