Lyons: Well, Miss Devereaux! And how is the fairest flower of the South?
Diana: Senator Lyons, that's the prettiest thing been said to me since I left Louisiana. I sure been gettin' pow'ful homesick.
One of the Girls: She sure is getting pow'ful Southern.
A character archetype of an upper class rich girl from the Deep South — or Sweet Home Alabama. She usually wears a Pimped-Out Dress to every dance or party, carries a Parasol of Prettiness in the daytime, and speaks in the most profound Dixie accent. May be subject to fainting or saying, "Well, I do declare!" Typically has a variant of a Hayseed Name akin to Clarabelle, Tallulah, Anne-Marie, etc — uniquely Southern but both feminine and dignified.
A trope that grew out of the South during The American Civil War, there are two versions of the historic Southern Belle: the Bonne Belle ("good beauty" in French), who is loyal to her husband and family even as she sees them off to war, and the Mauvaise Belle ("bad beauty" in French), who is selfish and vain and manipulates those around to her to get what she wants. In terms of behavior, the Belle of either flavor exhibits an outgoing and gregarious personality, in contrast to her stoic foreign counterparts the Yamato Nadeshiko and the English Rose. Southern hospitality is essential, with the Belle always willing to offer a nice pitcher of sweet tea or mint juleps to any guests that might arrive. She is witty and charming, but never oversteps the boundaries of her station, gender, or race. While always polite, she will not hesitate to call someone out for violating the rules of the cotillion.
Modern Southern Belles are a slightly different creature; the term is used to describe a woman from the Deep South in a non-Southern setting who has a thick accent and fierce pride in her heritage, and usually has a sweet nature but a feisty temper. Her sensibilities may mark her as a Country Mouse to those not close to her, but it gives her a unique charm, and she may very well be academically smart and resourceful even if others underestimate her. And she'll probably be wearing a crop top and short shorts rather than a flouncy maxi-dress.
The historic Southern Belle is now a Dead Horse Trope, usually limited to parody and historical romance novels. Compare Southern Gentleman (the Spear Counterpart), Princess Classic, Proper Lady (the general European counterpart of Bonne Belle).
Compare and contrast The Friendly Texan.
In Real Life, they sometimes go by (according to
The Other Wiki) "Ya Ya Sisters", "Sweet Potato Queens", and "GRITS (Girls Raised In The South)". note Another nickname is "Georgia Peach" for examples specifically from Georgia.
Not a version of Belle from the Deep South.
Examples:
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Anime and Manga
- The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1980): Becky Thatcher. She is a Missourian girl from a wealthy family, extremely hospitable to Tom and Huck whenever they visit, and also dresses in the fanciest of clothes at school and at home. Bonus points for attending church regularly.
- ∀ Gundam: Lily Borjarno is a lady from Lousana (post-apocalyptic Dixie) that wears the archetypical regalia, including a frilly dress, big hat, and decorative parasol. In the series' Feudal Future, she's not just an heiress but a Politically Active Princess and Lord Guin Sard Rhineford's self-declared fiancee, through which Lousana and Inglessa (New England) unite against the Moonrace invasion. Lily is generally friendly and well-meaning, but also a wily negotiator with a capricious and petty side; one episode is basically her scheme to humiliate Kihel for imagined advances on Guin.
- In one episode of Pokémon the Series, James returns home to his blue-blooded family, who promptly inform him of his engagement to a woman named Jessebelle, who turned out to be one of the reasons that led James to run away from home in the first place. She speaks with a Southern accent in the English dub and is a typical Rich Bitch with a vain, domineering personality, firmly making her a Mauvaise Belle.
Audio Plays
- In The Firesign Theater's album Everything You Know Is Wrong the wire recording of the medicine show features one of these. Celebrating that the South won the Civil War:
Beulah Belle: Think of those balls you'll have!
Dad: You're too young to think about that, Beulah Balls. Er, Belle.
