Why Were All the Classics Written by Men?

Homer, Virgil, Dante, Shakespeare, Dickens, Melville, Hemingway, Fitzgerald. Let's ignore Jane Austen and the Brontes for a minute and ask the question: why were all the classics written by men?

Many answers abound. I have never found the popular complaint about women being suppressed to be very satisfactory. I am also a firm believer in the fact that women are intellectually equal with men. So, why then? Why were all the classics written by men?

A few weeks ago, I ran across this excerpt from G. K. Chesterton's "What's Wrong with the World?"

Woman must be a cook, but not a competitive cook; a school-mistress, but not a competitive school-mistress; a house decorator, but not a competitive house-decorator; a dressmaker, but not a competitive dressmaker. She should have not one trade but twenty hobbies; she, unlike the man, may develop all her second bests. This is what has been really aimed at from the first in what is called the seclusion, or even the oppression, of women. Women were not kept at home in order to keep them narrow; on the contrary, they were kept at home in order to keep them broad. The world outside the home was one mass of narrowness, a maze of cramped paths, a madhouse of monomaniacs. It was only by partly limiting and protecting the woman that she was enabled to play at five or six professions and so come almost as near to God as the child when he plays at a hundred trades. But the woman’s professions, unlike the child’s, were all truly and almost terribly fruitful.

Chesterton has hit upon something here. Women, though not limited in ability, are often limited in the extent to which they can pursue something because they are called to pursue so many different things.

This may not be true for all women, but I think that it is true for many, and I know that it is true for me. And, what is more, I enjoy this limitation. I revel in it.

I wouldn't care to write if it meant that I never got to bake. I wouldn't care to write if it meant that I never got to scrapbook. And, above all, I wouldn't care to write, if it meant that I never got to give my kids bubble baths, read them Goodnight Moon, take them for walks in the wagon, and make them pancakes with chocolate chips.

I don't want to just write historical fiction. I want to paint with watercolors, compose choral music, grow a vegetable garden, participate in church committees, and volunteer in community outreach. And if that means that all of those things, including my novels, end up being "second bests," then so be it. I'm too busy reading, singing, blogging, and living to worry too much about it.

Rain and Reviewers: Saturday Links

I've decided to start a new feature on my blog called Saturday Links, where each Saturday I introduce you to interesting articles that I discovered during the week. Some of these may have already received excited mentions in my Facebook or Twitter feed, but here's a chance to group them all together and save them for posterity.

* * * * *

The first article I want to highlight is M.M. Bennett's post, "Speaking of the weather..." M.M. is a historical novelist from England that I met in my English Historical Fiction Authors group. You don't have to be from England to be part of the group. You just have to write (or read) historical fiction set in the British Isles--which explains why I qualify.

But M.M., as I was saying, is actually from England, and in this article, she argues against the timeworn warnings for writers to refrain from mentioning the weather.

Talk about the weather?  It’s one of those things novelists are told never to do.  Not ever.  It’s boring, the writing teachers and the literary cognoscenti tell us.  But here in Britain, we talk about the weather constantly.... (read more) 

* * * * *

Authors are not supposed to criticize reviewers. Not ever. Never. No matter what. But to be honest, I've been getting a little irritated lately at certain reviewers who think they are the gatekeepers to literature and that they know infinitely more than the authors of the books they review. Whenever I didn't like a book, my mother used to say, "Well, why don't you write a better one?" It's a piece of advice I sometimes feel like passing on....

This week I was intrigued to read Shawn Lamb's post "Review Styles of Writing Styles." Shawn is the author of Christian historical fiction and YA fantasy. In this post, Shawn gives general descriptions of certain kinds of reviewers, my favorite being Puffy the Book Slayer.

Think writers are the only ones with style? Nope, reviewers have styles, whether they mean to or not. In keeping with the tongue-in-cheek mode, here are some review styles that all authors encounter.... (read more) 

Our Summer "Vacation"

I am not supposed to be blogging right now. I am supposed to be at the beach. Every year our church holds a Family Camp at Twin Rocks Friends Camp in Rockaway, Oregon. Sunshine or no sunshine, it's pretty much the best summer vacation ever. This year we had registered for our cabin, purchased our snacks from Costco, and got the oil in the car changed for the road trip when...disaster struck.

