Are there any examples of feminist works in the Sword and Sorcery genre? [closed]

Question

A careful study of Sword & Sorcery literature placed its inception as a subgenre of fantasy in 1961 with Leiber's response to Moorcock. The ensuing years (1965-1981) brought forth a meager handful of books, which ultimately led to movie adaptations of Conan the Barbarian (March 1982), quickly followed by The Sword and the Sorceror (April 1982), The Beastmaster (August 1982) and was ultimately distilled into the less-than-female-friendly DeathStalker (1983), as well as the somehow more derivative and even less-female-friendly DeathStalker II (1987).

The influences of these early forays of the genre into screenplay are easily witnessed in the more contemporary Korgoth of Barbaria (June 2006), which could either be interpreted as a celebration or satire of those earlier films due to its accurate depiction of common tropes from those movies. One thing in particular that stood out to me was the treatment (in the literary sense of the word, "the presentation or discussion of a subject") of women in that show.

I have since gone back and watched the movies (in approximate order of release date) that influenced Korgoth, and I was left with questions about the very nature of the subgenre itself.

My question relates to the historical and societal context of the early (1960s-1980's) S&S works (literature and movies):

Was there ever any branch of the Sword & Sorcery subgenre that forayed into modern feminism (i.e., contained themes pertaining to post-First Wave Feminism)?

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Based on feedback from the comments, I am adding some specific criteria directly from Second Wave Feminism (~1961-1990, which coincides with the early development of the S&S subgenre). This is intended to clarify the definition of feminism as it applies in the context of this question. A relevant answer to this question would include books, movies or other works in the Sword & Sorcery subgenre that delve into some, if not all of the following topics:

• sexuality
• family
• the workplace (e.g., in the context of this question: profession/trade/quest)
• reproductive rights
• de facto inequalities (i.e., physical/biological)
• official legal inequalities

Also, in order to provide context to some of the comments, the original title of this question (and what I was contemplating when I originally wrote it) was:

Is the Sword & Sorcery genre inherently anti-feminist?

The reason that I'm highlighting this is to clarify that the mere presence of a female protagonist would not automatically satisfy the above criteria. Further, the revised title (Are there any examples of feminist works in the Sword and Sorcery genre?) has re-framed this question as a list-based question that excludes most of the works of the S&S genre, which was not my original intent (i.e., the question "is the genre anti-feminist?" cannot be fully answered without examples and counter-examples). Case in point, the summary of Red Sonja (1973) on Wikipedia contains the following:

Sonja is well known for her bikini armor, consisting typically of scale mail covering only her waist and breasts.

If the above character features were used a platform for plot points to cover some of the afore-mentioned criteria (either pro- or con-), then I could see it as being topically relevant to an answer. In short, I would like to see at least a few specific reasons why a particular work would satisfy (or break) the stated criteria (i.e., not a simple list), because the available online descriptions only highlight the very surface of some of these works, and there may be some non-obvious yet highly relevant themes buried in the content itself.

Answer 1

This article lists quite a few sword-and-sorcery books that the author viewed as feminist¹:

• The Birthgrave by Tanith Lee (1975) along with two sequels

  • This world has an early medieval culture with “decadent imperial civilizations,” small city states, nomadic groups, constant little wars and skirmishes and conquests, swords and primitive cannons, multiple religions worshipping various deities, and powerful but mysterious magic.
    _Wikipedia

  • ...the majority of the book is about women, their interactions with both men AND women, and their impact on Vazkor’s social status.
    _{from the linked article}

  • Note that these are also science fiction, so they might not count as "sword-and-sorcery" according to some definitions.

• The Gate to Women's Country

  • ...this critiques gender, biology, and destiny while at the same time refusing to offer any easy answers.
    _Wikipedia

  • The story explores many elements from ecofeminism, which has been a hallmark of much of Tepper's writing, both in her feminist science fiction and in her pseudonymous mysteries.²
    _{from the linked article}

Additionally, there are the Sword and Sorceress anthologies (currently 30 volumes, published yearly from 1984-present):

...Marion Zimmer Bradley...created the anthology to redress the lack of strong female protagonists in the subgenre of sword and sorcery.

Additionally, there are definitely others; these are just a few examples so that I have evidence there are feminist sword-and-sorcery works but this doesn’t become a list.

TL;DR there are definitely sword-and-sorcery works that are feminist or described as feminist.

