Gender and Science Fiction
Being a huge science fiction junkie, I noticed something that was glaringly obvious in this short story that I see as being true of the genre as a whole. There is very little room for a strong female protagonist in science fiction stories; the few exceptions being stories written by a female author. In this case, the wife is a passive character and the secretary is viewed as a sexual object of sorts. Any one who does anything is very blatantly male. I’m wondering why that is the case. Is it because military and technology are seen as male gendered actions? I don’t think that’s entirely the case. If we go back to Arthurian novels, we once again have far fetched stories filled with out of this world actions. . . and very docile females. Granted, Arthurian novels also have militant aspect to the stories, but clearly there is something about gender roles that is persisting in stories of a questing nature.
A second question I’m facing is, what exactly is going on in this story? Is it a self fulfilling prophecy, or is it just like the matrix, all in ones mind. In which case, is everything in his mind alone, or is his reality changing theirs? I understand the story, but the way it’s set up seems to be opening the story to more possibilities than is just apparent on the surface.
Max wrote:
I wonder if this question extends beyond science fiction and fantasy? Are male characters typically more likely to take action than female characters in literature on the whole? Is this less likely to be so if the author is female? It’s times like these that I really feel how narrow my personal view of the whole spectrum of literature is: I have no idea what the answer to these questions are. I simply haven’t read enough, and so all I can do is apply the sliver I have read to the question. I wonder if it’s statistically significant (probably not).
More on the original topic, I would have to say that I think there is a trend towards more of an equality of action in modern literature. The more recent a science fiction or fantasy text is, I have noticed, the more likely it is to have a female character capable of taking action. Over the last fifty years, things have changed greatly. One of the glaring oddities in (and complaints about) Lord of the Rings is that there are virtually no women. True, Eowyn has her moment when she and Merry manage to slay the leader of the Nazgul, and in some ways this sequence can definitely be seen as progressive, but in a series as substantial as Lord of the Rings, it is surprising that only one such instance should occur (female characters make other contributions to the plot, but they are always passive or indirect). In contrast, it seems to me that female characters who wield considerable power (and are willing to use it) are substantially more common in science fiction and fantasy written during the last few decades.
I do think that part of the reason that male characters tend to take more active rolls in science fiction and fantasy is because the theme of violence is prevalent in these genres, and masculinity is strongly linked with violence in our culture. Examining this cultural assumption is definitely worthwhile, particularly if you are trying to understand this phenomenon.
I think another reason is that, for whatever reason, science fiction particularly tends to be male dominated in terms of writers (although this is less true of late), and hence male writers, who inherently relate more to their male characters, tend to place them in the middle of the action.
Posted 25 Oct 2007 at 10:40 pm ¶
sean wrote:
Dick was not known as a feminist, by any stretch of the imagination. This story I think is not atypical in its depiction of the female. He is very much in the 1960s hippie/patriarchal mode: women are supposed to be “free” i.e. sexually available to men. Come to think if it, however, the heroine of Dick’s Man in the High Castle has got a lot of what mid-20th C. people would have called “spunk.” She’s a judo instructor who kills her lover when she realizes he is a Nazi/Fascist spy sent to kill the man in the high castle, a writer who has written a banned utopian/alternative reality novel where the Allies defeat the Germans and Japanese in WWII.
As for Arthurian, you’ve stepped into an interest of mine. Without boring you with detail – there are a number of Arthurian romances with complex interesting feminine roles – not 20th C. feminists, mind you, like Marion Zimmer Bradley – but think of the romances of Marie de France, Chretien de Troyes, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight – the women are not passive sex objects.
Posted 25 Oct 2007 at 10:46 pm ¶
Jamie Goldberg wrote:
I think science fiction is often considered more of a ‘man’s’ subject. Women are stereotypically not the scientists or the inventors and science fictions relies on innovations from our current society. I also think male authors are more likely to depict male protagonist’s simply because the character can become like an extention of themselves. However, female authors, namely Margaret Atwood often create dystopian societies in book where the main character is a women (ie. The Handmaid’s Tale).
Posted 26 Oct 2007 at 2:17 pm ¶
JakeP. wrote:
Although I am in no way respectably knowledgeable of the vast reserve of science fiction literature, I would also like to add that, from my reading of science fiction, women do not just lack strong, protagonist roles; they are often either unlikable, vicious, ready to demolish one’s self-respect, or insensible, another symptom of the dystopian future. Meanwhile, the male protagonist is often emasculated, a satire on the image of the masculine male leader of a space fleet or whatever. The eamples I have in my mind are from Vonnegut novels: Billy Pilgrim, the protagonist of Slaughterhouse-Five, is tossed about by the nihilism of his world without much voice or resistance; Paul Proteus, the protagonist of Player Piano, is not quite so helpless, but he certainly lacks the stereotypical cocky, masculine drive. Meanwhile, Billy’s wife is the insensible epitome and Paul’s wife represents the vicious stereotype. Arthur of “We Remember for You Wholesale” is similarly pathetic, for a while at least, and his wife is described as often breaking down her helpless husband.
To tie up these loosely written-together thoughts, I suppose that such science fiction writers as Vonnegut and Dick are reacting against earlier stereotypes of men in science pulp fiction. At the same time,for these men women don’t deserve “human” characterizations; they’re merely facets of a dystopian universe, at the center of which is always a befuddled, helpless male.
And one last note: When Savina mentioned that women were merely sexual property in Brave New World, I remembered a funny little thoughtI had while reading the novel: were any women alpha class? it very much seemed like to me that the highest rank women were capable of were beta plus. Otherwise, why would alpha class men have relationships with beta class women, unless there were no female equals, caste-wise?…
Posted 29 Oct 2007 at 1:36 pm ¶