Heroes through the female gaze

[sartorias]

Not just one but a couple of times, at ConDor, we were talking about quests, heroes, heroines, and glanced off heroes as written by women. That fit into a larger question about women's influence in letters that I actually wrote up, and will appear at the Fantasy Cafe in a few weeks.

But first, confining myself to heroes as written by females. I'd

Comments

[bunn]

I was thinking of Ged in the same way (doesn't fit that type of hero at all) OK, he becomes educated, but he's very much not polished - in fact, he starts out as a goat-herd, and feels awkward and uncomfortable in a 'polished' environment.

I suppose there is Arren, he's a prince, and fairly polished, but for one thing I'm not sure he's really the hero, and for another, I would say part of the point of the story is the stripping away of external things - all the graces and comforts and words - leaving only what really matters - life, death, sun on the grass, the sea, the dragon...

The other woman writer of heroes who leaps to my mind is Rosemary Sutcliff, and her heroes are mostly soldiers, or occasionally doctors or artists, with a definite lack of airs and graces. Even Marcus Flavius Aquila, who is supposedly an Equestrian, chooses a humble centurion's commission as an auxiliary, and we are left in no doubt that his semi-literate barbarian slave and friend Esca is worth ten of the loathsome Tribune Placidus. There is Artos the Bear (her historical and very definitely not very clean or gentlemanly version of King Arthur) but even he is a bastard, not a true-born prince.

It's a while since I've read any Mary Renault, but I don't remember her heroic Greeks being particularly gentlemanly either!

Hmm. I wonder if Poirot fits into the 'gentlemanly hero' mould? He is very clean and clever, but I'm not sure you'd call him witty, and within the English society in which he operates, I think there is something of a feeling that as a Belgian detective in patent-leather shoes, he is Not Quite A Gentleman.

[sartorias]

I think Mary Renault was doing a different pattern, though parallel.

Oh, interesting, thinking about Poirot.