women in fantasy books... again
Sep. 2nd, 2007 09:45 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethI'm up to book 3 of the Belgariad and some things are kind of nagging at me. And mostly they're about treatment of women. The race thing remains a bit ugly - surely you need to know more than a man's race to know what kind of person they are! Plus Murgo = evil = angular eyes = I feel vaguely ill every time they say that. But the treatment of women is bugging me.
I mean, there's more than one woman in the story, so call that progress. There are in fact three women who get to be named in prophecy and have an important role and that. It's just... one of them is called Aunt and cooks and cleans and sews and dedicated her whole life to bringing up Garion (even the thousands of years before he existed - she has a big speech to that effect). One of them is frequently described as childlike, yet she's destined to be Garion's bride, and she doesn't get any choice in that. And one of them was a literal sex slave. Taken as a trio, what does that show? Somebody's daughter, somebody's wife, somebody's sex object. It's making me shudder, it really is.
Ce'Nedra, Queen of the World, is the one who gets called childlike regularly, yet was introduced with a scene of her being naked and talking about how natural it is and then running around in a tunic everyone else considers indecently short. And then she's supposed to turn up and get married to some dude on the appointed day, because of prophecy. That makes an ugly little combination to my mind - tis uncomfortable enough when her whole species (dryads) gets described as childlike+sexual, trading kisses for sweets. Apparently they'll do almost anything for sweets. Just a bit creepy, there. But then the total lack of choice about who she marries? It's the defining factor in her introduction - she's running away from an arranged marriage and Polgara, the one woman in the group, who you might hope would be up for some self determination, is the one who enforces the rule, says she gets no choice about it, she's going to get married. And then the relationship with Garion is characterised by shrieking arguments and apparently hating each other. Now granted that's a stock component of romance - but what it does is once again confuse the signals. She's shrieking go away as loud as she can, yet the narrative is drawing inevitably closer to where 'she' realises 'she' doesn't mean it and actually wants what she's been running away from all along. In other words, if looked at as a bit of ideology written by a man, it's a story of What Women Really Want (Even When They Say No).
Creepy.
There's another female character in the first book who isn't all Prophesied, just the wife of someone from prophecy. Their relationship is cold. They married because her family told her to, again. He wanted her but she didn't want him. They spend most of their time apart, and when they're reunited...
"My Lord was quite insistent about certain rights and duties on the night of his return to Val Alorn," she said. "Not even the locked door of my bedchamber was enough to curb his insistence."
"All right," Barak said, flushing slightly. "I'm sorry about that. I hoped that things might have changed between us. I was wrong. I won't bother you again."
"Bother, my Lord?" she said. "A duty is not a bother. A good wife is obliged to submit whenever her husband requires it of her - no matter how drunk or brutal he may be when he comes to her bed. No one will ever be able to accuse me of laxity in that regard."
"You're enjoying this, aren't you?" Barak accused.
"Enjoying what, my Lord?" Her voice was light, but there was a cutting edge to it.
In case there's any ambiguity about what all that means, she ends up pregnant.
That right there? Describes rape. I'm on book three and it hasn't been called that. In fact everyone seems to be acting like she'll be happy she's pregnant. Including, again, Polgara. Pol seems quite amused when she notices in fact. And everyone treats it like Merel's icy rage is some kind of game she'll grow out of. She refers to her marriage as a duty, others tell her there's a lot more than duty but she'll have to find out for herself. Like she's in the wrong for not feeling the way a wife 'should', even if she acts entirely correctly according to her culture.
At no point, so far, has it occured to anyone that Barak is clearly and completely in the wrong. It's making me kind of sick.
As for the former slave - I've only just read up to where they meet her, but really, is 'slave' a role one actually *needs* in a story??? Even freed slave?
