have the Petrova post I've been sitting on for weeks.
My take on the metaphor at the heart of TVD is scattered far and wide, in a few related posts and episode reviews, dropped willy-nilly throughout comments sections across the land. But I don’t think I’ve ever put together all the parts of why I think the doppelganger part of the mythology is a stone cold brilliant metaphor for a particular type of femininity.
(Elena’s a controversial character, I know? The perspective I’m writing this from is that I love the character but don’t for a moment buy the St. Elena crap. For discussion, a few things to remember:
(1) This is a feminism-informed analysis of the doppelganger as an embodiment of femininity. It’s not about whether Elena is a feminist character in either the Watsonian or Doylist sense, but please keep all basic feminism-checks in place.
(2) That said, there are a lot of reasons to have a negative or defensive reaction to this presentation of femininity, and I think it’d be unfair to expect self-censorship on that.
Basically! Everybody be cool, nobody be the Nice Girl Police. Also, this post is evolutionary psychology for social science majors. It’s a metaphor, go with it.)
Subjectification of object
Something we (“we” means “I, and anyone who will let me jabber on for more than five minutes”) talk a lot about is TVD’s particular twist on the vampire romance sub-genre. The best way I can describe it is the “subjectification of object.” Normally, we talk about objectification of young women like Elena. Young Gothic Heroine is ostensibly the center of the story, and instead she ends up being completely objectified, flattened into a tool for the development of the other two legs of the triangle. Dehumanized, even.
TVD does something very interesting when it inverts this trope. The show lays the objectification issue down on the table with the doppelganger mythology. Elena, as far as the mythological ‘verse is concerned, is not an autonomous person. She’s Katherine/Tatia/all the other Petrovas; they are all linked because they are the object. TVD flips that on its head by giving Elena (and Kat, who is important in a different way) some very rich characterization built around that mythology. The most important story of TVD is Elena’s coming of age while struggling with her role as object. She has become the subject. No longer is her story about the other two angles of the triangle.
Performative femininity
Outside of the individual narratives of the Petrova women, the doppelganger’s role in the series mythology is an exploration of feminine roles in society. The doppelganger has to be a creature of great power, with the existence of whole species resting on particular properties of her physical self. Because of this, there are very powerful institutions invested in ensuring that she cannot wrestle control of her body and her future. The role of doppelganger - something socially capable of presenting at all times as an appropriate object of desire - is a created phenomenon.
This phenomenon is not only created by the work that goes into a feminine experience. It is also created by social feminine conventions. Elena’s doppelganger looks are what brought her to the Salvatores’ attention, but it’s her own adeptness at feminine behaviors that has kept their power at her disposal all this time. The ability to gather allies who will sacrifice themselves to protect the doppelganger is a trait that goes right along with the lovely brown curls and graceful little figure. This kind of EQ is certainly soft power - it’s just not the kind of power you’d choose if you had any option other than "basically nothing."
And isn’t that why we really love Kat? Because she found the loophole, seized ownership over her own femininity, and is shamelessly using it to her own advantage. Because she can kill you and do her nails at the same time. That, I think, is what JP meant with that wonderful quote that “there is no love story more important than Katherine and her own independence and self-interest.” Katherine, by taking herself out of the doppelganger game with her voluntary vamping, also took control over the skills she gained out of it. She is deviant because the keystone of the doppelganger/patriarchy-approved femininity is a lack of self-interest.
That's not to say there's no power at all in the doppelganger. She is white, she is pretty (which in the modern context includes being very thin and visibly able-bodied), she has the economic and social assurances of wealth. She's a Betty Draper, she's a Sansa Stark. She's a bird in a gilded cage. Whether or not that's a relatable or sympathetic position seems to vary widely from viewer to viewer, but we respond to it so strongly because it is an omnipresent archetype made metaphysically huge.
Agency and power
And yet, those institutions also rely on the perpetual availability of their reproductive capacities. So the doppelganger needs to be protected, and to be unable to protect herself. It’s not enough that she be able to draw attention with her beauty. The doppelganger-object needs to be charismatic enough to draw a large crowd of powerful protectors around herself, and to win their favor enough that none of them will see the bigger picture enough to bail or take her out.