Comic Books
- Gail Simone and Jim Calafiore's original graphic novel Leaving Megalopolis featured a heroine named Southern Belle who started out as a Bonne Belle until she was corrupted along with the majority of the city's heroes when they fought an Eldritch Abomination. She was part of a superhero team alongside Tom-O-Hawk and his son, Scout, but according to Scout she was actually a Mauvaise Belle who butted in on their partnership and treated Scout like crap. She's slated to be a main character in the sequel series Surviving Megalopolis and is described by Simone as "An incredibly horrible person."
- Bunnie Rabbot from the Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics). There was a scrapped plotline about her origins that would have revealed her real name to be Scarlet O'Hare, as a Shout-Out to Scarlett O'Hara. While that went nowhere, it's become official canon that while the name has always been spelt "Rabbot", it's actually pronounced "Rah-boh". Nobody calls her that because A: it's only evident in Bunnie's Dixie-ish accent, B: it's spelt Rabbot, and C: her Hollywood Cyborg nature makes "Rabbot" too much of a pun to pass up. Her uncle, also a Hollywood Cyborg, notes his name got the same treatment.
- X-Men: Rogue in the hands of Chris Claremont was originally supposed to be of lower-class and a tomboy, and her youth on the Mississippi made her more similar to Huckleberry Finn than anything. Later in the story she only dreams of being a Scarlett O'Hara-type belle, while in her everyday life she wears unladylike, sometimes masculine clothes and leads the life of a superhero. As time went on and writers changed hands, she became considerably more feminine in presentation, though her Southern-ness remains one of her defining traits. In some adaptations, such as X-Men: The Animated Series, she retains her Southern origins (and accent), while in the X-Men (Film Series) she's made more generically American as she was played by Canadian Anna Paquin.
Films — Animation
- Rayna Magnolia from Barbie in Rock 'n Royals speaks with the accent of one, and she is feminine. She even asks Erika if she has turned a frog into a prince.
- Rosetta in the Disney Fairies (a.k.a. Tinker Bell) movies has a thick Southern accent, wears a pink dress, and takes great pride in her appearance.
- Charlotte "Lottie" LaBouff from The Princess and the Frog is a Bonne version. She's the daughter of the richest man in New Orleans, has an accent thicker than gumbo, is outgoing and extroverted, and aspires to be the belle of the ball. However, she's also very kind and has a strong Interclass Friendship with the working, black Tiana.
Films — Live-Action
- Alvarez Kelly: Charity Warwick, the widowed owner of the plantation where Major Stedman has the cattle herd housed. She uses her feminine wipes to set up Kelly to be kidnapped by Confederate raiders. Liz Pickering acts the part, but assures Kelly that she is no Southern Belle. The war has bankrupted her and she is keen to escape the depredations of the South.
- Rosemary Bartlow in The Bad and the Beautiful is the bored, Southern belle wife of a successful author who wants nothing more than a trip to Hollywood and some excitement.
- The Canterville Ghost (1997): Southern-accented Lucretia Otis has a fancy wardrobe, loves parties, and is a haughty Mean Boss who has to have her way at everything and dominates her kindly Ohioan husband. She gets more nuance and sympathy when she admits her family went from plantation owners to impoverished bootleggers after The American Civil War and Hiram was a carpetbagger she was encouraged to seduce in Gold Digger fashion but fell in love with for real after she told him the truth and he didn't mind.
- Calvin Candie's sister Lara Lee in Django Unchained is a Deconstruction of this type of character. She is polite, well-mannered, dedicated to her brother and thinks the only thing wrong with whipping slaves is talking about it at the dinner table. She's also the one to suggest selling Django to a mining company as a Fate Worse than Death. The film practically spells out her complicity in the practice of slavery, and in the end she gets what she deserves.
- Phyllis in Excision (2012) is a modern-day Southern housewife who aspires to this. She wants to enroll her daughter Pauline in cotillion classes in order to teach her how to be a "proper" lady.
- Gone with the Wind.
- Scarlett O'Hara is the Trope Codifier of the Mauvaise Belle. She is vain, self-centered, and very spoiled by her wealthy family. She can also be insecure, but is very intelligent, despite her fashionable pretense at ignorance and helplessness around men. Her family owns the O'Hara plantation and her father becomes traumatised by the hardships of the Civil War (especially the pillaging of by Union soldiers). After the war, Scarlett shows qualities very unbecoming to a classic belle, such as readiness to do hard work herself and an almost Yankee-like business sense and enterprise.