Polgara looks like she should be a strong woman. She gets magic powers and sometimes she even gets to use them without her daddy telling her so. Thus far only on women... in fact come to think Polgara is left to deal with the women and told to keep out of dealing with the men. Great, now I've noticed another layer of irritation. It adds to how Polgara never got a tower - something mentioned casually as if it was an 'of course' that really grated on my nerves. Every other sorcerer has their own place to live, she lived with her dad. She has titles and honors from around the world, but when she uses them it's portrayed as some kind of affectation - a game or joke. She's never treated as plain outranking anyone. She's been living as a cook on a farm. When they travel she keeps on doing the cooking. And when she can't, Ce'Nedra does. She's travelling in a group of men that have all - except Garion and Durnik - spent much of their lives travelling. Surely they know how to cook for themselves???And the cooking thing bugs me quite a bit - because Ce'Nedra starts off as Bad, as haughty and expecting to be served and nobody likes her because of it. But her process of becoming a Good Girl involves - yes - learning to cook for everyone. I'm just *facepalm*.
Polgara knows the customs of many nations - which seems to boil down to being happy to be flattered, or to have a guy offer to buy her off a nearby male who is assumed to own her. I know there's a bit more about that custom in later books, but *really*, that's just... gah! And then, like I just mentioned talking about the other women, she's used to be the voice of normal, the one who agrees with and sometimes enforces norms. Like, the woman of the group says it's all okay, so we shouldn't sit there and be outraged.
At arranged marriage! And rape within marriage! And selling women like they're property!
Personally I'm just going to be outraged anyway.
Now, yeah, okay, quite a lot of other stuff is going on. There's more female characters than that. There's Queens as well as Kings, and two of them were sovereigns over her own people - one because they don't have any males, the other because she looks like the god's girlfriend and is kept on lust inducing drugs to keep her looking like that. Oh, and most of her immediate subjects are eunuchs - which clearly isn't a comment on letting women rule *at all*. And there was a whole race of humans that were mostly women - who got wiped out, but that was very sad and evil obviously and nothing to do with them being all women and just to do with them being cannibals except, hello, the author made them that way. And with all three of those - the dryads (all female), the Snake Queen (god's girlfriend lookalike), and the Marags (race that died) - lust is a major theme. Dryads steal men to make babies, and trade kisses for stories and sweets. The Snake Queen shags anything that moves and some things that don't, which is probably why her god-boyfriend rejects her, which allows Polgara to turn her into a snake (so she will stop being so lustful - apparently the hot blood is a problem). Polgara, of course, has stayed unmarried and childless for a few thousand years. I don't think they've used the word virgin yet, but. The Good Girl doesn't get any, calls some of those others depraved. The monsters and corpses and Bad ones are all about the lust. Is this looking familiar the bad way?
Why did the author make a bunch of thoroughly sexist societies and not one with actual equality? Why did the author invent a world with seven gods and no goddess? Why did the author chose to call a race 100% female 'monsters', even if he did then have her be outraged about it?
The main story has a lot of wandering around and fighting things and all that standard adventure bit. Okay, whatever. Actually I'm not finding it that involving.
And the whole Prophecy bit bugs me. I keep on wanting to introduce Ethan Rayne to the whole setup, or the Doctor, some agent of Chaos to shake things up a bit. I keep wanting to throw free will in the mix, basically. I *hate* predestination - there's no fate but what you make. And, okay, maybe the prophecy represents that fate you make... but why are there only two options, for goodness sake? Ridiculous.
I know I'm only on the third book out of, eventually, ten. I vaguely recall stuff changing as it goes along. But this stuff I've already noticed isn't making me feel very eager to keep going along. You know?
It is making me want to rewrite it with some of the characters genderswitched and some queer and some refocused.
The central character right now is a teenage boy who is learning to grow up in a world where boys protect girls and girls serve boys and girls kiss boys and aspire to marry boys and... he's just not asking the right questions. Sure, he gets all social conscience about serfs in Arendia - they're the guys in the same social position he grew up in, the ones doing the chores; he identifies so of course he wants them treated better. But he doesn't speak up about how women are treated, and that is starting to make me just... not interested. I don't *care* if he learns to use his power, if he's only going to use it to make things keep on being the same.
