TMC: Representation and the early days of SF

[John (Taloni)]

Any time we read an earlier SF work the subject of representation comes up. Main characters were overwhelmingly male and white. That's true for Martian Chronicles as well. There's only one story featuring women as MCs, and they're going to Mars to meet a man. Women exist mainly as spouses to MCs.

It's also true that the SF readership of the early days was overwhelmingly male. Even female writers of the day, as Veronica noted recently, wrote with male MCs because that's what readers were buying.

But the readership wasn't *completely* male, although you'd have a hard time getting the subscription fulfillment peeps to understand that. I'd like to relay a story.

My mother used to tell about how she subscribed to several SF publications. As she was born in the early 1940s, this would have been around the mid to late 1950s. Her first name was "Angela." Yet no matter how many times she filled out the form and conspicuously made that last letter an "A," the magazines always came to "AngelO."

It seemed the subscription house was willing to believe she was Italian but not female.

[Dara]

Despite knowing all of that I am still so, so exhausted reading books without any women in them and I no longer have the mental or emotional spoons to spend my free time engaging with material that refuses to acknowledge my gender as anything but secondary to the males. I just can’t. I appreciate classics for what they’ve done to influence and build the genre but I can’t be bothered to read them anymore.

[Ruth]

Dara wrote: "Despite knowing all of that I am still so, so exhausted reading books without any women in them and I no longer have the mental or emotional spoons to spend my free time engaging with material that..."

^^
This.
While I did enjoy The Martian Chronicles for the most part, and I’m glad I read it, the way Bradbury writes about women is just... yikes. I bounced hard off Ringworld for similar reasons and I’m often reluctant to pick up SF classics because of this very issue - why read something that’ll piss me off when there’s so much excellent inclusive SF from modern writers such as Becky Chambers?

[Trike]

There’s also the factor that the book was published when Bradbury was 29 years old. Most of the stories in it were written between the age of 24 and 28. It’s hard to see beyond your culture at any age, but it’s especially difficult when you’re younger. He lived in a white male-dominated world which was actively whitewashing history and oppressing everyone who wasn’t a white man.

His female role models were movie actresses and his mom. People of color were invisible. It’s not surprising he couldn’t see beyond that.

[Julia]

Dara wrote: "Despite knowing all of that I am still so, so exhausted reading books without any women in them and I no longer have the mental or emotional spoons to spend my free time engaging with material that..."

Yes! This!
While I can appreciate the quality of the writing/the ideas in an abstract sense, I'm just didn't enjoy the book. And the more classic SF I read, the more I despair of ever finding one I will be able to appreciate for more than its historical value.

And honestly I'm dubious of the defense that Bardbury was just a child of his time. He was after all capable to emphasize with the plight of African Americans in the south in "Way in the Middle of the Air", so he was able to see outside of the prejudices of his time. And then wrote something as ugly and misogynistic as "The Silent Towns".

[Rebecca]

I've noticed that I'm usually not as bothered by lack of female representation in our books as many of the other women here, and I wonder about why that is. It definitely bothers me in movies and TV, and bad rep as opposed to no rep is a problem ("The Silent Towns" being the only story in this book that I didn't enjoy, because it was so egregious. Night's Master I also found difficult because of the characterization/treatment of many of the women).

I think it might be because, barring The Hobbit, which was the book that got me into reading, I read almost exclusively books with all female, or at most, 50/50 split while I was growing up? Through elementary and middle school at least, I read SO MANY horse girl books, Baby Sitters Club/Sweet Valley High/etc, then moved into Tamora Pierce, Mercedes Lackey, Robin McKinley, Anne McCaffrey. I guess books like Harry Potter and Narnia are in there too, but they have female character diversity too. So if I occasionally read a book with an all or mostly male cast, it's not a big deal in my own personal reading? Meaning, I don't generally get the feeling of ugh, not another male dominated story, when it's a book.

I can definitely recognize the societal trend and understand other's frustration with books like that though. Like I said, I get very frustrated with TV shows and movies for doing the same thing, and maybe that's because it was harder for me to curate such a custom experience for myself?

[Jesse]

Dara wrote: "Despite knowing all of that I am still so, so exhausted reading books without any women in them and I no longer have the mental or emotional spoons to spend my free time engaging with material that..."

Even though I enjoyed the prose of Ray Bradbury I actually couldn't finish the book due to the inherent sexism in the stories. I was listening to the audiobook, so maybe it hit me harder than if I was reading it. Did anyone else abandon the book due to this?

