IV.

“What’s worse, looking jealous or crazy, jealous and crazy? Or like being walked all over lately. I’d rather be crazy.” – Beyoncé, “Hold Up”

Beyoncé released her sixth studio album, and second visual album, Lemonade, in 2016 through Tidal, an artist-centric platform that she co-owned. This unique privilege provided her with the freedom of artistic expression not often available to popular and mainstream artists, particularly female ones. Lemonade provided, among other messages and statements addressed by critics, an exploration of a Wronged Woman’s journey through an unraveling marriage. It supplies the audience with the expected actions of a Scorned Woman with acts of vandalism and displays of anger, but it sets itself apart in a vital fashion, casting aside the Scorned Woman to reveal the Wronged Woman beneath.

Lemonade provides what every Scorned Woman of popular culture has been denied: context, history, and agency. The album charts the path of a woman learning of and confronting her husband’s infidelity in eleven chapters: Intuition, Denial, Anger, Apathy, Emptiness, Accountability, Reformation, Forgiveness, Resurrection, Hope, and Redemption. (Beyoncé, Lemonade) Anger is a part, but only one part of a long narrative that leads to forgiveness. Lemonade’s visual album provides deeper context, providing rich imagery to accompany the Wronged Woman’s journey.

The visual album opens with a shot from “Don’t Hurt Yourself”, the Anger phase, played at very slow speeds, the sound evoking an animal growl, and then immediately transitions to shots of a plantation, Beyoncé in the tall grass. It hooks the viewer with the shot of expected Anger phase, but refuses to allow the viewer to see the Anger without the context of the Intuition and Denial phases. The Intuition section shows the viewer a woman in solitude, on display under stage lights, alone in the fields, or standing on a building’s ledge while speaking of suspicions of her husband’s infidelity, “Pray I catch you whispering. Pray you catch me listening.” (Beyoncé, “Pray I Catch You”) It speaks of the growing uncertainty that accompanies intuition, and how it leads into the instinct that she has been wronged by her husband, but unable to find confirmation.

Intuition’s uncertainty leads to Denial, with a transition that includes adaptations of poet Warsan Shire’s, “For Women Who Are Difficult to Love.” Shire’s lines are present throughout the visual album, presenting that the journey of the Wronged Woman has received plenty of creative attention in the realms of literature, art, and poetry, but has been largely ignored by a popular culture more centered on marketability. That Lemonade, performed by an influential woman in the music industry, often breaks the music to insert Shire’s poetry elevates the imagery and lyrics which precede and follow. This inclusion informs the viewer of the wealth of literature and poetry that goes lauded by critics but ignored by consumers, providing the knowledge that a Wronged Woman’s journey has been explored before, and invites further inspection.

Denial opens with a plunge into deep water and a woman submerged, alone, describing a list of self-inflicted excoriations, placing the blame for even the potential of infidelity upon herself, stating: “Got on my knees and said Amen and said I mean. I whipped my own back and asked for dominion at your feet.” (Beyoncé, “Denial”) The implied submission is one of many lengths the speaker goes to keep the blame on herself, which she can control and affect, instead of the uncertainty of, “But still inside was coiled the need to know, ‘Are you cheating on me?’” (Beyoncé, “Denial”)

Denial’s track, “Hold Up”, supplies the viewer with the aspects of the Scorned Woman required in the cliché, in that it includes a woman, a baseball bat, and vandalism. The lyrics, while set to a cheery, upbeat reggae-style foundation, portray the anger pushing at the cracking surface of the speaker’s denial. Beyoncé, in the visual album, strolls at first stone-faced, clad in a yellow dress. The yellow is symbolic, as at first glance it implies a happy, sunny outlook, the playful tone of the song implying the listener infer the positive aspects of the color, instead of the negative symbolism of jealous, anxiety, deception, fear, and depression. Her expression changes to a more joyful one upon taking a baseball bat from a bystander and proceeding toward a car..

