Women as Defined by Men: Princess Leia and Rey in Star Wars

Princess Leia is captured by men, saved by men, saves men, loves men, and kills men; Rey, too, saves men, is captured by men, escapes men, learns from men, and challenges men. What differentiates these two women, however, is their importance to the plot in the films they inhabit. Leia — being the first female character in the Star Wars galaxy introduced to fans in 1977 — is arguably secondary: she serves to further the storyline of the male characters who dominate politics, culture, and spirituality. Rey — arriving thirty-eight years later — is the central character to this new saga: she essentially is the plot in a politically, culturally, and spiritually complicated galaxy. Still, the way in which the audience perceives the two women’s strength and autonomy is almost entirely shaped by how they relate to the male-dominated galaxy and environments in which they live. They therefore take on the responsibility to represent all women, despite only justifiably being able to depict a very small portion of such a diverse group. Additionally, as depicted through Leia’s interactions with Han Solo in the original trilogy and Rey’s with Finn and Kylo Ren in the newer iteration of films, women’s relationships to men can both strip them of their mental and physical autonomy and also provide them the opportunity to strengthen the audience’s perception of their strengths and beliefs.

Princess Leia is first introduced as a woman to be controlled by men: she is challenging and uncompromising, and the men around her must suppress that. After recording a message to R2-D2, she is captured by stormtroopers — soldiers of the Empire she actively fights against.

When they bring her to their commander Darth Vader, we learn that Leia is a Senator from Alderaan and is thus “immediately perceived… as an authority figure” (Pianka 37). Our initial understanding of her character is thus one of power: she holds a high political position and challenges prevailing ideas of a woman’s place in politics, both in the late 1970s and today in 2018. Still, the very first interaction Leia has with a human character is with a man who accuses her of treachery and kidnaps her for her supposed crimes. As such, she is written to be a challenge, but not without consequence. No matter how much she disapproves, she must be controlled by the Empire and the men who rule it.

Leia still subverts the traditional idea of a woman dominated by men. Upon her capture, she adopts the “damsel in distress” trope, wherein a trapped woman must be rescued by a man, her hero. Leia is not stuck in this role, though: when her male “heroes” (Luke Skywalker and Han Solo) arrive to free her, she does not respond in the way one might expect.

Instead, as we can see, she tells Luke that he is, “a little short for a stormtrooper.” Her first assumption is that this unknown stormtrooper could very well take her to be executed, but she does not back down. Even when introduced to an unmasked Luke, she is not grateful — rather, annoyed. Because she does not immediately throw herself to Luke and fall in love merely for freeing her, Leia successfully avoids the damsel in distress trope. Since Luke, Han, and Leia are then unable to escape as easily as they would have hoped, Leia’s strength is perceived by how she gets them away. Thus, when her plan to escape through the garbage chute fails, Han makes it clear that she is to blame, rather than Darth Vader, who kidnapped her in the first place; or Luke and Han themselves, who failed to come up with an escape plan prior to “rescuing” her. The only things to eventually save them are C-3PO and R2-D2 — two droids assumed to be masculine, which subtly reinforces the idea that a woman is unable to solve a problem without the help of men. Although Leia is untraditional in that she momentarily becomes the heroine of the story, this role is stripped from her when her only act of heroism lands them in a different kind of trouble.

The exploration of Leia’s (hetero)sexuality truly begins in Star Wars V: The Empire Strikes Back, wherein her autonomy developed in the first film is challenged by her romantic relationship to Han Solo. Leia is consumed by her interest in a man she calls a “scoundrel” — her character is arguably centered around gaining his attention.

This is the very first time Leia appears in this film. She pines after Han Solo who has, since the end of Episode IV, become a captain in the Rebellion. In this scene, Han is written to somehow know Leia’s feelings better than she does when he implies that Leia is interested in him after she repeatedly rejects him. Leia’s chase after Han tells the audience that she does, indeed, have feelings for him, but she does not completely know it. Her mental autonomy is stripped because her feelings are dependent on someone else describing them to her (i.e. Han “knows” that Leia is interested in him because she follows him around). Later in the film, to regain her sense of control, she kisses Luke in order to upset Han. This scene is clumsy at best, but it worsens when the audience learns that Luke is actually her brother. Therefore, we do not read it as a sign of dominance on Leia’s part, but rather as awkward and, in some ways, desperate. Though Han definitively pressures and harasses Leia into being romantically interested in him (for instance, when Leia repeatedly tells him to stop touching her hand in the Millenium Falcon, to which he does not stop and instead backs her against a wall and kisses her), it is Leia who is criticized for not knowing her own feelings toward him. The second they kiss, Leia becomes the succumbing female lover: willing to do everything and anything for the man she loves.