[Dara]

Jesse wrote: "Even though I enjoyed the prose of Ray Bradbury I actually couldn't finish the book due to the inherent sexism in the stories. I was listening to the audiobook, so maybe it hit me harder than if I was reading it. Did anyone else abandon the book due to this?"

I did. It was really hard to get through so I decided I wasn't going to try.

[Stephen]

That is why I liked Little Fuzzy so much. Written in 1962 and the women had professional jobs in the tale! H. Beam Piper got a extra star in my review just for that.

[Oleksandr]

I don't think it is correct to judge with the present day rules any old fiction. Yes, true, they did have much more straight white able-bodied males than all others combined. But they are the tales that often play well with other races/genders/etc if a reader substitutes them. would the story August 1999    THE EARTH MEN radically change if the Earthpeople were women?

And while even at that time there were more inclusive authors, I read SF more for ideas and as an escapism, and I had no trouble enjoying the opposite (e.g. all female cast as in The Stars Are Legion) if the story is good

[Seth]

Oleksandr wrote: "I don't think it is correct to judge with the present day rules any old fiction...."

I think it's fine to overlook faults in things we enjoy - I certainly liked the Martian Chronicles overall, despite the issues pointed out here. But even the 'rules' of Bradbury's own time were more progressive than his representation in these books. Hidden Figures and other books have already examined how instrumental women were to the effort to propel humanity into space. The examples were there, even in Bradbury's time.

In trying times, like with female pilots in WWII, the US and other countries put women in cockpits, in factories, and behind slide-rules to win the war, and then win the space-race. Yet Bradbury's book envisions the most trying of times - nuclear war - and he fails to allow women to play any significant part. I think that authors, and especially science fiction authors trying to envision the future, can be rightly judged for their lack of vision in creating a place for women in their novels - whether that should cloud your enjoyment of a book is up to you.

[Julia]

Oleksandr wrote: "I don't think it is correct to judge with the present day rules any old fiction. Yes, true, they did have much more straight white able-bodied males than all others combined. But they are the tales..."

It's honestly not just the fact that there are so few women in the stories, but also the way that those few that exist are represented. I've recently started watches "The Terror" didn't mind at all that the cast is almost exclusively male. However, in the Martian Chronicles the few women we encounter are either subservient housewives or nagging annoyances. At best, women in this book are allowed to be pretty and nice but always passiv. To put it another way, I'd rather have no representation at all than have Genevieve Selsor.

I also don't think I would mind so much if it was just this one book. But so far, every classic of SF I've read in the last years has had similar problems.

[Oleksandr]

Seth wrote: " I think that authors, and especially science fiction authors trying to envision the future, can be rightly judged for their lack of vision in creating a place for women in their novels "

I don't think that the best SF books try to predict, it is not a futurism they are after, but 'what if?' In TMC, do you seriously assume that Bradbury expected any life on Mars? The same goes for all major SF works from Brave New World, The War of the Worlds, 1984 to modern novels

[Caitlin]

Oleksandr wrote: "Seth wrote: " I think that authors, and especially science fiction authors trying to envision the future, can be rightly judged for their lack of vision in creating a place for women in their novel..."

I'm confused. Are you trying to say that life on Mars is as unrealistic as women doing things in novels?

edited for spelling mistake

[Oleksandr]

Julia wrote: "in the Martian Chronicles the few women we encounter are either subservient housewives or nagging annoyances."

If the question is whether this is a fair representation of womankind then of course no. If the question is does it serve the story - I'd say yes. Take the first story set on Mars: Ylla. The author establish that Mars is just like the US small town, with housewife and possibly cheating husband, with their minor squabbles - this in contrast to expected pathos of the first contact. Despite been quite different (a misshapen giant.’
‘Somehow’ – she tried the words – ‘he looked all right. In spite of being tall. And he had – oh, I know you’ll think it silly – he had blue eyes!’
‘Blue eyes! Gods!’ cried Mr K. ‘What’ll you dream next? I suppose he had black hair?’) the astronaut plans to take Ylla to Earth - allusion to classic fairy tale cliche of a prince-rescuer. As I noted earlier for me these are fairy tales plus satire

[Oleksandr]

Caitlin wrote: "I'm confused. Are you trying to say that life on Mars is as unrealistic as women doing things in novels?"

I hope that was sarcasm. :)

My point was that Bradbury most likely hasn't expected the life on Mars (if any) be like in his stories, that they are allegories and fairy tales. I do not say that women were adequately represented in early SF

[Melani]

Oleksandr wrote:

My point was that Bradbury most likely hasn't..."

