I was reviewing my published stories yesterday and saw that 75% of them are told from a male POV. Phil refuses to let me analyze this with him and I am not sure I want to analyze it at all, but it got me thinking about what writers have done a good job of seeing the world through the eyes of the opposite sex.
A lot of female crime writers write credible male detectives. Ruth Rendell does an especially good job with Wexford although he doesn't exactly grow or change much. In other words, he is not a fully fleshed-out subject. Very few male crime writers write female protagonists--at this point I can only think of short story writer, Al Tucher's Diana.
But if we go to non-crime novels, we get a lot more of this. My favorite would be Emily Alone, written by Stewart O'Nan. I never once doubt Emily is a woman. And Tom Rachman has some convincing stories of women in THE IMPERFECTIONISTS. Evan O'Connell's MRS. BRIDGE also comes to mind.
17 comments:
Joanna Russ noted that we have less practice generally writing from women's perspectives, even women writers. And, certainly, certain works of fiction depend less on stereotypical distinctions than others (the differences between women's and men's perspectives on everything tend be along a spectrum rather than a clear dichotomy, after all).
ES Gardner's Lam and Cool came to mind, too, but they are hardly characters who will live through the ages, either. Isaac Asimov was proud of his Susan Calvin, while quick to note that she was by intention a character that he might today refer to as being along the Aspergers/autism spectrum...something a more competent translation of Stieg Larsson than we've had so far might indicate was well done in those books. Russ herself praised John Varley's female characters.
My own better work tends to use characters at least as stylized as anything in Donald Barthelme or Fredric Brown...
I hope I did a credible job of writing a female protagonist in Under the Ember Star. The story I have in Dreams in the fire, called "A Gathering of Ravens," has a female lead character. I find it difficult but an intersting challenge.
I think Peter Høgh does it fairly well in Miss Smilla.
Joe Konrath and Jacqueline "Jack" Daniels immediately came to mind, as did SF's Robert E. Heinlein and Podkayne of Mars.
Larry McMurtry probably does women characters better than any other male novelist I've read.
Even before I read MP's comment, I was thinking along the same lines. A number of female authors do male voices well. Interesting to think about. If you go to movies, maybe 7% of directors are women? Lina Wertmüller might be a good place to start, though earlier Leni Riefenstahl "knew her man" all too well . . .
Not crime fiction, but I could not stick with Allan Gurganus' "Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All." There comes a time to use the word twee, and this is it.
Patti - You've made an excellent point here. I like the way Martin Edwards depicts his sleuth Hannah Scarlett; it's quite believable and well-done. But it does take work to create a believable protagonist of the other sex. My own protagonist is male, and I sometimes find myself asking my husband for a credibility-check on things my sleuth says or does.
Though no names pop into my mind this second, there have been men who write cozies under a female-sounding or initials-only pseudonym who did a creditable job.
Stewart O'Nan also does a good job w/ female POV in Speed Queen. But this subject always makes me think of Cornell Woolrich, though I'm not sure what women think, generally, of his take on them.
Ms. Smila is an excellent example and so is Speed Queen-loved it. I have read only two or three Woolrich's and don't remember any problems-will have to pick another of the dozen off my shelves.
My husband says I need to work on the women in my stories-they seem too masculine.
Thanks for the mention, Patti!
Diana started life in a short story that I wrote for a writing class in 2000. I had no idea at the time that she would be my life's work, as she seems now.
I have several male protagonists in stand-alone stories, and I notice that they tend to end up on the losing end of things. One example is The Only Amateur, which is currently over at A Twist of Noir. Psychoanalyze that! :-)
I have another female lead, a historical figure named Beatrice Winser. She directed the Newark Public Library, my employer, from 1929 to 1942. In her own way she was tougher than Diana. A novella about her called The Acting Librarian is at Mysterical-e.
Thomas Perry writes a wonderful woman character, Patti. The half-Native American, Jane Whitefield.
Alan Bradley writes an amazingly good 12 year old girl child prodigy in the Flavia de Luce books. Not only is Bradley male, but he's elderly. How he gets into the mind and attitudes of an adolescent is startling.
Jasper Fforde write Thursday Next very well.
My feeling has always been that on the whole, men seem to write women a bit better than women write men.
I've kind of figured out why, but that's for another day when I have more time and space to wander.
I'm omitting the classics for the moment.
Yes, Flavia de Luce is a wonderful character.
This is a tough category to think of off the cuff.
How about Alexander McCall Smith?
Jeff M.
Good ones both.
Cornell Woolrich wrote great female characters who were also narrators. Bill Pronzini says it's very difficult for men to write convincing female characters in the first person. I think that's crap. It all depends what kind of man you are and how you view women, I think. I never found it hard to see the world from a "female point of view." I used to write plays and short stories back in college and I was always praised for my female characters rather than my male characters who were either goofballs or stereotyped hardasses. There was more depth and range in my female characters. AND! they were my favorite characters to create and write about.
Currently I'm reading GETTING OFF by Lawrence Block in his "Jill Emerson" guise and his woman narrator is very believable to me -- even if she is deeply disturbed.
I downloaded a Jill Emerson-is it set in art galleries in New Hope, PA.
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