The Angry Woman Trope: Explained
(TW: Graphic Imagery, Sexual Assault, Rape)
Hell hath no fury like the angry woman scorned.
Despite having a bad history back then, Angry Women have the right reasons to be mad about and we often root for them to right the wrongs that they’ve been given their whole life. Our whole life girls have been taught how to repress our feelings, but today we are able to express our emotions however we want whenever we want. So let’s take a good look at the Angry Women and how they are a force for change:
History of the Female Rage
Back then, there would be representations of female rage through art. Eg. Elisabetta Sirani’s Timoclea killing her rapist and the famous Artemisia Gentileschi’s Judith slaying Holfernes.
The author Virginia Woolf was also the popular embodiment of refined rage, especially for proper ladies who are taught to be docile. In A Room of One’s Own, Woolf showcases the anger in other women’s writing and even depicts her own anger through that history. She sees that anger as a reaction to women’s life as a second class citizen, especially in the works of Charlotte Bronte, a writer so angry, so much so that she wrote the madwoman in the attic and burned down the house.
Woolf’s anger had even found a new form in the mid-twentieth century, especially during the 60s-70s. The angry women have brought in the second-wave feminism and it gave birth to the angry feminist, believing it would help take down the patriarchal society.
But the issue with the Angry Women is that most of us aren’t taken seriously when we get mad. Most of them see our anger as something when we “overreact” or become a “bitch” towards other people. But when a man showcases their anger over something, people root for them. This was seen in a lot of Angry Men media such as Taxi Driver, Fight Club, Breaking Bad and Joker. But the problem is that most of these examples had depicted toxic white masculinity through the eyes of an angry white male.
How the female/feminine anger is portrayed in the media
Lately, there have been a lot pf portrayal of feminine anger in the pop culture, whether they were treated as a joke, scary or used for good.
It’s even shown through the “femme fatale” trope where most of the times, the woman wouldn’t take it well when a man cheats on his wife/girlfriend with her and then dump her away as he moves on with the former. This was also prominent in the film Fatal Attraction starring Glen Close as Alex Forrest.
When Dan (played by Michael Douglas) has a one-night stand with Alex, he then tries to ignore her or treat her as a friend. Alex doesn’t take this treatment well, like she says to Dan “I am not gonna be ignored, Dan.” while Alex’s rage is shown to be a bit sympathetic over being treated like a doll and Dan brought this on himself because despite being married and having a daughter, sleeps with Alex, her rage is treated as an obsessive “yandere-like”. Most of the audiences hated Alex so much so they panned the sympathetic ending where Alex committed suicide to punish Dan and instead, were given the one where she attack’s Dan’s wife and ultimately gets killed by her, ending her reign of terror once and for all.
In the late 90s, there were a rise of more sympathetic angry females speaking their own minds. With first being Kat Stratford from 10 Things I Hate About You.
She was shown to be a strong feminist who had an extreme disdain towards men who get away with being “assholes” and being forced into gender norms. Kat was shown to be that kind of female character who was shown to be ahead of her time. She had a lot of feminist values and did not want to conform to any man’s demands. But like in the source of the play The Taming of the Shrew, Kat becomes more toned down and a bit feminine when she falls in love with the bad boy Patrick Verona and gets together with him.
Allie Pressman from The Society represents the ambiguous rage. She has a lot of reasons to be angry and cynical at the world. First she lives in her sister Cassandra’s shadow, then gets transported to the replica of her town, then her sister gets killed and she gets put into the leadership position. She basically the female version of the male anti-heroic power player that we usually see in the past. She can be vindinctive, toxic at times and full of rage burning inside of her. Her toxic rage even depicts that there might be a time when she would snap. While she does whatever she can to control the town into peace and tries to use her anger for good, at time she lets her unbearable rage blind her into making bad decisions, to the point most of the supporting characters need to calm her down and give her suggestions.
There are even examples of the rage being used for good in taking down a patriarchal society that has for long abused and mistreated women. Especially in “rape-and-revenge” flicks,
For example in Gone Girl, Amy Dunne has showcased rage which is understandable but not admirable. Amy becomes angry at the patriarchal society who forces women to fit into their desires. Just like how she says in the “Cool Girl” speech, she had to fill in that role so that she could become desirable to Nick. But when she decides she has had enough and becomes less like a “Cool Girl”, Nick immediately gets bored of her and cheats on her with a much younger woman, which spurs Amy’s anger to the point she begins faking her murder and framing her husband for it.
Thana in Ms 45 gets raped twice in one day, which spurs a vengefulness against abusive and rapist men around her. She gives herself a makeover with dark clothes and dark red lipstick and begins gunning down abusive and rapist men around her. But she ends up misusing her rage as she ends up killing random men as well, who didn’t even have anything to do with the sexual assault Thana faced.
Cassie from Promising Young Woman, after losing her best friend to sexual assault and suicide, won’t accept how people treat violence against women as a norm and takes it upon herself to change the system and bring justice for her friend. Be it taking down possible “nice guy” predators or taking down her friend’s rapist by exposing him posthomously.
There is also a male variant of the “Angry Woman taking down men” trope, through Elliot Alderson from Mr. Robot. While most of the other female characters like Darlene Alderson and Dom Dipierro end up being docile and passive later in the series, Elliot takes on the “femme fatale vigilante rage” towards the patriarchal society that we feel. When we first meet him, he is shown to be taking down men who are abusers, pedophiles and cheaters etc. He is treated like a female character throughout the series, like constantly attracting Male Gaze from men and hating them. Like the female protagonists of the “rape-and-revenge” movies, he later finds out that he was molested as a child by a male figure, his father. But he doesn’t use violence to take down men and slowly softens up as he realises that finding inner peace in himself through love is the only way to achieve his goals.
These days, female rage has become a more prominent in society these days as more and more women are being taught to use their anger for good and channel it for change. Especially in the wake of the #MeToo movement and BLM protests, more women are stepping up to change the system. So the lesson here is that we are no longer asked to repress our feelings and we have the right to be mad.
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