Tumblr user guilty-as-battery-charged made a good point about how women in fantasy fiction who sew / embroider, etc. always get painted as the weak, boring, anti-feminist characters. This is a common trope in both fantasy and historical fiction that is actually quite annoying. Another user, try-to-get-writing also added the quote:
“Destroy the idea that a woman’s strength is derived from how much she subverts gender norms”.
Source: guilty-as-battery-charged
Because in historical fiction it’s a chore, like cleaning, in contemporary fiction there are easier ways to do things like that. Plus anyone can learn embroidery and sewing, not everyone has access to sword fighting classes so it’s more interesting because it’s out of the ordinary.
Unless you have a famous embroidering artist who accidentally sews sigils into a piece of work in just the right places to open a portal to another dimension I doubt you’ll find chores or easily accessible hobbies as a focus for a main character, male or female, in fantasy fiction.
That’s be an interesting read though.
Plus, you know, women fought hard to be regarded as capable of more than sewing, so authors probably didn’t feel comfortable painting them as domestic. It’ll be a while before that changes, seeing is still partly seen as domestic chores, but fast rising as a skill.
But to address your main point, characters such as Polgara the sorceress do exist. The writings of David and Leigh Eddings are full of strong female characters. It is not that these characters don’t exist, just that you may not have found them yet.
Polgara may be strong but she spends most of her time ridiculing, patronizing & occasionally abusing the men around her. They are all “Little boys” and are treated as such. She knows best & woe betide any who do something she disapproves of. If Belgarath treated women the way Polgara treats men it would be too outrageous for anyone but dude-bros to read. But she is a woman so it’s okay. I say this as a 53 year old woman who first read the Belgariad as they were published in the 80s and spent a year between books eagerly awaiting the next ones. I love the series but Polgara is incredibly irritating bossy, know it all
Tamora Pierce has Sandry in the Circle of Magic series. Sandry has sewing/weaving/spinning magic.
Fiber arts are, to women’s crafts, what writing and music were to men’s crafts–“enchantment.” They included powerful entry level skills (spinning could bbe done by anyone to some degree, but spinning the finest linen, wool, or silk was no beginner’s work). It was elitist-it took time and training to do well, and even frivolous activities like embroidery brought power to a family: a woman who could do white altar work, for example, brought a skill that could be used to bring pride to a family and gratitude and income from the church. But it always brings the “warrior’s” counter-grumble: it’s “crafty and ously,” a matter of skill not of strength. You can curse a king on the needle of your spinning wheel, or drench a handkerchief with a dye of your own blood to enchant a princess. Fiber arts are *binding* arts, illusive arts, and, like breadmaking, are often based in survival arts–and, yes, they are traditionally based in women’s arts, though once you set them free in the business community you find many a tailor killing giants and flies with every stitch.
Here’s the quandry: male or female, a “warrior” likes to keep things simple, “honest,” and “knightly.” There’s a scorn for the enchanter built into the game, and fiber arts are enchanter’s arts with enchanters’ styles subtleties. It is not “just” a chore: from the first spin to make a thread to the last stitch of a fresh-made shirt to the clever darning of a wife who will make a shirt last years longer than you’d expect, it’s a crafty thing. It’s a thing of women sitting silent by the fire for hours, creating the simple and wholesome–and the sneaky and unexpected. Coarse use and sophisticated beauty. It’s communal women’s magic coming together to sort out judgements while building quilts. It’s gossip in the knitting club. It’s the lone sewer and the combined women’s society. It’s the rich woman with time to produce a thing of beauty just because she wants to–and the grandmother who comes to rule her family because she is mistress of lace making, and in making and selling lace and teaching the skills to her family she raises them single-handedly from peasants to international merchants in a single generation.
A woman who gathers wool from the countryside or weaves star flowers gathered from the local graves is not “mere” enough to be treated as merely strong. You must mock her–or respect her. But you must be aware she’s always more than mere.
Ilna from David Drake’s Lord of the Isles was a weaver who wove some powerful compulsions and spells into her cloth. She was likened to a spider…. patient, cold, and cunning. In any other story she would have been an evil sorceress but they had bigger problems, and an iron moral code kept her in check (tho she had no hint of empathy or compassion per say). She was the most compelling of the 4 main heros by far.