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Pondering A Story Trope
Sep. 17th, 2014 06:06 pmNot doing the reading meme today even though I have actually read something and even had a thought or two to ponder regarding story tropes. I'm doing this in a musing way to try to figure out how and/or why the trope may work (or not work) for me. And I'm thinking of this one more in terms of a trope than a story kink because I tend to think of story kinks in a bit more of a "plot" thing and because I think of them as something within a summary that inevitably draws me into reading/viewing a story (often times against my better judgement). This particular trope can drive me away as easily as it can make me like a story. It's usually a dual question of my mood and the story's execution.
Beat around the bush, enough?
Anyway, the trope is "the long suffering heroine", stories that put a female character lead through absolute hell (these often include trigger warnings). In the last few weeks I've read at least three books that I would place in this category. Of those three I liked two, even though if I lay out what each of the heroines goes throudh it's a pretty horrific list of abuses. And, curiously, the book I liked least had the least amount of crap piled on the heroine. I don't really have a thing for seeing the crap abused out of heroines, so I'm trying to puzzle out why two of the books worked for me and one didn't. (And, yeah, I know realize it shares a great deal of territory with Hurt/Comfort tropes).
One thing I've wondered about is whether "the long suffering heroine" trope hits the same inner emo teen button that... well... emo teen YA and emo teen fanfic does. Sometimes it is easy to go with 'the world is against me' and thus easy to wallow in stories of heroines (or heroes) where everything is pretty literally entirely against them. They suffer and endure so that we feel a bit validated in our own mundane angst. I think one of the appeals in the more successful uses of the trope is...
Well, there's this like in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode "Fool for Love" where the pre-vampire Spike (William the Bloody) plaintively says to the woman who is about to emotionally sucker-punch him: "If you could only see me."
I'm pondering if one of the appeals of "the long suffering heroine" tropes is that someone "SEES" the suffering -- usually in the story. I say this because it strikes me that this is a crucial part of both of the stories that I liked that employed the trope (and was somewhat missing in the one that I didn't). In the ones that I liked, not only did the heroine suffer to hell and back, but there was a character who resisted feeling sympathy for the character only to slowly recognize the amazing inner strength and courage of the long suffering heroine.
I think this may in fact be as much part of the emo teen appeal as "the world is out to get me" part of it. Not only is the world out to get them, but FINALLY someone NOTICED! (And this is at least partly where Hurt/Comfort weighs in).
Is this part of the itch that the trope is scratching? (I laughed at one of the Good Reads reviews I read for one of these two books. It was a very negative review (because it truly is an insane pile-on of horrible things happening), which stated "I cannot stomach this book because the heroine should have killed her family." I laughed because, though I had liked the book, I totally agreed with that point.)
The last thing I noticed about what worked (for me) in the two stories that successfully used "the long suffering heroine" trope, had to do with the heroine herself. The two I liked had heroines who coped long after my own (or most mortals) coping skills would've run out. When pile-on had reached the point of any sane person giving the hell up and laying down and crying forever, the heroines kept trying to cope... and I think that was why, though I'm not a fan of pile ons, I actually had appreciation for the lead characters. In one, no matter how awful -- truly awful -- things were she kept trying to find some way to be forgiving and hopeful (she was also a master of denial, but in her case it seemed a necessary coping mechanism). I realize this was what got the negative view from the "The heroine should've killed her family" reviewer, because in a certain light this determined reaching for a bright side is being a doormat. But in this particular story I felt that it was actually this particular aspect of the character -- her determination to try to find something positive -- that explained her survival (plus the denial. Usually denial frustrates the hell out of me, but in this story I actually sort of saw how it worked as a mechanism of survival). If she hadn't been that kind of person, she probably would've curled up and gone catatonic... or murdered her family (seriously, it involved incestuous sexual abuse. She pretty much deserved to murder her family... even though she didn't). Conversely, the second heroine being lambasted by the "long suffering heroine" trope was the exact opposite. She saw no bright side left. In her own words, her dreams had died. She was not still trying to eek out hope... but she was just determined to survive. Just living through it became her focus.
... And I think this may be the third in the three-legged stool supporting when the "long suffering heroine" (or just as easily the long suffering hero) trope is effective.
1) Occasionally, we don't mind a bit of self-pity by proxy. We feel like the world is out to get us sometimes and so we experience someone who the world is out to get (makes our own problems pale by comparison). Followed by:
2) The validation of their suffering being recognized, 'seen' and...
3) Heroism achieved in the ability to carry on 'heroicaly' when we know that odds are we, the readers, would be curled up in the fetal position sobbing by that point.
At least I think those are elements of when these types of stories work.