- Scarlett's rival Melanie is her contrast, Proper Lady-like Bonne Belle. She's (apparently) naive and a perpetual ingenue, but she has Hidden Depths. She is filled with kindness, loyalty, love and determination. As kindhearted and good as she is, she holds some incredibly racist views of blacks and sexist views of women. Her beliefs are of the "paternal" type, because she believes blacks are too inferior to take care of themselves and it's duty for whites to look after them.
- In The Horse Soldiers, Hannah Hunter is a Silk Hiding Steel example, posing as The Ditz while secretly eavesdropping on a staff meeting as Marlowe discusses his battle strategy to learn what his mission is.
- Hush... Hush, Sweet Charlotte features Bette Davis playing an Old Maid who was once a Southern Belle. When her lover was murdered, she was suspected of it and stayed shut up in her house. She still dresses in her old debutante gown and steadily goes mad.
- In This Our Life featured Bette Davis and Olivia de Havilland playing two sisters that fill these roles in The Great Depression setting.
- Stanley is the Mauvaise Belle - vain, superficial and manipulative towards everyone.
- Roy is the Bonne - dignified, ladylike and kind.
- Bette Davis (again) played a Mauvaise Belle in Jezebel, where she has the audacity of wearing red at her debutante ball as a petty revenge to her fiancé. Very much mauvaise until her Heel–Face Turn at the end.
- LaWanda Dumore, the hot, but Jerkass Rich Bitch villain in Problem Child 2, is a modern type with a rather heavy, generically Southern accent which nobody else in the town seems to have. Despite the suggestion that her family founded Mortville (a fictional setting of indeterminate location) centuries ago, she's the only character in the town to speak that way, seemingly for little reason other than to reflect the unspoken Hollywood shorthand that "Southern accent = unlikable".
Literature
- Earth's Scariest Monsters!: Ashley speaks in a Southern accent and wears a brown cowboy hat along with brown cowboy boots. Both in life and as a ghost, she has dozens of friends, a strong sense of humor, and an adoration for animals. In her normal form, she wears a green dress. In her Samhain Form, she wears a one-shouldered crop top that fully exposes her midriff.
- Mary Johnson of Fellow Travelers. She's rich, from New Orleans, and well-educated for the time period (McCarthy-era Washington). She's also strong-willed and independent, and like so many of the belles on this page, that gets her into trouble.
- Gone with the Wind:
- Scarlett O'Hara is the Trope Codifier of the Mauvaise Belle. She is vain, self-centered, and very spoiled by her wealthy family. She can also be insecure, but is very intelligent, despite her fashionable pretense at ignorance and helplessness around men. Her family owns the O'Hara plantation and her father becomes traumatised by the hardships of the Civil War (especially the pillaging of by Union soldiers). After the war, Scarlett shows qualities very unbecoming to a classic belle, such as readiness to do hard work herself and an almost Yankee-like business sense and enterprise.
- Scarlett's rival Melanie is her contrast, Proper Lady-like Bonne Belle. She's (apparently) naive and a perpetual ingenue, but she has Hidden Depths. She is filled with kindness, loyalty, love and determination. As kindhearted and good as she is, she holds some incredibly racist views of blacks and sexist views of women. Her beliefs are of the "paternal" type, because she believes blacks are too inferior to take care of themselves and it's duty for whites to look after them.
- If the Shoe Fits: Sara Claire is a beautiful blonde from Austin, TX. She has a high-powered career in finance, but is otherwise down to earth and genuinely seeking true love. The audiobook gives her a noticeable Southern drawl. It's also invoked by the producers, who play up her Southern heritage on her solo date with Henry — the team dresses her in gingham and cowboy boots, and they go to a honky-tonk.
- Jaine Austen Mysteries: Killer Blonde features SueEllen Kingsley, who is definitely a mauvaise. Rather subverted, as it turns out the Aunt Melanie SueEllen raved about was actually running a whorehouse.
