I was talking with Ty Templeton earlier in the week and he explained to me that (while we were talking about gender roles in fiction) he had had real trouble coming up with a list of female protagonists who when introduced were not defined by an element of suffering or hardship. Every female romantic comedy protagonist ever, for example, is defined by their lack of a partner; that’s the entire point of romantic comedy. But this extends beyond just romcoms; female protagonists are almost always given a background of suffering or hardship which they must then overcome (as opposed to suffering or hardship within the story; that’s just dramatic conflict).
Ty explained that in previous conversations about this, he was able to identify only two female protagonists who didn’t enter the story defined by a hardship they would have to overcome as part of their narrative: Julia Child in Julie and Julia (her story is straightforward; she has a goal – to become a great cook – and she achieves it, and her past traumas suffered during the war and her inability to have a child are not relevant to her achievement) and Erin Brockovich (where Erin Brockovich may be poor/lower-class, but her narrative does not present that as something to overcome; her goal is achieve success in a class-action lawsuit and does so).
I gave it some thought afterwards and added two more: Baby in Dirty Dancing and Marge Gunderson in Fargo. But after that, I’m stuck. So what others are there? Surely there must be others!
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I guess it depends on how you set the goalposts. To use an example – Buffy, from the TV series. Her Dad’s not around and she moved to Sunnydale after burning down a gym, but these things are barely referenced in the show. There’s a certain amount of suffering that comes along with being the Slayer, but it’s more of the ‘with great power comes great responsibility’ type. So there’s not really a lot of background suffering that defines her – though she gets plenty over the course of the series, that’s just the dramatic conflict, as you say.
Alice (Alice in Wonderland)
Ripley (Alien) — no worse off than the rest of the crew at any rate
Sydney (Scream) — she starts off OK I think?
Isn’t it pretty common to start off characters with hardships to overcome, in general, though? For example, how many cop movies have you seen where Hero Cop starts out with some terrible trauma (“my last partner died” / “I shot a kid” / etc) and the rousing finale is where Hero Cop finally overcomes this trauma to win the day?
I think this one is more to do with the percieved value neutrality of male protagonists than anything. Whenever we stick a generic placeholder protagonist in there for things just to happen to, it’s generally going to be a male.
Once you move beyond that, which is admittedly a pretty big that, it’s hard to find a non example of a character built around some sort of past hardship, male or female because it’s an easy short hand to building a ‘complex’ character.
True — though in the horror genre, it’s more common for the “normal person that bad shit starts happening to” character to be female. Like The Ring, The Descent, Drag Me to Hell, Hallowe’en…
I am not completely sure but “Tank Girl” ?
Buffy’s desire and inability to be a “normal” girl is the backbone for the entire first three seasons of the show. She basically exemplifies the “defined by hardship trope.
In the first issue Tank Girl is already an international fugitive from justice, which propels most of her plots. Her comic is insane but the trope still works.
Dorothy from Oz?
Sydney starts Screan with her mother having been murder been recently murdered and finding out the guy she thinks killed him is getting out of jail.
Some examples:
Amelie
Lara Croft
Ariel (The Little Mermaid)
Belle (Beauty and the Beast)
Jasmine (Aladdin)
Mulan (Mulan)
Mary Poppins!
Also!
Agent Dana Scully
Det. Abby Mills (Sleepy Hollow)
Sarah Connor (don’t think “crappy waitress job” quite qualifies… she seems otherwise happy and normal)
Mindy on The Mindy Project
Nancy Drew
Clarice Starling
Belle from Beauty and the Beast seems like the best example in the comments so far. Sure, she seems to stick out from the townfolk because she likes to read so much, but she’s not marked as a total outsider-they think it’s odd, but they still like her. The only one who really gives her trouble before her father is kidnapped is Gaston, and while I’m not going to say “being pretty and pursued by an overbearing lout” doesn’t qualify as an issue, it’s not presented as a terrible hardship at first, just a courtship she’s not interested in.
Clearly it’s been a while since I saw Scream. oops
UGE: Det. Abby Mills doesn’t work. She’s a great protagonist — but her life is also defined by plenty of hardship. Sister in a mental institution. Because of childhood encounter with a demon, which Abby shared and has been trying to deny ever since. Broken family. Foster system experiences. Embarked as teen on life of petty crime and drugs before being given a chance by Sheriff Clancy Brown.
