My wife and I talk gender a lot and one of the things that came up a few years ago had to do with my wife's favorite fairy tale.  In it, the woman actually goes on a quest to save the man.  She loves reading books with heroic female figures as well.  She affirms often that she'd rather be the knight in shining armor than the damsel in distress and is boggles her mind why anyone would want to be otherwise.  she of course sees the knight as "capable" and the damsel as "incapable" or "helpless".  I gave her my own explanation of why a person would want to be the damsel and, inspired to do so by a few threads similar to this, would like to share it with you.

The damsel and knight scenario is one that involves the concept of value.  The damsel is someone of intrinsic value.  So much value, that monsters are willing to abduct her, kings willing to pay ransoms, and men willing to die for her.  The knight on the other hand, has no value - not on his own.  He must earn it by saving the damsel or die without it as countless others have before him.

I explained to my wife that I desire to be the damsel and not the knight because it means I am already valuable, desirable, and worth dying for.  I then asked, who'd want to have to risk death to prove their value?  I think she got it.

Anyone else want to be a damsel or a knight and why?

Wow.  You and your wife must have the most amazing conversations.  I have never looked at the "Damsel/Knight" paradigm in quite that fashion.  But I like it.  All I can say is that for most of my life, I have bravely been--I thought-- the Knight fearlessly searching for the Damsel.  I never thought I might be the Damsel needing rescue.
And maybe, just maybe, we get to be both Knight and Damsel--searching for our damsel, and finding we ourselves are worthy of rescue.

I'd still rather be the knight, looking at it that black&white.

Our "damsel in distress" has no power over her situation. She can't do anything about who's taking her, or where she's going. Typically, this person is also weak. I also feel she's more likly to die. While she's got this 'value', she's also disposable, and can be a pawn to get whomever else the captor wants to 'find' her,and kill him..

The knight, however, has an option what he's gonna do. He can choose to save her, or not to. He's actually intelligent (how else can you get around the green dragons? lol). Oh, and he's doing it for her.

That concept lies deeply rooted in the notions of 'courtly love' (as opposed to Courtney Love, who is beyond saving) that were at the heart of what we would now call 'romantic love.'  The knight saves the 'damsel' by taking her, both in a literal sense, but also in a romantic sense, as what the 'distress' usually is (as opposed to the notion that basically everyone except the King in the Middle Ages was pretty much 'in distress') tends to be dad trying to marry her off against her will (for reasons of property not romance)

HERBERT:  But I don't want any of that -- I'd rather--
  FATHER:  Rather what?!
  HERBERT:  I'd rather... just...
      [music]
      ...sing!
  FATHER:  Stop that, stop that!  You're not going to do a song while
      I'm here.  Now listen lad, in twenty minutes you're getting married to
      a girl whose father owns the biggest tracts of open land in Britain.
  HERBERT:  But I don't want land.
  FATHER:  Listen, Alex,--
  HERBERT:  Herbert.
  FATHER:  Herbert.  We live in a bloody swamp.  We need all the land we
      can get.
  HERBERT:  But I don't like her.
  FATHER:  Don't like her?!  What's wrong with her?  She's beautiful,
      she's rich, she's got huge... tracts of land.
  HERBERT:  I know, but I want the girl that I marry to have...
      a certain... special...
      [music]
      ...something...
  FATHER:  Cut that out, cut that out.  Look, you're marryin' Princess
      Lucky, so you'd better get used to the idea. [smack]  Guards!  Make sure
      the Prince doesn't leave this room until I come and get 'im.

Old Monty Python, by virtue of their exquisite British education, probably got closer the reasons of all this knight/romantic stuff in that movie then the people who played it straight.

Because, as it often turns out, the person the damsel was so in love with, turns out to be the knight - she just didn't know it till he rescued her.  And, what is of value here is not the damsel (god knows, damsels in distress must have been like Starbucks, one every block or so) but what the knight does, which is take.  Its all about the taking, be it damsels, land, Holy Grails, that the knight does, the power of a knight is to take (even to the point of Sir Lancelot - and he sure did, didn't he? - taking Guenevere from the King), and the best knights are the best takers.  By instilling a sense of 'virtue' in knights, by rescuing helpless women in distress these stories sought to make legitimate a very expensive form of gang rule.  It gives that act of taking some sort of 'holy' or 'sacred' context (all quests are of 'god') and because the entire deal is sacred - god himself ordains the king or other such mystical flim-flam: The Lady of the Lake, her arm clad in the purest shimmering samite, held aloft Excalibur from the bosom of the water signifying by Divine Providence that I, Arthur, was to carry Excalibur. (Which BTW isn't even parody, but pretty much straight out Malory, though where the reply is: strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government - that's straight up Python.)