¹_{I've not read any of these, so they may not all be obviously within the sword-and-sorcery genre.}

² _{Wikipedia says "citation needed", so take that with a grain of salt. However, the author's page says she wrote "eco-feminist...science fiction literature" with a source, so this should be a particularly small grain, probably.}

Answer 2

Equal Rites by Terry Pratchett, part of the Discworld series. The introduction says:

It may, however, help to explain why Gandalf never got married and why Merlin was a man. Because this is also a story about sex, although probably not in the athletic, tumbling, count-the-legs-and-divide-by-two sense..."

Its overt focus is on the workplace and official legal inequalities: the protagonist, Esk, is a young girl with magical talent who is destined to become a wizard rather than a witch, but Unseen University is male-only. However the sub-text is also about the sexist assumptions in fantasy literature generally. At one point Esk considers the division of magic between the sexes on the Disc, which is very much the standard fantasy model:

She thought about wizards. [...] They were wise, she recalled, and usually very old, and they did powerful, complex and mysterious magics and almost all of them had beards. They were also, without exception, men.

[...] Witches were cunning, she recalled, and usually very old, or at least they tried to look old, and they did slightly suspicious, homely and organic magics and some of them had beards. They were also, without exception, women.

There was some fundamental problem in all that which she couldn't quite resolve.

Later on the book also touches on birth control and sex when Esk meets Hilta Goatfounder, a town witch:

"The council have tried to run me out once or twice, you know, but they all have wives and somehow it never quite happens. They say I'm not the right sort, but I say there'd be many a family in this town a good deal bigger and poorer if it wasn't for Madame Goatfounder's Pennyroyal Preventives. I know who comes into my shop, I do. I remember who buys buckeroo drops and ShoNuff Ointment, I do."

There are quite a lot of other bits of feminist (or at least reaction-against-patriarchy) titbits scattered around in the Diskworld, from the description of Herrena in the Light Fantastic to the gay-lib-feminist mash-up of Cheery (Cherie) Littlebottom. But a full catalog would be long and they don't make any of the other books "feminist works".

Answer 3

If you accept Clarke's Law (Sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.), then Cherryh's Morgaine Quadralogy ought to count.

Morgaine is a product of a technological civilization which was shattered by time-travelling gates produced by the qhal. She travels alone, on horseback and armored, passing from gate to gate, destroying each as she passes. She was once part of a team, and is now the last survivor.

Jane Yolen's Sister Light/Sister Dark and White Jenna probably fit the bill.

The two are a magical pair, and Sister Dark only manifests herself in the dark.

Chicks in Chainmail edited by Esther Friesner, definitely counts.

The title says it all.

Answer 4

You can include the Andre Norton (Alice Mary Norton) "Witch World" a book that started the series in 1963. The author had to change the name to more masculine because according to publishers " it was necessary to market to adolescent boys because girls didn’t read that sort of thing".

While the series starts with classical "male hero travelling to the magic world to save the maiden in distress", it quickly changes to focus on the titular witch, who is not only a magic user but also skilled combatant and politician.

The book displays that the magic (although it is rather low -grade magic: illusions and mind control rather than fireballs and summoning demons) is in the hand of women and the Witches of Ethercap are the factual, skilled rulers the nation. It also states that the magic stays only with virgins ^*, so any acts of sexual assaults are treated as equal to murder.

the first book also introduces Loyse - an unattractive heiress of some small kingdom, who saves a witch from being raped - so it is not a "damsel saved by a hero" but a "powerful woman saved by another powerful woman".

These are not conventional babes and dames. They’re not gorgeous, for one thing. The one conventionally attractive female in the book, Duke Yvian’s mistress Aldis, is not a love interest, but neither is she completely evil. Everyone is using her, and she is using everyone else, in the way of political intrigue.

Loyse isn’t plucky or perky or cute. She looks wan and washed out, but she has a spine of steel. She discovers that it’s not looks or charm that gets the guy, it’s smarts and courage. The guy she gets has his own issues with looks and heredity, but she doesn’t care. They’re a match, and eventually they both realize it.

The witches are quite astonishing in the context of 1963 and men’s adventure. Certainly there’s been a long tradition of powerful sorceresses in exotic locales, but these are straight-out rulers. They’re strong, they’re confident, and they wield powers that no one questions. Even the Falconers, who actively hate women, have to accept their authority.

The story is not told through the male gaze, either, despite the predominance of male characters and viewpoints. That’s the convention of the time, but Norton subverts it beautifully with her matriarchal culture and her competent and confident female characters. Even Loyse the abused child has no qualms about standing up for herself. ^Source

^{The power of virgins is later found as not exactly true - why indeed women will lose the power after a rape, it is not so much in case of consensual sex without the expectation of losing magic... It's bit complicated and never properly explained, although proven possible when in the further books the titular Witch keeps her power even after few childbirths}