Felicity Porter of Felicity, Sydney Bristow of Alias, and Olivia Dunham of Fringe are rather unique female characters, especially when considered in comparison to the women seen in previous decades on American television. Until recently, even seemingly strong female leads often occupied and were defined by very traditional and stereotypical female roles, such as homemakers, wives, girlfriends, or mothers. One of the central goals of numerous current and historical feminist theorists is to achieve the freedom for women to choose their own roles and not have them chosen for them by a patriarchal system. Such role models are more important than one might imagine. A pervasive and persuasive argument from many feminists regarding role models is that strong female role models, and conversely the absence of appropriate female role models, can be very influential for young women. Not only do young women need to see powerful female role models in general, but entrance into many professions can be restricted by the lack of female professionals with whom young women can identify. If a young woman cannot see herself in a role because all the instantiations she sees are male, like physicists or astronauts, for example, then she is considerably less likely to choose that role when an opportunity arises. It is thus a worthwhile exercise to examine Abrams’s central female characters and assess their suitability as feminist role models. From a feminist perspective, a significant question about Abrams’s female leads in Felicity, Alias, and Fringe is whether they present positive images as feminist role models from the standpoint of three different feminist writers.
This chapter will explore the three central female characters from these television shows and evaluate them from several feminist perspectives, one from each “wave” of feminist theorizing. I will also discuss and critically evaluate Felicity, Sydney, and Olivia through the lenses, so to speak, of two of the central issues brought to light by feminist theorists: the pervasive oppression of women and the centrality of the masculine ideal of the impartial observer present in most mainstream Western philosophy. But before we can examine these topics, we should address the issue of why anyone should care about what feminists think about these characters in the first place.
“Feminism” can be defined in numerous ways. Many people believe that feminism is about blaming current males for the past treatment of women or that “feminist” is synonymous with “man-hater.” While there have been a handful of feminist thinkers who, perhaps somewhat understandably, have lashed out against the historically dominant and domineering gender, the majority of feminist theorists are not man-haters. My own experiences in grappling with this thing called “feminism” and thinkers who label themselves as “feminists” have led me to realize that many people are unfamiliar with the concepts discussed by feminist theorists and many more wonder why they should care what feminists say at all. I will admit at the outset that I am not an expert in feminist theories, although I have read many feminist thinkers, particularly those in feminist ethics. And I have firsthand experience with the negative connotations of feminism, as I have gone through the struggle myself over whether to call myself a feminist.
When I started as an assistant professor almost a decade ago, a senior colleague suggested I teach a course in feminist theories. Convinced that this was another way to say, “You’re a female so you should know and teach feminism,” I resisted the suggestion. But a few years later I was offered a bit of what turned out to be sage wisdom from another colleague that changed my mind. “Why should I care about what feminists think,” I asked, “especially since there is such disagreement among feminist writers and since the word ‘feminism’ has such negative connotations for most people?” She responded simply that one of the obvious kernels of truth upon which feminism is based is that women should receive the same consideration and have the same basic human rights afforded to them as men and that agreeing with this was good enough to call yourself a feminist. If this is indeed the case, then anyone who isn’t a feminist according to this minimal criterion should be considered morally suspect indeed. Even though this minimalist answer is a good start, feminist theorizing encompasses so much more, as I have learned.
So what is feminism? I argue that both a simple as well as a more complex answer can be offered. The complex answer is that feminist theorizing has occurred in what has typically been described as three “waves” of thought and that in each of these waves feminists have been concerned with somewhat different problems and have offered somewhat different solutions. The three waves of feminist theorizing, along with a representative theorist from each period, will be discussed in greater detail in the next section; for now, the simpler answer is a better place to start.
The opening lines of Ann Cudd and Robin Andreasen’s Feminist Theory: A Philosophical Anthology offers the following definition: “Feminist theory is the attempt to make intellectual sense of, and then to critique, the subordination of women to men. As such it has a relatively short history, for the history of seeing subordination as something that needs to be understood, rather than simply accommodated, or perhaps given a rationale, is relatively short.”1 So according to Cudd and Andreasen, feminism is at least about understanding and critiquing the oppression and subjugation of women. I think this suggests the simplest and clearest explanation that one can give: feminism is the recognition of the historical and current oppression of one gender, and this oppression is problematic. A feminist is then someone who recognizes this oppression where it can be found and hopefully draws attention to it.
