Wondering why all 'evil' characters are women?

[*~Diamond in the Rough~*]

[carol]

[Arwen]

[David]

A bigger question might be, Why are women often the bad girls in Fairy Tales? In fairy tales you have witches, evil stepmothers, Grendle's mother in Beowulf, and female baddies of all sorts. Feminists would say it arises from a male fear of women. I don't know. I only know that when Lewis creates female villains in The Chronicles he's simply plugging into an old fairy tale tradition. The real question might be, Why does such a tradition exist at all? As someone already pointed out, Lewis does not seem to make women the bad people in his other works, but in his fairy tales he does.

[Theo]

[jo]

Maybe women were then - well as they are now, but in a much more socially acceptable fashion - seen as evil temptresses trying to cause men to stray from the path of righteousness? The same mentality that dictates that women must cover themselves from head to foot in bhurqas in order that they don't inadvertantly show anything of themselves that might interest strange men might, in the past, have manifested in a different way: that of depicting women in literature as evil beings. That's just speculation though.

[StrawberryRose]

[WolfVanZandt]

[Robyn]

[The Bigsleep J]

[David]

Maybe the fact that an evil woman is so much scarrier than an evil man has something to do with it. Here I will anticipate brickbats from feminists, but I will say this anyway.

Women are traditionally seen as nurturing. They care for children, feed, nurse, protect their kids, comfort when children are hurt, tell bedtime stories and hold you when you have a skinned knee. Women are seen as naturally kind, loving, and tender. When a woman is not this, when she is cruel and terrorizing, it is even more frightening for the contrast with how she should be.

Men, on the other hand, are disciplinarians. They spank the children, fight in wars, are the authority figure, and are seen by children as more "frightening" in the general sense of the word. So it's not so odd for a man to be a negative character. Someone like Miraz strikes us as being as typical villian. Someone like Jadis, who should be kind and nurturing because she is a woman, strikes us as being an unusal and thus more frightening baddie.

This is true, I believe, not just for Lewis but for all the fairy tales with witches, evil stepmothers, banshees, harpies and sirens in them.

That may also explain why a lot of the male villians in Narnia--like Uncle Andrew and Rabidash--are silly, ridiculous villians. Men are supposed to be courageous, wise, judicious, heroic. Those who fail to do this are sometimes sinister like Miraz but more often ridiculous and preposterous because they have so departed from what Lewis would consider the proper role of a man.

[Stanley Anderson]

[Dr. U]

[jo]

hiya Dr U, thanks for an interesting and insightful post. Re Orual, she has been discussed quite a bit on this forum though I can't remember exactly which threads. One or two people - and i am inclined to agree with them - have speculated that Orual might have been 'a man in a woman's body' - an asexual woman, a Queen who was really a King. A woman who fought like a man and ate and drank with men and was treated by her fellows as a man. Not necessarily a sympathetic female character...

[Monica]