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The legend of good women
Yunnan Chen goes in search of female role models in literature.
Posted 3rd June 2009 | Author: Yunnan Chen
From Issue MT09 of Etcetera (Views: 158)
Prior to writing the novel Emma, Jane Austen wrote of her eponymous protagonist that ‘I am going to take a heroine whom no one but myself will much like’. Oh, how this truth rings through time. Aspiring fourteen-year-old authors who sit before their laptops and churn out poorly-spelt vampire romances or wistful graphic fantasies of Harry Potter’s lovelife should understand the same truth. The phenomenon of the ‘Mary-Sue’ is prolific in the online world: in fandoms, fanfiction, fanart and any other vehicle that encourages creativity in hormonal young girls in love with Legolas/Jack Sparrow/Edward Cullen. And guilty as I am of frequenting those circles (in my wild and long-past youth), it is not difficult to identify what they look like, and speculate as to why they occur.
‘Mary Sues’ are female protagonists, often inserted into the original story or canon through the whim of the author(ess), e.g. dropping spontaneously into Middle Earth and helping Frodo save the ring (as well as providing emotional comfort and ample bosom). They can be identified by recurring traits: beauty, long-luscious-locks; preternatural intelligence, an ability to talk to horses, magenta eyes and so on. Occasionally they will be tortured by a haunted, unspoken Dark Past that only the sexy hero can save them from.
The Internet is choked with digital outpourings of such pubescent fantasy, and yet it is not hard to see why, once the fury over the atrocious grammar and abhorrent plots of such stories subsides.
The explanation is pure escapism. Women, no matter what age, enjoy a good fairytale. The Emma of Austen’s time, all ‘handsome, clever and rich’, must have possessed traits that her author herself envied. So we fashion our heroines out of the clay of which we wish we were made. The creation of the female protagonist is a momentous job (as any teenage fanfic writer will tell you); it is creating a realistic one that is the difficulty; one that most teen writers have not yet overcome.
Having said that our female characters are ideal emulations from our desires, I arrive at an impasse: trying to reconcile the Lizzie Bennet of Austen’s time with the Bridget Jones of my own time, who so severely lacks the stately manners, etiquette and dignity of Austen’s heroine. And yet they both win the same Mr. Darcy. Perhaps Miss Jones forms a more realistic portrayal of the modern woman than Miss Bennet did, showing with irony, satire and honesty the insecurities and screw-ups of the contemporary female mindset.
Face it, if you had to live with prim-and-proper Lizzie Bennet as your sister, you’d probably strangle her. The modern audience does not want a practically-perfect Mary Sue that she cannot aspire to. Bridget is far more likeable for her flaws: an endearing n00bishness that signals to the insecurity of the reader that if such an imperfect woman can find true love, then maybe you, who are not as neurotic/malcoordinated/flabby, can do the same.
And the trend has continued. The modern day has blessed us with enterprising Buffys and Bridgets, and also the Hollywood heroines featured in ‘modern classics’ such as Confessions of a Shopaholic (somewhat inappropriate in the current economic climate): women whose superficial lives revolve around shopping, the colour pink, and finding the Ideal Man. The time-honoured themes of dresses and matchmaking have not changed since Miss Bennet’s time, (Sex and the City – four words say it all) but the portrayal of women as hysterical, shallow airheads, (especially in the male-dominated cinema industry), is becoming increasingly prevalent.
Female role models have been rare through history, female characters mostly repressed into demure waifs in need of princely rescue – true of fairytales, especially true of the Gothic period. The closest example to a ‘Warrior Princess’ in my mind is possibly the spirited but ‘manly’ Marian Halcombe, of Wilkie Collins’ Woman in White. Marian is a superficially unattractive woman who tries to play the hero, and thus can never attain the womanly ideal of romantic love. It also says something that throughout the novel she proclaims a recurring desire to be a man.
Despite the lack of Happy Ever After, she still represents a far stronger and aspirational role model than the distressed damsel of the piece, namely her sister, Laura Fairley, who by contrast does attain the Victorian Holy Grail of marriage and babies.
What do we have to aspire to now? The modern ‘realistic’ heroine is still obsessed with finding the Right Man, still obsessed with her looks. Bridget’s agonized quest for self-improvement expresses a very female desire to be her ideal, but this ideal is an image decided for us: to be skinny, to be well-dressed, to be a Woman so a man will have you. Is it the insecurity and schadenfreude of woman that intensifies the flawed, vapid Hollywood heroine’s appeal - do we need an onscreen airhead to make ourselves feel better? And is this what happens when we grow out of the Mary Sue phase, and our aspirations to the ridiculous die? What a depressing thought.
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