The problem comes (and here I am glaring straight at Freud)
(I'm impressed you managed to read through my stream of consciousness there. Been practicing on Joyce? *g*)
Bingo, and total agreement. **glares too**
And yeah, sex as power--and the interplay of sex and power--is a very interesting dynamic, and one that really fascinates me. My emotional reaction to the various relationships in the Pern books is more, I think, that they're bad not just because they're abrogations of female personhood (looking at when they were written and who was writing them, and how naive the characterizations in those books are as a whole) but also because they're oversimplified and disingenuous.
On the other hand, when I started reading SFF (as a wee bairn) Lessa was one of the stronger female characters out there. The other things I was reading at the same time--what, 1977, 1978 or so? must have been, because I clearly remember when White Dragon came out, my mom bought it in hardcover (something she never did), and I was disappointed because I couldn't get into it, having devoured the then-extant four books--my other options were Heinlein, Asimov, Piers Anthony, ROger Zelazny (Amber novels) Andre Norton (who had mostly male protags, iirc), and so on.
Remember: Downbelow Station was still three years away. Titan was a year in the future. (to name two books with better female characters) Dragonflight, by contrast, was already ten years old, having been published in 1968. Good girls *really* didn't, back in the day, and if they did they promptly fell in love and got married.
This was the bad old days, the era of the Gor series, God help us, and in my childish estimation Lessa and Menolly were up there with Jirel of Joiry. *g* So I think as a certain type of period piece, it's still got validity: I'm not sure you can judge it by today's standards. (Not that I've read them since I turned 12 or 13, I think)
Anyway, all that history aside, what bothers me more is that that she-really-wanted-it still shows up in fiction today. And a lot. More often in my slush than in published whaddevah, but in the published whaddevah, too.
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momijizukamori
Re: Rape vs. Ravishment vs. Smut
Date: 2003-07-06 06:08 pm (UTC)(I'm impressed you managed to read through my stream of consciousness there. Been practicing on Joyce? *g*)
Bingo, and total agreement. **glares too**
And yeah, sex as power--and the interplay of sex and power--is a very interesting dynamic, and one that really fascinates me. My emotional reaction to the various relationships in the Pern books is more, I think, that they're bad not just because they're abrogations of female personhood (looking at when they were written and who was writing them, and how naive the characterizations in those books are as a whole) but also because they're oversimplified and disingenuous.
On the other hand, when I started reading SFF (as a wee bairn) Lessa was one of the stronger female characters out there. The other things I was reading at the same time--what, 1977, 1978 or so? must have been, because I clearly remember when White Dragon came out, my mom bought it in hardcover (something she never did), and I was disappointed because I couldn't get into it, having devoured the then-extant four books--my other options were Heinlein, Asimov, Piers Anthony, ROger Zelazny (Amber novels) Andre Norton (who had mostly male protags, iirc), and so on.
Remember: Downbelow Station was still three years away. Titan was a year in the future. (to name two books with better female characters) Dragonflight, by contrast, was already ten years old, having been published in 1968. Good girls *really* didn't, back in the day, and if they did they promptly fell in love and got married.
This was the bad old days, the era of the Gor series, God help us, and in my childish estimation Lessa and Menolly were up there with Jirel of Joiry. *g* So I think as a certain type of period piece, it's still got validity: I'm not sure you can judge it by today's standards. (Not that I've read them since I turned 12 or 13, I think)
Anyway, all that history aside, what bothers me more is that that she-really-wanted-it still shows up in fiction today. And a lot. More often in my slush than in published whaddevah, but in the published whaddevah, too.