By Mar 2 2013 The Atlantic
Authors of both genders have long experimented with narrators and protagonists of the opposite sex—but there's still debate as to whether either sex can do it right.
If we want to investigate the way women have been "written" through the years by the opposite sex, we should return to the beginning. Eve took a bite of that forbidden fruit and pretty much got blamed for every sinful deed since. "Let's not forget the Bible was written from a man's point of view," pointed out a scholar I watched on TV recently.
This is not an awards show, of course. No winners or losers on which sex writes the other better. But there are strong opinions. When Nation magazine writer and poet Katha Pollitt learned that I was pondering whether men write women better than women themselves, her response practically crashed my computer. "You could not possibly be suggesting that! I think few men write female characters who are complex and have stories of their own. Where are the vivid, realistic and rounded portrayals of women in Roth, Bellow, Updike?"
To which others may respond, as did one friend, "I have two words for you. Anna Karenina."
Tolstoy's classic was written a long time ago, of course, and, on the flip side, evergreen female authors like Jane Austen and the Brontes managed to give us fine portraits of men alongside their memorable heroines. However, we have had a few revolutions since, resulting in a lot of space on the shelves, the stage, and the screen devoted to feminine mystiques and mistakes. For women writers, it is about finally getting, if not even, at least equal time.
"By default, women have it easier than men when they attempt to craft characters of the opposite sex," says novelist Sally Koslow (The Late Lamented Molly Marx), "because our whole lives we've been reading vast amounts of literature written by men." For male writers, trying to navigate the evolving battles of the sexes is more challenging. To their credit, they are not necessarily shying away from tackling women in their work, but are they 'getting' them?
Two hugely popular authors, Jonathan Franzen and Jeffrey Eugenides, for example, are known for full-bodied, decade-spanning novels. But their female characters? "Franzen's women are confused and masochistic," claims Pollitt. "The female lead in Eugenides' The Marriage Plot is the least interesting of the three major characters." Literary critic and writer Sarah Seltzer is a bit kinder, but agrees that a double standard endures. "I doubt whether a female novelist who so obviously bungled/sidelined a major male character as Eugenides did, would get the same slack from readers and critics."
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David Mamet; Focus Features; Jeffrey Eugenides
This is not an awards show, of course. No winners or losers on which sex writes the other better. But there are strong opinions. When Nation magazine writer and poet Katha Pollitt learned that I was pondering whether men write women better than women themselves, her response practically crashed my computer. "You could not possibly be suggesting that! I think few men write female characters who are complex and have stories of their own. Where are the vivid, realistic and rounded portrayals of women in Roth, Bellow, Updike?"
To which others may respond, as did one friend, "I have two words for you. Anna Karenina."
Tolstoy's classic was written a long time ago, of course, and, on the flip side, evergreen female authors like Jane Austen and the Brontes managed to give us fine portraits of men alongside their memorable heroines. However, we have had a few revolutions since, resulting in a lot of space on the shelves, the stage, and the screen devoted to feminine mystiques and mistakes. For women writers, it is about finally getting, if not even, at least equal time.
"By default, women have it easier than men when they attempt to craft characters of the opposite sex," says novelist Sally Koslow (The Late Lamented Molly Marx), "because our whole lives we've been reading vast amounts of literature written by men." For male writers, trying to navigate the evolving battles of the sexes is more challenging. To their credit, they are not necessarily shying away from tackling women in their work, but are they 'getting' them?
Two hugely popular authors, Jonathan Franzen and Jeffrey Eugenides, for example, are known for full-bodied, decade-spanning novels. But their female characters? "Franzen's women are confused and masochistic," claims Pollitt. "The female lead in Eugenides' The Marriage Plot is the least interesting of the three major characters." Literary critic and writer Sarah Seltzer is a bit kinder, but agrees that a double standard endures. "I doubt whether a female novelist who so obviously bungled/sidelined a major male character as Eugenides did, would get the same slack from readers and critics."
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