Needlework

[mrissa]

Oh, people. People, people, people, I am so tired of dislike of needlework being used as a stand-in for making a young female character actually interesting. I see this mostly in middle-grade fantasies, mostly. Not so much in YA, although I don’t know if that’s because I’m not seeing as much secondary world YA as I’d like. It sometimes goes with not being boyyyyyy crazy. Because girls who are interested in boys are stupid and hate everything that is fun and good and probably will grow boobs early and never ever ever have adventures. (Also girls who are interested in girls are invisible and don’t exist. So basically if you have proto-romantic feelings before age 18 or preferably 21, you stink. Thanks, MG tropes!)

Several things about the needlework thing annoy me, though. One of them is that it’s the cheap shot among “women’s work” stuff. It’s the one that middle-grade readers of the present are by and large not being asked to do, or at least not insistently/universally. Some girls are crafters as a hobby, but very few of them would self-define as doing “needlework.” So it’s a lot safer for an author aiming at a tomboy everygirl, because, hello, third wave! Tomboy everygirls can love making cookies or soup or whatever. And nobody* really says, “I adore cleaning. I live for cleaning. Cleaning is so awesome.” You can have your character announce that she hates scrubbing the floor, but nobody thinks that makes her amazing, they just think it makes her normal.

The other thing that ties in with this is: needlework used to be a lot like cleaning, in that it used to be necessary for continued health. Sure, you can choose whether you want your home spotless or a little messy, but you do in fact need to wash your dishes, one way or the other. That’s a health issue. And before industrial textiles, you had to do a million textile-related chores in order to keep your family healthily clothed. Mending. Taking things in and letting them out and altering them for younger/smaller family members. Even tapestry, while it is an art form and was used for self-expression, was also used to keep the walls of those stone castles and houses from turning the wenches into wenchcicles. Even in post-industrial textile societies, you will see a very realistic concern for what torn clothing and clever needlework can mean if you read the books of Noel Streatfeild, where the cost of a dress to put a family member in a good position to gain economic advantage is really non-trivial. I would love to see a parent or sibling in a fantasy novel react to a character’s stated hatred of needlework in one of these contexts–basically someone treating it as the protag saying, “I want you to buy me a better cell phone and data plan and all the other bells and whistles I want,” or else, “I hate cleaning the toilet,” rather than, “I am so interesting and independent!” I don’t expect that soon, though. It’s pretty embedded.

So where does all this come from? Two places: resentment of early twentieth century middle-class Anglo/American enforced femininity, and the Victorians. A lot, a lot of the women who pioneered the fantasy genres–especially children’s fantasy–chafed at the roles they were slotted into in the rest of their lives. And the “needlework as a useless pastime for enforcing female idleness” is straight out of Victorian life, where manufacturing endless unwanted decorations for the parlor and the jumble sale was, in fact, some women’s lot. But the Victorians were substantially along the line of progress of industrial textiles; a vicar’s daughter who spun flax would be distinctly odd, because that sort of thing was done in factories by then. Taking those frustrations and plunking them down wholesale in medieval-inspired cultures is understandable for those who lived them and witnessed them firsthand–Edith Nesbit, if ever you do that, I forgive you. (But notice that Nesbit has an unusual regard for the consequences of the children’s rash behavior on servants and the family budget. This was not much replicated by her imitators.) For those of us for whom they are historical study, it’s just plain laziness.

More than that, it’s attempting to make traits and interests exclusive that frankly aren’t. My friend V., for example, crocheted me a hyperbolic plane. She is interested in fiber arts and in math. She didn’t have to choose Boy Stuff or Girl Stuff–she can like some gendered activities and a great many activities like fiber arts and math that are not essentially gendered. And we lose a great deal when we accept shorthands for characterization too easily, too readily. “She’s a tomboy, not a girly girl.” “He’s a brain, not a jock.” We make our own cultural pitfalls in creating supposed opposites that aren’t really opposed more universal than we mean to when we import them whole cloth into secondary worlds.

Honestly, though, it’s just boring. It’s a trigger for me to say, “Another one of those, author getting lazy,” and put the book down. Find something else to express your character’s adventurous soul. Or don’t make them have a standard-issue Adventurous Soul TM in the first place. Whichever.

*Almost certainly somebody says this, because, well, people. They vary. And almost certainly there are loads of women who hate “needlework.” I am not a seamstress or a crafter myself. My complaint here is not that girls who fit these traits are unrealistic or do not exist, it’s that the traits are being overused and used cheaply.

Originally published at Novel Gazing Redux

Comments

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Yes and amen.

[txanne.livejournal.com]

SPINNING. SPINNING SPINNING SPINNING FOR THE LOVE OF MIKE, SPINNING.

