Every genre has its fantasy of the Superman.
By 'Superman,' I don't simply mean the caped Kryptonian. I mean the archetype of the exceptional protagonist: the legendary detective, the brilliant inventor, the feared warrior, the chosen one, the person around whom the world revolves.
He’s strong! He’s handsome! He’s intelligent! He is capable of completing feats that greatly surpass the threshold of your bumbling everyman!
When it comes to his work or study he is likely the top of his field, a prodigy, adored and reviled by all for his innate extraordinary skill. Men aspire to be him and women aspire to be with him!
Ah, isn’t that the rub?
For every Bruce Wayne, Tony Stark, Clark Kent and James Bond there is a startling shortage of female power fantasies of the same ilk. And why is that? Why are there not droves of female characters created by women playing the role of the swashbuckling superwoman, the revered genius, the feared assassin, the vigilante whose very name strikes terror in the hearts of evildoers?
Why does it seem that time and time again the most aspiration a female character has is to be the coveted love interest of such a man; that we hinge her value upon the ability to allure and ensnare him or multiple other men of his calibre? Why is it that we continually find the realm of the female power fantasy besieged by a naive, inexperienced teenage girl who is manipulated, assailed and outwitted by the far older, powerful man who will eventually be thrust upon her as her Greatest Love?
Think back to as far as Meyer’s Twilight when a clumsy and guileless Bella Swan tripped her way into the pop culture consciousness and engendered a vicious backlash criticising her lack of ambitions, motivations and even personality traits outside of the immortal vampire boyfriend she would come to centre her life around. It was misogyny, many would claim, that caused people to spew vitriol at what happened to be “a harmless female power fantasy.”
For you see, it would appear that for many readers the appeal of Bella was indeed that she was an empty canvas—all the better for a female reader to write herself upon. And while the act of self-inserting is hardly a female-exclusive endeavour, I am once more struck by the fact that the practice of self-inserting in Bella’s case seems to be reserved for stepping into the role of a love interest for Edward Cullen. It is Edward, not Bella, who gets to have the tragic backstory, the tormented emotional gravitas, whose appearance is so lovingly rendered and narrated by his author. Edward is the Superman and Bella gets to play the role of his adoring cheerleader.
But you might say that the Twilight phenomenon was years ago, the topic passé, that the literary world has moved on from such empty-husk protagonists.
I would think so too, until I encountered Moning’s Darkfever, another paranormal romance wherein its female protagonist is a naive, fish-out-of-water young woman confronted for the very first time with the existence of supernatural forces. During her journey to Ireland to investigate her sister’s murder she encounters Jericho Barrons, a dark, mysterious stranger who is implied to be centuries old and always leagues ahead of everyone else in the book—our protagonist included.
Throughout the first volume of the series we are forced to watch as Jericho threatens, assaults, and at one point physically chokes Mac, whom he constantly derides as stupid and frivolous. But not once does the narrative portray him as anything but sexy and dangerously enticing. It appears that the fantasy we are meant to be indulging in is exactly that—Jericho is a “wild, dangerous lion” that Mac eventually is meant to “tame” with womanly wiles and the potential of love. Her journey, her goals, her development—all of it comes secondary to fawning and fluffing the ego of this sociopathic male character while he mocks her for doing so.
I ask again, why is this the power fantasy we are being asked to aspire towards? Why is it in Maas’ A Court of Thorns and Roses series that instead of watching Feyre gradually go from a fearful human into a powerful fae we are instead subjected to a constant tug-of-war between two centuries older, hypermasculine male characters as they try to wield sexual ownership of her?
Or why in Valente’s Deathless, that instead of seeing Marya’s time as a soldier and military commander we only get to see the sexual power-plays between her and Koschei in which she is allocated the submissive role by default, a non-entity in her own sexual relations, followed by empty platitudes about the “war” of marriage? Why is it that the power fantasy for many women seems to lie in the desire to become romantically involved with a villain rather than becoming a villain herself?
I do want to assert that the intent of this post is not to deride the above works or put forth that women are “wrong” for having such fantasies. I merely desire more variety in female protagonists, where more of them are allowed spaces for themselves outside of their romantic lives. Where they get to grapple with moral ambiguity, supernatural power, prophetic destinies and royal bloodlines without being overshadowed by a male character whose story it was never designed to be in the first place.
If this essay resonated with you, The Essence of the Equinox explores what happens when women refuse to surrender power, even when the world demands they do.
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