This was my final Senior Project to finish my English Major, and it has an accompanying video that you can view here. The video mostly follows this essay, but there were some things cut for the sake of length.
“Her name was aurora borealis, but everyone just called her Abs for short. She was a natural beauty and not like the other girls. She had brown hair and an appropriate amount of freckles. Her skin was like a cup of coffee that was mostly milk because she was white. She didn’t need to wear a lot of makeup like the other girls, she didn’t care about things like that. She wore ripped jeans and vintage t-shirts because appearances didn’t matter to her. She ate lots of food but never gained any weight. She collected hotel bibles and would cut the pages out to create origami swans, she was just unique like that. She even cut her own hair which, it was fine because it, it didn’t look bad it didn’t look like it was a mistake, it looked good. Not a single person noticed her, except for me, I noticed her, because she was different,” (Stanzi Potenza, Tik Tok).
Have you ever read a book with that character that always seems to be written by a man? You probably have; it’s called the Manic Pixie Dream Girl trope, and it was initially coined by movie critic Nathan Rabin: “The Manic Pixie Dream Girl exists solely in the fevered imaginations of sensitive writer-directors to teach broodingly soulful young men to embrace life and its infinite mysteries and adventures” (The Bataan Death March of Whimsy Case File #1: Elizabethtown). Now, that’s a pretty spicy definition! Oxford Languages and Google define MPDGs as “a type of female character depicted as vivacious and appealingly quirky, whose main purpose within the narrative is to inspire a greater appreciation for life in a male protagonist.” The definition was geared initially towards films, but it has also shown up in young adult fiction novels. For this project, I looked at four books with female characters that may or may not fit this trope. I wanted to find out how far back the trope in American literature has gone, how it has evolved into contemporary times, and ultimately whether this trope negatively or positively affects modern readers.
Even though “Manic Pixie Dream Girl” was coined in 2007, there has been debate over who might fall in before the 2000s. Some classic MPDGs, according to Nicole Trilivas’s article “4 Manic Pixie Dream Girls From Classic Literature” include Kamala from Siddhartha, Calypso from The Odyssey, Beatrice from The Divine Comedy, and Ophelia from Hamlet. I have found two characters that came before the trope originated are Daisy from Daisy Miller and Daisy from The Great Gatsby. Lauren Passell, in her article “The 11+ Most Manic and Dreamy Manic Pixie Dream Girls in Literature” agrees. She lists the Daisys as her top two manic pixie dream girls; Daisy Miller is “so crazy! But the good kind!… She’ll make you take your clothes off and go dancing in the rain! She’ll make out with strangers and contract malaria!” She also points out how she “proves that sometimes MPDGs are bad news and sometimes they have to pay for their free-spiritedness.” She states about Daisy Buchanan: “Through the eyes of Gatsby, at least, Daisy is perfect—she’s flirty, carefree, and she has a ‘voice full of money.’… But this MPDG comes with cracks” (Passell). However, some of the richest MPDGs are from the 21st century, including Alaska from Looking for Alaska and Sam from The Perks of Being a Wallflower.
Let’s start off with diving into the term “Manic Pixie Dream Girl.” I think defining the term more thoroughly will help pin this quirky little character down. The term “manic” generally refers to a mental illness like bipolar disorder. Symptoms of mania can include: a decreased desire for sleep, increased desire for risky behaviors, increased hostility and/or irritability, louder and a more rapid rate of speech, easily distracted, suicidal ideation, and even wearing “bright clothing” (What Is a Manic Episode? Purse). The causes of such behavior include brain injury, high stress, recreational alcohol or drug misuse, sleep deprivation, and trauma or abuse. In the novels I have read, “manic” describes the characters’ often un-pin-downable behavior. According to Virginia Pasley in her article “Zooey Deschanel: What, Exactly, Is a ‘Manic Pixie Dream Girl’?” what separates a manic pixie dream girl from a female character with a distinct personality is “the sense that something is wrong with the MPDG. Hence, the ‘Manic.’ A true MPDG has to be like the girls whom alternative musicians wrote songs about in the ’90s… girls who appeared to be on the brink. Their drama and insecurity only made them more alluring to the singers, who were fascinated by them.” One minute she could be intensely reading War and Peace and making hollow feminist commentary, and the next, she could be drowning out her daddy issues with cheap gas station wine and dancing to classic rock music. I have also noticed that these characters might not actually be manic in the sense of mental illness; they could just be rebelling against the societal norms that took place during her time, which defines her as a social outcast but falls under the “manic” term. They could also just seem generally unusual or “not like other girls.” “Manic” also relates to the MPDGs fate. Since these characters are only meant to teach the protagonist something and not be real people, they often die or suddenly leave, most likely with weird reasoning. These women don’t get to live full, complicated lives.
