Stay In The Kitchen / Literature

Examples of Stay in the Kitchen in literature.

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• This is oddly invoked in Agatha Christie's 4:50 from Paddington, or What Mrs. McGillicuddy Saw!—oddly because it's the woman herself who invokes it. Main character Lucy Eyelesbarrow is an intelligent young woman in her early thirties who attended Oxford University and excelled in mathematics, which might have led to a promising career in science. However, she realizes that academic jobs don't pay well; as she freely admits to liking money, she decides to go into the field of domestic service instead. The trope is then downplayed, as Lucy is able to make a fortune off of her work as a housekeeper/nursemaid/odd-job holder: British nobles pay highly for her services, she refuses to settle in a single home (despite being offered small fortunes to do so) because she likes making her own schedules, and she even takes luxurious vacations whenever she pleases.
  • Also a common Subverted Trope in Agatha Christie's work - in more than one book the Damsel in Distress or The Load the male protagonists were so busy protecting turns out to be the Big Bad or at least The Dragon, much to their consternation later.
• Able Team. This backfires badly on team leader Carl Lyons when he deliberately leaves behind his Action Girlfriend, DEA agent Flor Trujillo, as they're about to bust a convoy of drug smugglers. The smugglers start shooting at them with an RPG-7 and Flor, who's commandeered a helicopter to catch up with them, flies right into it.
• In the Adrian Mole series, Adrian behaves this way with his first girlfriend Pandora, wanting to marry her straight out of school and for her not to work outside the home. Pandora, being promiscuous and The Ace, laughs him down.
• Agatha H. and the Clockwork Princess: Mention is made in a footnote that Bangladesh Dupree has encountered people with this attitude... towards her. Never more than twice though, and their replacements are always incredibly polite towards her.
  • Baron Wulfenbach, meanwhile, takes incredible strides to avert this trope, having entire all-female regiments in his army. Meanwhile, the number of the Baron's enemies who subscribe to this idea becomes increasingly small, usually because said all-female regiments have melted them, or blown them up.
• In the Codex Alera, this is subverted by a Discriminate and Switch. Maximus Antillar objects when Tavi appoints Mistress Cymnea to the position of Tribune Logistica, saying that she's "just a..." and stopping. When Cymnea demands that he finish the sentence, suggesting "Whore? Madam? Woman?", his reply is that she's a civilian.
• Played for laughs in The Alphabet of Manliness, especially in the Obedience section, which is a "taking care of your pet" manual... written for women.
• In Always Coming Home, the Dayao attitude on noblewomen is for them to be nothing but childbearers (although a noble concubine can be taken for pleasure exclusively) and never leave the house. This is a sharp contrast from the Kesh. There, if anything, women are the ones with the higher status.
• Exists to a lesser degree in the Antares novels — female spacers are a rarity on Alta. It is explained as a cultural holdover from when they needed to populate their world, women were expected to produce many children and therefore avoided dangerous occupations. That said, nobody voices any objections to female spacers, especially when they need to expand their navy to defend against the Ryall.
• In Animorphs, Andalite society has traditionally only allowed males to be warriors. Females can still be as highly respected scientists or artists, but not warriors. By the events of the actual series, where the Andalite's have been in a brutal war with the Yeerks for years, there are actually female cadets in the military.
  • When Visser Four creates an alternate timeline on Earth with America as a fascist dictatorship, one of the changes is that Rachel is not part of the Animorphs anymore. In a rather funny scene:
    Rachel: Why wasn't I even in the group?
    Drode: You? A violent-prone sociopath like you, Rachel? (laughs) You were in a reeducation camp. This world has little room for bold, aggressive females. You were being taught your place.
    Rachel: Say what? My what?
• Books of the Raksura: Gender-flipped and Downplayed with Raksura Consorts, the only males among the titular shapeshifting Draconic Humanoids who can reproduce with Queens. They generally lead pampered lives within their home colony and almost never leave, so some of them see Moon, a Consort who grew up outside a colony and remains an active, deadly fighter after joining one, as a sort of Rebellious Princess for not playing the role properly.
