Kick-Ass Girls, Conniving Witches and Submissive Whores: Images of Feminine Power in Contemporary Fiction.

Recently, a friend of mine announced to me in an excited voice that finally literature had given up on stereotypical portrayals of women.   When I expressed surprise at her statement, she mentioned Stieg Larssen’s Lisbeth Salander as a mold-breaking protagonist who encompasses feminist values. I shrugged away her comments. I can hardly think of a tattooed hacker as a role model and the more I look around I find heroines in mainstream and genre novels still shaped according to old-fashioned masculine fantasies and girlish fears.

I know that, despite my protestations, many do see in Lisbeth Salander an ideal heroine, one that leases female and masculine readers alike.  After all, she is modern men’s fantasy girl. Thin, lean, flexible of body and covered with tattoos and piercings, she fulfills contemporary notions of feminine beauty. She is a computer wiz, fiercely independent, and she “kicks ass.” Moreover, at an age where most men seem to get excited at the sight of girls necking with each other, Lisbeth is bisexual. She doesn´t need men, she doesn’t want to be supported by men, she doesn´t demand protection or commitment. Even women could be attracted to her because she tramples on everything that makes us weak: romantic love, dependency, fear of physical or sexual violence and a legal system that is not always kind to the female sex.

If Lisbeth is the ideal contemporary heroine then her complete opposite should be Anastasia Steele, the flaky protagonist of the Shades of Grey trilogy. Since Shades could only be classified as erotica, it´s sad to know that, in 2012, the genre still uses clichés created by the Marquis de Sade in the 18th century. Like De Sade’s Justine, virginal Anastasia surrenders completely to a handsome rake who abuses her to his heart’s contentment.

 Anastasia agrees to become millionaire Christian Grey´s sexual slave only because he is sexy, good-looking and wealthy. Hey! After all isn’t that what women crave? Gorgeous dude, great in bed and a good provider? But those attributes don´t cloak the fact that Shades is a remake of the old rape fantasy. More than a female fantasy, Shades is the sum of all feminine fears.

In fantasy rape, the fantasists always enjoyed the act, and so does Anastasia. She derives pleasure from Christian´s abuse even when it evolves into sexual violence. Because, despite what its advocates claim, the multiple BSDM scenarios in the book could only be describe as violent. In a milder scene that takes place inside an elevator, Christian tugs Anastasia’s hair while kissing her roughly. She relishes it! I would be gouging the eyes of any creature that messes with my hair!

Many try to sell BDSM erotica as examples of “women empowerment.”  I can’t think how being spanked, mocked and tied-up constitutes “empowerment” especially since Anastasia not only enjoys her “master’s” attentions. She is also getting regular injections of cash that swells her bank account. Yes, the submissive whore stereotype is doing quite well in the bestsellers list.

What really blew my mind about 50 Shades of Grey were not its idiotic protagonists, but the fact that it was based on the author´s fan fiction...about Twilight! I can´t picture chivalrous Edward pulling a tampon off Bella’s vagina, but obviously E.L. James does, and so do the detractors of Stephanie Meyer's saga who claim that Bella is a “submissive” heroine. Odd, I must have read another story because she didn’t strike me as such. What I did notice is that Bella and Sookie Stackhouse of Charlene Harris’ vampire stories are damsels in distress, always in need of werewolf and blood-suckers paramours to come to their rescue. It gives the impression that paranormal romances are all about frail heroines. Does that apply to the Fantasy genre in general?

Unprecedented literary success has brought George R.R. Martin a nice bunch of critics, feminists among then. For a couple of  entries in my Fantasy Blog I found and read several articles discussing different aspects of Martin´s misogyny and the negative handling of feminine characters and female power in his Song of Ice and Fire. Some critics seem to resent the fact that Martin’s strong, independent women like Melisandre, the sexy conniving witch, and Cersei, the sexy conniving queen, are portrayed as evil.

Critics, and not only feminists, have the bad habit of imposing modern moral standards upon historical fiction or fantasy texts. Martin´s women, good and bad, are pretty strong for the barbaric patriarchal world they inhabit. And because it is Epic Fantasy, Martin even includes an ancient archetype, the kick-ass, cross-dressing, warrior maiden, Lisbeth Salander’s medieval equivalent. The saga is pitted with girls that dress like men and fight like men such as Arya Stark, Asha (Yara in the TV series) Greyjoy, Ygrette, the Wilding, and, my favorite, Brienne of Tarth.

