Ingenue (stock character)

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Mary Pickford, a perpetual ingenue
Mary Pickford, a perpetual ingenue

The Ingenue is a stock character in literature and film and a role type in the theatre, generally a girl or a young woman who is rather innocent and endearing.

Typically, the ingenue is beautiful, gentle, sweet, virginal, and often naïve, in mental or emotional danger rather than physical danger, usually a target of The Cad; she may have mistaken him for The Hero. Due to lack of independence, the ingenue usually lives with her father or a male father figure (although in some rare cases she lives with a motherly figure). The vamp is often a foil for the ingenue (or the damsel in distress, for that matter).

In opera and musical theatre, the ingenue is usually sung by a light soprano. The ingenue stereotypically has the fawn-eyed innocence of a child.

Ingenue and ingenuous may also refer to a new actor or actress or one typecast in such roles.

Contents

[edit] Ingenue examples

Marguerite Clark, capturing the wide-eyed innocence of an ingenue
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Marguerite Clark, capturing the wide-eyed innocence of an ingenue

[edit] Actresses known for playing ingenues

[edit] References

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    [edit] See also


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