What a MPDG is not; she is not emotionally stable, not mature, she is barely coping with personal trauma but not mentally ill to the point of dependency, and does not concern herself with more than the protagonist. She is NOT well rounded.
The next term is “pixie,” which I’ve determined to be a comment on her appearance. The best MPDGs are generally thin, waify, definitely white, have an eccentric or weird style of dress, and dyed and/or short hair. A classic example of this aspect would be Jessica Day from the show New Girl and Summer from 500 Days of Summer (both played by Zooey Deschanel). It’s often pointed out how they are unaware of their beauty or how they seem not to care about how other people perceive them. She’s beautiful because she doesn’t know she’s beautiful, kinda like that One Direction song. They also usually have funky, uncommon names. MPDGs are not: women of color, not too unconventional looking–but also not boring looking–not hot unless the protagonist has never seen a woman with breasts before, not often curvy—definitely not fat—and they don’t dress in a way that could be described as anything but alternative, funky, or eclectic while still being “feminine”.
Now, I know I spent all this time explaining these other aspects, but those are almost obsolete if this third term isn’t present because it is the most critical aspect of being a MPDG. The third term to define is “dream girl,” and the reason why I’ve compounded it is that they feed off of each other. The term “girl” mainly refers to the fact that these characters are always cis white women that are (mostly) straight between the ages of 16-23 (notice how they are under the age of when humans’ brains fully develop). White women have benefited from the patriarchal stereotype that we are innocent, pure, emotionally weak, and feminine, and these traits determine our worth. The whole term, “dream girl,” refers to how the protagonist views her and how the author has written her. According to Jacob Mohr’s blog post “In Defense of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl: Subversions and Deconstructions of a Disowned Trope,” he states that MPDGs are defined by “their role in the male main character’s life—and by the fact that they’re entirely a figment of writers’ imaginations” (Mohr). They are valued and protected because the protagonist believes they are innocent, pure, and emotionally weak, no matter how unconventional they actually look or how maniacally they actually behave. In fact, a character could be the blandest, white toast girl ever or the complete opposite of all these things I’ve described thus far, and she could still be a MPDG if that is how the protagonist sees her. The male protagonist’s perception of her, which is usually false, is the most crucial aspect of being a MPDG.
Finally, let’s look at two examples of characters from the literary world that showcase the MPDG trope that came before its heyday. The first is Daisy from the novella Daisy Miller by Henry James. When Daisy first meets the protagonist Winterbourne, she is described by what she’s wearing: “She was dressed in white muslin, with a hundred frills and flounces, and knots of pale-colored ribbon. She was bare-headed; but she balanced in her hand a large parasol, with a deep border of embroidery; and she was strikingly, admirably pretty” (James 6). Here’s why that automatically bothers me; seeing a female character purely for her “pretty” appearance is reductive and superficial. Sure it’s not inherently harmful, but someone’s appearance is an easily misconstrued impact of an otherwise conscious intention. The way Winterbourne has perceived her has more to say about him than it does Daisy. It also makes my skin crawl because God only knows how many movies—and to some extent, books—show a woman like this, usually beginning at her feet and then finally ending at her head. It completely ignores who she is as a person. This outfit also screams childlike purity and beauty and wealth; it’s white, it has ribbons and frills, and it makes me uncomfortable. Daisy is consistently described as either a young lady or a young girl, and it’s retained that she’s about 16. Winterbourne is 27. Need I say more?
Daisy also meets the definition of “manic,” but not in a mentally ill way. It refers to how she ignores unspoken social norms and rules and instead does whatever she wants. According to Lisa Johnson’s article “Daisy Miller: Cowboy Feminist,” Daisy’s directness is a great flaw according to society but is very compelling to Winterbourne. Johnson states, “she speaks her mind and forces others to speak theirs, offering rare relief in the oppressive Jamesian atmosphere of unspoken but ubiquitous and unbending cultural rules” (Johnson). Daisy might look feminine and traditional, but she is characterized by her “commitment to freedom at all costs,” which “represents an internal cross-dressing, wherein she takes on attributes historically accorded only to men” (Johnson). Daisy refuses to be tied down by society, and at first, Winterbourne is both intrigued and attracted to this; “he thought it very possible that [Daisy] was a coquette; he was sure she had a spirit of her own; but in her bright, sweet, superficial little visage there was no mockery, no irony” (James 8). Daisy goes with him without a chaperone to Château de Chillon; she speaks freely and openly around him and just generally doesn’t care about societal niceties. Winterbourne is entirely okay with her behavior as long as he’s on the receiving end of it.