Born a lady, Brienne’s plainness (and the fact that she is taller and stronger than the knights in her realm) makes her unlikely marriage material. So she trains to be a knight. When she falls in love with King Renly, she goes to his court to serve him as a squire- bodyguard, knowing he could never reciprocate her feelings (aside from being married, Renly is gay).) What´s interesting about Brienne is that she kills men, is very skillful with her sword, and is terribly strong, but she is far from a virago. For someone who dresses like a man, she is quite feminine. She is shy, sensitive, naïve and she loves troubadour’s songs as much as Sansa Stark (Westeros epitome of refined femininity) does.

Like Lisbeth Salander, she hurts men who hurt women, but unlike The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Brienne is not a stone wall: she cries, feels sorry for Jaime (with whom she is obviously falling in love) and appreciates the positive aspects of her sex as when she pledges her service to Catelyn claiming to admire Lady Stark's “woman’s courage.”

It is interesting that Martin shows women as both destroying and creating forces, as helpers as well as enemies of the men that love them. Curious, because modern literature insists in presenting women as connivers and bringers of sorrow.  In Ian McEwan’s Atonement, poor Robbie Turner is destroyed by two women, one he loves, one who loves him. Robbie has been aided in his studies by the Tallis Family, his mother´s employer. However, in the closely structured British class system, he is constantly reminded of his place, especially by Cecilia, the Tallis eldest daughter. On the other hand, he befriends little Bryony, Cecilia´s sister, a precocious would-be-writer who develops a crush on him.

After seeing half-naked Cecilia taking a dunk in the garden’s fountain, tumescent Robbie writes an embarrassing letter describing his feelings towards her. Bryony finds the letter and is shocked by Robbie’s sexually explicit language. She sublimates her jealousy into fear by making herself believe Robbie is a deranged pervert. After seeing him and her sister making love, Bryony is convinced he is dangerous, and when her cousin gets raped in the woods, Bryony accuses Robbie, who is sent to jail. Although Cecilia believes in his innocence and stands by him, there is a sense that her bewitching beauty caused Robbie’s downfall and that his life could have been much better if he had never met these dangerous sisters.

We can’t accuse Ian McEwan of being impartial to women when female authors play the same game. In 2001, the same year that Atonement came out, Philippa Gregory published The Other Boleyn Girl a fictionalized view of Henry the Eighth’s second marriage.  The plot follows Ann and Mary Boleyn’s rivalry for the love of King Henry who casts away loving Mary in order to marry her ambitious sister. For some reason, most novelists tend to be unfair to Ann Boleyn. Indeed she meddled in politics and religious affairs, but she was also a patron of the arts, and no more ambitious than most high-class ladies of her day. Her sister Mary had several lovers before getting into King Henry’s bed, and by the time Ann came to Court, her royal affair was over.

In the book, Ann and Mary are loving sisters despite their different characters. Anne is strong-minded and rebellious. As he mother puts it, she is used to get what she wants just by “stomping her little feet on the ground.” Sweet and obedient Mary is happy to be married to a not very bright young squire. Henry visits the Boleyn Manor and Thomas Boleyn pushes a very willing Ann into the king’s path. Although Henry is taken by her beauty, he resents Ann´s facetious willfulness and sets his eyes on demure Mary. When the men in her family (including her own husband) prod Mary into the royal bed, she has no option but to comply. Eventually she falls in love with the king, who enjoys her meekness, thus she becomes his submissive whore, but not for long. By the time Mary is bedridden with pregnancy, Ann is back.

With ruthless ambitious and cruel vindictiveness, Ann does everything in her power to lure Henry away from her sister. Se does not want just to be a mistress; she becomes queen by withholding her sexual favors from the king. Driven by lust, Henry divorces Catherine of Aragon, Mary is forgotten, but Ann never gets her husband´s love. Her willful ways, constant tantrums and inability to provide him with an heir, soon bore the King who has Ann put on trial. The many charges include sorcery since only under her conniving spells could the King have committed so many follies.

Ann loses her head for being a tempting witch while her sister fares better; Mary keeps her life and fades into oblivion. The novel seems to have two morals:  is better to be a submissive whore than a bewitching sorceress, and when it comes to men, women will trample upon their own sisters. After glancing over these images of “powerful “women, I rather stick with Lisbeth Salander.

Could you think of examples in recent literature of female protagonists that are good role models? What about your heroines? How do you make them strong yet appealing?

Malena (Formerly known as Violante)

Writing from Life

During a writing workshop I took not too long ago, one of my classmates submitted an excerpt from a piece he was working on: a memory of his, which he’d embellished and turned into a story. It was a ghost story, and we’ll leave off for the moment that the “ghost” bit was something he believed was reality. The problem I had with the opening scene was the dog’s name.

