The Lost Lenore

           

 In her vlogs for Feminist Frequency, Anita Sarkeesian focused primarily on tropes in popular culture that emphasized negative female gender stereotypes. While her representation of female tropes leads to the conclusion that the majority of female characters embody these negative stereotypes, there are plenty of tropes that female characters that are not necessarily destructive. One such trope is the Lost Lenore, from the Lenore from Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven.” This trope is similar to the concept of the women in refrigerators that Anita talked about, but this trope takes it a step further. The Lost Lenore is a female character that has been deceased from the beginning of the work, and acts solely as a plot device for the writers to work off. While Sarkeesian would likely argue this trope as being a negative objectification of a female character, it could be argue that this trope acts as a way to complicate gender norms, and work in positive ways for female characters.

            In many ways, the Lost Lenore represents exactly what Sarkeesian was against. These characters are females whose death has more importance to the story than they did when they were alive. In this sense, they are little more than a plot device. It could be argued that, as women, they have been belittled to the point where they are only being used as a justification for the actions of the men. Given Sarkeesian’s arguments for other tropes, specifically in her interpretation of the trope of the women in refrigerators, this seems like a likely approach for this trope for someone arguing from her standpoint. This interpretation, though, belittles the importance of the character as a whole. The whole point of a character acting as a Lost Lenore is that their absence completely alters the life of the lover that they left behind. For Lenores that have passed before the work begins, the audience never sees them, and never gets to know their character. This does not belittle their existence as women. As a matter of fact, their effect, in death, on their former lovers is a testament to their significance.

            When the Lost Lenore is thought of, thoughts of gothic literature, such as Poe’s work, or modern Hollywood dramas are the first thing to come to mind. For this reason, one distinctive type of the Lost Lenore is seen in comedy. For example, the television sitcom Full House is based upon a father and his daughters, who have lost their mother. Danny, the father, must cope with the loss of his wife throughout the entire series. To the viewer, Pam, our Lost Lenore, is never seen. From a plot standpoint, she remains rather insignificant. Her back story is almost non-existant. The only information that is given about her is that she was killed in a car accident. Very few episodes, especially in later seasons, revolve around Danny’s lost lover. However, the significance of her lost can be seen in the effects of the characters. In this way, the Lost Lenore complicates gender norms, instead of reinforcing negative feminine stereotypes. After her death, Danny is left to raise three daughters by himself. Apart from the anxiety, and possible obsessive compulsiveness, that the loss of his wife gave him, Danny’s character is decidedly more feminine than other males in the series. Without a female figure in the house, Danny is forced to adopt the roles that she would have played. This concept is often played on by making Danny appear humorously over-feminine. After the death of his wife, Danny not only has to cope with the emotional side of loss, but the familial side. From a superficial viewpoint, some would say that Pam only acts as a plot device to serve Danny, but when taken in as a whole, the significance that this female plays cannot be denied. Of course there is very little to her actual character that is revealed, which is an argument that Sarkeesian offered against female tropes. Though, her roles in the family in no way enforce a negative stereotype towards women, and through her death, her positive aspects are only enforced further.

            Most characters across any form of media can be fit into a specific trope. The call that Sarkeesian is making to Hollywood writers to “write realistic characters” is quite ridiculous. No matter what traits are given to a character, they are always going to possess some traits that fit them into a specific stereotype. Even when the character is purposely given traits to contrast with those stereotypes, they can be overanalyzed to the point where their contrasting characteristics are linked to negative stereotypes. When analyzing tropes, it’s important to understand the ways in which both negative and positive stereotypes are being presented. Along with that, it’s important to understand why these tropes are being used. In the case of the Lost Lenore, the character is belittled to be little more than a plot device, who could be argued as using her femininity as a tool for the male characters. However, the greater context of the character, and the audience consuming the media must be considered in these situations. While Pam possesses many of the stereotypes that Sarkeesian is condemning, it is hard to see these features in the Lost Lenore as being negative.