However, because of the society of wealthy Americans turned Europeans Winterbourne associates with, no one wants him to pursue Daisy; they think she’s insane, to say the least. At first, Winterbourne wants to be around her, so he risked putting her in a situation he knows is inappropriate for her—but not for him—by taking her to Château de Chillon without a chaperone. When she youthfully rejects society for him, he sees her as his dream girl fantasy, but it’s a problem when she does it for someone else. Eventually Winterbourne agrees with the rest of his society and changes his perception of her after seeing Daisy flirt with Giovanelli, a young man he deems too low class and therefore inappropriate for her to be around. Winterbourne wishes she would only flirt with him. Because she chooses to exercise her agency, Winterbourne views Daisy as “a young lady whom a gentleman need no longer be at pains to respect” (James 59). That manic behavior and innocent beauty he was intrigued by is now upsetting to him. And guess what? Daisy still does not even care, not even if she gets Roman fever (61).
Unfortunately for Daisy, in classic MPDG fashion, she dies in the end from the Roman fever she contracted from staying out late. According to Jerilyn Fisher and Ellen Silber in Women in Literature: Reading through the Lens of Gender, Winterbourne only respects Daisy after tragically dying. There is a huge double standard between Winterbourne and Daisy, but “the text invites sympathy for Daisy even if she is not wholly admirable” (Fisher and Silber 127). For modern readers, there’s no reason to dislike Daisy for her choices. Winterbourne reverts back to viewing her as pure and innocent as he attends her funeral. In fact, he blames Giovanelli for allowing Daisy to stay out too late as if it wasn’t her choice to stay out late or anything. He even calls her a “poor girl” for having died (James 63). Because Winterbourne was able to view her as innocent and pure by the end of the story, she can maintain her Manic Pixie Dream Girl status.
Another example of a MPDG is Daisy Buchanan from The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Daisy, for the most part, fits into the pixie aspect. The first physical description is of her wearing white; “They were both in white, and their dresses were rippling and fluttering as if they had just been blown back in after a short flight around the house” (Fitzgerald 8). She’s also a 23-year-old white woman, so she’s got the appearance-based innocence down pat (especially in both movie adaptations). Something Nick perceives about her is how easily she could influence a man with her appearance. Everything she does seems to be conscious and charming; every word she speaks is in a “low, thrilling voice” (Fitzgerald 9). Nick goes beyond that by pointing out how “her face was sad and lovely with bright things in it, bright eyes and a bright passionate mouth, but there was an excitement in her voice that men who had cared for her found difficult to forget: a singing compilation, a whispered, ‘Listen,'” (Fitzgerald 9). But, Daisy is a wealthy young white woman that dresses well and is, frankly, shallow. She also happens to be married and has a young child, which does not fall into the MDPG trope.
Daisy is missing a significant aspect of the manic pixie dream girl trope; manic. The most manic thing she does is attend parties and have an affair with Gatsby, but that’s about the extent of it. Daisy is part and parcel of how women were viewed in this time. Gender norms went largely unchanged post-WWI, even though the 20s were seen as the new woman and flappers’ time. Women were either “commodities to be possessed and discarded by brutish louts such as Tom Buchanan” or “embodiments of an ideal for romantics such as Jay Gatsby” (Fisher and Silber 168). These categories rob a woman of her complexity and agency, and Daisy falls into both of these categories simultaneously. Daisy is aware that even though she has privilege, she does not have legitimate freedoms in life. The only way she—or any woman at this time—could live a good, comfortable life is to be married to a wealthy man. See Myrtle; her home life isn’t great without Tom and his money. In fact, Daisy was almost literally purchased by Tom with the pearl necklace. This is also why she wishes for her daughter to be a “beautiful little fool” (Fitzgerald 17). Money is the promise of comfort and privilege, and that’s ultimately what Daisy desires. Tom is aware of this, which means he can see her more truthfully than Gatsby can.
