Female Characters: What Can Make Them Annoying?
Since I’ve been developing this female character recently, and spotted an interesting thread about it on the NaNo forums (yes, again) yesterday, I’ve started to think of this some more. I suppose that it would be especially valid to examinate female characters written by male authors, yet being a woman doesn’t always mean that we can write our own sex perfectly, so anything would go. What makes female characters annoying? What makes them look like bad stereotypes? What details would turn them into bad or insipid characters, that wouldn’t necessarily produce the same effect with a male protagonist?One author who definitely turns me off on this specific point is Robert Jordan, like I’ve already mentioned a few months ago in my Likeable Charactes post. All his female characters, without exception, are boring at best, seriously irritating at worst. They all end up looking like each other, on top of it. They’re bossy, ordering everyone around, rolling their eyes while repeating “Men!”, whining when people don’t jump at their command, and, in general, absolutely obnoxious. And smoothing their skirts a lot. I can’t even remember the last time I smoothed my skirt (trying to desperately pull it a little lower after discovering that carrying the heavy laptop bag on my shoulder was making it go higher than intended doesn’t count). In a nutshell, these female characters are just stereotypes from the feminazi end of the spectrum—the other end being filled with the fragile creatures whose most major role can only be to end up in the hero’s bed.I know, I know, I’m not especially kind with these poor women. Now let’s get serious a moment. Does “woman with leadership qualities” really need to mean “bossy and quick to anger”? Can’t a woman be something else than either a bimbo ready to fall into a man’s arms or a workaholic whose life doesn’t have room for anything than her job? We’re not two-dimensional only; in real life, we have just as much personality and interest than men, and both sexes are people, all that simply. (However, I’ll admit that some matters are more likely to fall on women’s shoulders: the theme of juggling a career and children, for instance. There again…)As a matter of fact, bad stereotypes AND a high quantity of bad stereotypes are what can really make a story distateful for me, but to illustrate my view on the matter in more details, here are some of the things that I deeply dislike to see in/with female characters:
- Women whose only role in the novel is to become the hero’s love affair (except in romance novels, evidently, but I seldom read some anyway).
- Women who have qualities that can be essential to the plot, but get pushed out of the spotlight at the last minute by one of the male protagonists who “saves the day” when it was unneeded.
- Hags who behave like the only way for a woman to be “strong” is to boss everyone around, spit on men, and force the world to revolve around them.
- Stunningly beautiful creatures with a pea for a brain.
- Mary Sues (a.ka. perfect women/girls who have everything: the looks, the wits, success in everything they do, getting all the males they want, etc). They’re just not believable.
- Fragile little things who can’t lift a finger without breaking it—and, of course, need a man to save the day. As (very) secondary characters, they can be alright, but as main ones? No way.
- Women who are always all dressed up to the nines, no matter the situation or the time of the day. Even the most beautiful girl in the world will wake up someday with disheveled hair and feeling like they’ve eaten an ashtray.
The truth is, I can stand one or two of these character-types, as long as they don’t take too much room in the story and/or have a pretty good reason for being there and with such a behavior, but not more than this. When two or three female characters are bossy witches or wimpy creatures looking for a sperm donor so that they can have babies, my head explodes.Men will have their version of this post later on, by the way.
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Chris Howard
Great post, Yzabel. Tell us who you like in the literature? Not an exhaustive list, just name a few. A couple off the top of my head in fantasies: any of the women in Bujold’s Chalion books, Garth Nix’s Sabriel and Lirael. I’m not a big Jordan fan, but it’s funny that you brought him up. Wheel’s been republished for the young adult and older children’s market with the mainstream market volumes broken into multiple parts. I picked up From the Two Rivers, part one of Eye of the World, but I haven’t passed it along to my daughter for the reasons you name. I have to read Eye again, but I don’t she’d like it.
Yzabel
Well, if there’s one thing you need to know about what will follow after Eye of the World, it’s that it gets worse (regarding the women’s behaviors:roles, and other elements as well, but this is another story). If your daughter is the least bit sensitive about how women are described in books, indeed, she probably would be pretty irked as well.As for who I find well described/authors who do the job well: Charles De Lint writes very convincing female characters in my opinion (at least in the few stories I’ve read). Some of the heroines from the early Pern books are good, too (I really liked the character of Moreta). I also remember I quite liked Althea Vestrit from Robin Hobb’s Liveship Traders series, although it’s been years I’ve read them (and I know that in a matter of 4-5 years, my tastes have pretty much changed; I can’t get into a book by M. Z. Bradley anymore, for instance). There are others, I’ll probably remember them later on today—I haven’t gotten enough caffeine into my system yet this morning to fully function!
Lee Carlon
It’s funny as soon as i saw the title of this post I thought of Jordan, I’m rereading the wheel of time at the moment.The other person I thought of was David Eddings. his females are just as bad.I also like Althea, and Ian Irvine writes very good female characters and often has them saving his male characters.Looking forward to seeing the post about men.
Yzabel
Hmm, I bet everyone must think of Jordan now when they read the words “bad female characters”…David Eddings: I used to really like his books, but the truth is, once you’ve read the belgariad, the Malloreon, The Elenium etc, you realize it’s the same plot and character types recycled over and over. Too bad, because the belgariad itself, if I had only read this one, would probably have remained a very good memory.
Jennifer
If I can associate with a female character I usually like her and it usually means she doesn’t possess any (or very few) of your disliked traits. If I can relate usually they’re every day women.I like strong characters. The ditzy blonde drives me batty, the weak helpless female makes me want to scream. We’re human…make us human.Interesting post. You’ve got me thinking 🙂
Yzabel
“Every day women” tend to make the good part of the spectrum, I think 😉 partly because we can more easily identify with them, and partly because they’re believable (alright, both are related, of course). “Every day” doesn’t have to mean “banal and boring”. This is where skill to create characters who are truthful yet original at the same time enters the scene 🙂
Lee Carlon
Yes, I enjoyed the bellgariad, but my memories of it are lessened by having read some of his other books.And I just remembered, I recommended Ian Irvine as a good writer of female characters, I should add in his fantasy series, not his contempory sci-fi novel, as I was really hoping the ‘heroine’ in the Last Albatros would be killed early in the piece. Very annoying, she wouldn’t stop worry about her bum, and whining about everything.
Yzabel
Well, I’ll keep that in mind in case I’m to read his books them 🙂 Gee, are we all supposed to worry about our bums?
N. Mallory
I write/play in a number of play-by-e-mail role-playing games where you write for one or more characters in an ongoing story and a few years ago one of the players on one such game described his female character as having a rather large chest, which almost wouldn’t have bothered me except that she was constantly looking down at her own chest…I started to feel like she was checking herself out. Very weird.BTW, great post!