Know Your Worth - The Question of Equality in Fictional Couples
I won’t deny it; I like romance. For me, a romance should be an equal partnership of respect and passion and love between people.
But, of course, what defines “equal?” For example, fans of the Tony Stark/Pepper Potts cite them as equals, even though Tony Stark is a technological genius and billionaire with a super-powered mechanical suit and Pepper isn’t. They’re considered equals because of their personalities and complementary strengths. Pepper may not be a physical fighter, like Tony is, or have the same type of intellect that he does, but she is nonetheless a smart, capable, and determined person who is able to hold her own with him and isn’t afraid to stand up to him. So, in terms of being his equal, her strengths and personality are equal in terms of being complementary, rather than being the same.
However, I want to focus on the notion of equality in terms of the couple being matched in the same field and on the same level. Because one thing that I find interesting is the idea of a fictional couple whose participants are matched in skills, strengths, and hobbies to the point of being able to compete with each other in those areas.
For example, there have been real-life couples who did share common interests, careers, and skills. Pierre and Marie Curie, Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Frieda Kahlo and Diego Rivera, etc. But how many fictional couples can say the same? And what happens when an author tries to create this kind of equal partnership?
For instance, in the Harry Potter fandom, there are two couples who are supposed to be equals of each other in terms of interests and abilities: Gellert Grindelwald/Albus Dumbledore and Harry Potter/Ginny Weasley. Dumbledore tells Harry that he was attracted to Gellert for his brilliance, imagination, ambition, and magical talent, all of which rivaled his own. After shutting himself away from the world and from his family, Albus had finally found someone he could confide in, understand him, and work on the same level with him. The two boys plotted and schemed together, each invigorated by the other’s energy and brilliance. So, in many respects, they were each other’s equals, matched in almost every respect, able to understand each other in a way that most people couldn’t.
Then there is the pairing of Ginny Weasley/Harry Potter. Now while Harry and Ginny don’t share the same academic interests, they do share the same interest and skill in Quidditch. However, what I find interesting is that they didn’t start this way. Harry (and the reader) didn’t see Ginny’s prowess in Quidditch until the sixth book. Until HBP, Ginny was a relatively normal and ordinary girl. She wasn’t Harry’s equal in terms of fame, magical ability, athletics, intellect, or any other area. But when it came time for Ginny to become Harry’s girlfriend, suddenly she did become his equal, at least in Quidditch. And, according to interviews with J.K. Rowling, she made Ginny a Quidditch star so that she would be an equal to Harry.
Now consider the differences between the two pairings in how they were formed. Gellert didn’t suddenly become brilliant and talented; he was already brilliant and talented when Albus met him. JKR didn’t have to change him in order to make him suit Albus, since the reader already knew that Gellert Grindelwald was a Dark Lord from the first book, and thus could assume that Gellert was a powerful wizard. And since their romance was doomed to tragedy, Gellert didn’t have to prove that he was ‘worthy’ of Albus, thus leaving no question of why Albus fell in love with him. On the other hand, Ginny, in a way, had to become Harry’s equal in order to be ‘worthy’ of him.
A similar thing happened in the Artemis Fowl books. Once Artemis became a teenager, Eoin Colfer created Minerva Paradizo, another child prodigy, to be his love interest. And, like J.K. Rowling, Colfer specifically stated that he made her a child prodigy so that she would be “a girl for Arty.” In other words, so that she would be worthy of him.
This pattern of creating female love interests to be ‘worthy’ of male protagonists is interesting because it hardly happens the other way around. When an author creates a male love interest for a female protagonist, there’s not that much talk about the male love interest needing to be equal to her so that he’s ‘worthy’ of her. In fact, in a lot of YA books with female protagonists, the male love interest is often held up to be superior to her. The female protagonist is this plain, ordinary girl, and the male love interest is the impossibly handsome and strong (often supernatural) boy. There’s no talk of the boy needing to be as intelligent as the girl or share the same hobbies as her in order to be equal to her.
One may argue that this is the case because there really aren’t that many supremely talented female protagonists. There aren’t as many female child prodigies, there aren’t as many female warrior protagonists, etc. whose skills are so far and beyond the ordinary that any romantic partner of theirs simply must be on the same level in order to understand them.
Now, of course, the existence of female superheroes (or superheroines, whichever term you prefer) seems to belie this. But what are the romances in comics, most of the time? They’re usually between fellow superheroes or they’re between a male superhero and his mortal wife/girlfriend. Superman and Lois, Spiderman and Mary Jane, Iron Man and Pepper, Thor and Jane, etc. Not many female superheroes have a mortal husband/boyfriend. Wonder Woman and Steve Rogers, of course, is an exception to this. But who is Steve Rogers? Is he as powerful as Wonder Woman? No. He doesn’t even have superpowers. He’s just a regular human guy. He apparently does not need to be ‘worthy’ of Wonder Woman in the sense of being equal to her in power in order to be considered a viable love interest.