This is all leading me into what I really want to talk about; how Gatsby perceives Daisy. Daisy is the epitome of the “dream girl” aspect of this trope. Gatsby’s entire adult life is based around a wildly incorrect version of Daisy; he made his money, bought his house across the bay, and throws parties in hopes that she’ll see and wander in. Once Gatsby and Daisy rekindle their relationship, Nick realizes that Daisy could never live up to Gatsby’s expectations of her:
“There must have been moments even that afternoon when Daisy tumbled short of his dreams—not through her own fault, but because of the colossal vitality of his illusion. It had gone beyond her, beyond everything. He had thrown himself into it with a creative passion, adding to it all the time, decking it out with every bright feather that drifted his way. No amount of fire or freshness can challenge what a man will store up in his ghostly heart” (Fitzgerald 95).
When Gatsby and Daisy kissed for the first time, Gatsby became unconsciously tied to Daisy for the rest of his life: “when he kissed this girl, and forever wed his unutterable visions to her perishable breath, his mind would never romp again like the mind of God…At his lips’ touch she blossomed for him like a flower and the incarnation was complete” (Fitzgerald 110). In that exact moment, Gatsby is forever unable to do anything but to possess Daisy, but to “posses Daisy is to possess ‘some idea of himself…that had gone into loving’ her” (Fisher and Silber 169). Daisy isn’t an idea or a dream, which Gatsby is surprised by. Daisy has a daughter and her own reality, so she will never match up to his perception of her. The real Daisy is inevitable (Fisher and Silber 169). Daisy is far more shallow than Gatsby believes her to be.
And guess what? Daisy retreats to her comfortable life with Tom and chooses to move to Paris instead of running into the unknown with Gatsby. While Daisy doesn’t die, her status as a manic pixie dream girl goes with Gatsby, who died waiting for her to call him because his delusions of her were so strong. If Gatsby ended up changing his mind about Daisy, she would no longer be in the MPDG club.
There are two major differences between the Daisys, the obvious being that Daisy M. falls under the manic category, but Daisy B. does not. The other difference is how they are perceived by their protagonists. On one hand, Winterbourne, because Daisy is seen as manic, perceives this as attractive if it benefits him. Once it’s no longer attractive to him, she’s no longer his dream girl. Gatsby, on the other hand, has crafted a narrative about Daisy that is completely false, no matter how she acts. Sometimes, even, Daisy didn’t fit his narrative and Gatsby might have questioned it. Through these readings I have noticed those two categories of male protagonist as well; one that is romantically/sexually attracted to who he thinks she is, and the other that views her as beautiful, perfect, and pure and places her on a pedestal.
It is essential to mention next that modern iterations of MPDGs are often paired with inexperienced male protagonists who are also the narrators, which adds a distinct element to these narratives. Winterbourne and Gatsby are older and more experienced in life. What they lack in personal inexperience they make up for with their hugely incorrect perceptions of the women they are attracted to. The next two protagonists I’ll be talking about, Miles and Charlie, haven’t experienced much in life and need someone like Alaska or Sam, respectively, to inspire and teach them how to live life to the fullest. Winterbourne and Gatsby are also not the narrators of their narratives, which provides a sense of distance and detachment, even if the narrator—like Nick, for example—favors the protagonist. Miles and Charlie are the narrators, which compresses everything; their emotions and perceptions of the MPDG.
So now that we’ve got a solid foundation let’s take a gander at some more contemporary examples of the trope, starting off strong with the ultimate epitome of MPDGs: Alaska from Looking for Alaska by John Green, the king of MPDGs. If you’ve never read it, it’s about a teenaged boy named Miles “Pudge” Halter who’s entire existence is basically meaningless until he attends Culver Creek boarding school and meets a fun cast of characters, including Alaska Young. The back of the book literally states, “She pulls Pudge into her world, launches him into the Great Perhaps, and steals his heart” (Green). Tara Kehoe says in her article “YA Literary Tropes: The Manic Pixie Dream Girl (and Boy)” that Alaska’s “vivaciousness, boldness, and zest for life enthralled Pudge from his first day. Alaska is the epitome of the MPDG: she is quirky…unpredictable… and beautiful,” (Kehoe). More proof that Alaska is our touchstone for MPDGs according to Passell’s article I mentioned earlier:
“Alaska has hundreds of books in her room that she hasn’t read, because she’d rather be smoking and swinging on swings. She hypnotizes boys with her wit and beauty, watches porn, and pulls character Pudge out of his shell. And though Alaska’s name is unconventional—i.e., not Daisy—she’s still influenced by the pretty white flower: daisies remind her of her (dead) mother. Everyone is in love with Alaska” (Passell).
