My dear friend John Ronald Reuel
Tolkien, a British WWI veteran born in the late nineteenth century, has been
thoroughly criticized decade after decade for his depiction of women in his
magnum opus, The Lord of the Rings. The epic fantasy trilogy is the
ultimate boys’ club; every major character is not only male, but (with a few
obvious exceptions) the uber-masculine archetypal warrior flavor of whatever
species they represent. Sure, female characters crop up here and there:
notably, we have the pristine elves Arwen and her golden-haired grandmother
Galadriel, the feisty shield-maiden Eowyn, and Shelob, a gigantic, horrifying
spider demon thing. That lineup says a mouthful (and a dismal mouthful at that)
and gives credence to Professor Tolkien’s critics: women, when they do
incidentally appear in the story, are either virtuous pedestal prizes like the
elves, a jilted lover like Eowyn, or a treacherous beast like Shelob.
However, one must remember that The
Lord of the Rings, written between 1939 and 1947, was in many ways a
reflection of Tolkien’s world. He sought to create a mythical history of
England and to critique the weapons of mass destruction that were entering the
United Kingdom’s consciousness during WWII, not to comment on gender roles.
Perhaps Tolkien never identified a clear purpose for women beyond being a
nurturer, romantic interest, or gluttonous villain. Regardless, he chose mostly
to disregard women in The Lord of the Rings. Thorough character
development was restricted to male characters.
And as much as I have found myself
craving a strong female heroine in the story that I’ve loved all my life, I
have to give Professor Tolkien credit for refusing to attempt and spectacularly
fail at writing a female main character. There are as many pitfalls to creating
female characters in literature and film as there are unflattering stereotypes
about women. From downright hatred to condescending oversimplification, authors
(both male and female) seem to
struggle with injecting their own attitudes about women into their writing, and
the result is often predictable and disturbing.
Take Professor Tolkien’s close
friend and colleague, C.S. Lewis, who all but cornered the market on the
classic Disney-esque villainess: the formerly beautiful Empress Jadis, who
later devolves into the diabolical “Witch” of The Lion, the Witch, and the
Wardrobe fame. The story goes something like this: Jadis has a fight with
her sister, and, in a jealous rage, speaks “The Deplorable Word”, which ends
her world and kills all the people in it. All that to spite her sister. She
then gets stuck in a different world, which, as it happens, is the eponymous
world of The Chronicles of Narnia, and gradually takes over, crafts a
100-year winter just to be nasty, scares all the nice talking animals into
hiding, and then kills the Jesus Lion Aslan. What a bitch! The thing is, Lewis
takes great pains to make sure that we understand just how gorgeous and sexy
Jadis is before she becomes all witchy and evil (and she’s still a hottie when
she’s in witch mode, albeit in a more sinister way), which implies that her sex
appeal is intertwined with her villainy. This is in direct contrast with
Tolkien’s Shelob, whose villainy is externalized as hideous gluttony.
Lewis seems to have differed from
his friend in that his misogyny manifests in the form of aversion to female
sexuality. Take his much-maligned banishment of Susan Pevensie from Narnia on
account of her interest in lipstick and nylons. Susan is barred from entering
Jesus Lion Aslan’s kingdom of Heaven not because she “grew up”, as some have
suggested, but because she became a “woman”—or rather, Lewis’s idea of a modern
woman: sexualized and powerful as a result, like Jadis. This ties in to the
classic Disney villainess, the Maleficents and Wicked Snow White Queens of
literature: women who are so driven by their own desire for sexual dominion
over men that they literally turn evil. These women don’t care about military
strategy or omniscience or power for power’s sake. They just want to be
eternally beautiful and sexy—and they must be punished as a result. How
patronizing. How simplistic. How misogynistic.
Is the solution, then, to express
femininity in a non-sexual and therefore non-threatening way? The well-intentioned
writers of “badass chicks” seem to think so. Many fantasy writers in particular
give their female characters special powers or stereotypical “toughness” that
sets these characters apart from the damsels in distress. Katniss Everdeen is
handy with a bow and wears flaming
couture in The Hunger Games. Arya Stark is an adorable serial killer in A
Song of Ice and Fire. Hermione Granger, Harry Potter’s brilliant and
STRICTY PLATONIC OMG SO PLATONIC sidekick, vanquishes bad guys with knowledge
and logic. While this depiction of female characters is less offensive than
most, it’s still inherently reductionist and a bit condescending. Katniss and
Hermione, after all their toughness and badassery, require marriage to cement
their happy(ish) endings. We don’t know yet what’s in store for Arya, but I
cynically suspect that she’ll end up married to Gendry. Eowyn kicks ass and
kills the Witch King in The Return of the King not just because she
wants to prove how much of an amazing warrior she really could be—she essentially
goes on a suicide mission because Aragorn tacitly rejects her. The life of a
powerful, independent woman who could be and do so much more, reduced to
nothing because of a man. Which makes me wonder: is there an authentic,
relatable way of writing a female character who has admirable skills and
attributes? Must we feel compelled to express a female character’s inherent
femininity by reminding our readers that, underneath all the toughness and
competence and awesomeness, she is still just a woman and therefore ultimately
an object of desire, driven by desire?
