Why Must Writers Write From the Breast Perspective?

My personal hell will be slogging through an uneven book. An uneven book has some fascinating, and enthralling, bits sandwiched between terrible chunks of nonsense. A good book keeps you reading through its entirety; a bad book can be thrown to the ground never to be picked up again, but an uneven book; that’s a special torture. And so: my recent experience with the Wheel of Time series.

                For as long as I can remember the Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan has been extolled to me. It’s praised as being the greatest fantasy saga since Tolkien. A lofty claim, no doubt; a spurious one as well.

The problem is not that the Wheel of Time’s premise is bad. It is great. In fact, it is brilliant. There is no fantasy series out there with a better realized magic system; Saidin/Saidar, the details behind this magic system is as straightforward, yet as far reaching and complex, as a lecture by Richard Feynman. Where the saga fails is not in its world building, not the mytho-politics, not even all the characters, Matt Cauthon is great, Moraine, Lan, even the whiny misanthropic Rand Al’Thor has his moments. The saga fails in its sex relations.

                I do not mean the actual depiction of sex. The Wheel of Time, in comparison to say: The Song of Ice and Fire, is pretty PG-13 in its depiction of sex. What I refer to is how the characters interact around sex relations. The females are always for some reason angry. Nynaeve seems to be in a constant state of resting bitch face. She can not even access her inner powers until she is angry; a neat idea, but one that, because of Jordan’s inelegant handling of the character, ends up grating. Female and male characters seem to yell out a cursive “men!” or “women!” at every turn. It happens so often in the books that I wonder if Jordan’s understanding of humanity comes from a 1980s day time talk show; or perhaps a pulp magazine.  

This check out line perspective of women is not only a problem for Jordan; it’s often a problem in many blockbuster books.

Another saga I put down, with some wonder if I will ever pick it up again, is the aforementioned Song of Ice and Fire by George RR Martin. I have been reading this series since the early 2000s, way before the hype of the HBO show, but as I got into the fifth book, I noticed a troubling issue. It seems the female characters are written from the point of view of their breasts. Daenerys Targaryen is always conscious of what her breasts are doing under some piece of satin or armour. The books often have more narrative about breast placement than the exorbitant descriptions of food and anyone who has ever read the series know Martin’s feast descriptions fill more ink space than the Bible. (There is now a cookbook based on these.)

                Why is the only way into female’s minds, for my male writing compatriots, is through their naughty bits?

Imagine if Leopold Bloom in Ulysses walked over Dublin with constant discussion of what his penis was doing in his slacks. “My flobbity-gate-schlongwanger did process on the pub with me brain attached.” Would that novel be as remembered as it is?

I wonder if it wouldn’t be a hilarious project to write great pieces of literature from the perspectives of the penises and vaginas in them.

“Elizabeth Bennett’s crumpet did sit with an itchy feeling as it navigated the lace and wool of the settee. A breeze assailed through a puncture to delight the trapped enclosure.   Mr. Darcy’s scabbard did flop in the musty humid cotton of his twice washed trousers. It wondered again when it would have the chance to take the room in the vicinity of the maiden’s vagina. ‘Oh we shall be good friends’ it did think.”

                It is absurd that writers enter the brains of their characters through such juvenile means. It’s like the strides in character psychology that Woolf or Joyce or Ibsen discovered never happened. Although Jordan is not as guilty as this as Martin, if I had a dime for every time a character (Nynaeve being the guiltiest) crossed their arms under their breasts I would have a whole hell of a lotta dimes.

                I implore our writers to stop treating their characters as a meat market and write their thoughts. Maybe then I wouldn’t have to wade through all the garbage to get to the good parts. Maybe then reading these entertaining sagas would not be such hell.

P.S. Once you see how often breasts have opinions in books, you’ll never be unable to ignore it. I apologize, my friends.