The first thing to note about this novel is actually the format in which it was written. The first narrative page states “before” (Green 2), and the following page says “one hundred thirty-six days before” (Green 3) to indicate how many days that moment comes before the day Alaska goes missing. The novel is literally named after a character that doesn’t exist during most of the narrative. When we finally meet her, Miles describes her as “the hottest girl in human history” (Green 14). Now, I know I said that MPDGs usually aren’t hot. Still, Miles falls under the category of a protagonist that hasn’t really looked at a woman before, specifically one with a body, so we’re gonna let it slide (plus look who played her in the Hulu adaptation). Not much later, we see Miles staring at her, stunned, “partly by the force of the voice emanating from the petite (but God, curvy) girl and partly by the gigantic stack of books that lined her walls. Her library filled her bookshelves and then overflowed into waist-high stacks of books everywhere, piled haphazardly against the walls” (Green 15). So—of course—we get a vague, immature physical description, but we also get the idea planted that she might actually have a thought in her brain, based on how many books she owns. And then, to top it all off, she walks over to Miles, and instead of shaking his hand, she pantses him because that’s just the type of silly thing a good MPDG would do. After all that, though, we get an uncomfortably long paragraph of all the details of her body: how beautiful she is, how she smells like “sweat and sunshine and vanilla,” how her eyes look like “fierce emeralds,” and how large her breasts are. Then he literally looks at her, “from arc of the foot to ankle to calf, from calf to hip to waist to breast to neck to ski-slope nose to forehead to shoulder to the concave arch of the back to the butt to the etc” (Green 19). Remind you of anything I’ve already mentioned?
Alaska is the first character we see that could legitimately be “manic” in the traditional sense of mental illness. The perfect example of Alaska acting this way is after she and Miles get drunk and kiss for the first time. Right in the middle of the action, she suddenly remembers something, “‘I have to get out of here!’ she cried. ‘What’s wrong?’ I asked. ‘I forgot! God, how many times can I fuck up?’ she said. I didn’t even have time to wonder what she forgot before she screamed, ‘I JUST HAVE TO GO. HELP ME GET OUT OF HERE!'” (Green 132). Two pages later, the narrative switches to ‘after’. The next morning Alaska does not return from wherever she went, and the students are called into an assembly to find that Alaska was in a car accident and died. The boys decide to take it upon themselves to figure out why she died. It takes them 114 days to figure out that Alaska had missed the anniversary of her mom’s death. So, she finds some flowers, and she’s furious with herself for forgetting. But, she’s so mad and drunk that she either accidentally drove into another car or is so mad and disappointed with herself that she impulsively decides to commit suicide (Green 211). In between the moment she leaves Miles and up until they figure out why she died, Miles is utterly obsessed with her, even more than he was when she was alive. At the 20-days after mark, he finds himself sitting by the nearby creek and saying:
“‘You can’t just make me different and then leave,’ I said out loud to her. ‘Because I was fine before, Alaska. I was fine with just me and last words and school friends, you can’t just make me different and then die.’ For she had embodied the Great Perhaps—she had proved to me that it was worth it to leave behind my minor life for grander maybes, and now she was gone and with her my faith in perhaps” (Green 172).
Alaska pulled Miles in and made him feel special by including him in her elaborate pranks, pulling him out of class to pick four-leaf clovers, asking him big questions about life, and sharing cigarettes with him. He takes this as an inspiration to change his life. Miles feels entitled to her existence because she changed him, which indicates how MPDGs function. “They function as a catalyst for the protagonist’s growth, while remaining essentially a static character themselves, with no story arc of their own” according to Megan Maloy in her article “YA Friday: Tropes Spring Eternal – The Manic Pixie Dream Girl.” Alaska has no arc of her own; she is a static character. The way the book is formatted makes her death and lack of an arc feel inevitable. According to Mery Conception’s article “Review – Looking for Alaska” for Broad Recognition:
“Her relationship to her femininity and sense of her own (white) privilege feels woefully underdeveloped, particularly in her signature punchy feminism which feels like little more than hollow retorts. Her struggles with mental health — the unnamed undercurrent of her character development — is only offhandedly mentioned towards the end… when her friends question whether her death could have been a suicide rather than an accident. From the moment we are introduced to Alaska we see her indulging in cigarettes and alcohol and admitting, with a troubling sense of urgency, that she cannot bear to be home, all telltale signs of a troubled young girl dealing with unresolved traumas” (Conception).
