An Anti-Feminist Reading of Lady Marian Fitzwalter

In the 1938 Warner Brothers film, Marian is played by the late Olivia de Havilland (1916--2020). She was one of the last living links to an entire era of movie history. I have seen this film at least a dozen times on TCM. It was one of Robert Osbourne's favorites. Like him, I absolutely love this movie and easily place it in my all time top ten. Among other things, it could be Exhibit A in a contemporary college film course on how movies inform our knowledge of male-female roles, and we learn to conform to such roles, and come together as men and women, through this viewership in a postmodern way. In fact I took exactly such a course in Salem, Oregon in 1988 but we didn't see this movie. I only saw it years later.  In this version Marian and Robin have a different origin story than they do in the book I am reading. They don't meet until Robin is well established in the forest as an outlaw. Marian is aware of Robin's outlaw reputation before she meets him and predisposed to like him, as she is aware that England has fallen into tyranny, but as a woman, she remains unaware of the deeper implications of this until her eyes are opened by a man. The director Michael Curtiz (who also directed Casablanca) lets us see Marian fall in love with Robin when he meets him. The screenplay calls for her to be less overtly masculine than the 1912 children's book where she wears a suit of armor in the woods. As per the usual classical Hollywood poetics, her power remains overtly feminine in nature as a character, and we see her in scenes that reflect her domesticity. She stays as the "fixed point" in the castle, attempting to manipulate events on behalf of Robin, who is the active masculine out in the world.  Robin (active, masculine) can communicate with her, but she (passive, feminine) cannot communicate back to him (when she is finally forced to do so, she almost gets herself killed). She never betrays him, even to the point of bringing upon herself a death sentence for treason. They are the perfect masculine-feminine balance in the perfect love story. De Havilland's performance here was no doubt a huge reason she was cast the following year as the iconic Melanie in M-G-M's Gone With the Wind. 

Let us revisit the Green Wood. 

Imagine a scene deep in the forest, along path two strangers approach each other--two knights in armor one large and one smaller and thinner. They dismount and engage in mortal combat, hacking at each with swords for an hour, with the bigger one getting the best of the smaller one. The smaller one suffers a severe injury and appears on the edge of defeat, maybe death.

This is the story in chapter 6--except the knights we see are not actually knights. The armor of both of them is a disguise. Moreover, one of them, the smaller one, is revealed, to the astonishment of the larger knight, to be a woman.

Moreover, it so happens that the two parties know each other. They have known each other for a long time, since before the start of the events of the book. Moreover, they were deeply in love with each other, and planned to marry. But due the circumstances of the world, they were parted and have not laid eyes on each other in a long time.

Yet when they are revealed to each other, they fall upon each with kisses, as if day not passed. So deep is their friendship, much do they love each other, and so happy they are to see each other again, and hold each other in their arms. 

Of course the man is Robin Hood and the woman is Maid Marian, the daughter of the Earl of Fitzwalter, who lived nearby to Robin's father's castle, before it was burned and Robin was forced into the exile of the wood.  Because Robin truly loved here, he had to cut off contact with her and go on without her. But it is clear he never stopped loving her. Who could replace Marian?

Yet he almost loses her again, after the happy reunion in the Green Wood. She wants to stay with him.  When a woman loves a man, she wants to be with him always. Robin tells her it is too dangerous, and the forest is no place for her. This is despite that she put up a good hour's fight against him while wearing armor.  We know Robin is underestimating her hardiness, but that is what a gentleman is supposed to do. He is supposed to tell her to go home, and she will have none of it. A woman who is truly in love will tolerate the most extraordinary circumstances of living to remain with her beloved. Just never leave me behind.

All of this important because it proves Marian is worthy of being Robin's bride. He is an extraordinary person himself and much justice depends on him, as well as the lives of many others. We need him to be with a woman who can match his masculine energy with a feminine form of it. 

Modern audiences and criticism would make much about the gender-bending of having her fight as a knight. A modern "girl power" Hollywood movie would require her to get the best of him, to prove girls are better than boys.  Nobody wants to see that except disturbed people who hate real women.  Everyone is else is just pretending to like that because it makes the right statement "for the benefit others." The Medieval version is the correct one, pushing the masculine energy of Marian as far it could possibly go,in actual combat. Ultimately she surrenders, and because she is pure, in surrendering she get everything she ever could want, and will live happily ever after.

Of course they did the correct thing for the day and got formally married by Friar Tuck by nightfall.  But no! says the modern audience. This is too rash! Don't they need some time to think it over?

The truth is they could have been married much earlier, had Robin believed that Marian was up to being the bride of a forest outlaw (which she always was). 

Nevertheless, at this point in the story, the good masculine and good feminine are in harmony and operating in their high registers. We know nothing truly bad can happen to them in the rest of the story. They will face trials, no doubt, even ones that threaten their lives, but we know they will triumph over them and remain together. We already know they will live happily ever after. 

So now we understand why Robin sent the old woman to Marian, when they were still in exile. 

Imagine that forest scene, when Robin takes the visor over his vanquished competitor and sees his beloved looking back at him. Imagine how the world must have sang for him some incredible hymn. A man truly in love with woman does not worship her like a goddess. Such a thing is repulsive to a woman. Instead he sees in her, and through her, all the things she cannot see about herself. The missing part of him has been found, re-found, and given back to him. That's what good stories do, either in children's books or in Hollywood movies. Ah, youth!

Ironically in the children's story we see the situations faced by modern would-be lovers trying to find each other. Having to put on armor, and disguise ourselves as ferocious and scary warriors to each other. Is there a better metaphor for the way mean and women try to find each other today? So few people ever get the opportunity to look into another's eyes and recognize their beloved. Such a thing requires, for both sexes, a vulnerability that is either (for women) considered to be a manifestation of oppression, or (for men) cultivated in an effeminate register out of an inability to connect to a true masculine ability to lead the woman. Everyone loses out.