Writing from the perspective of the opposite sex

[Kookamoor]

I just finished reading She's Come Undone by Wally Lamb. It's a fairly simple read but it deals with a lot of complex issues that a woman, Dolores Price, faces throughout her life. I don't usually read Oprah-Recommended books, but I really enjoyed this one.

Interestingly, it's written by a man in the woman's first person voice. I found it really interesting how he was able to voice her feelings and it seemed to come out so accurately and naturally. He managed to encompass many very difficult issues, from female sexuality to abuse, and they were all depicted from what seemed a very feminine perspective.

What other books have you read (or have you read this one) that involve an author who is writing from the perspective of the opposite sex? Do you think they did it well? Is this a challenging thing to do?

 

[novella]

Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden was reviewed as a great example of a man writing from a woman's point of view, but I don't think he really pulled it off. There's a distinct fetishism about the clothes and habits which belies an 'outsider's' perspective and also the main character is almost totally depersonalized and superficial. I wonder if those positive reviews were written by men who imagine this is how a geisha might think?

The Courage Consort by Michel Faber is a much better example (referring to the title story in this book of three novellas). He is very convincing in the point of view of a middle-aged woman with complex psychological issues.

Most authors write novels in the third person, which kind of hops around various characters in the course of telling the story. Once you notice this, you see that writing from the point of view of the other gender is pretty commonplace. Sustaining a whole narrative in the first person POV that is the other gender is probably less common.

 

[Wolhay]

I don't think that there are any greater differences between men and women for the most part so the perspectives isn't something that I've pondered on a lot. I think that it should be possible to write a novel without disclosing the gender of the person just as some writers don't disclose the colour of the skin.

Something that I've noticed from female authors however, is that homosexuality doesn't seem to be uncommon when they're writing from a male perspective.

Fanfiction and cartoon erotica by females on the internet is overflowing with male bonding as well.

I've read a lot of books by male authors about male homosexuals but I haven't encountered a lot of books by male authors about female homosexuals.

 

[Kookamoor]

Fanfiction and cartoon erotica by females on the internet is overflowing with male bonding as well.

I've read a lot of books by male authors about male homosexuals but I haven't encountered a lot of books by male authors about female homosexuals.

I've noticed that there's a lot of homosexual fan fiction around as well - I used to read fan fiction of a particular tv show back in the mid 1990s, and there seemed this propensity to have some kind of romance between two of the men. I think the term used for it was 'slash fanfiction'. I never really liked this concept at all - nothing wrong with homosexuality, but it just didn't fit with the way I viewed the characters at all.

In regards to male authors writing about lesbian issues, however, that was one of the interesting things in this book. The main (female) character was questioning her sexuality and had a homosexual encounter... I thought it was fairly well done. I didn't really like the way the other woman was portrayed, but I still thought the way that the first person character dealt with her confusion was well done.

 

[Slacker]

LOL Kookamoor, lemme guess, was it X-Files fan fic?

For some reason, Mulder has gotten himself into a lot of slash fic (read: fantasy).

I don't think I've ever read anyone to match Wally Lamb though, to answer your question. As someone mentioned, there are plenty of authors in the third person "floating" POV who are adept enough at writing believable opposite sex characters for a scene or two, but I never read a first person story that was as authentic in that situation as "She's Come Undone."

He must be an extremely empathetic person.

 

[Kookamoor]

Hey Slacker - glad you read it and thought the same too! Oh, and no - it wasn't the X-files. It was a lot more obscure than that!!

 

[direstraits]

From the perspective of fantasy fiction though, there are a lot of female writers who portray male leads, but I think they don't really have to grapple a lot of emotional acrobatics that normal non-genre fiction characters go through.

Robin Hobb and Ursula Le Guin are examples of 2 writers whose male leads were believeable, but then their characters didn't really need to be much more emotionally complex than brick walls.

Rowling's treatment of young boys' mental states as they start to notice girls are a little off, in my opinion.

ds