Week 3 Question

Question 1: What gaps are there in Hergé’s representations of women?

Throughout The Adventure of Tintin there is a gap in the representation of women. Hergé’s female characters are typically subordinate, weepy, fainting, domestic and pathetic creatures, or they are sexy and sensual seen as a man’s accessory, or they are just a crowd filler in his drawings. Comparatively men are portrayed as the heroes and are more ‘important’ to the story than women who are often drawn performing domestic duties such as sweeping or having jobs such as land ladies, house keepers, and nurses. 

Peggy Alcazar is perhaps the most dominant character besides Madame Castafiore, she is depicted as a domineering wife, with scenes in the album ‘Tintin and the Picaros’ where we see her bossing Alcazar around, and seeing him doing stereotypically womanly jobs such as the dishes. However, Hergé saw this as satirical and she is portrayed shrewdly rather than being seen as a symbol of feminism and empowerment (Mountfort, 2020). 

Madame Castafiore is the closest thing that Hergé has as a leading lady, she makes appearances in seven albums as well as having an album dedicated solely to her in ‘The Castafiore Emerald’ (Mountfort, 2020). Madame Castafiore is a self-made career woman, independent, rambunctious, and seen to boss around her attendants. Yet, her visits are almost always unwelcome, she always seems to ‘intrude’ both in real life and through media transmission, or just shows up at the worst or best of times (Mountfort, 2020). 

Hergé did not believe that women had much of a place in comics (Mountfort, 2020, p. 2) and that view has been transposed into his work.    

References

Mountfort, P. (2020). Tintin, gender and desire. Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics. https://doi.org/10.1080/21504857.2020.1729829 

Mountfort, P. (2020). Tintin and gender part 1 [PowerPoint Slides]. Blackboard. https://blackboard.aut.ac.nz/