Rouge and the Myth of the Southern Belle

A portion of Chapter 5 of my PhD dissertation. Specifically focusing on the role of Rogue from the X-Men. Probably one of the first characters I actively tried to read everything about when I first started reading comics.

Rouge and the Myth of the Southern Belle

In looking at the correlation between sexuality and power, and how female power and sexuality are constrained in superhero comics, the X-Men provide some of the most compelling examples. Not only does the development of mutant powers occur at the same time as development of sexual maturity, but often those mutant powers are interwoven into how the characters develop and deal with sexual maturity and relationships. When the mutant Toad develops greenish skin and a long sticky tongue, it does change how he deals with members of the opposite sex. Similarly, Rouge, and her mutant power to absorb the powers and memories of anyone she touches changes the type of relationships she can have. It also plays strongly into myths of femaleness and female performance in the American South. As a character whose fictional biography has her born in Mississippi, learning French and English, she shares the image and experience of many young women born into the deep south, where ideas and performance of femaleness through the myth of the southern belle are popular and encouraged. However, narratively, these paradigmatic choices and their transmitted meaning work together to portray a constraining of Rogue’s sexuality and her powers, forcing her into the perpetual role of angel, virgin, and lady.

In discussing the myth of the southern belle and it’s cultural role, Diane Roberts notes that it is based on a fear that women, “might escape the rule of the patriarchy, that the opposition of white/black, master/slave, lady/whore, even male/female might collapse into an anarchic conflagration threatening to bring down the symbolic order” The myth of the southern belle is based strongly on maintaining distinctions between both genders and races and making sure those roles are performed in very specific ways to maintain a specific power structure and hierarchal dynamic. The myth of the southern belle, much like the assumed tropes of superhero comics, demands discreet genders, and how they are performed are integral to maintaining a particular structure of active/passive, dominant/dominated. For Rouge to perform as the southern belle in X-Men comics becomes reassurance that the mythology and meaning that she represents is still working, that her performance is not arbitrary, that meaning - particularly meaning about female sexuality and female power - has been constrained and the expected pleasure is delivered to the dominant reading position.

As already stated, Rogue’s mutant ability is to be able to absorb the powers, memories, thoughts, and general life force of anyone she makes skin to skin contact with. However, when she is first introduced, and through the majority of her publication history, she has no control over that power. Because of this, she is required to wear gloves, her costume is usually completely covering; though it is usually presented in the typical form fitting, painted on spandex style or easily shredded and - popular superhero style - unzipped and revealing. For a character who needs to remain covered up to protect people from her unchecked power, great lengths are taken to draw Rogue uncovered, or at least appearing uncovered; something that actually fits with her role as the southern belle.

 

The nature of her power limits the level of intimacy she is able to experience. When her powers first manifest themselves, it is during one of her first adolescent moments experimenting with her own intimacy and sexuality. Sneaking off one evening with a young boy, Rogue kisses the boy on an impulse and her power causes her to absorb his life energy and memories, putting him into a comma. This first dramatic experience with her powers sets up a number of ways that both her powers and her sexuality are presented.  First, her fear of hurting anyone the way she did her first boyfriend causes her to always wear gloves, but to also place a barrier between her and her sexuality. As she says in a later moment of frustration, “Ah’m tired of goin’ through life wearin’ prophylactics on both of ma hands.” The choice to refer to the barriers she sets up between her powers and other people as prophylactics is a telling paradigmatic choice. Her powers, her sexuality, are connected and limited by the way her powers and her sexual performance have been constrained and presented.

