indigobluerose:
Weird observation: Bertie Wooster refers to women with phrases like “the delicately nurtured,” and on numerous occasions as “females” or “the female of the species” and for some reason this doesn’t annoy me. (I would say it even comes across as adorable at times, but that is almost certainly pure bias on my part; Bertie Wooster’s entire existence overloads my adorability senses)
When I read The Last of the Mohicans, Natty Bumppo frequently referred to the women in the story as either “the females,” which made it sound like he was talking about livestock, or “the gentle ones” which was so damned condescending that it made me want to barf. It is, of course, a much older book than any of Wodehouse’s work, and sexism is sadly just to be expected, but that book stuck in my craw as astonishingly sexist (and racist, for that matter) even for its time.
Why does Cooper’s usage of these phrases bother me so much — oh my lord so much — while Wodehouse’s doesn’t? I’ve been pondering this… Bertie’s use of his phrases is usually referring to women in general, while Natty Bumppo’s are used to refer specific women, whom he knows personally, and who have names and a part in the story.
James Fenimoore Cooper’s treatment of female characters was so utterly dehumanizing; a double-whammy of objectifying and idealizing. Through the whole book Natty Bumppo’s attitude toward Cora and Alice Munro is as if someone has asked him to look after a small herd of glass sheep.
And WOW, those two stories have no relation to each other whatsoever, but those phrases in The Code of the Woosters made me think of TLotM, and I have really really wanted to complain to the world about that book for a long time.
(By the way, I’m not trying to suggest that those types of phrases in Wodehouse aren’t problematic, or that everyone is or should be affected by either of these stories the same way I am. Just rambling.)
I think about this frequently. I haven’t read the TLotM, and can pretty safely say I never will, but I’ve definitely read some Jeeves and I’ve experienced the same feelings. I’m always sort of expecting a certain level of sexism in something written so long ago, but I’m usually surprised that there isn’t as much as I’ve braced for, a lot of the recurring girls have real personalities, and that I’m almost never frothing mad at Bertie. I’m glad you’ve thought about it too! Also glad you mentioned this pattern of Bertie being general where other people are specifically reducing people they know. I think I didn’t know what it was for me that made Bertie so okay until now either.
What gets me a lot more often is how much MORE sexist the comment threads about this series get when people are trying to ape the vocabulary. LiveJournal entries in which you can see people slinging ‘beazel’ about in particular rub me the wrong way so aggressively that it leaves rug burn. I think they’re trying to be period and cute, but the way they use it and load it with disgust it is usually interchangeable with 'Beezelbub’, even if it kind of seems to just mean 'chick’ according to the internet. I have a weird suspicion the words are related, though.
It’s probably because I’m reading comments on a *LiveJournal* from a period in which it was normal to see yaoi fangirls just launch into female characters as being 'evil’ and 'bitches’ just for existing, but I’m always struck by how much more venom for women the (frequently women themselves!) commenters there have than Bertie ever seemed to.
You can see it in some fanfic too, of course, where it’s obvious the author could barely contain some raging hate and their Bertie comes off as really gross.
