Most fantasy authors choose a low-tech setting for their alternate worlds. Without going into the reasons for that, which are themselves fascinating and sometimes illogical, I will go straight to the result: by choosing low-tech we catapult ourselves backwards into history, often choosing to build a society that is less progressive than our own.
This ensures your mages reign supreme over swords and arrows (although some medieval weapons were badass, if you ask me) – but that’s not the only reason to do it. The more road blocks you can put in front of a character, the better. Readers tend to identify with the underdog, the person who is struggling against great injustices, and therefore what’s better than putting him in a society where things are unequal?
But then we get to the women. Romance gets complicated when you have a historically-adjacent setup of empowered males and disempowered females. In the United States, where this blog resides, women constitute 51% of the population but make up only 17% of congress, and they continue to struggle for control of their own reproduction. We moderns have not succeeded in working out our own issues, so portraying them is tricky. What’s worse is that romance in itself – its tradition of broody men and devoted women – is a ‘how not to’ guide for our daughters.
In short, we as writers tend to combine low-tech/less progressive settings with our own society’s pervasive sexism as expressed in romance’s literary tradition. The former is obvious, and may include attention-getters such as an abundance of prostitutes or rape. The latter is subtle and more problematic for me.
For the purpose of this post I am limiting my comments to fantasy. I haven’t read enough science fiction to know what I’m talking about – and I suspect the complaints I’m about to enumerate don’t apply. Before I continue I’d also like to admit I’m not immune myself to any of the criticism herein.
I rarely find what I consider to be an adult relationship in fantasy (some exceptions include but are not limited to Lynn Flewelling, Carol Berg, Teresa Frohock, J.V. Jones, and Bradley Beaulieu). Too often an extremely young man meets an extremely young woman, a bond is made, and that’s it for the rest of their book/lives. Even if they spend a large part of the book separated, their love remains true. For a woman it tends to be more dire, and the only way she can get out of a relationship is if the man is evil or dead. A son of mine has offered this in defense of the men: the only way they can get out of it, he says, is by taking on the brand of ‘cheater,’ which is usually a signpost on the way to ‘evil.’
So that’s it. They’re stuck. He might be broody, but she’s patient and understands. The female protagonist might have some issue with intimacy, but he’s a gentleman and he understands. Then something comes between them – magic or a big bad – and they overcome it are finally united/reunited at the end. A comfortable story. We’re all familiar with it and we know what to expect. It’s fun to see them eventually get together. What’s more, it’s historically adjacent and therefore seemingly more accurate for our low-tech settings than modern experimentation and sophistication.
Here’s the problem. There are dozens and dozens of fantasy romances out there in which women dedicate their heart, bodies, and wombs to one guy at a young age (and vice versa, except for the womb part). Sex without love and commitment rarely occurs, unless there are prostitutes or seductive faeries around for the men to enjoy. Children, once conceived, must be be given birth to, unless there is a tragic miscarriage. It closes our leading women into restrictive roles – not professionally, as fantasy women might be mages, healers, even fighters, but socially and emotionally as chaste, nurturing people.
You see, we writers, sensitive to sexism, will often make the man the less likable member of the relationship. He is the one who makes mistakes; he is the one who is broody or doesn’t communicate, while the woman is more perfect. This is problematic. What happens is that the female ends up as part mother, part therapist, urging him on to be a better man, helping him to cope with the hardships of growing into an adult relationship or defeating the big bad. She becomes a catalyst in the story of him: his sounding board, his love interest, the thing that spurs him towards improvement. Many authors handle it better than I have depicted here in this paragraph, but my point is the same. In trying to show what we think is good about women, we reveal ourselves: what’s good about women is that they motivate and inspire the men.
What’s wrong with being nurturing and wonderful? Well, nothing! But they can’t all be like that. And in real life, a strong female might just break up with the broody guy with issues. And where are the unlikable women, the prickly females? They are too few and far between. My daughter pointed out to me that women want to see imperfect heroines, flawed characters to whom they can relate, not a confidence-busting, idealized image.
Repetition encourages itself, especially if we get pleasure from it. In other words, the more we repeat these troublesome romantic scenarios – and add the payoff of a cathartic first kiss or sexual encounter – the more they will echo in our books and in our daughters.
I don’t have any answers, and I’m frequently guilty of the same offenses I’m outlining. All I try to do is be more aware of it. I try not to make sex a shameful thing. I try not to lock men and women into their roles. I try to give women choices, no matter how small, given the setting. But I am not perfect by any means.
Finally, near the end of my post, I will admit that I see things changing. I see a lot of progress. I expect in the comments there will be many examples of great books that in no way fall into these romantic traps. But we are not finished yet.
When cries of sexism go out, we shouldn’t reflexively dismiss them or offer long defenses. We should search for whether there is an underlying truth. You know when you are walking along in the dark, and there’s just the tiniest patch of ice on the sidewalk, but your foot just happens to land right on it and begins to slide? That. You thought you were on firm ground, but you were mistaken; there was something there that you couldn’t see. Our own biases, our own skewed perceptions, are sometimes impossible to perceive. Writing is a learning process. So we try to learn.
Sarah Jane on February 27, 2012
I agree. This is the Jane Austen template about which I complain rather a lot. And the black ice dogs us in countless realms.
Paul (@princejvstin) on February 27, 2012
You see, we writers, sensitive to sexism, will often make the man the less likable member of the relationship. He is the one who makes mistakes; he is the one who is broody or doesn’t communicate, while the woman is more perfec
The “pedestal” problem. There is also the “Madonna or whore” dichotomy that turns up in a lot of writing.
Anne Lyle on February 27, 2012
You clearly haven’t met my prickly heroine and nurturing hero
You make some great points, though – in fact I hadn’t thought about their relationship in quite those terms until I read your description of the reverse situation. I wasn’t consciously subverting that trope, though I did with several others.
