The Heroines We Love--and the Ones We Don't by Liz Flaherty & Helen DePrima


by Liz Flaherty

When I was nine years old, I read Little Women for the first time. I have no idea how many times I’ve read and watched it since. Jo March is my favorite heroine of all time. She felt every possible emotion in the three books she starred in, and handled every one of them so clumsily I identified, laughed, and cried with each one.

When I was…younger than nine, I read Understood Betsy. A few years back, I put it on my Kindle and have read it several times since. Betsy changes, grows, makes mistakes, gets to be a heroine but usually isn’t. I’ve never yet written a book that I didn’t think of Betsy.

I read The Shell Seekers every couple of years just to spend time with Penelope Keeling. I watch the movie made from it occasionally just to spend time with Angela Lansbury portraying Penelope Keeling. I can’t begin to explain what draws me to this particular heroine, but I am nevertheless drawn.


I loved Hattie in Courting Miss Hattie because she wasn’t gorgeous—they called her Horse Face Hattie!—and I wanted to spend time with her. I wanted to sit on the porch and drink coffee with her and talk about Life.

There are favorites among the heroines I’ve written, too. Grace in One More Summer, Libby in The Happiness Pact, and Carol in The Healing Summer (not out yet) are ones who hold firm places in my heart. Not because of their best points but because of their flaws.

Gone With the Wind is one of my favorite books ever, but I never grew to like Scarlett O’Hara. I might have loved her, but I never liked her.

I read a gazillion Nancy Drew books, but sometimes I wanted her to be…fallible. Wrong. When I read the nurse series that were popular when I was a kid, I loved Sue Barton, but Cherry Ames made me roll my eyes. Sue screwed up—I don’t think Cherry ever did.

None of the heroines of my life have been anywhere near perfect. If they were super smart, they also had two left feet. If they danced like a dream, they couldn’t spell any word with more than two syllables. And yet they have things in common. Like tenderness. Kindness. They laugh loud.

What about you? Who are your favorites—and your not favorites—and why?

by Helen DePrima

Thanks, Liz, for suggesting this topic. Ah, heroines! Sure, as readers, we love to fall for heroes, all shapes and ages, but we cheer and weep and agonize with the heroines, women with whom we can or wish we could identify.

The first heroine I encountered in literature was staunch, plucky, accident-prone Anne Shirley of Green Gables. I met her in my mother’s early editions, now loved to death by my daughter as a child. Another wonderful young heroine I discovered in my mother’s books was Elnora Comstock in Girl of the Limberlost, who met unkind fortune with grit and grace. And of course, the spunky Eastern schoolmarm wooed by the Virginian in the wilds of Wyoming.

Some characters are harder to love without reservation. I so wanted to smack 
Scarlett O’Hara upside the head for her willfulness and blind obsession with Ashley Wilkes, but we remember her more vividly than we do the gentle Melanie. Another female character with the same stubborn streak is Joanna Bennett of Elisabeth Ogilvie’s wonderful Bennett’s Island series, who didn’t get her priorities straight until halfway through the second book.


The heroines I created for my first four novels were characters I could admire, women confronting their fears and personal tragedies without losing hope and faith. In my book currently in progress, I’m dealing with a different breed of cat, an ambitious stage-struck Scarlett; I’d like to slap her cross-eyed for risking everyone’s happiness in favor of her career. I truly have no idea how the story will play out. Despite my yelling advice in her ear, she goes her own way. Stay tuned . . .

Comments

  1. You've mentioned some of my favorites, such as Anne Shirley (I was remembering just recently why it must be spelled with an "e"). Understood Betsy is terrific (did you ever notice, however, that the cat changes color in the book - no continuity editor there!). I haven't read Girl of the Limberlost for years, must revisit. My favorite heroine in Little Women was also Jo, who was bold and strong. Rose in Eight Cousins had to grow a lot--I actually preferred Phoebe. I also loved Mary Lennox in The Secret Garden & Sara Crewe in The Little Princess. I read lots of book with male protagonists, of course, like the Walter Farley horse books & in 5th grade read Les Miserables (Cosette, a minor character, is a bit selfish for my taste), and Tolkien's trilogy The Lord of the Rings. Then there's Katniss in The Hunger Games series. And how about The Velvet Room, 100 Dresses...not enough space for all of them!

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    1. Oh, I loved Phoebe! I liked Rose, too, of course, but Phoebe I understood. I need to re-read Girl of the Limberlost, too. My friend Nan and I went to Gene Stratton-Porter's home last year, and I swear we could feel Elnora's presence. :-)

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    2. I was so glad my daughter loved the Anne books as I did, justifying a pilgrimage to Green Gables on Prince Edward Island. I never could interest her in Gene Statton-Porter -- her loss.

