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Dragon-Slayers and Nurturers
Women today, at least Disney women today, resist the trope of the prince who rescues the damsel in distress. How perfectly awful to have toxic masculinity restrict her ability to be a strong and independent woman!
It occurred to me that we have an equally-popular trope that works in reverse: a woman who saves a man, not by slaying a dragon but by nurturing him. Think of the classic story of the nurse who stays by a man’s bedside, investing her energies into saving first his life and then, perhaps, his very soul.
Both clichés are good and valuable, because they involve people helping other people (through the attributes and capabilities we encourage in each sex), and the gratitude and love that come in return.
Published in General
When that little old lady beat Alfred the Great over the head with a broom because he let the cakes burn, it helped remind him to not let the weight of all his problems distract him from the task at hand. Which considering that he was being hunted by Vikings was a timely lesson.
Oh, totally. I’ve remarked before….hang on while I find it…. that it’s truly instructive that the ONLY monarchs dignified with the epithet “The Great” to this point in English history have been Alfred (who burned the cakes) and Canute (who–despite all reports to the contrary) was intensely interested only in showing the limits of his power. In one sense at least, failures both.
Nuff said.
Mr. She always used to say that the most useful and important tradition of the Western Canon was that men and women save each other. So far, I’ve not found all that much reason to disagree.
It burns me that modern “historians” state that the cake incident never happened because no one wrote it down for another 100 years. It was 878, and there was a war on! How many things that were written down in those 100 years have been lost to us? It’s not like Alfie could send the herald to pop down to Tesco’s and pick up some more spiral notebooks.
I knew a woman who nursed a famous author back to health and when he was fully recovered she married him and became Mrs. J. D. Somethingorother.
Can you help me out here? I cannot think of a single “classic story” involving a woman nursing a man back to health, at least not in mythology or fairy tales. I may not be recalling an important one.
There are many, many stories of men slaying dragons, or giants, or other beasts, to save a damsel in distress. Because she is his reward, you see. Why else would he bother doing it?
I do remember Ivanhoe, the plot of which does involve Rebecca nursing Ivanhoe back to health. That was from the early 1800s, though, not quite old enough to be “classic” in my view.
I cannot think of any such story from the Bible, nor from Greek myth. Again, maybe I’m forgetting something.
In my view, modern feminism does not fit into anything classic.
Who art thou, to naysay the Gilberton Company, Inc.?
You think a woman nursing a man back to health is “feminism”? Man, I live in a different world.
More importantly, was Alfred as awesome in real history as he was in The Last Kingdom.
I haven’t seen it. I had never even heard of it. The real Alfred deserved the appellation if anyone did, just for his comeback after burning the cakes.
Think of women transforming men. For example, the ancient and timeless Greek Classic Shrek, where first the man saves the woman from a dragon, and then the woman saves the ogre from himself. Sort of like Beauty and the Beast, eh?
The idea is timeless: women want to find a man who has all the right elements – except for the one she can offer that “fixes” him. And they live happily ever after.
Everyone wants to feel wanted and valued, especially for the qualities that we can uniquely bring to a relationship.
Sonia and Raskolnikov is a good one.
When I think of women’s power, I always remind myself of the story of David and Abigail. David, still an outlaw at the time, asked Nabal for some supplies as David was helping protect the land at the time. Nabal sends a snarky reply. David, seeing red, gathers his men and is ready to march in on Nabal and put an end to that snark — with prejudice. Nabal’s wife Abigail hears David is coming, gathers gifts and greets him herself and with reasoned words calms David’s wrath and he leaves with gifts and no harm done. What power it is to turn a force of armed men with nary a blow! It’s a shame that we don’t see that clearly now, that power is only defined in the masculine sense.
One wonders why feminists decided to do that. If masculinity is so toxic, why adopt it as your standard?