Role of Women

I think that the problem comes that a lot of "constructed" worlds are just a rip-off from your generic "Merry England" fantasyland (specially from Tolkien) and hence, they just copy the classic archtypes and social structures from it

As Pratchett said, Tolkien is like Mount Fuji those Japanese illustrations wereas you can see it, even as a small dot, in all

I'm using a "traditional" social structure, and I'm the first to admit it. But my characters are all just people who go after what they want to the best of their ability regardless of their gender or social standing.

I think focusing on gender is a mistake. People are people before they're male or female. I find the "beautiful helpless woman in peril" and the "all men are pigs" stereotypes equally annoying.

I might go for pigs in peril, though. I can just see the fearless pigherder children, brother and sister, chasing after the escaped herd, which they must retrieve before mom and dad find out. Unfortunately, the lord of the land has received a stern command from his pregnant wife to bring her pork NOW! Lots of it! And he's between them and the herd...

Oh, one other thing, back on a serious note. I think some historians may underestimate the ability of women in supposedly traditional societies to get their way no matter what the men want.

I tend to toss and forget books that do it badly. I do really like the way characterization in general is done by Diana Wynne Jones, Robin McKinley, Gail Levine, Megan Whalen Turner, Emma Bull, Sharon Shinn, Sherwood Smith, Lloyd Alexander, and many other wonderful writers I'm blanking on just now. I am having trouble figuring out whether any of these guys fall into the gender-stereotype thing. I really don't think they do. Perhaps because stereotypes are an easy out and the people who do character extremely well are the ones who don't take the easy out.

Oh thanks for linking to that, it made good reading. Meaning: it made me think.

I get irritated when the heroines are all precious and beautiful and angsting about fluffy bunnies, because it doesn't fit my experience at all, and so I just assume that the writer knows nothing about women (especially if they *are* a woman. Blegh)

I'vbe been wondering about how woman are seen in fantasy at the moment, because I have a chara who tries to be more ...well butch, i guess, although that's a very weak description of what she's doing.

Moving on, my dh read it and said he really liked the mc, because she was so real, and in his words, "funky, but still a chick."*


*yeah, he's a Neanderthal, but he's *my* Neanderthal, 'kay. I know what he means, he means it in a good way.

Interesting. That's one of the reasons that my Chronicles series has become my favorite endeavor. It started with a White wizard and a Black wizard, leading their flunkies and dueling it out. I'd guess it had about a 6 month half life before I lost interest in the project.

But I'd been looking for a mole among the black wizards, someone who could cross over the lines and be very morally complicated. I was going in the direction of a kind of Lando Calrissian or Garak (DS9). But then I was hit with the image of my white wizard locked in the arms of a woman. And as I watched black runes slithered up from deep under the skin of her arm and I realized that she was a black witch. And that's when I knew that she would be his wife. It's given the series a very different flavor. And a lot more intensity.

Let's face it, there's a lot of crappy decisions being made out there, even by good writers. And our genre is one of the worst for diving into stereotypes, because we so often take a situation and push it to the absolute extreme. It makes for raising some very interesting philosophical issues, but deep characterization... not so much.

I don't mean to pick on you, chroniclemaster, and I'm glad you're bringing up these points and arguing in interesting ways. (and to the Cooler!)

But -- argh, you're saying things that hit my buttons! I'm afraid I'm innately incapable of being quiet when people are making sweeping generalizations. So, hopefully you'll find this interesting and not antagonistic...

Deep characterization along with philosophical issues in fantasy:

Octavia Butler, Kindred
Susan Palwick, Gestella. In the collection The Fate of Mice.
Tim Powers, The Anubis Gates (again )
Jaqueline Carey, Kushiel's Dart
Lois McMaster Bujold, Paladin of Souls (even more than The Curse of Chalion)
Pamela Dean, The Dubious Hills
Jonathon Stroud, the Bartimaeus trilogy
Sherwood Smith, Court Duel/Crown Duel
Diana Wynne Jones, Dogsbody
...
Okay, I'll stop!
for now.

I'm an offender...

I have a ship's computer, whose voice is female, and she (*gasp*) does everything the ship's captain tells her to do...

Not only that, but she tries to keep him out of trouble despite himself, and also knows everything.

Oh man, totally coming back to this thread. I just took a class on the roles of Women in Literature. Needless to say we didn't have any science-fiction or fantasy.

I'll be back.

The women warriors in my series are as capable as men, mentally and physically. I know a lot of readers will find this unrealistic -- especially the upper-body-strength thing -- but I don't care; I made my own rules, and consistently backed them up. That's not to say that I don't have flawed female characters, but no more of them than flawed male characters.

