Lavinia Collins's Blog, page 21

The Day of Destiny – OUT NOW!

 

The third and final part of The Guinevere Trilogy is out now!

“I would thoroughly recommend this book to anyone with even a passing interest in romance, fantasy, or legend.” Rebecca

“I was completely swept up in the story” Anouska

“Such an entertaining read! Engaging, thoughtful and brilliantly written.” Henry

As Guinevere’s affair with Lancelot becomes public, Mordred forces Arthur’s hand and she is put to the pyre. Saved at the last minute by Lancelot, she is taken from Camelot to Joyous Guard, but before long Arthur gathers his armies to lay siege to the castle and begin a war that will threaten everything.

The Day of Destiny is the third title in Lavinia Collins’ highly acclaimed trilogy recounting life at King Arthur’s court from the point of view of Queen Guinevere.

 

Find it here (UK): http://www.amazon.co.uk/DAY-DESTINY-Guinevere-Trilogy-Book-ebook/dp/B00L0MA2HI/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1403011071&sr=1-4&keywords=lavinia+collins 

 

And here (US): http://www.amazon.com/DAY-DESTINY-Guinevere-Trilogy-Book-ebook/dp/B00L0MA2HI/ref=sr_1_3?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1403026395&sr=1-3&keywords=lavinia+collins

In Praise of Popular Literature

As someone who studied literature at university, I have been unavoidably aware of the snobbery directed by some against popular literature.* There’s this general idea that if everyone likes it, it can’t be good. It all has to be dense and referential, like James Joyce or T.S. Eliot (both of whom I like, BTW) in order to be worth something. But most of all, it has to be exclusive to be good.

With characteristic reason, good sense and sound judgement, Jeremy Paxman has spoken out, calling for poetry to better respond to and engage with a popular audience. (Read the article here: http://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/jun/01/jeremy-paxman-poets-engage-ordinary-people-forward-prize.) Quite right. Especially with poetry, we have slipped into a kind of snobby, elitist circle. Anyone in the poetry world (not I, I confess, but my partner is a poet and I peruse these things in a casual manner) is aware of just how wanky PN Review, the leading poetry magazine, has become. It seems like you need a PhD in philosophy or literature to publish in it, and you certainly need a PhD in at least one of those to grasp what the damn poetry is on about. The only contemporary poetry I have enjoyed lately is the performance poetry I see in little bars, in bookshops specially opened late, at open-mic events in arts centres. Paxman is right. Poetry has lost touch with the ordinary man. But there’s also the poetry that we don’t appreciate, that passes us by every day, without our notice. Jay-Z’s 99 Problems, the lyrics of Bob Dylan. Poetry used to be set to music. The word ‘lyric’ comes from the classical Roman instrument, the lyre, that accompanied that poetry. But the music we listen to, it’s popular, it’s low-status. It lacks that exclusive high-art appeal of poetry published by isolated intellectuals in a prestigious journal. But my god, I prefer it.

Similarly with the novel. Eloisa James has recently spoken out about the unfair marginalisation and devaluation of the romance novel. (Read it here: http://www.vulture.com/2014/05/romance-novelist-eloisa-james-interview.html.) Here, she talks about the issues of attitudes towards it. Working in academia, she had to keep her identity secret, because writing popular fiction, or ‘genre fiction’ (especially sexy books aimed at women, because we all know this is the most degrading thing possible – don’t get me started) would prevent her from getting tenure as an academic. There are many wonderful and sensitive articles about this by other writers. Amy Boesky has written this wonderful article on her experience of ghostwriting Sweet Valley High books as a graduate student to fund her studies, and the stigma associated with this: http://www.kenyonreview.org/kr-online-issue/2013-winter/selections/amy-boesky-656342/.

