The Anne Hathaway Archetype
She wants to be submissive, but believes it’s incumbent on a man to give her something worth submitting to.
The Anne Hathaway archetype is the kind a 400-page novel can have as the protagonist's love interest. That's to say she's coveted predominately by a male archetype that could be many things, but uninteresting isn't one of them.
The novel's male lead is deeply imperfect. He struggles with self-loathing, anger issues, and is simultaneously afflicted with egomania and Imposter Syndrome. He manages substance abuse reasonably well. He doesn't really like cigarettes, but smokes them anyways. He’s creative and clever, and the repartee is good.
He's smart and insightful enough to remain intriguing while you deal with his foibles. He's not intentionally cryptic, mostly just reticent to talk about himself and his feelings. She enjoys the small friction that is prying this out of him.
She likes that he has emotional depth, but doesn’t readily divulge in it. Despite her therapy speak, she (like her sisters) have a primal desire for him to be stoic, but introspective enough for those emotions to be expressed when called upon. A masculine shield that only she can soften.
She feels aristocrat-adjacent even though she isn’t. She has just enough Quirk Chungus in her to be endearing without evoking Theater Kid vibes. She understands her attractiveness isn't universal, but to a certain type-of-guy she's his 10. She leverages this, but not in a manipulative way; she knows she couldn't get away with it if she tried. This boundary setting makes her respect him. She doesn’t shit test him often, but occasionally it’s necessary.
She wants to be submissive, but believes it’s incumbent on a man to give her something worth submitting to. Female submission that must be earned is the ideal Darwinian pressure cooker over time, and she embodies this. If he can't dominate her in some ways intellectually, she's not interested; she will never admit how much this turns her on.
Her feminism is performative. A decorous veneer to signal higher status to female peers she doesn’t really care for. A luxury-beliefs facade is important for the aristocrat adjacent. Only lower-class women explicitly yearn for nature’s laws.
Neither of these archetypes make for the best parents. There's a degree of narcissism to both that results in things not about them acted out a tad begrudgingly, and the kids can sense it. The family vacations with children’s themes, attending the kids’ recitals… all just feel a bit perfunctory. Their household isn't the warmest, but there's still love there.
Her archetype is romanticized not because she's the ideal of beauty, intelligence, feminine warmth, or maternal love; but because she's an appealing composite of these traits in a manner that makes her femininity unpredictable in a refreshing way. And this male archetype needs this stimulation and challenge, or he loses interest.
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