[Some rambling thoughts on the lack of relatable female
characters in epic fantasies…]
At times it feels quite odd to be a female and a fan of fantasy and
science-fiction. I could (and may possibly in another post) probably analyze
this “situation,” in much more detail, but there is one thing in particular
that has bothered me, as I’ve grown older and explored more of these genres;
that thing is the dearth of relatable and
likable female characters in many fantasy stories.
Now, because it’s been a while since I’ve really sat down
and explored all the genre has to offer, I’ve decided to look at two staples to
make my case (whatever that is exactly, I’ll find out when I’m finished writing
this out): Tolkien’s The Lord of the
Rings, and Martin’s A Song of Ice and
Fire. I’d like my caveat, or rather,
pre-critical statement to be that, I do, in fact love both of these sagas. By
love, I mean… compulsively plowed through Rings
because I cared so much about what happened to Frodo and Sam, and could
not put down Ice and Fire (admittedly
quite possibly just to make sure that Martin didn’t kill off Jon Snow… oh and
the fact that after reading the final scene of A Game of Thrones I squee’d at the sheer brilliance of it… and oh,
still think that the character POV endings in A Storm of Swords are quite possibly the best sets of dénouement
ever written…).
Now that that’s out
of the way, I’d like to try to explicate a few insights I’ve had, that I’m sure
a lot of other women (and maybe men?) may have already thought about as
well. I’d like to start with a shorter
analysis of The Lord of the Rings because
of its age. (Perhaps another caveat is needed here: I’m a fan of hermeneutics.
I’m not really sure I agree with Heidegger’s so-called ontological turn, and I
do believe that although some human archetypes may persist throughout history,
we must analyze written works within their historical context. I’m not sure
this means works can’t have perennial meanings, but I do believe we can look at
them and make some good-old-fashioned common sense observations regarding
thematic structures. We can also look at the setting in which the work was
written and make some more common sense observations about the author’s
motivations and intentions.) What I wish to convey here is that many people
like to hold up LOTR as a perennial
classic of fantasy fiction – and yeah, he kinda
paved the way for fantasy to become a part of contemporary popular culture –
but, and this is a big but, his style of writing and his choice of characters
is basically archaic at this point. Don’t get me wrong, this is part of the
appeal of the story for me personally, and it’s not like it doesn’t have an
insanely large following, but it’s not contemporary fantasy as we know it. It’s
not full of graphic sexual encounters – mainly because of the fact that there
are so few female characters –
though at times the violence can be quite graphic (I mean come on, the heads of
the Gondorian soldiers being sent over the walls of Minas Tirith? Ew), but it’s
no Battle of the Blackwater, and even the dialogue is not what we’re used to –
it’s a vestige of a type of storytelling long abandoned.
So anyway, the reason I’m rambling on about the age of
Tolkien’s story, and the gaping differences between his style of writing
fantasy, and say, Martin’s style, is because I’m trying to provide a groundwork
where we can think about why there are so few female characters in the story, and
why they seem to be formed from religious and basically medieval stereotypes.
So here are the facts that are pretty common knowledge: Tolkien wrote LOTR because he wanted to tell a story
that followed a mythical heritage he had created with his friends for England.
He was a scholar in Anglo-Saxon culture and language and loved epic poetry.
Ergo, The Lord of the Rings. (I know,
I’m cringing already at that oversimplification and lack of verification of
those “facts,” sorry). What I’d like to actually say in my own voice, is that I
think if we continually look at Tolkien’s female characters in the following way,
we do something very dangerous: It’s
great that Tolkien has such strong and important female characters such as
Galadriel and Eowyn. Galadriel resists the temptation to take the ring for
herself and Eowyn kills the Witch King for crying out loud! How awesome is
that! Galadriel has amazing powers and is almost like a goddess. She’s so
beautiful and full of virtue. Blah, blah blah. (I actually had an English
major in college say something along those lines to me).
