Eleven chapters into Game of Thrones now. It's actually turning out to be quite tolerable. I've only cursed at it twice since my last rant.
I did get to Arya, though. The tomboy princess. Which has sparked another rant.
Arya, you see, is terrible at embroidery, and all girly things. She is not conventionally pretty. She is good at riding and math, and wants to learn to use a sword.
Arya is a strongfemalecharacter written by a straightwhiteman.
I am not saying that straight white men cannot write strong female characters - case in point Joss Whedon. But there are a few things to keep in mind when writing them.
1. Don't define them solely by their femininity
Arya's main defining characteristic is that she is a girl who likes boy things. This is the same problem I have with crossdressing - the strongfemalecharacter is strong because she takes on a masculine role. That is not feminism. All that does is reinforce gender binaries and male supremacy.
2. Don't ignore her femininity
The fact that Arya has to be bad at embroidery to be good with a sword (presumeably) bothers me. I crochet. I also fence. You can have both! This goes back to the binary - because Arya likes boy things, she can't like girl things. I am also irked by the fact that no writer has ever had the balls to go ahead and make the princess a transman. Or at least a dyke. Something other than falling prey to compulsory heterosexuality.
Okay, yes, Arya lives in a patriarchal medieval society, and I think she ends up in an arranged marriage later, so I'm going to set her aside for a moment and look at other tomboy princesses.
1. Eilonwy, from the Prydain Chronicles, by Lloyd Alexander
Eilonwy is also better at swordplay than embroidery - at least, she has more fun with it. She is not played off as a master swordswoman, though; she just likes adventuring. And she's fun. She's the sharp-tongued, practical wit, who comes up with weird analogies for everything. Arya is a girl who likes boy things. See the difference?
In the end, though, Eilonwy marries Taran out of literary convention.
2. Suzy Turquoise Blue, from The Keys to the Kingdom, by Garth Nix
Suzy's also kind of an Eilonwy. Not a princess, though. More practical than witty, and wonderfully irreverent. She is not girly, but not because she is masculine. She just is.
And actually, she doesn't hook up with anyone. Then again, she's like ten, and it's a kids book.
3. Elayne, from The Wheel of Time, by Robert Jordan
I could also have gone with Egwene, but I'm trying to stick with the princess theme. She becomes a badass mother (no, literally), queen, and mage. All perfectly within her reach as a princess, without crossdressing or being "masculine." Though she does start swearing like a soldier to get man-cred.
Sort averts CH? There's some polyamory going on.
4. Isodel, from Year of the Griffin, by Diana Wynne Jones
I'm reaching a little with this one. Isodel is conventionally pretty and unconventionally badass. I mean, she rides a dragon. Not as part of a scheme to save the world, he just kind of fell platonically in love with her. Everyone kind of falls in love with her.
She falls in love at first sight with Emperor Titus. It's Jones, so it's sort of a parody. All of her romantic subplots go like, pretty much. No fuss, no bother.
5. Millie, from The Lives of Christopher Chant, by Diana Wynne Jones
Technically a priestess/goddess rather than a princess. Very powerful enchantress. Decides to escape oppressive temple life to become a British schoolgirl. Can you get much girlier than that?
Marries Christopher when they are much older.
6. Everyone with a vagina (and then some!) in The Last Rune, by Mark Anthony
Seriously. There are two queens in book one, neither of which rule over a matriarchy (I think it's insulting to say that the only way a woman can rule is if the ruler has to be a woman). Plus, the main female lead gets mistaken for a duchess, and is bad at embroidery because she is from the modern world where people don't do that anymore, not because she rejects feminine things; and her best friend is a baroness who practically runs a castle as part of her gender role, helps the heros save the world a million times, and eventually becomes a queen in her own right. Not to mention that there are female VILLAINS. I mean, how awesome is it that you have so many strong female characters that you don't worry that having female villains is going to put a negative portrayal of women in your book?
Aryn, the baroness, has to marry a prince to become queen, but it is also clear that he had to marry her for the populace to accept him as king, and the Final Battle is coming so they need a strong leader NOW. They don't love each other, but it's implied they learn to like each other.
7. Rapunzel from Tangled
Yeah, it's a movie. It's also past midnight and I did not start out intending to make a top ten list. I think I'll cut it at eight. But she's a flippin' Disney princess - girly girl icon. But she has personality beyond her gender, and she is interesting and fun. Also, remember what I said about female villains?
So she marries a prince in the end. It's a Disney movie. And they actually had good chemistry, as opposed to, say, Arial, who never actually talked to her prince.
8. Tek, from the Firebringer Trilogy, by Meredith Ann Pierce
Yeah, I'm really tired now. Tek's a unicorn princess. Actually, she's not actually a princess, but she marries a prince. And then she finds out she's actually the king's daughter, and they have an incest scare, but then it turns out the prince isn't the king's son (sorry, spoiler). She's a badass warrior, kind of Nala-like in that she can kick the prince's ass (hmm, Nala's another good one), but unicorn society doesn't exactly have gender roles, so in-universe, her warrior skills have nothing to do with her female-ness. Out of 'verse, however, they give her traditionally masculine characteristics, while the prince is the more "feminine" sensitive peacemaker type. But it's not over-the-top, and I like her.
Like I said, marries the prince. CompHet. It's not a married-ever-after, though; it happens at the beginning of book 2. So they have an actual relationship as a married couple.
I need to stop now before I stop making sense. Basically, Arya bugs me because she is flat, and Martin doesn't know how to write women. The End.
No comments:
Post a Comment