Sword and Sorcery - Women Creators and Characters

Women Creators and Characters

Despite the importance of C. L. Moore, Leigh Brackett, Andre Norton, and other female authors, as well as Moore's early heroine, sword and sorcery has had a strongly masculine bias. Female characters were generally distressed damsels to be rescued or protected, or otherwise served as an inducement or reward for a male hero's adventures. Women who had adventures of their own often did so to counter the threat of rape, or to gain revenge for same. Marion Zimmer Bradley's Sword and Sorceress anthology series (1984 onwards) attempted the reverse. Bradley encouraged female writers and protagonists: the stories feature skillful swordswomen and powerful sorceresses, working from a variety of motives. The series was immensely popular and Bradley was editing her final volume at the time of her death (the series continued under other editors). Jessica Amanda Salmonson similarly sought to broaden the range of roles for female characters in S&S through both her own stories and in editing the World Fantasy Award-winning Amazons (1979) and Amazons II (1982) anthologies; both drew on real and folkloric women warriors, often from areas outside of Europe. Today, active female characters who participate equally with the male heroes in the stories are a regular feature in modern sword and sorcery stories, though they are also relied upon for sex appeal.

Introduced as a minor character in a non-fantasy historical story by Robert E. Howard, "The Shadow of the Vulture", Red Sonya of Rogatino would later inspire a fantasy heroine named Red Sonja, who first appeared in the comic book series Conan the Barbarian written by Roy Thomas and illustrated by Barry Windsor-Smith. Red Sonja received her own comic book title and eventually a series of novels by David C. Smith and Richard L. Tierney, as well as Richard Fleischer's unsuccessful film adaptation in 1985.