Un Unfinished Meta: The Construction of Elena Gilbert
color:black">My problem with Elena starts with her desirable qualities. In this essay, I will talk about the flaws apparent to me in the way the Elena character is constructed. I would talk about the flaws that the character has within her universe, but I feel that would be a mess of jumbled thoughts because I don’t feel like she’s written as having any. A flawed character, to me, is a character with something(s) that is acknowledged by other characters/the character itself/the narrative as less than perfect/not admirable. Here is an example of the narrative presenting a character’s views/way of thinking as less than perfect: Bonnie had a stance where she was against the Salvatore brothers. Yes, the producers were behind her on this, yet she was written as the one that needed to come to Elena’s side, not the other way around. They did not even write Elena to meet her halfway. Bonnie’s way of thinking is what needed to be modified. Bonnie is judgmental (Damon has called her on it, Caroline voiced it when they were talking about Jeremy, and when they were talking by the lake, Elena basically said that she wasn’t updating Bonnie on her life because she knew Bonnie would judge it: “You’ve made it pretty clear where you stand”). This leads her to stigmatize others like Stefan (once upon a time),
Damon, and Caroline (once upon a time), but when she does this she is always left on the outside looking in. Also, the narrative has handed Bonnie a consequence, both good and bad, each time she made a decision that went against the group, any group. She did not disable the device when Elena, Damon, and Stefan wanted to: the town was saved, but Mayor Lockwood and Anna died and Caroline landed at the hospital. She decided to give her best friend vampire blood whereas Elena did not want to: Caroline did not die, but she became a vampire and now her way of living has completely changed. Caroline and Jeremy told her that Luka had had enough of the hypnotism, but Bonnie went against that thought and pushed on: she got the result they needed, but her powers are stolen in the very next
episode.
color:black">Caroline is another example of a flawed character. The character herself, other characters, and the text constantly highlight her flaws. Matt has a list that he is ready to read off whenever he meets up with her. Damon called her useless. Caroline calls herself shallow. She felt second-best and short compared to Elena. She acknowledges that sometimes Bonnie and Elena tell each other things and keep her out of it. Tyler called her a bitchy little twit. All of these were presented as something that Caroline needed to fix about herself/grow out of. Damon called her Vampire Barbie which comes with all of the connotations involved when a blonde White woman is called a Barbie. The narrative gave her a consequence for sleeping with Damon, a consequence she was aware of and that she acknowledged and that affected her demeanor.
color:black">On the other hand, I feel that Elena does not have flaws within the TVD universe. Everyone else has flaws that Elena usually helps them with, and she herself just has things that happen to her.
color:black">That is the crux of the issue: the flaws that I see in Elena’s construction as a character are not meant to be seen. Elena possesses all of the desirable qualities of a heroine/protagonist and basically none of the undesirable ones, and if her desirable qualities appear problematic, they are not acknowledged. Let’s dive into them.
color:black"> She’s warm, kind, caring, selfless, and empathizes with everyone. Unless you’re Jonas and Luka Martin or
Mason Lockwood. If you’re those people then she won’t even blink at your death. Am I forgetting anyone?
color:black">She’s smart, spunky (Damon’s words after seeing her for a minute), and giving. She can think on her feet: first grabbing all the pencils to stab the vampire, then she broke a mop with her knee, and when Rose was attacking her she gouged her wound and then instead of running out of the house, she runs deeper into it (more on this later). Afterwards, she broke a chair apart with her foot and made a perfect stake (Julie Plec said it was a great Buffy moment). Then, she was so quick on her feet that she knew to take her jacket off to throw Brady off of her scent (which I thought was smart, and I remembered Bonnie did something similar when she took her jacket off to make Ben think she was just going to the bathroom).
Aside (excerpt from a conversation with ladygawain ): Here's why I found Elena taking her jacket off to mislead Brady as slightly unbelievable. It was a very practical move. And you're right that Elena is a romantic character. Here is why Bonnie taking her jacket off to make Ben think she was really going to the bathroom, and doing something as simple as opening the
doors when Katherine was choking her was easier to swallow: it's the way the characters are written. It's the way they're presented as thinking. Bonnie was the one who had to bring Elena down to earth wrt Stefan. She was the one who asked questions like, "What kind of future would you have? What do you know about him? Maybe he's a serial killer." She told Caroline to tell her mom about Damon. She freaked the heck out about Stefan. A character like that I would buy doing these simple, life-saving moves. Elena? Her answer to Bonnie was that Stefan made her happy, she trusts him, for the first time she felt good and it was because of Stefan, etc. Elena seems like the type who would look for an external weapon (like the pencils) then looking for something on her (like her jacket).