But it shows a lack of imagination doesn't it? That he can imagine an life on Mars and integrate all these fairy tales into his stories but still can't imagine a woman who does more then housewifery?

Learning that Bradbury was pretty young when he wrote the majority of these stories was very enlightening to me and helped a lot of the sexism go down easier. Of COURSE these are the imaginings of a young 20 something white man from middle America in the middle of the 20th century, it so fits. You can see where he tries to be progressive, but fails because he's still so stuck in his privileged mindset. Do I judge him for it? I mean sure. But I'm also judging Andre Norton for failing to even put a woman in The Time Traders (I'm reading it currently so it's on my mind).

[Oleksandr]

Melani wrote: "But it shows a lack of imagination doesn't it? That he can imagine an life on Mars and integrate all these fairy tales into his stories but still can't imagine a woman who does more then housewifery?"

I humbly disagree. For me has point was in that story: imagine they are just like us, Smalltown, U.S.A. The story was written, say in 1950, I am not sure of the date, but labor participation trends are glacial. if "work-force participation by married women in this age group has increased dramatically—from 26 percent in 1950" (https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/... ) then an average married woman was a housewife and if in a short story one wants to suggest averageness (erm, is it a word?) then it is fine for the story. Especially bearing in mind that in another story the archaeologist says that Martians stopped prior to industrial revolution

I disagree that any fictional depiction should state author's position on a social issue, esp. if the gist of the story in something else. I have a knee jerk reaction to 'socialist realism' (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociali... ) as a person, who grew to see its duplicity from inside

[Brendan]

Oleksandr wrote: "I disagree that any fictional depiction should state author's position on a social issue"

The importance of the All-American nuclear family was pretty much Bradbury's main thing, though. Almost his entire body of work was him worrying about things that would destroy the way of life he grew up with: television, automation, consumerism etc.

[Ruth (tilltab) Ashworth]

Oleksandr wrote: "The story was written, say in 1950, I am not sure of the date, but labor participation trends are glacial. if "work-force participation by married women in this age group has increased dramatically—from 26 percent in 1950" (https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/... ) then an average married woman was a housewife."

The issue isn't with women being housewives. As you say, that's what a lot of women were at the time, and there is nothing wrong with that. The problem is that the female characters in these stories are just housewives. They have no characteristics beyond their job, because these haven't been written for them. You can write a story full of passive women who 'know their place' and still make these women people. The Waiting Years by Enchi Fumiko is a good example of this, and tells the frustrating story of a woman who procures a young mistress for her husband and stands silently beside him for years. It is excellent, if painful to read, because a great deal of care is given to who these women are. The problem with TMC isn't in the roles women had at the time, the problem is that Bradbury doesn't care enough to make his women people; they are just housewives.

[Julia]

Oleksandr wrote: "As I noted earlier for me these are fairy tales plus satire "

I actually agree with that, I just think that the ideas about women behind the metaphors and satire are ugly and sexist. Women in these stories are not people, not in the same way men are. I mentioned Genevieve Selsor before because in "These Silent Towns" these things are so clearly spelled out. Women are supposed to be there for male wish-fulfillment. If they fail that they are to be targets of ridicule. Yes, it's satire and the targets are women who can't get a husband... 'She couldn't get a man, if she was the last woman in the planet! Now everybody laugh!' I could go on about examples from other stories about how the role of women is to be pretty and silent and care for the children and nothings else. The have no hopes or dreams or opinions beyond the men in their lives. You might as well replace them all with robots, no-one would notice....

This has nothing to do with the time those stories are written in. Women were human beings just as much 70 years ago as they are now, whether they were housewives or not. Bardbury made a choice (conscious or not) not to write them that way.

It's not that there is nothing of value in these stories, or that you can't like them. But they are sexist and for me that means I enjoy them less.

[Melani]

Oleksandr wrote: I disagree that any fictional depiction should state author's position on a social issue, esp. if the gist of the story in something else...."

An author's position on a social issue comes across in their writing whether whether they will or no. Especially if they attempt to write a socially progressive story (which is what Way Up in The Air is, an attempt to be progressive by showing the ridiculousness of white supremacists. It fails because the black people aren't characters they're caricatures). Bradbury's position on social issues comes out loud and clear. It's very much a white man from middle America in the 1950s who is trying to be progressive but not really understanding what that means.