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Or maybe you too, young lady, are identifying more with the men, old, young or middle aged in the novels that you read?
Yes, I do, and I'd not thought about it before. Thinking about it though, I think it has something to do with this -
I would say that I recognise when I identify with the authorial voice more clearly than identifying with a character
-but am interested to know, what proportion of the books you read are written in the first person? Because I think that part of the reason I identify better with male characters is that they seemed to be allowed, far more than female characters, to be a 'blank slate' -if a female character is writing in the first person, every single aspect of her emotions seem to be transcibed, which means that it's harder to impress one's own experience of being a woman on those characters. I'm thinking specifically here of the last two books I read with female narrators -neither of which I enjoyed, and in neither case was it entirely the narrator's fault -which were We Need To Talk About Kevin and PopCo. In both of those, the narrator seemed so eager to tell the reader exactly what she was feeling or thinking at any one time that my ability to relate to them dropped off so fast whenever she thought / felt something I considered inauthentic.
Anyway if you think about the male characters in the first person in an author like Murukami or (drawing a mental blank on people who write first person male characters, so I'm going to go for) F Scott Fitzgerald, the way the main character is feeling is almost never mentioned; less direct identification is being asked for, maybe the ambiguity there makes it easier to put yourself in their place and build up an identification with them.
Then again, when the 'saying everything' technique works, it's stunning -Margaret Attwood's Cat's Eye described being bullied as a child so well I actually found it scary -but I felt the the novel dropped off a little when she was describing her life as an adult, possibly because I couldn't identify with it as directly. Still, if that's one of Attwood's you haven't read I'd certainly recommend it if only to hear what you think.
As for interesting female characters in books -I find it hard to believe that I've not already mentioned Lolita. She doesn't meet your criteria of not having issues, but the way she deals with them and the way her dealing with them is portrayed is, I think, interesting enough to warrant a recommendation here. Have got that and Cat's Eye at home so if you want to borrow either or both let me know.
That might all be a bit general -since it's based on the books I can remember right now I might be doing women in literature a great disservice, but it's actually worrying me that I can't think of many strong female characters weren't written in the first person. |
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