At times I feel sexist because I would prefer to buy books by women authors. I have tried to read male authors but the ones I have read do not develop their characters like I like to have it done.

I agree. I enjoy David Brin’s books but not for the characterization. The only exceptions I can think of to this are James Lee Burke and Jim Butcher.

Maybe you have to be a Jimmy in order to write deep rich characters.

It amazes me how much books by women authors are pushed aside and deemed too “fluffy” to be given any literary value. You should’ve heard the uproar in one of my classes when someone lumped Jane Austen in the classic literature group. The majority of students seemed to think of her books as old brainless romance novels and refused to give her any kind of credit.

As for men writing stronger heroines than women writers… well as you pretty much said, that’s just bullshit. Wonderful response that article, Jane.

I do think I read more women writers, but only because i read more romance, and the vast majority of romance writers are women.

And no, I don’t find it easier to overlook bad characterizations because of a whiz bang plot. I don’t get that at all.

I also don’t think “pink” equates with “girl” but maybe that’s because I never wore it growing up. It’s a color, same as any other.

Finally, I totally agree with Jane about smart not having anything to do with ones ability to solve crimes. One of the reasons I’ve never been into the mystery genre (until veronica Mars, which I love because, you guessed it, the strong characterization) was because I had little interest in the whole crime-solving past-time.

Robin, I think you’ve kind of summed it up right there–clearly more eloquently than I did.

I think with so many novels getting published each month, it’s too easy for a lot of authors to just stick with sort of shallow gender stereotypes for their characters (Women automatically want lots of children! Men are never the needy, clingy ones in the relationship!) and not really flesh their characters out fully. Furthermore I think in romance and women’s fiction, because they’re so driven by characterization and character interaction, there’s less for the heroines to do and focus on besides the relationship issues.

I think what I personally am responding to in the “men books” I’ve read is that the characters have a little more spark because they have something to work towards, a clear goal is in sight. There’s less motivation and goals assigned to characters in women’s fiction for the most part, and for me personally I find that unappealing. In too many romances/chick lit that I’ve read lately (and I’ve read many more than I have thrillers or other traditionally “male” books), the women are characterized as kind of aimless and juvenile and lacking that motivation to make them interesting. (For my money, Jenny Crusie does motivation better than anyone. She’s a perfect example of a writer who creates romance heroines who are never boring.)

I love romance and women’s fiction and I’m a feminist and I’m not trying to malign the genre. What I was expressing was my surprise to discover that I enjoy heroines written by men more than a lot of the heroines written by women that I’ve read. I mean it should go without saying, but clearly your mileage may vary.

My post doesn’t speak for a genre and it doesn’t speak for RT or the way anyone else there thinks or feels, any more than I should hope Sandy AAR’s post speaks for AAR. We’re all individuals and we all have opinions (they are like assholes, after all). But it does speak to the way I feel, based on what I’ve been reading (and in my former job at RT and my current job as an assistant acquisitions editor and managing editor at BBC Audiobooks America, I get to read quite a bit.) The books traditionally pegged as men’s books are by and large offering more interesting heroines FOR ME than the books traditionally pegged as women’s books. Are there bestselling female authors (like all the ones you’ve named here) that write fabulous characters? Of course there are, that’s why they’re bestsellers. But hey there’s also Cassie Edwards out there. And it’s disappointing to me to see more new romances being released that follow in her footsteps than in Jenny’s.

I think reading within a genre can both condition and jade you as a reader. I know I respond to things in Romance differently now that I’ve been steeped in the genre. I’m hypersensitized to some things (like how strong women still have to be soft and gooey inside) and differently sensitized to others — like how when I first read Shadow and the Star, as maybe the first or second Romance I read, I thought Leda was a wet rag, but when I re-read the book later, I saw her strength and dignity clearly. Sometimes I think there’s a certain shorthands in genre fiction for types and characters and characteristics, and sometimes I think this shorthand sort of backfires, depending on how a reader fills in the blanks and on how far beyond that shorthand an author takes his or her characters.

Thanks for the discourse. I can confess that I didn’t post to be deliberately provocative. It was rather more an afterthought. I posted what I wanted to say and then thought “Hmm I bet some people aren’t going to like that.”
But I’m used to that…

I’ve read these posts with interest and I think perhaps I didn’t make my point clearly enough and/or people are OVERgeneralizing what I said. I didn’t say ALL women are writing dumb heroines or that ALL men are writing smart heroines. Nor did I say that ALL men do a better job, etc. etc.

