On Conan and Women

Art by Frank Cho.

Before we start, I just want to update you on how I’m handling the coronavirus crisis. Simply put, this has been my most productive month for writing; I’ve drafted three 10K+ short stories and am nearly finished drafting a novella. I’ve come up with a method that not only helps me write faster, but also helps me rapidly prototype an idea — I honestly don’t know why I didn’t think of it before.

Now that that’s out of the way, on to today’s topic.

Lately, I’ve been going through a collection of Conan stories written by the original author, Robert E. Howard (I do not intend to go farther than Howard’s Conan, as I consider all non-Howard works to be fan fiction no matter how well-written they are.)

These stories were and are a breath of fresh air. They feel wonderfully unrestrained, just like the barbarian himself. Conan is direct and honest, unlike his lying and scheming opponents. Unbounded by civilized convention, he sees matters clearly. Because my only understanding of Conan before encountering this collection was from knockoffs and parodies, I didn’t know that Conan often faced down monsters as well as men. The Conan tales fired the imagination and boiled the blood.

However, one feature stuck out to me — the sheer amount of sexual polarity in the work.

In the modern pop culture landscape, such polarity is frowned upon as a kind of bigotry and treated as a flaw that must be corrected. Advice commonly given to new writers, especially male writers, when writing female characters usually goes like this: don’t make them to traditionally feminine, don’t make them damsels in distress, don’t give them a strong emotional connection to the hero.

These Conan stories, on the other hand, were clearly written before that mindset became dominant. In contrast to Conan’s iron will and violent brutality, the women showed grace and delicacy, even after Conan carries them off for one reason or another. This polarity would also create strong romantic tension, which made the stories that much more entertaining. While the women sometimes clap back at Conan, there is nothing like the level of abuse a typical anime-style tsundere would dole out — and if she did, the woman would find herself dumped in an open sewer.

However, I noticed another thing about the heroines of these stories: more often than not, they tended to be passive.

I just feel they should take a stronger stand against villains, at least trying to inflict some pain on their captors even if the women ultimately need the hero to save them. There's a reason the woman warrior is popular even among those who despise feminist ideology. /end

— Rawle Nyanzi (@RawleNyanziFTL) April 13, 2020

Let me make one thing very clear: I am not calling Howard’s Conan “problematic” or suggesting that those works should never be read. I am also not suggesting that there is something wrong with authors inspired by Howard’s Conan, or that people who enjoy these stories as is are bad people. I was merely stating what I observed in the stories I read so far, as well as my own opinions on the female characters in them.

This led Jeffro Johnson, author of the excellent Appendix N: The Literary History of Dungeons and Dragons, to respond thusly:

You are an imposing a problem on Howard's writing that doesn't need to be solved. The women are in the story to provide one thing: a contrast to Conan. To give voice to emotions that are completely foreign to his character.

— Jeffro Johnson (@JohnsonJeffro) April 13, 2020

Twitter user Mega Buster Shepard made the following observation as well by pointing out the real history of women in combat:

Women can be fighters, there are historical examples but it's only really been with the advent of firearms that has leveled the playing field a bit. A woman will never be the physical match for a man in combat but give her a gun she can at least shoot her way out. https://t.co/Y0RooYcWp1

— MegaBusterShepard (@mega_shepard) April 13, 2020

Which leads to P. Alexander’s opinion on the matter, pointing out that Conan’s ancient-style setting doesn’t lend itself well to warrior women:

This is why women tend to have a stronger place in Raygun Romance than in Sword & Sorcery. In the latter, the Sorcery is the equalizing "gun", but typically the theme of S&S is "Sorcery Bad, Sorcery Work of Evil Serpent God," leaving women in a role of villain or healer.

— Cirsova (Mongoose & Meerkat Pre-Orders Live!) (@cirsova) April 13, 2020

There’s also the fact that I haven’t been through all of Howard’s Conan stories. I’ve barely touched his Golden Age, only having read The People of the Black Circle and A Witch Shall Be Born. Most of what I’ve read was from Howard’s early and middle periods, when he was still figuring things out. For that reason, I might be missing important context.

That being said, I do generally like the heroines of these Conan stories. I’ve observed before on Twitter that these stories were utterly mind-blowing when they were first published in the far less media-saturated 1930s, before fantasy became part of the pop culture landscape; Howard (and Edgar Rice Burroughs) invented whatever fantasy clichés Tolkien didn’t invent. But there is also the reverse — stuff that was common, even banal, in the past is edgy and spicy now.

Among the biggest ones is how the heroines are portrayed. Male/female interchangeability is the modern rule (especially in film and television), but these heroines defy that. What’s done in Conan is actually male-oriented romance: there is love between man and woman, but the relationship is not the main point of conflict, the monster/warlord/wizard/etc. is. The drama comes from the hero’s efforts to protect the heroine, and the heroine’s efforts to aid the hero. It’s not so much “Will they or won’t they” as “Will they kill the bad guy or won’t they?” And when the heroine appreciates the hero for his deed, it just feels right.

For that, Conan deserves a standing ovation.