I'm a Sociology, Media and English student which means analysing stereotypes and representation is like puppies and chocolate to me. On Christmas morning.And I recently had a thought (shocking, I know). In terms of breaking gender stereotypes, society is improving. Heroines are just as common as heroes and therefore women are seen less as damsels in distress which is great but.... what about villains? Men are also stereotyped and when you think of a big baddie in fiction... we often picture men. And this then labels men as always being the cruel and evil ones... and I think this should change just as much as men always being the hero. Because if men aren't always the villain... it will naturally show that women aren't always the damsel too. And, it will also show that men don't have to always be the cruel ones.... they can express their feelings just as much as women.
I decided to do a little visual presentation of just how serious this gender divide is. I mainly looked at fantasy books because in contemporaries the 'villain' tends to be more abstract like relationships, family and anxiety.
Also, these books are just from my bookshelf and off the top of my head.... there are plenty more examples.
Books with a male main villain/antagonist
Don't Look Back - The Dead List - The Covenant series - The Return series - Soul Screamers series - Shatter Me series - The Infernal Devices trilogy - The Mortal instruments series - Wolf by Wolf duology - Red Queen series - ACOTAR trilogy - Throne of Glass series- Harry Potter series - Vicious - Red Rising - Half Bad trilogy - The Hunger Games trilogy - The Mortal Instruments series - Angel series - Twilight series - The Vampire Diaries series - The Book Thief - Fallen series - The Selection series - The Lovely Bones - White is the Coldest Colour - Carry On - Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children - Faking Normal - The 5th Wave - Heist Society - Abandon trilogy - Percy Jackson series - The Darkest Minds trilogy - The Alchemy of Forever - Frankenstein - Watch You Die - The Winner's trilogy - Omega series - Shadow of a Girl - Weregirl - Iniquity - Flawed duology - Cruel Beauty - Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them -
Books with a female villain/antagonist
The Lunar Chronicles - Heartless - Gone Girl - The Narnia Chronicles - Gallagher Academy series - Beastly - Dorothy Must Die - After Anna - The Shadow Queen -
You don't even need to read each individual book to see the startling difference between the gender ratio. I just think, if we had more cruel and cunning women as antagonists, the representation of women and men would change as a natural consequence.
And it made me think of my own book- the one I'm currently writing- and I realised, every single one of my villains is female. Sure, there are some male assholes involved but... the main antagonists are female and I love that.
What do you think? Feel free to comment your thoughts!
Thanks for reading! Stay amazing!
Chloe
Very interesting perspective - you don't often think about gender representation in villains, do you? On an interesting side note, a lot of villains in fairytales are actually female.
ReplyDeleteThink about: Snow White, Rapunzel, Sleeping Beauty, The Goose Girl, Hansel and Gretel, Cinderella, The Snow Queen, etc. While for males, I can think of Rumplestiltskin, Little Red Riding Hood (assuming the wolf is male?), and Jack and the Beanstalk.
I'm a huge fan of fairytales, but I find the gender divide to be very interesting here. A lot of them seem to have both the protagonist and antagonist to be female.
I had thought about Disney villains too, actually, and you've made a great point! With Disney, I think it's a matter of appearance instead of just gender. The villains tend to been presented as ugly which influences just how important appearance is in our society. Just think of Cinderella, for example. She's extremely beautiful but her siblings are literally called the 'ugly stepsisters'. This affects how we consider appearance hugely. As if ugly people are always evil and you can only be kind and good if you look perfect on the outside.
DeleteWhat a dark side to Disney....
I am slowly getting more and more information about your book....;)
ReplyDeleteOne day I'll tell you everything.... but today is not that day. :p xx
DeleteI got all excited when my phone showed me the first part of that....
DeleteThere needs to be an expansion of female villains really. I mean if a man can be wicked and take over the world, so can a woman.
ReplyDeleteSince there are very few female villains, this makes me wonder what caused that other than being a very male dominant society. Do people think women can't be evil if they want to be? Or that if she was evil it wouldn't do that much damage to anyone?
Anyway, I enjoyed reading your blog post. :) And it is neat to see someone thinking about it too.
-Quinley