Death by Sex: Difference between revisions
Rescuing 1 sources and tagging 0 as dead. #IABot (v2.0beta9)
(update links) |
(Rescuing 1 sources and tagging 0 as dead. #IABot (v2.0beta9)) |
||
Line 214:
** Meanwhile, by contrast, the entirely '''un'''repentant and equally married Prince is punished by ''hooking up with'' ''[[Sleeping Beauty]]''. Then again, who was expecting something by [[Stephen Sondheim]] to be ''fair''?
* In Victorian theatre, the only accepted way for a "fallen" woman - that is, any woman who had sex outside of marriage, or had an affair - to redeem herself was to die. Preferably after seeing the horrible consequences of her actions. One notable example is ''East Lynne'': A woman is convinced by a rival of her husband that her husband is having an affair, and so agrees to run off with him. The husband supposedly was meeting the woman for purely innocent reasons. Which is why he's married to her in the second act. The man his first wife ran off with abandons her, so she returns to her former house in disguise as a governess to her own child. When she reveals herself to him, he dies. Everyone then finds out who she is, but she falls ill and dies shortly thereafter. And this was considered one of the classics of Victorian literature and theatre. Her melodramatic cry on her child's death, "Dead! And never called me mother!" is still somewhat well-known today.
** Aversion: W. S. Gilbert (of [[Gilbert and Sullivan]])'s 1874 play, ''[https://web.archive.org/web/20060901090614/http://diamond.boisestate.edu/gas/other_gilbert/html/charity.html Charity]'' has up a woman, Mrs. Van Burgh, who was virtuous in every way, except she had never actually married her husband. She has spent all her time since his death doing good deeds, and trying to rescue other women back to the path of virtue. Victorian theatre demanded that she be ruined, and die in order to be redeemed. Gilbert allowed her to be ruined by public opinion and the hypocritical antagonist (he lectures Ruth, one of the women Mrs. Van Burgh gave a second chance to, on how abominable it is that she is being foisted on society as if she was an unfallen woman. Guess who had seduced her?) - but then both Mrs. Van Burgh and Ruth head off to Australia as traveling companions for a colonial bishop whose son is in love with Mrs. Van Burgh's daughter. You wouldn't believe the uproar this caused in the newspapers of the time, which fell over themselves trying to see which could declare the play more immoral.
** Another aversion. Dickens' ''[[David Copperfield (novel)|David Copperfield]]'' has Emily, David's first love, dumping her fiancé Cam right before their wedding to run away with David's best friend James Steerforth and become his concubine. She ultimately lives, and after [[Break the Cutie|LOTS of misfortune (principally, Steerforth being an absolute]] [[Jerkass]] [[Break the Cutie|to her)]], she goes to Australia with her father Daniel. The book also includes Emily's best friend Martha, [[Hooker with a Heart of Gold|a prostitute]], who helps Daniel and David to find the missing Emily and also survives.
** Dickens used the trope straight in ''[[Oliver Twist]]'' with poor Nancy, who also was a prostitute and ended up dead.
| |||