What is Damsel?

The notion of damsel comes from dameisele,a term of Old French that can be translated as “Miss”. The concept has several meanings according to the context .

In some cases, a young woman is called a damsel, especially if she has pretensions to become a refined lady and wants to be treated as such. For example: “The boy invited the damsel to the theatre”, “In the novels, the heroes are always willing to risk their lives to save a damsel in danger”, “The grieving damsel touched the policeman”.

What is Damsel

A woman dedicated to the exercise of prostitution can also be named as a damsel: “The beautiful damsel soon caught the attention of the old man”, “The researchers believe that the missing businessman spent the night with a damsel”, “This alley is usually filled with damsels offering its services”.

The universal theme that appears in literature, plastic arts, film and video games is known as a damsel in distress, in which a beautiful young woman is in danger because of a villain and requires a hero to come to her rescue. The woman, in this context, is often presented as weak, naive and dependent on man: that is why the subject is considered sexist.

In Ancient Greece it is considered that there is the origin of the term or thematic of the “damsel in distress”. This concept where it can be found most is within the set of European fairy tales that later, many of them, have become classics of children’s literature and even highly acclaimed films of the Disney factory.

We are referring to “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs”, “Sleeping Beauty”, “Cinderella”, “Rapunzel”…

Since then in the various artistic and cultural fields we have known many other cases of damsels in distress. Thus, for example, in the comic book world, reporter Lois Lane was always saved by Superman from the compromised situations she got into. And we also bumped into Jane, who had her particular “hero” tarzan who saved her from the dangers of the jungle.

Likewise, we cannot overlook that the word damsel has been used to shape titles from different books throughout history. This would be the case, for example, of the work “The Damsel of the Castle”, which is an original legend written by Victor Balaguer.

This is not forgetting that this term is also included in a song performed by the Spanish tenor Plácido Domingo. We are referring to the title “Damisela charming”, which was launched in 1983 and was included in the album “The Music of Ernesto Lecuona”.

An example of damsel in distress is Princess Peach, the female character in the video game saga known as Mario Bros. This princess is always captive to a monster and Mario must save her.

Damsel, finally, is the name of a subfamily of fish from the pomacentrid family. These are brightly colored animals that usually live in salt water.

Damsel