Today, 20/4/18 is the eighth instalment the series of posts praising my all-time favourite characters for their quirks and flaws etc. called Favourite Character Praise Friday. I will be sharing these posts every two weeks to gush about fictional characters in a proactive environment. With this segment, I intend to demonstrate what makes characters great so you and I alike can use these facts to improve our characters!
So who is the subject of my eighth Favourite Character Praise Friday?
Warning! There will be spoilers! Is it even possible to give spoilers for history...? Regardless! Spoiler Warning!
Despite being depicted as a helpless woman throughout the production, Eliza is actually a very strong character!
Eliza was first introduced when she was approximately sixteen years old and met Alexander Hamilton at a winter's ball. She found herself completely helpless and love-struck by the nineteen year old soldier. The pair are married after a two week long courtship and she later fell pregnant with their first child. Throughout the production, Eliza is depicted to be a woman that trusts the world with everything she has, validated by her older sister Angelica stating that "You will never find anyone as trusting or as kind". She is depicted to be humble and simple in terms of what would make her happy, claiming she did not care about having a legacy or money, all she wanted was her husband to let her be part of his story.
Throughout the play, Eliza is dealt hardships due to her husband's behaviour. When she is approximately twenty five years old, ((judging by the fact her son was nine)) Alexander has an affair and when it is later revealed, she is heartbroken and attempts to remove herself from history by burning the letters that they shared during their courtship. Despite the fact that her husband published the fact that he had committed adultery, she remained by his side.
When her eldest child, Philip, was nineteen, he was killed in a duel in an attempt to defend his father's honour against someone who slated him. Eliza is at his bedside when he passes away and learns to live with the weight of having lost her son.
After Aaron Burr kills her husband in a duel at the end of the production, Eliza returns to the stage in "Who Lives Who Dies Who Tells Your Story" and informs the audience of everything she did in the fifty years she was alive without Alexander by her side. In this song, she says that she and Angelica, told Alexander's story, whilst Eliza also went out of her way to "interview every soldier who fought by [his] side",in doing so, she told the stories of his comrades. Eliza also managed to "raise funds in DC for the Washington Monument", in which made sure that George Washington, a man who served America for forty five years, would be remembered. She also managed to "speak out against slavery", noting that he could have done so much more than her, but she did all she could to make sure he would be remembered too. Not only did she do all of these amazing things for the sake of the people she knew, she also "established the first private orphanage in New York City" because Alexander was an orphan! She was incredibly strong, choosing not to "waste time on tears", something she had done many times before.
Eliza and Alexander are more similar than one might initially think!
When I was listening to "Who Lives Who Dies Who Tells Your Story" for what feels like the millionth time ((I constantly have it on loop on my laptop, it's my most played song on my phone, I absolutely adore it)), I realised a strong similarity between Alexander Hamilton and his wife. The lit student in me found myself relating Eliza's experience in 'Who Lives Who Dies Who Tells Your Story', after Alexander had been killed, to how he himself may have felt when John Laurens, his closest friend, had been killed during the war.
During the song "Laurens' Interlude", Eliza is not overly emotional over the idea that one of Alexander's friends had perished despite the fact that the war had ended. In this exchange, Alexander is silent for a moment and does not say a word until Eliza engages him and asks if he is alright. It is only then that he declares "I have so much work to do", and from there he continues to work hard to improve the world. One of Laurens' goals was to work against the act of slavery, establishing the first all-black military regiment.
At the end of the musical, she finds herself in a similar situation to her late husband and finds herself working for him - making the changes in the world he sought to make and did not have the opportunity to. One of the links that solidified this idea to me had to be when Eliza said that she spoke out against slavery, and acknowledged that Alexander could have done so much more than her had he had the time to.
Eliza, like Alexander finds herself with "so much work to do", in her mission to make sure her husband would be remembered! I found this parallel really clever and just had to rant about it!
The loyalty that Eliza holds to her husband is admirable
One of Eliza's potential character flaws is the fact that people "will never find anyone as trusting or as kind" as she is - this is particularly prevalent with her relationship with Alexander. She remains loyal by his side despite the fact he published the fact that he engaged in an affair with another woman. She remained loyal to him even though it was in his name that their son was killed, and it was his pistol that he took to the duel, and his advice which led to Philip being killed and not avenging himself by shooting his opponent. - However, I do not think that her loyalty is necessarily a downfall of her character at all.
At this moment in time, I could not possibly think of how I personally would be able to remain so loyal to a person that had brought with them so much misfortune. Yet Eliza was strong enough to put everything that happened to her behind her in order to make sure that her husband, someone who she vowed to love for the entirety of her life, would be remembered after she had died too.
It is due to the loyalty that she had to her husband and the legacy that she initially did not want, that she longed to protect. In order to do this, she made sure that he would be remembered and in doing so her efforts influenced a butterfly effect that created the musical in the first place!
So, what can we learn about writing unconventionally strong female characters from Lin-Manuel Miranda's depiction of Elizabeth Schuyler-Hamilton?
- Emotional strength is just as valid of a form of strength as physical strength - it took a lot for Eliza to forgive her husband for his misdeeds, but she did!
- Establishing a clever parallel between two strong characters is not a bad decision, especially if these characters seem rather different
- Exploring the idea of loyalty is interesting and worth probing at if you ever get the choice!
Thank you for reading my reasons that I adore Eliza Schuyler-Hamilton! I hope I influenced the way you perceive your own characters!
Until next time!
And remember:
Per Ardua Ad Astra!
- Imogen. L. Smiley
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