That’s a lot of hardship and suffering before the show even starts, and it’s clear when it starts that she has spent her young life trying to overcome those things.
But isn’t that less “hardship and suffering” and more “being a total badass”? Granted, I have not read the first issue of Tank Girl.
I agree with you on SMG Buffy. She starts the series as being the outcast loner girl who burned down her last high school. But how was Movie Buffy introduced… was she just a regular cheerleader who was suddenly thrust into the world of vampire slaying?
Marked as a child by the Creeping Evil that is in Sleepy Hollow. Doesn’t work.
Falls under the romcom rule.
Story defined by her need to see the wider world. Doesn’t work.
From her first scene she’s hamstrung by the fact of her gender and the entire movie is about that. Doesn’t work.
Was traumatized as a kid by the lamb slaughters, has spent her whole life getting over it, it directly ties into the main story. Doesn’t work.
Depending on the incarnation of the character, she’s either avenging her friends’ deaths or trying to carry on her lost father’s legacy or… etc. etc. etc. She is almost always given a defining hardship/trauma regardless of version. Doesn’t work.
Belle, Amelie and maybe Jasmine work. Mary Poppins works, but I’m not sure she’s a character so much as she is a force of nature.
Maybe–*maybe*–San or Lady Eboshi in Princess Mononoke.
Here are some that may work, depending on the definition of “hardship or suffering:”
Nora Charles — The Thin Man
Dorothy Gayle — The Wizard of Oz
Scarlett O’Hara — Gone with the Wind
Sandra Bullock — Demolition Man, Speed, Miss Congeniality, (Gravity?)
Amy Archer — The Hudsucker Proxy
Polly Perkins, Franky — Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow
Marge Sherwood — The Talented Mr. Ripley
I set ’em up, you shoot ’em down 😉
HollyH: All true. But I thought the idea was finding characters who aren’t INTRODUCED with suffering/hardship… we meet Abbey as a confident, capable police officer, and later on learn about the tragic past. Contrast with Karl Urban in CopBorgs (Almost Human), where his very first scene is “ARRRGH MY PARTNER DIED IN MY ARMS AND MY LEG IS GONE!!”
Maybe Abbey still doesn’t work but that’s why I thought she did.
I question dismissing Ariel. Wanting to explore isn’t a hardship, it’s a goal. It’s not akin to, say, overcoming her parent’s violent death or scrambling her way up from poverty or being kidnapped and locked in a tower for her entire life.
Other than the usual teenager butting up against a parent’s limits – in which case EVERY female protagonist is disqualified – her life has been the definition of luxury and privilege.
And the most recent Lara Croft game reboots the entire franchise. Lara’s an upper-class archeology grad student who’s doing well for herself right up until the ship crashes.
MGK, you said to find “female protagonists who didn’t ENTER the story defined by a hardship”… but I guess you also mean protagonists who aren’t later revealed to have a tragic incident in their past that ties either directly or thematically into the story? (i.e. Clarice Starling)
LIan: Lady Eboshi is a former prostitute, running a refuge for other ex-courtesans and prostitutes and their families.
P.S.
So are Scully and Sarah Connor still good?
🙂
Velma from Scooby Doo. (Maybe Daphne, but as the token damsel in distress…) In fact, Velma is probably the most proactive character in Scooby Doo. Shaggy and Scooby don’t really do much through their own agency. Oh, they stumble into stuff, sure, but Velma pieces it all together and resolves the conflicts in the end.
Lana Cane, from Archer.
How about Barbarella? She’s introduced as a sexy space cop without a care in the Universe.
SIDE QUEST: Find a single character in Les Miserables whose every moment isn’t defined by suffering and hardship
A couple of anime examples come to mind – Hajime from Gatchaman Crowds (perpetually upbeat, only significant hardship is battling a villain who wants to destroy the world) and Marika from Bodacious Space Pirates (ordinary high schooler, learns her dad just died in an accident but isn’t too bothered because she thought he had died long ago, only significant hardship is suddenly being thrust into a position of danger and intrigue as captain of a privateer ship) (the series isn’t what you might expect from the title; it’s basically Star Trek TOS only Kirk and Spock are teenage girls).
