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The women in this series bother me [1st book spoilers]


mattig89ch

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Ok, so I had to say this to some other folks who read the series.

In my past, I have read up to the fall of tir.  Or I think its tir.  the fortress that can't fall, before its taken (not sure what that riddle is, but its something like that).  But this was back when I was 14.  I'm out of audio books to listen to atm, so I picked up the first book in the series, figuring it might make for some interesting reading.  And after going through the first book again the women of this series, seem like bullies to me.  Pushing and bullying the men into doing what they want.  Or otherwise manipulating them into doing things their way.

And...it bothers me.  Every time the wisdom starts yelling, or threatened someone with her stick, I actually wanted to hit her in the mouth.  Or break that stick of hers, and shove it somehwere unpleasant.  Every time Morane just refused to answer questions, I wanted to hit her too.  It really comes down to a feeling of 'who do you think you are, to tell me what to do?!' And 'Who do you think you are to say what I can and can't know?!'.  I can understand them doing this once in a while.  But it seemed like every other interaction was them forcing their will on others.

Am I the only one who feels like this?

Edited by mattig89ch
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You're not alone. This is probably the number one complaint with these books. Robert Jordan wanted "Strong Female Characters!" but forgot to make them good characters as well. Some people feel differently, but that is the tone I've seen from numerous fans, and how I personally felt while reading up to book 8/9 with no change in that matter.

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As a woman, I have to agree.  I definately felt a lot of frustration whenever they were around.  I want to like them, but they just come off as W(b)itchy to me, which is not a term I generally like using.

 

Was Robert Jordan henpecked at home, or something? 

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this was discussed a lot, either for women in general, or for egwene specifically (sshe get really bad around book 5-7).

Yes, women main characters in wot are bullies. they are not alone; men are too, with the sole exception of perrin.

On the other hand, they are also fascinating concepts. they are genuinely heroic (you still have to see their best moments), and you can't help admire them. they are also genuinely bullies, and you can't help hate them. Nowadays flawed heroes are in fashion, but rarely you see heroes with flaws that make them unlikable for the public.

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38 minutes ago, king of nowhere said:

this was discussed a lot, either for women in general, or for egwene specifically (sshe get really bad around book 5-7).

Yes, women main characters in wot are bullies. they are not alone; men are too, with the sole exception of perrin.

On the other hand, they are also fascinating concepts. they are genuinely heroic (you still have to see their best moments), and you can't help admire them. they are also genuinely bullies, and you can't help hate them. Nowadays flawed heroes are in fashion, but rarely you see heroes with flaws that make them unlikable for the public.

 

 

My problem was that every time they did something cool, or nice, or even settled down for a moment, they would ruin it by making me hate them again almost right afterwords.

 

So either he wanted to write strong women, and did not know how to.

or he hated women for whatever reason, and it showed in his work

or he was abused by his mother or wife or something similar.

I want to go with the first reason, not the other two.

 

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2 hours ago, Shallanah said:

So either he wanted to write strong women, and did not know how to.

or he hated women for whatever reason, and it showed in his work

or he was abused by his mother or wife or something similar.

I want to go with the first reason, not the other two.

 

I think you are putting too many gender considerations here. As I pointed out, the men are no better (let's go visit baerlon and get in troubles despite the aes sedai best advice, let's go poke around in this place where the very shadowspawn is too afraid to enter, let's pick this obviously cursed dagger and not tell it to the knowledgeable people, just to stay with the first book). Everyone in those books think he knows better than everyone else, especially in matters where they have zero actual experience.

try to think of them as characters, and not as women. and especially not as role models

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6 minutes ago, king of nowhere said:

I think you are putting too many gender considerations here. As I pointed out, the men are no better (let's go visit baerlon and get in troubles despite the aes sedai best advice, let's go poke around in this place where the very shadowspawn is too afraid to enter, let's pick this obviously cursed dagger and not tell it to the knowledgeable people, just to stay with the first book). Everyone in those books think he knows better than everyone else, especially in matters where they have zero actual experience.

try to think of them as characters, and not as women. and especially not as role models

My bad habit.  I always overthink everything, and worry if I am not thinking enough.  It's hard to just turn my brain off sometimes, and I would love to be wrong in this case.

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You're definitely not alone in the observations. Outside the books, there's an attempt to explain the general Aes Sedai attitude (and maybe it got woven into the books, but I can't recall) having to do with the way the White Tower came into existence and the need to have a clear hierarchy where everyone knows who's in charge at any given time. Unfortunately, they got so used to being on top that most of them forget that there are other ways to get people to do what you want that don't involve unsubtle manipulation or even less subtle displays of the Power.

