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Aug. 25th, 2005 08:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
xenithI was grumbling the other day about a lack of female characters at this stage of the WIP. There's a reason for that, they're on a pirate ship out in the middle of nowhere somewhere (and yes, yes but the just-replaced-captain wouldn't have tolerated any other women on board).
Of course, I could have just arbitarily stuck a few in, but they'd need a reason to be there and that reason would then have to be part of the story (or twisting the setting to make it viable). Just to introduce a few token characters.
This is going to be a problem with any setting based on a male-dominated society. If you start fiddling with gender roles in a large way, then you need to start changing everything, from moral values to economics. Fiddling with them in a small way -- sure that's where stories come from.
So, if you start with a society where women stay at home and raise kids, and men go out to work and hunt merchant ships, then you're limited, aren't you? Is their a perception in our modern society that women of old, those who stayed home and raised a dozen kids, are inferieor, weaker, not the equal of their present day counterparts? Possibly I've mentioned before, how common it is to pick up a family history magazine and find an article written about someone's ancestress. How she managed to carve out a home in the middle of the bush, made all the clothes, the householdd equipment, ran the farm when the husband was away and raised 14 kids. So she was obviously superior to her peers. Except, as everyone seems to have at least one of these among their forebears, you have to wonder who their peers were. It was a fairly common story. Oh, there were some women who couldn't cope with all the above and those that stayed sensibly at home, but you have to admit, we do tend to look down on our stay-at-home predecessors.
These are the sort of female characters I keep writing about, competent, talented, intelligent women who have their place in society and try to fill it (with the occasional renegade pirate captain for variety). That's what I like exploring. If that means, I find myself with far fewer females than males, it's just a matter of quality vs quantity.
So I'll try to stop grumbling about it and get back to writing (they're currently on shore, staying overnight with the POV's sister, I think she's my favourite FC in this novel)
Of course, I could have just arbitarily stuck a few in, but they'd need a reason to be there and that reason would then have to be part of the story (or twisting the setting to make it viable). Just to introduce a few token characters.
This is going to be a problem with any setting based on a male-dominated society. If you start fiddling with gender roles in a large way, then you need to start changing everything, from moral values to economics. Fiddling with them in a small way -- sure that's where stories come from.
So, if you start with a society where women stay at home and raise kids, and men go out to work and hunt merchant ships, then you're limited, aren't you? Is their a perception in our modern society that women of old, those who stayed home and raised a dozen kids, are inferieor, weaker, not the equal of their present day counterparts? Possibly I've mentioned before, how common it is to pick up a family history magazine and find an article written about someone's ancestress. How she managed to carve out a home in the middle of the bush, made all the clothes, the householdd equipment, ran the farm when the husband was away and raised 14 kids. So she was obviously superior to her peers. Except, as everyone seems to have at least one of these among their forebears, you have to wonder who their peers were. It was a fairly common story. Oh, there were some women who couldn't cope with all the above and those that stayed sensibly at home, but you have to admit, we do tend to look down on our stay-at-home predecessors.
These are the sort of female characters I keep writing about, competent, talented, intelligent women who have their place in society and try to fill it (with the occasional renegade pirate captain for variety). That's what I like exploring. If that means, I find myself with far fewer females than males, it's just a matter of quality vs quantity.
So I'll try to stop grumbling about it and get back to writing (they're currently on shore, staying overnight with the POV's sister, I think she's my favourite FC in this novel)
no subject
Date: 2005-08-27 01:32 pm (UTC)