An Uncommon Heroine: Scarlett, Edna, Sula--and More Than 20 Other of the Most Remarkable Women in Literature

By Jamie Cox Robertson

One is not born a woman, one becomes one. -Simone de Beauvoir

Literature has provided us with some of the most unforgettable women in history. From wives and mothers to daughters and lovers, these women all have one thing in common--they're uncommon heroines. This unique collection includes more than twenty great novel excerpts depicting women young and old, wise and weary, flamboyant and cunning such as:

• Emma Woodhouse in Emma by Jane Austen
• Jane Eyre in Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
• Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffany's by Truman Capote
• Evelyn Couch in Fried Green Tomatoes by Fannie Flagg
• Celie in The Color Purple by Alice Walker

This book celebrates the women we envy, admire, and are inspired by--generation after generation.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Release date: Sep 18, 2010
• ISBN: 9781440508783

Book preview

An Uncommon

Heroine

Scarlett, Edna, Sula

and More Than 20 Other

of the

Most Remarkable

Women in Literature

JAMIE COX ROBERTSON

Copyright © 2010 by Jamie Cox Robertson

All rights reserved.

This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any

form without permission from the publisher; exceptions are

made for brief excerpts used in published reviews.

Published by

Adams Media, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

57 Littlefield Street, Avon, MA 02322. U.S.A.

www.adamsmedia.com

ISBN 10: 1-4405-0417-2

ISBN 13: 978-1-4405-0417-4

eISBN 10: 1-4405-0878-X

eISBN 13: 978-1-4405-0878-3

Printed in the United States of America.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Robertson, Jamie Cox.

An uncommon heroine / Jamie Cox Robertson.

p. cm.

ISBN 978-1-4405-0417-4 — ISBN 978-1-4405-0878-3 (eBook)

1. Women in literature. 2. Characters and characteristics in literature. I. Title.

PN56.5.W64R63 2010

809’.933522 — dc22

2010025718

This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information with regard to the subject matter covered. It is sold with the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering legal, accounting, or other professional advice. If legal advice or other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent professional person should be sought.

— From a Declaration of Principles jointly adopted by a Committee of the American Bar

Association and a Committee of Publishers and Associations

This book is available at quantity discounts for bulk purchases.

For information, please call 1-800-289-0963.

Dedicated to my mother, Barbara Jennell Cox and my daughter, Sophia Jennell Robertson

Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION

Anne Elliot

IN Persuasion BY Jane Austen

Jane Eyre

IN Jane Eyre BY Charlotte Brontë

Catherine Earnshaw

IN Wuthering Heights BY Emily Brontë

Holly Golightly

IN Breakfast at Tiffany’s BY Truman Capote

Ántonia Shimerda

IN My Ántonia BY Willa Cather

Edna Pontellier

IN The Awakening BY Kate Chopin

Amy Dorrit

IN Little Dorrit BY Charles Dickens

Dorothea Brooke

IN Middlemarch BY George Eliot

Tita de la Garza

IN Like Water for Chocolate BY Laura Esquivel

Gloria Patch

IN The Beautiful and the Damned BY F. Scott Fitzgerald

Tess Durbeyfield

IN Tess of the d’Urbervilles BY Thomas Hardy

Hester Prynne

IN The Scarlet Letter BY Nathaniel Hawthorne

Maria Chapdelaine

IN Maria Chapdelaine BY Louis Hémon

Janie Crawford

IN Their Eyes Were Watching God BY Zora Neale Hurston

Isabel Archer

IN Portrait of a Lady BY Henry James

Taylor Greer

IN The Bean Trees BY Barbara Kingsolver

Rachel

IN Mademoiselle Fifi BY Guy de Maupassant

Scarlett O’Hara

IN Gone with the Wind BY Margaret Mitchell

Sula Peace

IN Sula BY Toni Morrison

Roxane Coss

IN Bel Canto BY Ann Patchett

Indiana

IN Indiana: A Love Story BY George Sand

Winnie Louie

IN The Kitchen God’s Wife BY Amy Tan

Anna Arkadyevna Karenina

IN Anna Karenina BY Leo Tolstoy

Countess Ellen Mingott Olenska

IN The Age of Innocence BY Edith Wharton

Clarissa Dalloway

IN The Voyage Out BY Virginia Woolf

Introduction

I returned to the working world after a two-year hiatus and taught a couple of English classes at Suffolk University. As I prepared for one such class, I came across Truman Capote’s Breakfast at Tiffany’s, a novella about a carefree party girl named Holly Golightly. Rereading the book took me back fifteen years to the first time I taught college English and assigned the story to my class. I was twenty-four years old — barely older than my students. In my twenties, I thought of Holly as a self-centered girl who dated entirely too many men. But reading Capote’s novel again so many years later caused me to see Holly Golightly in a completely different way than I did back then. Now I see a necessary rite of passage to her outrageousness and self-centeredness, and I think a woman’s twenties is the perfect time to be whimsical and unpredictable. And besides, most girls are destined to make a lot of bad choices when it comes to men before ever finding the right one.

