Shrinking Violet - Television Tropes & Idioms

... Nuuuuuu, don't hurt me! D=

"I’m shy, so shy,

I’m shy and I don’t know why

I’m shy, so shy,

Guess you can say I’m just a shy guy..."

Painfully shy and quiet, the Shrinking Violet is the withdrawn character, usually female, who walks through the school hallways with her head down and wants nothing more than to blend in with the scenery to avoid all attention because she believes that her presence is worthless or unwanted. The reasons for her (lack of) self-confidence vary, but they usually include intimidation by the popular ones, and in more dramatic cases, a personal event that convinced her that the world would be better off if she just shut up. The Shrinking Violet usually doesn't suffer the brunt of bullying or taunts that more vocal outcasts take, presumably because she's so quiet that she might as well be invisible.

She will usually be better than average in scholastic classes, though not necessarily at genius or nerd level. Her appearance will often be pretty in a bookish sort of way. Bonus points if she has long dark hair that hides her eyes.

Some Shrinking Violets will accept their status, but be plagued with that nagging feeling that they can be more than they assume. Other Shrinking Violets will hate their crippling insecurities and want to reach out to others, but be paralyzed by fear of rejection. They didn't choose to be alone unlike The Daria, but feel powerless to change it. They may even harbor a secret crush on a popular male classmate which they, time and time again, cannot spit out.

One advantage to being the Shrinking Violet is that, being outside the viciously popular circle, the few friends she manages to make are the loyal, lifelong ones who'd give their right arms to help a true friend in need. Which they will, because the Shrinking Violet is invariably of the sweet-tempered, delicate type who makes a great friend and a lousy criticism taker from The Libby.

In the end, the Shrinking Violet will always find her inner beauty and strength with the help of her newfound friends or lover, and blossom into a mature, self-confident woman who would make her parents proud. The Beautiful All Along discovery is optional but highly recommended.

In rare cases, a superficial Shrinking Violet's mousiness will conceal a frightening and/or violent personality. Sometimes, this is also used to conceal the extremely creepy Uncanny Valley Girl.

In the off-chance that this trope is applied to a male character, it's usually to create an instant Butt Monkey.

Examples

Anime and Manga

Pictured above: Sakuno Ryuzaki in Prince Of Tennis. This is more evident in the anime, which puts emphasis in her clumsiness and chronic shyness and her crush on Ryoma, which didn't work well with Western fans and especially with rabid Ryoma slashers. Her still quiet, but more mature manga self is closer to a traditional Yamato Nadeshiko, and quite more well-regarded in the West.
- The main girl from the Dating Sim Doki Doki Survival: Sanroku no Mystic, Tsugumi Obinata, is also a bit of a Shrinking Violet (and a mild Dojikko) as well. Same goes to Shizuka Hirose, the main chick from Gakuensai no Oujisama, though this heavily on which male you're pairing her up with.
Hinata Hyuuga from Naruto embodies this trope, including the damage her ultra-strict father's family did to her self-esteem, as well as her huge crush on Naruto. When she first saw Naruto after nearly three years she fainted...twice.
Nozomi and Mayu from "Elfen Lied".
Rei Ayanami from Neon Genesis Evangelion, despite being more of an Emotionless Girl, has pretty much all the traits from the Shrinking Violet: she's absolutely quiet, in the recess she just sits in a bench and reads her textbooks, and few people at least seem to be aware of her presence, if only because she's an albino and therefore an Acceptable Target. She doesn't shirk from social contact because of shyness, however, instead avoiding it because she believes it 'unnecessary'.
- On the off chance, this was applied to a male character, Shinji, only to create an instant Buttmonkey.
In Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei, Meru Otonashi is this trope taken to its parodic extreme: A cute, fidgety girl who can't get a word out of her mouth in the simplest social situation, which doesn't prevent her from constantly sending floods of nasty, abusive SMS messages to her classmates with her cellphone. And what happens to when she loses signal isn't pretty...
- While on the topic of SZS, it's almost a crime not to mention Kiri Komori on this page. She even has the hair for it.
Sakaki of Azumanga Daioh can be best described as a Hulking Violet, due to being self-conscious about her size.
Miyazaki Nodoka of Mahou Sensei Negima fits this trope fairly well, complete with the Hidden Eyes in her early appearances. Currently, however, she's developed more, coming out of her shell around Negi and the others.
Suzuka of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha, especially before meeting Nanoha.
One really tragic case is Akira Sakura from Naru Taru.
In the case of Code Geass, this was Nina Einstein's original personality before she went all crazy after the death of her idol and crush, Euphemia..
Ill Girl Misao in the Pretty Sammy series. It brings quite a contrast to her alter ego of Pixy Misa, a gleefully over the top Card Carrying Villain.
Yukino Kikukawa from Mai-HiME, in contrast to her loud and brash best friend and partner, Haruka Suzushiro. Yukino has other friends on campus, but she doesn't speak to them as often, and even when she does, it's usually quietly.
Machi Kuragi from Fruits Basket. A male example is Wholesome Crossdresser Ritsu Sohma, skirting the line between being played for laughs and being portrayed sympathetically.
In Suzumiya Haruhi, Yuki Nagato is this in the Alternate Universe. Also gives us plenty of romance.
Kazumi Yoshida from Shakugan No Shana.
Hiromi from Diabolo is of this type, to the point of depression.

