Fantasy and Female Characters, Part Three
by kateelliott on Sep.18, 2009, under Kate Elliott and Ken Scholes
KEN:
So for those of us out there in that learning curve, who are the writers who are giving us the strongest, broadest cast of female characters? Do they tend to be female authors? Which male authors are doing it well and what books, series or authors do you recommend to give us a more solid foundation in diversifying our own work as writers?
KATE:
I asked this question on my blog last week in preparation for this post and got a ton of interesting answers (you all can check out the thread here if you’re so inclined). What I noted was how easily people came up with the names of female fantasy writers who do a good job writing about complex and interesting female characters (and who have more than one or two female characters in a novel); fewer male writers seem to be writing a diverse cast of females into their books even if/when they have a female lead or secondary lead (who is often in a relationship with the male lead).
For those of you who haven’t heard of it, I’d like to introduce the Bechdel Test. This test, popularized by artist Alison Bechdel in reference to films, states that a film passes the Bechdel Test when it:
1) has at least two women in it
2) who talk to each other
3) about something other than a man.
Once you start applying this test, it is shocking how few films pass and, for me, shocking how many long fantasy novels also fail to pass given how many pages they have to fill.
Instead of giving my own laundry list of writers to look for (I’m hoping readers will do that in the comments below), I wanted to talk about how writers can try to find a way out of the assumptions they may be bringing to the table when deciding whether and how much to introduce female characters into their fantasy/sf novels (if that’s even a question for them, as obviously many writers will simply have characters in their novels, some male and some female).
Even in patriarchal societies of the past (and present!), women–who might otherwise have been banned by custom or law from partaking in the public life of politics, power, learning, work and so on–still had personalities. With a little careful study of history, one might find that women found ways to accomplish things. Maybe they did it behind a screen, or around the corner, or in the back room or in a parlor, or ran the brewery they inherited from a deceased husband, but they did. So much of our view of what women “did” in the past is mediated through accounts written by men who either didn’t see women or were so convinced (yes, I’m looking at you, Aristotle, but you are but one among many) that women were an inferior creature that what they wrote was not only biased but selectively blind in its vision.
In reality, while women in many cultures worldwide had fewer legal rights as well as often living in constrained or deplorably oppressive circumstances, they still had minds and hearts and hands. Weird about that. And women found ways to use them, because people do.
In the last few decades, historical scholarship has been expanding the scope of who and what merits examination.
Writers writing stories that deal with power politics in the age of palaces would do well, for instance, to check out a book like Servants of the Dynasty: Palace Women in World History, edited by Anne Walthall. This cross cultural study of palace women in a number of pre-modern societies worldwide does not sugarcoat or distort the realities of women’s lives, but it also illuminates the many misconceptions people may have about women in such societies.
The scholarship on women in medieval Europe is extensive and growing, and I own too many titles to list them here, but one might start with a book like Singlewomen in the European Past: 1250-1800, edited by Judith M. Bennett and Amy M. Froide. I have fewer cross cultural and non-European studies specifically dealing with women’s history, although I’m expanding my library as I find new (to me) material, books like Women Writing Africa: West Africa and the Sahel, edited by Esi Sutherland-Addy and Aminata Diaw.
This kind of reading will open up story possibilities for writers who are having trouble figuring out, for instance, where women “fit” into epic fantasy.
I do want to specifically mention two 2009 novels because each does something that I’d like to highlight.
Cherie Priest’s wonderful new (and not epic fantasy but rather steampunk) novel Boneshaker features a pragmatic, plain-spoken (and not a warrior) mother who has to rescue her teenage son from, well, zombies. Mothers simply do not get enough page time in novels where they function in their own right as tough agents making their own decisions.
Daniel Fox’s debut fantasy Dragon in Chains includes several complex, interesting, and important female characters, including one unbelievably gripping, realistically brutal, and stunningly heroic sequence in which a common, ordinary woman without power or wealth or magic or anything but the will to survive and the wits to keep moving struggles with her children and husband to escape a city in the throes of being conquered by an army bent on wholesale destruction. Anyone who claims there are no stories for female characters in a patriarchal world riven by war should read this novel.
So, back to Ken’s excellent question. Let me throw it out for comment:
Who are the writers who are giving us the strongest, broadest cast of female characters? Do they tend to be female authors? Which male authors are doing it well and what books, series or authors do you recommend?
What do you think?
Related posts:
- The Epic Fantasy and Female Characters, Part Two KATE asked yesterday: Ken, I’d be curious to know if you have any thoughts about how female characters fit into epic fantasy, and if your own thinking on this issue has changed over time? KEN answers: I do have some thoughts, but I’m the first to admit that this is...
- Epic Worlds Without Women? KATE: I’m not a big subscriber to the Men are from Mars Women are from Venus school of human nature and gender personality types. This may be because I was a tomboy growing up, before certain cultural changes including the widespread advent of sports for girls made the word “tomboy”...
- Wizardly Women When Lev Grossman visited Babel Clash, we discussed the most powerful wizards in modern fantasy literature. Who would win the great wizard fight? Looking back at that conversation, the names mentioned included: Gandalf, Quentin Coldwater, Harry Potter, Raistlin Majere, Richard Rahl, Bayaz, Dr. Strange, Doctor Fate, Pug, Belgarath and Rand...
