One of the main themes of gender relations in Wheel of Time is that they are fraught. Men and Women across society and generation are at war with each other, treating each other like a different species. The women, almost without exception, independent of age or country of origin, see men as oafish, stupid children who must be shown the right way to behave and tightly controlled. Men, on the other hand, see women as overbearing, stubborn, unwilling to admit fault, and bossy. Personally, I find this extremely tiresome, that every character is so lacking in awareness and self awareness that they can't come to understand any members of the opposite s*x. Robert Jordan writes dozens of times throughout the books across every male character how incomprehensible women are. I think he might just be telling on himself. Or, I suppose it was more common in his time to boast about such things. "Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus" and all that.
The main issue with Robert Jordan's portrayal of these characters, though, is that in his writing he goes out of his way to show that the women are irrational, lack self-awareness, willfully stubborn, and hypocritical. Nynaeve is obviously the most extreme example, but all of the other women display this to some degree. They will have a thought about how infuriating some aspect of some other character is, and then the next sentence is them displaying the same trait. Robert Jordan is playing this for laughs, I think, but he doesn't do this with the same frequency or intensity with the men. He plays the women's inconsistency, irrationality, and hypocrisy for laughs. He rarely does this for the men. As a result, as a reader, it's difficult to not see Robert Jordan taking sides implcitly in the "man vs. woman" war he's written. The women are usually wrong and refuse to admit it. The men are right that the women are irrational. This goes in the reverse order only very occasionally.
why aren't the Foids on this Fantasyslop Mary Sues?
!bookworms !foidmoment WoTcels thoughts? I never read the Wheel of Time but I always love the drama it attracts. Was Jordan /ourguy/?
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Jordan was just a bad writer. Every page is full of braid tugging and characters thinking "wow the opposite s*x sure is crazy!" Shit writer with a cool story somewhere buried under his god awful writing.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
More options
Context