William Goldman’s novel The Princess Bride is famous for its iconic characters. One thing I noticed while reading was how Goldman depicts masculinity in the book, namely how it manages to create a divide between the heroes of the story and the villains. On one hand, the villains are tied to traits of “toxic masculinity,” while on the other, the heroes have traits that relate to a more positive version of masculinity.
For our three villains Prince Humperdinck and Count Rugen, this idea of “toxic masculinity” is clear in their need for control and dominance and their display of limited emotions. Count Rugen asserts his dominance in a few violent ways: killing Inigo’s father (131), defeating 10-year-old Inigo in a duel (132-133), torturing Westley (261-263) and almost killing Inigo (344-345). Once again, Rugen doesn’t show much when it comes to emotions, but he does have moments of arrogance and fear, which are both present when he faces Inigo at the end of the novel. With Humperdinck, we are shown these same emotions, but his most often shown emotion is anger. One display of his anger is during chapter six as Buttercup realizes he lied to her; during this fit of rage, he locks Buttercup in her room and then goes to “kill” Westley, both actions allowing him to assert his power. Earlier in the book Goldman show’s us two other instances in which Humperdinck asserts his dominance, one being his “Zoo of Death”. The “Zoo of Death” is a structure built under the castle with five different levels, four of which are filled with animals for Humperdinck to go hunt and assert his dominance over animals for whenever he pleases (74-76). On page 90 Goldman depicts Buttercup and Humperdinck’s first meeting where he asks for her hand, tells her because he’s the prince she can’t say no, and then threatens to kill her if she refuses again. Here Humperdinck makes his power clear as he threatens her with death to get what he wants.
Turning to our heroes Westley and Inigo, we don’t see as much need for control or dominance. An exception to this might be the duel between the two but the goal of said fight was more so to survive than to “show who’s boss”. Furthermore, we see a larger range of emotions from these two heroes over the story. During Inigo’s backstory (120-142), we see his love towards his father, his anger and grief at his murder, and his hopelessness at never avenging him. Right after he offers compassion towards “the man in black”, helping him up the cliff and allowing him to rest before they duel (144) and towards Fezzik as he tries to cheer him up with rhymes throughout the story. With Westley we are primarily shown his love for Buttercup and his despair at losing her. The important thing about their emotions is that they can be vulnerable within the text, they can show compassion and despair, which goes against the idea of “toxic masculinity”. Since Goldman connects “positive” masculinity with the heroes and “toxic masculinity” with the villains, he also ends up pairing the binary of “positive” masculinity vs “toxic masculinity” with the binary of good vs evil. As a result, the text criticizes the traits of “toxic masculinity” while encouraging vulnerability.
I am so delighted to read about The Princess Bride! I have only seen the movie, but I think that the observations you make here about toxic masculinity vs. positive masculinity being illustrated alongside the good/evil binary is largely why I (and so many others) find The Princess Bride so compelling. Emotional vulnerability holds such a prominent place in weaving the larger story. I think it is worth noting that a lot of the characters — largely the “good” characters but to some extent also the “bad” ones — contain a complexity of character that complicates the idea of a good/evil binary. This complexity makes me wonder about the nuances in the seemingly clear delineation between toxic vs. positive masculinity; for example, there are ways that both sides of the cast of characters use one or the other for the opposite of what one would imagine they are for (Westley pretending to be the Dread Pirate Roberts; Humperdinck pretending to be emotionally vulnerable). In the end, are some traits of toxic masculinity glorified with the good guys, and vice versa?