{"id":4698,"date":"2016-11-14T17:00:40","date_gmt":"2016-11-14T22:00:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/mojo\/?p=4698"},"modified":"2025-09-21T20:22:16","modified_gmt":"2025-09-22T01:22:16","slug":"placeholder-heroine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/blog\/placeholder-heroine\/","title":{"rendered":"Musings on the \u201cplaceholder\u201d heroine"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"A
Everywoman.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I.<\/strong>
\n<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Except for those little moments relieved by the occasional huge moment, everyday life can be a drudgery. Whatever you are engaged in, be it work (no matter how glamorous or lucrative it is) or raising a family or fulfilling your calling at church or attaining some long-held goal (usually all of them at once), at some point, you\u2019ll find yourself slogging through it and wondering where the magic is.<\/p>\n

The truth is, there is very little magic, except that which we grab for ourselves. When in the midst of this drudgery, few women1<\/a><\/sup> think to themselves, \u201cHow awesome am I? Super-awesome, is what!\u201d<\/em><\/strong> While she is in the midst of drudgery, she can be beset with feelings of inadequacy, hopelessness, and irrelevance, even if other people find her admirable or even inspirational in performing said drudgery.<\/p>\n

And this is what TV and movies and books and games are for: little moments of respite from the drudgery. People decry \u201cescapist\u201d fiction, but who really wants to read about other people\u2019s drudgery while in the midst of one\u2019s own?2<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n

Fictional characters are not immune to drudgery. The writers just choose not to show you that part because \u2026 why? It’s boring<\/em><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Giselle slogs through her neverending days of law school classes and shitty second-shift transcription job and church attendance after being stripped of her precious bookstore she can\u2019t rebuild. She has little to lighten her load or brighten her days. Who wants to read about how tired and hopeless she feels?<\/p>\n

Eilis slogs through the neverending stress of building a business, fighting off enemies alone, and seeks her magic in meaningless sex with strangers which she never finds and leaves her feeling worse than she did before.<\/p>\n

Justice slogs through neverending farm work, housework, college, and then law school with absolutely nothing but the goal of becoming a prosecutor. Even then, her options are limited to the two counties she can actually drive to every day because she has a piece-of-shit car and no money to buy a decent one.3<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n

And why do they do this? Because they\u2019re just trying to survive: financially, emotionally, and intellectually. It has to be done and there\u2019s no one else to do it. Just like everyone else.<\/p>\n

You, the reader, may not think about it much beyond the feeling that, \u201cHey, that\u2019s a lot more than I do.\u201d<\/p>\n

No, it\u2019s not. You do plenty. It\u2019s just that you can\u2019t see it and you probably don\u2019t want to think about it because it\u2019s depressing as hell. I don\u2019t care where you are in your life, every once in a while, you stop, look around, and wonder what the hell you\u2019re doing all this for.<\/p>\n

And sometimes, you can\u2019t answer the question.<\/p>\n

But you keep going anyway.4<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n

\n

II.<\/strong>
\n<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Which brings me to one of those hot-button topics in genre romance: the \u201cplaceholder heroine,\u201d wherein the heroine is void of personality or otherwise uninteresting, whose role is to be the foil for the hero as well as a way for the reader to insert herself into the story and thus, in the hero\u2019s arms. The heroine as written serves as the reader\u2019s avatar.<\/p>\n

These characters frustrate me. When I read, I want to experience someone else\u2019s life. I do not want to be obliged to construct my own character out of the bare shell the author has given me. Nor do I want to put myself in that shell. I already live my life.<\/p>\n

The most egregious example in my recent memory is Bella Swan from Twilight<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

Bella is the epitome of the placeholder heroine in that her personality is a void, her opinions are nonexistent, and she does not act. She is acted upon. One could argue that because she is seventeen years old, this is normal. Seventeen-year-old girls have no power and so Bella\u2019s reactivity is not untoward.<\/p>\n

Then along comes Edward, who gives her things any seventeen-year-old girl craves: the complete acceptance by, doting attention of, and fairy-tale romance from a truly powerful male. Thus, I would expect that female adolescents and young adults to find this storyline attractive.<\/p>\n

What has always baffled me, though, is why this is attractive to so many millions of adult women with husbands and families of their own unless the \u201cplaceholder heroine\u201d isn\u2019t just a theory<\/strike> [dead link].<\/p>\n

I nearly cried when I noticed my husband changing a light bulb. Watching him perform this menial task with so little grace and elegance, so un-vampire like, was a depressing reminder that there was no Edward in my life. My husband didn\u2019t float on air, change the bulb at breakneck speed or pounce off into the forest to protect me. Instead, he fumbled and ultimately dropped it on the floor where it shattered. The whole episode sent me into a depression.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A kiss from my husband is simply a kiss; there\u2019s no woozy feeling or butterflies fluttering in my stomach. We don\u2019t get lost in each other\u2019s eyes while discussing our son\u2019s report card or arguing over bills. Anyone who thinks otherwise has never been married. Bella and Edward live each moment in their own private world, with little else to divert their attention \u2026 \u201d5<\/a><\/sup><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Twi-Moms aren\u2019t just reading about Bella, we are trying to be her. We experienced her shock at the depth of Edward\u2019s love, and her crushing anguish when he left her. Stephenie Meyer captured the longing, the desire and the total devotion that is a faint memory for most married women.6<\/a><\/sup><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But why a seventeen-year-old sparkly vampire?7<\/a><\/sup> Surely there are enough hot, rich, controlling, stalker alphahole types<\/a> in adult genre romance to give women their fix of the woozy.<\/p>\n

But Edward himself is neither here nor there, really. The point is to escape the drudgery of life, as this article so explicitly states, into the arms of an Edward. The placeholder heroine is, in fact, an avatar for the reader.<\/p>\n

Or is she?<\/p>\n

\n

III.<\/strong>
\n<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

So I got to thinking about this one day, and it occurred to me that the vapid heroine might not<\/em><\/strong> be an avatar for the reader, but a reflection of how the reader sees herself<\/em><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

First there are the women who have little enough identities of themselves. For whatever reason they have given their own goals, dreams, and desires over to someone else: husband, children, boss, church, clubs, volunteer organizations. They define themselves in someone else\u2019s terms:<\/p>\n