The S3 finale was (not unfairly) quite controversial. One aspect of it is that nobody brought up the option of removing the threat posed by Original Alaric by Elena voluntarily turning. I think as a breakdown in the logic of this script, it’s a perfectly fair criticism; however, it’s a mere replay of a much starker instance of the same issue at the end of S2. Damon’s ghastly behavior in those last few episodes works as a distraction from the fact that Elena’s refusal to acknowledge the possibility of turning on purpose then was similarly selfish.** The obvious plan of dosing Elena and letting Klaus do the decoy sacrifice wasn’t even an option. Everyone went apeshit and put their lives on the line - and John and Jenna (and Jules, an antagonist but still a person) were sacrificed - in order to protect not Elena’s continued existence, but her mere human biology.
[Edit, which I can't believe I just thought of now: why in the world else would Elijah behave as he did when he and Klaus found Katerina? Trying to talk Klaus out of getting what he wanted - HA - and relying on some magic potion which had only been tried in theory? If he was so nuts about Kat, why not just offer her his blood before Klaus does the sacrifice? Kat doesn't care about the terms of her survival as long as she gets to survive, so she'd likely have been amenable to turning. If they do that, Elijah gets his love alive, and Klaus gets the spell broken. As far as these characters' stated priorities are concerned, that was a win-win-win. It didn't happen because Elijah privileges Katherine's humanity to an immense degree. This is how virgin/whore dichotomies play out with even well-meaning men who do love the women in their lives.]
Maybe that’s a protagonist privilege thing, in that Elena’s allowed to be a criminally foolish risk-taker, comfortable in the knowledge that she’s sucking all of Mystic Falls into her vortex of supernatural lunacy, because it’s the easiest way for the narrative to create drama. Or maybe it’s by design. As much as I’m not a fan of using evo-psych with its just-so stories to condone real-world systems of oppression, I think it is exceptionally well-suited to a work of pulp fiction about a vampiric teenage love triangle. For whatever metaphysical reason, the Petrova line is built to be preserved whatever the cost, and so Elena (like Isobel, Katherine, and Tatia before her) has the psychosocial skills to distract people from the solutions which are best for themselves, for the world at large, and almost certainly for Elena herself. The Petrova women may be beautiful, they may be much-loved pearls of their respective societies, but ultimately that’s a distraction from the way the universe considers them prime breeding stock.*
And ah, yes. This show has some compelling stories to tell about motherhood, and so many of them come from the Petrova women. They give birth to the next carrier, preferably when they are young and unattached, and then become a sort of….maiden sacrifice. Tatia was a single mother; the Mikaelsens exploited her body in order to form the vampire line. We don’t know what happened to her after that. Katherine’s baby was taken away from her instantaneously, and Kat herself sent off in shame, where she became a vampire. Isobel, a teenage mother, agreed to an adoption and then disappeared. More slowly than the other ladies, but still, drawn into the dark. All of them, killed and let loose on the world only after their reproductive duties were tended to. Motherhood is the most! Important! Job! In! the world! You must (if you are The Right Kind Of Woman, natch) want, crave, NEED above all else to give the gift of the next generation to the world! It is so wonderful that you will desire it NO MATTER THE COST. The doppelganger curse is, ultimately, little better than that of the vampire or the werewolf.
The Right Kind Of Woman clause is really important to note. Doppelgangers are rare. Most women don’t even have access to this wildly uneasy type of power. Bonnie, the young woman of color, is not permitted to wield soft power in the same way Elena is. Abby (WOC) and Liz (queer-coded; at least confirmed as not particularly interested in this type of femininity) somewhat break the pattern of mother stories set forth by the Petrovas. Caroline, though she and Elena are equally privileged in larger societal frameworks, doesn’t have the interpersonal skills to utilize her femininity to her advantage.
Maybe that’s why S3 had to end up where it did. Escaping adolescence, in all its vulnerability and fertility, already crashes through the metaphysical rules keeping her in line. For Elena, vampirism isn’t a case of arrested development. It’s an acknowledgment that the expectations on the doppelganger, while they had very real consequences, were ephemeral and unsustainable. The transition, rather than freezing her in time, is the opportunity to grow up that this femininity would never have allowed.
*In case it's not clear, I don't think this type of self-presentation is an essential biological or genetic trait, any more than I think the werewolf curse means to suggest that the cycle of abuse is a genetic thing. The TVD mythology is highly naturalistic, and uses its supernatural zoology to create metaphor for real-world social phenomena. That's my interest in the doppelganger metaphor.
