The Princess Bride question

Okay... The first thing everyone needs to understand is that The Princess Bride is a SATIRE. That means it's deliberately meant to take a broadly appealing and accepted topic/trope and push it to its most extreme limits in order to make the reader stop and think critically about it. The author deliberately started out the story as an every-knuckle-headed-young-man's wish-fulfillment kind of thing. The underdog-guy goes from being picked on by the most gorgeous girl ever to having her swoon at his feet in a declaration of love, then gets to live out his fantasy of slamming the door in her face and letting her stew for a while. (It's essentially the geek-gets-the-captain-of-the-cheerleading-squad wish fulfillment.) He goes off on some adventure and levels up and comes back as an absolute boss, besting the world's greatest masters of sword, strength, and mind (even though they've been working at this at least seven times longer than he has) because he's a prodigy. Once the reader (remember: the target audience is young men just like the author's fictional alter-ego Billy) starts feeling pretty good about this guy and decides to idolize him, Westley starts showing some less-heroic character flaws (like abuse and gaslighting), but it's easily justified because she made him mad, right? Riiight? It all pretty much spirals downhill from there. Buttercup raises Westley's pedestal higher and higher (spewing psalms about his perfection, declaring that her patron god Westley only cries over babies and funerals, and even PRAYING TO HIM for her rescue), all while the audience watches Westley's body and spirit being broken by the Machine (he even, gasp, cries because it hurts). This is literary irony doing what it's meant to do: showing the audience that Buttercup is wrong; Westley is as human and breakable as anybody else. The author steps out of the narrative repeatedly to remind the reader that life is not fair. The hero doesn't always get the girl, most of the time you're not as different from that guy you love to hate as you think you are, and no mystical entity called "Fairness" is going to reward you for thinking you're the good guy in your own story. It's meant to challenge the reader not to overlook Westley's faults (or the reader's own) just because he's the hero (the way young-Billy did), but to grow up and be a better man than the cynical, cheating man he portrays fictional-grown-up-Billy as.

Honestly, I like the feminist bent that it had - that Roberts/Westley views men and women as equals and that they equally receive punishment. Besides, Buttercup might not be terribly bright, but she's tougher than she looks!

I like more the movie version, Westly is about to slap her but doesnt, because even if he´s mad, he still loves her... I think there are some aspects of the characters that contradict each other on the book, like Buttercup not being bright but asking people to stop noticing her beauty and notices her mind instead...

I agree with Kassandra.

I have a hard time understanding everything that is going on here, too. Why doesn’t he tell her right away that he is Westley? Similarly, can anyone explain why Westley shuts the door on Buttercup when she declares she loves him at the beginning? I think he is always testing her... maybe he just loves her so much, and he can’t fathom that she can love him as much as he loves her. After all, it *appears* that she has moved past Westley’s death and has given her heart to Humperdinck. Maybe he just loves her too much...? Of course slapping a woman is NEVER the way to deal with love, but keep in mind this book was written decades ago when slapping a woman or a child was commonplace. (Have you ever watched the original Superman movies? When a little girl tries to tell her mother that she saw Superman, her mother SLAPS HER!)

But.... Doesn't anyone think it's interesting how Goldman wrote both the book and screenplay and left the slap out?

Like what do y'all think?

Also slapping is never nice, especially when it's supposed to be someone you love. But I don't think it makes the book bad. Maybe I need a 3x reread, but I never got the sense that Goldman was trying to say it was an okay thing to do.

Kassandra wrote: "Im currently reading the princess Bride and the dread pirate Roberts aka Westley even though Butter cup doesn't know it yet. He slaps her because it was the penalty for lying! That where he comes f..."

I was also bothered by it - I think there is a sad face with a tear by my annotation in my book.

No I don’t especially considering the time period. People are making way too big a deal out of this. Different culture, completely different time period. I hate when people say classics are sexist or racist. We need books like these to show how far we’ve come as a society. And how far we still need to come. If Buttercup had slapped Wesley instead no one would’ve batted an eye because of double standards. Think on THAT for a moment.

Cringing at the abuse excusing here. "He just loves her so much he thinks she can't love him as much as he loves her!!" REALLY? And yeah, she shoved him- after HE mocked her, slapped her, and threatened her! I'd want a violent person away from me too.

Westley was awful and I can't believe people say Twilight is the worst when people are romanticizing his toxic behavior and blaming Buttercup for it.

I agree with you as well Kassandra.

I'm glad they didn't put it in the movie version and honestly, this was an instance wherein I liked the cinematic take more than the literary original.

Of course we all realize it is set in different time when lots of unacceptable behavior was normalized but considering it was written for children/teens in modern(ish) day and Westley is heralded as a romantic hero, it stands to reason this particular detail would stick out like a sore thumb. The fact that the novel is satirical doesn't change the fact that that part was not needed and it wasn't in any way funny.

Keep in mind, this book was originally written in 1973. Thankfully we have evolved to see slapping a woman as unacceptable behavior, at least in West.

Buttercup also shoves Westley over a cliff into a ravine. That's not exactly appropriate either.

That said, it is annoying that Westley slapped her, but if I put a book down every time something offended me, I would miss out on a lot of amazing information and literature. I think it's important to consider the time period in which a book was written. Applying it to our current standards will always leave us disappointed.

Mae Hall, you're spot-on.

I didn't think that it was right of Westley to slap her...

I agree with Nicole Bliss. Events in books are over the top, hyperbolic, because otherwise they’d be boring. They take things to the extreme for effect and the very fact that we’re all talking about it shows that it worked. It was only a slap, people, it’s not like he stabbed her

It's a book and not real life. I don't know that I would forgo a whole book for something like that. I am sure there are MANY things in MANY books that most people don't do but we read them anyways. I would say to look at that one things together with the whole book. If you are that sensitive about something like that then I would advise against reading most books.

Well he was pretending to be the bad guy. Kinda comes with the job description. Of course, feminism isn't exactly a thing in this novel.