How Men Can Write About Only Men, but Women Write of Both

There are many, many books in existence with no female characters, or else merely a passing mention of a mother, or sister. It’s actually a little astonishing how many exist.

Meanwhile, I have yet to find a book which features only female characters, without one male, whether child, mailman, or grandfather, featured in the book.

Again, astonishing.

And I don’t mean astonishing from a politically correct point of view. It’s not my intention to make a war of the sexes out of this observation, but merely to poke into it, and see what I can turn up. I think it’s a fascinating question - why can so many books exist with only men, and none without them?

I think the answer is very simple, and has less to do with men rejecting women than we might at first think.

Men, for most of history, have interacted with men - on the battlefield, in bawdy joke-telling, in politics; while women have interacted with women. Men have written our histories, epic poems, and our first novels. Women have written our fairy tales.

Men tell the story from a man’s point of view - nothing wrong with this. After all, this is the point of view they know best. And they tell stories about adventures, which are often the leaving of the home to do some great thing, before returning back to the home. Men seldom write about domestic affairs, since they would rather merely live them. Thus, they do not put women into the story, unless it is Helen embracing her husband before battle. The woman has no place on the battlefield, or on the pirate ship, since it is she herself he is fighting to protect or return to, and many novels don’t even include that scene, but merely imply it. Men write about the external virtues: honesty, glory, perseverance, and courage.

Women, meanwhile, love to write about the domestic. Few women write novels about killing giants or conquering a kingdom. Rather, they reflect on the deeper matters - the stuff that matters most: the heart, morality, truth, patience, integrity… they write about love. And thus, they write not so much about events, but about people, and they write about these people in great depth. They tell of events only peripherally, in order to people the stage. This is why men often figure in a woman’s writing, even though she is not dealing with the world of men - rather, she is dealing with the world that matters most to men.

While a novel about the interpersonal relations of a group of women is certainly fascinating, and many more could be written, yet even that would grow boring, because it is only half of that with which women concern themselves in their thoughts. Men fight to get home to their women - they compartmentalize, and tell stories about their exploits when they get home. They do not need to put women (and children) in the story, because they are with the women and children while they tell the story. But women write about the heart, and the heart cannot be seen. The matters of the heart, the internal virtues and feelings, must be told, even if the insights happen in the presence of husband, father, and other male figures. If the woman had been on the battlefield, she wouldn’t need to be told about the battle. But if the husband is present during a moment of the heart, it happened invisibly, and he must still be told about that moment.

Thus we see that men generally tell tales about action and adventure: public events. These can reasonably take place without any women present, and if the women had been present, the telling would not be necessary; while women tell of what happens within, of private affairs, the things which no one sees. And yet, these must be communicated, because even when others are present, it is a secret, invisible thing, and others know not of it.