The “other” Women of Sherwood: The Construction of Difference and Gender in Cinematic Treatments of the Robin Hood Legend

Abstract

Films about the legendary hero Robin Hood mirror the social and sexualmores of their contemporary audiences more successfully than they reflect the Middle Ages. Because their original medieval and Tudor literary sources are obscure, plot points and characters in Robin Hood films are familiar-but-fluid, resulting in a body of self-referentially “reel” versions of the greenwood legend that reflect major social developments of the past century as much as they represent historically “real” or literary Sherwood outlaws. Since cross-dressing, provocative homosocial behavior among (sometimes feminized) male characters, and compelling female characters whose behavior and appearance often “perform” masculinity are endemic to the corpus, the films about the Robin Hood legend are especially fruitful for examining constructions of gender and sexuality. As the greenwood cohort’s familiar male characters have received more critical attention,¹ we highlight instead pivotal women in the Sherwood film canon, not only the obvious Maid Marian, but also other and Othered female figures—Marian’s serving woman, Queen Eleanor, men performing female roles, women performing male roles—whose depictions reflect the course of twentieth-century gender politics. The depictions of these marginalized female archetypes in movies about a famous male outlaw reflect the shifting roles experienced by women in the past century within family, workforce, society, and state.