The phrase Strong Female Character has been thrown around a lot lately in varying capacities. It's been used as praise, criticism, feminist critique and to criticise characters considered 'too feminist,' among others. But despite these categories, Emily Reid defied explanation she was an almost accidental example of female strength in a show that has always prized gunfire and explosions over restraint and quiet dignity. This is a woman who not only had to deal with the loss of a child, but a husband who refused any attempt to move on and the perhaps unsurprising breakdown of her marriage. In an age known for its tendency to moralize, she opened a secular women's shelter which aimed to help prostitutes, not lecture them. Emily also had the only scene in a series set in Victorian Whitechapel and named after Jack the Ripper which acknowledged that prostitutes were and are incredibly vulnerable to abuse. She was the perfect mirror to Long Susan, who could stop a brawl in seconds with the sheer force of her personality, rob gangsters and casually hold a conversation while concealing a bullet wound under her dress. What's frustrating is that there were so many more plausible reasons to write her out. For example, she could've left her husband after learning that he took their young daughter on a manhunt to find Jack the Ripper, where she drowned in a boating accident. Or she could have left him because he lied to her for months about the circumstances of their daughter's death. Or because he cheated on her. Or because (and I feel this bears repeating) he took their daughter on a manhunt to find Jack the Ripper. Even in a time period where divorce for women required an Act of Parliament, I wouldn't rule this out a possibility. Or she could have died suddenly, because death can happen to anyone, irrespective of characterisation. The decision to leave her out of the show entirely and add in a hand-waved and obviously contrived scene about her descent into alcoholism (from a character who was never seen in the same room as an alcoholic beverage) and subsequent social disgrace was not only insulting to her character but also to the fans deprived of seeing the fallout of Reid's revelation. As I said in the introduction, conflict is drama. As entertaining as the explosions, kidnappings and occasional murder, those are just icing on the cake. Pretty as they may be, if they happen to flat, under-developed characters who haven't grown or changed since season one, there's no point to it. As fun as eating a cake made entirely out of icing might seem at first, sooner or later audiences are going to get sick. So that's what I think. What do you think? feel free to comment!
Kate Taylor has a BA in English Literature and Creative Writing and an MRes in Creative Writing. Her nonfiction, reviews and other articles have appeared on Cuckoo Review and Mookychick as well as WhatCulture. Her fiction has been published in Luna Station Quarterly, Eternal Haunted Summer and in anthologies by Paizo and Northumbria University Press. She is 23 and lives in the North of England.