Ladies Getting Married* (Or Not)
Aug. 1st, 2011 07:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nymeth posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
ladybusiness
The following post was inspired by two things: first, a conversation between Jodie and Renay about romantic plotline outcomes and epilogues on the comments of my post on The Adoration of Jenna Fox; secondly, a comment I read somewhere last week (but sadly can no longer find – I seriously should bookmark these things) about how making romance central to the plot of any novel always undermines the female characters.
There’s a phrase the three of us have been repeating in our behind-the-scenes conversations, and which seems to be on its way to becoming a sort of unofficial motto for Lady Business: there’s no wrong way of being a girl. So although there are several legitimate concerns surrounding how many romantic plots play out, it seems pretty drastic and problematic to me to make a statement of the kind this unknown commenter made. Do we really want to add “fall in love/enter a relationship” to the list of things female characters are not supposed to do if they are to be considered proper feminist icons?
With this in mind, I wanted to analyse how different narratives I’ve encountered in the past dealt with “lady who didn’t want a relationship changed her mind” storylines, as I think these are filled with particularly good examples of my personal “dos” and “don’ts” of romance. I’ll start with my favourite negative example: Summer Finn, Zooey Deschannel’s character in (500) Days of Summer.
The reason why this movie let me down was not because Summer starts out saying she doesn’t want a serious commitment and ends up married. Regardless of my own misgivings about marriage as an institution, I find it extremely problematic to single out any one woman’s chosen course of action as a betrayal of feminist ideals or anything of the sort. I also have no issues with Summer’s inconsistency, as I think it’s only human to have contradictory feelings and wishes or to simply change one’s mind.
No, what bothers me about Summer is how the narrative frames her change of heart. It’s the fact that she sits on a park bench and tells Tom, her ex, that he was right all along. Her former views on romance were silly, misguided and naïve, whereas his ideas about destiny and soulmates were correct – it’s just that she hadn’t met the right person yet. Over the course of their conversation, Summer doesn’t just show she has changed – she belittles, erases and delegitimised her previous position. Ladies changing their minds = perfectly fine by me. Ladies who deviate from convention being shown to have been RONG all along and laughing at the folly of their past selves? Not so much.
My favourite antidote to (500) Days of Summer is probably Dorothy L. Sayers and her Harriet Vane/Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries (Strong Poison, Have His Carcase, Gaudy Night and Busman’s Honeymoon). It’s no spoiler to say the two main characters end up together, as most readers go in already knowing that. What surprises people (and what is an absolute joy to discover and savour) is the how of it. Yes, Harriet Vane begins be rejecting marriage and then changes her mind, but this doesn’t happen through a rejection of her previous stance. It happens through a slow and careful negotiation of each of her concerns about entering a relationship (which are further complicated due to issues of class, money and dominant views of employment for women in the 1930’s). These concerns are never shown not to have been legitimate – quite the contrary. And it’s exactly this that makes the romance so satisfying from a feminist perspective.
I can think of other single heroines who end up paired up, such as Amelia Peabody or Alexia Tarabotti from Soulless, and whose stories don’t bother me in the least. Again, nothing about how the novels frame their transition from singledom to coupledom dismisses or delegitimises their previous lifestyle, and that’s all I really ask for.
Having said that, I completely understand people being frustrated with the inevitability of heroines like Amelia Peabody or Alexia ending up in relationships, especially in a world where so few stories feature single heroines and show them to be leading happy and fulfilling lives. And here we enter representation issues territory. I think this kind of thing does matter. I think it matters a whole lot. But. At the same time, what Jodie was saying recently resonates with me more and more. Yes, we need more ladies doing and being everything. But I don’t want to hold what doesn’t exist against any single female character. The problem is in the pattern more than in any individual story (problematic issues like the ones surrounding Summer aside, of course). Let us demand more ladies, but preferably without hating on the ones that already exist. It’s not that they’re doing anything wrong, or that the solution to our current problems is to despise or erase their more traditional choices.
I’m an unapologetic sucker for a good love story, yet all the same I really don’t want romantic relationships to be held up as the end-all and be-all of every woman’s existence. But saying that they all weaken or undermine female characters? Creating even more rules that limit what women can do, be or experience? Let us not go down that road, please.
*By which I mostly mean ladies entering relationships and opting for whatever arrangements they choose. It just so happens that all the examples I’m analysing here do involve marriage.
There’s a phrase the three of us have been repeating in our behind-the-scenes conversations, and which seems to be on its way to becoming a sort of unofficial motto for Lady Business: there’s no wrong way of being a girl. So although there are several legitimate concerns surrounding how many romantic plots play out, it seems pretty drastic and problematic to me to make a statement of the kind this unknown commenter made. Do we really want to add “fall in love/enter a relationship” to the list of things female characters are not supposed to do if they are to be considered proper feminist icons?
With this in mind, I wanted to analyse how different narratives I’ve encountered in the past dealt with “lady who didn’t want a relationship changed her mind” storylines, as I think these are filled with particularly good examples of my personal “dos” and “don’ts” of romance. I’ll start with my favourite negative example: Summer Finn, Zooey Deschannel’s character in (500) Days of Summer.
The reason why this movie let me down was not because Summer starts out saying she doesn’t want a serious commitment and ends up married. Regardless of my own misgivings about marriage as an institution, I find it extremely problematic to single out any one woman’s chosen course of action as a betrayal of feminist ideals or anything of the sort. I also have no issues with Summer’s inconsistency, as I think it’s only human to have contradictory feelings and wishes or to simply change one’s mind.
