One more thing I read as a kid, that was a first for me. Heinlein’s juvenile Rocketship Galileo is not the best of his stories, but it had the first Jewish character I remember reading as a child. I don’t know that any stories I was reading then specifically mentioned the religion of a character, just as some visualize white characters I guess we assumed most were Christian. But when one young man told his father about the rocket trip being planned and asked permission to go his father let him make the choice, saying, "It’s been quite a while since you stood up in front of the congregation and said “Today I am a man”.
The first chapter of Starship Troopers (I.e the awesome power armor battle scene that you think the whole book’s going to be about until it turns into a boot camp story and polemic about militarism and democracy) also describes chaplains of all faiths giving the Mobile Infantry blessings before they head for the drop bays.
And the chaplains dropped as well.
Heck, everybody dropped; the only folks who stayed on the ships that delivered them were the navy crew. No bloated rear echelons in that army.
ETA: And pilots of the ships were as likely to be female as male.
Heinlein’s an interesting mix of proto-feminism and traditional thinking, though on the whole, as a teenage girl reading his juveniles was my first experience of adventure fiction where the girls were as likely to be as competent and important as the boys. If not more so.
That’s interesting, because I tried to read Friday and came away with the impression that Heinlein is a misogynist.
I didn’t really like Friday the way I did his other books, but I didn’t get that from the book. Guess everyone gets different opinions from different things.
I didn’t really get past the gang rape that the female protagonist was too cool to be affected by.
She put up with it and acted aroused to anger them. They expected her to cry and scream and be broken down, but she acted the opposite.
I have the advantage of knowing her personality, which provides additional context for my suppositions. For what that’s worth.
In writing parlance this would be known as the “defining moment,” in which early in the story we learn something important about the protagonist based on their actions. Heinlein thought gang rape would be a great idea for a defining moment for his female protagonist.
Personally it made me sick.
Ever read Podkayne?
Can’t do a damn thing as well as her baby brother – except for holding babies. Decides to go to space as a baby-minder instead of a spaceship captain, as she originally wanted, because math is hard.
And everything that happens to her and her brother because of her uncle deciding to use them as camouflage is somehow the fault, not of the uncle, but of their mother – not for making a bad choice of babysitters, but for daring to need a babysitter at all because she went to work instead of staying home with her kids.
Do NOT give me Heinlein as a feminist. Especially not the juveniles.
(And probably don’t get me going on Heinlein in general, come to think of it.)
I did.
It’s been a long time since I read it but I enjoyed Stranger in a Strange Land … only Heinlein I think I’ve read.
But many of my childhood favorite authors turned out to be jerks.
I liked Andre Norton. I suppose she wasn’t really a heavyweight, but her female protagonists weren’t shrinking violets either.
Since we’ve ventured down this side trail, Lois McMaster Bujold’s female characters are all well-rounded and intelligent (without being Mary Sues). In fact, the widowed grandmother who is the protagonist of Paladin of Souls is the hero of the book, in exactly the traditional mold of a fantasy hero - she even rescues the fair maiden, who is in this case a male calvary officer. The more impressive thing for me is that she also writes strong, well-realized male characters, who are authenticly masculine, without being toxic.
Heinlein definitely grew skeevier as he grew older, and by Friday he was deep in his dirty old man phase. His attitudes were typical of some of the older veterans of the Sexual Revolution - to him, things like rape, pedophilia and especially incest were just more sexual taboos that needed to be examined and overcome. It’s what makes many of his post-1960s books hard to read these days.
He was both. Remember this was a guy born in 1907 and who wrote many/most of his major works in the 1950’s (though probably his most admired book by his fans, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, was mid-1960’s) when he himself was already in his settled forties. He definitely respected women by the standards of his time - his third wife was more academically high-powered than him, had out-ranked him during their stint in the navy together (granted she was a WW II temporary WAVE, hired to save manpower during wartime), had been a multi-sport athlete in college and spoke seven languages. It’s not surprising that a number of his female characters (but hardly all or even most through his career) are portrayed as smarter, more competent, more emotionally perceptive and, sometimes, more practical than his mostly male heroes.
However he was also burdened by some of the cultural conditioning of his era and his female characters usually just have less agency than his male ones. The males are usually the leaders/heroes (even if clumsy ones), the females the sidekicks, damsels in distress or at best quietly nurturing powers behind the throne. Mix in his very libertine (for his era) sexual mores which can occasionally interact a little ookily with his subordinated female characters and you get a definite tinge of misogyny by late 20th/21rst century standards. Heinlein liked and even admired women - but he did so from a very mid-20th century perspective that was not really quite equal.
It also really depends which Heinlein you read. In some of his books women are barely window-dressing, in others they are closer to partners.
Obviously I am not a writer but it seems to me that unless the physical feature is going to be an intentional reveal of some sort any characteristic that is going to be specified should be established sooner than later? Before the reader settles into an image in their head that may be different. Which does not take away from the point of default assumptions. …
This is the first time I’ve thought about that. I picture him as White, too. But as a White man with very dark skin. No kidding. I should reread those books.
Maybe that’s so, and that is largely what I was thinking when making my original comment. On the other hand, part of the author’s original point was, it’s only for non-white characters that we seem to regard race as one of those important characteristics. Authors never (well, very rarely) bother to write, “He was a burly white man…” or “A beautiful Caucasian woman entered my office…”
Sometimes there are hints in that direction, like hair or eye color, and the occasional author may mention it if a character is particularly pale. You sometimes read about “alabaster skin,” for example. And of course, some authors give only a very vague physical description at all. But even those who do describe their characters in detail rarely mention their race explicitly–unless that race is other than white.
That was part of my friend’s purpose in leaving the reveal of her character’s race until later. “White characters never get their race established. Why should we do it with black characters?”
If it matters (it probably shouldn’t, but it probably does), the writer I’m taking about is a white woman.
Oh for fuck’s sake…
The singular they isn’t recent. Your paper sucked.