So let's talk about women who respect women.

[charlie_ego]

julianyap has once again declared National Put Quotes in Your Blog Month, so I'm going to put one in every post I make this month.

"Truth is all I have, and truth is never a comfort. But understanding truth, that is what you taught me to do. So here is the truth. What human life is, what it's for, what we do, is create communities. Some of them are good,

Comments

[thistleingrey]

Re: books and role models, yup, yup. I kind of wanted Nita Callahan's father to have the cancer... not that either parent is characterized roundly anyway in those books. Sometimes it matters crucially which parent is offed (Of Nightingales That Weep, anyone?), but really, it's a lot of perpetuation most of the time.

[charlie_ego]

Yes, yes! And speaking of female friendship... unless it's changed drastically (I haven't read the last book or so), why is it that Nita can't have any female friends who aren't cat wizards? Kit manages to have guy friends, even one who is his "best" friend aside from Nita. I mean, I personally didn't have close female friends until late high school, so I give her a partial pass, but it's still a little annoying. Same with Meg Murry having no friends besides Calvin (she did have a cool mom, at least, but all the action came from her dad in Wrinkle and Planet).

Okay, so, not really related to your point, but I read Nightingales very young, and it kind of... horrifies me now, that it's in the kid's section of the library! I mean, it's seven different kinds of disturbing! I guess the thing is, the really disturbing parts are elliptical enough that you don't see them as a kid, or at least I didn't.

[thistleingrey]

Totally, re: Nita and Meg. Oh, Meg. I loved Planet so much as a kid, in part because I envied being able to unfold family history. Then too, neither Nita nor Meg had the internet as kids, and the density of geek(-compatible) girls in any locale tends to be very low. My two best friends from HS are female, and they are still my two best friends (thanks in large part to internet connectivity, I must say); most of my other HS friends were male.

Yes. Heh. Me neither. I have been a little afraid to try Paterson's better known Terebithia as a result.

[charlie_ego]

Terebithia is one of those books I love so much that I can't possibly be objective about it. So, take that for what it's worth. I don't find it at all anything like as weird as her Japan books -- it's almost like it was written by a different person. (Note that I grew up in the South in a place that... while it wasn't as hicksville as the place portrayed in Terebithia, let's say that it probably helped me identify with the whole situation in the book. Also that it was written in the 60's or something like that, so there are bits like a teacher asking a kid to go to an art museum with her where there's nothing shady going on but would So Not Fly Today.) I recently reread Chrysanthemum and boy, that one was more disturbing than I remembered too. Love interest gets thrown in a brothel! I totally did not get that as a kid.

Oh, yeah, don't get me wrong, I love both Nita and Meg (Meg particularly I got to at the right time to totally identify), and I have always loved Planet and the others. I hadn't even noticed this problem until, well,

[ase]

There's occasional SF/F novels with mothers who are protagonists (The Interior Life, with its PTA mom / fantasy quest double narrative), but that's a very telling point. For example, Doris Egan's Ivory novels feature a powerful family matriarch; she's respected and loved, but not held up as a female role model.

Mentally thumbing along the list of formative authors: you've mentioned Bujold; Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy didn't really do role models, mother or father; Cherryh... mothers may be influential, but rarely models of positive behavior (I'm particularly thinking of Cyteen and the Olga - Ari I - Ari II mother / daughter sets); Lackey has dead or useless moms; etc.

[charlie_ego]

Yeah, I'm willing to do partial credit if there aren't any role models at all. Does Cherryh really do role models of positive behavior?

Oh, I forgot Octavia Butler as a mom -- does she have any decent mother-daughter pairs, though? The only one I can think of offhand is in Mind of my Mind, and that one... was not a good one.

At least Lackey has Talia acting as a major role model to Elspeth, which I like. (And Talia herself has some decent female role models, including Selenay.) So that's an improvement.

[ase]

Does Cherryh really do role models of positive behavior?

Not on purpose? There's the human ambassador in the Foreigner series, who trains the guy from other human faction; a character in one of the the nighthorse books tries to emulate an older character he respects. Positive mentorship just isn't on Cherryh's radar.

Octavia Butler does have mom-daughter pairs! The Parable duology has the mom/stepmom - Lauren Olamina - Larkin / Asha sets (none particularly happy, especially the last pair); Lilith as a parent in the Xenogenesis novels;

Oh! Not a mother explicitly, but Lackey does have an older female Herald-Mage running around being a model of good Heraldic behavior, in an awesome acerbic old woman way. (Also, saving young Vanyel from himself. It's not quite a full-time job.)

[ase]

Lost something in that middle paragraph; I think I was going to say, mothers are nurturing in some of Butler's work but rarely who you-the-protagonist want to be. Which circles back to your original point.

[nolly]

One that I would look at is Dean's Juniper, Gentian, and Rosemary -- have you read that yet? It's been a while since I read it, and I wasn't thinking about it from this angle, but there are definitely sisters, and I generally expect her to do fairly well with the relationships among women. It was a book that, had I read it in my early teens might've been to me what Tam Lin was when we read that, if that makes sense.

[charlie_ego]

I have not, even though it came out ages ago (when we were in college, I think?) - I really should. As you say Tam Lin does very well with the women relationships; Tina is kind of an airhead, but she's also a person, and Janet gets called on that, which I approve of highly.

Heh, I remember Tam Lin kind of ruining college for me, a little; I expected people to go around quoting Greek and Shakespeare all the time. Which I suppose the Classics/English majors may have done, but I didn't actually know any.

(And it was lovely to see you, if only briefly! Next time!)