https://www.reddit.com/r/InterviewVampire/s/5woda28IB4
interesting tidbit by Anne on gender. "feminine limitations"... oh Anne.
SO interesting, anon, thank you for sharing it!
But yeah, gosh, oh, Anne. I don't know. People in fandom are now especially, but have historically always been a bit shit when it comes to Anne, which bugs me because yeah, she was problematic and complicated and hated fandom for a chunk of her life and was obviously battling a lot of internalised misogyny, but she was also born in 1941, genuinely an incredibly evocative writer, and wrote a book series that was literally revolutionary in terms of its exploration of sexuality, if not necessarily gender. If she was a man, she'd be enshrined in lit canon, y'know?
I do think what she's trying to say there around feminine limitations is that Gabrielle had no way to live as a woman in her era, but at the same time, Anne's track record with female characters - - well, like I said, I think she was battling a lot of internalised misogyny.
This might sound a little odd, but in some ways I think a part of the tragedy of her daughter dying so young to me is that Anne never got to explore a new generation of womanhood with her. A lot of the older women I know - both silent generation as Anne was, and Boomers and Gen X - who have had drastically shifting understandings of womanhood as it relates to modern life have been impacted by young women close to them. Often daughters, but also granddaughters, nieces, friends' daughters, even in some cases just neighbours and friends. Anne probably had some of these, but the loss of her daughter I don't doubt would've shaped some of it too. Gosh, my aunt still struggles to be around my sister's boys after losing her own son, even though he passed long before either of my nephews were born.
Life's complicated, and our modern, mainstream understanding of gender and sexuality has changed so much in my adult lifetime, I can't imagine how much it has for older generations. That's not to excuse anyone's behaviour, bias or discrimination, of course, but things are never as black and white as people want them to be, y'know? And people shouldn't be punished for having complicated relationships with their own identities, which, well. A lot of what Anne's written - that post included - gives me an inkling that she probably did.
