Women in Fiction

[rowyn]

koogrr and I were talking a few days ago about the gender roles in fiction. I opined that early sf/f mostly had crappy female characters, when they had female characters at all. I think there's something about genre fiction in general that lead to lousy portrayals of women in the 40s-70s. It's not just science fiction & fantasy. I used to consume large quantities of romance novels when I was a teen, and mostly I got them at a used bookstore to keep the costs down. And because the used bookstore charged 50% of cover price, I sometimes would look for older romances because they were cheaper.

And then I noticed that they were also significantly worse. Somewhat more poorly written, but the worst part was the blatant sexism. The women were much more likely to be annoying: clingy, incompetent, whiny, etc. Men were sometimes outright abusive. I gave up on pre-80s titles after a while.

What's interesting about this is that it's not a question of these 'old' books offending my modern sensibilities. I've read much older material with enthusiasm. Jane Austen and Charlotte Bronte, to give two 19th century examples, wrote great female characters. Heck, Shakespeare wrote some good female characters (although most of his female characters are in relatively minor roles and fairly uninteresting, granted.) I'm not sure why much more recent fare would be so much worse. Maybe it's just that the quality of writing overall is much worse -- after all, a whole lot more writing is stil available from 50 years ago than from 200+, and hence a whole lot more schlock is also out there. Still, I'm hard-pressed to name many good female characters from pre-80s sf/f. Tolkein's Galadriel and Asimov's Susan Calvin come to mind. Tolkein's female characters are few and all in minor roles, but to his credit, what little you do see of women in LotR is generally respectful. Even the ones that aren't protagonists show some strength and determination. Remember Lobelia Sackville-Baggins? Contrast that with the cringe-worthy female roles in early Doctor Who episodes. come to think of it, the Heinlein books I've read (which aren't enough to make a good representative sample) have usually had good female characters.

Still, I'm wondering if whiny and incompetent female characters really were more common in popular early to mid-20th century fiction than in previous centuries, or if selection bias has winnowed out more of the crap from earlier periods. I think there's another factor at work in my impression. I'm not looking for egalitarianism or a lack of gender roles -- that is a pretty recent development in fiction. (And comes with its own pitfalls, like the rise of the omnipotent female character, who is not merely capable but excelling at absolutely everything). Rather, I'm thinking of books that treat women as intelligent and capable within whatever role they're assigned. And generally getting a role that's better than 'the victim in need of rescuing.' :P I'm not sure I'm expressing this very well.

Anyway, I'm curious if other people's impressions are similar or different from my own. What do you think the trends with female characters in fiction have been?

Comments

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

The Witches of Karres, from James H. Schmitz, the guy who also did the Telzey Amberdon books?

In general, I agree that the the earlier SF books tend to characterize women as weak, but these books also have fallen out of favor. I think the truth is that we would rather read books about strong characters, in a desire to emulate them or admire them, whether they are female or male.

I mean, would you rather read a book with a strong female character and a weak male character that she is constantly rescuing, or a book about two strong characters, female and male?

[rowyn]

Very true. Although I think I could be quite entertained by a story about someone who always needed saving. It's more than just the helplessness of the characters that bothered me. I think it's the sense that they're not even *trying*.

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

Happens in a lot of anime as well! Wherever it crops up, it's quite vexing.

Ah well, all cultures discover women's liberation at some point!

[rowyn]

One can only hope! Anime is almost equal-opportunity in this: they have some *lame* male protagonists. ;)

[jordangreywolf.livejournal.com]

Quite true, that. Oh, but it so frustrates me when there's a character - male or female - who is so useless that all he/she can do is stand there and plaintively shout out the name of another character who is in danger.

Hey! I can't do anything to help you, so I'll DISTRACT you! That'll help!

[mach.livejournal.com]

Oh tell me about that one! I want to SMACK a character like that.

It really pisses me off in the digimon/monsterhunter/onmyou taisenki/pokemon worlds as well. I swear, if my best friend/creature/soulmate was in danger I'd leap in there or start looking for weapons I could get that would allow me to help out!

Especially bad was Riku (Onmyou Taisenki) I'd SO have multiple heavy firearms after the first encounter with a demon or whatever.

[jordangreywolf.livejournal.com]

Well, at least in the case of Riku:

a) It's in Japan. I gather that nobody has guns except the cops and criminals.
b) It'd be even harder for a *kid* to get a gun.

But in America, yeah, it has occurred to me that if some sort of "Digimon-ish" animal-fighting game "story" were to happen in a place like this, I'd half expect that some kid would at least bring a pellet gun - or worse. (In this case, I refer to "Digimon" as in, "animal-fighting game turned into story where kids must [through their fighting pets] save the world" versus the "Pokemon" setting where all the pet-fighting action is "just for fun" and somehow respectible.)