Greg Nowell wrote:
> from: <mairead at mindspring.com>
> One oft-remarked bit of circumstantial evidence is how
> convincingly women authors portray male chars, compared
>
> to male authors portraying female chars.
>
> Yes: Like Shakespeare, Chaucer, and Zola
> (circumstantially speaking).
Zola wrote a magnificent prose poetry, but no one that I know of has ever claimed much for him in the way of creating women as women (or men as men, for that matter). Chaucer was not in the business of "creating character," a 19th century obsession, but in so far as he did they were (intentionally and gloriously) *types* that observed the decorum of position that dominated feudal Europe.
As to Shakespeare, my remarks on Chaucer apply in part. But even granting the unlikely postulate that Shakespeare (intentionally or "unconsciously") created male characters or female characters in any sense at issue here, his females are rather less convincing as females (and more convincing as the humanist's "illustrations of fundamental human nature") that are (say) the men of *Mansfield Park* *as men*. And his women are not remotely women (*as women*) in any sense relative to the debate here.
When I was in my 20s Rosalind (*As You Like It*) seemed the most glorious creature in all of literature -- but considered *as woman* the creation was clearly mine, not Shakespeare's. In almost all literature prior to the late 17th century you really need a program to tell the gender of the characters. That is one of the reasons no one in Shakespeare can tell his/her husband/wife in the dark or boy/girl twins will do as identical twins.
Probably the first real effort to differentiate character by gender was *Paradise Lost*. And I'll give you one guess in which the following character sketch appears, Pope's *On the Knowledge and Characters of Men" or his" or his "Of the Characters of Women":
"Odious! in woolen! 'twould a Saint provoke, (Were the last words that poor Narcissa spoke) "No, let a charming Chintz, and Brussels lace "Wrap my cold limbs, and shade my lifeless face: "One would not, sure, be frightful when one's dead-- "And--Betty--give this Cheek a little Red."
When he got around to dealing with women as women, he introduced his character sketches with
Nothing so true as what you once let fall, "Most Women have no Characters at all." Matter too soft a lasting mark to bear, And best distinguish'd by black, brown, or fair.
Have you ever actually *read* Chaucer????
George Eliot was good enough at depicting male characters as to make almost all male critics choke on them or treat them the way one treats a fart at a formal dinner dance.
Carrol