Hi Undercover Fa Kid,
Give Friday a break, she was in love with her boss and deservedly so.
I'm amazed this keeps coming up when RAH emphasized strong women throughout his stories including the unpublished "We the Living" with the general exception of the juveniles which had to get past the psycho witch at Simon & Shuster, so older women were easily permitted to show their brains, though the women of the people in Citizen of the Galaxy were pretty impressive .
"Puppet Masters" which came out in 1951 had "Mary Allucquere"; "If this goes on-" from 1940 had "Sister Maggie", while Gulf had Gail; all smarter, tougher, and more capable than their spouses, as they themselves admitted which was rather rare back then.
The starship captains in Starship Troopers were repeatedly recognised as smarter and tougher than the hero Juan Rico, and who wants to mess with Gwen Novak aka Hazel Stone in any of her books?
Rehearsing all of the dean's heroines would take too long, but Wyo, Hilda and Maureen would hurt me if they weren't recognised as well.
L
Undercover Fat Kid wrote:I feel like in every Heinlein novel, women can be smart and capable, until they're paired up with a male character, then off scene it seems that her brains leak out of her ears. Have Spacesuit Will Travel, Kip's mom is a math genius in her own right, but you never see it. It's probably only mentioned to explain why Kip is so smart. Good genes, you know. Same book, Peewee steals an alien ship and engineers an escape from their prison off stage, but as soon as she's with Kip, she gets docked most of her IQ and surrenders all of her initiative, until she's separated from him, at which time her IQ and initiative return in time to save him.
Agent Friday was slavishly devoted to and absolutely dependent upon the boss, etc etc.
I'm not saying you can't see a solid example of female characters doing something worthwhile in a Heinlein book, its just not on a level with Robert Jordan, where the two most powerful individuals outside the Car'a'carn himself and his two lackeys (with all due respect to Masters Cauthon and Aybarra) are women, or RFK where Death outscources the jobs that absolutely positively must be done to a certain one armed, 'cat wielding cyclone of doom.
