Meta: Rebecca and Rowena; Part II: The Texts

Part I: Introduction

In my last post on the subject of Ivanhoe, I wrote about how female characters (especially if there’s only two in any given project) are inevitably used as narrative foils to one another, whether it’s in the role of love interest, the embodiment of womanhood, or just in general. Sometimes it’s deliberately done by the writer, though often the audience does the comparative work on their own. After all, what’s even the point of having more than one female character if we can’t unfavourably contrast one with the other?

And the binaries these women inhabit are very often based on the fact they’re women. We’ve got the Madonna and the Whore, the Good Girl and the Bad Girl, the Dark and Light Feminine, Betty and Veronica, the Tomboy and the Girly Girl – I could go on.

For example, MGM’s latest take on Robin Hood has a pretty clear-cut Madonna/Whore dynamic (albeit with a degree of nuance) at work with Marian and original character Priscilla. Marian is virginal and sweet-natured, while Priscilla is a sexually active manipulator. The show also introduces a third type: Ralph, a girl living rough in the forest in the guise of a boy, who is obviously much more tomboyish than either Marian or Priscilla, and who makes up the third point of a love triangle with Robin. That each woman exists as a direct contrast to the other two is very deliberate.

But now I want to take a closer look at Rowena and Rebecca as they exist within Walter Scott’s novel, and then William Makepeace Thackery’s parody Rebecca and Rowena. The point that fascinates me is that they are very seldom compared to each other in Scott’s original text, but Thackery’s treatment of each character is a quintessential case of how fandom (or audiences in general) is predisposed to judge women by pitting them against one another.

And in a way it’s a shame, as Scott’s text invites no such treatment of them.

Woman of the Month: Max Mayfield

Maxine “Max” Mayfield from Stranger Things

It was back in 2019 that I included Eleven on my annual retrospective of notable female characters that I’d watched across the year… which means I can stretch my rule of not having more than one girl/woman featured from a single story, since I haven’t spotlighted any other characters from Stranger Things in one of these monthly posts.

The Duffer Brothers were generally quite good with their female characters (not groundbreaking, but certainly not terrible either) though it interested me that Max ticks quite a few clichéd “tomboy” boxes when she’s first introduced, as well as getting pushed straight into a love triangle. They not only play around a little with the Seamus is a Girl trope considering she first comes to the boys’ attention as “Mad Max” on the scoreboards at the arcade, but have her ride a skateboard around town and be rather abrasive in the face of Lucas and Dustin’s interest in her. She’s a tomboy, but also a tough girl.

Thankfully the love triangle stuff passes pretty quickly, as her most significant relationships early on are with her stepbrother Billy (who is abusive towards her), Mike (who is antagonistic toward her simply because he perceives her as a replacement to Eleven) and eventually Eleven (who also gives her the cold shoulder at their introduction).

To be honest, I never had a problem with Eleven initially rebuffing Max’s overtures of friendship, as she had just spent a year watching turgid soap operas on cable television before seeing Mike engage in low-key flirting with Max after a year-long absence. I knew a friendship between the girls was forthcoming, and they get their own subplot in season three, in which they investigate the increasingly erratic behaviour of Billy and his possible connection to the Mind Flayer. Plus, their shopping montage to Madonna’s “Material Girl” is a delight.

By this point Max isn’t just there to be Affirmative Action Girl or to supplement the boys’ storylines, though it isn’t until season four that her story really starts to kick off. Her grief and depression over the death of her stepbrother makes her an emotionally vulnerable target to Vecna, who needs four victims to kill to open the gates to the Upside Down. Realizing what’s happening to her gives Max an edge, and I’d go so far to say the “Running Up That Hill” scene is probably the best sequence of the entire show. Still, that season ends on a harrowing note: Max ends up in a coma from which she might never awake.

Well, of course she does, and though I’m disappointed that more wasn’t made of her friendship with El at the time, her reunion with Lucas ended up being one of the big successes of the entire show. The scene in which she finally wakes up in his arms easily made it into my list of best film/television scenes of 2025.

I firmly believe that the Duffers did not have all five seasons of this show fully mapped out in advance – in fact we know this from various interviews and behind-the-scenes footage. But in that respect I find Max’s trajectory as a character rather fascinating. Her initial introduction as “another girl” designed to shake up the boys’ dynamic wasn’t hugely promising, and yet her bad girl persona is explained and explored in several interesting ways, and she becomes an absolute lynchpin of the narrative from season three onwards. Say what you will about the rest, but her increased presence in the plot feels very organic and elegant. Heck, I’d go so far as to say that she and Holly are more essential in defeating Vecna than any of the boys!

From a Sixth Ranger to an intrinsic member of the party with her own original moniker of “Zoomer,” Sadie Sink is now all set to become the Breakout Star of the franchise, especially since she’s next appearing in an MCU film. But I’m sure she’ll remember Max fondly, as this tough little redhead ended up being one of the understated highlights of Stranger Things.