• The Brightest Shadow: Both played straight in certain cultures and nonexistent in others. Sein evens out differences between sexes, but mansthein alien biology still emphasizes those differences.
• Gender-flipped in A Brother's Price where it's the men who are expected to do this type of thing. The main male character does follow his gender role but he's also an Action Guy which deeply impresses his wives-to-be even as it's driving them out of their skin with worry.
• In Casino Royale, James Bond definitely holds this view, to the point of having a full-blown rant about it while chasing after Vesper's kidnappers.
• In The Cat Ate My Gymsuit, Marcy's father expresses this attitude toward her and her mother.
  Father says that girl children should be born at the age of eighteen and married off immediately.
• The Change Room: Corrine opines that so many men can't find a wife these days as they don't want to just serve as their husbands' helpmates, in disapproval. Eliza is a feminist and finds this very annoying, but refrains from comment.
• The Chronicles of Narnia:
  • In The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, Susan and Lucy Pevensie are advised not to fight when they are given their weapons because "wars are ugly when women fight" (the movies left this line out).
  • By The Horse and His Boy, however, which also introduces the Rebellious Princess Aravis, the grown-up Lucy has already made her way to the military as an archer, as Corin tells Shasta that she fights "as well as" a boy. Susan has decided to stay aside, but according to Corin it's because fighting just doesn't suit her sensitive personality ("Queen Susan is more like an ordinary grown-up lady. She doesn't like going to war, despite being an excellent archer"). Lucy becomes known as "The Valiant" and Susan as "The Gentle," making their involvement in combat a matter of personality, not societal rules.
  • Jill is portrayed quite well when it's her turn to go out on adventures in The Silver Chair and The Last Battle.
  • The movie threw this right out the window, with the producers pointing out that if Susan wasn't supposed to fight, Santa really shouldn't have given her a bow and arrow.
• Discworld:
  • The entire nation of Borogravia is like this in Monstrous Regiment, although it's suggested it's less out of a feeling women should be protected, and more out of a feeling women shouldn't be allowed to do anything, or they might get ideas, and the whole thing is enforced more by old women than men, who prefer not to even think about it.
  • Jingo parodies this twice:
    • Nobby complains that he's being expected to do the cooking, just because he's a woman. This is despite the fact that 1) He's not actually a woman 2) Nobody expected him to do the cooking, he just started doing it and 3) there is an actual woman present who everyone is very clear "doesn't do cookery". She's Sergeant Angua, so no-one's going to suggest she can't fight.
    • Carrot says that the D'regs have a particular view of women fighting. Jabbar, the D'reg Wise Man replies "Yes — we expect them to be good at it."
  • Lancre, despite being a very rural and generally "backward" place, has a reputation for producing very tough women who can handle themselves well. The presence of witches has a lot to do with it. Invoked in Carpe Jugulum when a (not local) priest demands to know why the townspeople have no problem with Granny Weatherwax going out to face monsters alone. They respond "Why should we care what happens to monsters?"
  • Subverted in Men at Arms, where the Watch is forced to get some new, "minority" recruits. They get a dwarf, a troll, and a werewolf. Vimes, in particular, is unhappy about this (he doesn't like werewolves), and so the others keep trying to explain that Angua's been taken on as a "minority recruit" because she's a "w—" and then looking horribly embarrassed and having Angua herself call their attitudes old-fashioned. At one point, Colon even says that "The Watch is a job for men." All of this sets up this trope magnificently. It then turns out her status as a female has nothing to do with their misgivings, and if anything, they're worried she'll be a little too good at fighting for comfort.
• The well-intentioned but misguided variety shows up in Dracula, where the males think it's best if Mina is shielded from knowledge of their plans to kill the villain. This enforced ignorance means she's a sitting duck for the very man they wanted to protect her from. After their actions lead to Dracula attacking her, they quickly change their philosophy.
• In Dark Life there is mention of a new sect of Christianity called the New Puritans which believes that Global Warming was God punishment for our sinful ways and that woman should “wear long dress” and “practice obedience” to help stop the rising.
• In Dragon Queen, Badan tells Trava that she can't run the tavern without a man.
