{"id":447,"date":"2012-01-31T00:04:29","date_gmt":"2012-01-31T06:04:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/?p=447"},"modified":"2012-01-31T00:04:29","modified_gmt":"2012-01-31T06:04:29","slug":"essay-do-men-and-women-write-differently","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/essay-do-men-and-women-write-differently\/","title":{"rendered":"Essay: Do Men and Women Write Differently?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I have asked this of several people,\u00a0 and all the writers I have asked, male or female, have denied that they do.\u00a0 But I, a mere reader, disagree.\u00a0 There are exceptions to every rule \u2013 Memoirs of a Geisha, <\/em>anyone? \u2013 but on the whole, I always think you can tell whether the writer is male or female.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not saying one is better, either \u2013 just different.\u00a0 A male writer is (usually) more focused on direct action, plunge ahead narrative.\u00a0 The male writer\u2019s character often has a certain kind of guy \u201ccode\u201d he lives by \u2013 doing the right thing, helping the downtrodden, etc.\u00a0\u00a0 I think we are all familiar with the \u201cWhite Knight\u201d P.I. trope.<\/p>\n

A female writer may be just as concerned with narrative, of course, but as she achieves her goal of telling a story she may notice along the way what\u2019s for dinner, what went into shopping for the dinner, how messy her house\/apartment is, what color her sofa is, etc. I know the kind of china collected by Deborah Crombie\u2019s main character.\u00a0\u00a0 I know Spenser cooks, but he does \u201cguy\u201d cooking \u2013 i.e., he finds an onion and some mayo in the fridge and manages to make something out of it.\u00a0 He hasn\u2019t planned ahead.<\/p>\n

Sara Paretsky, who writes a series every bit as hard boiled (perhaps more so) than Robert B. Parker\u2019s, never the less has left her readers with the knowledge that V.I. has a treasured collection of her mother\u2019s wine glasses.\u00a0 I have an idea of what her apartment looks like.\u00a0 I have no idea what Spenser\u2019s looks like, though I do have a good idea of what his office looks like.<\/p>\n

Again, not better, just different.\u00a0 A woman is interested in her mother\u2019s wine glasses, and assumes you might be too.\u00a0 And \u2013 I am!\u00a0 I imagine Spenser drinking out of jelly glasses.\u00a0 Or whatever.\u00a0 And of course, wait, you say \u2013 I know what Harry Bosch\u2019s house looks like.\u00a0\u00a0 And what Elvis Cole eats (again, guy cooking \u2013 lots of barbeque and beer).\u00a0 But the emotional details Paretsky shares when she talks about V.I.\u2019s wine glasses are a different emotional detail than one Parker includes when he talks about Hawk\u2019s sweat suit and bare chest, or even the ones Harry Bosch shares as he wanders gloomily around his sparsely furnished home, listening to jazz.<\/p>\n

I guess what I\u2019m saying is that the detours male and female writers take on their story telling paths are different.\u00a0 Women plan ahead \u2013 they buy groceries, for example \u2013 and men forge ahead, grocery-less.\u00a0 That\u2019s not so different from real life, in my experience.\u00a0 One of my favorite quotes is from a\u00a0 series\u00a0 by Lee Martin, encapsulating one difference (in my mind):<\/p>\n

When Harry arrived he had my shoulder holster and service revolver with him, packed neatly in a brown paper grocery sack.\u00a0 He handed the sack over and collected Cameron and while he was tucking the baby in his safety seat I was donning the shoulder holster.\u00a0 Of all the trade-offs I have ever made in my life, I think that was my least favorite.
\n<\/em>–Deficit Ending<\/em>, Lee Martin, 1990<\/p>\n

Of course this is a female narrator \u2013 so it may not be a fair example, but this quote captures the juggling act that most modern women \u2013 who work, have families and lives \u2013 are a part of.\u00a0\u00a0 It\u2019s a trade off, and this character knows it\u2019s a trade off.\u00a0 Sophie Hannah\u2019s main character in The Wrong Mother<\/em> has a cascading pile of tasks that if brought only slightly out of balance will make everything else fall apart.\u00a0 That\u2019s a book written two decades after Lee Martin\u2019s, as are Deborah Crombie\u2019s.\u00a0 Her Gemma Kincaid is managing a blended household \u2013 with a very agreeable partner, certainly \u2013 but she\u2019s often the one figuring out what\u2019s for dinner.<\/p>\n

Running a household is still a detail women don\u2019t leave out.\u00a0 Women\u2019s lives may have changed since the overwhelmed new mother in Celia Fremlin\u2019s 1950\u2019s classic The Hours Before Dawn, <\/em> but somehow there are some familiar details that persevere.<\/p>\n

An interesting case in point is Robert Ellis\u2019 fine LA police series which has a female main character.\u00a0 I love the series, but I still know a man wrote it.\u00a0 Lena juggles nothing (except emotional baggage) \u2013 she forges ahead.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s another quote, this time from Barbara D\u2019Amato\u2019s terrific novel, Death of A Thousand Cuts<\/em>, where the main character is a female cop:<\/p>\n

Park and I stood in the Hawthorne House kitchens with the evidence tech.\u00a0 My arms were folded across my chest, but lightly.\u00a0 I was trying not to wrinkle my clean linen blazer, which was just as crisp as my sharply creased navy pants.\u00a0 It was important in my department not just to be efficient but to look as if you were efficient.\u00a0 Unfortunately these clothes would look like dishrags by tonight.\u00a0 And I hate to iron.<\/em><\/p>\n

OK, so here\u2019s a character obviously on the job (the evidence tech) but she\u2019s worried about wrinkles (thinking ahead to the end of the day) and she manages to throw in a bitch about ironing. \u00a0This paragraph, to me, could never have been written by a guy.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s one from Dennis Lehane\u2019s Prayers for Rain<\/em>:<\/p>\n

Tony sat in the back of the black \u201991 Cherokee I\u2019d picked up when the engine of my Crown Victoria seized up that spring.\u00a0 The Cherokee was great for that rare bounty hunt because it had come with a steel gate between the seats and the stow bed in back. Tony sat on the other side of the gate…cracked open his third beer of the early afternoon, then burped up the vapor of the second.<\/em><\/p>\n

OK, this is a pretty \u201cguy\u201d paragraph \u2013 his engine seized up (um, what?) so he needed a new car, the bounty hunting, the beer, the burping\u2026and yet, Dennis Lehane\u2019s emotional punch is every bit as strong as any female writer\u2019s.\u00a0 He just gets to it differently.<\/p>\n

As I said, not better, just different.\u00a0 Can you tell, dear readers?\u00a0 I always think you can.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have asked this of several people,\u00a0 and all the writers I have asked, male or female, have denied that they do.\u00a0 But I, a mere reader, disagree.\u00a0 There are exceptions to every rule \u2013 Memoirs of a Geisha, anyone? \u2013 but on the whole, I always think you can tell whether the writer is … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-447","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-essays"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/447","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=447"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/447\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":448,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/447\/revisions\/448"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=447"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=447"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=447"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}