Marvel’s Jocasta: Fiction sometimes struggles with female characters, right? The particular kind where the character is angry, but the story must explain the reason before she can be taken seriously; where she makes questionable decisions, but we need to know what caused it; she hurts someone, but there “must be” a heartbreaking reason behind it, and if she is not clear about these, we tend to have a problem.
This expectation itself is particularly exhausting! Male characters can be arrogant, violent, selfish, emotionally unavailable and occasionally insufferable, and we still spend years discussing their motives ourselves. But give a female character half that freedom and we are all suddenly wanting to know whether she is “redeemable”.
Jocasta is not simply a woman who has decided to be difficult for fun’s sake; there is a history attached to her anger; reasons to question people and systems that shaped her existence, but does her character become interesting only when we can understand every single reason behind what she does? Jocasta does not have to be “likeable” for her story to deserve our attention.
Marvel’s Jocasta: Why Does She Have to Be the Good Woman?
Okay, think about this… we discuss female characters whenever they do something morally questionable, and the conversation rather turns into a trial. We question things from whether she was justified, manipulated, protecting someone, to whether she regrets it, and whether there is a good person behind the anger. The questions are, of course, reasonable and a complicated character study is worth the time. However, the problem begins when sympathy becomes a requirement for taking her seriously.
A woman can be hurt and still hurt people; have grievances and respond in a reckless, unfair or even cruel way; she can recognise that she has been wrong without becoming the most morally responsible person; and she can be interesting even when people do not enjoy watching her. This is where Jocasta becomes a useful character to look at, as her existence is tied to the choices other people make about her, and the VisionQuest version might add its own layers about identity, portrayal and the consequences of technological creation. Her anger cannot be separated from the history, but the history also does not automatically make everything she does acceptable… both things can be true. Right?
A Woman Can Have a Point and Still Be Wrong
One thing that female characters perhaps need is the freedom to be right about one thing while being completely wrong about another. Not every woman who was mistreated needs to become an advocate for everyone else; not every character who experiences injustices has to respond with kindness; and not every act of revenge needs to be framed as empowering simply because the person taking revenge is a woman.
Jocasta invites questions about autonomy, identity, and what happens when someone else’s decisions determine the conditions of your existence. Her connection to Josephine Carrington makes the questions rather relevant. Sometimes you just want to be able to understand why she is angry rather than being told, without outrightly agreeing with her. Her choices can be questioned, and is a last-minute moment of goodness to make everything easy and soothing?
Can we not let a female character be wrong, unpleasant and have reasons that do not excuse her behaviour? Should these things not coexist without the character being reduced to a convenient lesson of moral science?
Female Anger Is Not a Character Flaw
A male character who refuses to forgive might be described as “determined”, but a female character who refuses to forgive can quickly become a bitter one; a man seeking revenge somehow becomes dangerous, compelling, while a woman with the same desire is often at the risk of being written as unstable or boxed into being evil.
The description, of course, depends on the character of the story, and anger can be undoubtedly destructive; revenge can hurt people who really had nothing to do with the actual wrongs, and the point is not that women should be excused for everything they do but that their anger should be taken seriously before being judged. Jocasta does not have to be turned into a feminist icon for her circumstances to raise questions about who gets to decide what she should be, nor does every morally questionable thing she does need to be defended as an act of resistance because that would just replace one restrictive expectation with another.
She Does Not Owe Us a Redemption Arc
If Jocasta makes choices that hurt people, the choices should matter, but accountability does not have to mean that she must become gentle, forgiving, emotionally reassuring eventually. She does not have to forgive the people involved in the history; she does not have to be grateful for the opportunities, and she does not have to be nice to prove that she deserves to exist as a character beyond her usefulness to the plot.
This is not an argument of whether or not Jocasta should change; characters can definitely change, but a redemption to be treated as the only satisfying destination for a woman who begins a story morally compromised is perhaps something rather unstable.
Female representation can be chaotic: it cannot only mean giving women more screen time, more power or more opportunities to save the day; it should also mean letting them be people we might not particularly like and the people that might not fit the stereotype in any way. Stories need to give their female characters enough room to be a person, rather than a verdict waiting to happen.
What are your thoughts about the portrayal of female characters in fiction? Tell us in the comments.
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