Troublesome definition: Hysterical Woman

The name of this trope makes it sound like a certain kind of Always Female character, which might be a useful trope. However, the description is entirely given over to inveighing against the universal depiction of women as hysterical, which is far less worthy of a trope which might be more aptly called Women Are Hysterical.

That whole paragraph detailing the history and meaning stuff can go because it doesn't help describe the trope.

The description should be first and then the all the "we don't do that any more" crap should be at the end.

I don't think the boldface stuff at the bottom helps.

Going by the title, it sounds like it's about a specific type of female character, the kind who goes into histrionics whenever anything happens, and ends up hyperventilating so badly that she faints and has to be carried to the couch and revived with smelling salts. Apparently it's the much more general "women are dismissed for being too emotional". I'd say use the current title for the 'hysterical dame' character, and put the current description under Women Are Too Emotional or something like that.

Moved the history to Analysis, swapped the position of the paragraph about it being a Double Standard and the paragraph with the actual definition of the trope. Deleted the shouting at the bottom.

But the trope name still sounds like the character type, not "Women are more emotional than men". That probably should be changed.

edited 27th Mar '11 10:01:56 PM by Madrugada

...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.

I think I've seen a Women Are Emotional trope kicking around YKTTW, but I'm not sure.

Fight smart, not fair.

I did a bit of editing on what was left and tried to crisp it up.

Nice cleanup, Maddy & blackcat.

Goal: Clear, Concise and Witty

I went through the examples and cleaned out the editorializing. And the examples are evenly split between "woman having hysterics" and "women are presented as more emotional and less stable than men" types. This trope definitely needs to decide which one it wants to be.

...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.

I think it wants to be two tropes, and I think this one should be the women having hysterics because the name fits it better.

Reality is that, which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -Philip K. Dick

Isn't "woman having hysterics" a presentation of "woman is more emotional and less stable than men"?

Goal: Clear, Concise and Witty

Member of the Two Trope club here.

edited 28th Mar '11 7:43:15 AM by blackcat

No, not always. Often it's a presentation of this woman is overly emotional, and there will often be a far more levelheaded woman who looks down on her for it.

Reality is that, which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -Philip K. Dick

It also seems that the hysterical woman is rarely a major character.

It can be. But a woman can have hysterics without being presented as always being more emotional and less stable.

There's an example from House that is about Cuddy, who is about as far from emotional and unstable as you can get, but she has a hysterical breakdown in one episode. If the trope is "woman has hysterical episode" it's an example. If the trope is "Women are less emotionally stable than men" it isn't. Same for the two examples from Airplane and Airplane 2 — it's one-off sight gag based on a woman having a hysterical meltdown, but there's nothing to support that "women are less emotionally stable in general" — if anything, it's the male characters who are less emotionally stable.

edited 28th Mar '11 7:48:08 AM by Madrugada

...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.

That episode was a weird one there were two that the show focused on as hysterical, Cuddy and another girl who didn't know she was pregnant. But comments said that it was the entire plane that was experiencing this in a limited form.

And most of the time when a woman goes Hysterical or extremely emotional there will be a female The Spock type to yell at her its extremely rare to see a male do it like House did.

If its just one person I would put up a few examples Like This

but its almost always just one or two girls that lead the charge into Hysteria while the rest stay level headed.

edited 28th Mar '11 8:29:06 AM by Raso

Sparkling and glittering! Jan-Ken-Pon!

"Hysterics" are one emotional response to a situation but they aren't the only emotional response available. But once you subtract hysteria from the set of available emotional responses it is hard to find other emotional responses that women are presented making more often then men. I'm sure they are out there it is just for every female who shrieks "Off with their heads" there are more men doing that same thing.

Juliet's decision to kill herself is emotional but is it more emotional that Romeo's?

Hmmm, I'm musing here and also off topic. So I'll go away.

The Airplane she's talking about is a film. I do remember that episode though, it treated everyone male or female as histrionic. Well, sans House.

Reality is that, which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -Philip K. Dick

I was just talking about how in that episode of House it was one woman who was hysterical everyone else was pretty calm even though they were getting fake symptoms men and women. Its usually that way one woman goes hysterical it can spiral to other people or it might not.

If it spirals out of control into Mass Hysteria (Airplane and less extreme case House) or if it's just one Hysterical Woman (my example from Gosick above) I think is two different tropes. The only thing in common is most of the time it's a woman at the source (Although male examples do happen in Detective mysteries it's almost always a sign they are trying to hide something or know more than everyone else.)

edited 28th Mar '11 10:57:01 AM by Raso

Sparkling and glittering! Jan-Ken-Pon!

We don't have a trope for Mass Hysteria? Huh, I thought we would have that one. You're right, though, that a Hysterical Woman can sometimes cause mass hysteria. Something to be noted on the description.

Reality is that, which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -Philip K. Dick

Have we decided to split this trope?

I think a split sounds like a great idea.

It does not matter who I am. What matters is, who will you become? - motto of Omsk Bird

Returning to this after a while, I don't think I was harsh enough on this. I now think it might be better to rip out the existing definition and replace it with a new one that keeps in mind that Tropes Are Tools. Most of the examples probably don't fit this stupid definition, which is (like 100 other stupid tropes) very generically about how the portrayal of women in fiction has Unfortunate Implications.

There is now a page action crowner for this trope here. I was not sure about what options to include, so if someone has more expertise here, feel free to add and edit the crowner as you see fit.

"irhgT nm0w tehre might b ea lotof th1nmgs i dont udarstannd, ubt oim ujst goinjg to keepfollowing this pazth i belieove iN !!!!!1 d

Consensus is to split between the character type and the general perception.

Reality is that, which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -Philip K. Dick

I think the redefining Hysterical Woman is a good idea, though not a project I could pull off myself. But does anyone besides me doubt that "women being generalized as emotional" is really a trope?