This is just a random complaint about fictional women and period dramas. I’ve actually talked about this before in another post.
What annoys me about period dramas, whether based on reality or fantasy, isn’t necessarily that they always seem to want to bring up how horrendously “oppressed” and “repressed” women are. It’s that every. single. time? It’s either a rich woman, an aristocrat or a princess.
Because evidently peasant girls, maids or prostitutes aren’t aspirational enough. But to be honest, in stories like these the prostitutes are always liberated and empowered which is also just — wow. Like, we’re not even talking about, say, high-class escorts who presumably can pick and choose their own clientele. No, we’re talking about the bottom of the rung who actually live in brothels and get pimped out. You know, the prostitutes whose average lifespan was twenty years.
But how could women who have never been oppressed or repressed in their entire lives possibly relate to a female character if she isn’t rich, privileged and educated and too stupid and agencyless (it’s totally a word!) to use those things ruthlessly or not to her advantage?
You see, what she needs instead is a peasant boy who is poor, underprivileged, uneducated and actually belongs in the oppressed class to teach her how to unoppress and unrepress herself and “embrace life”. (And usually after that he can die at his earliest convenience because apparently a man’s only value is in service to a woman.)
And it’s like, really?
I mean, really?
Hiraeth 