Are Wives Afraid of Trophy Wives

Sijia Liu

Professor Carolyn Hanlon

WRT 105

Nov 18, 2010

Are Wives Afraid of Trophy Wives?

“Kevin Nolan loved Newcastle’s Championship success so much he says he ‘kicked the missus out of bed this week and slept with the trophy’” (Bird 6).

“What? What does he mean? Why would this man kick his wife out of bed and sleep with the trophy? What’s going on here between his wife and the trophy?

When I was reading the title of this article from The Daily Mirror online, I was totally confused by the diction. A ton of questions came into my mind. However, the first literary connection that I made was the compound word which I heard several years ago, a trophy wife. It is not hard for people to make associations when they are confused or a term has multiple meanings. “Is Kevin Nolan’s wife a trophy wife? What does trophy wife exactly mean?” Curiosity drives me to probe into the word trophy wife, which has gone through a dramatic semantic change, especially in affective sense throughout the years.

When we analyze the compound trophy wife, to understand the first part trophy is very crucial for us to comprehend the connotation and semantic change of the compound. According to Etymological Dictionary Of The English Language, the word trophy was originated from French, Latin and Greek, meaning that a memorial of the defeat of an enemy in French, a sign of victory in Latin and a monument of an enemy’s defeat in Greek (Skeat 667). The second part of the compound wife has a pretty obvious etymology. Originated from Old English, the word wife meant woman, hence it also meant a wife (Partridge 776). Because of the rich historical context of the word trophy, the compound trophy wife has one kind of etymology that is closely related to that of the word trophy even though it is believed that the term’s etymology is disputed.

For the etymology of the compound trophy wife, one of the two claims is that the compound trophy wife first appeared in a 1950 issue of The Economist magazine, referring to the historical practice warriors capturing the most beautiful women during battle to bring home as wives (Conner). To some extent, trophy wives symbolize the praise for the victory of one side during the ancient battles according to its historical context. Naturally, trophy wife was granted a commendatory and heroic affective sense towards the warriors when it was first used to describe their tokens from the war. They were praised for their victory. Trophy wives symbolize the victory of the warriors. However, this positive connotation is only one-sided, as we can imagine, the wives during the ancient period were absolutely afraid of the term trophy wife or being trophy wives. As what William Safire mentioned in his article on the term trophy wife, he believed that to have a trophy is fine, but to be a trophy is demeaning (Safire). To those wives or widows whose husband lost the battle during ancient periods, trophy wife meant failure, death, humiliation and loss of freedom. Even though, the compound emphasized more on the eulogy of the gallant warriors and there is no apparent pejorative affective sense when it was first used, it was still sarcastic for the losers’ wives, the soon-to-be trophy wives, who were afraid of the term. On the other hand, even if trophy wives had no power to refuse the term of disgrace, their resistance of being trophy wives reflected their individual value and high dignity. The social value, at the time when trophy wife was first used, appreciated the women’s fighting spirit of not being trophy wives. The first understanding of trophy wife denotes wives who were jeopardized by the danger of being trophy wives in distant history. And this connotation depends heavily on the term’s historical context and its first kind of etymology. Another reliable etymology for this compound was recognized by William Safire in one of his 1994 articles, which has a closer relation to our modern social value.

According to William Safire, when the word was first coined by Julie Connelly in 1989, the coiner originally gave the word a connotation of accomplishment and business acumen for the women who marries a husband one or two decades senior (Safire). According to Julie Connelly in Safire’s article, trophy wives are well-educated, graceful, successful, and beautiful. Moreover, they have their own career and they work hard, in return, their personal charisma and success certify the social status of their much elder husbands. There is no allegation or allusion in the term referring to the reason why old men would marry much younger and attractive wives. As we can see, when the compound trophy wife was first used to describe the certain kind of perfect wives in our modern times, no absolute relationship or specific reason of their marriage could be found when Connelly invented the compound in 1989. Furthermore, there is no deliberate intention or hidden agenda behind the relationship. Trophy wives are so excellent that the old husbands would divorce their aging wives and get married for the second or the third time despite the moral and social conservation or disdain of the weird age disparity. Undoubtedly, the majority of the aging wives regard the trophy wives as enemies, the elder ladies are jealous of the trophy wives’ wisdom and beauty, of course, they are afraid of trophy wives. In response to the old men’s dedication, the would-be trophy wives are also attracted by the old men’s sophistication and career achievement, as a result, trophy wives fall in love with their daddy-aged husbands. The most important glue between their marriages is that both the trophy wife and the old man believe in the destiny that their both career success and love for each other can bridge the wide age gap. Therefore, this term was only used as a euphemism for the one of a kind perfect wife and the legendary fairy-tale love.