Lana Cane is introduced as a strong female character who is not traumatized. This is for narrative purposes, as the show is the slow ongoing process of her being traumatized over and over again 😉
I’m not clear on the parameters here. Are you asking for examples where the character had absolutely zero hardship of any kind prior to the start of the story? Or if they had hardship, overcoming that has nothing to do with the conflict within the story?
I think both incarnations of Lara Croft count, IF I’m understanding what you’ve asked for here. The original started out with very little expressed motive other than “hey, adventure, wee!” The central conflict of the reboot, which is simply “survive, and help friends survive” is introduced at the very start of the story, not prior to it. There’s some stuff about her dad’s legacy, but that’s really a secondary motive and not what I’d call “hardship.”
Trillian in most versions of Hitchhiker’s guide.
Ivanova in Babylon 5, though you could argue that character elements like her relationship with her father and general isolation just weren’t clearly enumerated but still defined her.
As for Scully, I initially agreed with it, but isn’t she effectively defined by being saddled with this nutjob for a partner, and the possibility that her career is going to go down in flames as a result?
Avatar Korra, I think
Wonder Woman.
I’d counter that Scully is initially defined by being an FBI agent who’s good at science, and being stuck with Mulder is the initial wacky premise that she’s put into.
Contrast with Melinda May of SHIELD, who’s introduced as The Agent Who Something Very Bad Happened To And Please Don’t Talk About It.
Wasn’t Wonder Woman originally introduced as being trapped in a world she never made? Or was that Howard the Duck…
Seriously though, I thought her origins centred around being cast out of her homeland and being a stranger in a strange land and all that.
Joe H: Is Trillian a protagonist though? Or a cool supporting character that reacts to things?
Looking on Wikipedia, apparently pre-Crisis Black Canary qualifies, but post-Crisis Black Canary does not. Huh.
UGE: Again, depends on the version. In the radio plays, she’s very much a protagonist. In the books, she’s more of a bystander. In the TV series, she’s something of a protagonist but also a ditzy airhead. In the movie, she’s a protagonist but I’m not sure she meets the rest of the criteria. So, maybe not most.
Joe H: That makes sense, since I don’t really know the radio version. 🙂
Ellen Ripley doesn’t have any particular trauma going into Alien, that’s true, although that’s a bit of a cheat given that we don’t get any background on any of the Nostromo crew whatsoever (at least in the first movie). We find out that she had a daughter in the sequel… by way of the revelation that said daughter died of old age while Ripley was in cryo. And, of course, things get progressively worse.
I was about to say Captain Janeway from Star Trek: Voyager, but a check of her background says that, when her dad died in a drowning accident when she was a young woman, she took to her bed with depression for months. Damnit.
UGE: While there is no definitive edition of Hitchhikers, the radio plays are certainly my favorite version. And not just because they put an epilogue on the end of Mostly Harmless that takes away the bleakness, since Douglas died before he could write that away. You can buy cds, or they’re on Audible.
Jack: That’s not really a defining character moment though, it’s just a thing that happened, which the initial premise says is OK. (Besides, that sounds like something dropped in so Janeway had Something To Talk About To Make A Connection at some point.)
–Emma Peel (The Avengers)
–Sarah Jane Smith (Doctor Who)
–Dazzler (Marvel Comix)
–Bridget von Hammersmark (Inglourious Basterds)
–Captain Janeway (Star Trek *ugh* Voyager) (I agree with Joe H.)
–Amanda King (Scarecrow and Mrs. King)
–Lists are fun 😀
@MGK – I guess I just don’t see ‘I don’t want my superpowers’ as a hardship. Oh, well.
H-Jack: Of course Ripley’s daughter has no bearing on “Alien”, since she’s never mentioned. And we’re talking character introduction, so…
And it’s not a cheat; they just introduce her character through other means than a Tragic Backstory Infodump (for example, she’s the one NOT willing to break quarantine to let John Hurt back on board).