Basically what I want to say here is: I enjoy LOTR because it literally makes me
believe that Middle Earth existed, that I’m listening to Tom Bombadil talk
about time immemorial to the Hobbits during their stay in the Old Forest, and
that friendships like Frodo and Sam’s do exist. I don’t enjoy LOTR because there are literally no
relatable female characters that I can identify with and actually want to
survive whatever this strange and wonderful world has to throw at them. They
don’t exist, period. The only female character I even have reason to “root for”
is Eowyn because she’s a human and she wants to be a part of something – “The
Battle of the Pelennor Fields” to be precise. The problem is that she kind of
does this thing out of desperation. (My copy is the 50th Anniversary
One-Volume Edition, so look for this stuff on pp 841-843 if you’re following
along). She disguises herself as a man, and when the evil Witch King of Angmar
shows up and his fell beast kills her uncle’s horse (Snowmane, we barely knew
thee), she reveals herself to be “no living man,” but “a woman”! So Tolkien has
this clever thing in his appendices where he actually says that there was some
prophecy that no man could kill this Lord of the Nazgul guy. “What’s the
problem?” you may ask. Men and women are the same species, dude, so this whole
prophecy thing saying “man” which sounds a lot like we should read as “human,”
is ridiculous because men and women are both human. How could a woman kill this
guy and not a man? C’mon.
And herein we can see the main problem that really lies at
the heart of the Tolkien’s writing (and his generation, for that matter): there’s a tendency to make women this Other,
this mysterious sex who can be both goddess, good, benevolent, and powerful,
and fickle, tending toward evil, (OR, in the case of Eowyn, a silly girl who’s
in love with Aragorn, not because she knows him, but because “she loves only a
shadow and a thought: a hope of glory and great deeds, and lands far from the
fields of Rohan.” Aragorn says this to Eomer, her brother, on p 867 in my edition).
The other females in the story are all Elves. Galadriel is a powerful female
character, but she’s not a human and certainly not really relatable at all to
the average gal like me reading these stories.
Not to say that there are a lot of dudes out there able to relate easily
to Aragorn, Theoden, Eomer, Frodo, Sam, or Boromir the way that Tolkien writes
them, with their dialogue sounding like it comes out of some Homeric verse;
however, there are character traits that I think a lot of people can relate to.
And the dude characters get all the action!
I mean, God bless Peter Jackson et al. for giving Arwen a
bigger part in the films, and having her rescue Frodo at the Fords of the
Bruinen, but seriously, she’s still just an annoying love-interest distraction
from all the awesome orc-action. Why couldn’t there be a woman part of the
Company in the books, period? The answer is that historical context I mentioned
earlier. Tolkien wasn’t coming from a post-1960s American perspective. He was
writing what really amounts to a small story in the history of a made-up world.
He was versed not only in Anglo-Saxon but obviously all the literary traditions
of the Western world, and let’s face it, that tradition is pretty dude-centric.
So, there’s no one of my sex I can relate to in LOTR, but oh well. I guess I can forgive him. The man is dead after
all. And his story allows us to re-visit the age of epic poetry and myth that
continues to fascinate us, so I guess he’s excused.
You know who’s not excused? George R.R. Martin. GRRM, you
are NOT excused. We have a plethora of female characters in ASoIaF. And they’re all pretty freaking
crazy. Let’s look at some of them, shall we? (SPOILERS)
Catelyn Tully-Stark: When I first read the first three
novels in ASoIaF series, I was approximately 17 years old. I hated Catelyn when
I first read those books. I hated her because of her treatment of Tyrion. Then,
after I became a mom myself, I re-read the books about twice over. I still hate
book Catelyn. SPOILER ALERT for those who haven’t read the books yet and/or do
not wish to read them and are just watching Game of Thrones on HBO. I hate book
Catelyn because I can’t relate to her, even after becoming a mom. She basically
lets her 7 and 3 yr-old kids alone in a castle while she goes to talk to her
husband halfway across the realm, and then doesn’t go back to them even after her
husband’s dead because her dad is dying. Seriously, dude. As a mom, I’d be
allllll about making sure my kid who was in a coma when I left him was OK, and
making sure my 3 year-old was, you know, surviving without his mother! The only
time I actually felt pity for her was during the Red Wedding. That was it. Oh
yeah, and she’s super nasty to Jon Snow for no other reason than she’s pissed
she thinks Ned cheated on her. Not that poor kid’s problem, bitch.
Sansa Stark: So fucking whiney in the first book that I can
barely read through it without rolling my eyes. I can kind of understand her,
and actually feel more affinity for her character by the end of the 3rd
book and her short treatment in the 4th book because she realizes
how vulnerable she is as a young woman in the hands of a man like Littlefinger.