Comic Books

Salu "Shrinking Violet" Digby of the Legion Of Superheroes lived up to this trope in the post-Zero Hour reboot. The most recent reboot subverts this trope by making Salu a brash Action Girl.

Film

The titular character of Stephen King's Carrie starts out as a normal Shrinking Violet and is pushed over the edge into supernaturally psycho territory by a malicious prank pulled by the popular girls.
Cadet Hooks from the first Police Academy movie spends almost the entire film unable to look other characters in the eye and barely speaking above a quiet whisper, until very near the end when arresting a suspect when she screams "DON'T MOVE, DIRTBAG!". She continues to do that in every other Police Academy movie she's in. (Really, if someone that quiet started yelling like that and had a gun, wouldn't you feel like doing what they said?)
Mui, the female lead of Shaolin Soccer. Hair in the face, mumbling, acne, withdrawn, eventually pulling out of life in public to become a nun. Until the final showdown, of course.
The titular character of Densha Otoko is a rare male example. He's a cripplingly shy Otaku who's perfectly content with living in his own little world and only talking to people online. That is until he meets a kind and beautiful girl who's actually...*gasp* interested in him! With encouragement and advice from the members of his online community, he pursues her and finally learns to open up a little.

Literature

In the novel Speak, the main character goes through almost the entire school year basically trying to make it seems like she doesn't exist, because she called the cops at a party over the summer and her old friends and many people she doesn't even know hate her, even though her reason was that she was raped.

Live Action TV

One episode of (all together, now) Buffy The Vampire Slayer had a girl who acted this way; nobody in the school noticed her, or for that matter even knew she existed. Through a combination of quantum physics Techno Babble and the nature of the Hellmouth, she became invisible and snapped, taking revenge on the popular girls. The end of the episode revealed that she apparently wasn't the first girl this had happened to.
- Tara also fits this trope, especially in her early appearances (in season 4 and early season 5).
- Um, hello? Willow fits this trope to a T. Bookish appearance? Check. Tries to hide? Check. Social outcast, but what friends she has will risk life and limb for her? Double check. Blossoms into a self-confident young woman with the help of her lover? Check.

