Damsel in distress
The damsel in distress is a
Critics have linked the helplessness of these women to societal views that women as a group need to be taken care of by men and treated nicely.[1] Throughout the history of the trope, the role of the woman as the victim in need of a male savior has remained constant, but her attackers have changed to suit the tastes and collective fears of the period: "monsters, mad scientists, Nazis, hippies, bikers, aliens..."[2]
Etymology
The word "damsel" derives from the French demoiselle, meaning "young lady", and the term "damsel in distress" in turn is a translation of the French demoiselle en détresse. It is an archaic term not used in modern English except for effect or in expressions such as this. It can be traced back to the knight-errant of Medieval songs and tales, who regarded protection of women as an essential part of the chivalric code, which includes a notion of honour and nobility.[3] The English term "damsel in distress" itself first seems to have appeared in Richard Ames' 1692 poem "Sylvia’s Complaint of Her Sexes Unhappiness."[4]
History
Ancient history
The damsel in distress theme featured in the stories of the
Post-classical history
European fairy tales frequently feature damsels in distress. Evil witches trapped Rapunzel in a tower, cursed Snow White to die in Snow White, and put the princess into a magical sleep in Sleeping Beauty. In all of these, a valorous prince comes to the maiden's aid, saves her, and marries her (though Rapunzel is not directly saved by the prince, but instead saves him from blindness after her exile)[clarification needed].[6]
The damsel in distress was an archetypal character of medieval romances, where typically she was rescued from imprisonment in a tower of a castle by a knight-errant. Geoffrey Chaucer's The Clerk's Tale of the repeated trials and bizarre torments of patient Griselda was drawn from Petrarch. The Emprise de l'Escu vert à la Dame Blanche (founded 1399) was a chivalric order with the express purpose of protecting oppressed ladies.[7]
The theme also entered the official hagiography of the Catholic Church – most famously in the story of Saint George who saved a princess from being devoured by a dragon. A late addition to the official account of this Saint's life, not attested in the several first centuries when he was venerated, it is nowadays the main act for which Saint George is remembered.
Obscure outside Norway is Hallvard Vebjørnsson, the Patron Saint of Oslo, recognised as a martyr after being killed while valiantly trying to defend a woman – most likely a slave – from three men accusing her of theft.
Modern history
17th century
In the 17th century English
18th century
The damsel in distress makes her debut in the modern novel as the title character of Samuel Richardson's Clarissa (1748), where she is menaced by the wicked seducer Lovelace. The phrase "damsel in distress" is found in Richardson's The History of Sir Charles Grandison (1753):[9]
And he is sometimes a mighty Prince ... and I am a damsel in distress
Reprising her medieval role, the damsel in distress is a staple character of
The perils faced by this Gothic heroine were taken to an extreme by the
One exploration of the theme of the persecuted maiden is the fate of Gretchen in
"The great Goethe has given us a distinct and visible description of this denial of the will, brought about by great misfortune and by the despair of all deliverance, in his immortal masterpiece Faust, in the story of the sufferings of Gretchen. I know of no other description in poetry. It is a perfect specimen of the second path, which leads to the denial of the will not, like the first, through the mere knowledge of the suffering of the whole world which one acquires voluntarily, but through the excessive pain felt in one's own person. It is true that many tragedies bring their violently willing heroes ultimately to this point of complete resignation, and then the will-to-live and its phenomenon usually end at the same time. But no description known to me brings to us the essential point of that conversion so distinctly and so free from everything extraneous as the one mentioned in Faust" (The World as Will and Representation, Vol. I, §68)
19th century
The misadventures of the damsel in distress of the Gothic novel continued in a somewhat caricatured form in Victorian melodrama. According to Michael Booth in his classic study English Melodrama, the Victorian stage melodrama featured a limited number of stock characters: the hero, the villain, the heroine, an old man, an old woman, a comic man and a comic woman engaged in a sensational plot featuring themes of love and murder. Often the good but not very clever hero is duped by a scheming villain, who has eyes on the damsel in distress until fate intervenes to ensure the triumph of good over evil.[10]
Such melodrama influenced the fledgling cinema industry and led to damsels in distress being the subject of many early silent films, especially those that were made as multi-episode serials. Early examples include The Adventures of Kathlyn in 1913 and The Hazards of Helen, which ran from 1914 to 1917. The silent film heroines frequently faced new perils provided by the Industrial Revolution and catering to the new medium's need for visual spectacle. Here we find the heroine tied to a railway track, burning buildings, and explosions. Sawmills were another stereotypical danger of the Industrial age, as recorded in a popular song from a later era:
... A bad gunslinger called Salty Sam was chasin' poor Sweet Sue
He trapped her in the old sawmill and said with an evil laugh,
If you don't give me the deed to your ranch
I'll saw you all in half!
