Hi, I've been reading and enjoying your reviews for a while.
You're sooo right about Heinlein's female characters, both the good and the bad. Just showing a compentent female space engineer was revolutionary in the 40s, but she was a token special case, not a norm. And so it remained. The only real counter-example I can think of is in Glory Road, where the POV male character did his best to see Star, Empress of Twenty Universes, in that way, and she just wasn't able to subsume herself into being his wife. She had twenty universes to oversee, which took precedence. He eventually left, unable to tolerate the position of full-time spouse-with-no-other-job. I don't know if Heinlein did the irony on purpose; it's possible. He could see that women have independent emotions and minds, but he and his characters just didn't want to give up the perks of being a man in the 20thC he knew.
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You're sooo right about Heinlein's female characters, both the good and the bad. Just showing a compentent female space engineer was revolutionary in the 40s, but she was a token special case, not a norm. And so it remained. The only real counter-example I can think of is in Glory Road, where the POV male character did his best to see Star, Empress of Twenty Universes, in that way, and she just wasn't able to subsume herself into being his wife. She had twenty universes to oversee, which took precedence. He eventually left, unable to tolerate the position of full-time spouse-with-no-other-job. I don't know if Heinlein did the irony on purpose; it's possible. He could see that women have independent emotions and minds, but he and his characters just didn't want to give up the perks of being a man in the 20thC he knew.