Big Barda and Mr. Miracle is another exception. While Mr. Miracle/Scott Free is a fellow superhero, not only is he less powerful than Barda, he’s also shorter than her. But the selling point of their marriage isn’t that Mr. Miracle is worthy of Big Barda, but that he’s confident enough to not mind that his wife is stronger and taller than he is.
And speaking of the superhero marriages, what has recently happened in comics? DC split up Superman and Lois Lane and then split up Wonder Woman and Steve Rogers just so that Superman and Wonder Woman could hook up. But what was the reasoning for this? Was it because Steve Rogers wasn’t worthy of Wonder Woman and thus the creators paired her up with a superhero who was?
No. The whole pairing was about Superman. The reason for the breakup was based on the argument that Lois Lane wasn’t worthy of Superman because she doesn’t have superpowers. There wasn’t much talk about Steve Rogers not deserving Wonder Woman, no, it was all about how Wonder Woman would suit Superman. How she would be his equal and thus be a worthy partner for him.
And there’s another interesting side to this. Once Minerva Paradizo appeared and once Ginny Weasley became Harry’s love interest, both characters received much backlash from fans. Holly/Artemis shippers accused Minerva of being a Mary Sue who stole Artemis away from Holly, and a lot of HP fans accused Ginny of being a Mary Sue whose transformation came from nowhere. Minerva and Ginny were created in order to be ideal love interests for the male protagonists of their respective series, but were still received negatively by large portions of their fandoms.
The same fandoms, I remind you, who generated many slash pairings founded on the very same basis of equality that Colfer and Rowling were trying to achieve with Minerva and Ginny.
For example, many Harry Potter slash fanfics try to explain their pairings by stating that the male characters involved are equals in some fashion and thus are the only ones who will be able to understand each other. Tom Riddle and Harry Potter are equals because they’re both linked by Harry’s Horcrux and their shared past. Draco Malfoy and Harry Potter are equals because they’re rivals and they’re both adept at Quidditch, as are Cedric Diggory and Harry Potter. Sirius Black and James Potter are equals because they’re both clever enough to become Animagi and create the Marauder’s Map, etc.
But when Ginny is Harry’s equal because they’re both adept at Quidditch, suddenly the romance isn’t as believable. Now, granted, Ginny’s status as a Quidditch player was introduced much later in the books than Draco’s or Cedric’s, so it was perceived as forced and unrealistic. But JKR tried to do the same thing that many slash fanfic authors did: establish a romance on the basis of the two people as equals in some field.
The opposite happened with the Gellert Grindelwald/Albus Dumbledore pairing. Once the initial shock of Dumbledore’s confirmed homosexuality wore off, nobody argued that Gellert was a Gary Stu/Marty Stu or that the romance was unconvincing. Of course, Gellert didn’t have much rivals in the romance department, given Dumbledore’s advanced age and character status. Nobody was clamoring for Dumbledore to have a romance the way that they were for Harry, the protagonist. Everyone accepted that Gellert and Albus were equals and soulmates. But the same did not hold true for Ginny and Harry. But why is that?
After all, isn’t the notion of equality the purported reason for many slash pairings, including ones involving enemies? One of the reasons why many people ship Sherlock/Moriarty is because the two of them are equally matched in intelligence. The same goes for pretty much any hero/villain slash pairing. There’s already tension from the two’s antagonism towards each other and they have to be similar on some level in order to sufficiently oppose each other.
In fact, that’s one of the reasons why the Irene Adler/Sherlock Holmes ship has been so popular, because Irene is one of the very few people who defeated Sherlock at his own game. Thus proving the high level of her intelligence, thus proving that she was ‘worthy’ of him.
However, the Irene/Sherlock pairing is often cast as a relationship between the hero and the femme fatale, like other pairings such as Batman/Catwoman, Hercule Poirot/Vera Russakoff, and any noir hero/anti-hero with his femme fatale. The attraction is mostly portrayed as sexual, rather than a meeting of the minds, which is usually the case with male hero/male villain pairings.
So, this noticeable lack of canon female/male pairings where the two are intellectual rivals or worthy rivals in any shared field leads to the question: why? What is this attributed to? Why are there so many books and films featuring two boys or men who oppose each other or work together in the same field as equals, but not as many where that’s the case for a man and a woman? Why is it easier to believe that two men could be rivals and equals and be the only ones to understand each other, but when it’s a man and a woman, it’s somehow more difficult to swallow?