This is the first departure from the Scorned Woman cliché, as the blunt instrument for vandalism is not, as shown in the cliché, premeditated, but instead taken on a whim. This provides the first crack of the denial, as.her expression changes to anger when she breaks the first window, with the bystanders, much like in Barbershop, finding the action amusing. However, the woman strolls on, smiling again, implying that the window-breaking was a flash of anger flaring through her outward implication that everything is okay between her and her husband. The strikes become more frequent as the song continues, until she proceeds from smashing windows on cars to a display of wigs, which is accompanied by a gout of flame.

That the breaking of the display of wigs is done in a one-handed, almost casual manner, brings the uncertainty of her husband’s infidelity to the forefront. The context is later shown in “Sorry”, where the line, “He better call Becky with the good hair” is repeated twice. (Beyoncé, “Sorry”) Considering that “Becky” is a slang term for a white woman, and that “good hair” is usually referring to hair that is straight with no curls or kinks, usually possessed by white women, it becomes clear why the flames of rage burst in the background upon her seeing a wig with straight, white-like hair.

“Hold Up” also calls out the false dichotomy of the Scorned Woman, in that she asks if it’s worse to be seen as jealous or crazy, or accepting of the treatment. While the first two are commonly applied to women in popular culture, it’s the final that is rarely examined, that of suffering in silence. Joan Morgan calls attention to this in When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost: My Life as a Hop-Hop Feminist, attacking the concept of the “StrongBlackWoman”:

…by the sole virtues of my race and gender I was supposed to be the consummate professional, handle any life crisis, be the dependable rock for every soul who need me, and, yes, the classic — require less from my lovers than they did from me because after all, I was a STRONGBLACKWOMAN and they were just ENDANGEREDBLACKMEN. (Morgan 91)

This is where Lemonade sets itself apart, as it focuses on the pressures faced not only by women, but specifically black women. When “Hold Up” asks if it’s worse to look jealous or crazy, it doesn’t just imply that the speaker is worried about her appearance to her husband, but also how society will view her as well. That fare like Barbershop proclaims that not only is jealousy or craziness on the part of the Scorned Woman is applauded, it’s expected, underscores the much more limited choices that a black Wronged Woman faces instead of her white counterparts. As Morgan states, “I’d internalized the SBW credo: No matter how bad shit gets, handle it alone, quietly, and with dignity.” (Morgan 94)

But “Hold Up” isn’t the Anger phase, it’s Denial, of wanting to believe that she hasn’t been wronged despite increasing evidence to the contrary. She takes time in the middle to proclaim that her husband likely wouldn’t be so foolish to cheat on her, because she’s the best he’ll ever have:

Let’s imagine for a moment that you never made a name for yourself/ Or mastered wealth, they had you labeled as a king/ Never made it out the cage, still out there movin’ in them streets/ Never had the baddest woman in the game up in your sheets/ Would they be down to ride?/ No, they used to hide from you, lie to you/ But y’all know we were made for each other/ So I find you and hold you down. (Beyoncé, “Hold Up”)

Instead of cliché Scorned Woman rage, the speaker affirms her identity and self-worth, claiming her husband is fortunate in his success, because she never would’ve noticed him otherwise.

Without the necessary context, Beyoncé is a cliched Scorned Woman, breaking everything in sight because she thinks her husband has been unfaithful, making her easy to relegate as “jealous, or crazy”, providing those reactions as her only options. That she states, “I’d rather be crazy”, contradicts the implication of mental instability, as her consciousness of the two perceptions she is limited to displays her rationality. (Beyoncé, “Hold Up”) Her choice to “be crazy” is the only path society allows her in order to take action instead of suffering in silence or fuming in jealousy.

The visual album shows how each phase slowly transitions into the other, as Anger follows Denial, but Lemonade shows how vital context is in regards to the Wronged Woman. Without the history and self-flagellation of the Intuition and Denial opening, “Hold Up” looks like any other Scorned Woman cliché. She takes a baseball bat to cars, windows, fire hydrants, security camera, and even concludes with driving a monster truck over a line of cars similar to those she’d been smashing throughout.

