The Deerslayer: James Fenimore Cooper

I have heard much good about the skills of James Fenimore Cooper (September 15, 1789 – September 14, 1851). This novel, The Deerslayer, certainly has an intriguing name. There's something wonderful about the beautiful forests of Canada and Northern USA. I love the old western movies. If you, dear reader, are at all offended by racism or, to a lesser extent, sexism, then I suggest leaving this book aside. It was unpleasant to read and required quite some endurance.

Cooper has a good vocabulary, and he is certainly decent at using it. However, his style is heavy in sentimentality. But the hardest thing for me was the abject racism and, to a lesser extent, sexism of the story that harmed this book.

For Deerslayer, the idea of marrying a 'red skin' is so abhorrent, that he would rather be killed than marry one. He says to Hetty, a 'feeble minded girl,' when she proposes that he marry the 'Indian' widow, "Ought the young to wive with the old--the pale-face with the red-skin--the Christian with the heathen?" Racism is very heavy throughout the novel. Hetty, as mentioned already being a half wit, is a half wit only insofar as that it is "a mind beneath the level of her race."

Cooper's novel will certainly offend the feminists, as the ideal woman "... shouldn't be forward, and speak their minds before they're asked." A good wife's place is there to, as Judith puts it, is "...ready to study your wishes, and healthy and dutiful children anxious to follow in your footsteps..."

This book took me a long time to read, and it wasn't pleasant. I'm glad it's over.

New Lamps, Robert Moore Williams

New Lamps is a short science fiction story previously published in Other Worlds. I am unfamiliar with Robert Moore Williams and have not read any of his work before. It's available for free on Gutenberg.org. It's not really a great read. However, it sure points out the lousy way Williams saw women.

One of the first things that I first noticed were the breasts of his female characters. 

She was tall, lithe, and full breasted... He had spent most of his life in the laboratories of Earth... the women who had been there (in the labs on Earth) had been flat breasted, pale creatures in low-heeled shoes...

The main character, Ronson, has gone to Mars to meet someone who has managed to cure Martians of incurable cancer.

He meets two other earthlings, Jennie and her helper, Sam Crick. Jennie is the 'full breasted' one already described above. Cancer was going to kill Ronson, and he hoped this Les Ro would be able to help.

Two murderers and a leper, who had gone on to get treated with them are all cured. The two murderers are cured of their desire to kill, and the leper is healed of the disease.

Jennie is tired of being a weak woman ('her' words, not mine):

"...there's always been a fight within me. Instead of being a woman, I have only succeeded in being a bitch, all jangle of nerves, always trying to do what the men did, but knowing I really couldn't because I was a woman."

I guess Les Ro is able to cure Jennie of not quite being a woman:

She was becoming something else--a woman. The fact showed in the gentleness of her smile.

It reminds me of the complaint that I hear from time-to-time, about women being told that they need to smile.

I can't imagine how it must have felt in those days long ago. Girls seem to be treated so badly in fiction. They rarely have important roles, and their femininity is weak and powerless. When they are strong, they're 'bitches.' She couldn't be as strong as a man because she's a woman. But she's too strong to be a woman. The Martian doctor cures her of her strength and character in order for her to become the weak woman she wanted to be. Instead of the strong writer traveling around the solar system, writing stories, being famous, isn't as important as being a man's sidekick and object of physical attraction.