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  2. You've both mentioned some of my favorites, including your heroines, Liz! Gene Stratton-Porter's home was an amazing side trip--I felt her and Elnora there. Jo is definitely one I love as well as Anne Shirley. Rachel Field in All This And Heaven, Too, is a wonderful heroine and her story is a true one, so that makes her all the more vulnerable, I think. Scarlett--hmmmm... I loved that story and have probably read it at least six times, but Melanie was the real heroine of that book. Thanks, ladies. Fun topic!

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    1. I can't believe I never thought to visit Gene Stratton-Porter's home, growing up just across the river in Kentucky. Gotta put that on my bucket list. Which makes me think of one more self-sacrificing heroine: Melissa in John Fox's The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come. I doubt many people read early 20th century novels these days, but that one's a classic, spanning the decade before and during the Civil War, set in Kentucky.

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  3. I'll be thinking about this post all day! All the heroines I've loved before. I don't run into many people who know Sue Barton, but I remember exactly where those books were shelved at the Hild Library in Chicago. For some reason I ate up all those nurse books. Alas, no women docs in the books of my young reading years. Thankfully, those bad old days are over. I started remembering heroines and mulling them over after I read Little House on the Prairie. Laura was my first and maybe all-time favorite heroine. Thanks for the memories!

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    1. You are so right, and Sue (and her friend Kit) would have been a great doctor! I loved Laura, too--still do.

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    2. Somehow I missed a whole generation of books for girls -- Nancy Drew, Sue Barton -- because I preferred my mother's and grandmother's books. Plus every horse story ever written while I was growing up. I recently donated all those horse books to an equine rescue in Virginia to distribute among its volunteers' kids.

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  4. I'm like Helen--I may have read Nancy Drew but I don't remember it. I do remember reading the Bobbsey Twins. And I read every Black Stallion book I could get my hands on. I just read Green Gables for the first time a couple of weeks ago and loved it, head hopping and all. :-)

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    1. How marvelous that you've finally discovered the Anne books. Do continue with the whole series, which follows Anne through marriage and motherhood. Beautiful writing that holds up well over time.

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    2. I don't think I read the Black Stallion books, and didn't like the Bobbsey Twins. But I do remember Misty of Chincoteague--I loved them!

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  5. Fun post! You guys mentioned some fabulous heroines. I love Jane from Jane Eyre. Her impassioned speech where she sticks up for herself; that just because she's "poor, obscure, plain and little" does not mean she's without feeling or unequal.... Slays me every single time I read it. I also love Catherine from Wuthering Heights. Also, Elinor Dashwood from Sense and Sensibility. More contemporary picks would have to be Katniss from Hunger Games and Lisbeth Salmander from Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

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    1. Like you, I'm a big fan of Jane Eyre, but I've never learned to love Jane Austen's books -- my loss, I'm sure. I recently reread a wonderful historical novel about early California: Jubilee Trail by Gwen Bristow. Talk about a strong heroine!

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    2. I liked Jane Eyre when I read it, but was never able to re-read it. I do love Jane Austen, although I actually love the movies more than the books.

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    3. I read Jane Eyre a long time ago, but have also seen the movies (a variety of them, TV & big screen) a number of times. I always liked Jane, she had a sense of herself and her own value in an era where no one cared about the importance of women or of orphans.

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  6. Great list. I need to revisit some I read as a child. I remember loving the Nancy Drew books, and Anne of Green Gables, Misty, Little Women, but I can't remember the heroines well. I loved The Shell Seekers, but also Elfrida in Summer Solstice, an aging actress with may flaws but a generous heart. And then there's Charlotte, from Charlotte's Web.

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    1. I think Liz had a great idea to reintroduce us to the female characters who helped mold our thoughts and dreams.

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    2. I think I loved every book Rosamunde Pilcher ever wrote. Trixie Belden was another favorite from my kid years.

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  7. Great post! I was just discussing Scarlet O'Hara with a friend recently. She's a great anti-heroine - someone who isn't very likeable but we want to root for her. And do we ever! I also loved (and love) Anne Shirley and Lisbeth Salander. My oldest daughter has begun reading chapter books so we're now on the prowl for good books for her. We follow the A Mighty Girl FB page to find books with strong female protagonists. She and I just finished reading (together) the third Harry Potter book, Prisoner of Azkaban, so of course, she loves Hermoine:-)

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