Ingenue (stock character)

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Mary Pickford, a perpetual ingenue

The Ingenue is a stock character in literature and film and a role type in the theatre, generally a girl or a young woman who is endearingly innocent.

Typically, the ingenue is beautiful, gentle, sweet, virginal, and often naïve, in mental or emotional danger rather than physical danger, usually a target of The Cad; she may have mistaken him for The Hero. Due to lack of independence, the ingenue usually lives with her father or a male father figure (although in some rare cases she lives with a motherly figure). The vamp is often a foil for the ingenue (or the damsel in distress, for that matter).

In opera and musical theatre, the ingenue is usually sung by a light soprano. The ingenue stereotypically has the fawn-eyed innocence of a child.

The ingenue is often accompanied with a romantic side plot. This romance is usually considered pure and harmless to both participants. In many case, but not all, the male participant is just as innocent as the ingenue is. Also, the ingenue is similar to the girl next door archetype.

Ingenue and ingenuous may also refer to a new actor or actress or one typecast in such roles.

1 Ingenue examples
2 Actresses known for playing ingenues
3 References
4 See also

[edit] Ingenue examples

Antonia in Les contes d'Hoffmann
Cassandra of Stargate SG-1
Cosette in Les Miserables
Christine Daaé in The Phantom of the Opera
Polly Browne in Sandy Wilson's The Boy Friend
Cinderella
Clara Johnson in The Light in the Piazza
Dorothy Gale in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
Eva St. Clair in Uncle Tom's Cabin
Gilda in Rigoletto
Gretchen in Goethe's Faust
Hannah Jelkes in Night of the Iguana
Jemima in Cats
Johanna Barker in Sweeney Todd
Josephine in H.M.S. Pinafore
Julie Jordan in Carousel
Lauretta in Gianni Schicchi
Lakmé
Lili
Liù in Turandot
Madame Butterfly
Mabel in The Pirates of Penzance
Magnolia in Show Boat
Michaëla in Carmen
Nannetta in Falstaff
Peggy Sawyer in 42nd Street
Philia in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum
Rapunzel in Into the Woods
Snow White
Tatajana in Eugene Onegin
Phoebe Caulfield and Jane Gallinger from The Catcher in the Rye
Many of the paintings of William-Adolphe Bouguereau depict scenes of ingenues

Marguerite Clark, capturing the wide-eyed innocence of an ingenue

[edit] Actresses known for playing ingenues

[edit] References

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