Why do we look down on what is popular? What is enjoyed? A wealth of  the great literature that survives from the past is literature that was immensely popular and crowd-pleasing in its own time. Ovid’s sex tips, Chaucer’s fart jokes, Shakespeare’s plays – far less intellectual and “high status” than those of his contemporary and rival Ben Jonson – Dicken’s novels, serialised in the penny dreadfuls. We don’t give enough credit to what is enjoyable anymore. I wish we did. Isn’t literature about enjoyment and escape as much as it is about exploring ourselves, and the human condition?

What, from this time, will survive? What art form at the moment is challenging, enjoyable, sparking conversation and debate? I would argue that it is modern television. Breaking Bad, Orange is the New Black, House of Cards, Game of Thrones (I am aware these last two were books first, but they were made into TV cos they were entertaining, not because they were intellectual).

We don’t want poetry and literature to get lost under this fog of desperation for intellectual status. Something can be entertaining and still challenging. Enjoyable but still thought-provoking. Accessible to everyone and yet deep. Let’s value what we enjoy. I know I do.

 

 

*(Disclaimer: I studied at Oxford, where this is especially rife, and I am aware that many universities now have a focus on popular literature. This is also not to say that this is the opinion of all of the individuals I encountered there, just a general trend.)

#YesAllWomen vs #NotAllMen: Stop Excusing Misogyny

In the wake of a series of hate-crimes perpetrated against women, among them the Boko Haram kidnapping of Nigerian students and the murder of women by Elliot Rogers because of his imagined “rejection” by all of womenkind, the #YesAllWomen hashtag has sprung up, and done wonderful, important work bringing to the surface all of the ways in which being a woman makes life harder, more frustrating and more dangerous every single day.

In response to this supportive community that seeks to understand the troubles of an oppressed part of soceity, we have the nasty, whiny voice of “#NotAllMen”. The implicit protest of “Not All Men” is But I Didn’t Do It! and by extension it’s not fair for you to complain that people with whom I am associated through something beyond my choice as a group all do this. Funny, that you’re protesting that, when #YesAllWomen is protesting those moments when women are treated as less than human because of their belonging to a group they did not choose.

Why is honesty about misogyny so distasteful? Why do people try to deny that Elliot Roger was a misogynist?

I was born after slavery was abolished, and yet I would never hesitate to say that white people were responsible for slavery, even though I am white. It was a disgusting practice, an awful abuse of fellow humans, and a dark, dark blot on human history, and white people were responsible for it. We don’t have #NotAllWhitePeople tag for racism and race-related oppression, because we have grown out of that kind of petty “but it wasn’t me” complaining. What will it take for that to fly for misogyny as well?

Men are responsible for misogyny. Saying this does not implicate every single man in acts of misogyny, just as saying white people are responsible for slavery doesn’t make every white person a racist, or a slave owner.

I read all of Elliot Roger’s disgusting 140+ page manifesto, and he states again and again that women are ‘animals’ and he is going to get revenge on them for rejecting him. It is in black and white. What’s more, it’s textbook misogyny; Elliot was upset that he could not control his sexual desire for women, and blamed women for that desire, and for not being his slaves in fulfilling it. In the whole manifesto, he doesn’t describe a single conversation with a woman who is not his mother or stepmother. It reeks of entitlement. Elliot believed that he deserved whatever he wanted, because he was ‘superior’. Rich, middle-class white male. He believed, specifically, that he deserved women because he desired them.

So, the #NotAllMen contingent, I suggest that you grow up, and try to see beyond your own petty indignance that women are daring to speak up about the way they are treated, and try to imagine what it must be like. Read the #YesAllWomen posts. Ask yourself if you would like to live in a world where you are afraid every time you walk home alone, where you always have a contingency plan if you find yourself alone with a man, where you walk home with your keys between your knuckles in case someone grabs you, and where you are not allowed to protest that these things are unfair without being branded as making a fuss.

You as individuals may not be responsible for each individual problem, but as individuals you can take on some of the responsibility for the solution.

 

Writer’s Block vs Manic Writing

 

 

 

When people talk about writers, they often talk about “writer’s block”, the fear of the blank page and the inability to write. If you are not someone who experiences this, you can feel like you’re left out of some kind of club, and nodding along in sympathy to things you don’t really understand. 

