Cards on the table time: I love action, I’m intrigued by Catholic guilt and its relationship to vigilante justice, and I love long-winded conversations about morality, so Daredevil is an easy sell for me. Going into the Netflix’s second season I was a little nervous, because (a) I’m not into Punisher, and (b) I tend to get sick of Elektra. So how is it that in a season featuring a Punisher who made me cry, an Elektra I found riveting, plus many (many) long-winded conversations about morality, the one element of the show I can’t stop thinking about is Karen Page?
I didn’t even like Karen Page last season.
(Note: Spoilers for season 1 and 2 of Daredevil.)
Well, OK, that’s not quite fair. We were introduced to her as a brave/terrified young woman, in over her head but still fighting for the truth as her old employers tried to frame her for murder. Your heart would have to be carved from granite not to root for anyone in that situation, and Deborah Ann Woll did a tremendous job selling it. She was wide-eyed, exhausted, shaking like a Chihuahua in a lightning storm. Even when she was presumably safe, it was clear that she would be haunted forever.
When Matt and Foggy hired her I was excited that the show committed to following the fallout in her life, rather than becoming the ‘case of the week’ show I was expecting. But as the season unspooled, I found myself turning on her. I was irritated by her crush on Matt because it felt more like she’d imprinted on the nice man who saved her from jail more than a genuine interest in who he was as a person. (And when she asked Foggy to touch her face, in an incredibly gross attempt to substitute him for Matt, I recoiled from the screen.) Even worse, her fumblings into Wilson Fisk’s past and inept attempts at detective work started to feel like Harriet the Spy had just wandered into the grittiest corner of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. She lied to everyone, she hid things constantly, and worst of all, her half-assed investigation led directly to the death of both Ben Urich and Wesley. (My second and first favorite characters, respectively.) But it was actually Wesley’s death—at Karen’s hands—that started to turn me back to her.
“Do you really think this is the first time I’ve shot someone?”
With that one line, Karen takes her narrative back from Wesley. Just as in her first meeting with Nelson and Murdock, she’s being held against her will and facing off with a man across a table. She’s in an uncontrollable situation, and thinks she only has moments to live. No one knows she’s here. There’s no reason to think the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen will show up to deus ex machine her out of this. But even in her obvious terror, she’s icily specific. Think how differently this scene could play out if she’d said, “You think this is the first time I’ve ever shot a gun?” And when she does shoot Wesley, it’s not just one panicked shot to incapacitate him, but repeatedly, until she’s sure he’s dead.
From then on she acts like someone who has done this before. She knows how to get rid of evidence, she knows to wipe her prints from the table, she throws the gun into the river, and takes one of those endless post-murder showers that can never quite get the smell of blood out of your nose. She turned back into a character I wanted to explore further—not because she was willing and able to shoot, but because she reacted to her murder the way a normal human would react. Even though it was self-defense, it was a weight she was going to feel for the rest of her life.
In Season Two the show goes in many different directions, and shows us new sides to the characters. Foggy is still the heart of the law firm, and he displays his growing confidence in his job, while Matt, well, acts like a dick. There’s no way around this, guys: Matt’s messiah complex has gone to his head. When you’re arguing moral nuance with the Punisher, and losing? It’s time to re-examine some shit. But it’s Karen who shows the most growth and depth, and by the end of the season becomes an essential character. Karen is still processing what happened with Wesley—and possibly whatever happened in her past that made her good with a gun. While Matt preaches endlessly about giving everyone a second chance, and God being the only one who can decide who lives and who dies, Karen is the one who actually responds to killers with empathy. Matt doesn’t sit by Grotto’s side—Karen does. She concocts a cover story for him off the top of her head, she’s the one who gets him out of the hospital safely when the Punisher shows up, and she’s the one who advocates for him. She almost bolts out into the middle of another Punisher attack to rescue him. That this is empathy, not pity, is clear when Grotto asks her to kiss him for good luck; she holds up a middle finger instead. She’s not trying to make Grotto feel better, but she believes that as a client and a human, he deserves their help. The same consideration she hopes she would receive, presumably, if Foggy and Matt knew her own past. She is willing to stake her life on this belief.
We also see the evolution of her Harriet the Spy tendencies. Where Season One Karen was sloppy in her attempts to uncover Wilson Fisk’s past, Season Two Karen shows that she’s learned from Ben Urich, and attempts a covert, journalistic investigation into Frank Castle and the DA’s vendetta against him. She goes to the DA’s assistant for information, and when Nelson and Murdock both tell her to give up on the case, she first talks to Urich’s old boss Ellison and asks to see the paper’s archives. Rather than being daunted by the piles of aging newspaper she dives right into research, spending hours to find the truth about a man that most see as a monster. It’s inevitable that she go to Castle’s home, inevitable that she does her best to remain respectful even as she sifts through his privacy, inevitable that she alone sees him as a person. Again she goes into a dangerous situation without taking anyone with her, or even telling anyone where she’ll be, because she knows that no sane person would take the risk she’s about to take. But she still feels that it’s her moral duty to explore Frank Castle’s past. The biggest change is that this post-Urich Karen is more wary of danger; she keeps her guard up and escapes the house when the mysterious Suits show up at Castle’s door.