Seriously, I think the net is so widely cast herethat you’d be hard-pressed to make a lengthy list of protagonists of any kind that don’t have traumatic elements in their backstory.
Vianne Rocher from Chocolat.
but there was fanfiction that explained that she only eats chocolate to cope with the trauma of when her Dad was beaten to death by rape aliens so she doesn’t count sorry
Princess Leia?
Yes, having your home planet destroyed in front of your eyes has got to be on the short list of awful things to happen to a character, but it’s certainly not a haunting moment that defines her character throughout the OT.
EDIT: Her introduction does include being captured, but she takes it like a boss and is instrumental in her own rescue. Her being female is really only important in the context of convincing Han (and to a lesser extent Luke) to rescue her in the first place. I think you could also argue that Han only did it for the money and Luke had a hero complex that needed to be sated, so she was really just a rich person who needed rescuing.
How does Chihiro, from Spirited Away, work? I wouldn’t say that as a character she’s “given a background of suffering or hardship which [she] must then overcome”, more that her problems are thrust upon her.
Paksenarrion
Amelie: I dunno about this one. She had a stuffy childhood and was lonely. Her mother was killed by a falling tourist from Quebec. Her dad became a bit of a recluse and her home visits are kind of blah.
Not really *traumatic* (except for her mom’s sudden death, but we don’t get the sense that she’s angsty about it), I guess. I just want to point out that even though she’s the protagonist of what’s considered a cheery movie, there is definite melancholy.
What can I say … French.
I’m going to go with the opinion that this is such a poorly defined exercise that you’re going to have a tough time finding any protagonist who qualifies.
I think for this to be a meaningful exercise, you need to define your thesis statement, establish clear boundaries(at what point do we draw the line between conflict inside a story and conflict the character starts with? If a movie is explicitly about an adult woman’s relationship with her father, does that count or not, given that the movie probably doesn’t start with her birth).
As far as I can tell, the only characters that qualify are those who have no backstory whatsoever or those who had no problems in their lives up to the start of the film, which there aren’t a lot of male characters like that either.
… So, nearly all the examples given here are film or TV, but when you say “fiction,” are we counting novels and the like? Because in that case there’s
plenty ofquite a few examples, although less than I would have thought.The first that sprung to mind was Cordelia Naismith. Now, when introduced, she is reacting to suffering (that happened about 10 minutes before you meet her), but I’d argue that she is by no means defined by it.
A quick scan of my bookshelf reveals more than a few others. Telzey Amberdon, for example, or Vosill in Inversions. A goodly number of Robin McKinley’s protagonists (including Disney’s Beauty, dammit – you can’t tell me that wasn’t ripped off). Both of Janet Kagan’s non-Trek novels. Quite a lot of YA stuff. (Even, much I am blush to admit it, Honor Harrington.) And that’s being strict about the definition of “protagonist”.
I mean, what about, e.g., Hermione? Does she count?
And how about the definition of “suffering or hardship” – does, say, being a woman in a highly patriarchal society count?
It’s a decent point, though. I was mildly surprised as to just how low the percentage was of female protagonists in my quick straw poll, and of those, many do have some pre-story defining element of suffering or hardship.
On the gripping hand, those same strictures knock out a fairly large chunk of male protagonists. I think the problem is more to do with the dearth of female leading roles, in all forms of storytelling.
It’s something I think I’ll try to be a bit more aware of when expanding my collection from now on…
Slight correction:
Tank Girl is valid beeeecaaaaaause, *puts on giant cokebottle nerd glasses and pocket protector*
In the VERY FIRST tankgirl story, she has NOT YET been kicked out of whatever thing she got the tank from, as her mission is to get a colestomy bag to the president before he cacks his pants, BUT she is stopped in her journey by a kangaroo mutant who tries to steal the colestomy bag, which ultimately causes her to fail in her mission to stop the president cacking his pants and THEREBY getting kicked out of whatever service she was involved with.
It is only from the second story onwards that Tankgirl is on the run. (and to be fair the third story is I think the one where it’s tankgirl vs. ninjas vs. time travellers vs. satan over the ownership of God’s dressing gown that… in hindsight is actually funnier because it ends with satan becoming jimmy saville)
As to the other question let me drop the doozy:
Bella Swann from Twilight.
