It is this association with the Lover stereotype, which is sometimes synonymous with the male archetype of the same name, that can often lead female characters in stories to seem reductive. Uma Thurman (Beatrix “The Bride” Kiddo) in Kill Bill As a character, she can present both as the Female Warrior, like Joan of Arc, or as the Lover, which the singer Madonna embodies as a real-life example and Carrie Fisher eventually transformed into when she put on that gold bikini. Perhaps the only thing that truly defines a Wild Woman is her independence of thought and action, her unwillingness to simply “behave” or conform in the face of society’s pressures and presumptions. Reynolds, Saffron, bounced effortlessly between versions of the Wild Woman archetype. Zoe the Warrior, Inara the Lover, River the Wise, and Kaylee the Adorkable – all of them unabashed experts in their respective fields. Is your character young, but wise beyond her years like Jane The Virgin? Is she clever, calculating and unmarried like Maya in Zero Dark Thirty? Or is she just a straight-up badass like May Day in A View to Kill or also known as The Bride, in Kill Bill or Ripley in Alien? You might be dealing with a Wild Woman.Īnd if those examples aren’t enough, every female character in Joss Whedon’s Firefly series represents some unique version of the Wild Woman. One of the reasons this archetype is so hard to pin down is because it has become the catch-all category for any female character that doesn’t fit into the other three. So, we reevaluate who we are, what our individual values are, what our ideals are, what is okay for us, what is not okay for us, what we’ll stand for, what we won’t stand for, you know, in concrete terms of relationships.” And I think that something else is the Wild Woman archetype. We start to become aware of something else other than us. Stacey Shelby, who has done extensive research into the Wild Woman archetype, told the Pacifica Graduate Institute that a Wild Woman strives for individuation, allowing important, transformative and traumatic events to help them continue evolving. Gina Rodriguez (Jane Villanueva) in Jane The Virginĭr. She is both a gendered role by sexual objective existence, but also an archetype that can and does often refuse to tow the party line, by seeming tomboyish, butch, or androgenous. Things become even murkier when societal expectations get thrown into the mix. She is wise and independent like the Wise Woman, but she can also be a fearsome parental force defending her cubs from danger like the Mother, or virginal and ethereal like the Maiden. While all of these definitions share shades of one another, they also tend to share shades with other female archetypes. Depending on which Jungian psychologist you ask, the Wild Woman is instinctive and born of nature, or she is highly sexual and perhaps even vindictive, or she is ambitious, driven, proactive and aloof. The Wild Woman is perhaps the most dynamic, nebulous, and incomplete archetype of all. Exploring Female Character Archetypes – The MaidenĪs we continue exploring the four major female archetypes, Wise Woman, Wild Woman, Mother and Maiden, let’s consider the Wild Woman.
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