Are female characters in Fantasy subservient to their male counterparts?

[Mouse]

I love strong female characters. I get really annoyed when there aren't many female characters in books (Dorian Gray springs to mind!), strong or otherwise. I didn't like that there were no women in the Fellowship.

But, I get that these books were written back when women and men weren't equal, so I don't expect anything else.

Lots of the books I read now pretty much all have strong female characters in. For example, I've just finished Mortal Engines by Philip Reeve. The character of Hester Shaw is a really screwed up, facially disfigured girl, and yet she kicks more backside than the lead male character.

Also, by 'strong' I don't necessarily mean physically strong. I like it when female characters are interesting too. There are too many books/TV shows/films where women are just bits of fluff.

As for men/boys not really relating/liking books where women are the heroes, I kinda think that's changing nowadays too. For example, my YA books have a girl as the main hero. I vaguely thought girls would probably enjoy the books more than boys, but one review (from Read Between the Lines) was by a 14 year old boy. This is what he said:

...A great book for boys, and girls as well, because the main character is a girl...

Which always made me smile.

[Connavar]

Men not relating to books where the women are heroes is bad excuse.

In the hands of a good author a female lead hero will be liked. Trouble with fantasy of certain type is that there isnt many good writers writing Ripley/Xena/Buffy type ass kicking heroines. There are bad writers writing them like the writer of Sword of Truth....

Too many authors both male, female think the hero of fantasy by definition must be a male for some reason. Its like they must make another straight and arrow or a barbarian male hero to sell....

[Parson]

Originally Posted by sabolich

Parson, that is a sad survey. I wonder at what age the boys stopped watching the girl superheroes, and if that was because they really couldn't relate, or because they had already been taught girls are inferior, or if the writing of those shows presented the girls in a way that just really turned them off. Nature hardwires us to a certain degree to view the opposite sex in certain ways, reinforced (usually pretty blatantly) by the culture we happen to grow up in. So this is kind of an interesting observation on the part of that researcher.

I agree that this was a sad survey, which is probably why it stuck with me all these years. As to the "why" I'm not sure any amount of research would give anything definite on that. Humans are such complex creatures that motivation is often fuzzy at best.

If a first person illustration is helpful. I have a 6 year-old grandson who lives with me as well as a 4 year-old granddaughter. Up until this this year it didn't seem to matter to him the gender of the lead character in any cartoon he watched, but I can see that it begins to matter to him now. His Dad, who sees him every other weekend, is a serious "red-neck" but our home is seriously egalitarian. So I would tend to think nature more than nurture, but impossible to tell.

Mouse, I would agree that things are getting better at the adult level. But I suspect any 14 year old boy who is writing book reviews (on line?) is likely not a trend setter for that age group. And would be viewed a bit askance by his peer group.

[Mouse]

Originally Posted by Parson

Mouse, I would agree that things are getting better at the adult level. But I suspect any 14 year old boy who is writing book reviews (on line?) is likely not a trend setter for that age group. And would be viewed a bit askance by his peer group.

Are you saying he'd have to be a bit weird to like my books, Parson?

I think that boys are perfectly happy to read about female heroes in books. Look at Philip Pullman's HDM. Lyra is the hero and lots of boys happily read the books. Same with Garth Nix's Sabriel books.

[thaddeus6th]

It may not just be a question of boys not liking female leads. It might be that some female leads are written in a very feminine way (in the same way that some comediennes have 'being a woman' as their main material) and that this turns chaps off.

[Mouse]

Well yeah, but that goes both ways. I don't like reading about really butch, masculine men!

[Parson]

Originally Posted by Mouse

Are you saying he'd have to be a bit weird to like my books, Parson?

I think that boys are perfectly happy to read about female heroes in books. Look at Philip Pullman's HDM. Lyra is the hero and lots of boys happily read the books. Same with Garth Nix's Sabriel books.

You know better than that.

My point was not about the enjoyment of the reading but actually taking the time to write a book review that was not required. Most of my cohorts of that age, and my students of that age would not be write a Review that wasn't necessary. Only the "weird" ones would do such a thing.

[Ackernon]

I have very much enjoyed reading the conversation on the topic I posted. Thank you all who have posted your comments. As a film maker and a fantasy/Scifi enthusiast, it's nice to read people's points of view on a topic that is near and dear to me. In the current project I'm working on it was actually a stated goal in the scripting to have 3 dimensional, real women characters who could believably function in the Joseph Campbell defined hero or mentor roles. We also wanted to have them to deal with issues in a fantasy world that are valid issues in ours such as "office romances", sexual orientation, and sexism. Some issues are just timeless to any universe I suspect.

I agree with the statement that good female characters do not have to be female versions of Conan. There are lots of tools at their disposal that can be effectively used. Biologically women have faster reflexes and some would say a higher pain threshold than men, both a certain advantage depending on the situation. And one shouldn't discount the use of sex appeal after all. Male hero characters use it so why shouldn't females. All in all, it has been great fun to read the responses. Thanks.

