While We’re Talking Women…
A few days ago I posted an entry about why I so rarely write women as my main leads in fantasy – thank you everyone who joined in on that particular mull, it’s always good to have other thoughts on any topic where I am not myself that sure of my own stance!
One person pointed out that a very groovy woman in fiction indeed is a character by the name of C J Cregg from the West Wing, which, if you haven’t seen it, is absolutely worth your time and trouble. If I in reality could be half as cool as the fictional CJ, I’d consider myself a fairly happy woman, all of which brings me onto a question that I have been asked on occasion… which characters, fictional or otherwise, inspire me? This is occasionally a woman-specific question – which women inspire me? – but I tend to broaden out the answer as it seems a little counter-productive to stick just within one gender.
I have a set answer, and it is this: my general ambition for life to is grow up into a cross between Michelle Yeoh and Grommit. Michelle Yeoh, for anyone who doesn’t know, is a Malaysian actress and some-time Bond girl and let me take this opportunity to say I know nothing about her personality and have no interest in being either an actress or Bond girl – no, she’s on my list of aspirations not so much for who or what she does, but because she is genuinely a beautiful woman who knows kung fu and has been, in everything I’ve ever seen her, brilliant. (Go watch Sunshine, people!) I have no desire for a deeper analysis, since these superficial obtainments seem to me pretty damn groovy.
Grommit – and if there’s anyone here who doesn’t know who Grommit is then FIND OUT NOW – is the canine companion of the Yorkshire inventor Wallace. People tend to raise their eyebrows at me when I say that one of my all-time idols is a plastecine dog, to which I would reply – if you can raise your eyebrows with one half, one fifth the patient expressiveness of Grommit, well then you may have a point. Grommit is the ultimate loyal, intelligent companion – patient, smart, kind of heart and unbelievably expressive without ever needing so say a word which, for a writer, is both an unlikely and a worthy aspiration. And he is, of course, entirely fictional.
CJ Cregg, another fictional character who we’ve touched on, is a hero of mine, not least because it is undeniable that being tall and female and busy can do strange things for your social life.
I’d love to have tea with Rowntree and Booth. These were two social reforms – and sweet manufacturers! – in Victorian times who campaigned loudly for the working poor and seemed to be well ahead of the times for social conscience, hard work and candy confectionaries. I’d be interested to see what they’re like and what it was that made them that way. I’d also be fascinated to have a cup of tea with a woman by the name of Sultana Hurrem, also known as Roxlana. This historically rather mysterious lady was the one and only married wife of Suleyman the Magnificent who, if the name doesn’t give it away, was an Ottoman Sultan with a good reputation. It was the tradition of Sultans at the time to marry lots of women and keep lots of mistresses, but he remained entirely loyal to her throughout his days and her hand was felt quietly, so they say, from behind the harem door on matters of politics, society and even, perhaps, religion. Because no one but her husband and women were meant to see her face, and because Suleyman’s loyalty to her was considered really rather odd, her exact historical role has remained unclear, leading to her being branded anything from a deviant sexual fiend through to a compassionate political player of the game. Either way, she was clearly a force to be reckoned with in a place where women weren’t even meant to be seen, and this fascinates me.
Oddly enough, a lot of my idols are people for who I have no name. One story which always sticks in my head is of Red Cross workers in Rwanda during the 1994 genocide. At the height of the killing, every international agency and journalist had left the country. The U.N. pulled out, the African Union, the press, the Red Cross and Medicin Sans Frontier, because they could not guarantee the safety of their workers, and essentially for a few weeks in which millions died, the world turned a blind eye to what was happening and said ‘it is none of our affair’. Only four people stayed behind, against the advice of the ICRC, and for those few weeks they drove round the city and picked up anyone and everyone who needed help, taking them to the hospital regardless of ethnicity or their own personal danger. The streets at the time were full of checkpoints – Hutu here and Tutsi there – who would try and pull from the ambulance anyone they suspected of being on the other side – and these aid workers, despite having seen all their colleagues fled and several killed, stood up at each checkpoint and refused to let their patients die. I don’t know the names of the four workers who stayed, but somehow I think they’re probably the most important inspirations of the lot.