To the question, “why should I care about what feminists think regarding Abrams’s central female characters?” I would respond that we should care if recognizing the problematic oppression of women is important. And it is. Two of the reasons I am a fan of Abrams’s work are that I appreciate his inclusion of strong and intelligent women who occupy nontraditional roles as central figures in his programs, and I think these characters represent a significant improvement over the stereotypical female television characters I experienced while growing up. We should care about what feminists think about the female central characters in Abrams’s television programs because feminists care about addressing morally problematic gender inequities—inequities that have been consistently reinforced by most social structures and, for the most part, mirrored on television. If Abrams’s female central characters represent a change for the better, away from some of these problematic and restrictive stereotypes, given that his shows are fairly popular and given that television can be very influential on young people’s views of the world, then we should care about what Felicity, Sydney, and Olivia are teaching young people about gender roles and gender inequities.
I’ve chosen to discuss and critically evaluate Abrams’s female leads from the perspectives of three feminist theorists, each representative of one of the three periods, known as “waves,” of feminist thought. From first-wave feminism we have Mary Wollstonecraft, whose most famous work, “A Vindication of the Rights of Women” (1792), argued for allowing women access to the educational, political, and economic spheres that had been traditionally reserved for men. As such, first-wave feminists worked mainly to achieve some educational, political, and economic freedoms for women. At the time Wollstonecraft wrote her essay, women had virtually no access to serious education, had no direct participation or voice in the political systems in Western countries, and typically lacked the right to own property or earn an income of their own. The success of the women’s suffrage movement in particular seemed to satisfy some of the basics of the demands for political freedoms made by these early feminists, resulting in a significant decrease in interest in feminist writings and activism for a few decades.
From what is described as second-wave feminism we see the seminal work of Simone de Beauvoir, especially The Second Sex (1949), which is typically credited as originating this wave of feminist theorizing. Beauvoir argues for more than women’s access to the educational, political, and economic spheres. She argues that the denigration of women to the category of the “Other,” always the inferior of the male, is maintained through virtually all aspects of private life, relationships, and social life. Merely attaining some minimal access to the educational, political, and economic spheres is insufficient to offer any sort of real equality for women, as the oppression they face permeates much more than these spheres. It is instead central to the female gender and the forced gender roles themselves.
From the third wave of feminism we have bell hooks, whose writings include Ain’t I a Woman? Black Women and Feminism (1981) and Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center (1984). Hooks criticizes many “civil rights” and political movements, including mainstream (second-wave) feminism, for their failure to recognize the intersection of oppression from many sources, especially race, poverty, and gender. She also points out the failure of mainstream feminism and other movements to recognize the unique plight of black women and women of color, instead exacerbating their plight in certain ways to advance the agenda of their programs, and their failure to recognize that the oppression of women is not singular or shared in the same way by all women. Hooks offers persuasive arguments against the exclusion of men from the struggle for equality between the genders in which feminist thinkers engage, an exclusion she sees in contemporary feminism.
So what would these feminists think of Felicity, Sydney, and Olivia? One of the most significant contributions Mary Wollstonecraft offers is her critique of “sensibilities” as the cornerstone of women’s understanding. During her time, and continuing to a lesser extent today, women were encouraged to “follow their hearts” rather than their heads—not surprising since the prevailing wisdom of the day was that women were not fully possessed of rational capacities like men and thus needn’t be educated to make decisions like men. In this respect, Sydney and Olivia certainly seem to make largely rational and reasonable decisions. (Although a few of the rather outlandish pseudoscientific claims and bizarre medical procedures to which Olivia consents give me a bit of pause. But since a central premise of Fringe is the amalgam of some bizarre pseudoscience and some weird but real actual science, and since it is the somewhat insane “mad” scientist Dr. Walter Bishop who proposes most of the crazy ideas, this aspect of Olivia’s personality seems both unavoidable and forgivable.) Sydney tends to follow her gut instincts at times, but this isn’t the same thing exactly as advocating “sensibilities” over reason as the guide for the feminine. Instead, cognitive psychologists tell us that many well-trained individuals often follow the rational path when they follow their gut instincts in situations where a rational and well-considered assessment of the situation isn’t possible. Sydney certainly finds herself in these scenarios quite frequently.