When Castle rejects both Nelson and Murdoch—the actual lawyers—and chooses to speak to Karen about the case, this is why. It’s not because she’s the woman, or because he wants to apologize for terrifying her with a shooting spree; it’s because she alone was willing to go to his house and engage with the humanity that was taken away from him. Castle is willing to spill his family’s tragedy to Daredevil because he’s half-dead and the cops are on the way—it’s entirely possible that this will be his last chance to tell his story. Here the show is telling us something sad, explaining pain through a monologue. But Karen’s silent tour of Castle’s home is the show trusting us to experience that pain. We’re expected to allow Castle’s loss to enter our own minds without the mediation of an actor monologuing. This is the scene that gives us the real weight of Castle’s loss, and shows us why he became the Punisher. By structuring this arc in this way, the audience is allowed to connect the dots as Frank speaks. We can see him sitting in his daughter’s room, refusing to read her book. We can see that this space has become sacred in his mind, and so we jolt when we realize, along with him, that Karen has been there.
Matt attempts to become the Punisher’s Father Confessor; Fisk treats him like an attack dog he can unleash; Foggy begins and ends openly terrified of him. Karen, on the other hand? She defends him to Matt, rejecting all of his good Catholic attempts to push her into agreeing with him, and remain the sweet girl she is in his mind—she even allows this argument to ruin their second date. She’s the one who talks Frank through the arguments Matt and Foggy make on his behalf, to make sure he understands. She insists that he has a moral code—and that’s after he pursued her through a hospital like The Terminator. She’s the one he comes to after his escape from prison, and she’s the only one who wouldn’t shoot on sight when he turns up at her door. He even listens to her when she tries to talk him out of killing. (Unlike Matt, Karen has earned the right to talk to Frank about his moral choices.)
Finally, I think her responses to Matt show her growth more than anything. As the season unfolded I was dreading the point where Karen would be held up as the “good” girl, the sweet, small-town blonde, to contrast with Elektra, the dark-haired “bad” girl who kills ninjas for fun. The show sidestepped that potential land mine by making both women complex, interesting, and best of all, driven by their own passions instead of just acting as foils to Matt Murdock. And it does offer a few mirroring moments—Karen’s idea of a great date is inexpensive Indian food, while Elektra loves luxuriant foods like caviar and champagne. Both women knot Matt’s tie for him—but when Karen does it she’s helping him dress for a funeral, while Elektra is knotting his bow tie as they infiltrate a fancy Roxxon soiree. The show gives us these examples without comment, but it’s Matt who pushes this contrast. He wants Karen to be the “good” girl—the light that pulls him away from the “darkness” of Elektra. Especially during their heated Punisher conversation, Matt offers Karen a chance to retreat into a simple, black and white world, and she refuses. Karen’s world was never simple or innocent, and she’s not the fragile creature Matt has created in his mind. But after he’s basically abandoned her and Foggy for most of the season, Matt pulls a White (Red?) Knight, demanding a chance to protect her. Karen shuts him down with my favorite thematically-loaded line of the season: “I am not yours to protect.” Perhaps she’s the voice of New York, demanding that Matt examine why exactly he wears that suit every night…
I’m not saying that Karen’s arc was perfect—it’s ludicrous to imagine that she’d be allowed to move into Ben Urich’s private office, interview people, and stare at a blank white screen for months while real journalists are doing real journalism in shitty cubicles all around her. But when she finally steps into her new career and begins writing her article about costumed vigilantes, she finds her voice by interrogating the idea of the hero. She states up front that heroes aren’t costumed vigilantes or gods from other worlds, but the New Yorkers reading the article, who look themselves in the mirror each morning and set out to work in their city. Is it cheesy? Yes. Would a New York newspaper ever pay her to write it? Hell no. But by affirming her neighbors as heroes, and implying that she considers herself, Foggy, Ellison, Ben Urich, et al, to be the heroes the city needs, she brings Daredevil back down from the rooftop ninja wars, chain fights, and murky occult scheming that Matt finds himself lost in. As the one who stands by Grotto and Punisher, who stands for community and justice, she effectively replaces Matt as Daredevil‘s moral center, and embodies the soul of the show.
Leah Schnelbach is sorry about all the mean things she said to Karen last season. Come debate morality with her on Twitter!
I remember reading and rereading this tale several times as a child. I don’t know why exactly, I liked it but I can’t say it’s my favorite or why I like it. I’m not sure if in my version the last man was a soldier. Anyway, I liked the post, it was nice to give some thought to the inconsistencies and possible meaning of the story.
I remember how every time I read this story, I felt so sorry for all the poor men who went to solve the mystery and were executed because they were tricked and drugged. Sigh.