The point of all those stories was all about the Divine Providence deal, not the value of one person or the other.  They were just books and stories that made gang warfare OK. 

And in any Medieval story I don't want to be the knight or the damsel, I want to be the king, as Python so perfectly remarked: He's the one that hasn't got ->-bleeped-<- all over him.  Besides, the damsel does not have any intrinsic value, the value was all in her dowry. As the basic concept of a dowry goes to prove all in its own.

Well she does have 20+ Frost Resistance...

Knight or damsel? Tekla's right, marriage back then was about dowry, not necessarily love. And knights were actually jerks, same with samurai. They want to think that they were noble and all that, but they were just nobles and tended to bully people. Some could go an entire lifetime without fighting another fighter. But I suppose in fairytales it wouldn't be necessary to talk about that.

I'd rather be a steppe warrior or a viking. They were better trained. But if I had to choose, I'd pick knight, just because I like weaponry.

Well if it's either/or I choose Damsel - but this Damsel ain't up for distress 

I'm definitely a proto feminist Damsel and I do my own rescuing thank you

Though if some passing knight could give me a lift on his horse as far as the next services that would be peachy...

it's a long walk you see and these high heeled damsel shoes that the author insisted that I wear are killing me

Seriously - in those stories I always identified more with the Goddess or the Wise woman prophetess than the Damsel who always seemed rather a wimp!

But I have to say that I do like Interalia's story psychology analysis. That's worthy of Christopher Vogler or Christopher Booker - Two authors who wrote texbooks that were taught in my MA class.

IA, what an interesting post.  I choose knight, of course.  I'm not sure if the choice is even explainable, though I could give lots of good-sounding reasons.  There is this deep-rooted desire in me that wants to protect, to defend, to fight...I'm not sure where it came from.  Is it because I thought I was a boy at a young age and latched on to these "manly" attributes?  Or is it because it is hard-wired into my brain?  *shrug* at this point I guess only God knows.  Suffice to say this was one of the many glaring indicators that, when put together, finally got me to realize that being a woman and identifying as female isn't a matter of willpower.  I can't just "choose" to think I am a woman, any more than I can "choose" to think I am Darth Vader (although that might be kind of cool.)

Joseph

When I was male, pretending to be a man, I wanted to husband my little family in the archaic meaning – to cultivate it and care for it well.

Now, being female (more or less ), I find I want to be husbanded.

I have a motorcycle poster.  It says "Take your wife asphalt dancing."  I always liked that, and pictured myself operating the bike, the wife hugging me from behind.  (I actually did it with my wife.  We rode over 100,000 happy miles together that way. )    When I pulled out the poster after becoming Kate I realized with some surprise that I now wanted to be taken asphalt dancing – the one being taken.

I never wanted to be either the knight or damsel.  They both seemed a bit simple.  I always liked the wizard or crone.

- Kate

Quote from: K8 on December 07, 2009, 08:21:03 PM
I never wanted to be either the knight or damsel.  They both seemed a bit simple.  I always liked the wizard or crone.

- Kate

Ok Snap - Looks like it's you and me then Kate LOL

I want to be the seductress/evil witch/ temptress, have value all by yourself and have power over others.

Like Circe, the Queen in Snow White

In fairy tales I'm always the fairy. In my experience knights in shining armor tend to tarnish much too easily.

Fairy tales are all corrupted violent stores.

Who says knights had any say in things, as Tekla said, the King was the one calling the shots. Knights did have some free reign, but ultimately they were controlled by the King. Only the Round Table knights had any say in what happened in the kingdom.

As for Tekla's idea of being the King, it was more like live fast and die young.
How many people are trying to take that crown at all costs. Good King or Queen or not, when you need a food tester to ensure that you aren't poisoned it might be time to consider alternative methods of income.

Wizards, courts and consorts were often purged along with the previous ruler. Princesses were used as pawns by everyone. They may have lived in luxury, but they were probably the least free people in a kingdom.

I would rather be the peasant girl swept away by a knight or prince. 

when you need a food tester to ensure that you aren't poisoned it might be time to consider alternative methods of income
Perhaps, I often thought it was because so many of those stories are British in origin, and hence the king was eating the prototype British Cooking - you'd want a food tester for that too.