I agree with Carrol's remarks. Instead, I would offer Stendhal and Tolstoy as having created serious and credible women characters of some depth. Barkley Rosser -----Original Message----- From: Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu> To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com> Date: Wednesday, March 24, 1999 8:01 PM Subject: Re: bad male writers
>
>
>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
>
>
>