I also felt bad for the poor princes who were enchanted and seemingly lost their opportunity to break free of it, but the version I remember stated that they were left under enchantment for that many more days as for how many nights they had danced with the princesses (which makes everything fine with them, I suppose).
And I remember being mildly surprised by the soldier’s choice of princesses as it was usually always the youngest princess who got everything, as said. So, kudos to the soldier, IMHO, though, yes, it would be interesting to know how that marriage went …
I hated this story as a kid. To me, it had felt as though the princesses clearly WANTED to party in fairyland, and that for him to forcibly tear them away from their magical kingdom and marry one of them (when they had been so violently resistant to the idea!) was tyrannical.
It seemed like a lecture: women must not have fun, they must settle down, stay home, and marry a man who has earned them.
#letthemdance
This tale and Iron Hans are the Grimm tales that I couldn’t help keep coming back to. I think largely for same reasons. They ask so many questions and care to answer so few. Even 25 years after I first read them, they stick with me. As a writer of short stories, I’d say that these stories have influenced me the most. Glad to see other people appreciate this.
Growing up, I loved Marianna Mayer’s beautiful version of the story. The illustrations are simply stunning.
One difference from these other versions is that the hero is a shepherd-turned-gardener, who makes bouquets for the princesses. Another difference is that the youngest princess, after falling in love with him, prevents him from drinking the enchanted wine that would bring him under the spell.
This particular fairy tale has always been a favorite of mine. My preferred version is Robin McKinley’s in her ‘The Door In The Hedge’ collection. The Princesses are most unwillingly trapped into their nights of dancing by an evil sorceress who wants to match them with her dozen half demonic sons. They are vulnerable to the spell because they have some inborn magical talent themselves though not enough to help them. However it is hinted the eldest princess has some connection with the old woman who advises the Old Soldier. It is made very clear that the Princesses are DELIGHTED to be freed and all of them go on to have happy, fruitful marriages including number one with the Old Soldier.
Apropos of the shoes. Thin soled court shoes were made of fine fabrics and wore out rapidly, Queen Katherine Parr used to order them by the lot annually.
My favorite version of this story is Kelly Link’s The Girl Detective
It captures the surreal, dream-like quality of the best fairy tales, in a (sort of) contemporary setting…
Roxana – I love Door in the Hedge too. It contains a lot of my favorite re-tellings of fairy tales, including The Twelve Dancing Princesses and The Frog Prince. Both are deliciously dark and beautiful, the prose is lovely and reads just like a fairy tale should, while also expanding on the original tales (especially the Frog Prince one.) I think the only one I don’t like in that collection is the first story.
It’s been awhile since I read them, so I forgot that it was a sorceress who was trying to marry off her sons. The princes were truly enchanting – scary and yet attractive, and so was the fairy realm McKinley created.
This article raises a lot of good questions. If you think about the story of the Twelve Dancing Princesses it really is mysterious and puzzling.
Most adaptations of the story have the princesses under some kind of curse that they’re trying to break free from, although several stumble over the part of how the princesses started coming to the underground kingdom (“Hey! A door just opened up in the floor where there shouldn’t be one leading deep under the earth! Let’s get dressed up in our best party clothes and go exploring. What could possibly go wrong?”).
Entwined by Heather Dixon probably does the best job of dealing with this. For the princesses, whose mother recently died, dancing is a way of remembering her and dealing with their grief. There father, on the other hand, only sees it as disrespect for his dead wife. Strange magic is something the sisters are used to in this world and they think they understand it well enough to know what’s going on when they find a place where they can dance but, of course, they’re wrong.
There was a more sinister version I saw on TV once, The Six Dancing Princesses. The princesses know perfectly well what they’re doing. The witch is strongly associated with death and has kept the soldier alive through more than one battle for reasons of her own.
The soldier follows the princesses the first night but gets drunk at the ball and loses all the objects he collected to convince the king, who won’t believe him when he returns empty handed. The second night, the underground world is transformed into a prohibition speakeasy. The soldier brings back a coffeepot full of very bad gin, once again failing to convince the king. The third night, he realizes the king will never believe him unless he sees for himself. The king follows his daughters into a 70’s disco (and nearly has a heart attack when he sees how they’re dressed).
The soldier, however, refuses to marry any of the daughters, who have already killed so many men. He heads off to war again even though he now knows he no longer has the witch’s protection and this will likely be his last battle.
Other honorable mentions:
“The Twelve Dancing Princesses” by Robin McKinley.
The Thirteenth Daughter, by Diane Zahler.
Wildwood Dancing, by Juliet Marillier.
Princess of the Midnight Ball, by Jessica Day George.
For another version, that does indeed address some of the questions raised above, I’d highly recommend “Of Mice and Magic” from Ursula Vernon’s extremely funny Hamster Princess series –
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/of-mice-and-magic-ursula-vernon/1126577161?ean=9780803739840
in which the no-longer-invincible princess Harriet Hamsterbone deals with the curse with an enormous amount of common sense, a Poncho of Invisibility, a friendly prince working in the stables, and her trusty battle quail, Mumfrey.