- My Year of Rest and Relaxation has a late 20th-century example. The unnamed protagonist's mother is described as a member of drunken country-club Southern aristocracy, descended from "Mississippi loggers on one side and Louisiana oilmen on the other". She's a darker version of the trope, liking fine and beautiful things but proving selfish and neglectful, if not outright abusive.
- The title character in Hortense Calisher's short story "The Rehabilitation of Ginevra Leake" is a deconstruction. Ginny Doll, a Southern girl who's moved to New York, has been raised like this by her very proper mother, but is unattractive, unable to get any male attention, and accordingly ends up with insanely high-strung and romantic ideas about men. She eventually ends up joining the Communist Party and finding happiness, without ever ditching the lace towels and fancy hats.
- The short story Witch War by Richard Matheson describes a group of very young Southern Belles (all teen or pre-teen girls) who are sitting on a porch, drinking lemonade, gossiping and other such activities associated with the trope ... until it's revealed they are a secret weapon to be used against enemy soldiers, whom the girls rapidly massacre with horrifying powers of telekinesis. They then return to gossiping and giggling, with a murmur of "aren't we awful!"
Live-Action TV
- Deputy Chief Brenda Leigh Johnson (Kyra Sedgwick) in The Closer. She's a Southern Belle detective from Georgia who really stands out working in the Los Angeles police department. Her Southern charm and accent are actually a part of her interrogation tactic on suspects - although, as her husband Fritz points out, at heart she's "a bit of an old-fashioned girl".
- In the Frontier Circus episode "The Courtship", the T & T Circus arrives in New Atlanta, a town run by a pair of aging Southern belle sisters, one of whom attempts to inveigle Casey into marriage. Definitely Mauvaise Belles.
- Blanche from The Golden Girls is the rare Mauvaise Belle in a modern work; her promiscuity is a Running Gag throughout the show. However, her Southern-ness is distinctly old-school compared to her children when they've appeared; her daughters and niece are definite Modern Belles.
- Our Miss Brooks: In "Blind Date", Mr. Conklin is afraid of meeting his old college girlfriend, Lulubelle Calhoun of Chattanooga, Tennessee. He had told his wife Martha that she was the only woman he ever loved. Mr. Conklin, being a vain and pompous individual, convinces himself that Lulubelle was visiting to try and breakup the Conklin's marriage and win him back. In truth, Lulubelle was visiting for unrelated reasons and left the night before. In truth, Lulubelle had told Mrs. Davis that she didn't even know what she had seen in Osgood!
- The White Lotus (Season Three) introduces Victoria Ratliff, the matriarch of a very rich family from North Carolina. She's got a thick Southern drawl and superficial charm, and she's very proud of being a UNC grad. However, she's also snooty, rude, and addicted to drugs.
Tabletop Games
- Miss Peach, an heiress from Georgia. She's a member of the Extended Universe of the Clue series. While she pretends to be the Bonne Belle, most of Miss Peach's appearances point out that she is a pathological liar, and something of a temptress to rival Miss Scarlet, making her a true Mauvaise Belle.
Theatre
- In The Glass Menagerie, Amanda (the mother) is a former washed-up Southern Belle. Because the present is so depressing (she has a fragile unmarried daughter and a moody son, and she lives in the Depression-era while her husband ran away from them), she chooses to live in the past and tries to think of her glory days, especially dancing and having her gentlemen callers whom she entertained with stories.
- Miss Cooter in Me and My Dick is sweet and innocent yet sometimes impassioned and clad in a girly pink dress with a flower in her long, flowing hair. She has a strong Southern accent to fit the stereotype.
- Diana Devereaux in Of Thee I Sing, who was "the most beautiful blossom in all the Southland" until Wintergreen jilted her.
- A Streetcar Named Desire: Blanche is a Southern Belle in the 20th century, a fading relic of a bygone age. She is living in a world that doesn't really exist anymore and her ideals are hopelessly out of date. She has to deal with the loss of their mansion house Belle Reve in the South, having no money or prospects. She lives off her working-class brother-in-law Stanley as a guest at her sister Stella, but expects to be waited on and treated like a queen. She's constantly flirting with every man around, pursues young men and boys even, and keeps fishing for compliments. She looks down on (third-or-second-generation) immigrants and treats Stanley as if he were a primitive. She's insufferable but her fate is absolutely tragic.
