Would Hit A Girl / Literature

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• Alexis Carew: Anybody who fights Alexis — Captain Grantham actually complains once about how often she ends up beat to hell — but special mention goes to the horribly sexist Captain Neals, who is only stopped from having her flogged on general principles by the fact that he legally can't flog an officer. Then he disrates her for refusing to beg forgiveness on bended knee for not identifying a man who made a minor mistake due to fatigue, and promptly gives her two dozen lashes. This triggers a mutiny.
• Angel Child, Dragon Child: Raymond gets into a physical fight with Ut after she throws a snowball at him for throwing snow at her sister.
• Discussed in one of the Black Widowers stories. During the course of their wide-ranging discussion, one of the Widowers (most of whom would regard themselves as gentlemen) asks — with some bafflement — what kind of man would hit a woman. Henry, their all-knowing waiter, replies in his usual calm fashion that in his experience, there are two kinds.
  Extreme misogynists. And husbands.
• In Breakfast of Champions, Dwayne Hoover, during his rampage, says, "Never hit a woman, right?" before punching Beatrice Keedler and Bonnie MacMahon, who were trying to restrain him.
• In Ceremony, Spenser and Hawk fight their way through an orgy. Hitting men and women alike, Spenser comments, "No sexist, I."
• Cudjo's Cave: Captain Sprowl has zero compunctions with ordering the wife of a prominent Unionist whipped to make her reveal where her husband is hiding. Due to a case of mistaken identity, his men end up whipping his own mother instead.
• Dragon-in-Distress has Sir George, who threatens to use force against Princess Florinara Tansimasa Qasilava Delagordune. Apparently, his knightly vows did not include 'and not harm women'.
• Dan Krokos's False Memory has this exchange:
  Peter: You didn't break my nose.
  Miranda: Too bad.
  Peter: No, that's good. Because I would've broken yours.
  Miranda: You'd hit a girl?
  Peter: We fight all the time.
• Gentleman Bastard Locke Lamora is willing to punch out an 80-year-old woman. She's the head of the Duke's spy ring, who had stabbed Locke with a needle dipped in a slow-acting poison and was offering the antidote in exchange for selling out his friends. Rather than play along, he just punched her, grabbed the antidote and fled It's implied that the reason this worked is because he is known for as more of a Gentleman Thief running clever cons, and it never occurred to her that he would resort to such direct physical violence.
• Gor: Tarl Cabot starts out seeming unwilling to hit women, though he does threaten them with serious harm at various points. By the sixth book, Raiders of Gor, this reluctance has vanished entirely and he doesn't hesitate again to strike a woman for defiance, or to have her beaten.
• Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban: During a Quidditch match, Oliver Wood tells Harry to stop being a gentleman and just knock Cho Chang off her broom already. Chivalry might not be his only problem there — his crush on her is revealed in the next book. Similarly, the lack of chivalry doesn't seem to be Oliver's only problem.
• In Julie Kagawa's The Iron King, Quintus captured Meghan while the other four fought Ash. When he goes to torment Ash, Ash counters that he's the coward who wrestled with a girl while the other fought.
• Taken to an extreme in Mickey Spillane's I, the Jury: Mike Hammer deliberately shoots Charlotte Manning, a woman, in the stomach to avenge the similar murder of his Army buddy. Although this is sometimes passed off as self-defense, because she was secretly reaching for a gun at the moment of the killing, Hammer had already explicitly told her that he intended to kill her, and thus it is her actions that may be self-defensive.
• Several of the antagonists in the works of Stephen King:
  • Billy Nolan in Carrie hits girlfriend Chris.
  • In The Stand, Dayna Jurgens' Establishing Character Moment is her back story wherein she disarms an abusive ex-boyfriend.
  • Several of the men in Beverly's life (her father, the local bullies, a couple of boyfriends, and her eventual husband Tom Rogan) in IT are violently abusive toward her.
  • Bev isn't the only battered wife in the Kingverse. Dolores Claiborne and the protagonist of Rose Madder have abusive husbands. So does Helen in Insomnia.
• Landslide by Desmond Bagley. When the protagonist gets his face slapped by a Spoiled Brat he slaps her right back, figuring there's no point in applying a Double Standard in this day and age.
• Legacy of the Force: In this series of books, Jacen Solo ends up killing at least 4 female characters. Apparently, the three authors working on that series subscribed to the idea of Wouldn't Hit a Girl, and used this trope to demonstrate how much of a monster Jacen had become.
• The Millennium Series has Lisbeth Salander (and a few other women) being repeatedly attacked by men who do not hold back at all. This is not all that surprising, as one of the main focuses of the books is the abuse of women by men. Holding back against Lisbeth would not be a good idea at all. The second book has the boxer Paolo Roberto as a character, and he is notable for being one of the few characters who is completely disgusted by men hitting women, and relishes the thought of giving such a man a real fight.
• Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens has one of the characters – the ruthless Bill Sikes, an infamous Londoner thug – beat many people, including his prostitute girlfriend, Nancy. Despite his abusive behavior, Nancy stays with him, believing she is a stable force in his life. In the end, she sees what this lifestyle has turned them into and helps Oliver while trying to talk Bill to break up and turn over a new leaf. Bill, in one of the most heinous acts of 1800s English literature, barbarically kills Nancy. It isn't long before Bill is caught by his guilt first and then by the justice of his fellow men and joins her in the grave...
• The Saint: Simon Templar usually doesn't apply his personal brand of justice to women, but this was mainly due to a little trope known as High-Heel–Face Turn. When he did, in fact, shoot a couple of women (the leaders of a drug ring), he notes that this is the first time he's ever actually done so. On a couple of other occasions, he has no compunction about hitting a woman carefully on the back of the head to knock her out for a while.
• Sisterhood Series by Fern Michaels: Several male villains will happily use women like punching bags, and this is naturally used as a combination of a Moral Event Horizon and a Kick the Dog moment to show they're bad guys.
• All the time in A Song of Ice and Fire.
  • King Joffrey does believe that a King should not strike his lady, a 12-year-old Sansa Stark. Instead, he has his knights of the Kingsguard do it in his stead. With gauntlets.
  • Ramsay Snow's treatment of his many female prisoners along with both of his wives has been used to characterise him as a monster.
• In The Sword-Edged Blonde, part of Canino's Establishing Character Moment is to viciously assault his girlfriend Gretchen, who he apparently had a good relationship with (and who certainly didn't see it coming, or understand the reason for it). He did it just to make a point to Eddie — if he's willing to be that needlessly brutal to a girl he mostly likes, how much worse is Eddie going to have it?
• In Ruth Frances Long's The Treachery of Beautiful Things, Tom tries to persuade Jenny that Jack is nothing like them, Jenny sneers that neither she nor Jack are like him, and they're blessed in that, and he hits her. A fight with Jack ensues. Jenny is more horrified because of their blood relation than this trope, but it does play some part.
• In Vampire Academy, Strigoi apparently believe in beating people up equally. They don't mind attacking female characters physically. Goes with their lack of morality.
• Zig-zagged by the Confederation in Victoria. One of their worst enemies is a Lady Land, and they show few qualms about crushing their female troops in the field. Once victorious, however, they treat their civilians unusually nicely by their own standards; even irreconcilable bitter-enders are condemned to slavery when captured, rather than simply executed after drumhead court-martial.
• Averted in Warrior Cats, as female cats are functionally equal to male cats. You'll find females leading Clans, females leading patrol parties, and females suffering the same wounds. The only time they're given special mercy is if they're pregnant. However, even the "mercy for the pregnant" has been averted once to give Breezepelt a Kick the Dog moment.
• The Wheel of Time: In a series full of male characters who take Wouldn't Hit a Girl to the point of pure idiocy, there are a few examples where men are willing to fight back:
  • The three male leads, Rand, Mat, and Perrin, are from a culture where violence against women is pretty much unthinkable. Yet each of them eventually finds himself in a situation where killing a woman is necessary, and each regrets it severely: Rand meets a darkfriend on the road in the third book, who tries to lull him so assassins can get the drop, and he responds by killing the entire group. He later develops a severe Would Not Hit a Girl complex and when facing Lanfear is unable to use deadly attacks even though it may cost his life. Mat is seduced by Melindhra and kills her in defense; after this, he goes to great lengths to avoid fighting women, even when it puts him at a disadvantage, but is not as intense about it as Rand. And in the last book, Perrin has to kill Lanfear to prevent her killing Rand in his moment of triumph. Because of the mind control she's placed on him, he's deeply in love with her at the time, but still manages to bring himself to attack out of need.
  • The whole of the Seanchan and Aiel cultures, where women can join armies/warrior factions, same as men. The one exception are Aiel Wise Ones, whom nobody is supposed to hit, and they aren't supposed to participate in fighting either.
  • Perrin has a few "I pray these aren't women I'm killing in battle" moments, but he's nowhere near as bad as Rand, or even Mat. He also defends himself against his violence-equals-love girlfriend. In his defence, he has a fear of hurting people in general because he's so beefy and strong, and sort of part wolf. The spirit of one, anyway.
  • The male Asha'man on the whole, and especially Logain have no qualms about attacking female Aes Sedai, even if Rand forbids them from killing them.
  • A woman leading a band of male bandits/darkfriends in book 3 is advancing on Mat, who seems to be refusing to defend himself, when Thom throws a knife into her heart. He also fits into Wouldn't Hit a Girl though, because Moiraine notes his reluctance to politically move against women, even the ones who are more dangerous and treacherous than the men.
  • Galad, surprisingly enough, comes to this conclusion, earning a rare bit of praise from his sister and saying one of the most sensible things about men and women in the series:
    Perhaps once I would have hesitated [to kill a woman], but that would have been the wrong choice. Women are as fully capable of being evil as men. Why should one hesitate to kill one, but not the other? The Light does not judge one based on gender, but on the merit of the heart.

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