• The Dreamblood Duology: The city-state of Gujaareh reveres its women as "goddesses", which, conveniently for the men, generally involves keeping them comfortably sequestered in the home with minimal actual power or involvement in public life.
• In Jim Butcher's The Dresden Files, Harry has a chauvinistic sort of chivalry about him that firmly believes women shouldn't be in trouble or hit or anything like that. This might partly be because his chief mentor, one of the few people he really, genuinely respects, is about three hundred years old. Subverted in that he recognizes that it's a limitation, one that frequently almost gets him killed because as often as not, the people gunning for him are women themselves. It's just one he has to be really under pressure to start working around. Also subverted in that every woman he knows that's an ally is a straight badass, and the one he teams with most consistently is Karrin Murphy, who is also a Badass Normal, who only after several books came to understand the limitations of the "normal" part. She loathes it, but she understands it. And never let it be said Harry doesn't respect her. It's generally faded into non-existence by the sixth book, though he still does the opening doors and paying bills thing — though probably just to annoy Murphy.
• In Dying of the Light, this may well be Stay In The Rape Closet, at least for native women. A Gendercide plague had forced communities to either do that or be selected out. A few generations later, it became the societal norm.
• In Eccentric Neighborhoods, Dido, one of the Rivas de Santillana daughters, is passionate about poetry, but her boyfriend Antonio is put off by it. He arranges for famed Spanish poet Juan Ramón Jiménez to be invited for dinner at Dido's home. She is honored when Jiménez asks to see her poems. Jiménez leaves her a note complimenting her writing but advising her to quit so that Antonio will finally ask her to marry him. She weeps all night but she does quit and he does propose.
• Enchanted Forest Chronicles: Princesses are expected to act in "proper" ways, which generally mean being ditzy and useless and waiting for a prince to save them from something and marry them. Cimorene is considered "difficult" by everyone in the castle she grew up in because her practical mind led her to want to do things that actually served a purpose and let her take care of herself. Subverted in Searching for Dragons, when Cimorene has just met Mendabar and tells him she thinks Kazul is trapped in the Enchanted Forest and is going to go search for her. Mendabar tells her she shouldn't do that, to which Cimorene angrily asks him if it's because he thinks it's improper behavior for a princess. He tells her no, it's because he's king of the forest and thus knows that it's an incredibly dangerous place, full of dangerous stuff she's probably never seen before, and plus as the close friend and assistant of the already-disappeared king of dragons, her getting lost or killed or enchanted would likely spark massive political problems between the dragons and the citizens of the forest, which is the very thing they're trying to avoid. Cimorene is amazed because this is the first time someone ever gave her a legitimate reason not to do something. (She still goes, but accepts Mendabar's offer to come along and help her out).
• In Eragon, the eponymous character desperately wants Arya to be evacuated with the children when Urgals attack, although not out of chauvinism but because he doesn't want her to get hurt. She doesn't listen, and she continuously shows over the series that she is a formidable (and superhuman) fighter and eventual Love Interest of the title character.
• Played with in Everworld—David and the other guys often try to convince April to stay out of the fighting (even against Hel, whose powers mainly affect men). She always refuses and acts offended, but in her narration is ashamed to admit that she really, really wants to take those offers.
• Fifty Shades of Grey has this be Christian's idea of the 'place for a woman'. He practically mentions the trope itself, by saying that he would much prefer Anastasia to be nothing more than 'barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen'. He seems to have no problem with his second-in-command, Ross, being a working woman, but that might have to do with the fact that she is stated to be a lesbian.
• Forest Kingdom: A couple of the villains in the Hawk & Fisher spinoff series have this attitude.
  • In book 1, Adam Stalker has this opinion towards women and doesn't bother to hide it.
  • In book 2 (Winner Takes All), the Brotherhood of Steel has much the same attitude. One of their members, Jeremiah Rukker, outright tells Hawk that he's letting himself be held back by partnering with a woman.
• R. A. Salvatore's Forgotten Realms novels: Wulfgar starts getting entirely irrational ideas like this when he's to be getting married to Catti-Brie, even though he knows she's an Action Girl already. If he'd only admitted it made no sense and seen it was just his culture keeping hold of his subconscious, but he doesn't...