I’d argue that “feeling constrained by her life and having a desire to get out and see the world”, a la various Disney heroines, isn’t hardship or suffering. It’s something that keeps them from total happiness, sure, but what actual human is totally happy? I think characters who start their story totally content, of either gender, are pretty rare.
The more I think on it, the more I gotta push back on the Buffy thing, dude. Buffy’s superpowers are not a hardship. And you can’t argue that her separation from the ‘normal’ kids is a hardship because she chooses to do that. She has a chance to go along with the normal crowd and elects not to, due to her strong moral compass. Similarly, she could keep her powers, sit on her ass, and let people die by vampire attacks – but again, she doesn’t – not because Giles makes her be a hero, because she quickly proves she won’t be controlled by him or anyone else – but because she’s too good a person.
So unless ‘being a good person’ is a hardship under your definition, I have to staunchly contradict the claim that Buffy is some kind of iconic example of afflicted female protagonists. Yes, her desire to be normal is there – but she wants to help people more than she wants to be a normal person. I mean, that’s the entire point of ‘Anne’.
@candidgamera: “She has a chance to go along with the normal crowd”
Not really, when she reaches sunnydale she’s isolated because she’s the weirdo who had to move to sunnydale because she “burned her last school gymnasium down”. And cordelia doesn’t like her and keeps her outcast.
It’s only by the end of high school that she started to be accepted as a benevolent force rather than just a weirdo.
Samus Aran (given that like most NES characters, she’s introduced with no background.)
The Powerpuff Girls.
To go back to the beginning of the comments, Buffy in the movie. She is a normal girl, from an upper-class family, and very popular cheerleader. If you count that, and not Welcome to the Hellmouth, as the start of her story, she clearly qualifies.
Two I’d question from among those mentioned:
Dorothy Gale from the Wizard of Oz stories. As introduced, she is living on a failing Kansas farm — that is, in poverty, as Uncle Henry is unable to consistently make his mortgage payments. Especially in contrast to life in Oz, this looks to me like hardship; it’s just that Dorothy endures said hardship relatively cheerfully.
Honor Harrington is also the explicit product of suffering; we learn quite early in her adventures that her interaction with Pavel Young at Saganami Island — revealed in flashback — was a keynote and turning point in her training. (OTOH, Stephanie Harrington, Honor’s distant ancestor, almost certainly does count; prior to the events of either the original or book-length version of A Beautiful Friendship, she is clearly shown to have had a remarkably happy and well-adjusted childhood.)
Leslie Knope.
Captain (formerly Ms.) Marvel.
She-Hulk.
Most of the female members of the Legion of Super-Heroes (specifically, Saturn Girl).
Sif.
And I can’t think of anything particularly tragic about Lois Lane’s back story.
And I can’t think of anything particularly tragic about Lois Lane’s back story.
Silver Age Lois Lane falls under the romcom clause. Other versions of Lois Lane tend to be supporting characters rather than protagonists.
If you’re counting the Powerpuff girls, then the My Little Ponies: Friendship is Magic crew qualify as well.
Maybe so, Thok, but from the Bronze Age on, especially after Byrne’s reboot, when Lois took center stage, she held her own.
As far as Friendship is Magic goes, Twilight Sparkle (the central protagonist) is introduced as a social recluse and only then overcomes her isolation. It’s later revealed she still remembers quite vividly being bullied in “Magic Kindergarten” and has most of her self-validation invested in excelling academically and gaining her mentor Celestia’s praise.
While Applejack is all but implied to have been an orphan long before the pilot episode, Pinkie Pie had a joyless childhood and Fluttershy was bullied and mocked for her lack of flying skills to the point that it still affects her as an adult, these details of their backstory are only revealed later on. That leaves Rarity and Rainbow Dash with past lives appearing to have been fairly complication-free.
I’d echo Paksenarrion.
Most of the Female Co-protagonists in the Wheel Of Time series are introduced and exist prior to the story without hardship as a defining trait-specifically Egwene, Nynaeve, Min Farshaw, and Elayne. Now that I think about it *possibly* Aveindha, if you don’t count “comes from a warrior culture that adapted to a death zone” as hardship.
