The wisdom of years

I have a suspicion that editors are sometimes influenced by our cultural emphasis on young celebrity when looking at the characters in the books submitted to them.  Having become a woman of a certain age, I notice the absence of older women in the books I read, or read about.

It's okay for male characters to be old.  They can manage to hold onto their power too.  How much more powerful can you get than Gandalf from The Lord of the Rings?  But if we translated this character into a older woman she wouldn't be called a wizard.  She'd be called a witch, with all the negative associations that our culture puts on that word.  Or she'd be labelled as an old crone. Instead of admiring her flowing white locks we'd describe her thinning grey hair.

Some writers have managed to slip older characters into their stories.  CJ Cherryh's Pyanfar Chanur is a wily starship captain that has been travelling the space ways for a long time. A shrewd political and  interstellar political operator, it is her age and wisdom, her ability to read the big picture of her actions that keeps her alive in her dealings with the dangerous Kif. She is a powerful woman, and one of my favourite role models.

Elizabeth Moon features an older, not well-educated woman, in Remnant Population.  Her pragmatic, practical way of seeing life allows her to get in with the aliens just fine when she is left behind when the colony leaves the planet.  She has a quite, sly way of getting what she wants that is both gentle and strong, and takes no notice of the silly edicts of the men in charge.

These writers' choices of older characrers challenge our youth obsession.  They've seen it all before, the rise of a dictator or pirates, the greedy war of acquisition.  Older characters keep the history, balance the hot-headed actions of impulsive younger people.  They are the memory-keepers of our civilization, the essential link between the lessons of the past and the present,