The fundamental danger of writing a
competent, admirable, relatable female character is that she inevitably gets
branded with the unflattering designation of being a “Mary Sue”. For those unfamiliar
with the term, it refers to a female character who more often than not serves
as a self-insert for the author: a disgustingly perfect character who fits the
author’s ideal of what he or she aspires to be and allows the author to live
vicariously through that character. The most revolting example that I can think
of is Bella Swan from the Twilight series, whose biggest “character
flaw” is that she’s sort of clumsy in a cute and appealing way. Everything good
happens to a Mary Sue: she charms the hero, is applauded for being classically
“feminine”, gets to have oh-so-special powers and qualities, is inexplicably
good at sports (I’m looking at you, Ginny Weasley), often displays tolerably
plucky and sassy behavior, and always manages to save the day with her innate
feminine goodness. That’s right: “bad” female characters are bad because they
want to be, whereas “good” female characters, including Mary Sues, are good
because they have to be. Take all the autonomy out of your female character and
she becomes good by default. Readers tend to despise Mary Sues; we cannot
relate to them and the self-indulgence on the author’s part is woefully
transparent.
Therein lies the difficulty of
writing female characters, which falls somewhere between the realms of author
failure and reader resistance. Authors struggle with writing well-rounded
female heroines who are not driven by stereotypically “female” motives, while
readers resist well-rounded female heroines who somehow fail to fit into their
mold of what constitutes an acceptable female character. It’s a vicious cycle
of sorts, reinforced by those problematic archetypes that define the fantasy
genre in particular, but inevitably invade other genres as well. The result is
often a travesty of femininity: sexually manipulative villainesses, tough
chicks with hard exteriors but soft hearts secretly longing for male attention,
or Mary Sues who lose us entirely with their perfection and ridiculous amounts
of good fortune.
We also harbor subconscious
expectations that a female in any narrative must serve as a harbinger of
romance; even when the romance does not explicitly manifest within the main
narrative, we know it’s coming. Arwen and Aragorn never interact in the text of
The Lord of the Rings, but we always know that her purpose—her sole purpose--is to be his queen. Ginny
Weasley is Harry Potter’s prize for saving the world: not a partner or an ally,
but a reward. In the context of the real world, which has real issues with
gender roles and the subjugation of women, this reduction of women is intensely
problematic. Defining a woman’s purpose as it relates to the men in her life is
the foundation of sexism and misogyny. Widows in India are made to light
themselves on fire on their husband’s funeral pyres because they are thought to
no longer serve any purpose without a husband. Female children in China are
abandoned and murdered because impoverished families can’t afford the
prohibitively expensive wedding customs that accompany a daughter. These are
the dangers of defining women in men’s terms. When women are thought to exist
solely as support for men, whether in literature, real life, or both, it
becomes all to easy to dismiss the value of women not as women, but as people
who happen to be female. We tend to have less trouble viewing male characters
as simply people who happen to be male. Is this a product of our
heteronormative, male-revering global philosophy? Is this the effect of
generations of religious shaming of femininity, the original sin of Eve?
My attitude on this matter does not stem from any animosity towards men.
Female and male authors alike seem to struggle with creating honest,
compelling, realistic depictions of female characters. I have the utmost
respect for Professor Tolkien for throwing up his hands and deciding to refrain
from even attempting to write female characters, as he clearly did not possess
enough insight into the female condition of his own era or of his fictional
setting to write something honest about womanhood. It just wasn’t a part of his
narrative. Is that the solution, then? To turn a blind eye to the difficulty of
gender roles? Of course not. Nor can we hope to subvert traditional gender
roles in literature by continuing to write stereotypical bitchy queens, badass
lonely chicks, and Mary Sues—or by turning our noses up at any depiction of a
female character that doesn’t stroke our egos or comply with our own personal
status quo as a reader. Literature is and always will be a two-way street. I don’t doubt that the difficulty of writing
female characters is a symptom of the difficulty of accepting women in modern
society for all our conflicting attitudes, goals, and self-perceptions. If you
think depicting women in literature is tough, try being a woman in real life. If
you think it’s hard to write about a woman’s success without being patronizing,
try earning success as a woman without being patronized. If none of us are actual damsels in distress, evil vixens,
ass-kicking cool chicks, or flawless Mary Sues, then what are we? Something
even more difficult, complex, and
interesting. Hard to write…but even harder to be.
