Random thought
It occurred to me this morning that very few books I've come across depict male-female relationships with a kind of "equality" — by that, I mean the kind of relationship where it doesn't matter that one character is male, and the other is female. Over the course of reading many books, it seems that there is almost always some noticeable degree of bias in how a female character relates to a male character (and vice versa), simply because of the difference in sex. Two female characters may have a close relationship; two male characters might be the best of mates.
Looking through the record of fiction I have read since June 2001, I can only identify one distinct exception, being "Sputnik Sweetheart" by Haruki Murakami, where the narrator has an intellectual relationship with Sumire despite the fact that he is in love with her.
An imbalance, do you think? One wonders why so?
Posted by sniffles at April 12, 2003 11:27 PM