Characters do start to recognize this and call each other out on it, more after Brandon started working on the series but with examples of it beforehand as well. And if you've finished book three, then you've just scratched the surface of a lot of these characters. Egwene for example becomes a much better character later on, but you're a book away before the point where she starts down that road, much less where she actually becomes really cool. Probably my biggest turnaround of opinion from start to finish though, but it took a long time to get there. Just within the parts you've read, Mat would be a pretty obvious example for how the series takes time with its characters. In the first two books, Mat does something phenominally stupid and from that point on he's not terribly fun to be around or to read about. Come book three when he's cured from the curse, he starts to become much more enjoyable to read about and develops from there. Now imagine this stretched out over fourteen books and dozens of characters...

Wheel of Time is a funny thing. I enjoyed it (things like the way many but not all female characters are written aside) and if it wasn't for it, I may never have stumbled upon Brandon Sanderson's works or at least wouldn't have been as inspired to start reading them. And there are definitely parts of the series that I wouldn't trade for anything. It's just... it's a very very looooong slog and even knowing the endgame, I have a hard time recommending new readers to start on it because of it and certain hiccups along the way.

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Man I am so glad I'm not alone here.  I posted about this on a discord server, and had a user say that I didn't like strong women.  And, wait, this series is 14 books long?  I thought it was like 7 books long.  Thats a giant series.  I'm struggling to pick up book 2 atm, but another 13 of this reading really isn't all that apealing.

 

Found a meme on imagur that sums up my feelings exactly: PyVyD8r.jpg

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35 minutes ago, mattig89ch said:

Man I am so glad I'm not alone here.  I posted about this on a discord server, and had a user say that I didn't like strong women.  And, wait, this series is 14 books long?  I thought it was like 7 books long.  Thats a giant series.  I'm struggling to pick up book 2 atm, but another 13 of this reading really isn't all that apealing.

 

Found a meme on imagur that sums up my feelings exactly: PyVyD8r.jpg

 

 

Don't listen to those types of people.  Never once have I heard anything negative about any of Brandon Sanderson's female characters, (except maybe Shallan once or twice), and they are just as strong as Robert Jordans female characters without being irritating.  Stick with the series though if you can, it's a great one! if you can't though, I completely understand. :)

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6 hours ago, mattig89ch said:

Man I am so glad I'm not alone here.  I posted about this on a discord server, and had a user say that I didn't like strong women.  And, wait, this series is 14 books long?  I thought it was like 7 books long.  Thats a giant series.  I'm struggling to pick up book 2 atm, but another 13 of this reading really isn't all that apealing.

 

Found a meme on imagur that sums up my feelings exactly: PyVyD8r.jpg

And this is exactly why I don't like to bring gender (or race, or whatever) arguments into the mixture. Suddenly EVERYTHING has to be about gender.

A strong woman is kicking chulls? clealry this is a gross exploitation of women, you are writing to pander to a feminist audience and get their money. A woman needs rescue from some kind of situation? clearly you are enforcing traditional role models with weak females, you should be ashamed, you mysoginist. A woman decide to put her family before her career? OMG, that's so wrong, let's tell everyone to not read this thing. A woman decide to put her career before her family? Now you are teaching young girls to neglect their children, or to pursue a stressful lifestyle that may not be of their liking just to fuel somebody's ego. Shame on you. There is literally nothing you can do that is not controversial (and incidentally, Vin was 15 when she started fighting. at that age she should be in a school. Shame on brandon for giving teenagers strange ideas)

I have a simple test for those kind of matters: do men and women behave, roughly and statistically, the same? If the answer isn't clearly no, then there is no problem. If every woman depicted was a bully and every men was reasonable, then there would be a gender problem. But if some men are bullies and some women are bullies, then there is no problem, it's just those characters that are that way. If all women support their men and all men got to be in charge, then there would be a problem. But we have men who rule (mostly in later books, rand isn't the dragon reborn yet) and men who choose to support somebody else, possibly a woman (Lan is the foremost example here). And there are also some women who let others have their way (I think you haven't met them yet, though; or rather, you've seen one briefly, but that's spoileriffic). And incidentally, I always admired followers more than leaders. Everyone can tell others to do what he says; they would go nowhere without those people who choose to follow them without bashing egos at every step. Leaders would go nowhere if there weren't enough people willing to step down; it's those quiet people who carry on the world.

Even then, different gender roles could be perfectly justified by the setting; a hystorical novel set in the middle age with a prevalence of strong women would just be irrealistic, for example. And in the wheel of time, women are generally in charge, as an indirect result of the power having different effects on men and women; there is a prevalence of bullies among them, but that's absolutely in tone with the setting. It is prevalent enough to be fitting, not to be a real problem.