Conception also makes the point that “Green’s novels…often feel as though they exist in a hermetically sealed universe. When the worst thing a protagonist can imagine is being rejected by the girl sitting across from them in class or being humiliated in front of their peers — with no exploration of race, class, and gender dynamics — the stakes feel flattened” (Conception). Alaska could have been an incredibly complex and in-depth character that explores real feminist issues and mental illness, but instead, she feels as flat as these pages.
Her dream girl aspect lies with how Miles perceives her, and Miles feels that his perception is where she begins and ends. Because this narrative is from his point of view, his perception of Alaska is the “truth” of her character for the reader. Miles is similar in that way to Winterbourne; he is initially attracted to her MPDG-ness and then, by the end, feels angry and almost betrayed when those feelings aren’t reciprocated. By the very end, Miles says this:
“I believe now that we are greater than the sum of our parts. If you take Alaska’s genetic code and you add her life experiences and the relationships she had with people, and then you take the size and shape of her body, you do not get her. There is something else entirely. There is a part of her greater than the sum of her knowable parts. And that part has to go somewhere, because it cannot be destroyed… So I know she forgives me, just as I forgive her” (Green 221).
What does Miles have to forgive Alaska for? For making him fall in love with her and then dying? I want to rip my hair out. In the end, he just barely acknowledges that she was a human being, similar to how Winterbourne barely acknowledged Daisy after her death and gives us just a taste of how he doesn’t understand who she was. If you ever encounter a guy like Miles in the real world, run, do not walk.
Let’s look at another classic YA literary MPDG, Sam from The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky. If you’ve not read it, it’s about high school freshman Charlie and the “uncharted territory of high school, the world of fist dates, family dramas, and new friends. Of sex, drugs, and the Rocky Horror Picture Show. Of those wild and poignant roller-coaster days known as growing up” (Chbosky). It also takes place in the early 90s, which makes the music super fun and extra MPDG-y. We’re first introduced to Sam as “a very pretty girl” by the narrator Charlie: “Sam has brown hair and very very pretty green eyes. The kind of green that doesn’t make a big deal about itself” (Chbosky 19). She’s pretty but unassuming, and that’s shown especially in the movie adaptation as she’s played by Emma Watson with, I kid you not, a pixie cut. Check. An interesting aspect about Perks is that we have MPDG Sam and her stepbrother Patrick, who is bullied and called “Nobody” by the popular kids in school and who is also gay and dating a guy on the football team that’s still in the closet. Two manic pixie dream characters for the price of one.
What’s different about Sam than Alaska is that Charlie is not privy to Sam’s manic behavior the way Miles was with Alaska, and that distance between the characters is interesting. Charlie is fifteen years old while Sam is a senior. Charlie is so pure and immature he even says that Sam is so pretty and nice that she “was the first girl I ever wanted to ask on a date someday when I can drive” (20). Charlie goes so far as to tell Sam that he had a dream about her naked, and he starts to cry about how bad it made him feel because he saw her naked without her permission and she laughs “a really nice, warm laugh. She said that she thought I was being cute. And she said it was okay that I had a dream about her” (22). Sam points out to Charlie that she’s way too old for him and that he shouldn’t “waste his time thinking about [her] that way” (22). Sam also serves Charlie as inspiration for him to branch out in life more, like perform in the Rocky Horror Picture Show or to listen to cooler music, like The Smiths, that will change his life. Because of Sam and Patrick, Charlie is inspired to live in the moment, rather than just coast through life.
Something different about Charlie than the other protagonists is that he actively experiences a mental illness in his narrative because of sexual abuse from his aunt. He has clearly repressed this trauma, considering it doesn’t come to light until the book’s final 6 pages. Charlie’s narration is very matter-of-fact and sometimes reads emotionless and robotic. Of course, he could just be a socially awkward dude, but the way the book is formatted, Charlie is supposedly writing letters to no-one to work through what’s going on in his head; “I am writing to you because she said you listen and understand…I just need to know that someone out there listens and understands and doesn’t try to sleep with people even if they could have. I need to know that these people exist” (2). He’s the 90s Holden Caulfield, but less rude and judgmental. All of these things contribute to his emotional innocence and distance toward Sam. He wants to date her and sometimes views her sexually, but pushes all that away, partially because they make him uncomfortable but also because he thinks Sam is too good of a person for him to think of her that way.
