Woman of the Month: Maid Marian

Maid Marian from countless Robin Hood films, shows, books and other assorted stories

As it happens, this is my one-hundredth Women of the Month entry, so even though I try to choose someone particularly iconic for the end of the year anyway, this post deserved to feature a character even more special than usual. Thankfully, I’ve had someone in mind for a while.

This is going to be a long one, so you can read on under the cut...

For whatever reason, the past couple of years unexpectedly became the Years of Robin Hood, in which I tracked down everything from 1912’s silent Robin Hood to 2022’s The Siege of Robin Hood and everything in between. And with Robin inevitably comes his eternal partner: Maid Marian.

Marian, occasionally Marion, and (in a couple of cases) Marianne or Matilda, is one of English folklore’s earliest and most beloved heroines. What makes her so exceptional is that she’s not a goddess or a queen or a magical being, but just a normal girl who devotes her life to a noble cause – and falls in love along the way.

Is it fair to say she exemplifies the Western ideal of womanhood? A quintessential English Rose and Spirited Young Lady? That she embodies not only beauty and kindness but also bravery and pluck? That she’s one of the first and best examples of a female character who isn’t just a love interest to a male lead? Is there anyone out there who hasn’t heard of her?

In writing up this post, I wracked my brains trying to think of a comparable female character to Marian: one that’s a. been around for as long as she has, b. who is just as deeply embedded in folklore, pop-culture, and the collective consciousness, c. someone who’s one-half of a famous romantic couple, and d. can justifiably be described as an early feminist icon by being a proactive heroine in her own right – and I honestly couldn’t come up with anyone.

Guinevere ticks a few of the boxes (a, b and c) as does Lois Lane (b, c and d) but Marian is very much in a league of her own. There is simply no one else like her.

Yet her beginnings are lost to the mists of time, and her induction into the body of stories concerning Robin Hood came relatively late. She isn’t mentioned in any of the earliest ballads, and it’s widely believed she was deliberately inserted by the Church to ensure the Merry Men weren’t thought to be getting a little too “merry” with each other.

Her origins may well be found in pagan tradition, for some believe her genesis is the May Day festivities as the archetypal Queen of the May, associated with fertility, summer, youth, womanhood and the turn of the season. The May Queen is often accompanied by the Green Man or Jack of the Green, who is himself associated with the likes of Puck and Robin Goodfellow. Hmm, who does that remind you of?

As the Church had endless in trouble stamping out popular rituals such as the maypole, they ended up incorporating the ancient traditions into their own holidays, such as May devotions to the Virgin Mary, in which statues of the Mother of God were – like the May Queen – garlanded with flowers. It’s very tempting to draw a correlation between the etymology of Marian’s name and that of Mary herself – all the more so when you take into consideration the former’s “maid” appellation.

The association with Mother Mary is there (by definition, maid = virgin, not to mention the fact that religious practices directed at Mary are known as Marian devotions) but of course, that alliterative precursor to Marian's name also throws up connotations to the pagan concept of the Maiden, Mother and Crone trifecta.

In his book The Seasons, Nick Groom hypothesizes another possible association between our Marian and a Biblical Mary, pointing out that: "Mary Magdalene is also the saint of the garden from her meeting with Christ there after He rises from the tomb, and further affinity with nature is shown in her association with healing herbs, and following her retreat into the wild, in depictions of her as a woman of the wilderness. In English folklore this connects Mary with Maid Marian of the greensward, and in one early outlaw ballad, A Gest of Robyn Hode, Robin visits a chapel consecrated to Mary Magdalene in Barnstable, South Yorkshire."

This melding of pagan and Christian tradition is perhaps one of the most fascinating things about Marian, and is occasionally given a nod in the adaptations over the years. Though Robin and Marian (1976) and Robin of Sherwood (1984 – 1986) each portray Marian joining a convent and becoming a nun, the 1922 film had her crowned the Queen of Love and Beauty during a jousting tournament, while the 1991 film leaned heavily into pagan symbolism when it came to Uma Thurman’s take on the character, as did the 1991 computer game, Conquests of the Longbow, in which she’s depicted as a forest priestess.

But one of Marian’s earliest appearances in ink and on paper was circa 1283, in Adam de la Halle’s Le Jeu de Robin et Marion, a dramatization of an old French song. In it, a shepherdess called Marion resists a knight’s advances in favour of her lover Robin – even though there’s no proven link between this text and the body of stories about outlaws living it up in the greenwood, it’s difficult to pass off those specific names as merely coincidental.

Another possible source of Marian is historical public record. According to antiquarian Joseph Hunter there is documentation (circa 1322) of a woman called Matilda who married a yeoman called “Robyn Hode” in Wakefield, Yorkshire. She changed her name to Marian when she joined him in exile in Barnsdale Forest after the Battle of Boroughbridge during the reign of King Edward II.

These details (among other poems and ballads) may have partly provided the inspiration for playwright Anthony Munday when he wrote The Downfall and The Death of Robert Earl of Huntington in 1598, in which Robert Fitzooth, the Earl of Huntington, and Matilda, the daughter of Robert Fitzwalter, run away together after an attempted assassination of King John.

It wasn’t until the sixteenth century that Marian (and Robin too, for that matter) began to emerge from the shadows of time to assume a solidified role and personality in the narratives told of them. By this point, it was a rare retelling that did not portray her as a highborn lady; the Church having consolidated its influence over the narrative and characterizing her as both a noblewoman and a distinctly non-pagan figure of virtue.