color:black">Next, Elena is inquisitive. She thinks Stefan is suspicious, so she will use her connections and go down to the news station to look into him. She will question her kidnappers (Anna and Rose). She wants to know what is going on in her loved ones’ lives, but that only applies to Stefan and Damon (and sometimes Jeremy). When they clam up, Elena takes that as her cue to be more forceful in her asking. She can’t wait 10 minutes to be filled in on something (Plan B when Stefan told her he was with Damon and Bonnie). However, when Bonnie tells her she does not want to talk, to leave her alone, she’ll take that as her cue to give her space (and then expect her to comfort her after her meeting with her birth mother went south). Elena is inquisitive, so she will skip school and go down to the tomb to interrogate Katherine. Elena is inquisitive, but she has never inquired about her best friend’s life as a witch (how did she get so strong? How can she read that language in the grimoire? How do her powers work? How many powers does she have? Elena does not ask). Elena is inquisitive, but she does not seem to care to know when, how, why, and to what degree her best
friend and brother are into each other.
color:black">Elena is understanding. She will understand a serial killer to the same degree as she’ll understand her best friend. She has room for all of them. She’ll understand Caroline’s insecurities towards her. This does not annoy her, make her angry, make her feel weird, and it doesn’t even give her an ego boost. She just takes it in, and that’s about it. When Caroline told her she felt like her Bonnie backup, Elena just stood there staring at her. And then this aspect of their friendship was completely dropped in favor of Caroline calling Elena her best friend (whereas in season 1, it was Bonnie that seemed to be bringing them together). Peoples’ personalities are supposed to increase when they become a vampire, yet the producers wiped out Caroline’s insecurities towards Elena so that Elena would not have to deal with that and instead had Elena be the girlfriend that was there for Caroline during her transition. And when Elena found out Caroline had been trying to sabotage her relationship? She did not get mad. She understood (of course). Elena does not get mad at anyone except Stefan and Damon (and Jeremy back in early season 1). When Bonnie did not disable the device, Elena was not angry. She did not apologize for putting Bonnie in that position either. But Bonnie apologized for lying.
color:black">After the device episode, Elena lets Bonnie keep her distance from her. Because Elena will fight tooth and nail to fix her relationships, except when she doesn’t (Stefan and Damon vs. Bonnie). And then when they meet up, Bonnie wants to know where she and Elena stand. It’s not that Elena wants to exclude Bonnie (of course not!), it’s that she knows where Bonnie stands on everything, so she’s keeping her distance as respect to her wishes. It is Bonnie who needs to come around to Elena’s side, not the other way around, not even a little bit. In fact, Bonnie has never aired her grievances to Elena. Elena has never had to sit there and listen to where Bonnie’s coming from. She just knows, and
that is enough. She does not need to keep up with whether or not Bonnie’s opinions are changing. The one time Bonnie tries to talk to her about all of these things (Brave New World), Elena silences her because she was feeling
salty about the fact that Damon killed her brother (she’s over it now). Bonnie got choked by Katherine the episode prior, but she could not talk about it because Elena was not in the mood. However, Elena will go on a road trip with
Bonnie’s attempted murderer two episodes after the fact, asking him things like,“Am I safe with you?”
color:black">And then she stops Lee from killing Damon. Because Elena is also able to get through to people/talk them down, which I guess goes with her understanding them. She got through to Lee and stopped him from killing Damon. She got through to Bonnie and stopped her from killing Damon. She got through to Stefan and stopped him from killing Damon after he killed Lexi. But when she found out that Damon turned her birth mother, and Stefan tried to explain, she
asked Stefan, “Why are you protecting him?!” Because he’s his brother, Elena, what’s your excuse?