There are plenty of smart heroines in fiction written by women. I’ve read Charlaine Harris and Caren Lissner and Judith Ivory (who writes probably the smartest romances around) and SEP (whose heroine for Match Me If You Can–Annabel–may just be the worst example of that neurotic, supposedly brilliant/capable businesswoman who is anything but, yet she turned it around with the fairly crafty chick in Natural Born) and lots of other authors who are pretty fabulous. (Oh yeah and for the doubters out there, I challenge you to read Nancy Bartholomew’s stripper series and not think Sierra’s damn clever beneath the bleached roots). Ferfe’s heroine Tara (ahem) is a great example of a smart, DIFFERENT heroine for the genre.

But, I’ve read a good number of really poor romances and chick lit (perhaps in part due to my total immersion with the genre during my time at RT) with heroines who like to tell me they’re smart and yet don’t follow through with their actions. There are far too many dithering fool heroines who don’t really make an impression. Maybe it’s the sheer glut of too many books on the market that’s leaving me with these experiences. Not sure.

For my money, the male writers I’ve chosen to read (and mainly my tastes lie with mysteries nowadays after being burnt out on too many predictable romances/women’s fiction with stock characters) are crafting more interesting, complex, smarter heroines. It’s not a scourge to the genre, it’s my personal reading experience.

It is an interesting (to me anyway) fact that I tend to find the heroines in mysteries more dynamic than those in romance and women’s fiction. Perhaps I feel like the women who are spending 95 percent of their time wallowing in melodrama over their relationships simply need to get a hobby.
Perhaps the whole point of romance just doesn’t appeal to me anymore. I hope I havent’ gotten that cynical…and I don’t think I have because give me a Jenny Crusie book (written alone) and my heart will flutter any day. Show me a little great Julia Quinn historical banter and I’m all yours. I don’t know, I guess I can’t find what I’m looking for nowadays in romance or chick lit. (I’ve talked mostly about romance here, but I adore some chick lit heroines who worry about trivial things like the size of their posteriors too–Marian Keyes is a goddess, and I really enjoy Heather Cochran, Ariella Papa, and Jody Gehrman’s recent leading ladies.)

But I like this feedback (incensed or not) because I do want to hear recommendations for great female characters. So carry on, carry on. Give me some pointers on who not to miss!

Christine Rimmer replies:
March 5th, 2007 | Quote
Unfortunately for Tara/Flavia, succeeded in making *herself* look far less than Mensa-qualified.

unworthy of the effort required to step on them …

Sandy AAR replies:
March 5th, 2007 | Quote
Though you certainly took her out very nicely, Jane, you’re giving her essay a credence that it doesn’t deserve. JMHO.

And … (possibly) unemployed

Sandy AAR replies:
March 5th, 2007 | Quote
Jane, I think we’re fortunate that she’s a former RT Managing Editor.

Carry on.

I often bemoan the lack of well-drawn, “strong” heroines in Romance, especially compared to heroines in mystery and fantasy (and even YA novels). And I agree with Alison Kent (I think. I apologize if I’m not giving credit where its due), that many romance readers are far more interested in a strong “alpha” male than the female characters. I’ve seen comments where it is explicitly stated that a reader could care less about the heroine, or a book is dismissed out of hand if the hero is described to be other than traditionally “alpha”. I find it fascinating that such a female driven genre is so much more concerned with the characterization of the males. But the romance genre is huge and very diverse, and the strong heroines are out there.

Everyone’s come up with great suggestions for females who write intelligently and who write intelligent women. I’d like to throw in Sharan Newman and Lindsey Davis (historical mysteries). And for straight up dark and violentand non-feminine, how about Minette Walters, Poppy Z. Brite, Kathe Koja, or Caitlin Kiernan?

I think at the heart, we women have to change the dialogue to make emotional things, pink things, have greater value.

Societally speaking, I totally agree with you. But I think Romance DOES embrace emotional things as valuable. The trick in Romance, IMO, is to have the value of women’s emotional lives be more than their softness and vulnerability. In other words, I get tired of reading heroines who “discover” or “reclaim” their “womahood” or their “femininity” as part of falling in love. These emotional qualities are practically set in bold type and underlined as particularly *female* and not as simply part of what it means to be a whole and happy person. I wish more tough heroines didn’t have to go all soft to have the Romance HEA — as if they have to earn love, somehow, by being more of a “woman.” Too often, I feel like there’s stereotypical “girl” territory and “guy” territory in the genre (i.e. my reaction to the Crusie/Mayer book — and I actually think Mayer wrote some of the “girl” stuff and Crusie wrote some of the “guy” stuff, so I don’t think it’s about the gender of the authors themselves so much). That’s one of the things that drew me to the In Death series, actually — the fact that Roarke and Eve are always swiftching and shifting roles such that the roles aren’t as gender identified.