Like anything 90% of anything is going to be crap. Giving up on a whole genre over that 90% is like giving up on all literature because you're sick of reading about middle-aged divorcees in New England.

If she's going to dump bile all over a genre because some people don't get it, she will not make an impact, really.

She might find more success for her cause rewarding the ones who get it right with good word-of-mouth buzz.

rosemerry said:

Oh man, totally coming back to this thread. I just took a class on the roles of Women in Literature. Needless to say we didn't have any science-fiction or fantasy.

I'll be back.

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"Literature" is pretty large. I doubt you could cover all genres in one semester, or even the major classical works of European literature. Despite this, Ursula Le Guin does appear often in gender-related courses.

The author of the article should read wider, IMHO.

Gray Rose said:

The author of the article should read wider, IMHO.

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Here, here.

There are plenty of great female role models in fantasy. Even Narnia's Lucy and Susan were tough!

Shetwa gave a very nice list (though I admit that Kushiel's Dart is probably my least favorite book of all time.) And let's not forget authors like Connie Willis and Charles de Lint!!

Doodlebug said:

Here, here.

There are plenty of great female role models in fantasy.

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While magic in Jordan's Wheel of Time books aligns water and air with women, and fire and earth with men, the women are hardly wallflowers. Everybody on the continent fears Aes Sedai and Maidens of the Spear.

Books read in my Women's Roles in Literature class:
~Phaedra - Jean Racine (play translated from French by Richard Wilbur)
~A Doll's House - Henrik Ibsen (play)
~The House of Mirth - Edith Wharton
~I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings - Maya Angelou
~The Woman Warrior - Maxine Hong Kingston (first published as non-fiction but is now labeled fiction)
~Chronicle of a Death Foretold - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

In my novel I'm going to have a Japanese woman samurai.

Barefoot, and usually making me do things I'd rather not.

The joys of dating a tomboy.

Shweta said:

But -- argh, you're saying things that hit my buttons! I'm afraid I'm innately incapable of being quiet when people are making sweeping generalizations. So, hopefully you'll find this interesting and not antagonistic...

Okay, I'll stop!
for now.

Click to expand...

Not necessary. I certainly didn't mean to imply that there aren't great writers in our genre that are pushing the gender lines and doing really great characterization work. You missed my favorite, Ender Wiggin from Orson Scott Card. But... and here I go generalizing again (guilty as charged), I do think we're more traditional than our contemporaries in a lot of other genres. One of my professor's once said, you can innovate in a book, but only in one direction. Otherwise, you're too far ahead of your reader and they can't follow where we're going. How long have tough women been a staple of the mystery genre? Both as MCs and sidekicks. And mysteries are not a genre that is by any stretch as daring as fantasy/sci-fi (ok, for the most part). I don't mean to blacken, I'm a huge fan. But deep characterization is certainly one of the things that quickly help me decide that I'm reading a great fantasy book, and I feel that it's too often lacking in "great" fantasy/sci-fi.

Now I've gone and read the blurb on Anubis Gates. My poor bookshelf is already breaking with all the stuff I haven't gotten around to reading. Where am I going to find room for that! Curses upon you!

I guess the reason I'm arguing is that I have trouble thinking of fantasy that doesn't do great characterization, and have good, strong female characters in it. And I read a lot of fantasy.

So I don't think it's just that "Fantasy" is traditional. I think it's that it's much easier to find the traditional fantasy, and we as writers need to know so much more than that! So I am compelled to point out counterexamples. Like people did for me, some years ago.

Robert Jordan's women were fearsome,yes, but at some point I wanted to kick him for what I perceived as the destruction of strong characterization when 4 women fall in love with Rand. They lost a lot of their depth and vivacity in my view when they became petty, eager to be the one to care for Rand, to sleep with Rand, etc etc. His treatment of them could be blamed on the taint but I think even Jordan succumbed to the stereotyped female. His Aes Sedai were the only female characters I felt really continued to hold their own and they were truly formidable.

I've struggled with this a bit...as a female, I cringe whenever my main female character comes off as catty because I feel like people will say "Ah ha! There's a stereotypical female" when in fact she is the sole female on the ship, she is the Captain and in charge of their collective destiny, and my main male character comes from a matriarchal society. He's the first male heir to the throne in eight centuries...and it's caused a big stir. Main female character wears long skirts, has braided hair, and is a feminine character. But would having her wear pants make her less feminine? I don't think so. The blogger pointed out that women have to dress like men in order to be treated equally but why is that necessary? Can't you write a very flirtatious stereotypical female who wears slacks/pants? I don't think that authors are defeminizing a character simply by dressing her in OUR preconceived notions of what is feminine and what is masculine.