- In A Very Potter Musical and A Very Potter Sequel, Cho Chang, who was Asian in the original books is instead a vain (White), flirty Good Bad Girl with a strong Southern accent who everyone in the school wants to get with. She also has a fiery temper and gets quite indignant when she doesn't get what she wants.
Video Games
- Mad Moxxi develops this persona in Borderlands 3. Or at least the Pandoran equivalent, being from the redneck tribe known as the Hodunk clan. Borderlands 2 and Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel!, she hated being seen out-of-characternote , and threatens anyone who catches her out-of-character with a live burial in a shallow grave by one of her offspring. It's evident that she's made some peace with who she is. While her dating life is questionable, at best (considering she's slept with people like Handsome Jack and various bandits), her genuinely kind nature makes her closer to a Bonne Belle.
- Kingdom of Loathing gives us "Diving Belles", Southern belles who drowned themselves and came back as zombies that roam the depths of the Marinara Trench. Parodies of Scarlett O'Hara, their most dangerous attack is kissing the player really hard after mistaking him for an ex-boyfriend.
- Pokémon Champions: Cowgirl Kitt is a friendly, Southern-accented rancher at the Roster Ranch who’s always more than happy to allow the player to recruit Pokémon from said ranch. Her outfit includes a red cowboy hat, brown cowboy boots, denim overalls, and denim Daisy Dukes.
- The President of the United States in Saints Row IV, if you pick Female Voice 3. Can qualify as Mauvaise Belle, given that the President/the Boss is a murderous gangster.
- One such 'beauty' greets the player near the beginning of Uninvited. She is described to look like Scarlett O'Hara. And all she said was "Thank you for coming back to me, my love. You will be mine forever.", but you only see her from the back. Unless you do one certain thing and made preparations beforehand, however, she will reveal her face being devoid of flesh and there's nothing but skull in her head, and she starts ripping you away while screaming maniacally, therefore this is one hell of a nasty subversion of the trope.
Visual Novels
- In Scarlet Hollow, Gretchen is a 17-year-old, somewhat-yappy pug, but if the player chooses the "Talk to Animals" trait at character creation, she ends up speaking exactly like an old-fashioned Bonne Belle. While the story is set in the American South, she's the most stereotypically-Southern character in it by a mile.
Webcomics
- Charlotte Bishop in Lost Cause. Born in southern Missouri, Charlie looks the part. Like any Southern Belle, she wears elaborate outfits, has a white plantation house, speaks with a lilting accent and is wealthy.
- Faye's mother in Questionable Content is something of one (at least compared to her daughters, the elder of whom chose to make her life in darkest Massachusetts and the younger who came out as a lesbian not long after). Faye herself also lampshades this somewhat by jokingly referencing herself with common Southern belle stereotypes, such as getting "the vapors" and referring to Massachusetts as the "Godless North." Conversely, she's quite defensive of other people making fun of Southern culture.
- Scary Go Round: Referenced when The Boy visits France on an exchange trip. His host, Elodie, asks him about life in "Americanized" Britain, and he immediately starts playing along.
The Boy: Well, the men all wear big hats and carry shooters. Women say things like "Oh mah gawrsh Ah do de-clay-uh." ...Pianos play themselves.
Elodie: Oh my God it sounds fantastic.
Web Videos
- The Lizzie Bennet Diaries: Mrs Bennet, the beautiful but embarrassing mom of Lizzy, Jane and Lydia. It's her dream to see all her daughters married to rich men, having mothered two point five children and living in a house with a white picket fence. She lives in California, but her accent is decidedly Southern (as portrayed by Lizzie in her costume theatre). Her habits and life ideals are set in the past because she values stable life with marriage and children, and she can't even imagine that her daughters might want to pursue different things.
Western Animation
- In the Chowder episode "The Trouble With Truffles", Truffles is made aware that her voice scares people, so she obtains a dialing knob that changes it into that of a calm, refined Southern woman. It turns out to work too well because everyone begins to take her less seriously and gradually turn into cavemen.
