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Welcome

I started this blog in 2013 to share my reflections on reading, writing and psychology, along with my journey to become a published novelist.​  I soon graduated to about twenty book reviews a month and a weekly 99-word story. Ten years later, I've transferred my writing / publication updates to my new website but will continue here with occasional reviews and flash fiction pieces, and maybe the odd personal post.

ANNE GOODWIN'S WRITING NEWS

How to be a heroine

7/3/2014

7 Comments

 
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On a pilgrimage to Wuthering Heights, Samantha Ellis got into a debate with her best friend as to which Brontë heroine was best: Cathy Earnshaw or Jane Eyre. The shock of finding herself persuaded by her friend’s argument sent her stumbling back to revisit the heroines of her thirty-odd years’ devotion to fiction. How to Be a Heroine, part memoir, part feminist literary critique, is the result.

When I ‘won’ a copy on Twitter, I thought I’d nailed this year’s blog post for International Women’s Day. Unlike last year, I wouldn’t have to do search around for my own fictional heroines. Samantha Ellis would do the job for me.

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Although I shy away from non-fiction these days (The Examined Life by Stephen Grosz a rare and exceptional exception), I quickly became engrossed in the book. I warmed to the voice, and the meticulous attention to detail balanced with touches of self-mocking humour:

When Rhett sees that [Scarlett’s] hand is scarred, rough from work, sunburnt, freckled, the nails broken, palm calloused, thumb blistered, he spits, ‘These are not the hands of a lady.’ (The most direct result of reading Gone With The Wind again is that I have become more assiduous about using hand cream.) (p88)
I admired her passion for fiction, exemplified in her rage when authors let her down by failing to deliver for her heroines the outcomes she felt they deserved. I was happy with the balance between the general and the specific in both her fictional examples and in her authorial presence: it didn’t matter that I didn’t recognise all her heroines; and, as narrator, she manages to reflect the every-girl experience of what it means to grow up female, alongside the particulars of her own Iraqi Jewish culture.

About halfway through, it struck me that I was looking to Samantha Ellis the way she was looking to her fictional heroines. Never mind that I might be almost a generation older, I leapt upon the points of connection in our personal stories and felt let down when our trajectories zoomed apart. Would following her journey show me how to be a heroine?

And then, out of the blue, my enthusiasm waned. Was it because I’ve never read The Valley of the Dolls or was it something more fundamental? I thought the writer overly romantic, both in her choice of heroines and the demands she placed on them. Why did she expect a made-up character to show her how to live her life? And why, despite the scope of her own ambition, did she feature so many heroines whose fates were embroiled in the marriage plot? I longed for her to pick someone like Roxanne Cross, the opera singer who holds it all together in Bel Canto, who I’d chosen for my fictional heroine last year.

As I flipped from idealisation to denigration I was mirroring the process that Samantha Ellis had gone through time after time in relation to her heroines. Again and again, she’d start with the memory of perfection only to find, on rereading, the story was full of holes. The search for the answer, the disappointment, the picking ourselves up and searching again: it’s a familiar process. At the time I was reading, I was having the same battle in relation to a piece I was writing on Stephen Grosz’s thoughts on praise for Norah Colvin’s blog.

But this quest isn’t restricted to our reading and writing. It’s so fitting that Samantha Ellis has written this book as a kind of memoir, because this psychological transition from a world populated by heroes and villains to one where we can accept that most people have their strengths and weaknesses is the journey we make from child to adult. Although we might never give them up completely, at some point we have to turn our attention inwards to look for our heroes and heroines.

But it can be scary to rely on our own heroism; there’s always the fear that it might not be enough:

I felt let down when I could see the writer too much at work on a character because it reminded me forcefully that of course I don’t have a writer working on my story, guiding me to safety, bending the laws of reality for me, bringing in a hero to rescue me or transporting me to happier life by the stroke of her pen. (p240)

It’s something of a turnaround when Samantha Ellis settles on Scheherazade as her ultimate heroine, because there are no happy endings in the Thousand and One Nights:

We have to keep making choices, keep transforming. Scheherazade’s stories never end. Every story in the Nights opens a door that leads on to another story. (p244)

just like real life.

When I picked up this book, I was concerned it might be too light and frothy or too deeply erudite. It’s neither. Like novels, like life, it can be approached on different levels: an easy read that, nevertheless, poses as many questions as it answers. It’s one to come back to. What do you think?

