"Catherine Asaro wrote:
Re: The Moon and the Sun I've heard this mentioned a few times.
It's funny, because it doesn't strike me as "feminist" per se, but simply a
story told from a female point of view. The reason I hesitate at the word
feminist here is not
because the book doesn't illustrate the inequities women faced in the era;
it does a good job of that, showing without telling. What bothers me is
that the label suggests that the feminine point of view is "different.""
One thing I've learned during my years of identifying as a feminist (which I
now refer to as "the f-word it's dangerous to say in public) and doing
feminist scholarship in literary studies (you bet that a lot of
academic/literary criticism and theory is biased if not downright hostile to
women, women writers, women readers, and women critics) is that there are
many definitions of "feminist." That's why it's good to have a list to
discuss them all. I've been told that I am not a feminist because X by one
person; a month later I've been told I am a raving feminist dyke bitch
because X by another person. Sometimes it's the same X! By X I simply mean
an expressed position I have on an issue, or a specific way I have chosen to
live my life.
I consider _The Moon and the Sun_ to embody a feminist perspective rather
than just a female point of view because the protagonist consciously
questions her culture's views of "women" (the religious view that she should
be silent and not study; the patriarchal view that she should marry or
should devote her life to serving a male) and then makes a moral and ethical
decision that is misunderstood or likely to be punished by most people
around her. She also finds most of her emotional support for the majority
of the novel from women: not only from women, but from women marginalized
by her society (a "slave" and an "animal").
This usage is different than feminist in regard to the feminist utopias that
set up cultures that embody how a specific writer thinks a better society
should be, in terms of feminist principles.
I think there are a number of novels these days that fall into this more
expanded usage of feminist.
I cannot regard the use of a female point of view character (or feminine) as
equivalent to what I mean here. I think that there is still a difference
between this novel and between the traditional romance novels that may have
a female protagonist and point of view but which accept the cultural views
and imperatives without attempting to subvert or question them in any way.
Or between this novel and canonical novels which also have female point of
view characters.
Just as a women is not "naturally" a feminist, a female point of view
character does not make a book or narrative "feminist."
There are a fair number of "canonical" novels from the last century which
have female protagonists but which are not only by male writers but which do
not question ithe social beliefs about women in any way: _Anna Kareninna_
(spelling may be wrong) and _Madame Bovary_ are two I've studied. Lots of
male writers have female protagonists and point of view characters but they
are not feminist, nor are female characters by female writers necessarily
feminist.
_TMTS_ does strike me as a feminist novel.
Robin
r
or have sex with men
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