In Star Wars VI: The Return of the Jedi, Leia reinforces prevailing ideas about what women are willing to do in order to save the men they are expected to love. One film prior, Leia had told Han that she loved him only moments before he is frozen in carbonite, to which he responded that he knows. Notice here that Leia does not know her feelings; when she does, Han already knows. There is thus a contrast between how women are understood to control their feelings and how men perceive women’s feelings. Leia, now apparently in love with Han, sneaks into Jabba’s palace to free him. Just as with the garbage chute and the kiss with Luke, she fails: she is discovered by Jabba, stripped of her clothes, and enslaved.

The contrast between the costume she wears only minutes before and the slave costume is stark: in one, she is androgynous, defined by her actions and the way her body is used to accomplish them; in another, she is a woman, defined by her body and how she uses it. Her physical (and arguably mental) freedom seems a small price to pay for the attempted freedom of a man she loves as she submits to her situation. When she is finally able to kill Jabba with the very chains he uses to enslave her, it remains dependent on the actions of Luke and Han, who have created panic in their attempt to escape. Whatever strength she exhibits, she is still reliant on the men around her to some extent. Additionally, despite the undeniable trauma Leia has faced during her time with Jabba, this is forgotten as she falls further in love with Han.

Leia’s love for Han is not the demise of her character; rather, her sexuality as expressed through this partnership liberates her from traditional perceptions of a woman’s capabilities. In his paper entitled “The Power of the Force: Race, Gender, and Colonialism in the Star Wars Universe,” John Paul Pianka argues that no matter the amount of freedom taken from her at the start of the film, “Leia still manages to end Return of the Jedi on a high note, saving Han’s life by shooting an approaching stormtrooper” (Pianka 42). It is clear that Leia’s strength is not diminished by her relationship to Han. Furthermore, Pianka writes, Leia inspires many fans to “reach outside their comfort zone; to have confidence to wear such a revealing outfit, when they would otherwise be unable to” (Pianka 39). She simultaneously subverts expectations of women’s agency in her ability to fight in an outfit which is meant to strip her of her strength, while reinforcing prevailing stereotypes that women will do anything for the men they love. Her legacy of autonomy not only inspires the female audience of Star Wars but also carries on in Daisy Ridley’s Rey in the newer films, though the two differ in the way that they relate to men romantically.

In Star Wars VII: The Force Awakens, Rey is introduced as a fighter who does not want a man getting in her way. Her dirty, sand-caked clothes are genderless and unkempt.

Claudine Elnecave writes in her paper on theatrical costume that white symbolizes “innocence [and] virginity” (Elnecave 3). Rey then serves as a strong opposition to Leia in the first few seconds we see her in that the neutral beige she wears means that the audience sees Rey as someone susceptible to either good or bad — her costume does not say as much about her (gendered) character as Leia’s does. There is arguably more of a parallel here to Luke Skywalker, who wore similar clothing in the original trilogy. Additionally, she is not captured by men immediately as Leia is by Darth Vader, and so she does not have to assert herself in relation to them in order to prove her strength to the audience. Rather, Rey is strong because she can hold her own, on her own.

The first male human character she interacts with on screen is Finn, a runaway stormtrooper who sees Rey getting mugged and comes running to save her. (Note: Finn is boundary-breaking in his untraditional portrayal of masculinity and the hero trope, but he is not the focus of this essay.) He, too, is not unlike Luke was with Leia in this way: he sees a woman in danger and feels obligated to help. However, Rey alters our perceptions of a woman’s physical capabilities when she defeats the men attacking her. She presents as an independent woman who rejects the help of men to get her out of a situation: she can fight; she does not want Finn to hold her hand; and she is a pilot. Conversely, Leia does not necessarily need the help of men, but does not turn it down in the same way Rey does. In his essay in the book “The Ultimate Star Wars and Philosophy, You Must Unlearn What You Have Learned,” Cole Bowman writes:

Since Leia is the only major female character within the original trilogy, her decisions can be seen as representative depictions of women overall. Moreover, anything she does unwisely or poorly… sends a message about all women. If there were greater representation of women, however, there wouldn’t be a problem with evaluating Leia as an individual character versus Leia as a representative of women overall. (Bowman 178)

As such, it is important to note that Leia, though capable of making her own decisions, is greatly limited by the fact that she is one of the only women in the environments she inhabits. The choices her character makes reflect back on all women. The same remains for Rey: though she is autonomous in her rejection of Finn’s help, she is also the only woman shown on screen for the first hour of the film. Rey’s independence, therefore, is only shown in contrast to men; in this sense, she is still dependent on these relationships. Additionally, if she is the only woman shown on screen for such a large amount of time, it begs the question of how a white, cisgender, heterosexual (regardless of other identities, like class and ability) woman could be the representative for all women. Leia and Rey alike fit this mold. There is an immense amount of responsibility and pressure placed on them to be the perfect representatives for women, though they cannot possibly do this alone lest they risk misrepresentation. She — the Star Wars woman — must be independent of men while still romantically dependent; strong while remaining feminine; groundbreaking while fitting into the confines of what is expected of a woman.

