What Makes a Woman a Heroine?

This week a friend and I went round a new art exhibition, here in Madrid, entitled "Heroínas" (Heroines) - an exhibition which depicts women  through art, spanning many centuries and focusing on the different aspects which have been drawn out by the artists. 

Whilst slightly begrudging the fact that we paid the entrance fee, only to discover half way round that the second half of the exhibition was in a different art gallery (!), we were intrigued by  variety of the collection of artwork, and the thought behind its presentation. It was worth the walk to the second gallery to finish the tour.

 

What particularly interested us was the way in which the art was categorised, not chronologically, but in themes. The buzz word for feminism over recent years has been "empowerment" and this idea is established from the very name of the exhibition, which awards the title "heroine" to the array of different women depicted through the pictures: some iconic such as Joan of Arc, some highly symbolic, others merely peasant women, and a significant group are the female artists themselves.

In the light of this desire to portray the empowerment of women through art, the choice of categories is intriguing. The paintings or photos are grouped under the following aspects: solitude, work, delirium, sport, war, magic, religion, reading and painting. Several of these show obvious links to the idea of "empowerment", while other sections, particularly "solitude" - which depicted women in a state of apparent waiting, loneliness and passivity - do not seem to fit with the generally accepted idea of a heroine.

So what makes someone a heroine? The dictionary definition for the word is "a woman of distinguished courage or ability, admired for her brave deeds and noble qualities." Does that mean, as the exhibition seems to imply, that you can award such a title to any woman, simply for being female? The exhibition was thought-provoking as to the less conventional qualities of a heroic person... Solitude for example is claimed in this exhibition to hold "the seeds of independence and even resistance". 

What qualities would you expect from a "heroine"? Personally, I think I value qualities like kindness,  passion, wisdom or faithfulness in the women I admire, more than  I do rebellion or resistance.