• Get a Grip, Vivy Cohen!: Vivy's mom thinks that because she's a girl, she should play softball instead of baseball. Vivy has a hard time convincing her mom to let her join the Flying Squirrels.
• Gor: Women are subjugated in Gorean society. Free Women typically live in seclusion and must wear veils and robes of concealment if they go outside, though some are still able to become well-respected and accomplished members of their caste. They aren't permitted to fight and are prevented from learning how to, even those of the Warrior Caste.
• Hannah Swensen: As mentioned in Lemon Meringue Pie Murder, Andrea's mother-in-law thinks she should quit her job and be a stay-at-home mother and wife. Her husband Bill isn't much better, since he refers to Andrea's real estate career as "her little hobby".
• Harry Potter:
  • Once Tonks becomes a mother, Lupin and others are mostly concerned with keeping her safe. She's a fully-trained Auror, and probably the second best fighter left in the order. Once she shows up, though, she heads to the front lines immediately. Harry even notes this in Deathly Hallows, when Lupin offers to join the group on their quest and adds that Tonks is staying with her mother. Harry thinks this is odd and that Tonks would be more likely to want to join in on the action as well. This is right before he finds out Tonks is pregnant. When Tonks shows up to fight later in the book, it's after her son has already been born.
  • Also in Deathly Hallows, the entire Weasley family and Harry refuse to let Ginny join in the fight at the end. It's not that they think she's incapable, but that she's underage (everyone else underage has been evacuated) and they don't want to lose anyone else they love (Mrs. Weasley doesn't even want her other children fighting, but they're all legally adults, except for Ginny, and thus she can't keep them from doing so). Ginny is not happy with this and cheerfully runs off to help the first chance she gets.
• In John C. Wright's The Hermetic Millennia, Lady Ivinia tells the male Chimera warriors that Chimera women, of course, obey their men, and as a meek and gentle woman, she has no place in the councils of war, she will only tell them, in the name of the motherhood, that they must overcome the foe they face, and they should commit suicide if they fail. Then she withdraws, and one warrior observes that he's glad that their women are gentle, because if they were bold, who could imagine what they would be like?
• The Honorverse has a (mostly) justified variant with the planet Grayson, a colony of Space Amish who left Earth on a colony ship to get away from all technology. Unfortunately, they unwittingly chose a Death World to settle, and by the time they got there, they didn't have the resources to go anywhere else. As a result of the absolutely toxic atmosphere (heavy metals, et al), the death rates in the early days of the colony were devastating, and the stillbirth and miscarriage rates were astronomical. As a result, Grayson men became extremely protective of their womenfolk, who faced enough risk and tragedy from their own bodies that subjecting them to any more was practically unthinkable.
• The Inverted World: Helward's wife Victoria complains that the Guild system encourages this kind of attitude: women aren't allowed to become Guild members and are expected to devote all their time to producing children. The root of the problem is actually the skewed gender ratio of births in the City: the live birth of females is so rare that, even with mandatory marriage at a young age, it is becoming difficult to keep the population up.
• In Death: Commander Skinner explicitly states this attitude to Eve Dallas in Interlude In Death. She quickly demonstrates that she just does not fit in his view of the world.
• In The Infernal Devices, one of Benedict Lightwood's claims against Charlotte Branwell's leadership is that women are incapable of running the Institute.
• In The Jeremiah School, in order to distinguish himself as a thorn in the side of Peter Stone and his two friends, fellow Jeremiah School student Malthorne Draconius taunts Ginger Harmony by saying that women shouldn't be prophets, but that they should be housewives and mothers, like his own mother. Peter responds by saying that his parents most likely bought his way into the school, and that his mother is probably busy ordering the servants around.
