I have little to contribute to this topic, unfortunately, but I just wanted to say that I appreciate how well-thought-out these book discussion posts are. Thank you!
I'm glad you enjoy them. Sometimes I plan the topic ahead of time, and sometimes I say "Oh, it's Saturday, I'd better think of something to post...." :o
I'm not sure writers of different genders write that differently.
James Tiptree, Jr. went quite a while without being found out, and there have been several romance writers who did quite well under female pen names.
In general, I find writers who don't write the opposite gender very well, tend not to be doing a bang up job of writing there own, either. The only Heinlein I've read, I could still describe the plot pretty well, but I don't remember jack about any of the characters.
This is more or less my line of thought as well. We also tend to have different personal stereotypes about what a given gender, our own or otherwise, should be like and that colors thing for us. Frankly I find a great deal of the complaints about characters apply to all of the author's work, rather than to one gender portrayal. Either the author can write well developed characters or he/she can't.
JAMES TIPTREE: The obvious one. I picked up a book of tiptree stories having been told that Tiptree was a woman, and read it specifically through that filter. I definitely got different perceptions reading such stories as "The Screwfly Solution" and "Houston do you Read", knowing a woman wrote them. the fact that Tiptree was considered macho by people who didn't know indicates she got men right.
S.E. HINTON: Got it right. she's also known to surprise people who think The Outsiders must have been written by a man.
DAVID WEBER: His Honor Harrington character may be what you call a "chick who kicks ass". I take her at face value 'cause I tend to give authors the benefit of the doubt, but several (male) friends feel like Weber pretty much grafted boobs on a male action hero.
CHARLOTTE BRONTE: Seems to me, Heathcliff is more a malevolent force of nature than a real person, male or otherwise.
GEORGE ELLIOT: Comes to mind because she wrote under a male pseudonym. Middlemarch is one of
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Re: BrontëqueenmomcatSeptember 4 2011, 21:55:19 UTC
(soothingly) You're right, even if you did get the authors wrong. (If it's any comfort, I still have trouble keeping them straight and I was an English major/love English literature of that period/am a librarian.
Asimov doesn't write women well? That surprises me. The only book I've ever read of his is Nemesis, and the female main character in that novel is my favorite literary character that I've ever read - I identified with her more than with any other character I know of.
The only gender issue that REALLY irritates me is the trend lately (especially in the fantasy and sci fi genre) that any female character has to be physically impressive and good at traditionally "male" things and run around waving a sword/gun/light saber, raring to fight, in order to be considered a "strong character." Women can be strong characters without physical strength, IMHO.
Nemesis is kind of an outlier - honestly, it's probably Asimov's most successful attempt to write humans, much less women. He's very, very prone to writing people as plot-generating logic machines - which works more-or-less fine in short stories, but kind of badly in novels
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I've read a few of his short stories, but didn't notice the lack of humanity - now that you point that out though, it's quite different from Nemesis. And it's not necessarily that his characterization of people is the best, just that I admired the fact that he wrote a main character who was female, who was not physically impressive in either looks or strength, and was extremely intelligent
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I do see what you mean, and I don't think you're wrong in any particular - but one thing I think is worth pointing out is that the stereotype of the woman as "the brains/heart/etc" and the man as "the muscle" isn't uncommon. Intelligence (and to an even greater degree, intangible strengths like "will" and "character") are often pushed onto female characters, in complete lieu of anything physical.
Granted, it's totally not an improvement when you just make the woman a thoughtless bruiser - but it can often be fallout from a poor attempt at a genuinely positive statement.
There are plenty of contemporary examples, but I'm going to mostly cite authors who are safely dead.
Such restraint! I has none. T Jefferson Parker, who has a whole award named after him and is still alive, is widely lauded for a book called L.A. Outlaws. Now, I love crime fiction set in L.A., but I've only managed to get about 20 pages in (on three separate attempts) because lord love a duck, his female protagonist is just him in a fetish suit. Argle. Grargle. Bargh.
So of course I need to go find one of his books with a male protagonist to see if it's just a case of author writing everything badly.
Noir fiction as a whole, I think, especially the classics, is guilty of such crap depiction of women.
Good post!
I am totally failing on thinking of female authors who write men badly. Hm.
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James Tiptree, Jr. went quite a while without being found out, and there have been several romance writers who did quite well under female pen names.
In general, I find writers who don't write the opposite gender very well, tend not to be doing a bang up job of writing there own, either. The only Heinlein I've read, I could still describe the plot pretty well, but I don't remember jack about any of the characters.
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Yup. That pretty much sums it up.
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JAMES TIPTREE: The obvious one. I picked up a book of tiptree stories having been told that Tiptree was a woman, and read it specifically through that filter. I definitely got different perceptions reading such stories as "The Screwfly Solution" and "Houston do you Read", knowing a woman wrote them. the fact that Tiptree was considered macho by people who didn't know indicates she got men right.
S.E. HINTON: Got it right. she's also known to surprise people who think The Outsiders must have been written by a man.
DAVID WEBER: His Honor Harrington character may be what you call a "chick who kicks ass". I take her at face value 'cause I tend to give authors the benefit of the doubt, but several (male) friends feel like Weber pretty much grafted boobs on a male action hero.
CHARLOTTE BRONTE: Seems to me, Heathcliff is more a malevolent force of nature than a real person, male or otherwise.
GEORGE ELLIOT: Comes to mind because she wrote under a male pseudonym. Middlemarch is one of ( ... )
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That was Emily, yo.
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DAMMIT. Of course it was. Fixing.
DAMMIT. Won't let me edit. All right, Rochester then.
DAMMIT. That doesn't make sense....
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The only gender issue that REALLY irritates me is the trend lately (especially in the fantasy and sci fi genre) that any female character has to be physically impressive and good at traditionally "male" things and run around waving a sword/gun/light saber, raring to fight, in order to be considered a "strong character." Women can be strong characters without physical strength, IMHO.
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Granted, it's totally not an improvement when you just make the woman a thoughtless bruiser - but it can often be fallout from a poor attempt at a genuinely positive statement.
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Such restraint! I has none. T Jefferson Parker, who has a whole award named after him and is still alive, is widely lauded for a book called L.A. Outlaws. Now, I love crime fiction set in L.A., but I've only managed to get about 20 pages in (on three separate attempts) because lord love a duck, his female protagonist is just him in a fetish suit. Argle. Grargle. Bargh.
So of course I need to go find one of his books with a male protagonist to see if it's just a case of author writing everything badly.
Noir fiction as a whole, I think, especially the classics, is guilty of such crap depiction of women.
Good post!
I am totally failing on thinking of female authors who write men badly. Hm.
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