Molly Carpenter of the Dresden files, but she’s BG until she moves up into the co-protag team, and by that point it can be argued.
Jane Watson from Elementary.
The Unstoppable Gravy Express: Wonder Woman left her home voluntarily and eagerly, with permission from her mother and her gods and the ability to return at will
Any of the female characters from Scott Lynch’s Gentlemen Bastards books would probably qualify here. Yeah, some of them have tough lives, but none of them have a particular trauma that completely defines them, as they are three-dimensional portrayals of women with agency.
I guess Kitty Pryde wouldn’t count since she was introduced into an ensemble.
What about Pre-Crisis Barbara Gordon as Batgirl?
Hmmm…I’m thinking some people are letting admiration for badass protagonists lead to overlooking key parts of the story.
I would say Paksenarrion is pretty much the definition of a suffering protagonist, usually because of her gender. That’s the entire story arc of the series, and it’s not like Moon is terribly subtle about it.
Molly Carpenter turns into a protagonist after going through some serious stuff, including black magic and near beheadings, and then all the subsequent nonsense that Harry/Butcher puts her through.
Jane Watson in Elementary starts the series wracked with guilt about the patient she killed on the operating table.
So I’m going to say…no, you’ve got “suffering heroine” trope all over the place here.
As for Princess Leia — she’s literally the princess in the tower that the heroes go rescue. In fact, more than once during the course of the original trilogy.
As I recall it, Fred Davis, Buffy had a chance in the first episode to join Cordelia’s clique, but stood up for Willow instead. I could be wrong, it’s been a long time since I’ve watched.
As for Jane Watson from Elementary, Canukistani John, she accidentally killed a patient and was barred from practicing medicine for a while; she was traumatized enough by her error to still not be practicing when we meet her. [Edit: Fab O beat me to it.]
Molly Carpenter grows up in Dresdenverse Chicago, with wizards, dueling fairies, ghosts, vampires, werewolves, etc. Babs Gordon grows up in Gotham City, where supervillains run the place whenever a masked vigilante isn’t terrifying the populace.
Hardship by setting.
Of course, almost all heroes of whatever gender are born of hardship. That is the default.
Samus Aran. The first Metroid game does not reference her tragic past, or even reveal that she’s a woman until you beat the game.
The Boss from MGS3.
Technically also Commander Shepard if you choose the female variant.
In kids literature one shining modern example is Polly from the Mr Gum books by British author Andy Stanton – clever, astute, loyal, and no traumatic back-story in sight – she just is what she is (and if anyone doesn’t know the Mr Gum books they are hugely recommended – 21stC Roald Dahl, perfect for kids from 7-11 years old).
Oh, and maybe Arrietty from the Borrowers – she’s experienced no trauma at the start of the books?
If we’re talking fiction in general, Thomasina Coverley and Hannah Jarvis from Tom Stoppard’s wonderful play Arcadia are both exceptions to the rule.
Jean Louise “Scout” Finch
Mary Poppins.
Wendy Moira Angela Darling
Eglantine Price
Anne and George of the Famous Five
Irene Adler
Princess Eilonwy
I finally put my finger on the problem with labelling Buffy as one of the afflicted – she doesn’t have hardship, she has an internal conflict. Hardship should be something that the protagonist had/has no choice in, something external. Buffy can choose a normal life; she elects, instead, to help people.
If internal conflict is hardship, then we might as well just skip this exercise.
I’d argue Kima Griggs from The Wire qualifies.
Being a detective messes up her life (like it does to nearly every character on the show) but she starts out relatively healthy and happy despite being one of the only women in what is clearly a macho douchebag factory.
Ellen Ripley in Alien is a really a great example for the same reason that makes Alien great in general, like all the characters in the movie her motivations are:
1. not die
2. do her job
3. get paid for her job
What separates her from the rest of the crew is that she prioritizes number one over saving Cain. Because Cain is an idiot.
I could be wrong but I thought Amelie’s entire character arc was overcoming her father’s inability to show affection toward her?
Paksenarion’s story begins with her fleeing an arranged marriage.
She-Hulk’s origin was getting a life-saving blood transfusion from her cousin Bruce Banner.