I’m aware that at the moment, my ‘I don’t get writer’s blog’ spiel sounds already smug and unbearable, but bear with me, just a little. There is an opposite problem, for which there is no neat little noun-phrase, and from which I suffer, badly. 

My problem, is that I get myself into such a manic state that all I can think about all day, all I can concentrate on, is what I am writing about, the world I have imagined myself into, and I feel horribly disconnected from everything around me. I am absent in conversations, in day-to-day tasks, in everything apart from what I am currently writing. And even when there are things piling up to do, I will write for six, seven, eight hours a day. 

It will not surprise you, dear readers, to learn that poor starving artist that I am, I have a second job. This job requires a degree of attention, mental presence etc. This is a problem when I cannot think about anything apart from what I am writing. So is being functional in social situations. I have been with dear, dear friends in a social situation and been unable to focus on the world around me. I have been so lost in my own imagination, that everything else seems less real. 

This is a bizarre state to get it, but once I am there, I am stuck, and I write and I write, and that only makes it worse, and I produce tons and tons of stuff and – here’s the kicker to the writing process – I have no idea what’s good, and what’s awful. Because, you see, I imagine for those who get it, Writer’s Block is a natural filter, caused by perfectionism, which means that they can only write when it’s right (see what I did there)? I must confess that I am no perfectionist. I have a good editor, and a very patient partner who fix my grammatical mistakes and provide sage advice. I have tons and tons of material, and a head full of more that makes me behave like a total weirdo in public. 

I’m not saying I’m not grateful or glad of my bizarre mental state while the creative process is going, and I am sure those who get writers block badly will be narrowing their eyes at me at this stage, but the way I write ends in a rather tiring up and down process where I write and write and write something and then I feel so fatigued that I cannot undertake any creative activity for a few weeks afterwards. I can’t watch TV, I can’t read a book, I just have to write. It’s like being possessed. 

I wish I found it easier to block it out. I wish I felt as though I had my creative process under control. I’m certainly not wishing for writer’s block, but there must be some advantages to being able to shut it off. I suppose the grass is always greener on the other side, isn’t it? 

Why Reign is almost the Best Bad TV Program on the Telly

I love Reign, I hate Reign. I’m so confused! But I know one thing; I can’t stop watching it.

There is plenty to irk the medievalist in Reign, from the wildly historically inaccurate costumes, like in the first episode, the women all take of their shoes, and they are wearing stilettos. Just no.  No.

to -

Limpy sicky Dauphin replaced with Hot Existential Dauphin:

EXPECTATION: 

 

REALITY: 

 

This guy, whose sole purpose seems to be to kid the viewing public into thinking “Bash” rather than “Seb” is the acceptable shortened form of “Sebastian”:

 

WHO EVEN ARE YOU.

Beardy Nostradamus, inexplicably chilling at the French court, who is supposed to be like 60, but appears to be about 35, and more interested in breaking up a teenage romance than, y’know, the burgeoning rise of secular humanism in the great European capitals of thought:

 

 

Lookin’ sharp there, Nostradamus.

 

In this version, Mary is a largely charmless bossyboots (I know I’m not supposed to say ‘bossy’ about a woman, but I don’t care, she is bossy, and so are tons of men, and I think we should all chill out about the word “bossy”) who wears a lot of headpieces that look like they are from Claire’s Accessories (nothin’ wrong with that, just not very C16th) who’ll make out with anyone, so long as she’s drunk. Adelaide Kane makes a very beautiful Mary, and I can’t make up my mind if she’s not quite right, or if she’s doing her best with a very clunky script, aimed entirely at presenting Mary as some kind of Scots Angel of Love, descending upon the riven French court to cure it with her pouty lips and no-nonsense Scottish  (“Scottish” – they all have neutral-ish RP British accents) attitude to politics, life and love. She’s a bit nothing.