You may have noticed that I've taken up the drop spindle. In six weeks of obsession, I've not yet made enough yarn for a child's sweater. Spinning finely and consistently enough for actual clothing is something that takes a lifetime of practice, by which I mean modern Andean production spinners start when they're about 3. Girls who don't spin aren't special, they're just selfish.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

And I mean--you could have a girl character who said, "Why can't $brother or $malecousin and I switch chores?" But "I would rather muck out stalls than spin" is a) very different and b) does assume that spinning, like all "girl work," takes no skill and can be substituted in at will. And I call bullshit.

[asciikitty.livejournal.com]

Right. I spin, and I spin fairly well, but not terribly quickly. I can EITHER spin fast or finely, and of course the finer you spin the more yarn you need to have spun.

[fidelioscabinet.livejournal.com]

Excuse me while I strike a match and burn some incense in your general direction.

Also, that 'fancy' needlework? It was a treat for when you'd done your share of the mending, plain sewing, and so on that HAD to be done. It was a chance to be creative and inventive and do something besides darn socks and patch things and hem sheets.

Grr.

[alecaustin.livejournal.com]

A couple of general responses/points:

At a base level, this sort of characterization is, as you say, lazy. It's just as cheap as showing that someone is a villain by having them kick puppies, or making it extra-special clear that a kid is young and innocent and that her imminent sacrifice is a moment of pathos by having her ask for her teddy bear.

(There are times when I feel like the 4th Street mantra of "...if you do it well enough" might benefit from being "...if you don't cheat/aren't cheap." But I digress...)

On a more concrete level, authors often engage in this sort of characterization without thinking through ramifications. How important is it that, say, Arya and Sansa Stark be competent at embroidery? There's often a drive to depict all sewing and handicrafts competence as irrelevant frippery, regardless of the surrounding technologies of cloth production. It's yet another way in which the fantasy genre is unmoored from economics and more reflective of the '50s or the Victorian era than the age of chivalry. (As well as an indication that many authors don't care about cloth production.)

Finally, there are a ton of historical "girl things" that get elided in the focus on needlework and handicrafts. Household economics and accounting, for example, was "girl stuff" for ages-- as you noted elsewhere, men were expected to be philosophical in Louisa May Alcott's books, not to know arithmetic or be able to gauge how many candles were needed for the winter. So there are lots of other options available, but because they aren't cliches, they don't have as much generic weight/cultural charge. Bleah.

[wshaffer.livejournal.com]

And, speaking as someone who has done a bit of simple hand sewing recently, I can say that as domestic drudgery goes, it's pretty pleasant. You get to sit comfortably, and you can converse with people sitting near you, or listen to someone playing music or reading aloud. Your fingers may get sore if you spend a lot of time pushing the needle through heavy fabric, and you might jab yourself with pins and needles if you're a bit clumsy, but if you compare it to the physical discomforts of doing the laundry or scrubbing the floors in a pre-industrial setting, it's a treat.

Of course, the girls in these books very seldom seem to be asked to do the laundry or scrub floors, or even cook dinner. Because, as you point out, the needlework in these books is not actually a meaningful part of the domestic economy, it's an easily spurned symbol of girlyness.

[rikibeth.livejournal.com]

Caddie Woodlawn preferred doing outdoor boys' chores with her brothers, and did... until a cousin came to visit, and as cousin Clara was trying to coax Caddie into learning a quilting pattern, and the boys decided, well, if CADDIE is going to quilt, we should too! and startled poor Clara something fierce.

And of course Laura helped her Pa with the haying -- but she also earned money for the family by sewing, and because she loathed making buttonholes, she did them VERY VERY FAST.

Note that these are both lightly fictionalized historical characters. :)

I once had an RPG character who was very handy with a needle when it came to mending tack or hawks' hoods, but had no patience at all for decorative work in silks.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

I hate needlework almost to the point of phobia and nevertheless I agree with you.

[oursin.livejournal.com]

There's that scene in Little Women in which the March sisters deal with the boredom of hemming sheets by calling each edge the name of a different continent and using that as an educational opportunity. Also, but I can't remember where I read this (one of Charlotte Yonge's perhaps) having one member of the family reading while the others do their plain-sewing, but switching that round. (Though I wonder how poor myopic Ethel May managed sewing...)

According to the Journal of Saw It Somewhere Studies, girls' samplers were about demonstrating their mistressy of a range of types of stitching that were used for various kinds of mending and patching and making clothes, not just pretty embroidery display.

[diatryma.livejournal.com]

Needlework in books is treated like practicing violin: you have to do it alone and you can't do anything else at the same time. Which makes no sense. "I hate needlework! I want to be the kind of princess who stabs things!" "Darling, you have to do it or you won't be able to spend time in the solar with all the ladies of the court. If you don't keep up on the gossip, how will you know who to stab?"

