Dejah Thoris

John Carter and Dejah Thoris from the cover of McClurg's 1917 edition of A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs.

Dejah Thoris is a fictional character in Edgar Rice Burroughs's series of Martian novels. Princess of the Martian city state/empire of Helium, Dejah Thoris is the love interest and later the wife of John Carter, an Earthman mystically transported to Mars, and subsequently the mother of their son Carthoris and daughter Tara. She plays the role of the conventional damsel in distress who must be rescued from various perils, but is also portrayed as a competent and capable adventuress in her own right, fully capable of defending herself and surviving on her own in the wastelands of Mars.

Description

Except for some jewelry, all of the planet's races seem to eschew clothing and look down upon Earth's inhabitants because they do wear clothing. Burroughs describes Dejah Thoris thus:

And the sight which met my eyes was that of a slender, girlish figure, similar in every detail to the earthly women of my past life... Her face was oval and beautiful in the extreme, her every feature was finely chiseled and exquisite, her eyes large and lustrous and her head surmounted by a mass of coal black, waving hair, caught loosely into a strange yet becoming coiffure. Her skin was of a light reddish copper color, against which the crimson glow of her cheeks and the ruby of her beautifully molded lips shone with a strangely enhancing effect.

She was as destitute of clothes as the green Martians who accompanied her; indeed, save for her highly wrought ornaments she was entirely naked, nor could any apparel have enhanced the beauty of her perfect and symmetrical figure.

Publication history

Dejah Thoris first appeared as the title character in the initial Mars novel, A Princess of Mars (1917). She reappeared in subsequent volumes of the series, most prominently in the second, The Gods of Mars (1918), the third, The Warlord of Mars (1919), the eighth, Swords of Mars (1936), and the eleventh, John Carter of Mars (1964). Dejah Thoris is also mentioned or appeared in a minor role in other volumes of the series.

Other media

Comics

Dejah Thoris has appeared in numerous adaptations of the Martian stories, notably in a 1995 storyline of Tarzan's Sundays comic strip and various comic book series featuring her husband John Carter. She is mentioned in the first issue of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Volume II during a conversation between John Carter and Gullivar Jones.

She is a prominent character in Dynamite Entertainment's 2010-11 comic miniseries Warlord of Mars, based on A Princess of Mars. She first appears in issue 4. Dejah Thoris is also the main character of the Dynamite spinoff comic, Warlord of Mars: Dejah Thoris. Set 400 years before A Princess of Mars, the first story arc portrays Dejah's role in the rise to power of the Kingdom of Helium, as well as her first suitor. The second story arc will depict her as the "Pirate Queen of Mars".

Other novels/short stories/games

Dr. Dejah Thoris "Deety" (for D.T.) Carter, née Burroughs, is a protagonist in Robert A. Heinlein's The Number of the Beast. Burroughs's Dejah Thoris is also referred to in Heinlein's novel Glory Road by the protagonist when contemplating his accompanying female companion Star.

In the story "Mars: The Home Front", Dejah Thoris is kidnapped by the sarmaks and taken to their space gun base. John Carter assembles a Barsoomian force to both rescue her and foil the sarmaks' plan to invade Jasoom.

In the earlier prequel short story "Allan and the Sundered Veil" a "time lost" Carter sees a vision of himself fighting a Green Martian and winning Dejah Thoris in a "chrono-crystal aleph" (from Jorge Luis Borges's "The Aleph")

In The Apocalypse Troll by David Weber, Richard Aston refers to the very human looking female he has rescued from a sinking UFO as Dejah Thoris.

In the Junot Diaz book The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Oscar describes a neighbor girl as being "so pretty she could have played young Dejah Thoris."

In the board game ANDROID, one of the six murder suspects is named Dejah Thoris, a human woman from the Mars colony.

Films

Traci Lords portrayed Dejah Thoris in The Asylum's direct-to-DVD film Princess of Mars.

In the upcoming film John Carter, she will be played by Lynn Collins.^[1]

References

1. ^ Kit, Borys (2009-06-12). "Taylor Kitsch, Lynn Collins blast off to Mars". The Hollywood Reporter. http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/content_display/film/news/e3i45a4bf33efc179178ca1aefbace6b9ce. Retrieved 2009-06-12. ^{[dead link]}