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truepennyThis post is going to have almost as much disclaimer as actual content, but I need to articulate it.
So. Caveats and disclaimers: I know, as my subject line indicates, that "Trouble with Emily" and the other stories in Hospital Station were published in book form in 1962 and should not be excoriated for being a reflection of their times. I know, furthermore, that James White later did that most difficult and beautifully human thing: he changed his mind. Later Sector General stories have female characters, Murchison even gets upgraded from nurse to pathologist, and my favorite Sector General protagonist, Cha Thrat from Code Blue--Emergency, is female. Of course, Cha Thrat is also nonhuman, and we'll get to that down the screen a bit.
But.
The stories in Hospital Station (they've been spackled together into a quasi-novel, but they're connected novellas, really) are about the rejection of bigotry and prejudice. Conway, White's most frequent Sector General protagonist, gets read the riot act not once, but twice, for his disdain for Monitors, and it is perfectly clear that his attitude--the attitude of an uninformed pacifist toward the Federation's fighting force, and an attitude, as Williamson's explanation makes clear, that the Monitor Corps has in fact gone to a good deal of trouble to instill in people of Conway's class background--would be more than enough to get him booted from Sector General if it weren't for the fact that in the course of "Sector General" he learns the error of his ways and straightens up and flies right. Williamson is equally scathing toward the patients being brought into the hospital from fighting an interspecies war. Sector General stories preach tolerance and liberal thinking, and honestly that's one of the reasons they're good comfort reading. They're Utopian problem-solving stories, and I love them.
But.
At the end of "Trouble with Emily," O'Mara (Sector General's Chief Psychologist--and there's a whole 'nother critical essay about how he gets there in "Medic") and Conway are discussing Conway's progress from raw, self-righteous newbie to a valued part of the Sector General staff:
Now, this is the same O'Mara who is described in the previous story as a "latter-day Torquemada" due to his zeal in "guarding against wrong, unhealthy or intolerant thinking" (HS 82). The Spanish Inquisition probably didn't mind a little good woman-hating either. An aversion, even a slight one, to another species is a problem, but hating half your own? Enh, no big. You'd only waste your time "chasing" them anyway.
I sound bitter, don't I? It's because of the sucker-punch. Even in these early Sector General stories, there's very little blatant misogyny (and, as I said, later books adapt and correct their worldview); White's careful building of a world almost embarrassingly rich in species diversity means that most nonhuman characters are referred to as "it"; all Earth-human characters are referred to by last name only (and rank, if they have one). It's easy to miss the fact that there aren't any female doctors, especially if, as I did, you grew up reading science fiction and fantasy that didn't have female characters, and learned to read as if the male pronoun were genuinely the generic gender-neutral object that eighteenth-century grammarians and their followers have tried to make it. You make compromises to get the story. That's how it works.
Misogyny is an allowable neurosis. I read past it the first time I read "Trouble with Emily," and I nearly read past it this time. But something shook me out of the story so that I parsed the sentence, not as a piece of dialogue between O'Mara and Conway, but as something that James White in 1962 thought it was perfectly all right to have a sympathetic, intelligent parental figure say. And then I sat there, staring at the page, feeling winded and a little sick. Because I like James White and I like the world of Sector General and it hurt to discover that Sector General's all-embracing tolerance didn't extend to me.
I exonerate James White of deliberate malice. And it's not like I'm going to go out and burn all my Sector General books, or sell them to the used bookstore, or even stop searching for the ones I don't have. But still, the unthinking bigotry--in a series of stories carefully and obsessively concerned with the refutation of bigotry--says something about science fiction and something about 1962 and shows us why we're glad that people can change.