color:black">Elena is brave. This is where I’m going to bring up her running deeper into the house instead of running out of it. Because Elena is brave to the point of ridiculousness. Elena is human, but the more episodes that air, the less she seems to remember this. Elena gets more badass as the show goes on, but I don’t see that as a plus. She does not seem to recognize her mortality. She’ll run into a house full of vampires armed with nothing but a syringe of vervain. Damon was not being a macho pig by telling her to stay out of it. He actually had a point and was making sense. She is human, and it is a house full of centuries-old vampires! She’ll run after Stefan into a burning basement (hoping to do what, exactly?) She gets slapped down by a really old vampire, and she gets right back up (and with more questions to boot. And then after the kidnapping ordeal, she will totally understand Rose. Elena does not hold grudges. Clearly). She’ll climb down a well, get bitten by snakes, come back up, and cut her hand to feed her vampire boyfriend. Elena will happily babysit, by herself, a vampire who has been bitten by a werewolf. No, she is not going to say, “Damon, are you
crazy? I’m only human. What if she kills me?! She can run faster than I can!” No, she won’t say any of this because she is brave, and she can do it. She does not know how a vampire can get once bitten by a werewolf, and what’s worse it’s like she can’t even imagine it. And then when things do go south with Rose, she does not think to run out of the house. She runs deeper into it. I would have liked it better if she had rightly told Damon that she couldn’t do it. But no, Elena’s place on the bravery meter is constantly moving up as evidenced by…
color:black">…She stabbed herself. She hesitated a little, but in the end she had no qualms about driving a dagger into her gut. And then she spoke through the pain. And then she stabbed an original vampire. All while bleeding out. I would have been more impressed if she didn’t go through with it. If she had thought, “Well I tried to bluff, but he didn’t buy it. No way am I going to drive this dagger into my gut. Plan b, plan b!” But no, she did it becauseshe is not afraid and she is brave. brings me to…
Aside (excerpt from a conversation with ladygawain):About Jeremy, now HE I could see driving a knife in his gut. There's your point about wanting to die to be with Vicky, then wanting to die to turn off his feelings, there's him running in the tomb for Bonnie, but most important: he sliced his hand just to expose Anna as a vampire!
color:black">…Elena is so brave and giving, she will sacrifice herself for the people she loves. She is, after all, the ultimate giver. Her plan to sacrifice herself still makes absolutely no sense to me. Klaus wants you dead, Elena. So you’re going to make things…easier for him? Elena is in danger of being sacrificed, but her immediate thought is not to fight back (remember I said she doesn’t recognize her own mortality), it’s to get herself killed. By doing this, dialog has, of course, concentrated on Elena. Not on the witch that needs to perform the sacrifice, not on the werewolf that will be sacrificed, and not on the vampire that will be sacrificed (Caroline was turned for the specific reason of being sacrificed. Elena knows this from Katherine. Did she just not tell Caroline this? Is that why everyone is still focused on saving Elena and not on saving themselves as well?). And wanting to sacrifice yourself “For The People You Love” is not the same thing as wanting to sacrifice yourself for one specific person: Stefan, Damon, Jeremy, Bonnie, Caroline, Jenna. Just one person. That a different kind of bravery and dedication, and Elena is written as valuing everyone’s life equally, thus she will sacrifice herself for them as a group, never for one of them as an individual. I do not think she’sas dedicated to these people on individual basis as she is to them as a group.
color:black">Elena has qualities that will attract a guy like Matt, a guy like Stefan, and a guy like Damon. These are all, of course, her good qualities. Here’s the kicker: she has time for all 3. She sees something in all 3, because Elena is not the type to say, “You’re not my type. You’re cute, but I’m just not interested.” She’s saying this to Damon now, but we know the producers are actively working to change it. So yes, she has time for all 3.
color:black">Elena does not have guys falling for her left and right. She just has people willing to die for her left and right. Stefan can’t think of a better reason to die. Neither can Damon. For a long time it seemed Bonnie couldn’t either until they revealed her motivation in episode 17. Still, a good chunk of Bonnie’s screen time was spent saving Elena. She physically suffered for Elena’s safety. Jon came back to save her. Isobel’s back to lend a hand. Katherine says she needs to be protected and is trying to save her. And by virtue of being her brother, I’m going to add Jeremy on the willing to die for her list though he is seriously the one who’s least gung-ho/vocal about it. color:black">
Edit: Elena does not get in over her head. Bonnie was in over her head when she thought she had enough power to bring down the seal and she ended up almost killing Luka. Damon was in over his head when he killed Mason and angered Katherine, or pissed Jules off which lead to Rose getting killed. As a matter of fact, Damon's in over his head all the time. In Elena's case, on top of the Rose situation there's the fact that she made a deal with an Original vampire and when it's revealed that Elijah does plan to kill her as part of the sacrifice...she already knows. She was savvy enough to read between the lines. Getting tricked is for suckers like Bonnie (Ben, the Martins). Questioning the merit of relationships is for suckers like Caroline (Tyler). Even making wrong decisions is for people like Damon. Has Elena made one (acknowledged) bad decision? A mistake? Something she thought was right but turned out to be wrong? In my opinion, Elena is in over her head with the Salvatores. She misjudged those relationships, especially the one she has with Damon, but no matter times Damon does her wrong or how many lives Stefan will take, the decision to get/stay involved with the Salvatores will never be painted as Elena's mistake/error in judgment.