Writing about ladies and the unseen, menial characters
Women fencing. Circa 1910.
There’s a really nice piece on Tumblr called “PSA: Your Default Narrative Settings Are Not Apolitical” which discusses women in speculative narratives. To quote:
…it’s impossible for black, female pirates to exist anywhere, that pixies and shapeshifters are inherently more plausible as a concept than female action heroes who don’t get raped, and that fairy tale characters as diverse as Mulan, Snow White and Captain Hook can all live together in the modern world regardless of history and canon, but a black Lancelot in the same setting is grossly unrealistic.
I trot this out again because I am currently reading for Sword and Mythos and two of the well-intended questions (not from the same person) I received. The questions were:
a) Is it possible to feature a realistic female fighter in a historical setting, considering that females of the sort would be scarce?
b) Can the hero in a sword and sorcery story be something other than a warrior?
Miliciana. Photo taken during the Spanish Civil War.
I’ve blogged about the first question, about the women we don’t see in history before. However, I’d like to add something that my friend Paula R. Stiles mentioned the other day. That is that writers often complain that a strong woman in X setting would be an exceptional woman and thus not an example of the average woman. However, most men in history were not exceptional men. For every Napoleon there were 50,000 peasants. So why, if we often look to exceptional figures for inspiration do we want to diminish women with a hand wave of ‘oh, but she was exceptional‘?
I also want to question the idea that through history these exceptional women were as rare as purple unicorns. As evidence, I offer the case of Mary Everest Boole. A self-taught 19th century mathematician and math tutor, she had five daughters who became mathematicians and authors. One of them was the first woman Fellow of the Institute of Chemistry.
If an author were to write a story about a family full of female scientists in 19th century, people would probably criticize it as unrealistic because it would be full of exceptional women. But in truth, exceptional men and women are both scarce. Yet we don’t seem to find any problem imagining a whole family of 19th century male scientists as realistic, even though it is more realistic to picture a family of uneducated labourers.
Ellen Swallow Richards was the most prominent female American chemist of the 19th century. Photo of Ellen Swallow Richards and a class of women at MIT in the laboratory, holding scientific instruments.
This brings me to the second question which boils down to: can the hero be something other than an exceptional person? The answer is: of course, but we don’t like to picture that. Well, we do as long as the pig-sty cleaner learns to wield a sword and becomes a king, thus becoming an exceptional character (and this is obviously far-fetched if you want to talk about realism and exceptions, after all, how many pig-shit removers are royalty?). We don’t feel so comfortable if the pig-sty cleaner is a pig-sty cleaner.
And yet…why not populate our stories with some of these more menial characters? What is wrong with the baker, the cook or the servant? Nothing. Why can’t the common, unexceptional maid be our protagonist? Oh, she’s not exciting enough? Seeing the world from the point of view of a nurse who is bandaging the wounds of soldiers won’t do?
Why not? We often dismiss female characters because they would be unexceptional and leave mundane lives, but this doesn’t have to be the case. Your average Victorian maid could be quick-witted and street-wise, and much better at navigating the foggy streets of London than a gentleman.
I recommend that you pause to consider your vision of what is exceptional and average, and why you may pick a protagonist that is one or the other. Challenge yourself by writing a character that is the complete opposite of what you might expect to see and observe the results.
1959. Six NASA scientists.
Much food for thought here. When I was reading your piece just now, I had just finished reading and reviewing a Pakistani novel in which the only named female character to get a PoV was a tawaif, a sort of singer/prostitute. She was both menial (profession, the way society pressed down on her) and exceptional (in terms of the gravity of her character). The exceptionality of this character (who takes a backseat to the two primary male/brother characters) for me lies within her navigation of the strictures of her society and her surpassing of those confining societal expectations in a fashion that shows not just her character, but the likelihood that there are thousands, if not millions, of other characters like her who push back in their own ways against societal expectations.
Yet for most speculative fictions, I’ve found that the “exceptional” women feel less exceptional for many of the reasons you state. There is no real standard (minus the unspoken and usually assumed position that women are “naturally” inferior to men) against which to judge their exceptionalities. I use the plural here even though too often the “exceptional” element involves some form of violence: the maiden sword-wielder, the witch or enchantress casting fireballs or other destructive spells. Or they have to have the sharp wit, but muted to the degree that their ability to critique the society around them (the “real” as well as the fictional) is seen less as a commonplace criticism of the fictional/”real” societal value system and more as an exceptionality itself.
Hope this makes some sense for a late night post!
“I use the plural here even though too often the “exceptional” element involves some form of violence: the maiden sword-wielder, the witch or enchantress casting fireballs or other destructive spells.”
Yes. I think one of the ‘easy’ ways to make a woman ‘strong’ is to give her a gun or make her violent. It seems to be a default idea. However, even in a sword and sorcery scenario, it would be easy to have an interesting woman who is not violent and still is strong. An alchemist, for example, may not be killing people with a sword, but would still wield knowledge and smarts to achieve an objective. The thief does not need to murder people in order to steal something. And then, of course, our protagonist could be a priestess who is in charge of copying a dangerous illuminated manuscript. And what about the lady-in-waiting serving as a spy? There are no limits but we tend to limit ourselves even before we begin the story.