I took a class a while back from Carterhaugh School of Folklore and the Fantastic, called Unruly Bodies.
It taught me a lot of stuff, but there was one idea that kind of got stuck in my head and wouldn’t let go. There’s a trope called The Disposable Woman, or The Refrigerator Wife, and it is rampant and horrible and a sure sign of weak writing. Wikipedia has this to say about it:
Women in Refrigerators (WiR) is a website created in 1999[1] by a group of feminist comic-book fans that lists examples of Women in Refrigerators Syndrome, a literary trope in which female characters are injured, raped, killed, or depowered (an event colloquially known as fridging), sometimes to stimulate “protective” traits, and often as a plot device intended to move a male character’s story arc forward, and seeks to analyze why these plot devices are used disproportionately on female characters.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_Refrigerators
It’s not like women aren’t objectified and abused in real life enough, jeeze.
In Episode #3, 1994, of The Green Lantern, Kyle Raynor, our Hero, comes home to find his girlfriend, Alexandra DeWitte, has been murdered by Raynor’s arch enemy, Major Force, and stuffed into Raynor’s refrigerator. This act apparently spurred Raynor into some desperately needed character development and emotional growth, so … all good, right? Um. Well.
Not all good, guys. The Refrigerator Wife trope has haunted us for centuries. There are plenty of fairy tales where a woman has to die in order for something to happen, and so many books from the 18th and 19th centuries where a woman is just starting to have some agency over her life and has to either commit suicide or die of the consumption (it’s always the fucking consumption, innit?) because we can’t have women making their own decisions about their lives.
Fast forward to now, where we have women being forced to carry babies to the point of death because doctors are terrified to take any life-saving action that harms an unborn child … and every time a woman dies in pregnancy or in labor, another family loses a wife, daughter, mother, sister … Women are literally being made into canaries for a coal mine they really don’t want to live in. And how many times do we see this trope playing out in media, through movies, literature, television, plays, even in music? All the fucking time. The much-beloved 20-season sensation Supernatural has two, count ’em, two Refrigerator Wives in the very first episode. We really don’t need to encourage people to think that women are disposable, or that they’re objects to be used to make a point, or to fight a culture war. Enough is enough, and has been for a long damn time.
The yuckiness of this has been furtling around in my brain ever since Unruly Bodies (and let me just say, if you have never checked out Carterhaugh, and you love magic, mischief, and brilliant writing, go here now) and finally formed itself into a story I could tell in song-form, from the perspective of a dead Refrigerator Wife.
Um, enjoy?
One — I had never noticed that particular piece of ugliness in literature before. Will be on the lookout! Once you know, you can start to educate yourself, filter who you support, and that sort of thing. Good to know.
Two — I love the song! I have figured out how to download it, so it has been added to my Alma Drake collection on my phone! Awesome stuff. Keep doing what you do best.
Take care and stay out of the refrigerator.
Yeah, and once you see it you can’t unseen it. It shapes our perception so much.