As they become closer friends, Charlie puts Sam on a pedestal, similar to how Gatsby treats Daisy B. and somewhat how Winterbourne views Daisy M. When Sam and Patrick invite Charlie to a party, they make a toast to him and how he’s a wallflower. Charlie especially appreciates Sam toasting to him over anyone else (38). Still fairly early in the book, he confesses that he loves her “not a movie kind of love either. I just look at her sometimes, and I think she is the prettiest and nicest person in the whole world. She is also very smart and fun” (47). However, at that time, Sam is going out with Craig, and Charlie confesses he wants them to break up. When Charlie asks his older sister about Sam, she tells him that Sam had a poor reputation and has “low self-esteem” (49), which I think only contributes to how much Charlie puts her further onto a pedestal. He feels that because she is such a good person, nothing bad she’s ever done has anything to do with the fact that she’s not actually perfect. He’s also so in love with her that he doesn’t care when that causes issues. When dared at a party to kiss the prettiest girl in the room, he kisses Sam, even though he’s dating her friend Mary Elizabeth. It puts the whole group in an extremely uncomfortable position. Passell points out in her commentary that to Charlie, Sam is “a badass with a soft side. But that’s what Charlie tells us: the description we get of a MPDG from the MPDG’s victim is usually delivered through rose-tinted glasses” (Passell). Sam can do no wrong in Charlie’s eyes, and whatever her reality is, Charlie looks beyond all that because, of course, Sam can’t have rough edges; she’s too pretty and too nice. He wants to be seen and listened to because most of what he does is listen and pay attention to everyone else; that’s why they call him a wallflower. Kehoe noticed that as well in her commentary:
“Charlie is an introvert; a wallflower. Charlie does not socialize much or actually have much personality when we first meet him. Along comes Sam (hey, is Sam a common MPDG name or what?) and Patrick who introduce Charlie to life: in the form of wild nights out, mix tapes, romance, risk, and the Rocky Horror Picture Show (which they both perform in, of course.) Here, the Charlie/Sam/Patrick dynamic really shows what this trope means: it’s not about the MPD girl or boy, it’s about the straight character waking up” (Kehoe).
And she’s right, and that’s where Charlie falls into the “broodingly soulful” category that so many MPDG protagonists fall into. All he does is passively listen and thinks that enough to be a good friend (it’s important, but not the only aspect of being a good friend). He’s a blank slate that can be filled in with all the best parts of other people, and he only realizes how much his friends have done for him when they can no longer be his emotional support system in the way they were before.
Fortunately, Sam does something remarkable by calling Charlie out for doing all this before she leaves for college. Charlie confesses the moment he knew he really loved Sam and she tells him she “can’t feel that. It’s sweet and everything, but it’s like you’re not even there sometimes…You can’t just sit there and put everybody’s lives ahead of yours and think that counts as love” (Chbosky 200). The conversation continues about how Charlie has restrained himself from reacting the way he felt like he should because he thought that was the best form of friendship, mainly with Sam. Sam goes on to say this:
“Charlie, I told you not to think of me that way nine months ago because of what I’m saying now. Not because of Craig. Not because I didn’t think you were great. It’s just that I don’t want to be somebody’s crush. If somebody likes me, I want them to like the real me, not what they think I am…I want them to show me, so I can feel it too,” (201).
She promises to herself that she’s going to be independent and authentic to herself, aside from everyone else, including Charlie. She goes beyond the trope herself!
This is a great moment because here is where the reader can see that Sam isn’t all that Charlie has chalked her up to be; she knows she has rough edges and things to learn, and that’s okay, but what she won’t be is someone’s immature fantasy. What’s unfortunate for Charlie, though, but in turn gives him more depth than, say, Miles, is that they have this emotional connection and attempt to have sex, but Charlie is too triggered by Sam touching him. He cannot disconnect his feelings for Sam from his trauma, and he blames himself for it: “I wanted to kick myself for being such a baby. Because I loved Sam. And we were together. And I was ruining it. Just ruining it. Just terrible. I felt so terrible” (203). Sam tries to help him and apologizes, but Charlie does not apologize to Sam; he imagines his aunt. In fact, probably in an attempt for his brain to protect him, he essentially blacks out, and we don’t find until later that his family took him to the hospital. The final letter he writes is two months, after all that, and a day after he’s been released.
By the end, it seems like Sam is no longer on the pedestal Charlie put her on; in fact, the ending isn’t about Sam; it’s about Charlie working through his trauma on his own and figuring out his life without Sam’s help. He sees Sam once more, and all he really wishes for her, and everyone in his life, is that they’re happy (213). In the end, Sam is cleared of her MPDG status.