By sheer serendipity, my latest short fiction publication has a touch of the Thousand and One Nights about it. Like Scheherazade, Vashila, in Elementary Mechanics, first published in The Yellow Room and now given a second chance on Fiction on the Web, is a survivor, and from the part of the world I might loosely term the Middle East. Unfortunately, like Stephen Grosz’s patients, Vashila has yet to transcend her story. Perhaps her husband can help her. 

While you’re composing your comment, why not listen to Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade or, if you prefer pop, another musical heroine featured in the book, Patti Smith singing Gloria? Apologies if I’m tardy at responding to comments in the next few days, but should be properly back online by Wednesday when I’m aiming to post a follow-up to my post on writing about terror. I hope that doesn’t scare you off!
Thanks for reading. I'd love to know what you think. If you've enjoyed this post, you might like to sign up via the sidebar for regular email updates and/or my quarterly Newsletter.
7 Comments
Safia link
11/3/2014 10:35:09 pm

What a super review of this book, Anne. I think most young girls with a penchant for literature tend to be 'overly romantic' - I know I was! But you make such a great point about our assessment of literary heroines mirroring our path to maturity, and dare I say, scepticism? I was hooked on Austen and Hardy at 16 (and of course related to their heroines), but the thought of reading the former now doesn't fill me with enthusiasm. I do occasionally dip into Hardy for his opening para and perhaps his female MCs weather the passage of time better than Austen's. Very interesting post.

Reply
Annecdotist
13/3/2014 10:07:41 am

Thanks for another great comment, Safia. Funny, I still remember Thomas Hardy extremely fondly, but that might be because I haven't read any of his stuff since my early 20s. I too was extremely romantic, but I don't think I identified so strongly with those heroines. I do remember being deeply engrossed in Jane Eyre at 15, but I'm not sure I particularly admired her choices. Or maybe because that memory has been overlaid by subsequent reading as well as The Wide Sargasso Sea.

Reply
Norah link
12/3/2014 04:12:06 am

Hi Anne,
This sounds like an interesting read, though I am unfamiliar with most of the books. I tend to read more nonfiction than fiction. Would like to make more time for fiction. Would like more time! It is interesting that you comment on the move from idealisation to denigration. I think it is so easy to get caught up in the glow initially and then begin to pick the holes. However I think it is important to expose ourselves to the opinions of others, even if we find them challenging or just different or totally in disagreeance, as that is what helps us grow. I love your posts. You always give me something to think about.

Reply
Annecdotist
13/3/2014 10:14:16 am

Thank you, Norah for another great comment. Our reading habits are probably diametrically opposed as I rarely read non-fiction, and you caught me at an odd moment with The Examined Life. Yes, at any age, we can get caught up in the approval of something and then get annoyed when it is perfect, as nothing is. I admire your willingness to be challenged in your thinking – I'm sure I'm more conservative, but I do agree that sometimes it's only through exposure to different opinions that we can come to know our own minds. That's one of the reasons I so appreciate yours and other's comments on my posts – they always take me step further in my thinking. Long may it continue!

Reply
Annecdotist
14/3/2014 05:08:02 am

That should read WHEN IT ISN'T PERFECT – but then I'm not perfect, am I?

Charli Mills link
9/3/2015 08:50:16 pm

As you say, Samantha Ellis focuses on heroines of a specific genre. Heroines do exist beyond romances and I'm glad you emphasized that notion. But I also recall how voraciously I read as a child and teen and I can admit that it was to escape into other worlds and lives. These heroines can take on the role of shaping a girl as she connects and reads what she thinks is how she should be. I might have been hopelessly lost in romance novels had my husband not taken an interest and we read aloud together. In a way, that helped me bridge back over to realism and by college I had discovered real heroines in Medieval literature -- women who defied husbands or community and anchored themselves to churches or went on pilgrimages. Breaking out of genre and learning to read broadly has shaped me more than my early romantic heroines, but they still reside in my romantic heart. And tops, Laura Ingalls Wilder is my patron saint of heroines.

Reply
Annecdotist
11/3/2015 06:42:39 am

Thanks for checking this out, and for sharing your own experience. You make a good point that, when we're young, almost any kind of alternative life is romanticised – I'm thinking particularly how a lot of girls like books about horses – but perhaps it's only as adults that we reserve romance for coupling. And we've got to learn what we can realistically expect from that romance.

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