Now, of course, one could argue that this is historically based. For centuries, women weren’t allowed to compete with men or even participate in the areas of sports, academics, art, etc. and even today, certain areas are more male-dominated than others. But since women have made so many strides in equality since those times and since there are indeed fields where women work alongside with men, why aren’t there more stories that reflect that? Why aren’t there more romances that reflect that? Especially in the realm of fantasy or science-fiction, where real-life history doesn’t have to apply?
Fans have joked about whether or not Dumbledore’s romance would have been explicitly stated in the books if Gellert Grindelwald had been a woman. But what if that were indeed the case? If Albus had told Harry about how he was swept away by the brilliance and ambition of Greta Grindelwald, who plotted to rule over Muggles and became a Dark Lady. What if two of the Marauders were female and one had the role of co-leader (i.e. James or Sirius), who was best friends with her male counterpart? Or, as many gender-bending fanfics and fanarts have speculated, if Harry Potter were female? If the Chosen One, the child whom the Dark Lord marked as his equal and then obsessively hunted down, were female?
This not only applies to heroes or love interests, but also to villains. As I stated before, the female opponents of male heroes tend to be femme fatales, who use their sexuality as a weapon. Now, of course, that could lead to a whole other discussion of why female villains are disproportionately sexualized over male villains. But for now, let’s just look at the implications of this. The female villain is often sexualized, which means that the hero doesn’t oppose her intellectually or politically or morally, the way that he would with a male villain. He opposes her in terms of being able to resist her wicked wiles. Something that rarely happens with male heroes and male villains because, like Javier Bardem’s character in “Skyfall,” it will inevitably draw accusations of “trying to turn the hero gay.” Thus, the female villain is not the hero’s ‘equal’ or‘rival’ because they’re not on the same playing field. She’s employing a weapon that the hero doesn’t have to, by virtue of being the heroic male. For instance, Poison Ivy tries to seduce Batman in order to defeat him; Bruce Wayne seduces women because that’s part of his character. But he never tries to seduce any female villains in order to win. In this case, seduction is a female weapon, not a male one.
And the same holds true for many female protagonists and their corresponding male villains. Whenever the villain tries to rape her or grope her or otherwise try to seduce her, he’s also illustrating that they’re not on the same playing field. The heroine (most often) doesn’t play along, and, unlike the scenario of the male superhero where the femme fatale’s seduction is meant to be partly titillating, the attempted seduction by the male villain will always carry an unspoken threat to the viewer because of the power imbalances between men and women in real-life society. It’s one thing when Poison Ivy tries to seduce Batman; it’s another when Frollo gropes Esmeralda. Both are perceived and characterized differently.
But, of course, this can be attributed to something else: a misplaced sense of chivalry. Writers don’t give many heroes female villains to punch because punching a woman is commonly seen as more awful than punching another man (due to sexism, but also to women generally being smaller and less physically strong than men). That’s why it’s a common trope in movies to see the hero fighting the male villain, but refusing to battle the female villain (who is commonly fought by the heroine or the hero’s female sidekick instead). While this trope may be well-meaning, it still suggests that the female villain isn’t equal to the hero, because he can’t bring himself to battle her the same way that he would a male villain. He allows her to punch him, but he won’t deign to punch her back, implying that he thinks that she’s weaker than him. (Of course, there are exceptions. For example, in the movie, “Man of Steel,” Superman showed no hesitation about fighting Faora, who was just as strong and fast as he was).
So, since there aren’t many female villains who oppose the male heroes intellectually or who are allowed to engage in one-on-one combat with the male heroes, it’s more difficult to perceive them as equals in the same way that one might view a male villain and a male hero. Thus, when there is canon romance or when there isn’t, and fans fill in the blanks, there isn’t that same sense of competition. The female villain isn’t ‘worthy’ of the male hero the same way that a male villain might be ‘worthy’ of a male hero in terms of being his equal (ex. Moriarty/Sherlock, Draco/Harry, etc.).
But now to get back to Ginny and Minerva. Fans have asked, “Isn’t there something wrong with the idea that Ginny and Minerva have to be on the exact same level as Harry and Artemis in order to ‘deserve’ them? Did Minerva really have to be another child prodigy in order to be ‘worthy’ of Artemis? Did Ginny really have to be a Quidditch star in order to be the right girl for Harry? What about couples like Pepper/Tony, Jane/Thor, Lois/Clark, etc. where the two aren’t evenly matched and yet are still equals in their relationships?”
This is a valid question. And the idea of women needing to be the equal of men in order to be worthy of them, but men not needing to be the equal of women certainly may say some things about society and sexism. But, for now, I’d like to read and hear about more stories where neither partner has to be “improved” or “changed” in order to be the intellectual or physical equal of each other, but already are that way, who have no problem competing with or cooperating with each other on the same level. For nothing else, I just think that it would be interesting.