A year and a half ago, we found out that our oldest son Adam had biliary atresia, a condition where the bile ducts in his liver did not form correctly. He had surgery, an operation called the Kasai procedure, to connect his intestines directly to his liver so that the bile could flow out of his system. The doctors warned us that if he ever had a fever that couldn't be explained by flu or cold, it might be an infection of the liver.

Last Tuesday, Adam came down with a fever and started acting very sick. Wednesday, I took him in to the doctor's office for some labs. When the results came back, we were admitted to the Emergency Room at Doernbecher Children's Hospital. Adam was diagnosed with probable cholangitis (infection of the bile ducts), and put on a two-week regimen of IV antibiotics. An ultrasound showing increased scar tissue in his liver indicated that there might be more problems than just the cholangitis, but the doctors decided that's a problem for another day.

Turns out we're pros at trips to the hospital now. When we found out we had to go in, we had clothes, toiletries, blankets, the laptop, and the phone charger packed in five minutes. David took the night shift and I took the day shift--and aunties Amy, Jessica, and Ange helped out with the kids.

Our summer vacation was supposed to start on Sunday. Instead, we were released from the hospital on Monday, after a five night stay. A nurse came to our house and showed us how to administer the antibiotics through the PICC line in Adam's arm. No Oregon beaches for us this summer--we'll be roasting 'smores in our own backyard. No tide pools and surf this week--we'll be keeping a certain little boy's arm sterile and out of the sand.

While we're a little sad to have spent our summer vacation at the hospital, it's wonderful having our oldest boy (almost) healthy again. And though we're sorry to miss all the activities and time spent with friends, my husband would probably tell you that between camp food and hospital food, there isn't a whole lot of difference.

Adam hated being in the hospital room and wanted to go out
to the courtyard every chance he could get.

He really missed his twin Oliver who was only there for a few short visits.

Marcus was a trooper and stayed up at the hospital all day each day.

Pictures courtesy of Grammy Pics.

Heading home -- too tired to be excited.

Thanks to My Readers, Another Milestone!

A year and a half ago I posted about an important milestone in my authorial career--one thousand Kindle copies of I Serve sold. Now I have another milestone to share, a milestone I never even dreamed of when I self-published three years ago. Tallying up all electronic and print copies, I have now sold ten thousand copies of I Serve. I feel like I'm giving an acceptance speech at the Oscars, and I don't have much to say except thank you, thank you, thank you to all my readers, and God bless Amazon!

Getting Past the Hobbits: In Media Res

There's a running joke in my family about my dad and Lord of the Rings. After the movies came out, he decided he wanted to read the books for the first time. To make a long story short (yes, pun intended), he started The Fellowship of the Ring but couldn't get past the beginning section set in the Shire. "Too much stuff about hobbits," he complained, "and nothing was happening." Sacrilege, I know, to all true LOTR fans, but that was how he felt. After this incident, my family began to use the technical term "hobitty" for any book or movie that starts out slow.

Family members are always the kindest critics, and I've had my younger brother, more than once, refer to my first book I Serve as hobbity. My book hobbity? How dare he! What's wrong with a prologue? Victor Hugo himself spent eighty-some pages discussing Bishop Myriel before the protagonist, Jean Valjean, enters the scene.... Wait a minute. Bad example. I know more than a few people who skim through that part until the real action begins with the silverware thievery.

I'm rather fond of the prologue that leads into the story of I Serve, but recognizing that some readers dislike that style, I've attempted a different approach with The Chronicles of Tancred. Book I, Road from the West, begins with the Normans attacking a city and our hero, Tancred, striding off the field and leaving his post right in the middle of the assault. Book II, Flower of the Desert, also begins at a pivotal point in the story. I won't spoil the surprise my telling you what that is, but if you simply can't wait for the book to be released at the end of this year, I've posted Chapter One for your perusal.

There are many classics that begin a story from the very beginning with a thorough description of the setting or with a long, drawn-out history of the early life of the protagonist (The Mill on the Floss comes to mind). But in our current age of fast-paced television and fast-paced life, perhaps authors should adopt a different approach. Perhaps we should mimic Homer, one of the oldest storytellers of them all, and dive right into the action in media res.