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

[jordan179.livejournal.com]

I think there's something about genre fiction in general that lead to lousy portrayals of women in the 40s-70s.

Yes, there was.

The pulps were written for a primarily adolescent to twenties-ish young male audience. Which, back then, was "nerdly" to a degree scarcely comprehensible today, and at a time when nerds were far less popular than they are now.

Many of the fans were not dating, were not comfortable around women, and didn't like to see female characters and the attendant romantic plots emphasized in speculative-fiction stories.

This was, by the way, far more true in the 1920's to 1930's than it was in the 1940's through 1980's.

Adventure zines in general were only comfortable with female characters in the role of "damsels in distress." Romance zines went more into female characters for the obvious reasons, but back then the concept of how a woman in general, particularly one in love, should behave was highly restrictive. (For instance, women were generally supposed to have professional careers of their own only if unmarried, and to abandon any they had started should they get married).

I gave up on pre-80s titles after a while.

You're missing out on some of the greatest science fiction and fantasy ever written, then. Edmond Hamilton, E. E. "Doc" Smith, Murray Leinster, much of Poul Anderson, H. P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, a lot of Jack Vance, the best of Arthur C. Clarke ... and of course some of them women, such as C. L. Moore, Andre Norton, and Leigh Brackett.

By the way, the great writers generally adhered less to the genre conventions.

[rowyn]

"I gave up on pre-80s titles" referred to genre romance novels, not sf/f.

Being written by women (as most genre romance is now, and was then) is no guarantee of decent female characters. Nor is being written *for* women, as you point out with regards to romance 'zines.

Still, Austen wrote romances for women in a society with rigid gender roles and expectations, and *her* books aren't full of irritating female protagonists (Mansfield Park excepted). So I don't think it's just a matter of social mores, but again, it could be a matter of "survival of the fittest": Austen may have had hordes of contemporaries who wrote idiot female protagonists, but time has mercifully obliterated most of them. :)