Video Games

Fuuka Yamagishi and Chihiro Fushimi from Persona 3 are both of this type — the latter is also a (very mild) yandere.
Mio Kisaragi and Miharu Tatebayashi from the first Tokimeki Memorial.
Fire Emblem has a few:
- The Mage Tinny in Fire Emblem 4, second generation, due to years of abuse and seeing her genki mother Tiltyu completely broken due to it.
- The Pegasus Knight Florina in Fire Emblem 7, since she's very scared of males (though she grows out of this and can either marry a very brash Hot Blooded guy or become the partner of her Tsundere best friend). Don't forget Ninian, due to her traumatic past and guilt issues.
- The Manakete Myrrh in Fire Emblem 8: she's been sheltered an revered as pretty much a living goddess in Caer Pelyn her whole life and leaving home brings her quite the misfortune until she's rescued by Ephraim.
Mia Ausa from Lunar: The Silver Star.
Despinis, one of the Homunculus of Duminuss in Super Robot Wars fits this trope to a T. Even when attacking, there's not a chance she'll not slip up the phrase "I'm sorry". All with a face of a half-sick, super shy Lolicon bait. On the bright side, she does have some sort of kindness streak and this proves to be beneficial that in OG Gaiden, instead of dying like in her original role in R, she ends up surviving.

Web Comics

One such character appeared in the background of one single strip in El Goonish Shive, and a later filler portrays the character being sitting in a pile of fan mail, confused, and stating that she hasn't actually done anything in the comic.
Punned and subverted in Everyday Heroes

Web Original

Erika Swanson of Erika's New Perfume is definitely one of these, though she is very gradually coming out of it. Still not helped by the situation she wound up in trying to magically resolve it, even if it is slowly doing the trick.
Subverted in Dr. Horrible's Sing-a-long Blog. The titualar character is painfully shy, and has been quietly in love with a girl from his laundromat for months. Ironically, his alter ego is a megalomaniacal villain who wants to rule to world.

Western Animation

The appropriately-named Violet Parr from The Incredibles. Not only is she incredibly shy, she has the hair, the mumble, and a desire to be just another girl. Her family are superheroes in hiding, and her powers are invisibility and forcefields. Needless to say, she embraces her abnormalities and puts her hair back by the end of the film... at which point she promptly becomes pushy and insufferably perky. For some people.
A rare male, yet non-Butt Monkey example: Austin from The Backyardigans also embodies this trope. Not only he's purple (violet), during the first season he was very shy and didn't spoke a lot (heck, he had songs about that). Uniqua, however, helps him get over his shyness. Because of that, you can say Austin wants her more than just a friend.
Sheila the Thief from the Dungeons And Dragons animated series

Real Life

In what must have been a freak coincidence or a mass collective consciousness outburst, a recent online poll asking the citizens of Israel to pick their national flower was confidently led by the bold, bright red Anemone-coronaria, until the very last hours of the voting where people saw the anemone was winning and started voting en masse for the Cyclamen - a flower which has about it a long-established folk mythology of female shy and purple anthropomorphism, going back to an ancient legend of King Solomon praising "her" for her shyness and purpleness and humility and whatnot. In essence, this was the triumph of the Shrinking Violet by a twisted form of voter preference backlash culminating in The Casey Effect. Wow.
Well, if we want to get technical, the vast majority of us nerdy/geeky types(of both genders, even!) seem to suffer from this to some degree or another, possibly making this a case of Truth In Television.
- I definitely disagree with the "vast majority" claim. If anything, it's probably more that when confronted with a severely shy person, others are prone to think, "I bet they're a geek, too."
Partially a case of truth in television, the condition is known as Avoidant personality disorder, these people have a crippling fear of rejection and constant worries of looking foolish or bad, they closely monitor everything they say, and every reaction from anyone they're speaking to, (on the rare occasion that they even do speak to others) this often results in broken speech patterns and a lack of fluency, due to having their attention split between tasks. These people will often wind up choosing to be lonely, rather than risk rejection. However, where the trope fails the reality test is in the "growing out of it" part. In reality, the condition usually just becomes worse and worse. Sufferers rarely seek help, either because they don't want to waste a therapist's time, or they are worried they'll be rejected by them (Although, in TV land, there's another reason). In a painful irony many sufferers, due to their lack of speaking or participating in activities, are viewed as aloof or arrogant. When really, they're so nervous when they're spoken to that they may be rendered literally incapable of speech. This is of course, the most severe form of this anxiety disorder; there are plenty of others who remain functional, but very shy and greatly isolated from society. With a proper support network involving family and friends, such people can be coaxed into therapy, where counseling and medication can alleviate many of the symptoms.