Really, i think a lot of strife could be avoided if people were less prone to looking for hidden meanings, or at least more likely to dismiss them when not strongly backed by statistics.

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3 minutes ago, king of nowhere said:

And this is exactly why I don't like to bring gender (or race, or whatever) arguments into the mixture. Suddenly EVERYTHING has to be about gender.

A strong woman is kicking chulls? clealry this is a gross exploitation of women, you are writing to pander to a feminist audience and get their money. A woman needs rescue from some kind of situation? clearly you are enforcing traditional role models with weak females, you should be ashamed, you mysoginist. A woman decide to put her family before her career? OMG, that's so wrong, let's tell everyone to not read this thing. A woman decide to put her career before her family? Now you are teaching young girls to neglect their children, or to pursue a stressful lifestyle that may not be of their liking just to fuel somebody's ego. Shame on you. There is literally nothing you can do that is not controversial (and incidentally, Vin was 15 when she started fighting. at that age she should be in a school. Shame on brandon for giving teenagers strange ideas)

I have a simple test for those kind of matters: do men and women behave, roughly and statistically, the same? If the answer isn't clearly no, then there is no problem. If every woman depicted was a bully and every men was reasonable, then there would be a gender problem. But if some men are bullies and some women are bullies, then there is no problem, it's just those characters that are that way. If all women support their men and all men got to be in charge, then there would be a problem. But we have men who rule (mostly in later books, rand isn't the dragon reborn yet) and men who choose to support somebody else, possibly a woman (Lan is the foremost example here). And there are also some women who let others have their way (I think you haven't met them yet, though; or rather, you've seen one briefly, but that's spoileriffic). And incidentally, I always admired followers more than leaders. Everyone can tell others to do what he says; they would go nowhere without those people who choose to follow them without bashing egos at every step. Leaders would go nowhere if there weren't enough people willing to step down; it's those quiet people who carry on the world.

Even then, different gender roles could be perfectly justified by the setting; a hystorical novel set in the middle age with a prevalence of strong women would just be irrealistic, for example. And in the wheel of time, women are generally in charge, as an indirect result of the power having different effects on men and women; there is a prevalence of bullies among them, but that's absolutely in tone with the setting. It is prevalent enough to be fitting, not to be a real problem.

Really, i think a lot of strife could be avoided if people were less prone to looking for hidden meanings, or at least more likely to dismiss them when not strongly backed by statistics.

 

 

it's like politics (especially right now)  Better off not even talking about it to anyone, no matter what side of it you support.  too much can be lost over it.

Edited by Shallanah
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I forget where I read it, but I recall that the women portrayed that way in WoT are a parallel/subversion of real world sexism and dismissiveness, only towards men rather than women, partially due to Randland only having female Aes Sedai from the Breaking.

So on at least some level, the bullying etc of the women is intentional, I think.

Not that it makes it any easier to read at points, especially with certain characters.

Coughcough

Spoiler

Cadsuene

Coughcough

Good gods that character pissed me off, I have so rarely wanted to step into a book and personally smack someone upside the head. And in the mouth. And the face. Okay I just want that character to get a slap of some kind, preferably repeatedly. >__>

Edited by ScarletSabre
That woooooman. >_>
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17 minutes ago, ScarletSabre said:

I forget where I read it, but I recall that the women portrayed that way in WoT are a parallel/subversion of real world sexism and dismissiveness, only towards men rather than women

I have very rarely witnessed such behaviors. I have only seen women treated condescendingly by a few old people. I've never seen a man beat a woman, while I've seen the opposite on occasions. In my academic career, I've never seen any discrimination - in fact, I've seen discrimination towards men, as policies to increase the number of women in academia mandate that one has to pick a woman over a man all else being equal. then i went to work in the industry, and my boss was a woman, and I've never seen her treated disrespectfully. Then I became a teacher, and both the principal and her second are women, as well as most of my coworkers. I've never seen a girl being told she shouldn't study math because it's unfeminine, or stuff like that.

All in all, I never really got the hang of the whole gender business that seem to have exploded in the last few years, because while I am aware that somewhere, someone has to face those issues, they are as remote from my perception as the problem of flooding for a desert-dweller. I have a strong instinct to dismiss the whole problem as relegated to a small backwards minority and a few deranged individuals, greatly exaggerated at best.

I have a hard time believing that many men behave like women in the wheel of time do. If at least a significant minority does, however, I can understand what the fuss is about. Is there really that many real people behaving like that?:blink:

 

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8 hours ago, ScarletSabre said:

Good gods that character pissed me off, I have so rarely wanted to step into a book and personally smack someone upside the head.