I don't think I've read these since I was in school. Which is a long time. Things keep managing to actually surprise me. Not big things, but here and there.
Things I actually like about the book: Silk. He's snarky, sly, sneaky, and a professional spy. Also short. And an acrobat and martial artist. And he seems perfectly willing to notice that women are just as good at all those things as he is... though I could be reading in a bit far to get to that. He just seems to respect his Queen going in to the spy business and agree with her that shuffling the women off to a seperate council is ridiculous, and there's a woman in Tolnedra he respects professionaly... though her profession is also the oldest one, so that's another in the stereotype-women column. Annoyance.
But Silk is just exactly my fic type. He's kind of like Methos and Spike and suchlike. Including the thing where he enjoys his work just a little too much.
I hasn't yet a real life type but I rather hope it differs from my fic type right there. Characters that get off on killing are one thing, boyfriends entirely another.
The other characters... I like Durnik, mostly, but he exists to be the sensible solid likeable one so he doesn't so far do very much except follow along and make practical suggestions. And decide Pol needs protecting, of course. I find Barak difficult to like because of the thing with his wife, even though the narrator seems to like him just fine. Or possibly because of that. Hmmm, I don't much like Mandorallen, the paladin - he's just too boring. You always know what he's going to do. Actually that's true of most of them, they're all a type and you know they're going to use their special abilities and, well, kill stuff a lot usually. Silk's type involves making up other characters though, and talking very fast, and similar things that involve a bit of variety. I'm finding myself skipping bits in the fight sequences. I wouldn't skip a good bit of cunning plan, and that's Silk's department.
Sometimes I feel like I'm getting whiney, learning to read books in ways that make them no fun. Like it's me, you know? But then I look at the list of stuff the story is doing, and... no, I think it's quite reasonable to not like that stuff.
I read F&SF to get away from reality. Go places where absolutely anything could happen. Why does so much of it import the icky anyways?
I mean, there's more than one woman in the story, so call that progress. There are in fact three women who get to be named in prophecy and have an important role and that. It's just... one of them is called Aunt and cooks and cleans and sews and dedicated her whole life to bringing up Garion (even the thousands of years before he existed - she has a big speech to that effect). One of them is frequently described as childlike, yet she's destined to be Garion's bride, and she doesn't get any choice in that. And one of them was a literal sex slave. Taken as a trio, what does that show? Somebody's daughter, somebody's wife, somebody's sex object. It's making me shudder, it really is.
Ce'Nedra, Queen of the World, is the one who gets called childlike regularly, yet was introduced with a scene of her being naked and talking about how natural it is and then running around in a tunic everyone else considers indecently short. And then she's supposed to turn up and get married to some dude on the appointed day, because of prophecy. That makes an ugly little combination to my mind - tis uncomfortable enough when her whole species (dryads) gets described as childlike+sexual, trading kisses for sweets. Apparently they'll do almost anything for sweets. Just a bit creepy, there. But then the total lack of choice about who she marries? It's the defining factor in her introduction - she's running away from an arranged marriage and Polgara, the one woman in the group, who you might hope would be up for some self determination, is the one who enforces the rule, says she gets no choice about it, she's going to get married. And then the relationship with Garion is characterised by shrieking arguments and apparently hating each other. Now granted that's a stock component of romance - but what it does is once again confuse the signals. She's shrieking go away as loud as she can, yet the narrative is drawing inevitably closer to where 'she' realises 'she' doesn't mean it and actually wants what she's been running away from all along. In other words, if looked at as a bit of ideology written by a man, it's a story of What Women Really Want (Even When They Say No).
Creepy.