Anger is what is expected with the Scorned Woman, a cliché that is argued to be a trope. The difference between the two is that cliché is considered a lazy writer’s tool, a story mechanic that has become obsolete, and deserving of ridicule. A trope, however, is an audience expectation that a narrative will follow a specific path, and when the trope is subverted or contradicted, the audience feels frustrated or betrayed. To argue that the Scorned Woman is a trope is to argue that it is valid to expect a woman to behave irrationally when she has been wronged, and to ascribe her motivations to jealousy or mental instability, rather than allow a Wronged Woman agency over her own emotions. Why must she be limited to being seen as jealous, or crazy, when she could be frustrated, worried, depressed, anxious, fearful, worried, angry, or any other emotion?

The Anger phase of Lemonade takes the viewer back to the first shot of the album, of Beyoncé leaning against an SUV, but now, armed with the history and context, the song “Don’t Hurt Yourself” becomes much more pointed. The cliché of the Scorned Woman would require the Anger phase to be the only section seen, the section providing the most entertainment. That the poetry leading into the Anger section describes a grisly dismemberment of the woman her husband is cheating with, could lead the viewer into believing the true violence and destruction is yet to come. With an SUV featured prominently, with women draped about it, is a common image in hip-hop videos, implying that the video might feature Beyoncé destroying that SUV, a symbol of her husband’s masculinity.

Instead, the first line of “Don’t Hurt Yourself”, is “Who the fuck do you think I am?” (Beyoncé, “Don’t Hurt Yourself”) It is a line that proclaims the strength of her self-image and identity, with her accenting the profanity. The anger of the song is streamed through her words, calling her husband out for wronging her, asserting her independence with, “and keep your money, I’ve got my own. It would put a smile on my face, being alone.” (Beyoncé, “Don’t Hurt Yourself”) In those lines, Beyoncé accentuates the power that women have reclaimed: the ability to stand on their own and leave. Too often, women are forced to “be walked all over” because they lacked the resources to express their anger and follow through on a threat to leave. While it can be argued that Beyoncé has the means and resources to leave a cheating husband, the message of the song isn’t about leaving. Instead, it’s best explained by Morgan, “But recognize: Any man who doesn’t truly love himself is incapable of loving us in the healthy way we need to be loved.” (Morgan 78) This is shown in the lyrics where the speaker seeks to remind her husband of their connection, that whatever he does to her, he’s only doing to himself, concluding the with “When you love me, you love yourself.” (Beyoncé, “Don’t Hurt Yourself”) Even with the anger of the lyrics, it isn’t a song where she announces she’s leaving her husband, though she repeats in “Hold Up”, “Don’t Hurt Yourself”, and later “Sorry”, that she’s certainly willing and able to. It ends with, “This is your final warning/ You know I give you life/ If you try this shit again/ You’re going to lose your wife.” (Beyoncé, “Don’t Hurt Yourself”)

The primary departure from the Scorned Woman, and the display of the Wronged Woman’s journey is in the tracks that follow the Anger phase, and lead toward forgiveness. The album tracks and shows Beyoncé pushing forward through a lack of caring, emptiness, holding her husband accountable, and then finally forgiving him, focusing on their love and their connection. However, the wariness remains, as even after they’ve reconciled, the line, “Give you some time to prove I can trust you again” echoes the final warning of “Don’t Hurt Yourself”, informing her husband that while a Wronged Woman can forgive the one who wronged her, she won’t be wronged again. (Beyoncé, “All Night”)

Works Cited

Morgan, Joan. When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost: My Life as a Hip-Hop Feminist. Touchstone, 2000.

Beyoncé́, James Blake, Kendrick Lamar, The Weeknd, and Jack White. Lemonade. Parkwood Entertainment, 2017. MP3.