But what about Felicity? She changed her life plan based on a seemingly spur-of-the-moment decision to follow a teenage crush off to college rather than to follow the path her parents chose and that she had previously accepted without questioning. This decision certainly seems to put her in the category of employing “sensibility” over reasoning. But we gradually find out that this seemingly irrational, following-her-heart decision was really the best thing for her in terms of developing as her own person, and so her decision for independence of sorts wasn’t quite based on sensibilities. Instead, the decision to eschew her parents’ plans for her was in many ways a more traditionally masculine decision. But I admit that I wish in the end she had chosen Noel over Ben, as I think that would have been a cleaner break from her past and its well-meaning oppression. Choosing Ben in the end, the young man she “ran off to New York to follow,” seems to reinforce the sentimental “female” reasoning that Wollstonecraft spoke against.
First-wave feminists, however, also strove to attain access for women to the educational, political, and economic spheres, and all three of Abrams’s female characters pass this mark with flying colors. When Nina Sharp offers Olivia a job at Massive Dynamic for the first time, she remarks on the male-dominated roles they both occupy and the significance of their presence in these roles. Olivia and Sydney make excellent role models from this perspective, as does Felicity, albeit to a lesser extent. But it might be argued that, in examining Felicity through the totality of Felicity’s four years in college, she develops from a more traditionally feminine eighteen-year-old to a more confident, worldly, and better-educated twenty-two-year-old, which in itself demonstrates a move toward a more positive role model for young women. Looking at the character’s progression through time and through college thus demonstrates the move toward a more positive female image from the standpoint of first-wave feminism.
How should we evaluate these three characters from the perspective of second-wave feminists like Simone de Beauvoir? Beauvoir offers compelling arguments that women are perpetually the “Other,” subject to the power, education, and domination of men, and that the pervasiveness of the oppression of women isn’t relegated to just a few areas. Seen from this perspective, all three of Abrams’s female lead characters, especially Sydney and Olivia, seem to be good role models for demonstrating that women have abilities across the board that are the equal of men’s.2 Sydney sometimes demonstrates a need for the emotional stability and companionship of her friends, but this traditionally feminine neediness is balanced by her dedication to her profession and her obvious professional capabilities. As Felicity is more of a coming-of-age story, we can again look at her character throughout her four years in college as opposed to early in the show, when she seems to exemplify in many ways the meek and weak “good girl” persona. She works through her feminine naiveté and weaknesses and comes out stronger on the other end. Despite some characteristics of Felicity and Sydney that portray weakness, the characters come out well on the other side and seem to have achieved the respect of friends and colleagues for their strength and courage. And perhaps this is a good thing for a feminist role model, as it demonstrates that even if women start out at a disadvantage, they can overcome it and fill roles or choose professions typically reserved for men.
What can we say about our three Abrams heroines from the perspective of bell hooks? Many third-wave feminists, hooks included, focus on the exclusion of women of color and poor women from the feminist movement. Third-wave feminists often note that the goals of second-wave feminism are really the goals of white, middle- and upper-class women and that not only are women of color ignored but their concerns and interests are entirely excluded as mainstream feminism strives to demonstrate that the plight of the “woman oppressed” is universal. But the oppression faced by poor women of color is different and more pervasive than that faced by the white women who defined the second wave of feminism, hooks argues. Second-wave feminists focused on women’s right to work and join the professions, for example, to escape unhappy and forced work at home, where they are excluded from true participation in social and political life and power. Third-wave feminists such as hooks contend that many women of color and poor women would fight for the opportunity to stay home with their children as a matter of choice—a choice they are denied by circumstances or poverty and a choice that is ignored by second-wave feminism. Rather than apply hooks’s critiques directly to Abrams’s heroines, it may suffice to say that Felicity, Sydney, and Olivia are all clearly white, educated, upper-middle-class women who, although they seem in general to be good role models from the perspectives of first- and second-wave feminism, probably offer less in the way of being true role models who can be emulated by poor women or women of color. Even though there are a significant number of people of color in the three shows in question—for example, Phillip Broyles, Olivia’s FBI boss, and junior agent Astrid Farnsworth from Fringe, as well as Felicity’s friend Elena and Sydney’s friend Francie—the three central female characters are obviously Anglo.
