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Women Who Work
16/9/09 15:33Way back in time I read one of the first articles that really convinced me I needed to lavish some devotion on Bookslut. Jill Bailosky talks about creating a modern female character who is able to follow her passions without sacrificing her life, as in the olden days of tragic female heroines. Back in the day, female characters who hoped and dreamed of something beyond what they had tended to be cut down by their creators, on the understanding that the public wouldn’t tolerate women who had stepped outside the boundaries living to a happy, ripe old age. To summarize – they were not good girls.
I feel that woman who follow their passions are still not characterised as not ‘the kind of girls we like to see’ in contemporary writing. There are now plenty of books where female characters are able to follow their romantic passions, without getting a ‘mysterious cough’, or finding themselves shunted off their feet by a careless driver. Women escape unfulfilling relationships, have life changing affairs, meet prince charming on a regular basis and live to see another day in today’s fiction. However, when it comes to the world of work women plus job still seems to equal a barrier to true passion (read romantic passion) rather than a successful realisation of long held desires, when it comes to fiction.
Female characters who are professionally driven are more often portrayed as being unhealthily obsessed with their work, rather than healthily dedicated to their professional development. At the beginning of a book where a woman is pursuing a career in a traditional business setting she will almost never be in a happy, fulfilling relationship. In order to maintain a successful love affair these female characters are required to realise that work isn’t everything and either scale down their involvement at the office, or realise that the job they are in is not really their passion, in fact their passion lies somewhere more traditionally female.
Now I’m not saying these aren’t good ideas to find in a novel (work to the exclusion of all else is unhealthy, sometimes a creative path is more rewarding than a traditional office based job) but it seems that they mostly crop up in novels with female main characters. As far as I can see, there is no comparable message to be found in books with career focused male characters, even though warnings about work taking over your life are surely just as relevant to men. I don’t see slews of books about men meeting women, realising what life is all about and ditching their careers to set up a small stand selling their wood carvings. It seems like male characters are allowed to develop, change and earn the reader’s support without giving up or changing their careers. Often a female character’s progression from nasty, hard and unfriendly characters to sympathetic, friendly and loving personalities the reader can cheer for, is accompanied by a woman’s realisation that her job is the route of her problems.
Subjects men are allowed to claim as a passion (career, art, sport) are quickly shown to be obsessions, that need to be reigned in when a woman becomes heavily involved with the same subjects, yet hundreds of books are sold where romantic obsession consumes women to the point where they ignore everything else (not to keep banging on, but Twilight I’m looking straight at you, you know what you did) and that is deemed perfectly acceptable. Characters outside of the romance will actively encourage this kind of behaviour and many women overwhelmed by romantic passions/obsession go on to have wonderful happy, uncomplicated endings. When a woman is passionate about something other than romance her story always seems to involve much more strife, much more qualification (yes she was fabulous marathon runner, but she never truly found her soul mate) and comes with a bittersweet ending.
Am I surprised that women who follow their romantic passion still get top billing over women who have other paths to follow? Our survey says, no. Is this a big disappointment to me, well it’s a more mixed answer. I’m a big fan of romance, especially when women successfully fight for the partner of their dreams and achieve their heart’s desire. I just wish we could start to see more diversity in the goals and passions that female characters pursue in novels. I wish having a successful career didn’t have to be matched up with being an emotionally lacking women. I wish women’s deep interests in solitary, consuming preoccupations could be taken seriously and judged just as valuable and personally fulfilling as romance is. Are we close, can you pass me examples of female characters whose personalities develop, without them giving up ties to an enterprise they love and are good at?
There’s more of this stuff to follow, so you may want to run for the hills now. If not stick around for the opportunity to discuss and probe female stuff in literature. Comments and thoughts appreciated as always.
I feel that woman who follow their passions are still not characterised as not ‘the kind of girls we like to see’ in contemporary writing. There are now plenty of books where female characters are able to follow their romantic passions, without getting a ‘mysterious cough’, or finding themselves shunted off their feet by a careless driver. Women escape unfulfilling relationships, have life changing affairs, meet prince charming on a regular basis and live to see another day in today’s fiction. However, when it comes to the world of work women plus job still seems to equal a barrier to true passion (read romantic passion) rather than a successful realisation of long held desires, when it comes to fiction.
Female characters who are professionally driven are more often portrayed as being unhealthily obsessed with their work, rather than healthily dedicated to their professional development. At the beginning of a book where a woman is pursuing a career in a traditional business setting she will almost never be in a happy, fulfilling relationship. In order to maintain a successful love affair these female characters are required to realise that work isn’t everything and either scale down their involvement at the office, or realise that the job they are in is not really their passion, in fact their passion lies somewhere more traditionally female.
Now I’m not saying these aren’t good ideas to find in a novel (work to the exclusion of all else is unhealthy, sometimes a creative path is more rewarding than a traditional office based job) but it seems that they mostly crop up in novels with female main characters. As far as I can see, there is no comparable message to be found in books with career focused male characters, even though warnings about work taking over your life are surely just as relevant to men. I don’t see slews of books about men meeting women, realising what life is all about and ditching their careers to set up a small stand selling their wood carvings. It seems like male characters are allowed to develop, change and earn the reader’s support without giving up or changing their careers. Often a female character’s progression from nasty, hard and unfriendly characters to sympathetic, friendly and loving personalities the reader can cheer for, is accompanied by a woman’s realisation that her job is the route of her problems.
Subjects men are allowed to claim as a passion (career, art, sport) are quickly shown to be obsessions, that need to be reigned in when a woman becomes heavily involved with the same subjects, yet hundreds of books are sold where romantic obsession consumes women to the point where they ignore everything else (not to keep banging on, but Twilight I’m looking straight at you, you know what you did) and that is deemed perfectly acceptable. Characters outside of the romance will actively encourage this kind of behaviour and many women overwhelmed by romantic passions/obsession go on to have wonderful happy, uncomplicated endings. When a woman is passionate about something other than romance her story always seems to involve much more strife, much more qualification (yes she was fabulous marathon runner, but she never truly found her soul mate) and comes with a bittersweet ending.
Am I surprised that women who follow their romantic passion still get top billing over women who have other paths to follow? Our survey says, no. Is this a big disappointment to me, well it’s a more mixed answer. I’m a big fan of romance, especially when women successfully fight for the partner of their dreams and achieve their heart’s desire. I just wish we could start to see more diversity in the goals and passions that female characters pursue in novels. I wish having a successful career didn’t have to be matched up with being an emotionally lacking women. I wish women’s deep interests in solitary, consuming preoccupations could be taken seriously and judged just as valuable and personally fulfilling as romance is. Are we close, can you pass me examples of female characters whose personalities develop, without them giving up ties to an enterprise they love and are good at?
There’s more of this stuff to follow, so you may want to run for the hills now. If not stick around for the opportunity to discuss and probe female stuff in literature. Comments and thoughts appreciated as always.