At one level, I think those physically strong tough as nails kick-ass heroines are part of the pendulum swinging away from the damsel in distress heroines, so I welcome them, because I think they signal a backlash against the stereotype of female passivity in Romance. And hopefully the backlash signals an openness to finding a better balance in both heroes and heroines. I include heroes, because when we talk about “alpha” heroes in Romance, they often bear little resemblance to how alpha animals are in the wild. True alpha animals, for example, don’t routinely bully and overpower weaker animals just for the heck of it. That’s another stereotype I’d like to see nuanced a bit more. Yes I know some readers love the extremes, but I don’t think there will ever be any lack of those more typed characters in the genre for exactly that reason.

As for the heroines of Julie Ann Long and Caroline Linden, I find myself avidly reading books by both of them for the sheer freshness of their voices and the focus on character and relationship building.

So are dumb or weenie heroines. (See how cleverly I circle back?) But there are readers who enjoy them, who get tingly when the hero saves the day or continues to save her from her own dumbass actions. Everyone’s entitled. In some fiction written by men, female characters may or may not be smarter than a bag of rocks, and can still be, essentially, wallpaper. Pretty to look at maybe, but all they really do is hang around.

The idea of oompa loompas cooking my dinner kind of grosses me out. Maybe that would be a great diet book: The Oopma Loompa Diet: Losing Weight Through Visualization.

hey… i’m not the one who employs oompa-loompas. That would be Miz Nora. Allegedly.

I kid, I kid. Please don’t strike me down. :(

I partially agree with Alison on this. Romance readers like to think that the Dishrag Diva heroine is a thing of the past but she still exists. Nothing gets my blood boiling more than when an author “tells” me the heroine is “smart, tough, independent” but she’s really as dumb as a bag of rocks. I’m not expecting every heroine to be a weapons expert – but good lord some common sense would be nice. Also, heroines who don’t wait around for the hero to rescue them. Certainly there are a lot of “strong” heroines in romance now – but helpless wimps that evolution should have weeded out are still here too. It’s especially trying when you hit a patch of these idiots at once. I can never read just one wimpy heroine, I somehow get stuck reading several of them in a row. Dumb luck I suspect.

Onto Robin. Your comment is a like a 2 for 1. First, I agree that there need to be better heroines in romance and by better, I don’t mean physically stronger. By better I mean women who are emotionally capable. Whose answer to life is not to find a man and fall in love. By better, I mean women who are financially capable. I read one report that stated in over half of the marriages today, the woman is making more money than the spouse. By better, I mean women whose strength is derived from inside herself and not just through physical prowess.

But emotional and mental stability does not compute in the might equals right equation. So long as we allow the male dominated society to dictate what is of value, then we as women will always struggle with identity. I think at the heart, we women have to change the dialogue to make emotional things, pink things, have greater value.

I’ve always thought Madeline Hunter had strong female characters. I thought Claudia Dain’s character in The Holding, Catherine, had strength of character. She endured vile things to save her people and managed to survive, heal and love. More recently, I like the characters drawn by Julie Ann Long and Caroline Linden. In Beauty and the Spy, the heroine says to the hero that she loves him, laying herself bare, without any guarantee of a positive response. Those actions to me say “I’m going to take control of the outcome and not be passive.” In the same way, I think erotic romance can be (but is not many times) be empowering whereby a woman takes control of her passion, her own sex life and creates her own destiny.

Basically, I think there are a lot of stupid books written by men and a lot of stupid books written by women, and a lot of smart books written by both. One thing I do think is interesting, though, is that many of the books people are pointing to as expressing strong heroines seem more hybridized to me, Romance + (suspense, SF, Fantasy, etc.). NOT that I’m trying to make a general summation here, because I can name tons of smart Romance heroines and books, too, from Melanthe in Kinsale’s For My Lady’s Heart, to Sugar Beth Carey in SEP’s Ain’t She Sweet, to Emma Hotchkiss in Judith Ivory’s Untie My Heart. But are there certain expectations for how women are drawn in straight Romance, especially in terms of how they express or demonstrate their strength? I’ve seen readers hold it against Eve Dallas that she leaves Roarke alone so much when she’s working on a case, but would those same readers hold the same behavior against Roarke? I don’t know — I do wonder about this sometimes, about how female characters in straight Romance get to be strong and smart and how sometimes I feel books have to go out of their way to prove that the kick ass sharp as a tack heroine is still a Woman underneath it all.

a pack of pygmies

I just want to know – why pygmies? Now I have a image of the oompa loompas in my head.

Must go stop and marinate fish for dinner

Ms. Roberts doesn’t have a pack of pygmies doing that stuff for her? Wow… that’s so mind-blowing. ;)

Okay, back to lurking.[/quote]

There there bam, did Mz. Roberts just shatter your dreams? You could prolly have pygmies now if you want them ;).

Must go stop and marinate fish for dinner

Ms. Roberts doesn’t have a pack of pygmies doing that stuff for her? Wow… that’s so mind-blowing. ;)

Okay, back to lurking.