Re: RARA-AVIS: Re: Hardboiled Dames


Diane Trap (trap@mail.libs.uga.edu)
Mon, 14 Jun 1999 09:50:31 -0400 (EDT)


> Words from the Monastery wrote:
> >
> > As I've said before ... I don't see any reason why a genre cannot be "boys
> > only" ... girls and boys don't only look different, but they think different
> > too and a big part of being hardboiled is the mindset of the character ...
> > an old school masculinity that a female writer can emulate, but a female
> > character can only pull it off in drag ... equality is a nice thing when it
> > comes to treatment, but to say a genre has to have it's female or male
> > equivalent is ludicrous.

So you're saying that if a woman character (using the definitions of other posters) is a loner with a moral sense that may be at odds with that of the rest of her society, and is willing to put herself at risk to act on that moral sense, sometimes violently, she wouldn't be believable.

> I have to sort-of agree. Even romance writer Tom Huff wrote under the
> name "Jennifer Wilde".

That's not writing, that's marketing. A Jennifer Wilde romance follows the dictates of the genre: whatever its decorations, the story is the relationship between the main male and female characters, and the ending is happy. The industry caters to the most feminine sensibilities of women readers; I don't think a man could sell a romance under his own name to either publishers or readers.

     -----Diane Trap
          trap@mail.libs.uga.edu

> --
> from Mari Hall found.dead.in.texas@airmail.net

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