McAnally's (The Community Pub) > Author Craft
Writing from a different gender perspective
the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh:
--- Quote from: Aludra on October 14, 2009, 03:35:03 PM ---"writes females well" defined as: How Jim writes in Codex Alera. (LOVE IT)
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Codex Alera has just never come together for me, nor does it stick well in my head, socan;t really comment there.
--- Quote ---does not "write females well" defined as: LKH. Seriously. Ick. I love her monsters and some of her male characters. I want to kill Anita. Which would display immense talent if that were her goal. I don't think it is, though.
I'll further say that it's not so much a "HEY your lady isn't lady-like" as a "Hey! Just because your character is a woman doesn't mean she's obsessed with her nails! Really!" thing.
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Well, one would think that that combination of examples serves rather well against any gender-essentialist notion that men can't write women in some ineffable way that only women can, fwiw.
I'd also offer Daniel Abraham's Long Price books for a really good example of a man writing female characters; one of the viewpoint characters in the first is a middle-aged female manager with a bad leg that is a permanent chronic source of pain, which is a kind of character I can't recall ever seeing in an epic fantasy before, and she is just wonderful.
the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh:
--- Quote from: lt_murgen on October 14, 2009, 03:52:16 PM ---"That wouldn't make sense. The whole reason Ripley was the hero was because she was the groups mother- protecting them from the big bad monsters that they didn't know were lurking out there."
She was right! Viewed in the light of the mother-protector concept, the movie Aliens becomes the story of two matriarchs defending their brood against the other. Not heroism, not sacrifice, but the preservation of their species. I watched it again later, and saw a whole new depth to the movie I had missed before.
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Myself, I hate Aliens on something pretty close to these grounds; I think it's profoundly anti-feminist. Take a strong independent female professional, contrive a means to assemble a nuclear family around her, and present that as her core motivation. Kinder, kueche, kirche. And that's before we get into the subtext of the enemy female being fecund, parasitic, and black.
I think I am one of a very small number who dound the opening to Alien^3 profoundly satisfying on these grounds.
Kali:
Jim writes women well in all his books. Murphy, Charity, Molly... All feminine, all complete characters with their own strengths and weaknesses.
Male author who writes women VERY poorly? Robert Jordan. Snivelling, sniffing, bitchy, snotty, conniving, whiny, and horrible. There isn't a woman in the entire series (or at least as far as I read, which was the first four or maybe five, I think) I could either identify with, or could ever imagine wanting to know. I'd smack them all senseless. Hated the lot of them, and the female characterizations are one of the biggest reasons I stopped reading the books. I can only conclude that Robert Jordan has never met a strong, competent, kind, loving woman in his entire life. They're all mean and sly and hateful, judging by the women in his books.
the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh:
--- Quote from: Kali on October 14, 2009, 04:16:31 PM --- I can only conclude that Robert Jordan has never met a strong, competent, kind, loving woman in his entire life.
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Having met his wife, this is not in fact true.
Shecky:
--- Quote from: neurovore on October 14, 2009, 04:22:16 PM ---Having met his wife, this is not in fact true.
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I'm most curious as to what Harriet thought of her husband's female characters, given all the great things I've heard about her. It's a shame, too, as I otherwise thoroughly enjoy the Wheel of Time (yes, despite all the cries of "boring!" around the world-building/stage-setting in later books; I don't think that's a bad thing).
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