Female Villains

Not all stories have baddies. The protagonists may be challenged by a mindless thing, such as an animal, a fire, a disease or a natural disaster. The greatest fiction does have villains, however. Even if the main threat is otherwise, there is evil to contend with.

The significance of villains is that they are people as the problem. They are deliberately a threat. To contend with them is a clash of wills. Even if sympathetic, the villain is the will to evil personified.

Men have always been the warriors. Women are seldom combatants. The heroes and villains of action-adventure contend with each other violently, thus, the heroes and villains are traditionally male characters.

The heroine and the villainous dominatrix are not new, but they have only recently become somewhat common. The female characters of action-adventure are traditionally the damsel in distress and the seductress. The usual exceptions were the hero’s mother or the villain’s eye-candy girlfriend.

Society is more comfortable with the idea of a female character being a hero than a villain. She may slay men and all is well, since her victims are baddies. If she is harmed, it is by baddies, thus, our ideals are not subverted.

Society is uncomfortable with the idea of female villains. The very idea acknowledges that women may personify the will to evil. The sex of our mothers is vilified… and that is scary to us, who were all children. We are more comfortable with the idea that the female villain is not actually a villain, but rather the victim of the actual villain, turned to evil by him.

What if a woman is actually murderous… and not because a man drove her to it? She is a villain because she wants to do evil things, for whatever reason. Not only is she willing to kill, she delights in doing so.

Not every villain, male or female, is reprobate. The character may have a truly sensible reason for his or her villainy, even if it involves killing people. Crafting such a figment of imagination takes more effort and skill to get right, however. It is much easier to make a villain evil for the sake of evil, to suit the story as the protagonist’s foil.

Limiting female villains to always being sympathetic marginalizes female characters in action-adventure entirely. Imaginary women must be allowed to thrive in the full spectrum of the genre. They must be allowed to be the best or worst people in their stories… or else being “female” shall mean “inferior” as a figment of imagination.

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