One reason Marian must come across as sufficiently feminine is that her purpose, in some analyses, is purely sexual. She can be unwomanly, in other words, but only to a point. Marian excels at archery, which requires great skill but not large muscles, physical contact, or mannish clothing. Marian’s sport of choice is a good example of how Peacock strikes a balance between the unconventional and socially appropriate. While a “decidedly ungenteel heroine,” (Ibid., 190), Peacock’s Maid Marian is not so unfeminine as to challenge gender assumptions. She refuses “to be constrained by male authority,” (Ibid., 192), disobeying her father to spend time with the merry men in the forest. His Marian “represents vigor and activity” and shows “unquenchable energy” and determination in both body and mind (Ibid.,151). Peacock was influenced by Mary Wollstonecraft's Vindication of the Rights of Women and “came to believe that female intelligence should be defended against its contemporary depreciation" (Barczeweski, 192). In Peacock’s Maid Marian, the title character “is drawn from Peacock's ideal of womanhood, and she owes more to her author than to the legends” (Knight, 61). This dichotomy draws questions about the possible biases that may have affected the myth until modern times and about the type of feminist hero that Marian has the potential to embody. In these two pieces of literature Marian appears as both a strong intellectual role model for women and an overlooked, sexualized subordinate to her male peers. Two major works that have lent an identity to Marian are Thomas Love Peacock’s 1822 novella Maid Marian and the ballad Robin Hood and Maid Marian. Marian plays more significant a role than lady of the house, however. One common theory suggests that Marian appeared because the Robin Hood character was rising in class stature: “he first time a role of substance for a lady emerges in the outlaw myth is when its hero has become a lord, and so needs a lady, both as part of his gracious style of living and to provide the continuation of the landed line”(Knight, 59). Though Marian does not appear in the original legend, by the sixteenth century she becomes an essential part of the tale. It is hard to evaluate and study the mythic character of Robin Hood without considering his significant other, the fair Maid Marian.
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