Fig 1:

   

(I could think of a really efficient way for her to multi-task this, but y’know… whatever)

 

 

BUT It is all worth watching for this woman:

 

 

That’s right, Evil Catherine de Medici. Why is she evil? Who knows. Perhaps she taps into this trend: http://jezebel.com/on-television-mothers-are-the-villains-1575313509 that puts the mother into the “angry momma bear” role, fiercely defending her children. Perhaps she’s just sick ofAnd to an extent she’s a type; she’s an angry, disillusioned wife of a philandering king. But I just don’t care. I love her. Effectively, she’s Cersei Lannister lite. She fiercely defends her children, but they’re not evil, or conceived through incest. She still gets shit done, and don’t take no shit from nobody, OK? I watch Reign every week hoping for my fave old Evil Catherine to turn up and do something evil. She gets all the best lines, while Mary Queen of Scots bumbles around looking wide-eyed and naive, and she gets shit done. When she’s not plotting, she’s scheming, and when she’s not scheming she’s saying the only witty lines in the whole thing. She has, too, a touch of humanity and mercy about her. She the shining point of interest, complexity and humour in this otherwise drab tweenified historical TV fluff machine.

Now I’m out of the Tudors, and it’s a week between GoT, I find I have come back to Reign, and it does have a its charms.

BUT what bothers me the most about Reign is the TV programme they didn’t make. They wanted a love-triangle, so they invented “Bash” (NOT A NAME), but Mary Queen of Scot’s real life had a steamy love triangle already built in.

Mary Queen of Scots was involved in some kind of passionate affair/ intrigue during her second marriage to Robert lord Darnley, where she was involved to some (unknown) extent with the Earl of Bothwell who was married. In fact, there are a bunch of sonnets supposedly written by her, some of which seem to be addressed to him and go along the lines of “Roses are Red, Violets are Blue, Your Wife is Stupid and I Hate Her”. Ready made love triangle there, no need for teen angst to be inserted in the form of a man who cannot abbreviate his own name. Furthermore! Part of the reason that Mary Queen of Scots was keen to be rid of Darnley  (poss by murder – hope you are paying attention to this intrigue, TV execs) was that he was a prolific bisexual, and she was sick of him ditching her to have sex with men. Now, I have learned from Game of Thrones how bisexual intrigue is to the viewing pleasure of my good self (and many others – don’t pretend you didn’t enjoy a cheeky bit of Loras Tyrell/ Renly Barratheon action, I know you did). Here it is! Ready made into the life of one of history’s most famous queens!

But beyond that, and on a serious note (sorry), in Mary’s life, and what she left behind in the poems that she herself might have authored about her relationship with her lover Bothwell, whom she later married, is something complex, and dark and little explored on the television. The history of Mary and Bothwell’s relationship reveals something like an abusive relationship. Before they were married, but while they were at least heavily emotionally involved in an affair, he kidnapped her, and raped her. One of the sonnets supposedly written by her (the ‘Casket sonnets’) appears to describe this event, and all the troubling complexity of having your desires violated by someone you usually desire, and have loved and still do love. The complexities of abusive relationships are rarely explored properly in television programs, nor the complex love lives of women over 25.

This is the essential problem with Reign; in what it leaves out, it shows how small-minded TV executives still are. A woman who had a rich, complex, troubling life as an older woman is chosen to be shown as a teenager (Oh my god, she’s like totally Queen of Scots!) and for characters to be invented to create a “love story” that isn’t there, because the TV stations still find bisexuality, older women (and by older I mean >25, which is in no way at all old, but is maybe TV old because the world is mental)’s love and sex lives distasteful. They shy away from what is interesting to make what is safe, and “pretty”.

I can’t wait until someone is brave enough to make a film or TV series about the real life and loves of Mary Queen of Scots. Because that would really be something.