 

To have her powers uncovered, no longer in check, is a dangerous proposition and one that has already proven to be destructive to men. When longtime love interest Gambit tries to touch, kiss, and comfort Rogue, Rogue smacks him away. “Don’t ya get it?! It won’t happen ‘cause it can’t! My entire mutant power is about restraint. I can’t touch another livin’ person without fear of swallowin’ that person whole! their thoughts an’ hopes an’ dreams become mine. Ah got no control over my abilities” Rogue communicates the common idea about female power and sexuality, that it needs to be controlled, that it needs to be kept in check or it will be destructive. Her power, and her sexuality must be restrained, maintained within an already determined set of rules. The idea of restraint, again, a nod to the idea of Rogue as the perfect southern belle. In describing what her powers could do to Gambit - or any man for that matter - she uses terms notably familiar to what villainous characters like Poison Ivy and her sexuality could similarly do to men. Where Poison Ivy would devour them, suck them out, and leave them empty, Rogues unchecked power and sexuality would similarly swallow them whole. Without restraint and constraining, female power and sexuality is all consuming and all destructive, a theme that is repeated often when female power and sexuality is presented in superhero comics. The reader comes to understand, that to be consumed by these women is to be destroyed. To prevent that, their powers must be controlled and restrained.

Being closed off, having that barrier between her and anyone else plays into her performance as the proper and gentile southern belle and helps to transmit the image of her powers and sexuality as constrained and restrained. “the belle had to deny her sexuality and, at the same time, perform passion without taking part in it.” and, “the virtues she should have been the embodiment of - beauty, passivity, submissiveness, virginity, and asexuality” By the very nature of her powers, Rogue must perform the virginal, and asexual roles of the southern belle. The patriarchal system of control and dominance at the heart of the myth of the southern belle is also at the heart of how Rogue and her powers are presented to the reader. However, as with the southern belle, that does not mean that Rogue and her sexuality is not objectified. The same way that the belle is required to perform passion or to be the embodiment of beauty, so to is Rogue  still required to be objectified and seen by the dominant position. Though she needs to maintain her virginal status, she still needs to be sexually available. Both narratively and visually, Rogue is presented as sexually available, objectifiable, and as we have already mentioned, stripped and revealed. Her sexuality is something that can be obtained or purchased, just so long as a certain set of gentlemanly rules are followed. this transmits the idea to the reader that female sexuality is a commodity or a prize. It is under control and after enough persistence and the right process, that sexuality can be maintained and passed on to a new, male, controller. In the case of Rogue, the dominant position’s stand in is Gambit.

 

On one particular night out, Rogue lays out the rules of how her sexuality is to be understood through her performance of the southern belle and the ideas of femaleness that performance represents. Dressed in a full, body covering dress, she informs Gambit that, “A lady has to look her best when she goes out on the town, Gambit. After all, there might be some real gentlemen at that restaurant.” For Rogue, a major part of her performance, despite all of the drama that comes with being a mutant and a superhero, is to be available and ready for the right gentleman to come along, follow the prescribed rules, and marry her. “Since courtship, innocent romances, and, consequently, marriage were considered to be the highest aspirations of her life, the belle’s energies and skills were mainly directed to finding and marrying a real Southern gentleman” As a true southern belle, Rogue must be constantly performing the submissive, demure, but constantly sexually available role that is expected of her so that she can eventually get married. But to do that, she needs to find the right gentleman to control her and her powers.

The give and take with Gambit and Rogue is often part of that courtship and romance, with Gambit showing that he is the right type of gentleman to control her sexuality, and power. He is often presented as insinuating that he could overcome her life-force stealing powers. After being told again not to touch or kiss her because of her powers, Gambit suggests, “but don’t nobody know how Gambit loves a challenge” As a rightful gentleman, gambit assumes that he has the ability to control, contain, and overcome any dangerous side effects of her mutant powers. This assumption isn’t far fetched for the dominant reading position to understand or expect. Within the context of superhero comics, female power and sexuality is constrained and controlled by male power and authority. But for Gambit to really be able to control her, her power, and her sexuality, he needs to adhere to the dominant, male role set up by Rogues performance as the southern belle. As she specifically tells him, “Ah’m a woman. If ya can’t, if ya won’t, treat me like one, then please leave me alone” Within this statement, Rogue, and the narrative’s, definition of woman needs to be understood specifically as defined by the southern belle myth. By overlaying this myth on the character, and placing her in courtship with Gambit - a character who is also from the deep south - the narrative love story between the two continues to transmit very specific ideas about discrete genders and the need for men and woman to perform in very specific ways. To understand female experience, female power, and specifically female sexuality, the dominant position needs to see it as presented in a distinctly binary way that can conform to patriarchal ideas of dominance and dominated. Rogue and Gambit engaging and performing to the southern belle codes of courtship and romance, maintain those ideas and transmit their validity.

