John Wyndham
I've just been reading a bunch of John Wyndham books.
And, good god, it never ceases to grab me how very 1950's they are written.
Now, to be fair, he's not terrible on the feminist front. The only truly incompetent female characters appear in the Midwich Cuckoos - possibly because he was faced with having to write about more than 2 women at a time. Basically all of his lead women are competent, clever women - though with that nasty aftertaste of being that way "despite their gender", and they tend to be married to very clever men who congratulate themselves on their wonderful wives.
I mean, The Trouble With Lichen has a female main character! And she's not only, visibly, on page told she's not really a proper woman as she's not interested in getting married or having children, but despite all that she still cares about her appearance and uses her formula of long life in a high end beauty salon to extend the lives of rich and powerful women, who then form a power bloc to get knowledge of this life extension therapy generally available. And all that sounds really good and empowering back in the '50's in a "woman working within the system to make things happen" way... except it comes with that lovely taste of paternalism from Wyndham and the male characters. (Plus, she's marriedish by the end of the book, which never ceases to piss me off).
Oh, I like the book, and it's got some very feminist discussions of how life might change if women aren't expected to be married at 20 and dead by 70, but could expect to live to 300 or so, but many of the changes talked about have already happened so that from a 70 year perspective the feminist good stuff disappears a bit into "well, yes, boys", and the paternalism and misogyny just grates. (See me telling the book, when it raises the "what happens to women who marry at 20, grow up, and realise they married the wrong man" and "will marriages last 250 years often" questions with "the current answers to those questions are divorce and serial monogamy, John Wyndham". The 2011 world's already dealt with these ideas for a while).
On the other Very 1950's Theme of John Wyndham's writings... attitudes towards The Bomb.
I don't think I've yet read one of his stories where he didn't have characters gung ho about nuclear bombing the shit out of anything that scares them. The USSR? Bomb them. Kraken beasts living in the Deeps of the world? Bomb them! Giant walking plants? A nuclear bomb will sort them out. A village of small scary alien children? Time to blow the village up with a nuclear bomb...
Okay, The Chrysalids isn't crazy about nuclear bombing anything that scares them. Because they live in an irradiated world after a nuclear holocaust, with high mutation rates. But I really have to laugh that the "on the street" opinion to ANY of the disasters in most of John Wyndham's writing involves characters wanting to drop nuclear bombs on the problem until it goes away. (And the do! The number of nuclear bombs used in The Kraken Wakes until everyone gets it through their thick heads that Nuclear Bombs Are Not Working, Try Something Else, is amazing. And America and the USSR take a fair while longer than the UK to figure it out).
Reading characters saying "It worked on Japan! Let's bomb it!" looks really, really weird from the 21st century.
And, good god, it never ceases to grab me how very 1950's they are written.
Now, to be fair, he's not terrible on the feminist front. The only truly incompetent female characters appear in the Midwich Cuckoos - possibly because he was faced with having to write about more than 2 women at a time. Basically all of his lead women are competent, clever women - though with that nasty aftertaste of being that way "despite their gender", and they tend to be married to very clever men who congratulate themselves on their wonderful wives.
I mean, The Trouble With Lichen has a female main character! And she's not only, visibly, on page told she's not really a proper woman as she's not interested in getting married or having children, but despite all that she still cares about her appearance and uses her formula of long life in a high end beauty salon to extend the lives of rich and powerful women, who then form a power bloc to get knowledge of this life extension therapy generally available. And all that sounds really good and empowering back in the '50's in a "woman working within the system to make things happen" way... except it comes with that lovely taste of paternalism from Wyndham and the male characters. (Plus, she's marriedish by the end of the book, which never ceases to piss me off).
Oh, I like the book, and it's got some very feminist discussions of how life might change if women aren't expected to be married at 20 and dead by 70, but could expect to live to 300 or so, but many of the changes talked about have already happened so that from a 70 year perspective the feminist good stuff disappears a bit into "well, yes, boys", and the paternalism and misogyny just grates. (See me telling the book, when it raises the "what happens to women who marry at 20, grow up, and realise they married the wrong man" and "will marriages last 250 years often" questions with "the current answers to those questions are divorce and serial monogamy, John Wyndham". The 2011 world's already dealt with these ideas for a while).
On the other Very 1950's Theme of John Wyndham's writings... attitudes towards The Bomb.
I don't think I've yet read one of his stories where he didn't have characters gung ho about nuclear bombing the shit out of anything that scares them. The USSR? Bomb them. Kraken beasts living in the Deeps of the world? Bomb them! Giant walking plants? A nuclear bomb will sort them out. A village of small scary alien children? Time to blow the village up with a nuclear bomb...
Okay, The Chrysalids isn't crazy about nuclear bombing anything that scares them. Because they live in an irradiated world after a nuclear holocaust, with high mutation rates. But I really have to laugh that the "on the street" opinion to ANY of the disasters in most of John Wyndham's writing involves characters wanting to drop nuclear bombs on the problem until it goes away. (And the do! The number of nuclear bombs used in The Kraken Wakes until everyone gets it through their thick heads that Nuclear Bombs Are Not Working, Try Something Else, is amazing. And America and the USSR take a fair while longer than the UK to figure it out).
Reading characters saying "It worked on Japan! Let's bomb it!" looks really, really weird from the 21st century.