Conan the Barbarian and his Lily-White Women

The Guardian has a piece about the race and gender issues some might have with Robert E. Howard's pulp fiction of the 1930s.

From the story...

Basically, these stories are pure pulp fiction, and all the more enjoyable for being unashamedly so. Rather than, as I've been doing, devouring several of them in one sitting, I think it would be better – less repetitive – to read them as they were originally published in Weird Tales; I can imagine them working brilliantly in regular instalments, garish art and all. They're the work of a young man, in his 20s – Howard committed suicide in 1936, at the age of 30 – and they clearly came tumbling from his pen at full speed. Stephen King is quoted on my edition, saying they "seem to almost fall over themselves in their need to get out".

For all that, though, there are elements that jar horribly today. Villains are usually dark-skinned; the darker the eviller. The more lily-white a woman's skin, the more prized she is. Howard might be a product of his time, but so am I, and it's impossible to read sentences such as "in this accursed city … where white, brown, and black folk mingle together to produce hybrids of all unholy hues and breeds – who can tell who is a man, and who is a demon in disguise?" without cringing.

Howard's women, too, get me down. Conan is obviously written for boys, but why oh why are the ladies such wimps? Even the spirited Valeria in Red Nails – "as quick and ferocious as a tigress" – is popped on Conan's knee and caressed – against her will, but later, as "a chill crept through her veins", she will "unconsciously" lay her "white hand on her companion's muscular brown arm" for reassurance. And she's one of the good ones.