Ingenue
Ingenue
The Ingenue is a stock character in literature and film and a role type in the theatre, generally a girl or a young woman who is endearingly innocent.
Typically, the ingenue is beautiful, gentle, sweet, virginal, and often naïve, in mental or emotional danger rather than physical danger, usually a target of The Cad; she may have mistaken him for The Hero. Due to lack of independence, the ingenue usually lives with her father or a male father figure (although in some rare cases she lives with a motherly figure). The vamp is often a foil for the ingenue (or the damsel in distress, for that matter).
In opera and musical theater, the ingenue is usually sung by a light soprano. The ingenue stereotypically has the fawn-eyed innocence of a child.
The ingenue is often accompanied with a romantic side plot. This romance is usually considered pure and harmless to both participants. In many case, but not all, the male participant is just as innocent as the ingenue is.
Ingenue and ingenuous may also refer to a new actor or actress or one typecast in such roles.
Ingenue examples
- Antonia in Les contes d'Hoffmann
- Cosette in Les Miserables
- Christine Daaé in The Phantom of the Opera (1986)
- Cinderella
- Clara Johnson in The Light in the Piazza
- Dorothy Gale in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
- Eva St. Clair in Uncle Tom's Cabin
- Gilda in Rigoletto
- Gretchen in Goethe's Faust
- Hannah Jelkes in Night of the Iguana
- Jemima in Cats
- Johanna Barker in Sweeney Todd
- Josephine in H.M.S. Pinafore
- Julie Jordan in |Carousel
- Lauretta in Gianni Schicchi
- Lakmé
- Lili
- Liù in Turandot
- Madame Butterfly
- Mabel in The Pirates of Penzance
- Magnolia in Show Boat
- Michaëla in Carmen
- Nannetta in Falstaff
- Peggy Sawyer in 42nd Street (musical)
- Philia in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum
- Rapunzel in Into the Woods
- Snow White
- Tatajana in Eugene Onegin
- Phoebe Caulfield and Jane Gallinger from The Catcher in the Rye
- Many of the paintings of William-Adolphe Bouguereau depict scenes of ingenues
- Marguerite Clark, capturing the wide-eyed innocence of an ingenue
- Judy Garland, whose resumé contains many ingenue roles
Actresses known for playing ingenues
- Mary Pickford
- Daryl Hannah
- Lillian Gish
- Mary Philbin
- Marguerite Clark
- Janet Gaynor
- Bessie Love
- Judy Garland
- Sarah Brightman
- Emmy Rossum
- Veerle Casteleyn
- Ileana Cotrubaş
- Sandra Dee
- Scarlett Johansson
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