One of the most significant contributions of feminism to philosophy, value theory, and many other academic disciplines is to draw attention to the importance of viewing theories, past events, and contemporary problems from different perspectives. A popular way to discuss the consideration of feminist critiques, or seeing theories or events from the perspective of feminist theorizing, is to suggest that we consider a topic from a feminist standpoint or through a feminist “lens.” This same metaphor of using different “lenses” to view theories or events has surfaced in other sorts of theorizing as well. It has become popular to say that viewing a practice through the lens of race, class, or economics can reveal different aspects that might not have surfaced without the use of those perspectives. Using a somewhat oversimplified example to illustrate, we can consider that forty-three different people have held the office of president of the United States. If we look at this situation through a feminist lens, we would surely notice that all forty-three have been male. If we consider the same fact through the lenses of race, class, and economics we would note that all have been Anglo (except President Obama) and that most have hailed from rather specific and privileged educational, economic, and class backgrounds. As a further example of the lens metaphor, we can examine some common and seemingly innocuous practices in our culture, including male door-opening behavior; the typical restaurant waitstaff’s offering of the check to the man at the table; the female titles of “Miss” and “Mrs.,” which express a woman’s marital status, in comparison to the singular male counterpart of “Mr.”; and so on. Such events and situations may be cultural in nature but viewing them through the lens of feminism can shed light on the inherent gender bias in these otherwise generally accepted practices.
I will utilize the lens metaphor here by considering the characters of Felicity, Sydney, and Olivia in light of two of the recurring and central themes in feminist theorizing. These are the recognition of the pervasive historical and current oppression of women that shapes and influences societies and individuals in both overt and subtle ways and the criticism of the traditional Western notions of self and autonomy as being gendered (that is, the impartial, unconnected, and independent observer is a male ideal, many feminist theorists argue). Again, we can use these two central themes as lenses through which to examine our three female characters. I’ll call the former the “oppression lens,” as it reveals how the systemic oppression of women can influence situations and events. I will call the latter the “interconnectedness lens,” as many contemporary feminist theorists suggest that people are interconnected in ways that cannot be transcended in the manner that the traditional independent male ideal of the self suggests.3 So what can these two lenses reveal about Felicity, Sydney, and Olivia?
Looking first through the “oppression lens,” we need to remember that second- and third-wave feminists argue convincingly that the oppression of one gender is considerably more far-reaching than merely their exclusion from the political, social, educational, and economic spheres (as the main goal of first-wave feminism was to gain inclusion for women in these spheres). In looking at Sydney, Felicity, and Olivia through the lens of systemic oppression, the first thing I notice is that they are all survivors of sorts of some significant manipulation or deception. One of the most interesting features of these three female characters is their “coming out the other end,” so to speak, after manipulation at the hands of patriarchy in one form or another.
Felicity’s choice of college, ostensibly to follow a man she hardly knows and has a crush on, is really a move away from her controlling parents’ (mostly her father’s) expectation that she will follow in her father’s path and become a physician. We find out early on that he seems to have even manipulated the system a bit to guarantee her access to Stanford in premed. Her whole life seems to have been preplanned by her parents (from the “zygote” phase on, as Felicity tells us in the first season). Paternalistic manipulation, though perhaps loving, is still paternalistic manipulation. Through repeated attempts at bribery by her parents to get her “back on track,” she resists and remains in New York to find herself.
