I have always been of the opinion that if a story is good and enjoyable and you keep coming back to it for that enjoyment, weather the characters are male or female is irrelevant.
The Lord of the Rings and Middle Earth history is, in my opinion, a fantastic story, its something I can't stop reading once I get started. To simply throw it away on the grounds that there aren’t enough of one sex or one group is madness!
I have never been a fan of Jane Austin, which annoyed my English teacher at High school. When I read
Pride and prejudice and said, "I didn't enjoy the story. Not a lot really happened." she replied, "The story doesn’t matter!" I was quite taken back by this. Obviously, she is entitled to her opinion, but it seems that the story would be the most important part!
Later on in the year I asked this English teacher what she thought of Tolkien and
The Lord of the Rings. Again, she seemed to disregard the story as an irrelevance, saying, "It's all male. How can I read something like that?" So I asked, "Don't you enjoy a good story?" and she said, "why? Its not the story that matters, its what the author is trying to say."
Well, in my opinion, what the author is trying to say is only a small part of a book. Without a good story, how can the meaning be seen without eye rolling?
I think I once wrote a story to annoy this teacher, it went something like this.
"Once upon a time there was a woman named Jim who was fed up of political oppression and so shot her husband and went to downing street and married the prime minister and went on to rule the world."
Immature, I know. But I was trying to make a point. You can argue till your blue in the face about what an author meant by something, but first and foremost should be a good story.
That’s how I always saw it anyway.
Any thoughts?