Pearl White - Infinite Women

Born: 4 March 1889, United States
Died: 4 August 1938
Country most active: United States
Also known as: NA

This entry is excerpted from the online exhibit “Women in Early Film,” curated by Dr. Alison Landsberg, Professor of History and Art History, George Mason University and written by Claire Love and Jen Pollack. It is reprinted with permission from the National Women’s History Museum (United States of America). All rights reserved.

Actresses played a crucial role in shaping the development of early film as well as Hollywood and the studio system. More popular than their male counterparts, early female stars helped make Hollywood a booming commercial venture. Actresses parlayed this popularity into greater control of their roles, as well as what happened behind the scenes. Before the advent of the Hays Code in 1934, they also sought out challenging and dynamic roles that gave women agency and challenged accepted norms just as often as they conformed to what might be viewed as proper feminine roles. As a result, early Hollywood had a dynamic where actresses had room to explore the many different ways women might be depicted on film.

In direct contrast to the ingénue was as the heroine, a woman who faced down danger with resilience and determination. Serials were recurring films that featured the same character moving through a continuing storyline. Serials popularized the cliffhanger, hoping to lure audience members back to the theater for the next installment. Young working women, who made up a substantial portion of the turn-of-the-century female audience, empathized with heroines who were often like themselves: young women cast adrift from their families, navigating the new industrial and urban landscape.

The most popular serial was The Perils of Pauline starring Pearl White, which ran for twenty episodes in 1914. White did many of her own stunts. One of her most famous perilous situations was being tied to the tracks in front of an oncoming train: a plot device subsequently recreated (and made fun of) in many films. The character of Pauline perfectly typifies the serial heroine. She was a plucky young woman freed from conventional family relationships using her unrivaled strength, bravado, and intelligence to navigate various crises.

Though the serials implied that only women without familial ties could move through the urban world, they also provided examples of women eventually achieving the domestic ideal despite their supposedly unorthodox adventures. Serial heroines always eventually ended their adventures by surrendering their freedom to marriage or a return to family. These heroines, therefore, modeled the traits necessary for young working women to survive in the new working world of the city, but they also demonstrated that a woman’s main goal remained finding a husband and settling down.