So. Caveats and disclaimers: I know, as my subject line indicates, that "Trouble with Emily" and the other stories in Hospital Station were published in book form in 1962 and should not be excoriated for being a reflection of their times. I know, furthermore, that James White later did that most difficult and beautifully human thing: he changed his mind. Later Sector General stories have female characters, Murchison even gets upgraded from nurse to pathologist, and my favorite Sector General protagonist, Cha Thrat from Code Blue--Emergency, is female. Of course, Cha Thrat is also nonhuman, and we'll get to that down the screen a bit.
But.
The stories in Hospital Station (they've been spackled together into a quasi-novel, but they're connected novellas, really) are about the rejection of bigotry and prejudice. Conway, White's most frequent Sector General protagonist, gets read the riot act not once, but twice, for his disdain for Monitors, and it is perfectly clear that his attitude--the attitude of an uninformed pacifist toward the Federation's fighting force, and an attitude, as Williamson's explanation makes clear, that the Monitor Corps has in fact gone to a good deal of trouble to instill in people of Conway's class background--would be more than enough to get him booted from Sector General if it weren't for the fact that in the course of "Sector General" he learns the error of his ways and straightens up and flies right. Williamson is equally scathing toward the patients being brought into the hospital from fighting an interspecies war. Sector General stories preach tolerance and liberal thinking, and honestly that's one of the reasons they're good comfort reading. They're Utopian problem-solving stories, and I love them.
But.
At the end of "Trouble with Emily," O'Mara (Sector General's Chief Psychologist--and there's a whole 'nother critical essay about how he gets there in "Medic") and Conway are discussing Conway's progress from raw, self-righteous newbie to a valued part of the Sector General staff:
"... It has been apparent since you first arrived here," the Major had told him, "that you mix more readily with e-ts than with members of your own species. Saddling you with Dr. Arretapec was a test, which you passed with honours, and the assistant I'll be giving you in a few days might be another."
O'Mara had paused then, shook his head wonderingly and went on, "Not only do you get on exceptionally well with e-ts, but I don't hear a single whisper on the grapevine of you chasing the females of our species ..."
"I don't have the time," said Conway seriously. "I doubt if I ever will."
"Oh, well, misogyny is an allowable neurosis," O'Mara had replied, then had gone on to discuss the new assistant.
HS 112
Now, this is the same O'Mara who is described in the previous story as a "latter-day Torquemada" due to his zeal in "guarding against wrong, unhealthy or intolerant thinking" (HS 82). The Spanish Inquisition probably didn't mind a little good woman-hating either. An aversion, even a slight one, to another species is a problem, but hating half your own? Enh, no big. You'd only waste your time "chasing" them anyway.
I sound bitter, don't I? It's because of the sucker-punch. Even in these early Sector General stories, there's very little blatant misogyny (and, as I said, later books adapt and correct their worldview); White's careful building of a world almost embarrassingly rich in species diversity means that most nonhuman characters are referred to as "it"; all Earth-human characters are referred to by last name only (and rank, if they have one). It's easy to miss the fact that there aren't any female doctors, especially if, as I did, you grew up reading science fiction and fantasy that didn't have female characters, and learned to read as if the male pronoun were genuinely the generic gender-neutral object that eighteenth-century grammarians and their followers have tried to make it. You make compromises to get the story. That's how it works.
Misogyny is an allowable neurosis. I read past it the first time I read "Trouble with Emily," and I nearly read past it this time. But something shook me out of the story so that I parsed the sentence, not as a piece of dialogue between O'Mara and Conway, but as something that James White in 1962 thought it was perfectly all right to have a sympathetic, intelligent parental figure say. And then I sat there, staring at the page, feeling winded and a little sick. Because I like James White and I like the world of Sector General and it hurt to discover that Sector General's all-embracing tolerance didn't extend to me.
I exonerate James White of deliberate malice. And it's not like I'm going to go out and burn all my Sector General books, or sell them to the used bookstore, or even stop searching for the ones I don't have. But still, the unthinking bigotry--in a series of stories carefully and obsessively concerned with the refutation of bigotry--says something about science fiction and something about 1962 and shows us why we're glad that people can change.
