My Top 10 Heroines

Although there are newer protagonists with power and incredible resolve such as Katniss Everdene (who sounds like she stepped right out of Thomas Hardy) or Hermione Grainger, these are my favourites, the ones who have influenced me and kept me reading.

        Jane Eyre – when I was younger and first read the novel I didn’t fully get Jane. I still believed in the fairy tale and couldn’t understand why she chooses to run away from Rochester and live with the Rivers family. Now, as a 40 year old woman I get it. I get it so much that I had my first tattoo based on her declaration ‘I am no bird and no net ensnares me’. Jane is strong and is aware that she has worth despite being poor, plain and obscure. She has values and wants to stick to them. She proves herself to be hard working, loyal and discreet. She leaves Rochester because he is married even though she loves him, because to live with him as a mistress is to compromise her values. She would lose some of her character id she submitted to his wishes. By leaving and working as a teacher she finds peace with herself and companionship with the Rivers family, but turns down a marriage proposal from St.John Rivers because she has no feelings for him, and he has no feelings for her simply seeing her as a perfect missionary’s wife. Jane knows she is worth both love and respect. Jane returns to Rochester on her own terms and with her own fortune; now she can come to him as an equal and loses nothing of her own character in being with him.

      Jo  March –Recently I did one of those quizzes on Facebook that asked which March sister I was. I did all of the questions and was disgusted to find the answer was Amy.  I always wanted to be Jo March. Jo is my heroine because she is a writer first and foremost, an incredibly loyal friend and sister, and above all independent. She doesn’t care about wearing gloves, having dresses with patched holes, and speaking to boys without an introduction. She has a platonic relationship with a boy and she craves the freedom he has in life and his potential for adventure. Jo wants to do the same. She hates Meg simpering over Mr. Brooke and doesn’t understand why the girls have to split up and marry. When Beth is ill she cuts her own adventure in New York short to nurse Beth and support her parents. She turns down a financially comfortable marriage with Laurie to be her own person and will not be pleasant or false just to gain advantage; when Aunt March goes to Europe she takes Amy as a more agreeable companion. Jo has accepted the possibility of being a maiden aunt and is comfortable with her own character when she meets the unconventional Professor Bhaer who is older, poor and not the most suitable husband for a young girl. Jo doesn’t work by society’s rules, she makes her own.

       Anne Shirley – Anne is another writer who caught my imagination when I was very young and made me long

for long red, carroty hair. In liking her I recognised a part of myself I didn’t like very much; the slightly snobbish side where she wants to do better for herself than stay at home and be married like her friend Diana to plain old Fred. Anne is clumsy, plain speaking, full of temper and always getting into scrapes. When asked whether she would rather be divinely beautifully, angelically good or divinely clever she chooses clever. She is so obviously
 in love with Gilbert Blythe but thinks she can do better than marry the boy down the road. She has dreams of gilded rooms, and marble halls and travelling far away from Prince Edward Island. However, she learns as time goes on that home is very important and the people we leave there more important still. She goes through a huge learning curve in the books from a naïve orphan with a huge imagination to a woman who recognises where her heart lies. Yet, she never gives up her own dreams of excelling at school, getting a scholarship to go to university, being a published writer and living away from the island for a time. Yes, she marries Gilbert Blythe the boy next door but Anne Shirley is far from ordinary.

      Lisbeth Salander – Probably the strongest and most powerful woman in this list I guess she is the heroine of every woman my age who has read the Steig Larsson books. A male friend of mine cited her as one of his favourite literary characters ever, never making the distinction that she was a woman, so she has crossed over into the male consciousness too. Lisbeth lives on her own terms, loves on her own terms and works on her own terms. She has quirks both of character and of style. She has a particular look of tattoos, leather and piercings that suggest danger or at least keep people away from her. She doesn’t want to engage with people on first meeting and once we learn about her background that becomes more understandable. She is a survivor of horrific childhood abuse and of a revolting sexual attack in the first novel.  She makes no concessions to societal norms, works undercover and lives undercover. She is super-intelligent and a world-class computer hacker, pulling off daring feats of embezzlement that would scare most people to death. She is super violent and her revenge is often bloody and shocking, and she makes no allowance for the fact she is a woman. She does not wait for someone else to take care of her, she takes care of herself. Although I wouldn’t aspire to her violence I would aspire to her self-reliance and strength.

S    Sugar- the prostitute at the centre of Michael Faber’s novel The Crimson Petal and the White drew me in immediately. I fell in love with the way she addresses the reader directly and brings you into a world you might think you’re familiar and soon makes it clear you’re not. Sugar’s world is one where her mother has prostituted her at the age of 13, and she still ‘works’ in her house. Sugar lives in a world where men are in charge and she spews out her hate for them in her book where she is free to imagine appalling acts of violence she commits on her regulars, particularly William Rackham. He has a neurotic wife at home who needs quiet and receives visits from a doctor who seems to spend his time trying to stop her hysteria with intrusive examinations. William installs Sugar in her own house with an allowance where she is available only to him and this feels like the first freedom she has ever had. Yet it is when she becomes a nanny to his hidden daughter Sophie that Sugar realises all men and mainly William are weak and not to be trusted. She thought she was worth more to him than just a nanny; she thought she was an equal but he dismisses her business ideas and treats her as he does his wife Agnes. Sugar helps Agnes escape to a convent and then escapes with Sophie, hoping to give her the sort of childhood she never had. She buys a new notebook to keep writing her story. I love that Sugar survives, that she has found a way of venting her anger with writing and that she is able be maternal with Sophie, finding a love that makes her feel whole.