• H. Beam Piper's Lord Kalvan Of Otherwhen does this with Rylla, who has been raised as a boy owing to her father's inability to produce a son. When she breaks her leg leading an otherwise successful cavalry charge, Kalvan tries to get her nurses to pretend that her limb hasn't healed so she'll hopefully miss the rest of the fighting. Fortunately for him, she figures out what he had been doing and leads a small squad of cavalry who happen to arrive in the right place to capture an enemy commander who had been attempting to flee the battlefield. In a twist, Kalvan knows entirely well that his wife is one of the better fighters around. He also knows that she's very reckless of her personal safety and that the dynasty cannot survive both of them dying in the same battle. Later on, when she finally learns to be a little more careful, he raises fewer objections to her leaving the castle.
• Appears frequently in Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982, as the book is about sexism.
  • When Jiyoung was in a hiking club in college, the female members were not allowed to become club president.
  • The professors at Jiyoung's colleges would not recommend female students to employers.
• The Kzin of Known Space are what happens when a bronze culture gets genetic engineering. The Men are warriors and all violent. The women are modified into being non-sentient.
• The Moon and the Sun: When Pope Innocent XII visits Versailles, he criticizes Marie-Josèphe for composing music because he believes that women should be silent.
• The Reynard Cycle: This is played straight and inverted. The Arcasians have this attitude, but their enemies the Calvarians are a gender-neutral meritocracy capable of fielding entire companies of female combatants. Then Reynard adopts the Calvarian model when building his Army of Thieves and Whores and ends up with one-fifth of his own army being women, some of whom are later made Chevalier (Knights) for their efforts. This doesn't sit well with the more traditionally minded Arcasian nobility.
• In Scavenger Alliance, The Alliance has some clearly-defined gender roles; men hunt, women fish. Women cook and care for children, aren't allowed to use bows and don't become officers. Women leave their division to get married, not men. This is because a few throwbacks have managed to grab positions of power and always derail any attempt to change things: Wall and Major always vote against proposed female officers, for example. Changing this is a major recurring plotline, and Blaze getting Wall on her side so he votes for her as Donnell's deputy is a huge victory. This is quickly followed by Raeni ousting Major as leader of Queen's Island.
• Septimus Heap: Invoked by Septimus in Syren where he tells Jenna to stay with Milo Banda rather than follow him into the Ice Tunnels, as her survival is critical for the safety of the Castle.
• Reconstructed and inverted in Shadow of the Conqueror by practitioners of the religion of Matriology. These folk have a matriarchal culture that holds that it is the nature of women to give life, whereas the nature of men is to take life, both of which are acknowledged as necessary acts. Thus in, say, a farmer's house, the husband's duty is to pick the fruit and slaughter the cattle, while the wife's duty is to prepare the food. Thus it isn't so much that women aren't allowed out of the kitchen so much as that men aren't allowed in it.
• This was why Toulac, a career soldier, had to retire from the army in the Shadowleague trilogy by Maggie Furey.
• Shtetl Days: The Nazi-ruled world is clearly very patriarchal. Even in the mid-21st Century it's taken for granted that the wife does all the cooking and cleaning.
• Skolian Saga: Subverted. The upper classes of the Skolian Empire are like this—some of them even forbid their male family members from seeing anyone who's not a relative except under strict supervision, although they're considered to be out-of-touch for it. The kidnapped princeling in Undercity desperately wants to go to university and become a marine biologist, but his mother won't allow it. After Major Bhaajan figures out that the kidnappers were able to get him because he was so unhappy he ran away, she relents, and by the end of the book he's enrolled.
• A Song of Ice and Fire:
  • Brienne is frequently reminded by minor characters that "a woman's war is in the birthing bed," even though she'd really have no problem mopping the floor with all of them. The society of Westeros is incredibly sexist, and Lord Randyll Tarly is not only against women being anything but wives and mothers he is also against noblemen being anything other than warriors. This is a particularly dark example because there's really nothing protective about his attitude toward her. He doesn't bother to hide the fact that he's really, really hoping something terrible will happen to her so that she'll learn her lesson and get back in the kitchen where women belong.
  • Deconstructed. This mentality actually puts most women in danger more than it protects them from it. Most women and girls in Westeros cannot defend themselves because they've been discouraged from learning how; nor can they enforce chivalry. Without male guardians, a situation that occurs frequently, especially for peasant women, they're sitting ducks. And there are many men out there who Would Hit a Girl.
