Luly’s Top 10 Favorite Disney Females → #10 Maleficent
Both of the female villains that I have on this list have something in common: they’re not fighting for beauty, youth or vanity but for something else. The reason why I like Maleficent as a female character is that her reason to be a villain is pretty easy to relate to: she’s an outcast. Let’s set the situation: there’s a party that’s celebrating the birth of a princess who is already being betrothed to Prince Philip while fairies give her gifts of “beauty” and “song”. Everyone was invited but Maleficent, who crashes the party and gets angry enough to curse the child to die at age 16. Well, if that doesn’t put you in perspective of what’s actually important in life next to marriage, beauty and song, I don’t know what does. Maleficent is so angry that she seeks the child to keep the curse in motion and also tortures Philip when he wants to rescue Aurora by telling him she’ll keep him captive until he’s on the verge of death, when she’ll let him join his forever young bride to be. She’s pretty damn pissed off.
But haven’t you ever been left out by people you trusted? Haven’t you ever felt an outcast, felt mocked and got so angry you would have wanted to do something about it, to show your true worth? Yes, this is not a good example, but hey, at least you get some background, some character development, some emotion in the movie. Maleficent isn’t scared of anything, she has revenge in her mind and a lot of power to make it happen, she’s confident, classy and very, very angry. In contraposition to other female villains who fight for beauty, youth or vanity, Maleficent actually is the opposite, beauty and youth are Aurora’s traits and Maleficent reminds her that there’s something that she won’t be able to fight with beauty and youth: the fragility of human life.
Thank you, dear.