And then he grabbed her (and then)
He tied her up (and then)
He turned on the bandsaw (and then, and then...!) ...
20th century
During the
A form of entertainment in which the damsel-in-distress emerged as a stereotype at this time was
The damsel-in-distress continued as a mainstay of the comics, film, and television industries throughout the 20th century. Imperiled heroines in need of rescue were a frequent occurrence in black-and-white
The James Bond novels of Ian Fleming, originally published in the 1950s and 1960s, would sometimes feature the "Bond girl" tied up by a villain and needing to be rescued by Bond, and this theme continued into a number of the films, produced from the early 1960s onward, including Dr. No, The Spy Who Loved Me, Octopussy and Spectre, all of which show Bond rescuing the female lead, who has been tied up. In some films, Bond and a female character are tied up together (for example, in Live and Let Die and Moonraker). In other films, Bond is shown tied up and in peril (examples include Goldfinger, You Only Live Twice, The World Is Not Enough, Casino Royale and Skyfall) and in some cases is rescued by the female lead (such as in Licence to Kill and Spectre).
Frequently cited examples of a damsel in distress in comics include Lois Lane, who was eternally getting into trouble and needing to be rescued by Superman, and Olive Oyl, who was in a near-constant state of kidnap, requiring her to be saved by Popeye.
Coined by
Critical and theoretical responses
Damsels in distress have been cited as an example of differential treatment of genders in literature, film, and works of art. Feminist criticism of art, film, and literature has often examined gender-oriented characterisation and plot, including the common "damsel in distress" trope, as perpetrating regressive and patronizing myths about women.[16][17] Many modern writers and directors, such as Anita Sarkeesian, Angela Carter and Jane Yolen, have revisited classic fairy tales and "damsel in distress" stories or collected and anthologised stories and folk tales that break[clarification needed] the "damsel in distress" pattern.[18]
Empowered damsel
Films featuring an empowered damsel date to the early days of
Empowered damsels were a feature of the serials made in the 1930s and 1940s by studios such as Republic Pictures. The "cliffhanger" scenes at the end of episodes provide many examples of female heroines bound and helpless and facing fiendish death traps. But those heroines, played by actresses such as Linda Stirling and Kay Aldridge, were often strong, assertive women who ultimately played an active part in vanquishing the villains.[citation needed]
C. L. Moore's short story "Shambleau" (1933) – generally acknowledged as epoch-making in the history of science fiction – begins in what seems a classical damsel in distress situation: the protagonist, space adventurer Northwest Smith, sees a "sweetly-made girl" pursued by a lynch mob intent on killing her and intervenes to save her, but finds her not a girl nor a human being at all, but a disguised alien creature, predatory and highly dangerous. Soon, Smith himself needs rescuing and barely escapes with his life.
These themes have received successive updates in modern-era characters, ranging from 'spy girls' of the 1960s to current film and television heroines. In her book The Devil with James Bond (1967) Ann Boyd compared
The female spy
Reflecting these changes, Daphne Blake of the Scooby-Doo cartoon series (who throughout the series is captured dozens of times, falls through trap doors, etc.) is portrayed in the Scooby-Doo film as a wisecracking feminist heroine (quote: "I've had it with this damsel in distress thing!"). The film Sherlock Holmes (2009) includes a classical damsel in distress episode, where Irene Adler (played by Rachel McAdams) is helplessly bound to a conveyor belt in an industrial slaughterhouse, and is saved from being sawn in half by a chainsaw; yet in other episodes of the same film Adler is strong and assertive – for example, overcoming with contemptuous ease two thugs who sought to rob her (and robbing them instead). In the film's climax, it is Adler who saves the day, dismantling at the last moment a device set to poison the entire membership of Parliament.
In the final scene of the Walt Disney Pictures film Enchanted (2007) the traditional roles are reversed when male protagonist Robert Philip (Patrick Dempsey) is captured by Queen Narissa (Susan Sarandon) in her dragon form. In a King Kong-like fashion, she carries him to the top of a New York skyscraper, until Robert's beloved Giselle climbs it, sword in hand, to save him.
