Neutral Female characters in Literature.
- Lampshaded and Defied by Rachel of The Beyonders. She knows that she's in a medieval world where women are told to stay out of fighting most of the time, but she refuses to let it happen to her and becomes the party's Black Magician Girl.
- Subverted as early as the book version of The Body Snatchers; the female lead pretends to be a stereotypical version until she can sneak the syringes full of morphine out of her shirt sleeves and poke the Mooks with them.
- Gender Inverted in A Brother's Price, for the whole society, but especially Jerin's grandfather Alannon, who was kidnapped by Jerin's grandmothers, out of a castle under siege. Apparently he was just taking a bath when the spies found him, and decided to take him with them. It's encouraged by the society, as men are seen as too valuable to harm. Jerin averts this trope, as he has his own ideas about whom he wants to marry, and it just so happens that the women who kidnap him are less attractive than the set of sisters he is engaged to marry. (Alannon was apparently not engaged, and as his kidnappers did everything to make him happy, and his family had been executed, anyway, he decided to just go with it.)
- Justified and subverted by Chloe in the Darkest Powers series. While they're separated from the other two members of their group, her friend Derek is attacked by a man named Liam. She has a switchblade and desperately wants to help, and keeps trying to — she even lampshades this trope in her distress and frustration at not being able to help:"I thought of all the times I'd been in an audience, snarking about the stupid, useless girl hovering on the sidelines of a fight, holding a weapon but doing nothing, watching the guy get pummeled."
- The thing is, the two guys in question are 1) werewolves, and therefore have super strength, and 2) moving so fast that every time she attempts to stab Liam, she has to pull up fast so she won't stab Derek instead. However, this trope goes from justified to subverted when Liam has Derek pinned — the second they stop moving, Chloe darts forward and stabs Liam in the back of his leg, thus allowing Derek to free himself and giving them both the chance to run like hell.
- Justified and subverted in The Reckoning as well. This time, though, Derek and his opponent are both in wolf form, so it would be understandable if Chloe did nothing but watch. Even then, though, she manages to avert this trope entirely: She climbs a tree so that Derek won't have to worry about her getting hurt, and then notices that the other werewolf is badly scarred on one flank, meaning that his skin is unprotected there. She yells this down to Derek, and that strategy is what allows Derek (who has never been in wolf form before, and even now has only been in it for about an hour) to win the fight against an experienced werewolf.
- Addressed and eventually subverted in Dracula in regard Mina. The men of the Dracula hunting party (especially her husband Jonathan) don’t want to Mina to be remotely involved in anything dangerous so are happy to invoke this along with Stay in the Kitchen, for the sake of Mina’s safety and nerves. However, this sentiment comes back to bite them as what they’ve actually done by leaving Mina out of the action is left her to be a sitting duck when Dracula strikes — resulting in Mina getting assaulted by the count and forced to drink his blood and become a vampire. Having learned their lesson the heroes bring Mina along with them for the climax with her psychic sire connection to Dracula being the trump card that lets them defeat him. Adaptations typically play this tragically straight however due to Chickification with only Bram Stoker's Dracula having her be involved in the Final Battle… protecting Dracula whom she loves in this version.
- Both the heroines and villainesses of the Elemental Masters series like to exploit this, as Edwardian Era men don't think much of women and thus are more willing to turn their back on them or underestimate them in a fight, much to their detriment.
- Discussed, then subverted in The Fire Rose, when Rosalind finds it absurd when women in plays just faint when men capture them and her friends respond that she doesn't know she might react in that situation. In the climax of the book, the villain captures her and tries to give her love interest Jason a Sadistic Choice between saving her but giving into his animal side or letting her die....and Rosalind promptly uses her own magic to incinerate him.
- The Hunchback of Notre Dame Esmeralda only has two moments of true agency, rescuing Quasimodo from a mob that has trussed him up and giving him water and rescuing Gringoire from Clopin. Otherwise she’s just a Damsel in Distress and The Ingenue who watches the action unfold and is just about helpless to prevent anything happening to her necessitating Quasimodo, Gringoire and to a lesser extent Phoebus to step in and save her. She dies anyway unfortunately.
- The Hunger Games: Justified for Mags because of her old age. Since she was a previous victor, though, we can assume she was an Action Girl in the past.
- In Les Misérables this often a point against Cosette. While the entire cast Valjean (her adoptive father), Javert, Marius (her boyfriend), Enjolras, Courfeyrac, Grantaire, Gavroche and Éponine (her foster sister and Marius’s other love interest) are all at the barricade fighting, Cosette is at a safe house with Ma'am Burgon sitting comfortably on her finery clad bottom. While in all fairness this largely justified given Valjean’s promise to Cosette’s dying mother Fantine was to safeguard her daughter at all cost, Cosette’s passive role in the story is still noticeably given every other named woman in the story including Fantine herself had some agency.
- Averted in The Phantom of the Opera with Christine. In the original novel she has a shocking amount of agency and independence for a woman in 1880s France being outgoing and stubborn. In some instances she’s the one physically forcing the male lead Raoul to go her way and follow her decisions. The only time where Christine is unhelpful is when she’s literally tied up and once unbound by a unassuming Erik (who captured her in the first place) she immediately goes to try and help Raoul and the Persian locked in the torture chamber, though this of course gets Erik suspicious. Adaptations however haven’t been kind and Christine is usually depicted helplessly watching the events unfold in horror.
- In The Princess Bride, Buttercup is in the room throughout Westley and Humperdinck's final face-off, but as the narration abruptly stops mentioning her, it can be assumed she stands there like a wall hanging while the antagonist threatens her and her lover's futures and those of their friends. Since the altercation starts by interrupting her attempted suicide, Buttercup is literally holding a knife. One belonging to the villain himself, no less. You'd think Humperdinck insisting at length that they're powerless would prompt her to go in for a stab.
- Defied in Mercedes Lackey's The Sleeping Beauty. When the Big Bad is fighting The Hero coming to save the princess, the former's job is somewhat harder when said princess is throwing everything she can reach at his head.
- Brought up in Tales of Kolmar, as Lanen thinks that if this were a tale she'd be expected to do this. A number of the fights around her are dragons versus demons or demon summoners and she just stays out of the way, not even wanting to be on the sidelines, but there's a memorable instant in Song In The Silence where a demon summoner who is immune to dragonfire turns out to not be immune to human fists.
- Bella Swan from Twilight plays this straight. Her prime role in the books is to end up in danger so that she can be rescued by Edward, mostly from situations that she senselessly caused in the first place. Even when she's against something, at most, she'll only murmur apologetically before she's quickly dismissed. This even goes as far as being expected to comply and wait passively while she's being assaulted by Jacob or ordered around by Edward.
- Subverted and defied in the children's book Zog, by The Gruffalo team Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler. The eponymous dragon is going through dragon school, kidnaps a princess, and then a knight arrives to fight Zog to rescue the princess. The princess immediately steps in saying "Stop fighting, both of you. I don't want to go back to wearing silly dresses in the castle." Then the three of them team up to become the medieval world's first flying doctors squad.
