Last week VS Naipaul inflamed a fair bit of controversy when he declared that there was no female author whom he considered his equal. Setting aside the sheer stupidity of such a statement (and the question of his own mental state) I found it interesting that he felt that he could tell “within a paragraph or two” whether a piece was written by a woman. According to Naipaul women have a sentimental, narrow view of the world which comes across in her work as “feminine tosh” in his view (yes, my hackles are rising as I type this).
Now our very own Kathryn Lilley raised the issue of ‘gender detection’ in writing in a blog post a while back and, if memory serves me right, we all submitted a paragraph to a website (possibly gender genie) to have a computer program evaluate an author’s gender based on the words used. I also seem to recall that this so called assessment misdiagnosed a number of pieces – so I continue to wonder, can you really tell if a woman or a man wrote something??
For my part, I doubt I would be able to distinguish a thriller by our own Michelle Gagnon from those of her male colleagues (except that I obviously have read her work and know it). Indeed many female writers have been mistaken for being male writers (some deliberately choosing to adopt male pseudonyms as well) so you have to wonder what planet Naipaul is on. I wouldn’t know that PD James was a woman from reading her Adam Dalgliesh novels just as I wouldn’t have guessed that a mother and son were the mystery author ‘Charles Todd’. There are also just as many book written by men that, had I not known that, would have assumed were written by women (Snow falling on Cedars and Room with a View, to name just two). Even in the literary sphere has Naipaul not heard of Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell or George Elliot??
But, rather than continuing to rant (VS Naipaul isn’t worth it), let’s focus on the nitty gritty – can you honestly tell if a novel is written by a man or a woman?