Gender treatment in fantasy, according to Bakker

[salinea]

Still from Pat's Fantasy Hotlist, interview of R. Scott Bakker, about the Prince of Nothing epic fantasy series which I reviewed here.

- The genre exhibits a strong (albeit recent) tradition for subverting gender stereotypes by presenting worlds in which strong, independent female characters are plausible or even expected. Yet your world is as patriarchal as the reality that inspired it. I expect that this theme makes up for a good part of the discussions you have about your creation, possibly detracting from what you actually want to talk about. Is it difficult to resist the temptation to put something like a bad-ass tomboy warrior-princess with snappy dialogue and a heart of gold into the books?

First, let me say that I think I should be called out on the carpet on this issue, simply because I cover some pretty troubling ground. I certainly don’t believe in "quota characterization," either to be politically correct or to broaden the "gender appeal" of my books. Leave this for the after-school specials. I also don’t think that depiction automatically equals endorsement. The question that people should be asking, it seems to me, is one of whether I reinforce negative gender stereotypes or problematize them. If the books provide enough grist to argue this question, then the answer, it seems to me, automatically becomes the latter.

But the fact remains that a lot of people get hung up on my female characters: On the one hand, I self-consciously chose the harlot, the waif, and the harridan for my female characters, yet some seem to think a kind of unconscious moral defect chose them for me. If so, it would be a truly colossal coincidence that I would happen to pick the three misogynic types - I mean, isn’t it obvious that I’m up to something critical? On the other hand, I wanted my fantasy world to be realistic, to temper our yearning for premodern times with a good look at how ugly things got, particularly in times of war. When bad things happen to my female characters, it’s the circumstances that are being criticized, not the characters themselves!

But people get hunches while they read, and once they do, confirmation bias goes to work (and this is simply one among many reasons why we always buy our own bullshit), and the text, I think, possesses more than enough ambiguities for people spin any number of self-validating interpretations. It’s when they insist their interpretation is the only interpretation, or even worse, that it captures what’s really going on in my bean, that I become baffled.

Now, I'd argue with the form of the question (it's arguable whether it's a genre convention "to subvert gender stereotypes by presenting worlds in which strong, independent female characters are plausible"...), but the subject of females characters in that series is certainly interesting.

For those who haven't read it, the world presented is indeed inescapably gritty and brutally violent, especially against women and there's a strong sense of realism to it.

Of the three characters that Bakker mentions, though, I'd say that only Esmenet, the "harlot", is a real success, she's the only one that can be seen as sympathetic and strong, and her story is compelling. The two others serve more as plot device than anything IMHO. The "harridan" doesn't even have a PoV and is intensely creepy (not that creepiness is exceptionnal in those books ^^), and the "waif", Serwë, is victimised, shallow and stupid enough that despite the sympathy I felt for what she lived through, I would never say I found her interesting as a character.
I do agree about Bakker's point about "problematizing", which is worthy enough, although in this case one should also take into consideration the context of the genre, because if every story is one of gritty realism, then the problematization may be more of a reinforcement than he would think.
Then there's the issue which he fails to mention, which is the treatment of sex and sexuality, and of the bad guys of the setting utilisation of sex in extremely creepy way, and how it relates to his treatment of gender.

Thoughts?

Comments

[scriva.livejournal.com]

RE deconstructing medival sexism:

I think his portrayal is much more a caricature (sp.?) of "medieval sexism" than a real deconstruction, imo. I know that pre-modern society in Europe was pretty babaric, but even then women were able to play different roles than just having to chose between whore or nothing, even if they were mostly excluded from real power and there was no notion of belonging to oneself. This is the same thing that bothers me a little bit in his conception of the Nansur Empire and the Ikurei family; they are the incarnation of Western anti-byzantine prejudices. And even though, Conphas is an interesting character, the whole culture feels somewhat tacked on, not real.

But maybe, that's Bakker's intention writing a story that is constructed of our "cultural" biases and not the portrayal of any real culture.

[etrangere.livejournal.com]

Agree, I addressed a but of that in my answer below. He definitly could have nuanced more the different Inrithi cultures (not to mention the Fanim, and the Scylvandi), he does show different attitudes to homosexuality, after all. As it is the sexism of all societies seem very strangely homogenous for such a vast setting.

The Ikurei family feels all kind of head-scratching. I'm willing to believe that people might be that nuts on occasion, but there's an overthetop to it that never failed to defuddle me.

But maybe, that's Bakker's intention writing a story that is constructed of our "cultural" biases and not the portrayal of any real culture.
Errr... maybe?