Torn: The Damsel and the Heroine in Every Young Woman
I’m going to change your mind about something.
At one point, in a dark castle on the edge of a ravine in a dark forest, a dark queen stood in front of a shiny piece of glass. She stood with her hair neatly combed back, her crown shimmering on top of her head, her red lips soft and her eyes bright.
Around her was a magnificent throne room, an elevated chair behind her gleaming and lined in velvet, fit for the rich, the powerful, and the dominating. Although, for once, the room with its high-vaulted ceilings and massive stone doors was empty, the queen normally sat above a great crowd of her advisers, her soldiers, and all of the common people under her rule. From that view, it seemed she had it all.
“Mirror, mirror, on the wall…” She started, her voice strong and intimidating. “Who is the fairest of them all?”
It seems at first that this woman, so devoted to her own influence, so drunk on her own visage, was merely looking for affirmation of what she already knew — that she was the most beautiful, the best in all the land. It seemed she just wanted to boast of how much she had.
We want to hate this character. I know I always did, when watching a hundred renditions of Snow White growing up. I thought she was evil and heartless.
But I want to change your mind on this dark queen, because I’m not so sure that when she asked the question, her voice didn’t shake a little. I’m not so sure that she isn’t just like you and me. When she stood in front of that mirror and asked her question, what she really wanted to know was not just about beauty, about fairness, about power or strength or glory. Actually, her heart was screaming —
Am I good enough?
Up in the Tower
There are a hundred images to look to as a definition of the female status quo: Marilyn Monroe. Katniss. Beyonce. Bella. Malala. Jyn Erso. Sleeping Beauty. Lizzie. Elsa.
I have an equal affection for Belle, Ariel, and Daenerys. But it seems to me that in every story, there is a critical question facing each female character or icon: ultimately, does she listen to her head, or does she listen to her heart? They seem like two entirely different worlds, two vastly competing realities.
In one, a woman finds herself in a tower. Since she was a little girl, she played dress-up and had a fairy godmother and she believed she was beautiful. Sown into her being was the hope that someone would come along one day to fight for her, to climb up the walls of her tower, over the bricks she had lay sturdily to protect her heart.
She is a damsel.
Not in distress. Not in trouble, not helpless, and not just simply a prize to be won by the highest bidder. It’s just that as she laid those bricks and as she waited, she desired something — to be valued.
Whether that be by a charming fellow or by our closest friends and family, we as women are longing for the chance to be sought after, romanced, cared for, and loved. We want someone to claw and crawl and struggle up our defenses because they think we are worth the companionship.
For the woman in the tower, her role seems simple. To wait. To hope. To pray. But you, like me, are not easily satisfied by this answer. We know our heart is there, and we understand that as it beats bloody in our chest, with it comes a hundred emotions and our deepest desires. But we also know that damsel can be a really rotten word.
So we get torn.
We get torn waiting for someone to fight for us, and we forget to actually live. We get torn connecting who we are with the value of being loved and romanced. We get torn throwing our everything to the first guy who makes it up our tower wall.
We get torn between our stirring hearts, pounding and burdened, and the other option glaring so obviously in our faces:
Just get out of the tower, already.
Down on the Ground
There’s a poignant scene in Tangled when Repunzel steps with her bare feet onto solid ground for the first time. Squishing her toes into the grass, she is instantly intoxicated with the freedom.
Finally, she could take control of her own story. It would no longer be dictated by others and she would no longer be staring out the window at the passing of her life. We want to be the heroine. We want to push aside the quiet tangles of our hearts or leave them locked away and instead bring out the firepower.
The mind of a woman is a remarkable place. There is the laser field of sharp thoughts, slicing away motives and tones of voice in every external circumstance, a super computer with twenty tabs open all at once, and a library of skills and visions and ideas tucked away in the corners for easy access. To ignore the wealth of her education, her leadership, her capacity to do good, would be an unbearable waste.
Once, I believed in fairytales. Once I believed in the patience of the tower and the value of my heart. But while that woman inside of me was quiet and earnest, my mind wanted so many other things — to adventure, to create, to research and learn and to often stifle everything else.
Someone once wrote that the heart wants roots but the mind wants wings, and it’s hard to bear the bickering. Sure, to be loved and cherished, to seek out the deepest human relationships, to become a mother all sounded like things that could be good at some point in my life.
But what if allowing a little bit of the damsel in destroyed the heroine?
What is so confounding was how these two parts of me seem to be at odds with each other. They both want good things — things I know God has stitched deep into the soul of every young woman — but if I choose one, I’m afraid I might have to silence the other.
Who’s the Fairest?
Half of society screams that the heart matters, that above all else we should want to be satisfied with the confines of the tower — to being sensitive and kind and beautiful, to being wives and daughters and mothers. The other half wants us to ignore that internal plea altogether, embracing instead our ambitions and passions and our capacity to rise through the ranks.
We think our minds can make us the fairest. We think our hearts can make us the fairest. But trust me when I say that silencing your mind to fill your heart will leave you emotionally exhausted and striving for purpose. Silencing your heart to give your mind the freedom it wants is to be lonely and often discouraged.
The damsel and the heroine are the best, are the brightest, are the most beautiful, when they are beckoned to flourish together. We were made to love AND fight, to save AND be saved.
It’s common in our world today to be shamed into believing that a delicate heart, tenderness, or grace are forms of weakness. Equivocally, it’s common to feel underestimated or out of place if we don’t fit into what traditional womanhood is supposed to look like.
I have found myself here, battling these expectations of what I should or should not be, many times. I have found myself here, wondering after the depths of the heart or the expanses of the mind, many times. I have found myself here, hoping that I’m somehow good enough, many times.
But you know what I have realized? There is no ideal, no stereotype, no definition well written enough in our world to house the mosaic of the human soul, female or male. I was not created for a box others have created or a role others have performed.
We may think that a heroine’s path or a damsel’s path are two different roads, but the choice really lies less in where we decide to go and more in who we decide to be.
You and I can be heroic and romanced, smart and compassionate, fierce and fragile. There will be times in life where we will have to set aside our pride and let others lead. There will be times in life where we will have to be gritty and strong despite a tender heart.
Choose to be bigger than the definitions, more perplexing than the norm.
This life, these characters around us, this beautiful story, is going to need women far more than “the fairest” of the fair…it’s going to need protagonists that are courageously complex.
