rowyn | Women in Fiction

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?

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

shockwave77598.livejournal.com

Not all female characters are or have been whiny brats who need saving all the time. Nor have all male characters been macho lucky sons of guns who always win the day (and the girl.)

But I've encountered a number of people in my life; people so two dimensional that nobody would believe anyone could really be like that if I wrote them into a story. But they do exist and they are so totally flat and shallow. So I'm widening my allowable character fields to incorporate some of these vapid Paris Hilton Wannabes in the future.

From:

tetsujinnooni.livejournal.com

"Sturgeon's Law applies to people as well"?

From:

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?

From:

rowyn

Yowch! Harsh. :)

I dunno -- perhaps it's that people are harder to judge, but I don't think I'd lump 90% of the people I meet as significantly inferior, overall, to the other 10%.

From:

rowyn

Yes, but will you have your male protagonist fall in love with them? :)

One of the striking things about the annoying female characters I'm thinking of is that they're not just harebrained nuisances to the main characters. They're the love interests and sometimes the protagonists themselves. And yet they're so ... lacking.

But this certainly isn't uniformly the case for any period. I expect the more I think about it, the more good female characters I'll recal from older fiction. But it does seem like the 'vapid female' character type was significantly more common in fiction 30+ years ago than it is now.

From:

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.

From:

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*.

From:

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!

From:

nkcmike.livejournal.com

Working from very stale memory... I think the Harper Hall telling of the Pern myth was pre-80s (if not by much), and had a pretty strong female lead.

The good news is that there's LOTS of series now that have good female characters in central roles.

From:

terrycloth.livejournal.com

I think most of the really old sci fi I've read fits into the 'if they had female characters at all' bin. Or, er, doesn't, because they didn't really.

Um... Brave New World had a female protagonist, right? And while she wasn't exactly the perfect role model, that wasn't because she was female, it was because she was a Beta.

From:

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. :)

From:

haikujaguar.livejournal.com

I'd have to agree with this.

From:

terrycloth.livejournal.com

I can sort of see that, although it's more '10% of the people are super-awesome' compared to everyone else who's merely 'normal', and not '90% of people are crap'.

From:

rowyn

Oh, yes. The Harpercraft Hall books may've been 80s (I think they were) but McCaffrey started the Pern books in the 70s and her female characters were overall pretty good.

And agreed, there's no dearth of good female characters in fiction nowadays, for which I am grateful. Even the female characters in genre romance are usually interesting now. :)

From:

rowyn

I tried thinking about it that way, actually, but still didn't feel as though it matched my experience. Maybe "10% of people are super-awesome at *something* that the other 90% are only average at".

But people have so many variables to them that it's particularly hard to qualify them in this manner. The things I value most in a friend aren't the same things I'd value most in a co-worker or a doctor or an author or whatever. It's very rare for me to meet someone who seems well above average in almost all respects.

From:

rowyn

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

From:

rowyn

Brave New World had a female protagonist? Um .... yeah, I think I've forgotten about 90% of that book. I'd give Huxley a pass anyway, since none of his characters were very memorable. He was more about the concept and setting than anything else.

One of the odd things about having read so much fiction with virtually no female characters of note is that when I started reading someone like, say, David Weber, I'd find myself thinking "What, are *all* his characters female?" No, only around half of them. :) Nowadays I hardly notice at all; I'm not sure why that is.

From:

terrycloth.livejournal.com

No, being good at *something* is different, and a lot more common. And neither necessary nor sufficient. It's really hard to put my finger on why some people are 'better'... harder than it is to point out examples. Which I am *so* not going to do.

From:

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!

From:

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.

From:

mach.livejournal.com

No, now there's a derth of M/M couples in sci fi. :-D

From:

koogrr.livejournal.com

Well... once in a while I have run into people that were across the board better than me. It was unpleasant. Usually it's a matter of adjusting the scale, "well, he can lift more weight than I can, but I'm a better artist" sort of thing. Except for this particular guy, beat me hands down on everything I could compare. He wasn't playing one-up either, I was desperately looking for some way to feel superior and couldn't find it.

Better engineer, better artist, better writer, more well read, more girlfriends, more boyfriends, partied harder, better athlete, more traveled, richer, geekier, just everything. I did not want to be around him, I just felt like a cheap knock-off. About the only saving grace is it was over 12 years ago and I haven't seen anyone comparable since. So, I accept there are some 'most excellent' people out there, but they're rare. Really rare.

With everyone else it's more trade-offs. I'm better at this, they're better at that.

From:

koogrr.livejournal.com

Ah, Brave New World.

I bluffed my way through a class and an exam which included that book, and did quite well regarding it. Much better than the people who actually had read it. My questions to the TA were 'most interesting', mainly because I was guessing at the plot, which gave her a lot of jumping off points for discussion. Ah, they figured engineers would be interested in fiction about technology and sociology - when all we really wanted was good marks.

From:

koogrr.livejournal.com

I'm stunned they even keep them around.

Like, why-why-why-why are you bothering with this useless woman, when surely there are others about. Why pick Polly Perkins when you could have Franky? (If you're a Sky Captain)

Even in the Anime, if there's a M&F char that seem remotely suited for each other and semi-romantic, a snot-nosed bratkid that constantly interrupts them appears and becomes inescapable. Not that this entirely ties in, but that kid is female more often than not.

From:

rowyn

Yeah, but there's *always* been a dearth of those. Even Homer hardly featured any. ;)

Colleen Doran's graphic novel A Distant Soil had some *gorgeous* M/M couples, though. 'Course, if you branch into graphic novels, yaoi is easy to find.

From:

rowyn

Bizarrely, that makes sense to me. And, yeah, I don't think pointing out examples would be a good idea.

From:

rowyn

I can see Frankie ditching him, no problem. But I'll never understand why he'd pick *Polly* over her. Oy vey.

From:

rowyn

You bad, bad boy.

It's a pretty good book, from what I recall. It's the first thing that taught me that I value liberty over happiness. I never had it as assigned reading for a class; pity, that.

From:

terrycloth.livejournal.com

Heeheehee, Brave New World was the book that convinced me I wanted to live in a Dystopia.

Just, you know, a *working* dystopia like that, and not a broken wreck of one like 1984's.

From:

terrycloth.livejournal.com

Like the guy who joined at the same time as me, worked longer hours, wrote better code, got promoted over me repeatedly, got married and had kids, and still manages to outdo me in gamer-geek areas like anime knowledge and stuff? And is healthier and more handsome and athletic and... grrrr.

He's also got my temper, though, so at least he's not perfect.

From:

ladyperegrine.livejournal.com

But...did he get to go out with

rowyn? ;-) *grin*

I think sometimes I feel fortunate not because of what I'm good at, but because of the experiences I've had and the friends I've made. Other people are better writers and mothers, I'm sure...but they don't get the experience of parenting Daniel and Ellie, or being married to Dave, or creating the exact things I do or having the friends that I have. (Thanks again for your part in that, heh - not just your friendship, although it's very cool, but for all the people I've met through you, too.) Anyway, It's those things that make my life feel wonderful as-is, and I wouldn't trade them for being more capable.

Also, 'better' is such a subjective term when it comes to art; and I also think, with art, you don't realize how good you are.

From:

ladyperegrine.livejournal.com

mmmm.... ;-)

From:

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.)