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Originally Posted by Bookpossum
As for Milady, I quite agree with Catlady - she wouldn't have flinched. She was of course painted as the supreme villain, but it's interesting to consider what made her that way.
- Why was she in a nunnery in her youth? Clearly not by choice.
- She was branded by the executioner for leading his brother astray. How about a bit of personal responsibility for his actions by the brother instead of blaming the girl, which is all she was.
- She was hanged by her husband and left for dead, not because of anything she did, but because of the brand.
- She was double-crossed and treated disgustingly by D'Artagnan, our supposed chivalric young hero.
Who can blame her for wanting her revenge upon all men?
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Quote:
Originally Posted by latepaul
I was thinking about this as I was nearing the end of the book and I think Milady is what happens when you try to write a female villain but you firmly believe that women are constitutionally different to men. So she has a toughness to her, she can be very resolved, but she is still very controlled by her emotions - whether it's quailing at the execution or flying into a rage over D'Artagnan's betrayal of her.
<SNIP>
[...] it turns out she was punished out of all proportion of any perceived crime on her part.
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Milady was something of a female demon, wasn't she, whose face occasionally revealed her essential evil. Was she supposed to embody an essential belief about women, going back to Eve's tempting Adam? Men helpless and feckless and thus forgivable in the face of temptation?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Catlady
This is something I wondered about--were the attitudes those of the mid-1800s or those of the mid-1600s?
Milady certainly wasn't admirable, but on the other hand, what choices did a woman on her own have? She was tough and a survivor.
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Milady, naturally enough, was my favorite character and I thought the book picked up whenever she appeared. I can come up with a ton of theories about why all the women were portrayed as they were - tempting and controlling. I do wonder if there's an element of anti-Mariolatry going on; there was no sense of women as nurturing or holy. Constance Bonacieux comes closest with her explicit heavy-handed name (Constant Goodheavens), but as Bookpossum said, she needed to be killed off because ultimately she was still an unfaithful wife.