I agree that it’s difficult portraying strong, powerful women in settings where, traditionally, they had even less power than nowadays – it’s possible, but it requires serious creative thought as well as awareness that the problem exists in the first place. A lot of writers just fall back on familiar tropes instead of pushing themselves to write something unique.
Mark Lawrence on February 27, 2012
Hmmm. It all sounds generically true… and I can’t claim to have read a large percentage of the fantasy out there. But the truth is I can’t remember any examples at all of the loyal nurturing woman character (with any significant page time) in any fantasy book I’ve read in the last 20 years… We demand examples!
W.G. Marshall on February 27, 2012
Great essay. The issue of how to portray realistically complex women is a touchy one, just as race is touchy. Since I’m only interested in “flawed” characters, readers looking for positive role models in my work are apt to be discouraged. I gladly cop to being a misanthrope (we humans do kinda suck), but not a misogynist.
Mazarkis on February 27, 2012
@Anne – no I didn’t know about your book. I will check it out.
@Mark – I hate to name names, but just off the top of my head, Robert Jordan.
Anne Lyle on March 2, 2012
No reason you should have heard of it; it’s not out until the end of March so there haven’t been many reviews yet.
Your own book is on my “to buy” list – sounds right up my street, with all that political intrigue. I just have to find time to slot it into my busy schedule!
Mazarkis on February 27, 2012
I would like to point out that I see elements of this in even some of my favourites, which makes me even more reluctant to call out any authors
Mark Lawrence on February 27, 2012
Never read any Jordan.
And when I go out for a walk I prefer to enjoy the journey than to minutely examine the road for patches of ice. If I land on my bum once in a while… well, it’s all part of life’s rich cliche.
Nicole Murphy on February 27, 2012
I think a better title for this post would have been ‘the trouble with romance in fantasy’. The moment you write ‘fantasy romance’, you have those of us who read and write romance thinking about this in terms of the genre of romance and in that respect, what you’re saying is wrong. There’s still exceptions (there is to everything) but romance is by far moving away from the brooding hero and sweet woman trope. Nowadays, if your woman isn’t a strong, self-contained type who can just as easily make her way in the world without a man thank you very much, you’ll have a hard time selling romance.
However, in terms of romantic relationships within the fantasy genre – spot on. In my opinion, it’s one of the reasons behind the rise of urban fantasy and paranormal romance – that readers can enjoy fantasy and also see real relationships.
I think this might be a gender issue in terms of authors, something that isn’t as much an issue here in Australia where the majority of our fantasy authors are women. Here, we’ve got folks like Trudi Canavan, Fiona McIntosh and Rowena Daniells writing high or epic fantasy with very real female characters having very real romantic relationships.
I know that overseas, men still outnumber women in the fantasy stakes and perhaps that is the issue – the men don’t feel comfortable writing romance and so they fall back on tropes or cliches rather than creating real characters and letting them have real interactions?
Mazarkis on February 27, 2012
The unstudied life.
Mazarkis on February 27, 2012
@Nicole – you are right. I was trying to be clear about my subject matter, but failed. You make an interesting point about urban fantasy. Unfortunately I have not read enough of it.
I am not sure whether it’s just men who do this. Twilight exists, after all
Nicole Murphy on February 27, 2012
Yeah – there’s a bad apple in every barrel
Mark Lawrence on February 27, 2012
isn’t that ‘the unexamined life’ :p
NicoleL on February 27, 2012
I agree with Nicole M that this is a gendered issue in terms of the writers — not exclusively of course, but I find that men writing fantasy generally fall into these tropes while women tend to be more thoughtful and try to avoid them. It’s one of the reasons that I tend to read more women authors than men in fantasy.
I think it’s this lack of thoughtful creation that also equates low tech with less progressive. Just because the majority of fantasy has been written in a pseudo-medievalist Europe with traditional gender roles as seen in the history of Western society does not mean low tech must equal less progressive societies.
Off the top of my head, Kate Elliott’s Traitor’s Gate duology does a great job of looking at how the status of women varies in different low tech societies, from very low status to equal status.
Thanks for your post on this @Mazarkis. I think it’s important for authors to call attention to these topics, especially men, who don’t get as much automatic backlash as women do when they say the same thing. Also I just picked up a copy of your book based on the post on your blog about the other things you try to push back on in your writing.
mazarkis on February 28, 2012
@Nicole–thanks!
Rebecca on March 6, 2012
There are only so many stories to begin with, and when you’re writing a fantasy romance, you’ve limited the field even further. Of course most of these stories are similar. How can they not be? Even if the story is fantastical, there must be some verisimilitude, which tells us that stories set in a medieval-esque time-period will force some marginalization of women – either by putting them on the pedestal, or by knocking them off of it. There are not a lot of choices, because we, as fantasy romance authors, are grounded in our own medieval history – where women WERE subjugated. She had few choices: wife/mother (birth control was unreliable), whore/prostitute, or nun. If our heroines rise above it all and finds some happiness, then praise the Lord. And if our heroes and heroines are young, well, that’s realistic too – when lifespans were significantly shorter and so many young ladies died in childbirth. If we can coax a successful love story out of all that, such is the better. I’m writing one of these now and these concepts roll through my mind all the time. I fight the trope, but I don’t manage to entirely subvert it. I’m not sure I can. My female protagonist is strong, but feminine. My male protagonist is filled with angst. What do you expect? They’re teenagers, and in medieval times, that made them adults.
mazarkis on March 6, 2012
As Nicole pointed out, I should have made the headline “romance in fantasy” not “fantasy romance” but having said that, I agree there’s not much to do about the woman’s situation after choosing certain settings. I too chose a setting in which women were second-class citizens.