Note: I have been working on this post for several months now, and it just keeps getting longer and longer. As such, I’ve decided to break it down into four parts: the introduction, the novel/parody novella, the films, and the television adaptations.
Every now and then I come back to this article in The Toast about The Unified Theory of Ophelia, in which the author half-jokingly claims that they once believed everything there was to know about womanhood could be discovered in the character of Ophelia.
I had a similar revelation last year on reading Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe and watching its assorted film and television adaptations (plus, William Makepeace Thackery’s parody novella). Everything about how female characters are portrayed across media, how fandom responds to them, and even how Love Triangles and Fan-Preferred Couples form in the imaginations of readers/viewers, can arguably be found in media’s collective portrayal of Rowena and Rebecca across the centuries.
 |
| Source |
I would go so far as to say that the genesis of all fandom’s discourse and harassment and cross-examination and hypersensitivity and preoccupation with female characters and the role they play in any given narrative can be traced back to these two fictional women. Is that too broad a claim? Yes, of course – but as the linked article points out, every now and then certain theories and concepts that interest you can occasionally seem to magically coalesce into a single, shining, straightforward example. It’s like discovering the unifying theory of the universe.
This won’t come as a surprise to anyone who frequents this blog, but the subject of how women are portrayed across fiction is one of the great interests of my life. One aspect of this depiction is in regard to numbers. Despite women making up approximately half the human race, there is often only one notable female character in any given story, giving rise to the concept of The Smurfette Principle, in which a single featured woman is essentially required to represent a full fifty percent of humanity.
But when a story has two female characters present, things start to get interesting, for at this point a duality exists. As a species, we love creating binaries: young and old, left and right, black and white, good and bad. When it comes to women, there are boundless ways to divide, categorize and compare: the Tomboy and the Girly Girl, the Light and Dark Feminine, the Betty and the Veronica – and of course, the Madonna and the Whore.
In the realm of fiction, a lot of these dichotomies are utilized in order to form characterization through contrast: what one character is, the other is not.
Very rarely do women get a well-rounded character out of these archetypes. That’s not the point of archetypes, and in the case of women, not only are the above tropes very basic either/or definitions, they have a tendency to compartmentalize traits in a way you simply don’t see with male characters. For instance, I cannot think off the top of my head of a female character that enjoys playing football and getting dressed up in girly clothes. I can, however, think of plenty of male characters who contain masculine and feminine characteristics. Men are blank slates to be filled in; women come with preexisting types of femininity that have to be adhered to.
Furthermore, when men are given foils, there’s usually some interesting nuance and variety at work. They can be the Ego and the Id, the Red or Blue Oni, Brains and Brawn, Cain and Abel, Chevalier vs. Rogue, Good Cop/Bad Cop, Straight Man and Wise Guy – the list goes on. Women have a more limited range of gender-specific duality: the Madonna and Whore, the Good Girl and the Bad, the Maiden and the Crone – and most of this has to do with how they’re perceived by men, or how much value they have to the patriarchy.
And of course, sometimes it’s frankly impossible for female characters to contain different aspects of their opposing archetypes, since the entire point is that they’re immutable opposites. You cannot be a Madonna and a Whore at the same time. Natalie Portman tried that in Black Swan and lost her mind as a result.
I’m getting a little off-track here, so let me reiterate. Whenever there are two women in a story, a binary will inevitably emerge, and the dynamics between said women are usually one of three things: bitter rivals, BFFs, or complete indifference to each other (as in, they may not even interact with each other at all). Whatever narrative path the story choses to take, there will almost always be a lingering sense of competition, even if it’s just in the minds of the fans. Which female character is more relatable? Which one is getting more screentime? Which one is going to hook up with the male lead?
And whether the contrast is deliberate or by accident, the story’s audience will usually exacerbate things by pitting the two women against each other in fandom debate, whether it’s a shipping war, or just a personal preference for one over the other.
Am I generalizing? Yes. But also... not really. Even if it’s on a subconscious level, even if it’s entirely subtextual, there will always be a desire to contrast and compare; to choose your favourite, especially among female characters. It’s just there. And the further back you go into literary history, the more obvious it becomes. Back in the day, the Madonna/Whore binary was a big one, but storytellers also made extensive use of love triangles (the virtuous innocent versus the conniving gold-digger) or age differences (the maiden versus the crone).
You can be sure that one female character will always be implicitly framed as “better” than the other. And even if they’re not, fandom will end up drawing conclusions on their behalf.
Let me just throw a few examples into the ring. I won’t go into too much detail, but just ponder for a moment the treatment of Lucy Westenra and Mina Murray in Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Penelope and Circe (or Calypso) in Greek mythology, Cosette and Eponine from Les Misérables, Scarlett O’Hara and Melanie Wilkes in Gone With the Wind, Arya and Sansa (or Sansa and Daenerys) from Game of Thrones, Amy and Jo March in Little Woman, Laurel Lance and Felicity Smoak from Arrow – heck, even Taylor Swift herself playing dual roles in her music video for “You Belong with Me.”
It’s not just in how the stories themselves portray these women (none of which are depicted as overt villains) but how they’re received, discussed, perceived and treated by fandom. The act of contrasting female characters, and then having arguments about them, is ubiquitous throughout our culture.
As a result, whenever these old patterns are shaken up a little, especially in works where you’d otherwise expect very flat characterization for women, it feels like a cause for minor celebration. It was back in March of last year that I was first inspired to write this post, brought on by the way the characters Xiao Qiao and Sun Shangxiang were portrayed in John Woo’s Red Cliff.