Some recent adaptations present her as a cousin to King Richard (Kevin Costner’s Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves) or ward to Queen Eleanor (Disney’s The Story of Robin Hood and His Merrie Men), and occasionally she’s an Uptown Girl to a lower-class Robin – though the very earliest stories featuring both of them portray the pair as simple rustics. Yet Marian was not always Robin’s only love – the earliest ballads have him paired with a shepherdess called Clorinda.

One can’t help but feel that Marian emerged as the victor to Robin’s love for purely aesthetic reasons – tell me, which of the two names is more pleasing to the ear? The alliterative appeal no doubt played its part as well, for though she’s often referred to as Lady Marian in various adaptations, it’s hard to resist the double-M resonance of her title and name.

Even as part of a centuries-old love story, Marian is unique. Amidst all the famous lovers of myth and legend, most are marked by tragedy: Anthony and Cleopatra, Guinevere and Lancelot, Romeo and Juliet, Orpheus and Eurydice. Yet unlike those others, Robin and Marian are usually afforded a happy ending. Yes, certain stories recount Robin’s death and Marian’s retirement to a nunnery, but before that they share many happy years together, and most filmic adaptations chose to end with their wedding.

But the most striking thing about them is that they’re a partnership of equals, each carrying a little bit of the other with them. Robin can integrate himself in courtly life, just as Marian often eschews convention and goes to join him in the greenwood. Both are fighters, both can employ a silver tongue and a quick wit to get what they want, and both are passionate about matters of justice and honour. These days, they are inextricable from one another, with their romance taking up the greater part of any story that’s told of them.

Many of the most modern takes on the character chose to imbue Marian with fighting skills, depicting her as a fierce warrior in her own right; perhaps best typified by Judi Trott in 1984, Anna Galvin in 1997 and Lucy Griffiths in 2006. They’re sterling examples of the typical Action Girl trope that became so prevalent in the nineties, though the Child Ballads (gathered in the late nineteenth century but obviously circulated much, much earlier) describe Marian as “a bonny fine maid of a noble degree” who disguises herself as a page to find Robin in the forest, successfully fighting him to a standstill before they finally recognize each other.

She also popped up frequently in Victorian penny dreadfuls, characterized (surprisingly enough) as a skilled archer and natural leader in Robin’s absence. As one puts it, she contains: “gentleness and firmness, feminine grace and masculine intrepidity.’

I always appreciate takes on Marian that demonstrate her worth and intelligence without the need for her to prove an aptitude for swordplay, but that she’s been holding her own in battle for as far back as the eleventh century is certainly an argument-stopper for the usual hordes of nit-picking whiners who throw fits when female characters so much as pick up a weapon in their own defense. Sorry guys, but if you don’t like it, you’ll have to jump in the nearest time machine and go take it up with the ancient bards.

Because Marian may almost always be a noblewoman, but she’s also very likely to be a tomboy as well. With that in mind, her reach throughout folklore, literature and modern depictions of heroines probably can’t be quantified. Whenever there’s a rebellious young woman, especially a princess who chafes against societal restrictions or pushes back against gender norms, I see Marian cheering her on from the shadows.

Merida in Brave, Ariel in The Little Mermaid, Elionwy in The Chronicles of Prydain, Amy in The Ordinary Princess, Calla in The Gummi Bears, Cimorene in The Enchanted Forest Chronicles, Rosella from the King’s Quest series, Eleanor from Covington Cross, even Princess Leia herself – if she’s headstrong and brash then a debt is owed to Maid Marian.

She’s been played by hundreds of actresses across the years, many of them exceptionally good at their craft: Olivia de Havilland, Cate Blanchett, Uma Thurman, Audrey Hepburn, and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio to name the most famous. They all bring something different to the role, but also the character’s most essential quality: that indominable spirit.

She pops up for cameo roles in stories that otherwise have nothing to do with Robin Hood: Doctor Who, Blackadder, Star Trek, Once Upon a Time, T.H. White’s The Sword in the Stone, and that’s not even touching the wealth of novels and literature that’ve been written about her, from Michael Morpugo’s Robin of Sherwood, in which she’s an outcast albino, to Michael Spradlin’s The Youngest Templar trilogy, in which she’s a Saracen assassin called Maryam.

There’s so much more out there I haven’t seen, or even heard of.

Her portrayals don’t always pan out well: films and shows often make her a Distressed Damsel or a Faux Action Girl, and in one infamous case she gets Stuffed in the Fridge to facilitate some half-hearted manpain.

But the idea of Marian transcends any clumsy depiction of her – she’s the spirit of her times and of resistance against oppression, any retelling’s moral compass and emotional centre, an ideal of feminine strength who can shoot and fight just as well as hold court and distribute alms. If you break down the whole point of a Robin Hood story, you’ll discover that what he’s fighting for is a life with Marian, and a world in which she can live in freedom and peace.

Which is why her death on the BBC show was (and still is) so hateful to me. Marian is more than a murder victim, killed off for cheap shock value. A symbol and an archetype, dating back centuries, of love and fertility and goodness and bravery: reduced to having a sword shoved through her womb in an overtly sexualized death scene, left to die slowly and painfully on the desert floor, largely in service to her killer’s arc that didn’t amount to much anyway... it’s obscene. There are no words to express how much it revolts me. Not to get hyperbolic, but to me, it’s akin to blasphemy.

From pagan celebrations to Marian devotions, Elizabethan plays to ancient ballads, real-life figures to modern Hollywood films, the figure of Maid Marian as we recognize her today has been shaped by the trickle-down of various sources that have each added something to her character and our understanding of her. Her legacy has strengthened over the centuries, and will go on for many generations more. I imagine her as gradually emerging from the shadowy forest of the past, having taken bits of all those stories to don herself with – and it’s only a matter of time before we get to see what she does next.