No, what bothers me about Summer is how the narrative frames her change of heart. It’s the fact that she sits on a park bench and tells Tom, her ex, that he was right all along. Her former views on romance were silly, misguided and naïve, whereas his ideas about destiny and soulmates were correct – it’s just that she hadn’t met the right person yet. Over the course of their conversation, Summer doesn’t just show she has changed – she belittles, erases and delegitimised her previous position. Ladies changing their minds = perfectly fine by me. Ladies who deviate from convention being shown to have been RONG all along and laughing at the folly of their past selves? Not so much.
My favourite antidote to (500) Days of Summer is probably Dorothy L. Sayers and her Harriet Vane/Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries (Strong Poison, Have His Carcase, Gaudy Night and Busman’s Honeymoon). It’s no spoiler to say the two main characters end up together, as most readers go in already knowing that. What surprises people (and what is an absolute joy to discover and savour) is the how of it. Yes, Harriet Vane begins be rejecting marriage and then changes her mind, but this doesn’t happen through a rejection of her previous stance. It happens through a slow and careful negotiation of each of her concerns about entering a relationship (which are further complicated due to issues of class, money and dominant views of employment for women in the 1930’s). These concerns are never shown not to have been legitimate – quite the contrary. And it’s exactly this that makes the romance so satisfying from a feminist perspective.
I can think of other single heroines who end up paired up, such as Amelia Peabody or Alexia Tarabotti from Soulless, and whose stories don’t bother me in the least. Again, nothing about how the novels frame their transition from singledom to coupledom dismisses or delegitimises their previous lifestyle, and that’s all I really ask for.
Having said that, I completely understand people being frustrated with the inevitability of heroines like Amelia Peabody or Alexia ending up in relationships, especially in a world where so few stories feature single heroines and show them to be leading happy and fulfilling lives. And here we enter representation issues territory. I think this kind of thing does matter. I think it matters a whole lot. But. At the same time, what Jodie was saying recently resonates with me more and more. Yes, we need more ladies doing and being everything. But I don’t want to hold what doesn’t exist against any single female character. The problem is in the pattern more than in any individual story (problematic issues like the ones surrounding Summer aside, of course). Let us demand more ladies, but preferably without hating on the ones that already exist. It’s not that they’re doing anything wrong, or that the solution to our current problems is to despise or erase their more traditional choices.
I’m an unapologetic sucker for a good love story, yet all the same I really don’t want romantic relationships to be held up as the end-all and be-all of every woman’s existence. But saying that they all weaken or undermine female characters? Creating even more rules that limit what women can do, be or experience? Let us not go down that road, please.
*By which I mostly mean ladies entering relationships and opting for whatever arrangements they choose. It just so happens that all the examples I’m analysing here do involve marriage.
no subject
Date: 2011-08-01 10:27 pm (UTC)I guess people worry, because the entertainment money pot is shrinking, so many creators are still so attracted by the shiny metal trap of traditional narrative and it's hard to see yourself, or your friends going unrepresented in media(please I can haz more single women, please ever so much?). The married, or romanced women seem to sell so well and may seem to take all the space the single female characters might have obtained and people get angry. It's just that anger often gets directed at the wrong things. It makes much more sense (although I have been the angry person and it can be hard to see sense) to blame the societal structures that put us in these sorts of messes.
no subject
Date: 2011-08-01 10:35 pm (UTC)I really do sympathise with the anger, but it does trouble me when it's directed at the characters themselves and expressed in terms of weakness/personal failure/betrayal of any sort of ideal/etc. Like you said it can be hard to see reason, but it's good to take a step back.
Also, ALL THE STORIES NOW AND FOREVER PLEASE just might be the best skipping record refrain ever ;)
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Date: 2011-08-02 05:07 am (UTC)I am going to read Sayers now for sure. *adds to Goodreads*
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Date: 2011-08-02 09:40 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-08-03 06:39 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-08-02 03:21 pm (UTC)And this: "there’s no wrong way of being a girl" is now one of most favoritest quotes ever!!!
Debi
(I can't get my openID thing to work.)
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Date: 2011-08-03 05:44 am (UTC)I love romance a lot, but sometimes I think what can happen, I especially observe this on TV, is that a romance can end up being what a female character is all about...she becomes a love interest first and character on her own right second. (I stole this from a friend but I think it's true) And in some ways this is inevitable, I suppose, for example I was never upset on LOST that Sun and Jin didn't really have stories that were separate from each other, they were introduced as a married couple so naturally their stories went side by side.
But say on a show like Gossip Girl or Bones, I've watched female characters who were interesting and unique and different become chained to a love story and their characterization suffer as a result. It's especially frustrating for me with these two shows and with TV in general because I cared about those characters first and foremost as individual characters. Which isn't to say that at some point I didn't also enjoy the love story, but the nature of TV writing is to create drama and tension and try to drag these things out and so you get character regression and OOC moments and all kinds of other stuff, ugh I don't want to get too spoilery, but it's frustrating to me and I can see how whatever comment that is you read that can't find sort of applies in these situations.
I remember reading an Amish fiction once where the character was single and I was so happy because I'd never contemplated what that would be like for someone in a community like that. She claimed to be happy and content with her life and then she met someone and realized there was a happiness she never knew and she'd been lying to herself all those years. I was so disappointed because...well I know you sort of feel like that when you fall in love at first, that the world feels new and you feel alive in a different way, but that didn't mean she'd been lying to herself...she could have been genuinely content before one doesn't cancel out the other, IMO.
Anyway this is super rambly but you're always so good at finding the place of tension to exist in and this post made me think a lot.
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