Kitty Pryde suffered migraines from her emerging mutant power.
Non-suffering: Tea Leoni in DEEP IMPACT
Well, all right then. On the list she goes!
Other candidates:
Mrs. Marple
China O’Brien
Jessica Fletcher
Kara “Starbuck” Thrace
Allison DuBois (Medium) (unless you count being stuck with a douchey husband)
Not the Buddha- Compared to most of the male X-Men Kitty Pryde’s “gets migraines” were pretty minor. Wolverine is Wolverine. Cyclops is an orphan who involuntarily destroys anything he looks at and who was recruited into crime as a weapon. Iceman and Nightcrawler both had to deal with lynch mobs. Colossus is Russian. Beast found his emerging mutancy to be so traumatic that he had himself erased from the memories of anyone who ever knew him. Banshee has a dead wife and brother out to destroy him for it.
I gotta agree with DistantFred, it’s hard for me to see Kitty Pryde as being initially defined by hardship and suffering. My memory is that she started out as “quirky teenager”.
New candidate: V.I. Warshawski
Juno – Juno – not suffering until the movie starts and shows how she deals with the hardship of teen pregnancy on her own terms
Jadzia Dax – DS9 – I’m not sold that her having to go through the initiate program twice is really a hardship compared to Kira having her home invaded by Cardassians for 60 years
Edwina McDunnough – Raising Arizona – come on she’s a cop
Jordan O’Neil – G.I. Jane – no hardship until the movie begins (even if it is a terriblish movie)
Elizabeth Bennet – Pride and Prejudice – not sure if she counts but really why not?
Janet Colgate – Dirty Rotten Scoundrels – she’s the target of a bet and she’s awesome!
UGE: Kara ‘I got my boyfriend killed by passing him from flight school when he wasn’t ready and it drove a wedge between his Brother who I loved and their father who I see as my father and I’m not telling the father about it and I’m constantly acting out and almost actively trying to get myself thrown out of the fleet/put in jail’ Thrace?
Iji? Ursula from Sword and Sworcery?
Nearly every character in Mass Effect has a tragic back story, including Shepard, except Tali. Her arc is tied to species tragedy but not her own personal experiences. When you met her, her goal is to complete the same rite of passage all Quarians undergo.
It’s not suffering relative to guys in the story, it’s suffering relative to people. Lots of the X-Men are introduced as suffering because that’s primarily what Prof X seeks out, mutants that need help.
One thing that some people seem to be avoiding here … there is a difference between having a backstory that contains hardship or suffering, and being defined by that.
Just as an example: Batman, in most incarnations can be defined by his tragic backstory (at least at first). The Adam West Batman even drops a nod to it in it’s first episode, although that show could definitely be seen as one where Batman isn’t really defined by, or trying to overcome, his tragic past. It’s something that happened, but by this point, he’s already overcome it to some extent. Contrast that with Superman. You do have some stories where he’s ‘defined’ by being the Last Son of Krypton, but in stuff like the Reeves movie, it’s just sort of a thing from his past. He doesn’t dwell on it, especially once he reaches adulthood, etc.
Being “THE cop that lost their partner” is different from being “a cop that lost their partner”. If it’s presented as an explanation for the characters behaviour, or parallels the conflict going on, sure.
For Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, her story is presented as wanderlust and the grass being greener on the other side, more so than trying to escape the harsh tragedy of growing up in poverty. If there is suffering or hardship, it’s not something she’s defined by.
Someone pointed out Korra from Legend of Korra. She’s a great example. While lots of character’s around her (and in the previous series) have tragedy in their past that define them on some level, she’s just very competent and is training to be the ‘chosen one’. Her hardships and struggles in the series come in part because of her not having really faced hardships in the past, as she is easily frustrated, being someone to which everything came easy before. Even with later revelations about stories about her parents, all of it was things she never would have known about.
For another example, Kaitnyss from the Hunger Games. While the set up basically means just about any protagonist is going to have a tragic backstory, it being a dystopia and all, she has the extra layer of basically having to replace her father because of the 1-2 punch of her father dying and her mother shutting down as a result. So she’s very much defined by her hardship, as she’s basically someone that ‘grew up too fast’ to fill in for missing parents, on top of the horrible conditions the average district 12-er would go through. So that is someone that fits the trope well, compared to some borderline examples where “well, something bad happened to them in the past”, that doesn’t really come up until later on in their story.
