On Tue, 1 Apr 1997, lissa bloomer wrote:
> also... i wonder about our word "hero." perhaps this word implies too much
> of what we are NOT looking for in a female character. (the linear hunt --
> the tackle -- the bagging of the goods.) Which reminds me of Le Guin's
> essay called "The Carrier Bag of Fiction." There, she writes that novels
> are good because they are stories about people -- rather than heroes.
> hmmmm....must reread.
Perhaps it does, but is there a better choice?
Le Guin asserts that the proper place for the hero is the epic, or at
least not the novel, where s/he can be propped up on a pedestal in a
directed, linear narrative. The novel, she argues, is a collection of
relationships that can only be distorted by the presence of a hero.
I'm not sure. With a looser definition of hero as simply a human ideal,
a respected or respectable actor in society, the novel might be considered
the ideal place to discuss the hero and his/her relation to society. I
don't think the hero has to be one-dimensional or universal. At least I'm
writing a thesis that discusses some very different sf protagonists as
heroes, most of whom do not follow the classical, linear model. The women
I'm writing about quest for wholeness and autonomy, not "the bagging of
the goods," except in the most metaphorical sense.
Maybe the hero and heroism simply need to be re-defined. I can't be sure
that the women I'm writing about are, on some objective scale, heroic, but
if they are, they are constructing a more varied heroic. (btw, I'm
writing on Heinlein's _Friday_, Butler's _Parable of the Sower_, Piercy's
_Woman on the Edge of Time_, Piercy's _He, She, and It_ [heroes w/o
heroic narrative], Tepper's _The Gate to Women's Country [heroic narrative
w/o a hero], and Russ's _The Female Man_ and Cadigan's _Fools_ as
fragmented heroes.)
Any thoughts on how we might define the female hero? Could she, or should
she, ever follow the classical/traditional model (of
departure-initiation-return, mysterious and illustrious birth,
dragon-slaying, threshold-crossing, etc.)?
Does sf propose a different female hero, do you think, than society or
mainstream lit?
Questions I'm wrestling with :)
Andrea Klein
alklein@wesleyan.edu
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