Fantasy as a genre is growing rapidly. TGA would never reject something for ‘becoming mainstream’, but the changes that can occur during the shift into the spotlight can be interesting as it strives to appeal to the masses.
It’s not exactly a groundbreaking observation to point out that women are often underrepresented and misrepresented in historical fantasy literature. We’re writing more or less with the assumption of that as known, and instead aiming to look at how women are underrepresented in the more modern generation of mid-high or historical fantasy, specifically from about 1980 onwards (in other words, Lord of the Rings style fantasy, but post-Lord of the Rings), and why those representations are problematic or praiseworthy.
So, instead of arguing whether or not female authors write or enjoy fantasy – (This isn’t Comment is Free – Editor) - it might be worth looking at the idea that female-written fantasy is often ‘demoted’ to ‘Young Adult fantasy’ (YA) instead of regular fantasy. While YA fantasy is a brilliant and worthwhile genre in its own right, complex and well-written books are being viewed as just for children. Game Of Thrones is no more complex than Harry Potter, or The Hunger Games.
G R R Martin simply sprinkled the word ‘fuck’ liberally in his dialogue and is perhaps thus viewed as a much more grown-up and highbrow sort of writer.Books with female authors or protagonists are often shoved unceremoniously out of this group and mislabelled as just something for kids.
‘Such sword. Much shiny.’A particular example of this is Tamora Pierce and her books. They’re ‘Young Adult’ and, at times, marketed as ‘Feminist’ simply because their protagonists are female and teenagers. However, the world that is built in her Tortall series (starting with Alanna: The First Adventure) is complex with multiple different nations, cultures, religions, political regimes, and even in-depth histories for each nation that influence the public opinions in the time of the books. Later books cover some extremely complex political topics regarding colonialism, slavery and societal racism in a way that isn’t often discussed in fantasy.
Her themes and narratives are is very obviously based on real colonialism and the historical actions of European nations, rather than being disguised under layers and layers of magical settings and different human-like species. So while Pierce’s books are YA fantasy with YA protagonists, they are not only YA fantasy: they are complex discussions of society, gender politics, religion and just about everything you could want from a fantasy novel. Other supposedly YA books cover the same range of topics, especially the other books mentioned in this feature.
Other examples of female-written fantasy being portrayed as YA due to young adult female protagonists include Maria V. Snyder’s Yelena Zaltana and Opal Cowan trilogies (starting with Poison Study and Storm Glass respectively) and even Trudi Canavan’s Black Magician trilogy (starting with The Magician’s Guild) according to some booksellers. The labelling of Pierce and Snyder’s works as YA is perhaps reasonable considering that they are smaller than the typical fantasy tomes and are definitely nowhere near the epic fantasy from writers such as Tolkein or G R R Martin, but the themes and topics discussed are no less mature and there are parts of both of them, especially later Pierce books, that would usually be considered inappropriate for younger readers.
Some male-written fantasy series, such as Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time, also follow the journeys of young adults but are not classified as young adult fantasy, raising questions as to why female characters and female authors warrant a description of young fantasy when male characters and authors don’t.
There’s also an idea surrounding female authors that they won’t sell books to a male demographic if their name is traditionally a woman’s name; J K Rowling is a lot more ‘gender neutral’ than Joanne Rowling. For Tamora Pierce it worked the other way, she had created a story about a young woman for mainstream fantasy but was asked instead to change it to make it appropriate for the YA female demographic.
Robin Hobb is also a female author writing fantasy under a gender-neutral penname. D.C. Fontana wrote episodes of Star Trek under a male pseudonym, Patricia Elrod writes fantasy under the initialed name P.N. Elrod and Nora Roberts wrote sci-fi under the name J.D. Robb. This idea of taking a pseudonym or using initials to write fantasy and scifi isn’t new or confined to women, obviously one of the most famous fantasy authors is J.R.R. Tolkein, and his contemporary C.S. Lewis also wrote children’s fantasy and philosophical-religious texts. However, the reason for taking these ambiguous or directly masculine pennames appears to be very different for women. Every writer is entitled to use a different name or persona while writing, but to have to adopt a different gender, either male or neutral to write when they don’t identify as such, so that they can be considered on the same level as male authors shows a fundamental issue within fantasy and scifi. Most literary fans would like to think we’re past the days when the Brontë sisters and Mary Ann Evans (George Eliot) had to publish under male names to be respected, but apparently not.
N K Jemisin, writer of the Inheritance TrilogyUnfortunately this labelling of female fantasy authors as YA authors has also led to the idea that women can’t or don’t write epic fantasy which is pretty blatantly untrue, considering authors like Karen Miller (who, interestingly, usually has male main characters), Trudi Canavan, N.K. Jemisin and Allison Croggon have all written what could be considered epic fantasy in various forms, with multiple characters and story lines, long journeys and great challenges. N.K. Jemisin’s Inheritance Trilogy is exemplar of this, as it is an intense political fantasy series on par with A Song of Ice and Fire, exploring topics that Martin missed out on such as race, as Jemisin’s characters explore the idea of race as a marker of social class and power, written from the experience of one of very few women of colour writing popular fantasy novels. The lack of non-white people, especially women, in historical fantasy is a gaping hole that even supposedly feminist critiques of the genre overlook, and something TGA will be covering both in part 2 and as a separate feature.
Overall, it seems that the situation has to change both within the books and within the publishing industry for representation to improve. It seems ridiculous that a medium where you don’t even know what the author looks or sounds like can still have such scope for discrimination.
In Part 2 of this feature, we’ll look at female characters within historical fantasy.
Who are you favorite female authors of historical fantasy? Let us know in the comments!
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