ingénue

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Actress Mary Pickford played a number of ingenue roles.

The ingénue ( /ˈænʒənuː/) is a stock character in literature, film, and a role type in the theatre; generally a girl or a young woman who is endearingly innocent and wholesome. Ingenue may also refer to a new young actress or one typecast in such roles. The term comes from the French adjective ingénu meaning "ingenuous" or innocent, virtuous, and candid. The term may also imply a lack of sophistication and cunning.

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

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

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

Examples

• Ariel in The Little Mermaid
• Maria in West Side Story
• Ophelia in Hamlet
• Christine Daae in The Phantom Of The Opera
• Cosette in Les Misérables
• Tammy Tyree in the Tammy film series
• Donna Moss in The West Wing
• Bailey Quarters in WKRP in Cincinnati
• Jemima or Sillabub in the musical Cats
• Johanna Barker in Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
• Luciana in The Comedy of Errors
• Sandy Olsen in Grease
• Amelia Sedley in Vanity Fair
• Alice Munro in The Last of the Mohicans
• Sidney Prescott in Scream (franchise)
• Hope Cladwell in Urinetown
• Marie Antoinette in The Rose of Versailles
• Annie Edison on Community
• Cecile Caldwell in Cruel Intentions
• Magnolia in "Showboat"
• Laurey Williams in Oklahoma
• Hope Harcourt in Anything Goes
• Sookie Stackhouse in True Blood

See also

• Feminist film theory
• Femme fatale
• Damsel in distress