“I don’t think ‘Smoodgy’ really matches the feel you’re going for here,” I said.

“But it was really his name,” he said.

“Right. But this is fiction, so you can change the name.”

“But why should I?”

“Because it’s a ghost story, and that name lightens the mood. I don’t think you want a light mood here.”

He stared at me. “It was really his name.”

I gave up at that point. But the student’s difficulty in deciding which real bits to keep, and which bits to change for the sake of the scene, was all too common. I face similar problems with my own work, only it’s much easier to spot it in other writers’ stories.

But Cujo really looked like this!

Our own lives are the richest source of material we have for fiction. Even the most out-there spec-fiction writer is drawing from her experience in some way or another. But stories that very closely mirror reality can still legitimately be called “fiction”: it’s up to the writer (within reason) to decide. It seems to me that as long as names and details are changed to protect others’ privacy, it’s totally legit to present memoir as fiction – though not the other way around.

At the moment, I am most moved to write about my own life, probably because I’ve been reading a lot of microscopic navel-gazing autobiographical fiction. Suddenly that thing that happened in fourth grade with the large boy who pretended he was the Incredible Hulk until we all ganged up on him and literally kicked him as he lay howling Hulkishly on the ground … it seems like fodder for a good story. It begs to be fictionalized. But I have to keep some caveats in mind:

Don’t be too literal. It doesn’t matter what really happened. Reality is merely a suggestion here. To break yourself out of reality, deliberately change at least one thing about the story before you even start: change the sex of a major player, change the setting, change the year. This will help you break out of the mode of “memoir” and release yourself into “fiction.” This is important because real life is messy and, frankly, mostly pointless; stories, on the other hand, must be meaningful and organized in order to be emotionally satisfying.

Don’t be vague. Writers who tell a story that really happened to them may forget that the reader wasn’t there. They make assumptions, letting the reader fill in the blanks. Don’t forget to provide details. Describe the setting, describe how the people looked, describe the time period. You can always go back and edit things out if you’ve overdescribed, but get the details clear first.

Don’t mistake ‘anecdote’ for ‘story’:  Many of us have been warned against “slice of life” stories, but we don’t really know what that means. It means you don’t have conflict. All you have is description. A curious event is not a story, quirky people are not stories. You have to have problem. If there was none in your anecdote, make it up: conflict is the heart of every story.

This is not you

Don’t portray yourself as a saint: Stories in which we star have a major potential pitfall: we make ourselves look way too good. In that anecdote about the Hulk Boy, I would be sorely tempted to make myself the person who did none of the kicking; especially since I was bullied myself, I certainly don’t want to tell everyone about what a horrid little mutant I was that day. But that fact may be the heart of the story: it’s more interesting to be behind the spectacles of the nice person who makes a terrible decision than to observe a nice person just … being nice. If your anecdote has you being heroic or merely passive, change it. Switch POVs, if you need to: write the story from the most dynamic person’s viewpoint.

Don’t implicate real people: I touched on this before, but if your characters are based on real people, change enough things about those people so nobody can tell who they are. As Violante mentioned in her post on Romans-à-clef, Miranda Priestly in The Devil Wears Prada was widely assumed to be based on Anna Wintour, the very real Vogue editor. You can get away this kind of thinly-disguised character assassination, probably, but it’s safer and kinder to disguise your characters thoroughly. It will also make high-school reunions and family Thanksgivings less awkward.

An addendum to this “Don’t” is the flipside “Don’t be afraid to write about real people.” Someone told me she recently trashed all her journal entries about one crazy family she’s been peripherally involved with, because she was afraid the information might somehow get out and cause problems. I thought this was a terrible shame; she's been telling me these stories, and they’re quite colorful. All she needs to do is hide the identifying details. I’ve been afraid to write about my own (significantly less crazy) family, for fear of causing rifts. But writers need to write. As long as you are protecting people’s privacy, don’t stop yourself from writing a good story, for any reason. At least get the words down: you can always vet the story before publication, if you are so lucky as to get a publication offer.

Now that the Don’ts are over, let’s focus on the Dos: much more fun. (For a more thorough exploration of these, see “Turning Life IntoFiction,” by Robin Hemley.)

Keep a journal: Writers are usually more observant than the average person, by nature, but you can train up this quality by keeping a writer’s observation journal. Notice conversations, jot down memories, describe scenes. Not only does this sharpen your perception skills, but the notes may later serve as filler for your stories. An anecdote or fragment of a dream may even be the seed for a complete story. Writing every day also keeps you in the habit of, well, writing every day.