Kara “Starbuck” Thrace – Hell, no. Her tragic past and formative traumas are one of the engines that powers the story for the entirety of the series.
Audrey Parker from Haven?
Thinking about this brought I came up with Nimue in the Warlord Chronicles, who is introduced with absolutely no trauma or issues, just a clear goal (to become the first female Druid).
And then she spends the first book being raped, mutilated, and driven insane, and these traumas (inevitably) define her character for the remaining two books.
One of the more interesting details is that she was expecting — and even hoping — for something like this to happen to her, as it was necessary for her to suffer the “three wounds” to become a Druid (and, by extension, it’s pretty much stated that Merlin has also been raped, maimed, and driven insane in his backstory, although he shows no sign of it).
Lucy and Susan Pevensie in the Narnia books. Yes, there’s a war on, but that’s more an explanation as to why they’re in the country than any particular hardship, although the films make it more of an issue tahn the books do.
My first thought at the list of Disney protagonists early in the list was to go Ghibli, and then somebody mentioned San from Princess Mononoke, but that’s nowhere near the best choice because: orphan wildling raised by a wolf goddess has gotta mess you up a little.
But plenty of other Ghibli choices.
– Nausicaä of Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind.
– Sophie from Howl’s Moving Castle.
– Kiki from Kiki’s Delivery Service, unless you define “you are young and you need to grow up because this is a coming of age story” to be a defining hardship
– Chihiro Ogino of Spirited Away. (I don’t want to move to a new town could be a great suffering and hardship for a tween, but it’s not the defining burden she must overcome as the core element of the narrative.)
– Satsuki and Mei from My Neighbor Totoro, although depending on what symbolic significance you want to ascribe to Totoro and the sprites, I suppose you could argue that the whole movie is just about the girls coming to terms with their mother’s illness.
Hermione Granger, assuming she counts as a protagonist, definitely fits. (She is somewhat less than perfect socially, but she’s got supportive parents, and is generally pretty amazing. Her desires are “to do keep doing well in school”.)
Robin from How I Met Your Mother has an interesting claim — while the series is a romcom, while introduced, she’s a series protagonist, but not looking for romance. The question, really, comes down to whether or not, when introduced, she’s a protagonist or just a love object for Ted.
Let’s go a bit further back. I don’t recall Juliet being said to have any particular hardship until she fell for Romeo (I believe this is out of the rom-com requirement section as she was not particularly looking for a romantic partner or suffering from lack of same).
And how about Lady Macbeth? Or is there a backstory I’m not recalling on her?
Neither the original nor Silver Age Hawkgirls were from a suffering background (I think something might have been retconned in for Shayera, but only decades after she was introed).
Capt/Ms Marvel was introduced as having to prove her skills and competence as a woman in male dominated fields, and when we met her family, her father was a classic “you’re only a girl” type.
Jean Grey’s trauma was retconned in close to 20 years after her introduction.
I’d say Buffy doesn’t count if you count the movie as canon, but does if you don’t.
While on the subject: What about Cordelia?
Sidney Bristow (Alias)? She has bad stuff happen to her right out of the gate, and she has more bad stuff retconned into her childhood as the series goes on… but she does start as a kick-ass special agent who mostly has her shit together, despite her estrangement from her father.
Gemma Simmons from Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.?
Gemma Simmons has been too much of a reactionary background character to count, I think. And the one story where she might count as a protagonist, it was because she got infected with a deadly virus-thing about to make her explode.
See, the reason I mentioned Kara Thrace was that she was introduced as a cool, no-nonsense bad-ass fighter pilot. Later on we found out her backstory is chock-full-o’ tragedy, of course.
But again, I thought the idea of the exercise was thinking of female protagonists who aren’t introduced in terms of “here, meet this long-suffering soul drowning in hardship”. Because plenty of them ARE introduced in such Fontine-like terms.
. Every female romantic comedy protagonist ever, for example, is defined by their lack of a partner
Presumably the antithesis of this would be Sex in the City.
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