Picture a painter poised in front of a blank canvas. At his side, his art kit is filled with hundreds of colors, each tube of paint strikingly unique. Now, picture another painter standing beside him, her canvas just as blank. In her art kit, however, all she has are the three primary colors.
This is the difference between writing male and female protagonists.
It is no secret that there is a lot of dissatisfaction with modern portrayals of female protagonists. Whether in books, films or television, audiences are tired of quirky klutzes searching for love or machine-gun-wielding generals telling the men around them to ‘man up,’ insisting that the use of these tropes makes female characters flat and boring. As a female writer, however, I tend to disagree. Rather than believing we need fewer tropes in modern female characters, I would argue that the only way to improve is by creating more of them.
To understand why stories need more tropes for female characters, we first need to define the term itself. According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, the word trope is “a common or overused theme or device [similar to a] cliché.” Notice the first OR in that statement. A character trope is not inherently bad just because it is commonly used, similar to how the color blue is not bad just because it is used in so many paintings. Like artists with paints, writers rely on tropes not only to fill out their stories and characters but also to mix together new spins on universal themes and experiences. The problem, however, is that writers of female protagonists haven’t been given the same variety of colors to paint with.
Compared to their male counterparts, the history of female protagonists is remarkably lacking. Though lots of historical literature offers examples of fascinating female characters, such as Shakespeare’s works and “The Odyssey” (long live Calypso!), very few of these characters were ever protagonists. Even when female characters were given more of a spotlight, they were almost always seen in how they interacted with the male characters, leaving them more flat and less explored. It was only when more women began to write their own stories that things took a turn for the better.
If I were forced to pick a ‘Big Three’ when it comes to paving the way for modern female protagonists, it would be hard to beat Jane Austen, L. M. Montgomery and Louisa May Alcott. While Austen’s fictional women showed the struggle between heart and society, and Montgomery’s “Anne of Green Gables” single-handedly invented the whimsical bookworm, Alcott cemented many character dynamics that would become a staple of so many great fictional females. Not only did the four sisters in “Little Women” create four separate tropes that are still constantly drawn from (think of how many times you’ve seen a woman main character determined to value her craft over her love life), but the honest joy with which she showed sisterhood paved the way for deep and meaningful character dynamics to this day.
Yet, even with these great influences, female protagonists are plagued by having fewer examples to draw from than traditional male protagonists. Modern audiences can only see the same small set of tropes done so many times before they tire of them, and even when writers mix their few colors the best that they can, too often, female protagonists still fall flat compared to their male counterparts.
There are various ways that writers have dealt with this difficulty. After decades of simply avoiding the problem by largely not writing female protagonists, many have tried to get the best of both worlds by simply assigning male protagonist tropes to female characters, creating a category I like to call “Dudes with Curves.” Rather than being realistic representations of women, these characters are simply male stereotypes in female bodies, creating hard-hitting, no-nonsense chicks who are not only “not like other girls,” but not like girls at all.
On one hand, I understand where these writers are coming from. There is a reason why, while promoting their big-budget movies, well-known actresses constantly praise their roles for being “strong” rather than “introspective” or “unique.” Without a doubt, it is easier to steal the colors from the painting beside you when your own kit has so few to choose from. But, in doing so, are we really creating better representation for women? Or, instead, are we avoiding writing them as the beautiful, unique people they are? I believe that, as storytellers, we need to be brave enough to experiment with finding new tropes to add to our writing palette, blazing the trail so that, someday, female protagonists might finally have all the colors they deserve.
Article written by Sabina Boyer.
Photo courtesy of Jane Austen Literacy Foundation.