 

 

Negotiating Chick-Lit May as a woman who thinks she’s not a “chick”

So, hermit that I am, lost in the medieval world and far from the modern day and the world around me (I literally got Facebook two months ago, and because my publisher said I should) I only just realised, ten days in, that it’s “Chick Lit May”. Aside from the fact that this is just like ‘International Women’s Day’ and ‘Women’s History Month’ and suggests that all things “lady” are the “special event” and all this men are the norm, it has got me thinking about the term “Chick Lit”. 

I don’t know how I feel about it. I think if someone called me a “Chick” to my face I would slap them. I think it’s patronising, and demeaning, and I think it belittles women. I don’t like ‘bird’ either, incidentally, so perhaps I am just overreacting to avian nicknames for women, I don’t know. I would not call what I write “chick-lit”. But, my publisher would. To me, “chick lit” was always something with a pink cover you read on the beach, and nothing I ever enjoyed. It was like the Sex in the City Movie (not the series – that was great) in book form – glossy, trite, false, and full of aspirational items to buy. I read historical, fantasy and classic fiction and I was sure that “chick lit” was something that was aimed at a different kind of woman. Someone pretty. Someone who wanted to imagine themselves shopping, or marrying a faceless billionaire. 

But “chick lit” May has made me rethink. Seeing fellow author Julie Shackman talk about chick lit, http://julieshackman.wordpress.com/2014/05/09/three-cheers-for-chick-lit/ and her own novel which is as far from “pink sparkly women go shopping and replace their lack personalities with designer gear and a rich man” as you can get, really, I wonder if I haven’t been a bit of an awful snob about the whole thing. I wonder if I haven’t succumbed to some culturally embedded sexism, when I assumed from the name chick lit that we could only be talking about something bland and vacuous. It has also made me think of things I have read which have been deep, and moving, and wonderful that would definitely come under “chick lit”. 

So maybe it’s time for feminism to reclaim “chick lit”. We reclaimed “cunt”, surely, “chick lit” can’t be harder. But maybe it already has, and I am behind the times, because I see women writers who wright complex, sensitive stories using it about themselves. So it’s my “chick-lit” May resolution to start using that term about my own work, and to be proud to say that it’s under the broad and varied umbrella of Chick Lit. Women writers have already been making the term theirs, and it’s high time I joined in. 

Interview with Lavinia Collins, author of The Warrior Queen

laviniacollins:

Interview with my medieval homegirl, Bex. So grateful to her for having me on the blog, and a huge thanks to her for such stimulating (and challenging!) questions. But then I am a girl who likes to be kept on her toes ;)

Originally posted on Medieval Bex:

Lavinia Collins is the author of The Warrior Queen, part one of a new Arthurian trilogy. This post, an interview with Collins, is the second of two exploring this new work.

As a medievalist, Lavinia, you must have a keen awareness of not only the medieval stories of Arthur, but also of the countless modern adaptations in literature, art and film. So what motivated you to write your own take on these timeless tales? What does your trilogy do differently to everything that has come before, and which writers/tales would you say have inspired your version the most?

Hmmm, what a good question! There are several aspects to what motivated me to write. I really loved all the medieval versions, and I wanted to be able to share them, and a least a small part of some of the stories they contain, with a wider audience, but especially in a way that…

View original 3,064 more words

Sauce for the Goose: Sexism and the Topless Question

 

You may have noticed that my covers are a little racy. Go on, have a good look at them. MMM saucy. Nice. Take a good proper look, go on. As long as you’re not at work, and your boss isn’t peeping over your shoulder. (Although, if they are, you know that they’re intrigued by the same thing!)

Does one seem more naked to you? You’d better look again to check. Perhaps a third look… anyway.

Book 1 – Guinevere is hanging out half-naked in the woods. It’s sexy, it’s enticing, her look is halfway between “come hither” and “fuck off” and as soon as my publisher sent me this cover idea, I knew I had to have it.

Book 2 – Sexy half-naked Lancelot has been having some kind of sensual swim, and is giving us the eye as he gets out of the water.