A similar role reversal is evident in Stieg Larsson's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, in whose climactic scene the male protagonist is captured by a serial killer, locked in an underground torture room, chained, stripped naked, and humiliated when his female partner enters to save him and destroy the villain. Still another example is Foxglove Summer, part of Ben Aaronovitch's Rivers of London series - where the protagonist Peter Grant is bound and taken captive by the Queen of the Faeries, and it is Grant's girlfriend who comes to rescue him, riding a Steel Horse.
Another role reversal is in Titanic (1997), written and directed by James Cameron. After Jack Dawson is handcuffed to a pipe in the master-at-arms' office to drown, Rose DeWitt Bukater leaves her family to rescue him and they head back to the upper deck.
In Robert J. Harris' WWII spy thriller The Thirty-One Kings (2017), the chivalrous protagonist Richard Hannay takes time off from his vital intelligence mission to help a beautiful young woman, harassed on a Paris street by two drunken men. She laughingly thanks him though saying she could have dealt with the men by herself. Hannay has no suspicion that she is herself the dangerous Nazi agent he had been sent to apprehend, and that she recognized him and knows his mission. Unsuspectingly he drinks the glass of brandy she offers him - whereupon he loses consciousness and wakes up securely bound. Gloating and jeering, the girl mocks Hannay for his sense of chivalry proving to be his undoing.[24] Destined to an ignominious watery death, it is the would be rescuer who is in very big distress; fortunately, his friends show up in the nick of time to save him from the clutches of the femme fatale.
Conversely, Jo Nesbø revives a classical Damsel in distress trope in his 2007 crime novel The Snowman. Nesbø's protagonist Harry Hole is faced with his beloved Rakel having been bound and forced to sit on a fast-melting seat of ice; once it has melted she would fall into an infernal device and be torn to pieces. Harry Hole manages to save her, though at the price of suffering some mutilation himself.
In video games
In computer and video games, female characters are often cast in the role of the damsel in distress, with their rescue being the
In the
Princess Peach throughout much of the Mario franchise is also a paradigmatic example. She is repeatedly kidnapped across the Super Mario series, beginning with her debut in Super Mario Bros. in 1985. In most games in the series she is kidnapped and trapped in a castle by the villain Bowser and his minions in order for Mario to rescue her.[32] Peach has been described as the "quintessential damsel in distress" and her repeated abductions as a running joke and pop culture reference by Time.[33][34]
In 1989, another Nintendo character, Princess Daisy, was cast in the role of damsel in distress in Super Mario Land.[37] In Prince of Persia, an imprisoned princess is the game's objective, necessitating the player character to rescue her.[38]
See also
- Courtly love
- Feminist film theory
- Feminist literary criticism
- Feminist science fiction
- Final girl
- Knight-errant
- Literary trope
- Missing white woman syndrome
- Portrayal of women in comics
- Portrayal of women in video games
- Predicament escape
- Princess and dragon
- Scream queen
- Stock character
- Strong female character
- Women in refrigerators
References
- ^ a b Sarkeesian, Anita (March 7, 2013). "Damsel in Distress (Part 1) Tropes vs Women". Feminist Frequency. Archived from the original on October 30, 2016. Retrieved August 9, 2021.
- ^ Lowbrow, Yeoman (December 28, 2014). "When Natives Attack! White Damsels and Jungle Savages in Pulp Fiction". Flashbak. Alum Media. Archived from the original on January 2, 2015. Retrieved August 9, 2021.
- ^ Johan Huizinga remarks in his book The Waning of the Middle Ages, "the source of the chivalrous idea, is pride aspiring to beauty, and formalised pride gives rise to a conception of honour, which is the pole of noble life". Huizinga, The Waning of the Middle Ages (1919) 1924:58.
- ^ Ames, Richard (1692). Sylvia's Complaint of Her Sexes Unhappiness : a Poem, Being the Second Part of Sylvia's Revenge, Or, a Satyr Against Man. London: Richard Baldwin. p. 12.
- ^ Chisholm 1911, p. 975.
- ^ "Unga Fakta - Grekisk mytologi". www.ungafakta.se. Retrieved 2022-05-10.
- ^ "Chivalry or The Chivalric Code". webpages.uidaho.edu. Retrieved 2022-05-10.
- ^ "Spanish Lady".
- .
- ^ Booth, Michael (1965). English Melodrama. Herbert Jenkins.
