One of my friends told me this story about her English class. The first writing the class read was Beowulf, a beautifully written classic about men killing monsters, dragons, and doing other macho things. It is also a very masculine classic; women appear only for two or three lines during the entire epic poem. And yet, strangely, despite that the twenty-five-person class had only about two males, none of the females complained about having to read a novel composed solely of men and manly-man activities. However, the tables turned later in the year when the class was forced to read Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. This venerable novel, about flirting in the higher social classes of Victorian England, managed to evoke only "There’s not even a scandal?", "No one dies!" and other loud groans from the minority males of the class. Much of fantasy seems to be the same way. No matter how large the female readership is, most of fantasy is still made for men.
One woman, however, sought to change this. Apparently she thought that novels with no female characters in them that women were expected to read, regardless, were a little unfair to girls who were growing up asking, "Where’s my strong, feminine role model who can flirt and slay dragons?" or something of the sort. Her name was Robin McKinley and she wrote a wonderful book that managed to snag the coveted Newberry Award. (Strangely it’s not really for "young adults", but heck, Ayn Rand appears in the young adult section, even though she’s controversial and The Fountainhead has a graphic rape scene.) And yet, despite its prestigious award, most males have never read it, never will, and don’t know its name. And yet, at the same time, thousands of young women in my generation adoringly read it and the novels that followed, finally glad that we had a heroine who could slay dragons and fail at flirting or plucking eyebrows.
Robin McKinley’s The Hero and the Crown admittedly isn’t for everyone. Most men will appreciate the dragon and evil wizard slayings that occur in it as well as the other high packed action scenes. However, the "I lack social graces, I trip over my own two feet, I love horses" attitude of the heroine may give a male reader the impression of "wait, this was written for girls." as he runs to save his own masculinity. Well…duh. That was sort of the point of the novel. Not the running for masculinity part, but the part about the novel being written for girls. However, these same readers ought to remember, as they read this, that there are major male characters in this and that more than a few women have staggered through The Lord of the Rings trilogy by J.R.R. Tolkien, a novel set in a world that, for no explicable reason, manages to populate itself without sex due to the utter lack of female characters. (OK, maybe there were a few, but were any of them either 1) important, 2) show up for more than a page, or 3) seem approachable enough that you could actually flirt with one, far less get one to bear your child?)
Perhaps even worse than the Lord of the Rings’s dubious example is how most fantasy novels have decided to follow in its wake. The majority of the books that are churned out and read are those like DragonLance, a series that has only two female characters (Goldmoon and Mina) who aren’t primarily love interests, The Belgariad, where women admirably appear, but fill far lesser roles than the male characters, or many others where women do appear, but don’t do much of anything. All of a sudden, J. K. Rowling using her initials, rather than her female name, for the Harry Potter novels makes sense. (Apparently publishers feared that if the news that she was female got out that boys would decide that Harry Potter novels had cooties and would run, screaming, to robots killing monsters novels with appropriately masculine pen names.)
And then, when we thought it could get no worse, in some sort of strange retribution that seems even more grotesque, female writers have revolted in bizarre ways. Annoyed that books were written with no female characters, they decided to turn the tables and allow no male characters…or rather no male characters that are not total wimps. Novels began to arise that claimed they were "fantasy" but were more along the lines of a Harlequin Romance ™ novel than that of a swords and sorcery fantasy. Logically these novels further enforced the idea that strong female characters were a bad point of view from anyone involved (except perhaps romance readers), which only generated worse trash.
So, what’s a reader who actually likes the idea that both men and women ought to have decent characters to do? Is there some sort of gender-neutral middle ground, or are we stuck with our best fantasy examples being The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien and The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley? There are books that women can identify with and men need not fear their masculinity over, but they appear to be few and far between. The latest series of DragonLance by Margaret Weis and Tracey Hickman makes wonderful progress, actually having a major female character, while some of Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Darkover novels do manage to include killing things and, at the same time, have female protagonists. Similarly, I’ve been hearing decent things about Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series (despite that I haven’t read it, so can’t really comment), and Courtway Jones’ trilogy of In the Shadow of the Oak King, Witch of the North and A Prince in Camelot manages to use female and male protagonists with a nice mixture of flirting and fighting. Check them out, and maybe, someday, my primary gripe about fantasy novels will be a general lack of spontaneity in plot.