Pretty similar, right? Similarly nude, similarly enticing looks, except, I have received three messages from eBook-advertising sites to tell me that poor old Guinevere is NSFW (even though, since she is half-turned from the camera, we actually see less skin than we do in the cover of vol.2) but they’re happy to have the picture of the half-naked man on their site.

I think this is sexist.

Why is a half-naked woman ‘rude’ and a half-naked man OK by them? Part of the problem is that as soon as we see any female flesh we’re socialised to think THIS IS SEXUAL. This woman is a sexual object, because she is naked. A naked man? He’s just… chilling naked? I don’t know. Do they think that men get aroused by pictures of naked women, but women just shrug at pictures of naked men? Is it because there is an implicit bias towards a male heterosexual viewer who goes ‘MMMM naked lady, meh naked man’? I can’t see any other reason why one flash of flesh is more ‘NSFW’ than another.

Nudity isn’t always sexual, but if it is, why should female nudity be more sexual than male? Why is Book 1 NSFW and Book 2 Safe?! I am a woman who supports the No More Page 3 campaign, but the nudity on the book covers is different. Firstly, it’s in the context of a story, secondly, it’s gender-equal and thirdly it’s not put next to the children’s books. Also, I would argue that it’s sensual rather than sexual, though perhaps I’m splitting hairs, and wandering from the point here.

The point is, it’s sexist and childish and small minded to say only female nudity is inappropriate, ‘NSFW’, or not ‘family friendly’. Either they both or, or they’re not. We’re still working on outmoded practices that sexualise female skin by default, and assume a male heterosexual viewpoint. It’s time we grew up.

The Game of Thrones Rape Controversy: Why I am angry about it, and why you should be, too.

 

There has been a lost of internet discussion (mainly outrage) about last week’s episode of Game of Thrones. I’m going to be talking about what happens in that episode, so if you haven’t seen it and want to be surprised, I suggest you don’t read the rest of this post.

In last week’s Game of Thrones, Jamie Lannister raped his sister/lover next to the corpse of their son in the great sept. There has been widespread condemnation of Alex Graves’ decision to change the scene from the book, and defend it as ‘not rape’, more a kind of sexy tussle where “No, stop, stop” and weeping are just charming lady-code for “yes yes more” (A far cry from the book where Cersei says “do me now”).

Sonia Saraiya has written a great article here: http://www.avclub.com/article/rape-thrones-203499 about the TV show’s propensity to change consensual sex in the books to rape on the TV show. It’s a great point, and it’s really worth reading. I don’t know why those decisions were made. To an extent, with the first episode she talks about – D�aenerys and Khal Drogo – it might have been the case that the directors thought that in a pseudo-medieval world, the first night of an arrange marriage could only be rape. I don’t know. But the pattern is alarming.

However, there is one element that has been largely ignored in the changes made from Jamie and Cersei’s scene of rough sex in the book to rape on screen, that I think is the most telling in terms of the latent misogyny of television. It is this element of the sex scene in the book:

““The Others can take the septons.” He kissed her again, kissed her silent, kissed her until she moaned. Then he knocked the candles aside and lifted her up onto the Mother’s altar, pushing up her skirts and the silken shift beneath. She pounded on his chest with feeble fists, murmuring about the risk, the danger, about their father, about the septons, about the wrath of gods. He never heard her. He undid his breeches and climbed up and pushed her bare white legs apart. One hand slid up her thigh and underneath her smallclothes. When he tore them away, he saw that her moon’s blood was on her, but it made no difference.” 

That’s right folks, the good directors at HBO think that TV viewers can’t handle a bit of menstruation. Whatever people’s preferences, I this is a decision that beggars belief. It was as though the executive team at HBO had a conversation that went along the lines of, “Oh no, menstrual sex is so distasteful. Let’s make it more palatable for the audience by changing it to a rape.”