How did we get from the Daisys to Alaska and Sam? Obviously there’s a major difference with Alaska and Sam being written around the time when the trope was coined and it was popular for male writers to write that super specific character type, it just so happens that the Daisys also fit in. Another difference is that the Daisys are fuller characters then, at least Alaska, and somewhat Sam. As a reader, and because of the third person narrator, we can see that the Daisys aren’t just what the protagonist notices about her, but it’s hard to make those concrete assumptions when the narrator is also the protagonist. For example, it’s clear to any reader that Gatsby has illusions about who he thinks Daisy B. is, Nick directly points those things out, but it’s harder to parse that out with Charlie about Sam because Charlie’s perspective is the only one we get about Sam (until the very end of course). Alaska and Sam could have been characters with more depth, but the perception of their male protagonist blocks that from happening, so they have been reduced to their MPDG status.
So, what does all of this mean in the grand scheme of real life, though? I think the manic pixie dream girl trope, when done the way it’s intended to be, is harmful to young readers. According to Hugo Schwyzer’s article “The Real-World Consequences of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl Cliché” there are real issues that women and men face because of this trope; it seems as though women exist only to help men change (Schwyzer). Because of female characters like this, young women grow up “expecting to be the supporting actress in somebody else’s” life. Women aren’t “fantasies, and we weren’t made to save you” (Schwyzer). These characters aren’t just people we read in books or see on screens; they operate as templates for our real lives. If that template tells women that if they’re cool, quirky, and kinda crazy, all they’re meant to do is teach a boring guy how to live life and then die without having lived their own full lives. And, the manic pixie dream girl trope hurts men too! MPDGs tell men that they have to be taught by a woman to become complete human beings instead of finding meaning in their lives on their own terms. Plus, so many men still compare women to Ramona Flowers from Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, Stargirl from Stargirl, Daria from Daria, April from Parks and Rec., Clementine from Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and Jess from New Girl (and most of these girls aren’t really MPDGs).
I either resonated with all the MPDGs I’ve talked about or can empathize with them on a personal level. I resonate with Daisy Miller rebelling against society’s stupid norms of how a woman worthy of respect should act. I empathize with Daisy Buchanan when she chooses her marriage’s safety and comfort over Gatsby’s unrealistic fantasies of her. I felt like I was Alaska in high school, someone that’s chaotic and messy but still wants to be taken seriously and is someone worthy of being loved. I felt similarly with Sam; there was a time in my life where I wasted my time on men who didn’t care about me just to get an ounce of attention, and how I don’t want to be someone’s “first” anything anymore. Because of these characters’ nature, I filled in their blank spaces with pieces of myself because they made me feel like I was looking in a mirror. I’m always hurt by MPDGs fates because it makes me feel as though that’s the only ending I deserve, too; one that’s tragic and unfulfilling. It makes me feel like the only thing I exist for is to give the best parts of myself away to a bland, boring dude that will leave me with nothing in return. And I know I’m not the only young woman that’s felt that way before! American pop culture has been saturated with these narratives since I was in middle school.
And don’t even get me started when all these fun, manic things aren’t attractive anymore. You can’t be so manic that you freak people out or hurt someone’s feelings, or too depressed to get out of bed, or too body dysmorphic to look at yourself in a mirror, or allow your negative relationship with your dad to get in the way of supporting a man’s healing—then you’re just a crazy inconvenience. You can no longer be repackaged nicely if you can’t be shoved into a box.
I cannot tell you how many drafts and manuscripts I’ve read in my writer’s workshop classes where there are still characters like Alaska and Sam. They are always written by a white, self-professed liberal, young men that really just wrote a self-insert fan-fiction of a life they’d rather be living that gives them a hot, bubbly, fun, and without complexity girlfriend. But I have faith in the future still. Many stories have been published, and that will be published about women that are complex and interesting while also not being perfect. It’s also kinda cool to see how more books and movies are coming out about women that seem like MPDGs and then poke holes into that perception (like Margo in Paper Towns by John Green) and even manic pixie dream boys (like Theo in All the Bright Places by Jennifer Niven).
At the end of the day, female characters with personalities shouldn’t be considered a manic pixie dream girl based on how they act or look, but rather on how the male protagonist chooses to view them. That also goes for real-life women, who do not exist to be defined by immature men. If every single fictional woman considered a manic pixie dream girl was a living, breathing person, she wouldn’t be how pop culture views a manic pixie dream girl; she’d have rough edges, bright spots, and everything outside and in between. If a guy told her she was a MPDG, she’d probably punch him in the face. Real women aren’t MPDGs, and if they are, it’s only because an idiot man thought so.
Works Cited
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Ellie Piersol 