by interloper » September 25th, 2006, 2:49 am
I think the question is perhaps a bit of a side issue, since the ability of a writer to portray characters in general, and the personalities of men and women in particular, is mainly (though by no means exclusively) relevant to novelists, and as a writer CS Lewis was not primarily a novelist. I cannot with competence comment on the space trilogy, for I've only read one of them (THS) and that was many years ago. But I can form a view about the Narnia stories - and it is mainly as the author of those, and hence as a novelist, that he is remembered by people in general. There I think he portrayed the 'real' people very well (ie sons of Adam and daughters of Eve), but of course these were all children. I say this with the experience of seeing the way my own children responded to the stories as they were growing up (I have one son and one daughter).
One mark of a good novelist I believe is the ability to write in such a way that it's not obvious, as you get into the story, whether it was written by a man or by a woman. Very few authors seem capable of this, without letting a clue slip out here and there. Two outstanding examples in my own (fairly limited) experience of novel reading are Dorothy L Sayers and Nevil Shute. This is principally an observation on the ability of the writer to portray both male and female characters with understanding and impartiality, leaving no room for comments like 'a typical man's way of describing a woman' or 'a typical woman's way of describing a man'. Of course there are other aspects of Nevil Shute's novels that leave you in no doubt that it's a man writing (for instance his extensive knowledge, born of experience, of aircraft engineering), but he portrays all his characters well, male and female, with a pleasing absence of sexist bias.
By contrast, the Miss Silver crime fiction books by Patricia Wentworth (Dora Turnbull) are so patently and obviously written by a woman. She describes her female characters, both the 'goodies' and 'badies', very well, but she is hopeless at portraying male characters of any sort properly (with the possible exception of young boys, who crop up now and again in the stories). Neverthelss I'm very fond of the Miss Silver books, and frequently re-read them. To keep things balanced, I feel the same way about Freeman Wills Crofts, another crime fiction writer (this probably says something about my reading habits). His plots are brilliant, his way of telling the story has the reader spell-bound and his style of writing is pleasurable and relaxing. But as a creator of female characters he's a non-starter. I think he probably realised this himself and got round the problem by making virtually all of his main characters men.
To return to CS Lewis, I think he himself was conscious of an inadequacy in projecting the character and personality of women, in fact he virtually said so (where was it he said "I cannot speak for married women, because I am neither married nor a woman"?). But then it was typical of the man to be ingenuous in this way. To digress a little, an interesting line of conjecture is this: if God wanted to choose a writer of children's books that would become a legend in their day and in succeeding generations, and which would convey an unmistakable message of Christian truth, what sort of person would He choose? No doubt someone in their late thirties or early forties, with growing-up children of their own, and with wider experience of children as well - a primary school teacher perhaps, preferably with a degree in child psychology. Not a bit of it! He chooses a stuffy middle-aged bachelor, an Oxford don steeped in Medieval and Renaissance literature. But a man honest before God and people: "I wrote the sort of stories I myself wanted to read as a child". And to be safe, he makes the most important points concerning a person's obedience (or otherwise) to God using children as his subjects - perhaps that is a lesson in itself.
Last edited by
interloper on September 25th, 2006, 3:36 am, edited 2 times in total.
), but I cannot believe them as women.