(Of the books that inspired this particular pondering, one was in an e-kindle bundle of 10 books that I cannot find anywhere as a stand alone. Another is this one (trigger warning for rape, incest,... and a godawful family. And I'm not saying that the story/writing is 'good' (here, have a fine helping of cheese with that) just that it trades on 'martyr for a heroine' trope, and does so in a way that I felt incredibly sympathetic for the heroine.).
Beat around the bush, enough?
Anyway, the trope is "the long suffering heroine", stories that put a female character lead through absolute hell (these often include trigger warnings). In the last few weeks I've read at least three books that I would place in this category. Of those three I liked two, even though if I lay out what each of the heroines goes throudh it's a pretty horrific list of abuses. And, curiously, the book I liked least had the least amount of crap piled on the heroine. I don't really have a thing for seeing the crap abused out of heroines, so I'm trying to puzzle out why two of the books worked for me and one didn't. (And, yeah, I know realize it shares a great deal of territory with Hurt/Comfort tropes).
One thing I've wondered about is whether "the long suffering heroine" trope hits the same inner emo teen button that... well... emo teen YA and emo teen fanfic does. Sometimes it is easy to go with 'the world is against me' and thus easy to wallow in stories of heroines (or heroes) where everything is pretty literally entirely against them. They suffer and endure so that we feel a bit validated in our own mundane angst. I think one of the appeals in the more successful uses of the trope is...
Well, there's this like in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode "Fool for Love" where the pre-vampire Spike (William the Bloody) plaintively says to the woman who is about to emotionally sucker-punch him: "If you could only see me."
I'm pondering if one of the appeals of "the long suffering heroine" tropes is that someone "SEES" the suffering -- usually in the story. I say this because it strikes me that this is a crucial part of both of the stories that I liked that employed the trope (and was somewhat missing in the one that I didn't). In the ones that I liked, not only did the heroine suffer to hell and back, but there was a character who resisted feeling sympathy for the character only to slowly recognize the amazing inner strength and courage of the long suffering heroine.
I think this may in fact be as much part of the emo teen appeal as "the world is out to get me" part of it. Not only is the world out to get them, but FINALLY someone NOTICED! (And this is at least partly where Hurt/Comfort weighs in).
Is this part of the itch that the trope is scratching? (I laughed at one of the Good Reads reviews I read for one of these two books. It was a very negative review (because it truly is an insane pile-on of horrible things happening), which stated "I cannot stomach this book because the heroine should have killed her family." I laughed because, though I had liked the book, I totally agreed with that point.)
The last thing I noticed about what worked (for me) in the two stories that successfully used "the long suffering heroine" trope, had to do with the heroine herself. The two I liked had heroines who coped long after my own (or most mortals) coping skills would've run out. When pile-on had reached the point of any sane person giving the hell up and laying down and crying forever, the heroines kept trying to cope... and I think that was why, though I'm not a fan of pile ons, I actually had appreciation for the lead characters. In one, no matter how awful -- truly awful -- things were she kept trying to find some way to be forgiving and hopeful (she was also a master of denial, but in her case it seemed a necessary coping mechanism). I realize this was what got the negative view from the "The heroine should've killed her family" reviewer, because in a certain light this determined reaching for a bright side is being a doormat. But in this particular story I felt that it was actually this particular aspect of the character -- her determination to try to find something positive -- that explained her survival (plus the denial. Usually denial frustrates the hell out of me, but in this story I actually sort of saw how it worked as a mechanism of survival). If she hadn't been that kind of person, she probably would've curled up and gone catatonic... or murdered her family (seriously, it involved incestuous sexual abuse. She pretty much deserved to murder her family... even though she didn't). Conversely, the second heroine being lambasted by the "long suffering heroine" trope was the exact opposite. She saw no bright side left. In her own words, her dreams had died. She was not still trying to eek out hope... but she was just determined to survive. Just living through it became her focus.
... And I think this may be the third in the three-legged stool supporting when the "long suffering heroine" (or just as easily the long suffering hero) trope is effective.
1) Occasionally, we don't mind a bit of self-pity by proxy. We feel like the world is out to get us sometimes and so we experience someone who the world is out to get (makes our own problems pale by comparison). Followed by:
2) The validation of their suffering being recognized, 'seen' and...
3) Heroism achieved in the ability to carry on 'heroicaly' when we know that odds are we, the readers, would be curled up in the fetal position sobbing by that point.
At least I think those are elements of when these types of stories work.
(Of the books that inspired this particular pondering, one was in an e-kindle bundle of 10 books that I cannot find anywhere as a stand alone. Another is this one (trigger warning for rape, incest,... and a godawful family. And I'm not saying that the story/writing is 'good' (here, have a fine helping of cheese with that) just that it trades on 'martyr for a heroine' trope, and does so in a way that I felt incredibly sympathetic for the heroine.).