There's another female character in the first book who isn't all Prophesied, just the wife of someone from prophecy. Their relationship is cold. They married because her family told her to, again. He wanted her but she didn't want him. They spend most of their time apart, and when they're reunited...
"My Lord was quite insistent about certain rights and duties on the night of his return to Val Alorn," she said. "Not even the locked door of my bedchamber was enough to curb his insistence."
"All right," Barak said, flushing slightly. "I'm sorry about that. I hoped that things might have changed between us. I was wrong. I won't bother you again."
"Bother, my Lord?" she said. "A duty is not a bother. A good wife is obliged to submit whenever her husband requires it of her - no matter how drunk or brutal he may be when he comes to her bed. No one will ever be able to accuse me of laxity in that regard."
"You're enjoying this, aren't you?" Barak accused.
"Enjoying what, my Lord?" Her voice was light, but there was a cutting edge to it.
In case there's any ambiguity about what all that means, she ends up pregnant.
That right there? Describes rape. I'm on book three and it hasn't been called that. In fact everyone seems to be acting like she'll be happy she's pregnant. Including, again, Polgara. Pol seems quite amused when she notices in fact. And everyone treats it like Merel's icy rage is some kind of game she'll grow out of. She refers to her marriage as a duty, others tell her there's a lot more than duty but she'll have to find out for herself. Like she's in the wrong for not feeling the way a wife 'should', even if she acts entirely correctly according to her culture.
At no point, so far, has it occured to anyone that Barak is clearly and completely in the wrong. It's making me kind of sick.
As for the former slave - I've only just read up to where they meet her, but really, is 'slave' a role one actually *needs* in a story??? Even freed slave?
Polgara looks like she should be a strong woman. She gets magic powers and sometimes she even gets to use them without her daddy telling her so. Thus far only on women... in fact come to think Polgara is left to deal with the women and told to keep out of dealing with the men. Great, now I've noticed another layer of irritation. It adds to how Polgara never got a tower - something mentioned casually as if it was an 'of course' that really grated on my nerves. Every other sorcerer has their own place to live, she lived with her dad. She has titles and honors from around the world, but when she uses them it's portrayed as some kind of affectation - a game or joke. She's never treated as plain outranking anyone. She's been living as a cook on a farm. When they travel she keeps on doing the cooking. And when she can't, Ce'Nedra does. She's travelling in a group of men that have all - except Garion and Durnik - spent much of their lives travelling. Surely they know how to cook for themselves???And the cooking thing bugs me quite a bit - because Ce'Nedra starts off as Bad, as haughty and expecting to be served and nobody likes her because of it. But her process of becoming a Good Girl involves - yes - learning to cook for everyone. I'm just *facepalm*.
Polgara knows the customs of many nations - which seems to boil down to being happy to be flattered, or to have a guy offer to buy her off a nearby male who is assumed to own her. I know there's a bit more about that custom in later books, but *really*, that's just... gah! And then, like I just mentioned talking about the other women, she's used to be the voice of normal, the one who agrees with and sometimes enforces norms. Like, the woman of the group says it's all okay, so we shouldn't sit there and be outraged.
At arranged marriage! And rape within marriage! And selling women like they're property!
Personally I'm just going to be outraged anyway.
Now, yeah, okay, quite a lot of other stuff is going on. There's more female characters than that. There's Queens as well as Kings, and two of them were sovereigns over her own people - one because they don't have any males, the other because she looks like the god's girlfriend and is kept on lust inducing drugs to keep her looking like that. Oh, and most of her immediate subjects are eunuchs - which clearly isn't a comment on letting women rule *at all*. And there was a whole race of humans that were mostly women - who got wiped out, but that was very sad and evil obviously and nothing to do with them being all women and just to do with them being cannibals except, hello, the author made them that way. And with all three of those - the dryads (all female), the Snake Queen (god's girlfriend lookalike), and the Marags (race that died) - lust is a major theme. Dryads steal men to make babies, and trade kisses for stories and sweets. The Snake Queen shags anything that moves and some things that don't, which is probably why her god-boyfriend rejects her, which allows Polgara to turn her into a snake (so she will stop being so lustful - apparently the hot blood is a problem). Polgara, of course, has stayed unmarried and childless for a few thousand years. I don't think they've used the word virgin yet, but. The Good Girl doesn't get any, calls some of those others depraved. The monsters and corpses and Bad ones are all about the lust. Is this looking familiar the bad way?
