Maid Marian
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Maid Marian is the female companion to the legendary figure Robin Hood.
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[edit] History
The earliest Medieval Robin Hood stories gave him no female companion. The Robin Hood character at this time was rather brutish woodsman and a female companion would have been out of place.
Maid Marian was originally a character in May Games festivities (held during May and early June, most commonly around Whitsun) (Knight pp.11-12) and is sometimes associated with the Queen or Lady of May of May Day. It has been suggested that she became associated with Robin Hood in this context, as Robin Hood became a central figure in May Day, associated as it was with the forest and archery.
Marian is likely derived from the French tradition of a shepherdess named Marion and her shepherd lover Robin (not Robin Hood). The best known example of this tradition is Adam de la Halle's Le Jeu de Robin et Marion, circa 1283.
Many early Robin Hood tales deal with Robin's devotion to the Virgin Mary (such as in Robin Hood and the Monk), but this aspect of the character vanishes as Maid Marian makes her way into the tales. This, combined with Marian's initial status as a virginal maid, suggests another possible origin for the character.
[edit] Character
In narrative terms, Maid Marian was first attached to Robin Hood in the late sixteenth century as Robin was gentrified and given a virginal maid to pine after. Her biography and character have been highly variable over the centuries, being sometimes portrayed as a pagan or Saxon and other times as a high born Norman. (Marian's role was not entirely virginal in the early days. In 1592, Thomas Nashe described the Marian of the later May Games as being played by a male actor named Martin, and there are hints in the play of Robin Hood and the Friar that the female character in these plays had become a lewd parody.)
Maid Marian's character evolved, becoming conflated with the Goddess Diana as she became portrayed as a skilled huntress who fought alongside Robin.[citation needed] In the Victorian Era she reverted to her previous role as the dainty maid. This highborn woman appears in many movies, under various characters: in The Adventures of Robin Hood, she is a courageous and loyal woman, whose initial antagonism to Robin springs not from aristocratic disdain but out of dislike of robbery; in The Story of Robin Hood and His Merrie Men, she, though a lady-in-waiting to Eleanor of Acquaitaine during the Crusades, is a mischievous tomboy capable of escaping over the countryside disguised as a boy. With the rise of modern feminism in the 20th century, the character has often been depicted as an adventurer again, sometimes as a crack archer herself. In modern times, a common ending for Robin Hood stories became that he married Maid Marian and left the woods for a civilized aristocratic life. See also Maid Marian and her Merry Men for a modern role reversal.
[edit] Literature
There have been several books based on the fictional character:
- Maid Marian — 1821 novel by Thomas Love Peacock
- Maid Marian — 2004 novel by Elsa Watson
- Lady of the Forest; novel by Jennifer Roberson
- Lady of Sherwood; novel by Jennifer Roberson
- The Forestwife (and its sequels, although she's only the main character in the first); young adult novel by Theresa Tomlinson.
[edit] Television
- Maid Marian was the lead character in Tony Robinson's BBC children's comedy Maid Marian and her Merry Men. In the show, Marian was portrayed as the real leader of the Merry Men, whilst Robin was a vain coward who had become the leader by accident.
- in the 1980s HTV show Robin of Sherwood, Marian was played by Judi Trott, and after meeting and falling in love with Robin, lived with him and the other outlaws in Sherwood Forest.
- In Blackadder: Back & Forth, Maid Marian is portrayed by supermodel Kate Moss.
[edit] References
Knight, Stephen (2003) Robin Hood: A Mythic Biography. University of Cornell Press.