      Lucy Honeychurch – This is a bit of a cheat because the first time I met this character in the film and Helena Bonham-Carter’s portrayal may play a large part in my love of this character. Lucy is at the dawn of a new age where classes are mingling more and the old social order is changing. Meeting the Emersons in Florence is a turning point for Lucy, who according to Mr.Beebe needs to live as excitingly as she plays piano. Lucy wants to let go and love George Emerson but can’t because of convention and also some self-deception; she does not want to face her attraction for him. Lucy is at the dawn of a new age where suffrage will come to the fore and through the novel the reader follows her journey from a young woman stifled by convention who can’t even accept the offer of swapping rooms to an independent woman following her own life with the man she loves. All the way through the novel I was rooting for the real, passionate Lucy to break free; when she does, the joy I felt has stayed with me.

.     Pru Sarn – Prudence Sarn is the narrator of the novel Precious Bane. The first thing we learn about Pru is that she is ‘hare-shotten’ which means when her mother was pregnant a hare ran across her path and Pru was born with a hare lip. She knows she is different from what is seen as normal, never mind beautiful. She is often labelled a witch by strangers, but also knows she is not attractive to men because she is tall and willowy rather than rosy cheeked and buxom like Jancis who is being courted by her brother. Pru still has a great sense of self, despite her disfigurement she is knows she is valuable as a help for her mother and when her father dies and her brother Gideon takes over she works as hard as any man to keep the farm going for him. Gideon has a dream that they will all live in a grand house with money and Pru works for this with him, even though she doesn’t need the money or the grand things. Pru knows who she is and is happy with that. She has resigned herself to never marrying, which is why she agrees with the plan to appear as Venus for Beguildy; if Jancis is seen naked her marriage prospects will be ruined but Pru has no marriage prospects anyway. Her love for the weaver Kester Woodseaves is immediate but she knows she has no chance with him. She leaps to his aid when he stops the bear baiting with the courage of a man and is it her bravery and difference that Kester falls in love with. I also love that Pru finds peace while in the attic writing her journal. She is solid, brave, and sure of who she is without wanting expensive clothes, or a grand home. She still sees her own worth, despite not being conventionally beautiful or rich.

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     Anne Elliot- among the witty and beautiful Lizzie Bennet, the idealistic and romantic Marianne Dashwood, and the chatty mischievous Emma Woodhouse, it is easy to forget Austen’s quieter and less dazzling heroine Anne Elliot. Appearing in the novel Persuasion, Anne is independent, intelligent and decent. Anne’s family is headed by a narcissistic baronet who is absurd and foolish. He persuades Anne to turn down the man she loves eight years earlier than the events of the novel. When we meet Anne she seems resigned to spinsterhood and life with her dreadful family. Yet, her story is set back in motion when her previous suitor comes back into their society having fought in the Napoleonic Wars and become wealthy. Wentworth represents a new class of self-made man contrary to the usual hierarchy represented by the Elliot family. I felt so much relief when Captain Wentworth reveals he is still in love with Anne!  The ending reminds us that there are second chances in life and that sometimes the quiet woman in the corner who has dignity and patience wins out in the end. Rather like Lucy Honeychurch, but at the turn of a different century, Anne moves forward in marriage as a new class and status of woman, who has chosen to marry for love rather than convention.

      Rosa Dartle, is my favourite Dickens character and is a great contrast to the other women in David Copperfield, the pathetic Dora and Little Emily, and the ‘perfect’ Agnes. Rosa is Steerforth’s mother’s companion and is described as a spinster in her thirties. She is slender and very dark with a livid scar on her lip. This depiction of her as a ‘spoiled’ woman fascinated me so much I started to research a PhD on women and disfigurement or disability. In contrast to other women in the novel she has her own opinions and is happy to give them. She has an unrequited passion for Steerforth and has been left sarcastic and bitter from his inattention. Her emotions, as strong and unpleasant as they may be, seem the most real of Dicken’s heroines and suggests a woman with depths only hinted at here. Rosa  is left trapped with Steerforth’s mother and has no chance of escape through marriage that other women may have. Yet she also has a certain freedom in action and speech, certainly more than the saintly Agnes will ever have.

      Coralie Sardie – To pick someone from a brand new novel is a bold move but I have fallen in love with Coralie. In early twentieth century New York City Coralie’s father owns The Museum of Extraordinary Things and Coralie is his exhibit. Born with webbed fingers, Coralie wears a mermaid tail and climbs into a tank every day to be shown off to paying customers in Coney Island. She thinks her webbed fingers make her a freak, and feels she will always be under the rule of her father in the museum. Her father trains her to swim in the Hudson River in the hope people will see her as a monster and raise the profile of his exhibits. One day she swims a little off course and meets a man in the woods who is a photographer. She falls in love with him instantly, but knows she has no chance without her gloves hiding her deformity. Surrounded by people with various disabilities and disfigurements that make them exhibits, Coralie has no knowledge of her worth outside of the money she can make from men who pay to see her. She has to learn to develop her self-esteem and independence, helped by the knowledge of their maid’s romance with the Wolfman which makes her see possibilities for people like her. I loved watching her grow and develop into a woman who learns about her complicated past and then creates her own destiny

      Phew that was tough! I am aware that I have a bias towards characters who are plain, disfigured or disabled in some way. This is probably because I have a disability and identify strongly with these characters. Lisbeth Salander chooses to mark herself in some ways, and even Sugar has an unusual skin disease that leaves circles and spirals of dried skin on her body. All are mostly poor, disadvantaged or at least restricted in some way. I love a character who rises above their problems and takes control of their own destiny. I then remembered others I’d missed such as Denver from Toni Morrrison’s Beloved, Ursula from Life After Life and the lovely Emma from David Nicholl’s One Day. I think that the list might be completely different on a different day!