We can see Sydney’s manipulation at the hands of SD-6, her father, Jack Bristow, and Arvin Sloane as clear examples of oppression—examples of the male patriarchy dominating a woman’s psyche so completely that she never truly acts freely since the “self” of a person so dominated cannot ever act freely. Conceived in this way, when Sydney finds out that she does not actually work for the CIA or the U.S. government but instead is part of a major power working against both, her situation appears somewhat analogous to that of a woman who at some point recognizes her oppression and sees for the first time the feminist point that the entire political and social system within which she has been raised has been indoctrinating her into the patriarchy. When Sydney turns into a double agent and eventually brings about the downfall of the organization that has for so long held her captive, both literally and metaphorically speaking, through its lies and manipulation, she has in many ways broken free. But she is trained for, and is really quite good at, being a spy, and so she goes on in that line, thus trading one kind of oppression for another, but at least with her eyes now opened she seems to be able to “choose” her allies and allegiances a bit more freely.
Fringe begins with Olivia Dunham recognizing her own manipulation at the hands of her lover and partner, John Scott, whom she kills in the pilot episode after she risks her life to save him and he then tries to kill her. Throughout the show, Olivia is a driving force in many ways, rather than a follower. Unlike Felicity and Sydney, outside of her manipulation by her partner, the manipulation she faces repeatedly in the show is an all-encompassing power struggle that isn’t as individualized a struggle as the other two characters’. But as with Felicity and Olivia, much of what happens centers on the choices Olivia makes. All three of these characters can tell us something interesting and useful when seen through the feminist lens of oppression.
Looking through the “interconnectedness lens” we can consider whether Sydney, Felicity, and Olivia make decisions through the traditional detached male, independent observer approach. (Interestingly, the Observers from Fringe seem to personify this separatist and impartial masculine role in many ways.) As before, we see Sydney and Olivia occupying more independent roles, but interestingly, they do so with a strong support network. The three shows in question (Felicity and Alias more significantly) in many ways revolve around the choices made by the three female characters. Of course, the feminists who argue against adopting the “male” conception of the internal self and of “human” autonomy as an impartial and separate entity from the embodied and social creature might not see their choices as truly free, but I argue that the representation of women making intelligent choices that shape the world in meaningful ways is significant. And all three of these characters, Felicity and Sydney in particular, demonstrate that these decisions needn’t be made entirely from the independent, impartial, male standpoint but rather can be made while recognizing the interconnectedness that women often more clearly represent.
Sydney Bristow and Olivia Dunham represent strong feminist role models in terms of first- and second-wave feminism. Examining Felicity Porter as a character across her four years in college (and the show) demonstrates that considering her coming-of-age tale as a whole makes her a better example of a role model than does examining many of the particular events in the show or her specific choices. None of the characters, however, really addresses the core of the issues on which third-wave feminists focus. In considering the two central feminist themes of pervasive oppression and the genderedness of the Western notion of autonomy, Abrams’s three female lead characters offer interesting pictures of different aspects of these concepts. In the end, Sydney and Olivia are much closer to the traditional male ideal of detached independence than Felicity, for good or for bad. I argue that Abrams has created three strong female characters and that feminist lessons can be learned in considering their suitability as female role models.
1. Ann E. Cudd and Robin O. Andreasen, Feminist Theory: A Philosophical Anthology (Oxford: Blackwell, 2005), 1.
2. This is not to argue that men and women should be treated equally in terms of sameness but rather that they should be treated equally in terms of opportunities afforded them.
3. Of course, not all feminist theorists who note the “maleness” of traditional Western notions of self and autonomy as independent and impartial suggest that these need to be replaced with the concept of an interconnected self that encompasses the feminist notion. Some instead suggest that traditional conceptions of the self and of autonomy are the correct concepts, even if rooted in a gendered and idealized “maleness.” The notion of self and the corresponding concept of autonomy are significant philosophically in numerous ways, the most compelling of which can be found in value theory and in political theory. The feminist attack on the genderedness of the impartial observer stance can be seen most significantly in the ethics of care approaches and in feminist epistemology, where feminist theorists suggest that we cannot be separate in order to make ethical decisions or to access knowledge in a truly impartial manner, as the impartial observer stance suggests.