Arya Stark: One of my favorite characters, but she’s pretty
crazy. She’s supposed to be about 9. (Sansa’s supposed to be about 11 BTW). So
again, nothing really relatable there? I may remember what it was like to be 9,
but not what it was like to be 9 in the SoIaF universe? She also beats some kid
until he shits his pants at one point, and then wants to be an assassin and
kill people for a living.
Daenerys Targaryen: One of my favorite characters until the
5th book, when Martin just made her start acting completely
different than she had been acting in the previous 3 books (she wasn’t in the 4th
book). So Dany is supposed to be 14 I think (I could be wrong, but it’s
somewhere around there) when the epic opens. She, also, has kind of a crazy
streak: she likes to set things on fire with her dragons (which is awesome).
She also has some interesting and strange ideas about love and sex.
Cersei Lannister: Crazy fucking bitch. Much less nuanced in
the books than in the TV series. She’s power-hungry, vindictive, and generally
rash in her decisions. She even gets disgusted by her youngest son because he’s
not violent and crazy enough. The only thing that can possibly redeem Cersei in
any reader’s eyes is the fact that she has been used by her father, and her
late husband, and politics in general, and you kind of feel bad for her and
understand her desire to rule. But she’s totally nuts and has sex with her twin
brother.
Brienne of Tarth: She’s a fantastic fighter, but she’s got
really stubborn ideas about loyalty to the point of absurdity. Oh yeah, and she’s
super ugly. Thanks, GRRM. Apparently to be a great fighter, a woman has to look
like a disgusting man.
So, there’s a (super) brief and oversimplified overview of the
female POV characters in Martin’s Song of
Ice and Fire. It’s pretty bad, but there it is. (If anyone other than me
reads this, I expect criticism). I’ve
actually read (and no, I have no citations for this, sorry) that some people
are touting Martin’s series as feminist because it has a lot of strong female
characters; however, I believe they were referring to these characters’
depictions in the HBO adaptation Game of
Thrones. Not only are the characters slightly different on TV, but this
statement is kind of absurd in any case. Why? You ask. Here’s why, in a really
brief set of statements:
Martin’s universe gives women crappy status across the
board, and the way he has the female characters respond to this gives away his
bias as a male writer. The adult women – Catelyn, Cersei, and Brienne – all act
in ways that are totally foreign to me. Catelyn has no compassion for Jon Snow.
Usually, the trait of treating one’s non-biological children like crap is a
male one. (Yes, fling the nasty comments my way! I’m begging for them at this
point, with that statement). She prefers the company of her dying and
dementia-ridden father to the company (and safety!) of her small children, the
one of whom was practically dead and permanently disabled the last time she
left him. And she does everything she does on impulse. Cersei seems to do the
same – and so does Dany to a degree. So basically, GRRM, you’re trying to tell
us that women may be strong in some ways, but are capable of making really
stupid decisions much more so than cold, rational, calculating men. Brienne is
infatuated with Renly Baratheon and is constantly obsessed with how inadequate
she is. Wow, I guess women can relate
to that, but it’s not exactly the best kind of relating? Sansa is a child in
the beginning, and she’s obsessed with everything being perfect and pretty and
fairy-tale-like (irritating!), and Arya is a tomboy who’s really great at
acting rashly and getting people killed. Dany loves her dead husband to the
point of weirdness, and she can’t make up her mind what to do about this whole
gathering an army and trying to take over Westeros thing. Gods, she’s so
indecisive! Cersei… must I really even
go there? She’s so narcissistic she loves having sex with her twin brother.
Come on. Everyone can relate to that. *Head desk*
I guess what I’m getting at here is that I’m not sure where
the feminism comes in during these books. All that said, I think GRRM does a
great job at showing the grey areas of human behavior and existence. No one is
all good, nor are they all bad. The way he writes makes the universe very
realistic. It’s fantastic. But, let’s face it, readers: who are you rooting for
when you read these POV chapters? Are they women? If they are, why are you rooting
for them? I personally feel that GRRM kind of takes his own ideas of what women
are like (or should be, or should think – especially about loyalty and sex) and
just writes it down shamelessly. I love Arya’s story, and I love Dany’s, but
the characters themselves outside of the story are not particularly likeable. …Just
something to think on.
In the meantime, I’ll be working on writing about a sci-fi
universe that actually has likeable, strong, female characters. And it’s
written by a woman. So maybe the problem is that men can’t write about women in
fantasy/sci-fi settings realistically enough for the characters to be likeable
and relatable to female readers.
Hmmm….
