In "Loud Achievements: Lois McMaster Bujold's Science
Fiction" (first published, in two parts, in the New York Review
of Science Fiction Oct and Nov 1998, and reprinted on-line
at http://www.dendarii.com/kelso.html ),
Sylvia Kelso suggests that for most of the books of the series, Miles
is attractive to female readers because he is "codedly feminine," or,
as she quotes Bujold herself saying, "a female in disguise," "socially
disadvantaged" by his physique, "just as women in patriarchal society
are made to feel deformed." All of that changes, though, in A
Civil Campaign. Miles may be "socially disadvantaged," but he is
not only politically very powerful, but is positioned, repeatedly, as
a patriarch, not only with respect to Ekaterin, but with respect to
all the women working on the bug project, with respect to the
scientist who engineered the bugs, and with respect to the Lady
Donna/Lord Dono issue.
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