Triple Threat

WEDNESDAY: The Trope

MOTHER, MAIDEN AND CRONE

I’ve been reading Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman for my podcast, Endless, and in one of the early issues, there was a lot of play with the triple goddess, the three furies, the graces. Called by a lot of names—all of which are better than “crone”—these three women carry the wisdom and knowledge that comes from looking at life from three angles; the young, the mid-life and the… let’s call it… experienced.

I’ve always enjoyed the three goddesses, and had some fun working with these three stages of life in Dogs and Goddesses, which I wrote with Jennifer Crusie and Anne Stuart. I like the idea of looking at the world from multiple perspectives, which makes this archetype fun because it has a great deal of versatility.

And while this trope is highly feminine-coded, because wisdom is often coded feminine, that doesn’t mean you can’t do this with masculine-of-center or non-binary characters. What if you did a gender spectrum set of furies, one masculine-of-center, one non-binary, and one feminine-of-center?

Lots of potential in this one.