Quote:
Originally Posted by issybird
I thought of McCall Smith and the gender issue and I think the unusual aspect is that it's a man writing for a woman, as the reverse happens all the time. There's the Golden Age and Peter Wimsey, Hercule Poirot, Alan Grant and Roderick Alleyn. P.D. James and Ruth Rendell have male detectives. And so forth, even Liam Campbell.  I think that's mostly down to gender issues and having men in the position of power and frankly, what sells best. It's a truism that while little girls might read the Hardy Boys, little boys would almost never read Nancy Drew. |
True, it's more typical for women to write about men. OTOH, I honestly think society makes that both more acceptable and more easily carried off successfully. It's very, very hard for someone who is a priviledged white male to put himself in the position of a black female than it is for a priviledged white female (Dorothy Sayers) to put herself in the position of a privileged white male (Lord Peter Wimsey who was in many ways a caricature.)
I think the reason McCall Smith was condescending was just that issue of crossing not one, but two, significant boundaries, and doing so from a position of privilege. I find his Isabelle Dalhousie books equally 'quaint' but less condescending. But I also don't think he's all that successful at capturing the character of a very privileged woman. It's very much a man's view of what such a woman would be, rather than a woman's. Or that's how it seems to me.
Circling back here to the book in our hands. I really wish we had someone in the group from the Aleut or Athabacan First Nations to help us understand how well or not Ms. Stabenow did. My sense is that she did quite well -- it felt right. But I'm viewing from my own lens, so I always have to doubt.