Heroines in Fiction
And still the debate over whether woman have achieved emancipation in fiction rages on. Well, it kind of depends.
What I love about the Urban Fantasy genre is that it doesn’t matter if the main character is male or female. Jim Butcher’s character Harry Dresden is just as entertaining as Darynda Jones’ Charley Davidson. Most series I read have female leads, but even among those books lies a whole lot of gray, from the tough-on-the outside Damsel to the softly spoken Buttkicker.
In television, the first truly independent woman who could hold her own and accepted-but-didn’t-need help from tall strangers was Buffy Summers. She was kind, insecure, certainly not in love with her own powers, but always ready with the stake when a fanged foe came a-knocking.
Before Buffy, strong women, for example in anime, were stripped of nearly everything that made them female, as if femininity and violence, or even femininity and self-confidence, were mutually exclusive. Even today this sort of thinking finds great favor with certain screen writers and authors.
But heroines can be wonderfully feminine and tough at the same time. I’m not even talking about characters walking around unshaven with a chip on their shoulder, stabbing any man that looks at them funny. No, mental strength is the true key to emancipating a character. Cagney and Lacey, those eighties female cops, had that in spades. While one was married with children, the other was looking for love. Yet both did their jobs with the kind of obsession that had up to that point been considered exclusively a male domain. Sadly they were surrounded by plenty of chauvinists to provide humor for the less enlightened.
In fact, Cagney and Lacey’s partnership inspired my book Divide and Conquer. I wanted to spin a story around two women with fiercely different backgrounds being thrown together by a common fate. Lea and Nieve, my characters, do not become BFFs immediately, but they are connected by a bond that transcends normal friendship. At the same time, I did not want a Buffy/Faith scenario, where they were always at odds with one another.
Sadly, too many agents and readers still prefer a strong male to ably assist their “feisty” heroine (nothing condescending about being called “feisty,” right, ladies?). In fact, I was once asked by a beta reader to give the males of Divide and Conquer a more prominent role. When I enquired what she meant, I was told a romance is only believable if the man proves his worth by playing the central role in the ultimate battle. Otherwise he would not be an alpha male.
Seriously?
Well, I believe in the ‘alpha female.’ Luckily, most authors agree that Urban Fantasy is one genre where women can be strong and competent. Where they choose their friends and their partners according to their own ideas, and not in line with expected stereotypes. Here, women are allowed to cry, throw a hissy, kick ass if ass needs kicking, and generally emote and act like real-life human beings.
Hurrah for Urban Fantasy.
What are your feelings on the subject?