Why did the author make a bunch of thoroughly sexist societies and not one with actual equality? Why did the author invent a world with seven gods and no goddess? Why did the author chose to call a race 100% female 'monsters', even if he did then have her be outraged about it?
The main story has a lot of wandering around and fighting things and all that standard adventure bit. Okay, whatever. Actually I'm not finding it that involving.
And the whole Prophecy bit bugs me. I keep on wanting to introduce Ethan Rayne to the whole setup, or the Doctor, some agent of Chaos to shake things up a bit. I keep wanting to throw free will in the mix, basically. I *hate* predestination - there's no fate but what you make. And, okay, maybe the prophecy represents that fate you make... but why are there only two options, for goodness sake? Ridiculous.
I know I'm only on the third book out of, eventually, ten. I vaguely recall stuff changing as it goes along. But this stuff I've already noticed isn't making me feel very eager to keep going along. You know?
It is making me want to rewrite it with some of the characters genderswitched and some queer and some refocused.
The central character right now is a teenage boy who is learning to grow up in a world where boys protect girls and girls serve boys and girls kiss boys and aspire to marry boys and... he's just not asking the right questions. Sure, he gets all social conscience about serfs in Arendia - they're the guys in the same social position he grew up in, the ones doing the chores; he identifies so of course he wants them treated better. But he doesn't speak up about how women are treated, and that is starting to make me just... not interested. I don't *care* if he learns to use his power, if he's only going to use it to make things keep on being the same.
I don't think I've read these since I was in school. Which is a long time. Things keep managing to actually surprise me. Not big things, but here and there.
Things I actually like about the book: Silk. He's snarky, sly, sneaky, and a professional spy. Also short. And an acrobat and martial artist. And he seems perfectly willing to notice that women are just as good at all those things as he is... though I could be reading in a bit far to get to that. He just seems to respect his Queen going in to the spy business and agree with her that shuffling the women off to a seperate council is ridiculous, and there's a woman in Tolnedra he respects professionaly... though her profession is also the oldest one, so that's another in the stereotype-women column. Annoyance.
But Silk is just exactly my fic type. He's kind of like Methos and Spike and suchlike. Including the thing where he enjoys his work just a little too much.
I hasn't yet a real life type but I rather hope it differs from my fic type right there. Characters that get off on killing are one thing, boyfriends entirely another.
The other characters... I like Durnik, mostly, but he exists to be the sensible solid likeable one so he doesn't so far do very much except follow along and make practical suggestions. And decide Pol needs protecting, of course. I find Barak difficult to like because of the thing with his wife, even though the narrator seems to like him just fine. Or possibly because of that. Hmmm, I don't much like Mandorallen, the paladin - he's just too boring. You always know what he's going to do. Actually that's true of most of them, they're all a type and you know they're going to use their special abilities and, well, kill stuff a lot usually. Silk's type involves making up other characters though, and talking very fast, and similar things that involve a bit of variety. I'm finding myself skipping bits in the fight sequences. I wouldn't skip a good bit of cunning plan, and that's Silk's department.
Sometimes I feel like I'm getting whiney, learning to read books in ways that make them no fun. Like it's me, you know? But then I look at the list of stuff the story is doing, and... no, I think it's quite reasonable to not like that stuff.
I read F&SF to get away from reality. Go places where absolutely anything could happen. Why does so much of it import the icky anyways?