Pure Princesses and Fallen Angels: A Study of Two Literary Archetypes This week has been a week of profound, pensive thought - as many weeks are for me, but this one in particular has been notable, if only in that I have been thinking about high school more than usual. I am not nostalgic for that particular period of my life; on the contrary, while I will concede that it has brought me many friends whom I care to keep for the rest of my life, and has taught me many lessons, I remember it as largely a time of pain, of severe mental anguish, of the inflicting of scars which, though visible, will never be erased. As I write this entry, I am reminded of an entry which Michelle wrote some time ago about her childhood. She wrote of living vicariously through the books she would read silently, on the playground, in lieu of having fun with actual friends, of which she had none, she says. Children, as many people know, are cruel, albeit innocently cruel, and cannot appreciate the full consequences of their actions, and are simply too busy being children to really sympathize with others. Nevertheless, even children need someone to sympathize with them. That is why many of the more pensive children who have been ostracized in their lives turn to books. I was such a child. Perhaps I was not ostracized to the fullest extent by my peers; I was certainly not a pariah. I did have many friends, but such friendships were formed because I basically let them treat me as they wished. Hence, there was reading, writing and introspective thought. I could lose myself in my reading if I so wished, imagining a world where I was loved, not simply tolerate it. When I learned writing, I learned to create the world by myself. It was my way of finding, or creating, people who could identify, who could sympathize with me. The more literature I read, the more characters I found in whom I saw myself - something I notably lacked in real life. Still, even as I found characters whom I identified with, I found a whole wealth of characters, also, whom I enviously and desperately wanted to be. In literature, there are usually two female archetypes. The first is the beautiful, virtuous, virginal paragon of femininity, who embodies all the female attributes which the (typically male) author idealizes. More often than not, she is a doe-eyed innocent, unaware of the love which the protagonist feels for her. And thus through her innocence, she becomes an object of desire for many characters in the novel. The second archetype is usually the object of pity and sympathy on the reader's part. She is passionate, sometimes even sexual, and feels the purest kind of love for the protagonist - a love that is often unrequited. She is no ingenue, though the sadness of her station and the depth of her love often lend her a kind of innocence. Whether she dies, is exiled, or just sort of fades into the background, she very rarely ends up with the man she loves. I identified strongly with the latter, but always wanted to be the former. The summer before eighth grade, I undertook the gargantuan task of reading all of Les Misßrables. When people see the play, when they read the book, they root for Eponine. Their hearts go out to Eponine. She is the symbol of wasted beauty, of wasted life, of tragedy in its fullest sense. Of unfulfilled potential, of something that could have and should have been. Through the musical, or the book, one sincerely hopes that Eponine ends up with Marius, and one can hardly believe she dies in a Paris gutter, when she has sacrificed so much for a man who is blinded by the beautiful archetype number one, Cosette. After all, what the hell has Cosette ever done in the book, besides look pretty and have no personality? I finished Bread and Wine a few days ago. It is Cristina Colmartini, the "living saint," the woman who wants to devote her life to religious service, the chaste-as-ice maiden who is beautiful but untouchable as the statue of Mary, who wins the love of Pietro Spina. Bianchina Girasole, by contrast - a real woman, one of flesh and blood, a woman who has lost her virginity but whose love is pure nonetheless - does not win the love of Pietro, who is more than content to use the fact that she is unconditionally in love with him to send her on dangerous missions to Rome on his behalf. There is a glaring amount of injustice in such literature, and sadly, such is the way of the world as well. I think back to high school, that tumultuous time in my life, and I have always been the one who has loved passionately, unconditionally, and unhesitantly. I have often heard the gripe of my male friends about women: that they reject the genuinely "good" guy, almost always pursuing the jerkoff of a guy who beats his girlfriend, hoping that they will be the one to change him. But men, while they smile at girls like me, and perhaps grant us their quiet respect, they admire, fall for, and seek the Cosettes and the Cristinas of this world. This is my gripe with men. I wonder, because I fall into the second archetype, if I will, in fact, get my fairy tale ending. If, perhaps, one day, the depth and purity of my love will not be in vain. Perhaps the psychologist in many of you will assert that I seek out such situations in which I will inevitably set myself up for failure, and I assure you that you are wrong. There is nothing more that I want for myself than Cosette's ending. I have, in fact, devoted my life, short though it has been thus far, to seeking out a man with whom I can fulfill that. Perhaps I have found him, but I am scared to death of losing that which I have found. I am scared of being Eponine. It is a fate which I seek to avoid with all my being. back to thoughts home