gender through literary matters

[cacian]

should a writer chose his own gender to write his main characters and the rest is either one or the other. The reason for this is to allow for leadership of genders to prosper and ideas on how to manipulate /perceive the other gender.
To understand each other from a literary point of view is most important.
Or should we the do it the other way and write our lead character our opposites and see it works.
Either way we must follow our instincts.

The other question I have is this : Is there such a book written only in one gender for one where all characters are either one or the other but never both at the same time?

What say you?

[hillwalker]

I'm assuming the first part of your question is 'Does the main character in a story/novel have to be the same gender as the writer?'

The answer is obviously 'No'.

H

[cacian]

I'm assuming the first part of your question is 'Does the main character in a story/novel have to be the same gender as the writer?'

The answer is obviously 'No'.

H

Yes thank you hillwalker. What makes you say that?

[hillwalker]

Because there are no rules that require writers to make their main characters the same gender as themselves. Why ever should there be? It's like suggesting Thomas Hardy was wrong to write 'Tess of the D'Urbervilles' or George Eliot was wrong to write 'Silas Marner'.

You seem to be getting 'hung up' on how or why we write instead of getting on with your writing.

H

[cacian]

Because there are no rules that require writers to make their main characters the same gender as themselves. Why ever should there be? It's like suggesting Thomas Hardy was wrong to write 'Tess of the D'Urbervilles' or George Eliot was wrong to write 'Silas Marner'.

You seem to be getting 'hung up' on how or why we write instead of getting on with your writing.

H

This is my writing . Research is part of it.
It is not about rules it is about instinct and why we write.
I explained the reasons why one may approach writing through their own gender to break through human understanding of their own self.
I may not understand the masculine gender because I am not a he but i would begin to understand it from a writer's point of view because he took the time to write about it using his characters as male. Male lead characters written by men writers help the female gender to grasp what men are about and vice versa.
It is not rocket science it is literature. We emancipate and intellectualize understanding through reading stories and writing them.
I thought you of all people understood this.

when I write poetry i write what i know. I pass on what i have acquired through my understanding of life.
Poetry talks reality and changes prospectives and I like it because it is not about a he or she or a lead characters it is about everyone.
Stories are more focused and it is about a human against another. A writer tells his or her stories through the eye of a fictional character they get to make up.
All characters in stories should be about how to strive to succeed that way one can demonstrate that they could.

[cafolini]

Because there are no rules that require writers to make their main characters the same gender as themselves. Why ever should there be? It's like suggesting Thomas Hardy was wrong to write 'Tess of the D'Urbervilles' or George Eliot was wrong to write 'Silas Marner'.

You seem to be getting 'hung up' on how or why we write instead of getting on with your writing.

H

Not a bad estimate of Cacian's being taken over by the spirit of a mule. LOL

[cacian]

Because there are no rules that require writers to make their main characters the same gender as themselves. Why ever should there be? It's like suggesting Thomas Hardy was wrong to write 'Tess of the D'Urbervilles' or George Eliot was wrong to write 'Silas Marner'.

On the other hand no one really knows who Thomas Hardy was I never met him in person and the same goes with George Eliot.
They might have been characters in disguise who knows.
If you think of Jane Austen her main characters were female and their leads were male.
It makes sense. She saw her the woman with the characteristics and the flavours and the mens as the money providers. She wrote herself well in into her female characters because they all did have a happy ending type of stories.

[qimissung]

Well, Jane Austen's stories weren't all "happy." If you look closely at the ending of "Sense and Sensibility," it was more pragmatic than happy. I'm not sure what that has to do with your topic, though.

I think it would be a mistake to limit authors to writing only about characters that were the same sex as they were. Look at "Anna Karenina" by Leo Tolstoy, which is one of the most brilliant novels ever written. Even "Lolita" by Nabokov. He wrote compellingly, not just about a female, but a prepubescent one at that. I know there are many other examples, those are just two of the top of my head.

[Shaman_Raman]

should a writer chose his own gender to write his main characters and the rest is either one or the other. The reason for this is to allow for leadership of genders to prosper and ideas on how to manipulate /perceive the other gender.
To understand each other from a literary point of view is most important.
Or should we the do it the other way and write our lead character our opposites and see it works.
Either way we must follow our instincts.

The other question I have is this : Is there such a book written only in one gender for one where all characters are either one or the other but never both at the same time?

What say you?

Cacian, it's hard to answer because it's a loaded question. One, no an author can have the main character either gender they please. Should they pick there own gender because of some certain bias towards it? No, because a male author won't necessarily portray their male main character in a positive, or superior light, and vise versa. Maybe Amy Tan's Joy Luck Club shows female dominance, but J.D. Salinger's Catcher in the Rye, shows a humiliating joke of a man. And the novel version of Bourne Identity probably has two equally intelligent and contributing main characters, one a man and the other a woman. So it varies, but I don't think it's about manipulation or negative perception of the other gender.