  • The in-universe histories, set while dragons were still around, reveal that the Targaryen royal family and their Velaryon cousins used to have a lot more martially inclined women, although they were from a different cultural background. This trend seems to have died out with their dragons when they would likely have felt the need to assimilate more Westerosi cultural values as they no longer had their superweapons.
• Spenser: Spenser and Susan Silverman often discuss this, with Spenser often doing his best to protect Susan. It annoys her, but since he's an ex-cop and private detective and she's a psychiatrist she grudgingly defers to his judgments on matters that could get them both killed.
• Star Trek:
  • In the novel Ishmael by Barbara Hambly, a ST/Here Come The Brides crossover — an amnesiac Spock is taken in by Aaron Stemple. At one point two characters have gone missing in the rainy Seattle woods and Spock suggests Biddy Cloom lend a hand in the search. "But she's a woman!" says Stemple. "What has her gender to do with her ability to locate missing persons?" asks Spock.
  • A variant in the Star Trek: Voyager Relaunch novels. Tillum Drafar has the view that mothers should not be working outside the home. Among his people, biological necessity compels women with young children to dedicate their time entirely to the infant. When confronted with B'Elanna Torres, who balances her work with her motherhood, he implies she is a poor mother for doing so and initially treats her dismissively. B'Elanna, once she understands the reason for his prejudice, manages to challenge it in a non-confrontational but effective manner.
• Star Wars Legends:
  • Depending on the Writer, Luke Skywalker is either somewhat protective of his prickly friend and later wife Mara Jade, wanting to stand between her and the worst danger but entirely willing to fight alongside her and acknowledging that she's better in some areas of combat than he is... or he's much more protective and less appreciative of her skills. Either way annoys her.
  • Tenel Ka goes through this with Jacen Solo. But she's less snide about it than Mara is.
• This is the twist ending to The Stepford Wives. It is revealed that the men of Stepford are quite happy to murder their wives, just to replace them with gorgeous robots that have no outside hobbies or interests and live only to cook and clean and care for their husbands. The result is that after roughly six months, the women seem to turn perpetually happy and talk about how they're giving up photography or whatever because they just weren't very good at it anyway and now they're too busy.
• The Stormlight Archive: Subverted. The Alethi have very strict gender roles (particularly in the aristocracy) that define "masculine arts" (politics, combat, commerce, etc) and "feminine arts" (art, science, history, etc). For either gender, stepping outside these roles is seen as scandalous - a woman who wanted to fight would be "told her place", but the same would go for a man who wanted to write a book. There are a few exceptions, though. The priesthood is open to both genders, and priests have at least some leeway in terms of gender roles. And since all the gender roles are based on an ancient book defining them, jobs that didn't exist back then (such as horse groom) are gender-neutral.
• Sweet Valley High: A book had the girls dealing with a homeroom teacher who had this attitude. Literally — he takes the money collected for the class to buy lunch on a class trip and gives it to the girls for them to buy supplies and make lunch for the entire class. He also assigns the girls to clean up duties and seems genuinely incapable of believing that the girls are just as adept at sports and class offices as the boys are.
• The Tale Of Magic: It's illegal for women to read and they aren't expected to be anything other than an obedient wife and mother. Brystal's father believes this to such a degree he doesn't think a women should correct anything a man says; even if he was saying the sky was purple.
• Tasakeru: Zero does the sweet-and-misguided version of this to Hanami, ostensibly because his Samurai training has drilled the concept of chivalry into him since birth, and also because he really does care about Hanami.
• C. S. Lewis' Till We Have Faces: The King of Glome once hits his daughter -and main character- Orual during an argument. Later he feels remorseful about it, but he puts the blame on Orual, stating she should refrain herself from meddling in masculine matters as politics. Ironically, Orual ends inheriting the throne of Glome.
• Tolkien's Legendarium:
  • In The Lord of the Rings, everybody tries to keep Éowyn away from the battlefield, and King Théoden wants her to stay in Meduseld and rule Rohan in his absence, thereby giving her another "man's job" instead. Éowyn disguises herself and goes to battle anyway (though it's never made clear whom she deputized to stay and rule Rohan). And while she's at it, she brings Merry with her, when he has also been excluded from the troops on account of being too short. She and Merry kill the Witch King of Angmar, a.k.a the guy who killed King Théoden.