- ISBN 0-434-01325-0.
- ^ Erish, Andrew (8 January 2006). "Illegitimate dad of 'Kong'; One of the Depression's highest-grossing films was an outrageous fabrication, a scandalous and suggestive gorilla epic that set box office records across the country". Los Angeles Times. Archived from the original on 14 March 2013. Retrieved 5 July 2017.
- ^ Jones, Ralph. "How Shrinking perpetuates Hollywood's most sexist cliché". bbc.com. BBC. Retrieved 31 March 2023.
- ^ Condon, Michael (October 2002). "The Fanzig Challenge" Archived 2011-07-10 at the Wayback Machine. Fanzing. Retrieved January 11, 2006.
- ^ a b Prowse-Gany, Brian (August 12, 2015). "Rise of the Female Superhero". Yahoo! News.
- ^ "Damsel in Distress (Part 2) Tropes vs Women". 28 May 2013.
- ^ See, e.g., Alison Lurie, "Fairy Tale Liberation", The New York Review of Books, v. 15, n. 11 (Dec. 17, 1970) (germinal work in the field); Donald Haase, "Feminist Fairy-Tale Scholarship: A Critical Survey and Bibliography", Marvels & Tales: Journal of Fairy-Tale Studies v.14, n.1 (2000).
- ^ See Jane Yolen, "This Book Is For You", Marvels & Tales, v. 14, n. 1 (2000) (essay); Yolen, Not One Damsel in Distress: World folktales for Strong Girls (anthology); Jack Zipes, Don't Bet on the Prince: Contemporary Fairy Tales in North America and England, Routledge: New York, 1986 (anthology).
- ISBN 0-485-30076-1.
- ^ "Visitor Reviews: From Venus With Love". The Avengers Forever. Retrieved 2007-05-11.
- ^ Jowett, Lorna (2005). Sex and The Slayer: A Gender Studies Primer for the Buffy Fan. Wesleyan University Press.
- ^ Graham, Paula (2002). "Buffy Wars: The Next Generation". Rhizomes: Cultural Studies in Emerging Knowledge (4, Spring). Bowling Green State University.
- ^ Gough, Kerry (August 2004). "Active Heroines Study Day - John Moores University, Liverpool (in partnership with The Association for Research in Popular Fiction)". Scope: An Online Journal of Film and Television Studies. Institute of Film & Television Studies, University of Nottingham.
- Polygon Books, London 2017, p. 147.
- Gamasutra. Retrieved 8 October 2013.
- ^ Stephen Totilo (2013-06-20). "Shigeru Miyamoto and the Damsel In Distress". Kotaku. Retrieved 8 October 2013.
- ^ "In Super Mario Odyssey Gaming's Original Damsel In Distress Might Finally Get Her Due". Kotaku. 2017-06-17. Retrieved 2024-02-05.
- ^ "Amtix Magazine Issue 17". March 1987. Retrieved 2014-06-13.
- ^ "Computer Gamer - Issue 18 (1986-09) (Argus Press) (UK)". September 1986. Retrieved 2014-06-13.
- ^ "Dragon's Lair Review". GameSpot. Retrieved 2024-02-14.
- ^ "GameSpy: Dragon's Lair 3D: Return to the Lair - Page 1". Xbox.gamespy.com. Retrieved 2014-06-13.
- ^ "Thank You Mario, But Our Princess Is In Another Game, Getting Kidnapped Again". Kotaku. 2009-11-13. Retrieved 2024-02-13.
- ^ "The 15 Most Influential Video Game Characters of All Time". TIME. 2017-06-30. Retrieved 2024-02-13.
- ISSN 0040-781X. Retrieved 2024-02-13.
- ISBN 978-0-313-37612-2.
- ^ Hilliard, Kyle. "Everything We Know About Princess Zelda In Breath Of The Wild". Game Informer. Retrieved 2024-02-14.
- ^ "Page 2 | The History of Mario". Eurogamer.net. 2007-11-09. Retrieved 2024-02-13.
- ^ "Prince of Persia Classic Review". GameSpot. Retrieved 2024-02-13.
Bibliography
- Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). . Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.
- Mario Praz (1930) The Romantic Agony Chapter 3: 'The Shadow of the Divine Marquis'
- Robert K. Klepper, Silent Films, 1877-1996, A Critical Guide to 646 Movies, pub. ISBN 0-7864-2164-9