To your other question, I'm sure there has been, but honestly I can't think of one at the moment. I can't imagine there never being an author that thought, "What if my novel had all men/women?" Whether or not it'd be of any value is an entirely different question.

[Shaman_Raman]

“This is the point. This IS the point, Taper, it's not bull****. I’m not just talking about my wife, I’m talking about my life. I can’t seem to get that through to you. I’m not just talking about one person, I’m talking about everybody, I’m talking about form, I’m talking about content, I’m talking about interrelationships. I’m talking about God, the devil, hell, heaven. Do you understand? FINALLY?”

[Lokasenna]

To turn the initial thought on it's head, some people use the quality of individual male/female portraits in an anonymous work to attempt to identify the gender of the author. Take, for example, Laxdoela saga - one of the greatest masterpieces of the Icelandic family saga. Unusually, the central character is a woman, and one invested with a profound, subtle and moving psychology. This has caused some academics to insist that it must be the product of female author, and indeed I even attended a paper last summer where one of the world's foremost academics in the field was attempting to argue they she may have identified three sisters who may have been the collective author of the saga.

To be honest, though, I'm not convinced. I don't see why a male author cannot be capable of writing a convincing female character, or vice-versa.

[hillwalker]

I may not understand the masculine gender because I am not a he but i would begin to understand it from a writer's point of view because he took the time to write about it using his characters as male. Male lead characters written by men writers help the female gender to grasp what men are about and vice versa.
It is not rocket science it is literature. We emancipate and intellectualize understanding through reading stories and writing them.
I thought you of all people understood this.

Did I suggest that I didn't understand your point? The question you asked wasn't about female readers gaining an understanding of the opposite sex by reading work written by a male featuring a masculine main character. It was - can a man write about a female character as effectively as a woman writer - or indeed, should male writers only write about masculine main characters (if I understand it correctly).

My answer still stands. I have written stories - even a novel - from the pov of a feminine MC. Was I misguided to even attempt doing this because I'm a man? I trust not.

H

[cacian]

“This is the point. This IS the point, Taper, it's not bull****. I’m not just talking about my wife, I’m talking about my life. I can’t seem to get that through to you. I’m not just talking about one person, I’m talking about everybody, I’m talking about form, I’m talking about content, I’m talking about interrelationships. I’m talking about God, the devil, hell, heaven. Do you understand? FINALLY?”

Yes I do. Haha. It is easy to write a bible when god is a man and the writer is just another one of the same. When however a lady is mentioned it is either a virgin or a prostitute. The extremes are well too extremes. Is the bible some some kind sanctions to biase one gender over another? I am not so sure.
The other mention is I am assuming is that the bible one race biased too. There are no mention multicultural ties. This is just speculations. I am read of the bible throughout.

[Delta40]

What about animals? In Watership Down I guess the author was right to make most of the bunnies the same gender as himself so yeah perhaps you have a point...except does a writer have the right to assume what it's like to be an animal regardless of gender?

[cacian]

What about animals? In Watership Down I guess the author was right to make most of the bunnies the same gender as himself so yeah perhaps you have a point...except does a writer have the right to assume what it's like to be an animal regardless of gender?

Hello Delta man has no place in animalship he is yet to ask for its permission to demission. I take offence personally when a human demoralise a subject such as animals ie talks animal with the idea of projecting himself through it. There is no knowledge to be had from such derogatory manner. It is most likely to be very offensive to the animal if it had spoken for now it does not. I must not presume i take advantage of those who have not the mean to compete along or against me. I reserve judgement on parole.
What there is a lot of cobblers however. Haha.
Anyway I think it is best to approach writing from a standing point of view where I the writer project my ideal through my gender. What I am left to play with I experiment by using it as a recoursive approach to acting reacting and finding.
I consider characters as toys puppets a writer invent to create an atmosphere of interactive play using what he/she knows, his knowledge of himself against of that he does not. That what is chemistry does in a lab it mixes and matches and see if and when comes up with something. It most likely to be successful if the solution does not burn spill and end up messing the rest of the experimentees. A writer is like a puppeter only with a pen and paper.
Wrting is a world play we all manifest in order to conduct our role hopes plays and hopefully get to somewhere we wish to be. Language is a world stage and the writer its conductor where he or she gets to musicalise over notes and pitches. That is all I think.
However I am not suggesting for a minute we may not approach writing through other genders au contraire we must do that after we have mastered our own and then the rest should fall into place.
All in all if a writer asks how should I start to write the answer should be start with yourself. Why not?