[Laura Olson]

Hi- new to this thread. Great stuff. So Parson, your cartoon study makes that case that female superheros stopped being leads because little boys wouldnt support those shows without a male lead. So does that mean that little girls also expected to see males in these leads? Or do females just tend to watch less tv period. OR do young girls want to still secretly have that strong hunky guy swoop you up rescue you.
We still even in america have a culture where women are less truely independent and expected to survive on their own. Own their home, start and run their own business, fix their own toilets and cars, cut down their own trees, have their own good credit score all without the aid of a man. (you get my meaning?) I think we are getting there but still not there yet. Are women watching fantasy because they are wanting to viscerally particpate in what the lead is doing, or is it because they want to fantasize about the lead male? I personally would love to see more fantasys where I as a viewer can do both. Have a strong female that I can pretend is me AND a hunky guy I can fantasize about!

[Parson]

Laura,

As I recall it, your question would be beyond the scope of the survey. The survey noted that over time boys would not support female leads, but that girls would support either female or male leads. I do not remember it delving into any of the why questions, and I would suspect that this would mean someone speculating more than offering evidence.

The result is of the survey is that it is very hard to get a network to buy into a female lead in an action/adventure cartoon. My observation, limited as it is, would be that when boys become too old for Dora the Explorer, they are much, much, more likely to migrate to Transformers than to Barbie.

[Quokka]

Still if a show is well written it can still find an audience, Kim Possible was a very successful cartoon with a female lead and from what little I could find a demographic of both male and female fans. If Pixar's Brave turns out to be more than a disney princess story it will be interesting to see how it's received.

Unfortunately rather than risk something new it's too easy to try and repeat what has worked before and the more it gets recycled the further back it goes and the more certain it is to be a male lead.

[Ackernon]

Originally Posted by Quokka

Unfortunately rather than risk something new it's too easy to try and repeat what has worked before and the more it gets recycled the further back it goes and the more certain it is to be a male lead.

I think you have nailed the past decade of the entertainment industry philosophy on the nose. Is it because audiences expect bigger explosions and wilder chase scenes that demand such huge budgets that the money people are no longer able to take the risk? Or would more engaging stories and writing satisfy an audience just as well? LOTR had a pretty big budget but also an excellently crafted screen play from the original format so it's hard to tell from that one.

[Robert Kelsey]

I think the world despite its progress in certain countries for equality for all, is still in its traditional way of thinking. That a man is in the lead role of guiding and safeguarding others. That its his duty to do so. The world isn't ready to break from the stereotypical macho lead. There have, are and will continue to be great women as leaders. Take Queen Zenobia from history for one. As well for over a decade a women ruled the church by putting in popes she could control. But in the world of SFF typically I think you will continue to see more male dominated characters than female ones.

[Anne Lyle]

Originally Posted by Connavar

In the hands of a good author a female lead hero will be liked. Trouble with fantasy of certain type is that there isnt many good writers writing Ripley/Xena/Buffy type ass kicking heroines. There are bad writers writing them like the writer of Sword of Truth....

And there are plenty of women readers who are equally bored by the Xena/Buffy kickass leatherclad eyecandy that's frankly not much less of an adolescent male take on women than the braid-twirling stereotypes in WoT.

At the same time I don't want to read about female characters whose main interests are domestic, because that's too close to the role that real life tries to force us into, TBH. I wasn't into all that when I was five, and I'm not now!

The main protagonist of my own book is a guy (for the reasons of historical realism discussed earlier), and the main female character is just an ordinary girl trying to make her way in a male-dominated world. She learns to fight well enough to defend herself, but she leaves the serious arse-kicking to the ex-soldier protagonist who is far better equipped to do so, by both biology and upbringing.

[Karn Maeshalanadae]

This is based on the author, really, though I've noticed that for the most part, authors do seem to be getting away from the sexist views you have mentioned and are giving female characters more solidity.

This is not to say that every lead protagonist/antagonist should be female. But neither should they be solidly male and the females simply token characters like what had been represented in 1950s science fiction movies. A good example of the "eye candy" female character would be, unfortunately, from Piers Anthony's Visions of Tarot series, and to be honest, the first few Xanth novels as well. That being said, he had become more sophisticated as the seventies went on by and provided more realistic, independent female characters in novels such as Being A Green Mother, And Eternity, Under A Velvet Cloak (again, the main character was female and while she was sexual, she was confident in her sexuality and was not second fiddle to any male), and some of the later Xanth novels, like The Dastard, Demons Don't Dream, and The Swell Foop.

Terry Brooks, again, seemed to have examples of the eye candy female with Willow from The Magic Kingdom of Landover series, but if what I had heard from the sixth volume onward, the daughter Misty was much more independent.