So I am faced with an interesting conundrum in my novel. As I wrote the story, the medical examiner was a women. Then I started reading and doing my research. First off, it would have been a coroner in the Victorian time period. Second, women were just beginning to come into their own as nurses and certainly were rare as doctors.
So...now I am trying to decide do I go the "easy way out" and make the coroner a man? Or do I keep my female and explain/show somewhere that she is rare, frequently challenged and has to fight for respect?
On one hand, I certainly like the idea of a strong woman coroner (being a huge fan of Rizzoli and Isles), however, I don't know that I want to add the complication of another woman in a typically male dominated field. The Heroine is a courier and owns her own business, which is definitely unusual enough.
On the third hand (!?), it's alternate history, I've already made tweaks to history and had things created earlier than they really were...so would it break the "suspension of disbelief" if I had a woman in a typically male dominated field for that time period?
It's an interesting challenge that I'll have to play with. If I keep her, it could provide an interesting subplot within the overall story.
It's not as if this barricade/Blocks the only road
It's not as if you're all alone/In wanting to explode
~Rush, The Pass
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