Femininity in the Alloy of Law era.

[The Kings Raven]

Something's been bugging me about the portrayal of femininity in the Alloy of Law era books, and I think I put my finger on it while rereading Shadows of Self.

There's a moment in chapter 19 (if you have an ebook you could find it easily by searching for the word Allrianne) where Marasi thinks about the difficulties of doing her job and remaining feminine at the same time.

I can understand where she's coming from. Vin was graceful in both the ballroom and battle, she's a lot to live up to.

But at the same time, it seems odd that Marasi thinks of it as a conflict between her role as a constable and femininity. If Vin is the ideal Scadrial woman I would expect say, a dressmaker, to worry that she doesn't have enough opportunities to get into a fight to be properly feminine instead of a constable worrying about getting her hair right.

A constable has the opportunity to be Vin-in-the-ballroom when dealing with witnesses and Vin-in-battle when dealing with criminals. A dressmaker doesn't have any opportunity to be Vin-in-battle at all. So while the constable might find it hard to live up to both sides of Vin, she's still ahead of most other professions.

I guess deep down, what I'm trying to say is, it feels like Scadrial defines femininity the same way we do but has less restrictions on women than we did in the comparable era. But I think that if Vin is the iconic women than, even with  Allrianne's influence, Scadrial should have a fundamentally different definition of femininity to Earth.

Anyway, I just wanted to get that off my chest. 

[StormyQueen she/her]

I think that although Vin has had a large amount of influence in structuring the society, especially for women, I think that there's still a lot of culture left over from the days of the empire. Culture doesn't just change overnight, and while Vin did seem to open opportunity for women, society does not change overnight. 

We don't really know a whole heap on what happens inbetween era 1 and era 2, but key players in the political and social landscape can very much influence the role of women.

So, overall, I don't think it's that strange that the role is different, especially as Vin wasn't around for the next era, not even the start of it. 

[Dihatimus]

There was also Allrianne Cett who after that Catacendre gave speeches about femininity and work. I suspect she had quite an impact on propriety. She could be quite persuasive after-all.