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Author
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Comment
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Elizabeth
Unregistered User
(7/9/04 10:04 am)
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Women and Love in the media
Had a quick question. While not regarding fairy tales exactly, I
think it is important. I was recently rewatching Return
to Me when I realized that Minnie Driver doesn't say "I
love you" back to David Duchovney at the end of the movie.
This has been portrayed in a lot of movies and I was wondering why?
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CrCeres
Unregistered User
(7/9/04 2:13 pm)
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Well...
If you want the highly informal, rather simple theory: She has a rather passive role, ie she is being pursued, not the other way around. She does not need to prove her love. The folkloric examples--all the sleeping beauties, snow whites, beauty and the beast (in which the beast is passive) just require one of the two parties to give proof of love for the spell to be broken.
I would suggest taking the above explanation with lots of salt.
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Elizabeth
Unregistered User
(7/19/04 11:39 am)
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Wasn't quite specific enough
Okay, I guess I wasn't quite specific enough. What I meant to ask was why are women portrayed in this way? What is it about the feminine psyche that is satisfied by literature and movies that are about men proving their love rather than the other way around? Its not so much the traditional gender roles in dating that I'm curious about. There are a lot of stories about individuals proving their love--male and female. and I'm not worried about stories where no one says "I love you" because love is often impled. But there are so many stories to be read or watched where boy meets girl. Boy and girl realize ungdying love. Boy over comes obstavcle. Boy says I love you. There is no 'girl says I love you back.'
Elizabeth
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CrCeres
Unregistered User
(7/21/04 4:18 pm)
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Girl vs. Boy
Sadly, I know nothing of psychology, so I still can't give a nice professional answer. I don't know why there is so much literature and other media that focuses on the guy proving his love. Though if the main audience is women...
I also don't know why stories like 'The Master Maid' haven't crossed the hurdle between classic folklore and pop culture.
In the Master Maid, and many stories like it, the Maid gets her boyfriend out of heaps of trouble, only to be forgotten when he meets another woman. So she follows him to the wedding and either tells the story or uses magic to remind him that she exists and still loves him.
Okay, so stories can be psychoanalyzed for hours, and the great mysteries of human behavior will still be pretty mysterious. Good luck.
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Kel
(7/31/04 10:40 pm)
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Treated like a princess?
Maybe some people who write like that want to be worshipped and so one of the characters in their writing is treated the way the writer fantasizes about and does not need to say "I love you, too" (Or even riskier "I love you" first.)
I think I may have read a story like that CrCeres- was that the one where he was under some spell and turned into a pig? I remember a story like that which starts out like a version of Cinderella, and the girl somehow tricks a witch into killing her own children.
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Amal
Registered User
(7/31/04 11:25 pm)
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post-Victorian culture?
I get the impression that our society's still under the influence of hundreds of years of precedent, where women are the ones with something to lose (virginity/honour) in the pursuit of what they want (marriage/security). So in that case, the onus is on men to prove that they'll not be "deceivers" and tie that knot with a ring that amounts to a tenth of their yearly income before the relationship can proceed further. Or something. I haven't seen either of the movies mentioned, but it is a trend I notice in pop culture. Women have to be "won," still.
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