The pair are complete opposites, best described as the Tomboy and Girly Girl, and yet they each have more depth and nuance than this contrast usually allows. More remarkably, even though they share only a single scene, it demonstrates they’re very fond of each other. Across the course of the film, they – by embodying two very different kinds of womanhood – are both instrumental in achieving victory for their allies.
Moreover, each one’s actions are not interchangeable. Xiao Qiao could not have done what Sun Shangxiang did (infiltrate the enemy camp in the guise of a boy), just as Sun Shangxiang could not have done what Xiao Qiao did (use her beauty and charm to distract their enemy at a critical moment). The binary remains intact, but each half of it is celebrated.
But having rewatched Red Cliff, I was then inspired to reread Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe, since the two most prominent female characters of that novel share many similarities to Xiao Qiao and Sun Shangxiang.
Like Qiao and Shangxiang, Rowena and Rebecca are the only two female characters of note in the entire story, and only share a single scene together. Furthermore, they also end up subverting (or perhaps “elevating” is a better word) some of the expected clichés of the archetypes they’re based on. Extraordinarily, they’re not overtly pitted against each other, despite the fact they’re both in love with the same man, and they part on relatively good terms with no animosity between them.
Rather, it is the readership (or as we would call it today, the fandom) that ignores this nuance in favour of rivalry, favouritism, slander and character assassination. This was never better seen than in William Makepeace Thackeray’s parody sequel to the novel, Rebecca and Rowena, which (as the title indicates) delves deeper into the characterization of the two women and the comparison that readers are invited to draw between them. (Or, even if Scott doesn’t invite them to do so, they’ll inevitably invite themselves to do).
Once that was complete, I moved on to the four most famous filmic/television adaptations of the material: the 1952 film, featuring Joan Fontaine and Elizabeth Taylor, the 1970 BBC production, with Clare Jenkins and Vivian Brooks, the 1982 television film, starring Lysette Anthony and Olivia Hussey, and the 1997 miniseries, with Victoria Smurfit and Susan Lynch, all of whom play Rowena and Rebecca respectively.
All of these adaptations take more of an interest in the heroines than the original novel – not only as individuals, but in regards to the dynamic between them. For example, the scene in which the women farewell each other at the end of the story plays out profoundly differently in all four features, favouring either one woman or the other as the female lead of the story.
The myriad of ways in which they’re portrayed across these various mediums is where my point of interest lies, for as Thackeray’s novella makes very clear, the contrast between the two women doesn’t just exist in the story itself, but in the eyes of those that experience it. Sadly, it is a truth universally acknowledged that for one woman in a binary to be beloved, the other must be despised. Fandom cannot like one without loathing the other. It’s like, the fandom rule, built into its very DNA, and this is seldom more clearly seen than when it comes to Rowena and Rebecca.
The favouritism of one fictional woman over another can rely on a lot of different factors, including how readers/viewers relate to the male characters, what they’re shipping, who is the underdog of the story (as we have a tendency to side with the most hard-done-by), which character is introduced first, and so on. All sorts of things, from the understandable to the arbitrary can help inspire our preference for one female character over another.
It’s a shame in so many ways, as relationships between women in real life are so essential, and yet whenever they’re depicted as foils in fiction, they’ll be treated as rivals... even when they’re not portrayed as such in the text. And that’s as true now as it was when Ivanhoe was first published.
***
So, what’ s my summation here? In very generalized terms, whenever there are only two significant women in any given story, they are naturally compared and contrasted with one another. By doing so, they’re inevitably also pitted against each other, simply by dint of there being two of them. When two halves of a deliberate dichotomy exist, one is usually deemed better than the other, either in the text or by the fandom, with the favourite used as an ideal that the other falls short of.
And the Ur-Example of this, at least in my opinion, is Rowena and Rebecca of Ivanhoe. The original text itself is only implicit when it comes to any comparison between the two women, though Thackeray’s parody goes whole-hog with it and it’s not a coincidence that every single adaptation has put more emphasis on the love triangle, which in turn exacerbates fandom favouritism, not to mention its laser-guided obsession with which character is “better” or “more deserving” of the role of female protagonist and/or Ivanhoe’s true love (or in fandom parlance: “the winner.”)
I’m fascinated by how each retelling of the story deals with the two women: trying to make Rowena either more interesting or more unpleasant, playing up the attraction between Rebecca and Ivanhoe, overtly putting the two women more at odds with each other, emphasizing more of a rapport between them instead, or – as Thackeray did – simply committing complete character assassination.
As ever, I have an interest in the way women exist in stories, what they embody, and how they interact with each other when they get the chance. Before I delve into it all, I have to admit at this point that there’s no profound thesis statement to this project. In the posts that follow, I’m simply going to go through each iteration of the female characters and examine how they’re portrayed in each retelling of the story, specifically in how they’re used as a contrast to each other. Sometimes Rowena gets the narrative “higher ground,” in terms of how the story treats her, and sometimes Rebecca does.
Why? Because I find it interesting, and because I think it sheds light on how female characters are used in throughout fiction in general – especially when there’s more than one, and especially when fandom’s collective need to create binaries and then get into massive online arguments about them is taken into account. In many ways, Rebecca and Rowena embody the way female characters are characterized by writers and treated by fandom: with a deliberate sense of duality, with unfair contrasts and comparisons, with overt favouritism, with Shipping Wars and Die For Our Ship attitudes, and with a steadfast refusal to engage with them on a deeper level, despite their original literary depictions transcending many of the sexist stereotypes and clichés that you’d expect.
Stay tuned for Part II: The Novel
No comments:
Post a Comment