Do you have an equal balance of male or female characters in your novel? I have eight characters in my novel, which I believe is fine for historical fantasy. Four are male and four are female. The protaganist is male.
What influenced the sex of your characters?
You make a good point Christopher.
Charlotte Bronte wrote The Professor, from the male perspective. Many respected critics have commented that it was a mistake.
However, Jane Austen did not experiment, she wrote intelligently about what she knew. Austen wrote about women in women's company, and men in women's company.
Jane Austen was not familiar with the private conversations between men in her day, and so avoided the pitfalls.
The female dialogue in my novel will have to be thoroughly checked.
I remember John Cleese talking about when he and Connie Booth wrote the scripts for Fawlty Towers. When he suggested a line of women's dialogue, Connie remarked that a women would not say that.
In my stories so far the MC has always been male, but the only reason for that is that I feel I won't be able to properly write a story from a woman's point of view as I lack important insight (meaning I am not one. :p ) I have however, almost always, a female character in the stories that I guess she would be considered the 2nd most important character.
Also note that I started writing in the first person POV, which was why I used male MCs, but even though I have written stories in the third person since then, I still used only male MCs. I guess it would be a nice challenge and change to try and write with a female as the MC.
As for the total number of male vs male characters, I never thought about that. But thinking back to my stories, I think the males dominate my stories, completely unintentional. Maybe something I should look into and try to bring at least some more balance to the story.