Lone Princesses and Girly Books

[cassiphone]

Originally published at tansyrr.com. You can comment here or there.

I’ve had a tab open to this post by Jim C Hines on Girly Books and gender stereotyping all week, pretty sure that I wanted to say something about it, but not sure what.

I understand his bafflement at male readers being hesitant to pick up his new books, the ones with girls on the

Comments

[adamhenderson]

That's an interesting observation, I remember having a chat awhile ago about percentages of male/female or ambiguous authors, and someone suggested that there was actually about a 60/40 split favouring female or ambiguous fantasy authors. But now that I think about it, while a lot of those authors tend to favour female protagonists, or at least major POV characters, they're often still women in a men's world...

[cassiphone]

yeah I think when it comes down to it, most male authors are more comfortable writing women talking to men (because that's something they have at least partial experience with) than women talking to women. Which is understandable.

but just because there is a much better balance of male and female fantasy authors now doesn't mean that the works being produced aren't heavily influenced by this weight of history, and that history is largely male-centric.

[adamhenderson]

Well, since the medieval fantasy world is based on our true history, and our true medieval times were controlled by men, it's kind of inevitable that the women will be isolated in a men's world.

With a character such as Mara (similar to Queen Elizabeth in this), only truly extraordinary circumstances could bring her to power. We can suspend our disbelief for one female character, but not a whole horde of them.

Which was why I found Mists of Avalon so different. There was a women's power structure, and I thought the defining relationship of the book was the one between Morgaine and Viviane. I'm not a literary scholar, so maybe I'm wrong, but the relationship I thought of next was the one between Morgaine and Morgause. Morgaine and Arthur is perhaps a distant third?

I haven't read it recently, but it is a powerful memory from my teens.

Thoraiya

[cassiphone]

You're right, I'd forgotten about the Morgaine/Viviane dynamic! (I only read MoA once unlike the Firebrand, which I read multiple times, really enjoying the Kassandra/Andromache friendship).

You don't need to have more than one *powerful* woman in a story, but I do think that historically women would have worked together and supported each other. I just think it's interesting how often fantasy - the quest type fantasy in particular - has such a strong focus on male friendships and alliances, and then allows only one woman (usually an Extraordinary woman) into the club.

But yeah, these are just the beginnings of the thoughts, I think I need to do some reading and re-reading. I am interested in how the traditions have developed across books. In Mists of Avalon at least there were many female characters, each very different and interesting in their own way. i was definitely too quick to dismiss it.

[opheliastorn]

Sophie may be separated from her sisters and stepmother for lots of her story, but even offstage, they're not just sitting around - they're getting on with their own awesomeness. I like that about the book, myself.

[cassiphone]

I like that aspect too, and I don't in any way think it's an anti-feminist story. But it can't be included as an example of fantasy which has women working together - Sophie mostly interacts with male characters.

As I said, this isn't a bad thing it just is so hard to think of fantasy which centres around more than one female character.

[opheliastorn]

Oh, yeah. I just tangented a bit, whoops :D

Tamora Pierce's Circle books would also fit your category, though: three of the 'Circle' are girls, and two of their teachers are women - and then, later, Daja at least has two female students, though I think the others' are all of the opposite sex (Sandry and, um, dancer-boy, and so on). Haha, it probably annoys me more to see the token-girl type groups in fiction because I found those books so young, and got used to the multiple wimmins with dictinct personalities dealio early.

[cassiphone]

Yes, I was thinking of the Circle books. Alanna is the best known of Pierce's works but I think she did a lot better in moving away from cliches in later series. (I love Alanna but let's face it, she's a redhead with violet eyes and a talking cat)

I always liked the fact that the Circle of magic was made up of three girls and one boy and that the majority of their teachers were female.

I actually think that YA - fantasy and otherwise - is way better than adult fiction at showing a range of female characters, probably because it is quite a substantially female-weighted genre right now and I agree, it's kind of a shock when you look at adult fiction and find it all unbalanced.

Girls. They come in more than one personality!

[houseboatonstyx]

In the later Oz books, many of the most sensible and dominant characters are female, and friends, and much of the story is about them working together. Ozma and Dorothy have an adventure alone (in GLINDA OF OZ iirc).

Outside fantasy, in the old Nancy Drew books the relationship between Nancy and George (a girl) and Bess was made much of, and most of the people they solved mysteries with were female. (Also outside fantasy, see SWALLOWS & AMAZONS.)

[cassiphone]

I never read Nancy Drew. Love Swallows and Amazons. But yeah I was specifically talking about fantasy because mainstream children's and YA books generally do focus more on female friendships, and female groups.

The later Oz books are definitely better for gatherings of female characters, though it's the first one that most people have read and that has had the largest influence on the fantasy culture.

[benpayne]

I don't know if it's true or not, but I have this thing in my head where the books where there *are* female friendships seem to exist in this separate world to other relationships?

I guess it's the way books/movies/whatever are marketed. But it seems like female friendships only exist in this charliesangels/thelmaandlouise/etc kinda subreality.

What I wonder is how many books are there were strong, believable friendships between women *and* strong believable relationships between women and men can co-exist?

[cassiphone]

I read books like that all the time - where female friendships/relationships and female-male friendships/relationships are both there in the text

[opheliastorn]

I mentioned the Circle books by Tamora Pierce above, and they feature both f/f and f/m friendships prominently and well - only one of the Circle is a boy, but he's firm friends with the other three, and they with him.

... I'm having trouble thinking of any prominent m/m friendships in them, though, except perhaps for Frostpine and his apprentice. Even there, though, it's more of a working relationship, and with a skewed power dynamic due to the teacher-pupil relationship.

[stephanieburgis]

I love the female relationships in Kristin Cashore's Fire.

[cassiphone]

I really must read that.

I have a working theory that multiple female characters are more common in YA fantasy than in the books aimed at adults... but I suspect that's largely because I've been reading mostly YA for two years.