Fortunately, Brandon did it for us. And according to a signing report, he enjoyed every minute of it. Whether this was part of RJ's original notes or Brandon added it on his own, at least someone did call her out on the bullying attitude.

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  • 4 weeks later...

I believe the only Aes Sedai I truly hated even up until the very end, and i just finished the series a few weeks ago, were cadsuane, and egwene (even cadsuane is a bit of a stretch even though she was overly aggressive and deserved every second of her exile). Naynaeve is the way she is for a very specific reason and she grows greatly throughout the books probably ends up being my favorite female character. Moraine can be irksome at times because she is overly vague , especially with rand, but after nynaeve she is probably one of my favorite female characters. Elaine unlike her absolutely terrible, horrible, awful no good excuse for a human being brother gawyn is a great character as are silverbow and tuon.  every other woman in the book is written pretty well. I enjoyed suane, leanna, fiale you just have to read their context. and i do believe to some extent Jordan wrote the women to kind of subvert reality and show how women are put down and pushed aside in society by showing what it would look like if the origin of an age or religious tale started with men, eating the proverbial apple instead of women. 

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  • 2 weeks later...

ok, so I tried to stick with the series.  I bought the second book, and got up to just after rand is told he's the dragon reborn.  But...I just can't continue with it.

Moraine's handling of telling him he's the dragon, and just the manipulation are really bothering me.  So much so, I'm actually being put in a bad mood irl over it.

Not sure what I'm going to read next tbh, but I don't think it'll be this book.

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  • 2 weeks later...

@mattig89ch - IMO you are smart not to waste any more time on a series you don't like. The ONLY character in the whole series I liked without reservation was Hopper the wolf - all the love for the Hopper!! I felt all the female characters were basically the same person, just with different overly-florid descriptions of how they looked. I felt that Jordan's background in the military/at that military school (where IIRC there have been issues with hazing and harassment) might have influenced his idea of "women/strong women," and not in a good way. I could not force myself to read beyond book 6 - literally wanted to stab my eyes out and kill all the main characters myself. Admittedly, as a middle-aged woman I am not the series' target audience. So to bridge from book 6 to Brandon's books (#12, 13, & 14), I relied on Leigh Butler's re-read and the WOT Encyclopedia, which are both still online I think. So if you someday want to read Brandon's WOT books, that's a viable path. Meantime, I hope you're able to get your hands on some reading material you DO enjoy! Reading should be fun! :D

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This series really saddens me because it has so much potential to be one of my all time favorites! I really liked the world building, the tone, and a lot of really cool ideas. I agree with the o.p about these so called "strong women". In reality they are weak because they are always giving into baser instincts like anger and act spiteful to each other and brats to the men (who are baffoons for large sections). There are other problems such as pacing (which tops the list). I am trying the series again starting with my favorite, of the ones I read, Shadow Rising in audiobook form curtesy of the library. Who knows if I will finish it but one of the cool ideas I liked is the Aelfinn and Eelfinn.

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On 14/06/2018 at 1:31 AM, mattig89ch said:

ok, so I tried to stick with the series.  I bought the second book, and got up to just after rand is told he's the dragon reborn.  But...I just can't continue with it.

Moraine's handling of telling him he's the dragon, and just the manipulation are really bothering me.  So much so, I'm actually being put in a bad mood irl over it.

Not sure what I'm going to read next tbh, but I don't think it'll be this book.

The only thing I can say in defence of the characters is that there ARE characters who don't act like that, quite a few women in fact. They have foibles and problems of their own, but I will say there are some. They are, sadly, few and far between for some parts.

And the manipulation etc are big plot points for Rand going forwards in fact, as he tries different ways of dealing with them, and with thinning patience for it, with various forms of success and failure.

Honestly, if you can't get past it, fair enough, I'd recommend something like Villain's Rule - The Shadowmaster Book One if you want something funny, if very adult, dealing with fantasy and worldbuilding etc. That being said, I'd say give the next book a shot, especially since it's where Matt really comes into his own, and becomes a fan favourite. But of course it's up to yourself! ^^

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18 hours ago, ScarletSabre said:

That being said, I'd say give the next book a shot, especially since it's where Matt really comes into his own, and becomes a fan favourite.

Honesty, my opinion of WOT was much the same as mattig89ch.  I read book 3 and it was Matt that was the final nail in the coffin.  I am glad that so many people enjoyed the books and I wanted to stick it out to get to Sanderson's portion, however, it was not to be.

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  • 6 months later...

I gotta say, the only books I didn't like was books 7,8, and 10. Those only because they were so slow and not much happens. 

And the only female characters I wasn't annoyed with was Suian and Nynavae. Those because they were the only ones that had any common sense or being open to other suggestions.

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