For Rogue, to perform her gender correctly, she must constantly keep her power and her sexuality in check, but at the same time make it available. As she tells Gambit, to let her power and sexuality out, to let it be unchecked, is dangerous, “ah’m so afraid, ah might hurt you” A fear that is valid because of what happened to her first boyfriend, “it was the first an’ last time ah kissed someone out of passion.” In all the retellings of Rogue’s origin, she is always the one that initiates that first kiss, the one that puts her first boyfriend into a coma. She is the one that is sexually aggressive, she becomes active and lets passion take over, causing her to transgress the rules and performance that are set up for southern belles and that particular type of submissive female performance. Not only in this situation, but in other moments through the years of continuous publication of X-Men comics, whenever Rogue steps too much out of her southern belle role, she is either punished or at fault for dangerous consequences.

Like fellow female team member Storm, Rogue is eventually given command of her own team of X-Men by Cyclops, the de facto team leader of all of the X-Men. However, to be a team leader is to move outside of the role of the southern belle. A belle isn’t a leader, she is submissive and always subject to male authority. Moving outside of her required gender performance, things go wrong for Rogue quickly. Not only does half of her team defect to the role of villains, one member dies, and another is put into a coma. And to add on top of that, her powers become amplified and twisted to the point that she can instantly kill with a touch, going so far that she also ends up consuming and absorbing the psyches of 8 billion entities. A level of human destruction on par with other female superheroes like Jean Grey (Phoenix) and Wanda Maximoff (Scarlett Witch) when they let their powers become unchecked from patriarchal power structures.

 

By defying her expected gender role and no longer being submissive and subservient, by letting her powers become unchecked, Rouge becomes destructive, ineffective, and all consuming. Without restraint, female power and sexuality becomes too much, too all consuming, and unimaginably dangerous. Even Cyclops, the voice of patriarchal authority realizes that giving her authority was wrong and in opposition to the way patriarchal power structures work, “I was wrong about rogue…I put her in a role she couldn’t handle” To perform femaleness correctly, Rogue must perform the role of the submissive belle. In the world of superhero comics, without proper oversight, control, and restraint offered by the patriarchal dominance, female power and sexuality is dangerous and destructive. By letting her sexuality become unrestrained, Rogue’s power too becomes unchecked. As a young girl she hurts someone she cares about, she consumes him with her unchecked passion. And later as an adult, when she tries to step outside of the expected role of her gender, similar misfortune and damage is done. The correlation between her unchecked passion and sexuality and her powers becoming uncontrollable actually becomes literal later when Rogue finally has her powers controlled and repaired by the ultimate force of X-Men patriarchy, Professor X.

After almost 27 years of publication and only occasionally being able to touch someone, Marvel editorial and creators at the company decided it was finally time to change Rogue and how her powers functioned. while the reasons for this from an editorial stand point aren’t clear and the creators behind the storyline haven’t spoken much about it, one thing we can see by looking at the narrative, is that Rogue’s powers, the changes that allow her to control it, and the way the narrative presents these changes, still fit with the logonomic system delivering a specific meaning that fits with the dominant positions expectations of female power and sexuality. Rogue’s unchecked power and sexuality are still represented as dangerous and destructive and it requires patriarchal power and authority to put them in check.

