Of male and female characters

[bazarov]

Tolstoy's Anna Karenina is the best male character and except Agatha Christie, I'm not familiar with women writers Sorry, Bronte and Austen fans!
Well, definitely Pierre Cake( known as Piece Von Cake), by Downing, new rising star on beautiful literature sky!

[Bakiryu]

I've never found a writer who can describe the mind of a woman. That must mean either I have a weird mind or I don't understand women. Weird.

I did Identify with Callie from Middlesex (except for the part on being a hermaphrodite of course), but I can't really remember an specific author.

Women in books are often so boorish and insipid (except for some good manga).

[PeterL]

I've never found a writer who can describe the mind of a woman. That must mean either I have a weird mind or I don't understand women. Weird.

While I am not a woman (so I don't have the same perspective on the matter) I have observed the same thing. No writers describe women's minds, and that includes female writers. I almost get the feeling that woman writers deliberately omit large parts of how women think.

[grace86]

I think D.H. Lawrence did a beautiful job portraying his female characters. Hehe of course I am not the first forumer to mention him.

Talisin, did you say "I" in your first post??

[downing]

Tolstoy's Anna Karenina is the best male character and except Agatha Christie, I'm not familiar with women writers Sorry, Bronte and Austen fans!
Well, definitely Pierre Cake( known as Piece Von Cake), by Downing, new rising star on beautiful literature sky!

brother Goebbels

[Janine]

I think D.H. Lawrence did a beautiful job portraying his female characters. Hehe of course I am not the first forumer to mention him.

Talisin, did you say "I" in your first post??

Gee I wonder who you are referring to, Grace....Hehehe - you mean me and Pensive - she mentioned him first; I just expounded on that comment.

Gearing up for next short story - Pensive, Grace, and (?)... I will announce it tonight. Happy reading ~ J

[NikolaiI]

A couple of things here. One, my grandmother has been writing for years about the idea that it is harder for a man to write from a woman's perspective as for a woman to write in a man's. Do you think this is true? And the other, this concept I've heard about but don't remember in detail, something about how the male perspective is the independent one, and the female is the dependent one in our society, I guess related to the first. So it's difficult for women to write from a woman's perspective as being the main thing, and discarding the other perspective. And if someone does, is it accepted very much?

[Noisms]

But how would you ever know? I'm a man, so I don't know what it's like to be a woman; therefore, how am I equipped to judge whether a male author writes women correctly or accurately? And vice versa - women can't judge whether women writers are painting accurate portrayals of the way men think, because they don't have a basis for comparison.

So I think the only thing we can actually make a judgement on is how people from the opposite sex write about our own sex. And I have to say that I rarely read a woman writer whose portrayals of male characters are at all convincing. The one exception that I can think of off the top of my head is Donna Tartt, whose main character in The Secret History rings true in his thoughts and behaviour as a typical emo wannabe-intellectual college boy.

[blazeofglory]

The thing is, I have seen that male writers have done quite well when picturing male characters, as have female writers with female characters.

But now the thing is the opposite sex. There are not many writers who can acccurately picture the oppossite sex's character's mind.

So, the question is:

Female forumers, which male writer do you think has most accurately described the mind of a woman; the same question to male forumers: which female author has most accurately described the mind of a male character's inner world?


And, oh yes, sorry for my terrible english.

This is possible because writing is mainly fictiously done, and we are in interaction, both male sexes and female sexes, and we can understand one another and they find reflections whether they are male or femable characters.

[Virgil]

I think D.H. Lawrence did a beautiful job portraying his female characters. Hehe of course I am not the first forumer to mention him.

I would have to agree, Lawrence does a great job with female characters. I know, I'm not a woman, so how can I be so sure? Well, they just seem correct. On the other side of the coin, Hemmingway does a horrible job with female characters.

As to women writers I'm a little hard pressed to recall memorable male characters by a woman novelist. I think the male characters of Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights strike me as real. Also Edith Wharton's Ethan Frome struck me as a real man.

[cziffra]

Would it be silly to mention JK Rowling? I know a lot of people don't value her work very highly (at least, not as "literature") but I do think she nailed gender remarkably well. I never doubted Harry or Ron as characters, and this is quite remarkable given that they grow up over 7 years. Also, to my knowledge, Rowling does not have a son, so her imagination is really something. A remarkable achievement, writing through the mind of someone not only of the opposite sex also through the stormy years of adolescence.

[Etienne]

Dostoevsky's female characters are often quite interesting, most are moulded in the same women however, but "his" women are often the core of the plot (The Idiot, The Gambler), or are at least a very important element (Crime and Punishment, The Brothers Karamazov)

[Old Crow]

For some reason the first author that sprung to mind when I read this topic was Anton Chekov. I'm a male so, of course, I can't entirely vouche for the validity of his female characters, but, taking aside the fact that their developments tend to occur in massive epiphanies (which was more due to the fact that he worked mainly in short stories and plays, making epiphanies necessary to the narrative) his female characters seemed to strike me as being particularly stark and realistic.

As far as a female author portraying a male character, the first that comes to mind is Iris Murdoch's Charles Arrowby from "The Sea, The Sea", particularly in the way she describes the feverish irrationality and intensity of jelousy. But then again, that might say more about me then it does about Iris Murdoch, which is another point: Doesn't framing a question about the realism of characters specifically by their gender disposition a person to answer based on their own perspective of what they believe a male/female should be, and not what they actually are?

If some one were to name Lady Macbeth or Heathcliff in this thread, what would that say about their perception of the gender they were reflecting on as a whole, despite the fact that both those characters are realistic? The point I'm trying to make is that great characters are great by virtue of their universal appeal, and not by their gender specificity. Not to criticize this thread, since, after all, there's nothing actually wrong with dwelling on gender issues, but I think sometimes we skew toward the best in ourselves when so many great characters have been forged out of demonizations.

[writerx]

so what about modern female writers portraying modern male characters?

[Lioness_Heart]

It seems to me as though male characters are in general more convincing than female ones (although that may just be because i'm not male so can't tell the difference), but at least certainly in the way that they seem from a woman's perspective.

Probably the most convincing female characters I've found have been by Jane Austen; Catherine in Northanger Abbey is really easy to identify with as a teenage girl. But then there are women who characterise women really shockingly, like Mary Shelley in Frankenstein (although there is the whole debate as to whether this was done on purpose).

I find some of Shakespeare's female characters quite convincing (taken in the context of the time) as he quite often seems to look at things from the female perspective more than his contemporaries.