Scenes from life

Experiment with form: Since this is a post about turning life into fiction, I’ll skip the memoir and focus on short story vs. novel. My favorite autobiographical fiction form is the short story: it allows for a more impressionistic approach. If you go on like that in a novel, you’re likely to bore the reader: there has to be more conflict and more action in a novel. The downside of the short story is that you have to be extremely economical with language: every little word counts. The short story also tends to be less character-focused, since you don’t have time to develop the characters except in rough portrait. Description reigns.

Although I have no stats on this, it seems to me that short stories are making a comeback: Several writers of note (such as Jhumpa Lahiri, Junot Diaz, Alice Munro, and Michael Chabon) have put out recent short story collections that have done well. These stories are typically not big clever ideas with a twist, but meditations on the everyday. You get the feeling they are highly autobiographical. On the novel side, I recently finished Justin Torres’s beautiful, luminous little gem, We the Animals, which is based partly (mostly? entirely?) on his childhood. The slim little book barely registers as a novel, though, and took him – by his own admission – five years to complete. Sometimes, the more of ourselves we pour into a story, the harder it is to write. Worth keeping in mind.

Focus: Because life is messier than fiction is allowed to be, we need to impose structure on our autobiographical fiction. This has been, as my sisters know, my biggest struggle. I almost feel unqualified to talk about it, but let me pass on Hemley’s advice: pick one aspect of your story to focus on: character, theme, setting, or Big Event. He gives examples: Nick in The Great Gatsby is an example of the narrator as observer, telling the story from a distance. In Gone with the Wind, the focus is on Tara, the estate. Setting is primary there. Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar uses theme (the titular bell jar) to organize her autobiographical work. The Big Event focuses on one cataclysm, such as the big-game hunt in Hemingway’s The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber, or the suicide that forms the framework for my own WIP.

If you’re like me, you look at that list and think, well, each of those aspects is vital. How can I possibly zero in on one? I suppose they key is not to exclude the others, but to make one the hook, the center of gravity around which the others revolve. Certainly Gone with the Wind has strong characters, and The Great Gatsby has a Big Event, but the stories spin around one axis. Think of which axis your story really spins around: that can be your organizational guide.

How much of your own writing stems from your experience? What advantages and pitfalls have you encountered when trying to write about your life? How have you overcome them?

The Powerful Pull of Superheroes

Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone
in the latest and greatest version
of Spiderman.

Lately, I've been very intrigued by the comic book and graphic novel industry. Recently, I took a trip to Paris and, out of curiosity, I wanted to see if the Virgin Megastore on the Champs Elysées was still in business (considering how so many forms of entertainment have gone digital). For me, it was a trip down memory lane, being a poor broke English assistant, I spent many hours with headphones on listening to the latest CDs on the market. (Wow, do I feel old!) Of course, the store had changed and things had been rearranged but, to my surprise, the top floor was dedicated to a café, a small pricey area filled with expensive writing utensils and... comic books and graphic novels. I'm talking walls and rows of comics and graphic novels I'd never heard of and some that have been around for years. All I could think was, "Who reads these?" because I certainly don't. I didn't take a photo to share, but click here if you'd like to see what it looks like.

A few months back I wrote a guest post entitled "The Year of the Superhero," and quite frankly I wrote it because I've noticed how saturated movie theaters have become when it comes to movies about superheroes. By the end of this summer, there will have been five superhero movies released already this year. Marvel Comics alone has a new comic book on stands every Wednesday. Not being a comic book reader, that sure shocked the pants off of me!

And I'm also curious as to why so many people get pulled into these stories. There obviously has to be a market for both comic books and graphic novels if they are getting published on a very regular basis since their popularity exploded in 1939. So, I went in search of some answers.

First, let's start by defining the difference between comic books and graphic novels. According to Graphic Novels.com, here is how they define both mediums:

❝Graphic novels are, simply defined, book-length comics. Sometimes they tell a single, continuous narrative from first page to last; sometimes they are collections of shorter stories or individual comic strips. Comics are sequential visual art, usually with text, that are often told in a series of rectangular panels. Despite the name, not all comics are funny. Many comics and graphic novels emphasize drama, adventure, character development, striking visuals, politics, or romance over laugh-out-loud comedy.❞

But what is it about these storylines, with their comically dressed masked men and women and bubbles of words floating about their heads? Why do we need superheroes in our lives?