**For the record, I don’t think it’s immoral for Elena or anyone else to be self-interested. I just think it’s important to be clear that it’s not particularly moral, either. Her decision at the end of S2 wasn’t the selfless act of a martyr the kids want to think it was, it was amoral risk-seeking with catastrophic consequences.
(Elena’s a controversial character, I know? The perspective I’m writing this from is that I love the character but don’t for a moment buy the St. Elena crap. For discussion, a few things to remember:
(1) This is a feminism-informed analysis of the doppelganger as an embodiment of femininity. It’s not about whether Elena is a feminist character in either the Watsonian or Doylist sense, but please keep all basic feminism-checks in place.
(2) That said, there are a lot of reasons to have a negative or defensive reaction to this presentation of femininity, and I think it’d be unfair to expect self-censorship on that.
Basically! Everybody be cool, nobody be the Nice Girl Police. Also, this post is evolutionary psychology for social science majors. It’s a metaphor, go with it.)
Subjectification of object
Something we (“we” means “I, and anyone who will let me jabber on for more than five minutes”) talk a lot about is TVD’s particular twist on the vampire romance sub-genre. The best way I can describe it is the “subjectification of object.” Normally, we talk about objectification of young women like Elena. Young Gothic Heroine is ostensibly the center of the story, and instead she ends up being completely objectified, flattened into a tool for the development of the other two legs of the triangle. Dehumanized, even.
TVD does something very interesting when it inverts this trope. The show lays the objectification issue down on the table with the doppelganger mythology. Elena, as far as the mythological ‘verse is concerned, is not an autonomous person. She’s Katherine/Tatia/all the other Petrovas; they are all linked because they are the object. TVD flips that on its head by giving Elena (and Kat, who is important in a different way) some very rich characterization built around that mythology. The most important story of TVD is Elena’s coming of age while struggling with her role as object. She has become the subject. No longer is her story about the other two angles of the triangle.
Performative femininity
Outside of the individual narratives of the Petrova women, the doppelganger’s role in the series mythology is an exploration of feminine roles in society. The doppelganger has to be a creature of great power, with the existence of whole species resting on particular properties of her physical self. Because of this, there are very powerful institutions invested in ensuring that she cannot wrestle control of her body and her future. The role of doppelganger - something socially capable of presenting at all times as an appropriate object of desire - is a created phenomenon.
This phenomenon is not only created by the work that goes into a feminine experience. It is also created by social feminine conventions. Elena’s doppelganger looks are what brought her to the Salvatores’ attention, but it’s her own adeptness at feminine behaviors that has kept their power at her disposal all this time. The ability to gather allies who will sacrifice themselves to protect the doppelganger is a trait that goes right along with the lovely brown curls and graceful little figure. This kind of EQ is certainly soft power - it’s just not the kind of power you’d choose if you had any option other than "basically nothing."
And isn’t that why we really love Kat? Because she found the loophole, seized ownership over her own femininity, and is shamelessly using it to her own advantage. Because she can kill you and do her nails at the same time. That, I think, is what JP meant with that wonderful quote that “there is no love story more important than Katherine and her own independence and self-interest.” Katherine, by taking herself out of the doppelganger game with her voluntary vamping, also took control over the skills she gained out of it. She is deviant because the keystone of the doppelganger/patriarchy-approved femininity is a lack of self-interest.
That's not to say there's no power at all in the doppelganger. She is white, she is pretty (which in the modern context includes being very thin and visibly able-bodied), she has the economic and social assurances of wealth. She's a Betty Draper, she's a Sansa Stark. She's a bird in a gilded cage. Whether or not that's a relatable or sympathetic position seems to vary widely from viewer to viewer, but we respond to it so strongly because it is an omnipresent archetype made metaphysically huge.
Agency and power
And yet, those institutions also rely on the perpetual availability of their reproductive capacities. So the doppelganger needs to be protected, and to be unable to protect herself. It’s not enough that she be able to draw attention with her beauty. The doppelganger-object needs to be charismatic enough to draw a large crowd of powerful protectors around herself, and to win their favor enough that none of them will see the bigger picture enough to bail or take her out.
The S3 finale was (not unfairly) quite controversial. One aspect of it is that nobody brought up the option of removing the threat posed by Original Alaric by Elena voluntarily turning. I think as a breakdown in the logic of this script, it’s a perfectly fair criticism; however, it’s a mere replay of a much starker instance of the same issue at the end of S2. Damon’s ghastly behavior in those last few episodes works as a distraction from the fact that Elena’s refusal to acknowledge the possibility of turning on purpose then was similarly selfish.** The obvious plan of dosing Elena and letting Klaus do the decoy sacrifice wasn’t even an option. Everyone went apeshit and put their lives on the line - and John and Jenna (and Jules, an antagonist but still a person) were sacrificed - in order to protect not Elena’s continued existence, but her mere human biology.