Is menstrual sex still so taboo? Is rape still seen as more “sexy”, more aesthetic, than menstrual sex? Certainly, Game of Thrones seeks to shock, and show violence, and I am not one of those people who are interested in complaining that this ruined Jamie’s “redemption arc” – an act of rashness is entirely in keeping with the character of a man who pushed a small boy out of the window, and perhaps the directors wanted to remind us that Jamie was not some healed soul who saved a woman from a bear and went on to live happily ever after. That’s not the point here.

The point is, rape has become an aesthetic of television, a sexy plot point, even to the extent that the directors of a TV show rightly lauded for its complex and powerful female characters consider a scene when a woman is shouting for the man raping her to stop, a “turn-on”. No wonder everyone is angry. What might have actually shocked people – in a progressive, positive way – is the sex as it is represented in the book. It’s rough, it’s incestuous, it’s menstrual. It’s fucking great. But the raped woman – and the rape of women – is an old aesthetic trope that we can’t seem to resist. From my dear old namesake Lavinia in Titus Andronicus raped and maimed, to Tess of the D’Urbevilles, raped women have been represented as an object d’art rather than sufferers of a horrific crime.

Changing the scene puts Cersei unfairly into that box, and doesn’t faithfully recreate the complexity and interest of the scene in the book. More than anything it’s lazy and cowardly to hide from menstruation as though it is the monster under the bed, and jump right to rape. It was a brave scene for Martin to write, but he has shown himself not to be afraid of dealing with things that other authors – especially those of fantasy – have not. I am sure that I am not the only fan who feels let down by the lazy misogyny of the adaptors of his books for HBO.

 

“Woman Must Write Woman, and Man, Man”: The Shadow of the Medusa

Helène Cixous penned the now staple phrase of feminist literary theory, “Woman Must Write Woman, and Man, Man”, in 1975, decreeing that women must write their own experience, and so must men, and neither should transgress into each others’ territory. I am not here to disagree with Cixous (

In 1975 what Cixous was saying was radical, and it was important, and it was essential. Now, I’m not sure if it isn’t a little reductive to suggest that a woman cannot know what is is like (and cannot write what it is like) to be a man, and a man cannot do so of a woman. This somewhat seems to suggest that all men are fundamentally different from all women, and this is the defining social divide that determines our outlook on and experience of the world. Do we say black must write black and white, white? Do we say heterosexual must write heterosexual and homosexual, homosexual? And yet, all that I have published is a first-person series of novels told from the point of view of the member of my own gender.

Surely, Geena Davies’ genius plan to solve sexism in film and television (you can read it here: http://jezebel.com/geena-davis-solves... seriously, I was dubious reading the title, but it would seriously work), if we take Cixous’ advice that woman must write woman and man, man, would not work in novels. Davies suggests changing the gender of some main characters in film and tv to female without changing their personality in order to create proper female characters. Great. I’m 100% on board.

Why don’t we feel the same about novels? About the process of writing? Why is it that I read, for example, Rabbit Run and think that John Updike gets the men so right and the women so, so wrong? Why is it that I have not felt the need to tell a man’s version of the story? Do we truly understand the opposite gender too imperfectly to write from their perspective?

Why don’t I “write man” in my novels? Perhaps gender roles are so tightly encoded into our society that we can’t get outside of them in our thoughts. Perhaps it’s because of the years of misogynistic tradition in literature building up behind every writer, male and female, that Cixous was wary of female experience in male hands. Honestly, I don’t know.

However, I would like to believe that we have come a long way since then. I would like to believe that, between each other, men and women might be able to – through literature – negotiate somewhat what male and female experience of the world is like. Our own experiences are not absolute truth, and perhaps we can only come to understand each other if we keep trying to write each other. This is the way, I think, for us to get closer to understanding each others’ experience of life, of the world around us. I think it’s a mistake to shut off another’s perspective, to not try to imagine.

Literature is the space in which we try to understand an experience different from our own. That is why I love medieval literature so much – it brings us just a little closer to understanding the medieval experience of the world. Surely this can be done, also, between women and men.

I would like to believe that it can.