Strength of Hearth

sartorias wrote an entry a few weeks ago that I missed until now, mostly wondering about whether male writers and female writers create epic fantasy differently. The conversation threads are great -- much literary analysis on the meaning of epic fantasy happens in one thread, which I found quite engaging and informative, and then wrote my response based on gut instinct rather than analysis anyway.

Here's something I've been thinking about on and off since Twostripe told me I was being ridiculous by not considering Hermione Granger a "strong female" character. (Edit: He was right. Just to make that clear. I agree with him after our conversation, and realized I was falling prey to the equation I point out below.) A lot of the definition of "strong female" character that's expected right now equates to women-who-can-kick-butt-and-take-names. It is, in fact, a kind of masculine definition of strength. In what I see as the general way this plays out is the following equation:

women with swords > women with wands > women with hearths

A homemaker is not typically thought of as a strong woman. She has a traditional female role. She's not fighting against gender stereotyping, or against orcs or monsters. She's taking care of the home front.

But you know what? That hearth is important. While men and women with swords are out there saving the kingdom from external forces, the woman at the hearth is making sure they have a kingdom to come home to.

When I responded to sartorias's post, I was thinking about the Brian Jacques novels, and about how some of the female characters are go-getters, fighting on the front lines. (In the first novel, two of the most valuable fighters are Constance Badger and Jess Squirrel; in later stories, heroines like Mariel fight with improvised weaponry to carve out their own way home.) But there are also a lot of female -- and, actually, male! -- characters who aren't fighters. They're peace-loving creatures, many of them monks, who are healers, community builders, scholars, caretakers. They're not just strong because they give the heroes strength in the this-is-what-we-front-line-warriors-are-fighting-for way. They're strong because they persevere, because they don't lose hope, and because they are able to keep hope alive for others. It's a quiet kind of strength, but it's one that I think often gets discounted (considering I have been a guilty party on that myself).

There's a lot to be said for a Hestian grounding and for strength of hearth. Since I'm coming to appreciate that idea more as a parent, I wonder if there's an additional pertinent question to tag onto sartorias's gender question: do fantasy writers who are parents write differently than fantasy writers who are not?