- The Critic has Miranda, Alice's sister, who moves to New York at the end of the series. She's a more modern take on the trope, but still as glamorous and invested in marrying a rich husband. She falls for Jay's boss, Duke, who's also a Southerner. Their meet-up has them even dressed up as Scarlett and Rhett.
- In the Futurama episode "The Deep South", Fry meets a mermaid Southern Belle in the ruins of the legendary lost sunken city of Atlanta. Her father is a rich merman in a white suit. She has the accent, she's sweet and welcoming and is immediately smitten with Fry. Fry even settles in to enjoy his life with Umbriel deep down under the ocean, but upon encountering the Mermaid Problem, he runs to try to catch his friends.
Fry: Turns out I loved her, but I wasn't in love with her.
Amy: [to Leela] Trouble in the bedroom... - King of the Hill has a few examples, being a show that takes place in Texas.
- Luanne and Nancy are modern takes on the belle. They're both blonde, beautiful (if a bit vapid), proud Texans with thick Southern accents, but Luanne is firmly on the Bonne end of the spectrum since she is kind, generous, and hospitable.
- Nancy, however, is the opposite extreme and firmly on the Mauvaise end. She's one of the most beautiful female characters on the show, has a charming personality, and a great public image... but even once you get past the decade-plus affair, she's the most self-absorbed, vindictive, and two-faced narcissist on the block without Dale around to keep her worst impulses in check.
Peggy: You may look like a Southern Belle, but instead you're as vicious as a bulldog. Why, I've seen you ruin whole wedding showers with one catty remark.
- In "A Beer Can Named Desire", when Bill visits the Dauterive estate in New Orleans, he finds himself getting seduced by three widows who all fall into the Mauvaise end, one of whom (Violetta) is actually his cousin.
- The Mask: Animated Series: Eve, who is the masked alter-ego of Evelyn, speaks with a Southern Belle accent along with being confident, love-crazy, wild and genuinely insane but is a Nice Girl as she treats the man she loves gently after accidentally throwing him through the ceiling.
- My Little Pony has several examples.
- Truly from My Little Pony 'n Friends. She can sometimes be snooty and stubborn, she is seen wearing various outfits or accessories in some episodes, and often says "I do declare".
- My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
- Rarity is usually a Proper Lady with a Mid-Atlantic accent. However, in the episode Simple Ways, she acts like this trope as she tries to be more like Applejack, so she can impress a unicorn travel writer Trenderhoof who is in love with Applejack. The she goes full bumpkin, when she sees he's still more interested in Applejack. In response, Applejack once pretends to be a straight example of this trope ("Apple Jewel").
- Cherry Jubilee. An enterprising earth pony who owns Cherry Hill Ranch, a cherry orchard and processing factory in the town of Dodge Junction. Evidently a fan of rodeos, as this is where she met Applejack.
- In "Brotherhooves Social", Applejack's older brother Big Macintosh also pretends to be one ("Orchard Blossom") to participate in the Sisterhooves Social with Apple Bloom. When Sweetie Belle calls out "Orchard Blossom" as Big Mac in a dress, "she" responds with "Why, as... charmed as I am that you find me in the slightest resemblance to such a... uh, fine and noble product of the Apple clan, I am astonished in equal measure." When Apple Bloom says "I have to go to the bathroom", Orchard Blossom responds by saying "powder your muzzle" is a more ladylike expression.
- The Real Ghostbusters: "Til Death Do Us Part" spoofs this with a ghost girl named Dixie falling in love with Egon and trying to marry him in a Shotgun Wedding. The girl has the Southern Belle accent, attire and behavior to match.
- Tex Avery MGM Cartoons: "Uncle Tom's Cabana" features the character Red (originally from "Red Hot Riding Hood") as a Southern Belle named Little Eva.
- Penelope Pitstop, first in Wacky Races and then in her own series The Perils of Penelope Pitstop.
- Cindy Bear in the Yogi Bear cartoons. She sometimes carries around her little parasol.