Either way, Rey seems unconcerned with any kind of romantic relationship to men, despite their interest in her. For instance, Finn asks if she wants to return to Jakku later in the film in case she has a boyfriend — a “cute boyfriend” — a comment which Rey says is none of Finn’s business. She evidently does not prioritize being in a relationship and therefore does not “suffer from sexual objectification” (Vainikka 61). Her sexuality is something private, unknown to both the characters onscreen and the audience watching. What’s more, her being a woman is not central to her character, and neither is the way in which she expresses her romantic interests in others. No matter how little she wants to engage with men, she is captured by Kylo Ren similar to Leia’s enslavement by Jabba the Hutt.

After losing to him in a lightsaber battle, Rey is captured by Kylo Ren, strapped to a chair, and interrogated with the Force, a scene analogous to sexual assault in the same way Leia’s enslavement to Jabba the Hutt is.

Vilma Vainikka argues in her paper “The Portrayal of Female Characters in the Star Wars Film Saga” that this scene “can be regarded as an allegory to rape threats” in that Kylo is “threatening to invade not her body, but her mind without her permission or consent” (Vainikka 63). When Kylo tells Rey that he “can take whatever [he] wants” from her using the Force, Rey is regarded as an “object or tool to be used for his own goals” (Vainikka 63). Jabba, too, views Leia as an object in the same way, though he sees her more as a means for entertainment and conquest rather than a way to gain information. Nonetheless, revenge must be exacted against the women’s captors: Leia kills Jabba and Rey escapes Kylo Ren. Leia obviously cannot forgive her captor, but Rey desperately wants to. In Star Wars VIII: The Last Jedi, she spends the middle portion of the film trying to prove the good in him. For a moment, the audience believes the same as Rey: that there is conflict between light and dark inside Kylo. He kills Snoke, his and Rey’s mutual enemy, but eventually it is evident that his only goal is to hold power all to himself (see below).

Leia and Rey are similar in the way that they are both want to forgive the wrongs that the men in their world have done to them: with Leia, Han’s harassment of her; with Rey, Kylo’s imprisonment of her. Rey still wants Kylo to be good when she begs him not to go down the path she sees him on. However, she differs from Leia in that there is only so far she is willing to go. She refuses to help the First Order and will not succumb to the forces of the dark side just to save a man she cares for. In this sense, Rey furthers the development of her independence from men and uses her morals — i.e. sticking to what she believes is “good” — to overcome her feelings (romantic, platonic, or otherwise).

Female sexuality can be liberating and restrictive, blinding and enlightening, according to its representation through Rey and Leia in their respective Star Wars films. While they both reinforce the patriarchal notion that men can and should be forgiven for any and all of their wrongdoings, they also provide strong examples of women’s strength and autonomy. Additionally, being arguably the most important women in their respective films means that they must be the representatives for all women. As such, they have immense amounts of responsibility to act in a way that simultaneously challenges and conforms to the male-dominated systems that control us. How women interact with the patriarchy that dominates our lives, both in fiction and in reality, remains dependent on our relationship with and to men, but it does not mean we cannot demand more independent and adequate representation.

 

Works Cited

Bowman, Cole. “Pregnant Padme and Slave Leia: Star Wars’ Female Role Models.” The Ultimate Star Wars and Philosophy: You Must Unlearn What You Have Learned, by Jason T. Eberl and Kevin S. Decker, Wiley Blackwell, 2015, pp. 171–181.

Pianka, John Paul. The Power of the Force: Race, Gender, and Colonialism in the Star Wars Universe. Wesleyan University, May 2013, pp. 32-61.

Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope. Directed by George Lucas, Twentieth Century Fox, 1977.

Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back. Directed by George Lucas, Twentieth Century Fox, 1980.

Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi. Directed by George Lucas, Twentieth Century Fox, 1983.

Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens. Directed by J.J. Abrams, Lucasfilm, 2015.

Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi. Directed by Rian Johnson, Lucasfilm, 2017.

Vainikka, Vilma. The Portrayal of Female Characters in the Star Wars Film Saga. University of Eastern Finland, April 2018, pp. 58-70.