Women in Lovecraft...

[Bob Lovecraft]

Yeah, but she's also hot, which means Lovecraft would have her eaten or raped and then eaten by some big, slimey monster.

Bob

[Kryptych]

Yeah, but she's also hot, which means Lovecraft would have her eaten or raped and then eaten by some big, slimey monster.

Bob

Not necessarily... most of Lovecraft's women in his fiction are either vaguely described, or when they are, more often than not they're plain to the point of hideous.

[Kaelestes]

I like to think Lovecraft was afraid of beautiful women for the simple chuckle value it provides me.

[TransconaSlim]

Oh Wow!  I didn't know a photo like this existed:



So... very... awkward...

but yeah, I wanted to point out that Sonia Greene was quite pretty, in that old worldy kind of way.

[Genus Unknown]

Awkward and chubby (HPL, not Sonia). The guys mentioned that he'd gained weight while he was married, but I've never seen a picture of "hefty" Lovecraft. Looks a bit weird, eh?

[TFeldt]

Hopefully I'm not stepping out on a limb here but I'd like to state that I rather enjoy the fact that his stories are only populated by white men. Now, hear me out before biting my head off. In today's society we're so extremely focused on being politically correct that many stories follow the same basic formula. We have a certain number of women, men, some colored, some white, etc. It's a trend that has cemented itself over the last couple of decades, even when it's to the detriment of the story.

Anything that breaks this mold is almost guaranteed to be interesting. I can't for the life of me remember what it's called but there was a sci-fi story I read 10 or 15 years ago that presumed Africa took a dominating role in the exploration of space. There weren't any token black guys in it, there were token white guys. It immediately struck me as a lot more fascinating than if it had been the same old "white captain, male white second in command, white female com officer, black guy engineer, etc"-formula. There was also inverted racism, which does exist even if it isn't politically correct to mention it either, that added to the picant flavor.

There's also several areas where women have a detrimental role to the story development. The 1982 movie The thing by Carpenter has an engaging conversation about this in the director's comments (or in the making of documentary, can't remember). Basically men and women act differently when they are entirely surrounded by their own gender or a mix of men and women. Now, let me append that I lament the fact that there isn't at least a few stories by HPL that had female protagonists since they would have added another layer to his writing. Instead of falling into the contemporary trap of symbolic equality he just went overboard in the other direction.

[Kryptych]

John Carpenter's The Thing was one of the best examples of how an all-male story creates an interesting dynamic (and it was in the commentary with John Carpenter and Kurt Russell - "There was no posturing because there was nobody to posture for"). That applies not only to the film crew but the characters... they were constantly unhinged, ready to bite each other's heads off not just out of aggression, but out of pure fright.

Another good case for this is the first Alien film. Yaphet Kotto's character Parker throughout the film is an image of male machismo ("I'd rather be eating something else, but right now I'm digging food"). When his friend Brett is killed, he has a moment where he displays genuine fear before composing himself and returning to his angry, macho self. It's not until he's the last man on the ship, with the only other survivors being women, that this subsides... and even then, he tries to play the hero (sure, after that moment of "oh my god" fright upon seeing the creature) and runs after the alien, which gets him killed and doesn't help Lambert, who is too paralyzed by fear to "get out of the way" as he kept shouting.

I'm not saying Alien isn't a great film or that I object to the presence of women in such films and stories; I would never say that women have a "detrimental" role - it just depends on the kind of story being told. Lovecraft is telling stories about cosmic horror. As I said before, even Ripley exhibits fear in the Alien films, but so do the men ("Game over, man!"), and back to The Thing... those guys are scared shitless throughout the film.

Ultimately, the reason I enjoy Lovecraft's stories being dominated by males... because men are traditionally not ones to display intense fear; even if they are of "nervous disposition" as many of Lovecraft's characters are. I like to think that his characters being male only emphasizes the magnitude of what they're facing and makes the otherworldly horror of what they're being confronted with all the more palpable.

[TFeldt]

Just to be clear, since this can potentially become a flammable topic, I never said or meant to imply that women automatically assume a detrimental role. If their roles are written that way then it's the fault of stereotypes in our society. But there are plot lines where mixing genders is detrimental to the end effect the story/movie/etc is trying to underline. Instead of muddying the waters I'll just reference The Thing again. I can see no way that movie would benefit from having a female character, every way I twist and turn it the end result would be worse.

But on the other hand, I can see no way for Alien to work as well as it does without Ripley as the main protagonist. Would even go as far as to say that if any of the males had survived until the end then their presence would have been a detriment to the movie's finality. What? A cuddly kiss scene at the end? The two of them quietly slipping into the cryo chamber together in the classic (and worn out) movie fashion? Perhaps a platonic end where they smile at each other and seem to imply "We made it." No, the end is perfect as it is. You might imagine that I was rather happy about Hicks dying in the crash before the third movie began.

[TransconaSlim]

I get what your sayin'.  Glengarry Glen Ross is another all-male cast that really works, and that probably wouldn't have worked well if they threw in a woman for no reason other then having a women (then again, the "woman in a mans world" can be a pretty compelling storyline, but again, we would all be expecting that eh). 

still, there is a large body of fiction that falls under "feminist science fiction".   In Lovecrafts time, the Women's movement was in its infancy, only focusing on legalistic issues like suffrage, spousal property laws, etc.  During the 1920s writers such as Clare Winger Harris and Gertrude Barrows Bennett published science fiction stories written from female perspectives and occasionally dealt with gender and sexuality based topics, while much pulp science fiction published during 1920s and 1930s carried an exaggerated view of masculinity along with sexist portrayals of women.  But then again, there where plenty of women writers in the plups too.  Still, I figure that audience of those magazines mostly male,  and the majority of writing was sub-par, so yeah.

It wasn't until the second wave of feminism beginning in the late 50s/early 60s that women’s roles were questioned in this sci-fi/fantasy/genre fiction.   Then we have this burst of feminist sci-fi.  We have Ursula K. Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness (1969) and Joanna Russ' The Female Man (1970) which deal with the socially constructed aspects of gender roles by creating worlds with genderless societies.  We have Aliens and Terminator, Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

so yeah... I actually don't know where I'm going with this except for an interesting history of woman in sci-fi. 

[catamount]

I like to think Lovecraft was afraid of beautiful women for the simple chuckle value it provides me.

I'm with you on that!

[Manndroid]

Cooties.

[Kryptych]

I actually don't know where I'm going with this except for an interesting history of woman in sci-fi. 

Well, it certainly interests me, as I hope it has interested all of you. You're all awesome.

[old book]

Anything that breaks this mold is almost guaranteed to be interesting. I can't for the life of me remember what it's called but there was a sci-fi story I read 10 or 15 years ago that presumed Africa took a dominating role in the exploration of space. There weren't any token black guys in it, there were token white guys. It immediately struck me as a lot more fascinating than if it had been the same old "white captain, male white second in command, white female com officer, black guy engineer, etc"-formula. There was also inverted racism, which does exist even if it isn't politically correct to mention it either, that added to the picant flavor...

Actually, the shade of Lovecraft told me he wants to do a remake of Brother from Another Planet... He wants to call it The Coloured Out of Space... (babadahmbp+cymbals) I'm having a heck of time explaining to him why "person of color" is acceptable while "colored" no longer is, and he's calling me all sorts of weird names and not buying it at all...

Also, Andre Norton.