The Hero and the Crown

Plenty of girls like fantasy novels. “Eowyn” is not in the Social Security Administration's top 1,000 names for any year, so I can't verify this, but I imagine it's rapidly increasing in popularity. And they beefed up Arwen for the Lord of the Rings movies to make another female hero for little girls and young women.

I wonder how I would have related to Aerin of Robin McKinley's The Hero and the Crown if I had read it earlier in life. I think I would have liked her a lot. She's clumsy, antisocial, bookish—and one of those women who suddenly everyone notices is beautiful.

Why does she have to be beautiful? Do all heroines have to be beautiful? It seems like the author has to play the Miss America game—giving her female character a skill and a talent and a philanthropic interest so that we can tell ourselves we admire her for more than just what we can perceive as she struts across the stage.

It's true that just beauty isn't enough to make us love a character. I like Aerin much more for her stubborn persistence and her endearing awkwardness than for her beauty. I want her to be different from other women. I want her to be the best dragon-killer in the country. I want her to effortlessly slay every foe in her path. But I still want her to be beautiful. I want all the men to desire her in the way that men desire women. I want her to have everything.

So why do I resent the fact that the author felt obliged to make her beautiful? Why do I feel slightly like Robin McKinley has sold out?

One of the few fantasy-type books I've read that has a non-beautiful main character is Till We Have Faces. But that book is different in many other ways. We don't admire the main character for much besides beauty, either. She's not really a hero. She's disturbingly like us. It's a great book. But it's in a different, more psychologically complex genre, I suppose.

I suppose Robin McKinley is not trying to upset the tradition, not trying to make a point about beauty. A book in the classic fantasy genre, if it is to have good female characters, requires them to compete not only with other women but with all men. Aerin's strength and ingenuity set her apart from the other women, and her beauty sets her apart from men.