a week of Sacrificial Virgins

James Murray, editor and philologist (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Spent the week putting in a little work every day collaborating with Lauren on our paper on Sacrificial Virgins in the Whedonverse, of which we now have a complete draft, approximately twice as long as anything we'd actually be presenting; so stage two, cutting it down to size and adding pictures, is next week.

We're comparing sacrifice of virgins in Greek tragedy to the same persistent trope in the Whedonverse.( Or do we mean motif?  And what is the difference?  Must check my Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms (1), which I just downloaded (2)(3)(4)...)


I am running into a problem with our basic premise.  Sacrifice of virgins is a motif that shows up absolutely everywhere.  Andromeda for a start.  Every fairytale where the knight saves the princess from the monster-of-the-week.  I've just checked the Stith-Thompson searchable online index (http://storysearch.symbolicstudies.org/ ) and there are 318 motifs involving "princesses"; 159 involving "maidens"; 98 involving "virgins" (and another 95 involving the Virgin Mary).  Most of these aren't about virgin sacrifice, but the prevalence of stories about virgins/maidens/(always virgin) princesses demonstrates the persistent fascination Western culture has always had with the post-pubescent pre-marital phase of the female life cycle.  Sacrifice of women in that phase is always represented as particularly powerful in several ways (both magically or religiously efficacious, and emotionally wrenching), because of the supreme value of the victim, sacrificed at her moment of greatest desirability and perceived worth to the community.