Defaulty Spectacles

Tue, 05 Jul 2011 08:56:56 GMT

I was getting a distinct impression that Three Katherines of Allingdale had grown into a book disproportionately dominated by female characters - that is, above and beyond the deliberate focus suggested by the title and associated choices of perspective.

If true, this seemed out of true with the setting and subject matter. Apart from the central Three Katherines, I'd have expected things to turn out equally at best. (Fairfields is, in its post-mediaeval way, considerably closer to an equal-opportunity society than our own. Its massively larger parent culture is, as my beta-readers for Katy Elflocks will know already, most traditionally and obnoxiously not.)

But I had reason to suspect that my perceptions weren't accurate, and that active female characters might appear more salient than their numbers or spotlight-time warranted, because they are not the conventional default in this sort of fantasy. On the other hand, so many of my all-time favourite characters from my personal pantheon have always been heroic and/or active women with agency and viewpoint - Cassilde Théret and Lies van Luyt; Kesti President and Kandakay Kaoring, Locket and Sapphire and Tawn; Tindally Myl of Qorth; my fanfictional instances of Nyssa and Tegan from Doctor Who; 'Hacki' Hackenbush and Lib Cody, Lena Rushwell and Temerity Pyke; the Crocus and Celerian and Lowerry the Red Blade, Katj and Lylat and Savafy Bistirin Yon, to mention only those outside the Kateverse who've marked me most profoundly - that surely, surely any default I have is rather in the other direction? I'd really be stretched to come up with a roster of men from my universes who come up to that mark!

Still, I thought, it wouldn't hurt to check.

Hoo boy. Was I wrong, or what?

My dodgiest suspicions are confirmed. In The Deed of Katy Elflocks alone, women do outnumber men 2:1 amongst the first rank of characters (see again: Three Katherines), but the ratio drops to simple parity when the other significant characters are counted. In Killer-Kate and Luke Lackland, women still retain much of their 3K edge in the top rank, but adding the much larger secondary cast of this work moves us slightly into a male majority. So my background is pretty much as I'd consciously visualized it. Yet even my own perception was of a cast, by guess, two-thirds female.

That's at least a thirty percent overestimate. And I'm the author, and I knew what I was shooting for in the first place!

I'm not prepared to fix perceptions by the pernicious lie of missing my mark so as to give the casual impression of hitting it. The setting is painted truly. It must stay that way.

The only solution I can think of offhand is to be especially vigilant for dullness and sameyness in the sections where a lot of the male characters congregate. There's one particular plot-knot around the midbook where I had rather too many of them in holding patterns. That's something I have to address anyway in the rewrite, which might narrow the disconnect between perception and reality. Other than that, I can only see what my beta team and any future editor will come back with on this.

Still. Sheesh!

comments

Goat Notes

Defaulty Spectacles