Plus, it's not something you practice, it's something you do. I'd love to see more intermediate needlework in books or at least a bit of learning curve.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Oh, I think this actually brings up one of the things that frustrates me. It seems to be assumed that if you can't immediately do whatever-fancy-stitch, you can never do whatever-fancy-stitch. You are Just Not Good At This. Which is, in fact, one of the most common geek fallacies about being smart in general--but if it was applied to sword-fighting in a similar type of stories, the same people would never stand for it.

Also: If you don't keep up on the gossip, how will you know who to stab?

OH YES.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I don't propose "I hate sums/household accounts" as the new "I hate needlework" spurning of girliness, though, because it won't read that way to a modern audience. It might well work to have a scorned elder sister good at girl stuff like math and sums, ugh, but I think that would possibly work best in a boy character--and also work best if the math and sums turn out to be useful.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Right, the sample was the "I will not ruin your stuff if you set me to actual work" display.

[adrian-turtle.livejournal.com]

"The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate" is not SF, it's MG/YA historical fiction about science. But it starts with a tween girl in 1899 who hates most of the women's work her mother wants her to learn, and the author seems to be looking at her with sympathy but not applause.

[txanne.livejournal.com]

Caddie Woodlawn was real? \o/ How I loved her.

[txanne.livejournal.com]

You'd be the person telling stories to keep the rest of us entertained.

[rikibeth.livejournal.com]

Carol Ryrie Brink's grandmother. Isn't it awesome?

[rikibeth.livejournal.com]

And cross-stitch wasn't an exercise in decorative futility the way it is now (I love the interesting stitches in crewel-work, but counted-cross drives me bonkers); it was the standard stitch used for putting initials and numbers onto shirts and so on for laundry-marking, to make sure those were worn in rotation so they'd wear evenly, and to tell family members' things apart when the sizes didn't make it instantly apparent.

I can see how the religious or exhortative texts sometimes used on samplers might have driven a more restless girl mad, though. I can't remember which character I read who was set to stitching one that said "When I was young and in my prime / Here you may see how I spent my time" and, when she finished it, she burnt it, because she couldn't think of a more stifling sentiment, and she went off and had adventures or something. It might even have been Susan in Emma Bull and Steven Brust's "Freedom and Necessity", which would put it firmly Victorian and in the hands of a young girl who'd always have servants to do the required making and mending.

[rikibeth.livejournal.com]

And boy stuff on an education level is Greek and Latin, for prestige... potentially useful science was not rated as highly. It was boys who got the higher mathematics, too. I can't remember any instances of it being considered necessary for a girl to learn trigonometry. Boys in the upper classes would have had that and calculus for the mental exercise (though Greek and Latin still had more prestige); otherwise, if it was useful, it was useful to naval men.

(my Hornblower fangirl is showing)

[rikibeth.livejournal.com]

Well, there are always the ones who stab their fingers and bleed on the linen, spoiling it so they have to start again.

I once helped teach the Pages' School at Pennsic. I did teach some basic embroidery stitches, to boys and girls alike, because it was a skill I had and could share. They all were fascinated at the process of making French knots, and could get behind the concept of embroidering designs on their gear so they could tell whose it was.

My dad taught me to embroider when I was four. My mother is no good at sewing; his grandfather had been a tailor. He was putting together a couple of embroidered pillow kits, one for me and one for my brother, and I thought it looked like fun and wanted to try, so he helped me pick out a kit (a picture of Charlie Brown and Snoopy) and taught me how to read the diagrams and what they meant you to do with the needle. I did really well at everything but Snoopy's satin stitch filling -- I screwed up enough on it so I wound up with not enough yarn to finish it, so Snoopy stayed white from the ground fabric. By the time I got to Charlie Brown's shoes, I had the hang of it.

[rikibeth.livejournal.com]

In the expanded generational Little House books, Laura's Scottish great-grandmother Martha wants to spin and is upset that she's too young and uncoordinated to get the hang of her mother's spinning wheel. A kindly neighbor shows her how to use a drop spindle and encourages her to spin while walking, and Martha's family is duly impressed when she demonstrates the skill!

[ellen-fremedon.livejournal.com]

otherwise, if it was useful, it was useful to naval men.

Who, of course, would all have known how to sew.

[carbonel]

Then there's Sandry in Tamora Pierce's Circle of Magic books. She wanted to learn to weave, but that was considered lower-class, so she was gently led (i.e., forced) to do more appropriate tasks, like decorative needlework.

[rikibeth.livejournal.com]

I laughed so hard when O'Brian wrote a bit where Preserved Killick was muttering to himself about how women had no notion of sewing buttons on securely.