Following the events of Rogue’s botched time in a leadership role, she makes the decision to isolate herself in the Australian outback where she can’t harm anyone and can hopefully figure out her own life. However, Rogue, as a belle and female character, isn’t capable of figuring things out on her own. To control her power, to be normalized sexually, requires patriarchal authority to intercede. To atone for past sins and slights, Professor X - along with Gambit - track Rogue down and she is offered a diagnosis for why her powers have been underdeveloped, “Rogue first used her powers involuntarily. Before they were fully formed, before she could know, or control, what she was doing”. Because of her impulsiveness, because she didn’t demure or control her passions and powers, it caused her powers to function incorrectly. According to Professor X, the same thing happened again when Rogue, as a villain, unchecked absorbed all of the life force she could from the Avenger Ms. Marvel. Using her powers unchecked, giving into her desires outside of the patriarchal rules set up for the belle, caused her to, “paralyze the development of your powers. To freeze them in that nascent stage. They never developed as they were meant to develop.” Without patriarchal power and without adhering to her specific gender performance, Rogue’s powers, and her sexuality, didn’t develop correctly. her powers and sexuality need to be in control, to be controlled by patriarchal power. Because she never did, it separated her from normalized sexuality and powers; at least normal within the patriarchal structure. To repair the damage of her subversion, to normalize her, Professor X needs to fix her.

After rooting around in her mind, dismantling parts and building it back up, Professor X declares her cured and normalized. However, when Rogue questions her actually being cured, “but ah don’t feel any better, any more in control.” Professor X responds, “With respect Rogue, you have no experience of control, and therefore nothing to compare this to.” As a proper belle, Rogue has never controlled her power or her sexuality, that isn’t part of what she is suppose to do. While she has tried to cover up and restrain her powers, the idea of controlling her power and sexuality, making it consumable, has always been the province of male figures. Professor X understands control and so can dictate how she will now use her powers and her sexuality. For a belle, to have her power and sexuality controlled, means to show that she is willing to give it to a gentleman. Just two pages after Professor X fixes and normalizes Rogue, she is kissing Gambit, posed so that the reader can see all of the indicators of her femaleness. Fixed and normalized, Rogue can now not only be seen and objectified, but also can now be enjoyed by the patriarchy physically and fully.

For rogue to be a sexual being, to want a relationship with Gambit or another male character is in no way a problematic representation of female power and sexuality. However,  Rogue’s narrative, her powers and sexuality, have all been constrained by the imposed role of the southern belle and the gendered performance that it requires. Her sexuality and power are not autonomous things. While she does choose to be sexually restrained and covered because of her power, that restraint is part of what she is expected to be as the angelic, virginal, belle. Even restrained, she is denied control and agency when it comes to her sexuality and power. She is dependent on patriarchal powers and authority to constrain and control her powers as well as necessary to normalizing her sexually. Her sexuality is only acceptable and valid when constrained by a patriarchal system that makes her powers/sexuality, dominated by a constant and present dominant male power.

While female sexuality itself can’t be seen as problematic, when it is passed through male expectations and perceptions, that sexuality becomes distorted and objectified. Female sexuality, specifically female sexuality that isn’t placed under the control and purview of the male gaze or experience, is perceived as out of control and potentially dangerous. Something that should be feared and a source of dread. “Fear of female sexuality is male projections of fear of subversive power”. To assuage this fear and dread, female sexuality, and so female subversive power, must be shown as passive. Normalized representations of female sexuality need to be represented under male dominance and function within a sphere that is defined by the patriarchy. For the dominant position, female sexuality can only be understood, or performed correctly, when perceived and observed through the male experience and relation to it. If it were to function outside of that male constraint and control, that would lead to decentralization of the patriarchal power structure. The anxiety and dread of this potential, leads to representations that present unchecked female sexuality as monstrous and destructive. Poison Ivy, as a villain has already been shown as an example of the monstrous unchecked female power and sexuality and how she is normalized and constrained to passivity and objectification.