- Questions Coming up next week, Ken and I will have posts “On Writing the Series” and “On Writing The Novel.” For today, we’d like to open up the discussion to questions. If there is anything you’d like to ask, ask away. We’ll either answer in comments or we’ll pull the question...
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Off Armageddon Reef by David Weber « Wendy Palmer
September 23rd, 2009 on 5:35 am[...] drawback for me, the fact it fails the Bechdel Test, which I was reminded of just the other day in this discussion. (To pass, you not only need multiple female characters, but they need to talk to each other, about [...]
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September 18th, 2009 on 8:13 am
I’ve always held that Piers Anthony’s ‘Mode Series’ had a group of strong female types. Colleen (the main character) and her struggles with both cutting and emotional traumas helped me a lot during my teen years. Brandon Sanderson’s Vin, from his Mistborn books, is also a female character I think is strongly written. T.A. Pratt’s Marla Mason as well. Paul Park’s Roumania books also feature a strong female MC (though she annoyed me in the latter half of the 4 book set).
September 18th, 2009 on 8:32 am
Lots of strong female characters in MG/YA fantasy by both male and female writers. Tamora Pierce has a fantastic stable of them in her Tortall and Circle books. Others that spring to mind include: Katsa in Graceling by Kristen Cashore, Lirael by Garth Nix, the Tiffany Aching books by Terry Pratchett, Cimorene and Kazul in Dealing with Dragons by Patricia C. Wrede, Creel in Dragon Slippers by Jessica Day George, Harimad-Sol in The Blue Sword by Robin McKinley, Valkyrie Cain in Skullduggery Pleasant…
September 18th, 2009 on 8:53 am
I have a preference, perhaps even a bias, when trying new authors, to pick women writers. Precisely because I expect them to have interesting female characters.
If a book comes out, even with great reviews, that is written by a man, with a male main character, it falls to the bottom of the “try” pile.
September 18th, 2009 on 9:14 am
Brandon Sanderson is doing a rather good job of this. The first book of Mistborn has very few women, but the protagonist of the series is female (and awesome). Elantris also has a female protagonist, and in Warbreaker (available as a free ebook on his site) two of the three major POV characters are female. All are well-handled, and the books are great reads anyway.
September 18th, 2009 on 10:42 am
As mentioned above, Brandon Sanderson’s Warbreaker has some strong female characters, and Tamora Pierce is all about the heroins in her serieses. Robin Hobb’s Liveship trilogy is another good example. After the main provider of the family dies, the females in the family are practically left to fend for themselves in their rapidly changing world. They do allot of traveling, allot of growing as a family, and as individuals. Don’t get me wrong, there are allot of male characters too, but the females in these books are note worthy.
September 18th, 2009 on 11:06 am
Jacqueline Carey has quite a few interesting and well written female characters in her books based in Terre d’Ange. Also Storm Constantine in her Wraethu books takes an interesting look at gender roles and sexuality in an epic fantasy setting.
September 18th, 2009 on 12:45 pm
Re: Wraethu — I admit, all the characters in that series basically read as male to me. There were a few stabs at more motherly characters, but they tended to read as very fay gay men. It probably didn’t help that many of the main characters were “converted” from gay men initially. I found the first generation of true hermaphrodites more interesting, a little less gendered, but still male.
On the other hand, Storm Constantine has some very interesting women in her other books.
So I think she’s good, I just think Wraethu is a bad example of her work in that regard.
September 18th, 2009 on 1:56 pm
Anyone interested in historical studies of women in antiquity (as opposed to the Middle Ages) might want to look for books by Sarah Pomeroy. Her study of what is known about Spartan women is particularly good. There is also a “sources in translation” compendium edited by Mark Lefkowitz and Maureen Fant, WOMEN’S LIFE IN GREECE AND ROME.
A further tip on this period of history: Athenian women were much more restricted than women in other city states.
September 18th, 2009 on 1:57 pm
Mary Lefkowitz, not Mark!!! My fingers are kind of stiff today!
September 18th, 2009 on 9:22 pm
I can’t believe I didn’t think of Robin Hobb’s Liveship Traders series before! Hobb is one of my favorite writers of all time. The women in Liveship Traders are excellently portrayed!
September 22nd, 2009 on 6:04 am
Not a fiction book, but extremely illuminating: Anyone wanting to learn about the role of women in a historical setting might want to read “Mrs Woolf and the Servants: The Hidden Heart of Domestic Service” by Alison Light. What I like the most is how the writer manages to show the breakdown of the Victorian model of service and the transition to modern life. A lot is applicable to service throughout history. This book is all about identity.
September 22nd, 2009 on 2:08 pm
Oh, excellent, thanks for the recommendation of the domestic service book, and indeed all the various non fiction books suggested which help gain a fuller picture of the historical past.
And to everyone who joined in: great examples of interesting writers/novels.
September 23rd, 2009 on 11:03 am
While Patrica Briggs and C.E. Murphy have become known for their urban fantasy novels, they both have other series that are more traditional fantasy.
Mercedes Lackey usually has a good mix of both male and female characters.
There seems to have been more authors such as Patrica C. Wrede and Ru Emerson published in the 1980’s who offered a variety of female protagonists.
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