But I don't think I've ever felt like I was bucking a system by having a matriarchal society...a lot of societies were matriarchal and continue to be within the "private realm". I'm not bucking a system...I'm working in a new one.

And for authors that keep women and men in Anglo-saxon traditional roles...if that's what suits their story, then why not? If their story is about a male hero who rescues a princess, then WHY would they WANT to have the princess picking up a magic sword and slashing her way out of the magical barriers? Their story would be gone...that'd be a different story.

And I agree that there are plenty of books where females are strong willed, doing it their way, etc and they're having to rescue men

I don't think the author of the blog is doubting that there are strong female characters in fantasy. What she doesn't like is those strong female characters being portrayed in cliche'd fantasy roles (the whole water vs fire thing, the men going out and being men, etc).

I'm happy to say I unintentionally broke one "women's fantasy cliche" in my NaNo. Okay, yes, I did have the male pyro kid, but his mom was an earth mover. *gasp!* NO WAI, says you. YA RLY, says I. She liquified a gargoyle statue and sent pieces of it shooting out like stone bullets. Yet she's just a regular mom, with a 9 to 5 sort of job. Cheerful. Smiles a lot. No navel gazing for her - okay, bad guy destroyed, time to go home and eat dinner. What did you do at school today, honey?

Personally I think that blogger needs to delve a little deeper in fantasy. By no means are all women weak in fantasy, nor are they all cliche'd in the way she talks about (and if they are, there is a strong point about them to counter it, I promise). If she's making such broad generalizations then she has obviously not read too far into the genre, or she has personal blinders on that allow her to pick out every cliche'd female in every book yet skim over or ignore those that aren't cliche'd because she's still pissed about the cliche'd one that appeared in chapter 4.

Some points I could see and agree with, but to me it just sounds like she's not picking up good books or is going into them with a pre-formed opinion. Time to branch out, methinks.

Or maybe I just have good luck picking out books. I don't know.

Aslera said:

Robert Jordan's women were fearsome,yes, but at some point I wanted to kick him for what I perceived as the destruction of strong characterization when 4 women fall in love with Rand. They lost a lot of their depth and vivacity in my view when they became petty, eager to be the one to care for Rand, to sleep with Rand, etc etc. His treatment of them could be blamed on the taint but I think even Jordan succumbed to the stereotyped female. His Aes Sedai were the only female characters I felt really continued to hold their own and they were truly formidable.

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And all that braid-tugging and sniffing!

JimmyB27 said:

And all that braid-tugging and sniffing!

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If Egwene pulled her braids one more time...

When he introduced Min, I was quite excited and then he failed me there too. *sigh* Though, I suppose, his Atha'an Miere/Sea Folk are an interesting study in social order and gender roles.

deathwizard said:

The women warriors in my series are as capable as men, mentally and physically. I know a lot of readers will find this unrealistic -- especially the upper-body-strength thing -- but I don't care; I made my own rules, and consistently backed them up.

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Interesting. I don't think most readers would have that much trouble with capable female warriors, considering how common they are in various forms of media nowadays, but do you actually have your females being generally equal to males in strength as you seem to be implying? If so, do they tend to have the mass to back it up, or are they daintily built yet somehow strong? My stuff is full of mega-tough warrior heroines too; though I never really gave much thought to that specific issue, they generally can carve up mooks and cleave through people's limbs etc. as good as the males... however, I do often have them being overpowered/at a power disadvantage against a major male enemy, but that has more to do than anything else with the guy being *huge* and capable of crushing most people male or female. Of course some of my gals are huge as well (Rose ) and can slam the crap out of big men and big monsters too.

The book that comes to mind immediately is Guy Gavriel Kay's The Lions of Al-Rassan (theoretically coming to a theater near you, unless it's not), in which the main character is a medieval physician. Which I suppose theoretically is still the woman-as-healer archtype, except it doesn't come across that way. (It might help that there's no magic involved.)

Aslera said:

If Egwene pulled her braids one more time...

When he introduced Min, I was quite excited and then he failed me there too. *sigh* Though, I suppose, his Atha'an Miere/Sea Folk are an interesting study in social order and gender roles.

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Hey, I like Min, she doesn't take any guff from Rand, always calling him Sheepherder, heehee.

Keep in mind that Rand is ta'veren. Things often go against the odds around him, sweeping people up into his pattern, like the time a guy dumped a barrowload of straw on the ground, and every stem landed on end...not that hard to believe 3 women would go for him (he and Egwene are just friends, remember?)