[Edit, which I can't believe I just thought of now: why in the world else would Elijah behave as he did when he and Klaus found Katerina? Trying to talk Klaus out of getting what he wanted - HA - and relying on some magic potion which had only been tried in theory? If he was so nuts about Kat, why not just offer her his blood before Klaus does the sacrifice? Kat doesn't care about the terms of her survival as long as she gets to survive, so she'd likely have been amenable to turning. If they do that, Elijah gets his love alive, and Klaus gets the spell broken. As far as these characters' stated priorities are concerned, that was a win-win-win. It didn't happen because Elijah privileges Katherine's humanity to an immense degree. This is how virgin/whore dichotomies play out with even well-meaning men who do love the women in their lives.]
Maybe that’s a protagonist privilege thing, in that Elena’s allowed to be a criminally foolish risk-taker, comfortable in the knowledge that she’s sucking all of Mystic Falls into her vortex of supernatural lunacy, because it’s the easiest way for the narrative to create drama. Or maybe it’s by design. As much as I’m not a fan of using evo-psych with its just-so stories to condone real-world systems of oppression, I think it is exceptionally well-suited to a work of pulp fiction about a vampiric teenage love triangle. For whatever metaphysical reason, the Petrova line is built to be preserved whatever the cost, and so Elena (like Isobel, Katherine, and Tatia before her) has the psychosocial skills to distract people from the solutions which are best for themselves, for the world at large, and almost certainly for Elena herself. The Petrova women may be beautiful, they may be much-loved pearls of their respective societies, but ultimately that’s a distraction from the way the universe considers them prime breeding stock.*
And ah, yes. This show has some compelling stories to tell about motherhood, and so many of them come from the Petrova women. They give birth to the next carrier, preferably when they are young and unattached, and then become a sort of….maiden sacrifice. Tatia was a single mother; the Mikaelsens exploited her body in order to form the vampire line. We don’t know what happened to her after that. Katherine’s baby was taken away from her instantaneously, and Kat herself sent off in shame, where she became a vampire. Isobel, a teenage mother, agreed to an adoption and then disappeared. More slowly than the other ladies, but still, drawn into the dark. All of them, killed and let loose on the world only after their reproductive duties were tended to. Motherhood is the most! Important! Job! In! the world! You must (if you are The Right Kind Of Woman, natch) want, crave, NEED above all else to give the gift of the next generation to the world! It is so wonderful that you will desire it NO MATTER THE COST. The doppelganger curse is, ultimately, little better than that of the vampire or the werewolf.
The Right Kind Of Woman clause is really important to note. Doppelgangers are rare. Most women don’t even have access to this wildly uneasy type of power. Bonnie, the young woman of color, is not permitted to wield soft power in the same way Elena is. Abby (WOC) and Liz (queer-coded; at least confirmed as not particularly interested in this type of femininity) somewhat break the pattern of mother stories set forth by the Petrovas. Caroline, though she and Elena are equally privileged in larger societal frameworks, doesn’t have the interpersonal skills to utilize her femininity to her advantage.
Maybe that’s why S3 had to end up where it did. Escaping adolescence, in all its vulnerability and fertility, already crashes through the metaphysical rules keeping her in line. For Elena, vampirism isn’t a case of arrested development. It’s an acknowledgment that the expectations on the doppelganger, while they had very real consequences, were ephemeral and unsustainable. The transition, rather than freezing her in time, is the opportunity to grow up that this femininity would never have allowed.
*In case it's not clear, I don't think this type of self-presentation is an essential biological or genetic trait, any more than I think the werewolf curse means to suggest that the cycle of abuse is a genetic thing. The TVD mythology is highly naturalistic, and uses its supernatural zoology to create metaphor for real-world social phenomena. That's my interest in the doppelganger metaphor.
**For the record, I don’t think it’s immoral for Elena or anyone else to be self-interested. I just think it’s important to be clear that it’s not particularly moral, either. Her decision at the end of S2 wasn’t the selfless act of a martyr the kids want to think it was, it was amoral risk-seeking with catastrophic consequences.