  • Beren and Lúthien: After being reunited with Lúthien, Beren tries to convince her to return home without him because his quest is too dangerous for her...even though she has just rescued him from the dungeons of Sauron (whose fortress she blew apart and away). Beren tries to sneak away while Lúthien is sleeping, but she catches up with him and gets it through his head that she is not letting him go through his mission alone (and good thing she did because Beren couldn't have stolen a Silmaril from Morgoth without her help).
• In the Tortall Universe, noble women were mostly trained to be polite, beautiful and good at managing estates. Alanna decided she would be having none of that, so disguised herself as a boy and trained to be a knight. After revealing her gender, saving the land several times and the King marrying another competent fighter from another land, this begins to dissolve. The follow-up series, Protector of the Small, shows that the attitude is alive and kicking as sexists continually try to block Keladry from becoming a knight.
  • The prequel Beka Cooper series shows how this starts; a religious movement of the Gentle Goddess (or some such) that would eventually gain enough popularity to kill off the Action Girl. In hindsight, this shows why Alanna is the Goddess' champion; she must have gotten tired of being pushed aside and pretty much jumped at the chance Alanna offered her to gain her reputation back.
  • Note that the above examples pertain to Tortall, the main setting. Other cultures in the setting range from worse than the Tortallans to full gender equality, and in the case of the Copper Islands the rightful ruler is always a queen regnant.
• Oddly, Esme in Twilight. Rosalie and Alice are formidable fighters always in the thick of conflict, but there is never any question of whether or not Esme will take part. In fact, it is stated at one point that Esme is not a fighter. Presumably, this is related to her role as "mother" in the family (and her conscious decision to refrain from violence), but it's still pretty strange since she must be just as strong and capable as any other vampire and they could always use the help.
  • In Breaking Dawn, Edward is constantly upset with Bella taking fighting lessons from Emmett, at one point outright forbidding her from having any one night. It's supposed to be because he can't stand the thought of her being hurt, but as a vampire, there's very little that can harm her. Plus, she's a newborn and thus has more strength than a normal vampire, and the Volturi are coming for a fight, so having her be untrained for combat comes across as just silly.
    • It is implied to be because he has to see Emmett's thoughts about ways to hurt her that it bothers him, and he says outright that it is because he can't bear to think that way about her that he can't train her himself.
• This is true for most of the polities in Victoria: A Novel of 4th Generation War. The New Confederacy finds women in the military incompatible with Southern chivalry, and the Nazis share similar sentiments, as does the reactionary Northern Confederation. The only significant exception is Azania, which is a Lady Land and is mocked by the Confederation in particular for its female soldiers.
• In the Wheel of Time series, Rand repeatedly goes out of his way to avoid getting any women killed—even his Amazon bodyguard and the evil sorceresses trying to kill him. Rand is rapidly going out of his mind, and knows that this is stupid behavior and all it does is annoy said bodyguards and his three girlfriends but he can't make himself stop it. Likely a result both of upbringing and having killed his wife in his last incarnation. The aforementioned Amazon Bodyguards at one point threaten to commit mass suicide if he doesn't let them go into battle with him. Another time, when he does manage to sneak off without them, they then come in when he's canoodling with his girlfriend and beat him up as punishment.
  • Nynaeve and Elayne go on numerous adventures together and constantly grumble about the men wanting them to stay out of danger. However, they do have a point since they are undertrained apprentices with no combat skills and get kidnapped often.
• When Women Were Dragons: It is 1950's American suburbia, after all. Alex's father discourages her from pursuing a college education, unless she's out for an Mrs Degree. He would much rather she forget the whole math thing and marry right out of high school. After all, what good is a college degree to a woman? Also, Alex's mother takes her role as a housewife very seriously and sometimes punishes other women who will not conform to social expectations. For example, she briefly cuts off communication with her sister until the latter agrees to take a husband and act in a more acceptably feminine fashion.

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