The Phantom

One of the longest running comics still on the market is The Phantom, the first ever superhero to grace the pages of a newspaper. He doesn't have any supernatural powers like those who followed in his footsteps (i.e. Superman, Spiderman, The Green Lantern, Wonderwoman, etc.), but rather relies upon his natural powers and skills like Batman, Black Widow, and Iron Man. In an informal and unscientific conversation with my husband who used to be quite the fanboy back in the day (and in some ways still is), I asked him what he enjoys about superheroes in general. Do those with supernatural powers outweigh those without? Do the female superheroes need to be sexy in order to draw the male public in? And the stories -- are they any good?

For my husband, The Punisher is his favorite. If you can remember back to the films that have been made, then you'll know they didn't fare too well at the box office. But it's the guns and the vendetta The Punisher has that makes him relatable to the reading public (or mainly to men). He's an antihero of sorts, one who goes after the criminals with any type of war weaponry available. He stands up for the little guy. And, perhaps, there in lies the key. Will any given superhero stand up for Plain Jane and Average Joe when the going gets tough? He pretty much has to if he wants the public to love him.

Here is a list of other characteristics many superheroes share:

• Intelligent
• Wears a Costume (I can't think of one who doesn't.)
• Athletic
• Role Model
• Has a Weakness (Kryptonite, anyone?)
• Has an Arch Enemy
• Secret Identity (alter ego)
• Love Interest (i.e. Mary Jane, Lois Lane, any one of Bruce Wayne's women)
• Has a Goal
• Special Powers (not necessarily supernatural powers)
• Earns Respect
• Has a sidekick
• Unique
• Uses Gadgets
• Has a Lair or Hideout
• Interesting Past (this is what motivates him in his quests)
• Vehicle (i.e. the Batmobile, Iron Man's suit, the cool plane the X-Men use)
• Determined
• Strong
• Brave

That's quite a list, but every single one of them is true. What would Superman be like if not for kryptonite weakening his powers? Batman needs his Batcave, right? And don't forget that gadgets are a must for Iron Man.

Overall, I think what most look for in a superhero is whether or not he is incredible in some extraordinary way and yet is very human and relatable to what is going on in one's life. My husband prefers those who don't possess a supernatural power because they are just like you and me. Take a look at Bruce Wayne. He has this dark past that makes him human on many different levels, but when the sun goes down, he goes out and hunts down the bad guys. At the same time most comic book and graphic novel readers enjoy the badassery of all superheroes, even the somewhat antiheroes like V from V for Vendetta. He's out there cleaning up the streets using his terrorist tactics to fight against his totalitarian government, but also keeping a cozy existence underground enjoying the simpler things in life like music and books. Superman has impressive powers, but at the same time he's just a boy who grew up on a farm and works as a reporter for his day job. You can't get more basic than that, can you?

Sometimes a superhero never
connects with the audience, like
with The Green Hornet.

But, sometimes a superhero's story just doesn't connect with the public. The most recent occurrence of this is with the 2011 release of The Green Hornet starring Seth Rogen and Jay Chou. My first thought when this film was released was "Who thought Seth Rogen could play a superhero?" (Personally, I think he lacks some of that "athletic" skill mentioned in the list above.) And many critics mirrored my thoughts. Roger Ebert didn't mince words when he said, "The Green Hornet is an almost unendurable demonstration of a movie with nothing to be about." Mike LaSalle from The San Francisco Chronicle had this to say:

"No one loved it into existence. No one had a dream...it feels less like an adaptation of The Green Hornet than a series of vague gestures on a 'Green Hornet' theme. In the place of the basic elements of storytelling, the movie offers vacancy."

In truth, consumers of comic books and graphic novels don't want to spend their money on some vague story that offers no satisfaction in return. They want to see the hero overpower the villain. They want to see what drives that character to go on a vigilante quest. They want to know what weakens the superheroes strengths and how that superhero devises a plan to get around such obstacles. The reader wants to feel his/her own vindication in the end, and, of course, there needs to be a hook to push that reader into buying the next installment in the series.

After all, what Mike LaSalle has to say at the end of his review is very true indeed:

"It's strange, but even in an action comedy, if the audience doesn't care whether the protagonist gets killed, it's a big problem. Without that one human element, all the carefully orchestrated action becomes mere commotion -- and sleep inducing."

Keep that in mind. We don't want to become noise in a reader's ear, to the point that he/she stops reading our work. Any writer needs to make the reader care about that main character -- no matter what genre you write!

Are you a comic book/graphic novel reader? If so, what's your favorite and why? Do you feel that any of the longstanding stories have jumped the shark and you just won't read them anymore? Do you feel the films ever measure up to what's written in the books?