The Holy Grail

My high school English teacher told our class that the reason men are always in search of the holy grail in literature is because women already have all the answers. When we read about Chretien de Troyes' Perceval, who was in search for the Holy Grail, but really in search of how to live life. He meets women along the way who give him insight into becoming a knight and becoming a man. But they always stay put and don't continue with Perceval on his adventures because there's nothing more that they need to learn.

The theme of women as all knowing prevails in Medieval lit, like Beatrice in "The Divine Comedy," and in tons of classic stories that stood the tests of time. Cinderella's fairy godmother, the old beggar who turns the prince into a beast in Beauty and the Beast and Sleeping Beauty's fairies. Pretty much all of Shakespeare's witches and soothsayers were female. Pinocchio's fairy godmother knew to build in a visible lie detector, and Peter Pan's Wendy was the only one with enough sense to grow up.

It works the other way too, with smart, evil women wreaking hell on their dumb, docile and naive princesses. Like the queen/sorceress in Snow White, or Ursula in the Little Mermaid.

But I think you see these women plenty today, just in a different form. Basically, today's holy grail women are able to tell men when they're being dumbasses, because they've missed the point all along.

Some of my favorite examples have been in the books I've read over the last couple of years. Like in the who-dun-it thriller "Into the Woods" by Tana French, where a detective, the male first-person protagonist struggles to solve the case, but realizes his female counterpart has known from the beginning. She was just smart enough to know he had to come to the conclusion on his own.

"The Answer is Always Yes" by Monica Ferrell chronicles the freshman year of college of Matt Acciaccatura, who, in his constant struggle to be cool, gets mixed up in the drug culture of New York's night clubs. While the night life sucks in his friends little by little, his good-girl girlfriend Sophie remains unseduced.

Finally, "The Secret History" by Donna Tartt brings to life a group of too-smart-for-their-own-good college students who, when things get out of hand, end up murdering one of their own. The group, which consists of five men (later four) and one woman, Camilla. The three men go along with the murder mainly because they are in fearful awe of their leader, Henry. But it is later revealed that Henry is in love with Camilla, and that she's been pulling her share of the strings all along. Although Henry remains the leader of the pack, Camilla has his heart, and therefore way more power than he probably intended to give.