The number of the glamorous trophy wives is not that large, but we can still find some excellent trophy wives. The prestigious Canadian singer, Celine Dion, is a perfect trophy wife of René Angélil’s, a 68-year-old singer and manager who is regarded as the main driving force behind Celine Dion. The French first lady, Carla Bruni Sarkozy used to be a singer, songwriter and model, who married the 12-year-older French President, Nicholas Sarkozy (Chatham). Although the compound trophy wife disregards the purity of the relationship between trophy wives and their husband, at this stage of its development, the factual wide age gap between the husband and wife can not be avoided. Moreover, followed by the changing social value, the compound trophy wife has gradually lost its “trophy” luster; on the other hand, the term has derived more subtle and degrading connotations.

In contrast with the previous understandings, the connotation of the compound trophy wife shared by most of the people today is rather pejorative. When “trophy wife” is mixed with the more recent social value toward fame and money, a plethora of negative or only some superficially complimentary scenarios of connotations would pump out. Such as, a bimbo who sits at home all day giving out to the pool boy, while reading Hello! And OK magazine, and drives a Mercedes ML; a sugar daddy provides power and materialist things and she provides beauty and sex; a woman who marries for money and sits around all day looking pretty (Conner). Oxford English Dictionary Online offers the most familiar meaning of the compound, trophy wife, which refers to a wife regarded as a status symbol for an older man. This compound has almost become the paraphrase of terms such as, gold-digger, boy toy, and dumb bimbo (“Trophy wife”). Apparently, generally speaking, the compound has become derogatory when people come across it. Nowadays, the so-called highly qualified trophy wives are much more self-motivated than their ancient counterparts who were so scared to be captured to be trophy wives. The trophy wives in our modern concept are full-time professional gold-diggers who have only one aim out of the marriage, the money. On the other hand, for the husbands, they only care about their trophy wives’ appearance to impress other people but not because they love their wives. They want to brag their social status and wealth by carrying a trophy around. The husbands’ swelling ego debases themselves and pushes them to make flippant decisions of marrying a trophy. Undoubtedly, the marriage is deceptive. The original wives of the husbands are still afraid of the trophy wives because they sabotage their family and snatch their husbands’ property. Therefore, the compound today emphasizes the pure pulchritude of its connotation and reveals people’s distain for the shallow type of marriage.

Linguistically speaking, social values are demonstrated in the elevation or deterioration or euphemized way of speaking. Unfortunately, the semantic change of the compound trophy wife has witnessed the degeneration of social values, and the swelling of individualism, from other-awarding competitions to self-and-other-awarding competitions. In the distant history, at the time when people were “financially poor”, they regarded the victory of their clan or country as the worthiest thing to be “trophied”. For the women, the compound trophy wife marked their struggle for respect and freedom. The social values cherish patriotism and freedom. As what the more modern etymology of the compound reflects, the society accentuates the importance of self-actualization, such as career achievement, personal fulfillment and true love. However, when our society is getting more and more materialized, the compound trophy wife has been degraded to describe the superficial marriage based on beauty and money.

Feeling the threat of being trophy wives in ancient times, the threat of excellent trophy wives, and the threat of gold-digging trophy wives, wives are always afraid of trophy wives no matter what connotation the compound has had during different periods of time; no matter men were given trophy wives or fight for trophy wives. The changing connotation leads me to delve into the changing social values rather than the denotative meaning of this word. Will the connotation of the compound trophy wife keep changing? Will our social values continue to degenerate? Will wives be afraid of trophy wives forever and ever? Wait and see.

Works Cited

Bird, Simon. (2010). “TROPHY WIFE; Nolan kicked missus out of bed so he could cuddle cup.” The Daily Mirror, 1 May. 2010. ProQuest. Web. 14 Nov. 2010.

Chatham. (2010). “Top 5: Trophy Wives.” Global Post. 25 Jul. 2010. Web. 16 Nov. 2010.

Conner, Vilma. (2009). A Trophy Wife. Born Again Virgin. Web. 15 Nov. 2001

Partridge, Eric. Origins: An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English. New York: Routledge, 2009. Print.

Safire, William. (1994). “ON LANGUAGE: Trophy Wife.” The New York Times. 1 May. 1994. Web. 14 Nov. 2010.

Skeat, Walter W. Etymological Dictionary of The English Language. Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1910. Print.

“Trophy wife.” Oxford English Dictionary, additional series 1997. Web. 15 Nov. 2010

本文来源：https://www.2haoxitong.net/k/doc/dff2fe7db90d6c85ed3ac635.html