I got to thinking — would I see other women I had read about in a different light now that I was older, married, and had a daughter of my own? I decided to go back and reread a lot of great classic literature about women and see what I thought of those women now. I also decided to read some novels I had never read. An Uncommon Heroine is the result of all the reading — and rereading — that I did. Of course, this collection of novel excerpts cannot include every book about an unforgettable woman in fiction, but the women I’ve chosen are, to say the least, fascinating in their own right.

The women in this book are not the Eleanor Roosevelts or Marilyn Monroes of our world — they are mothers, daughters, lovers, and wives just like you and me. The writers who created them cut to the core of what it means to be a woman living on her own terms. The result is sometimes rewarding, other times regretful, but most of the time these heroines simply learn from their experiences and use that knowledge as they forge ahead into new challenges. That’s the appeal for me. Hopefully, that will be the appeal for you too. But whatever you take away from this collection, I hope you will find these women’s stories to be as enlightening, engaging, and thought-provoking as I have.

Anne Elliot

IN PERSUASIONBY JANE AUSTEN

FIRST PUBLISHED IN: 1818

Who is she? A heartbroken woman who is given a second chance to prove she isn’t so easily persuaded.

Her Story

Anne is the quiet, dutiful middle child in a family full of vain and flamboyant characters. To hear her father and sister talk, one would think Anne was a frumpy old woman with no interest in anything other than her books. Even worse, her family has given up on her ever finding a husband. But Anne’s passion and desire to love run deeper than anyone in her family will ever know. She made a mistake eight years ago when she let her father and her godmother, Lady Russell, persuade her to break off an engagement to Frederic Wentworth because he was a naval officer heading into war and his family had no money. Anne didn’t care about money and she was willing to take her chances with war, but her desire to please her family won out and she decided not to marry the only man she ever loved. Lady Russell assured her that in time she’d be glad she didn’t marry Frederic, but it seems Lady Russell was wrong.

Eight years after breaking his heart, Anne comes face to face with Frederic again. Now, he is wealthy and her family’s fortune has dwindled considerably. She would like to tell him that she is older and wiser now, but she can barely utter a hello when she sees him. Besides, with so many young women vying for his affection, she can’t expect him to give her a second chance. Can she? Could he be persuaded?

What Makes Anne Elliot So Memorable?

Anne Elliot is memorable for anyone who has ever suffered from heartache — and for those who have longed for or been granted a second chance. And, of course, she is unforgettable to anyone who was ever young and in love. For anyone else, Anne may seem like a plain and dull woman in an otherwise charismatic family.

The Life and Times of Jane Austen

Jane Austen, born in 1775, was part of a close-knit family. Based on journal entries, she seemed to have a happy childhood and preferred the company of her family to that of others. Her father and her brother James invested a lot of their time in Austen’s education. She let them know early on that she wanted to be a novelist and — foregoing marriage — devoted her life to writing. Between 1811 and 1816, she wrote Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, and Emma. Since she published her work anonymously, Austen was not famous in her lifetime. Her books were also overshadowed by the hugely popular Charles Dickens, and not taken as seriously as George Eliot’s. Persuasion and Northanger Abby were Austen’s last completed works, but neither novel was published until after her death at age fortyone in 1817. In 1869, her nephew, an aspiring novelist, wrote a book titled A Memoir of Jane Austen that sparked a new-found interest in her work among scholars and everyday readers alike.

FROM Persuasion

Vanity was the beginning and the end of Sir Walter Elliot’s character; vanity of person and of situation. He had been remarkably handsome in his youth; and, at fifty-four was still a very fine man. Few women could think more of their personal appearance than he did, nor could the valet of any new made lord be more delighted with the place he held in society. He considered the blessing of beauty as inferior only to the blessing of a baronetcy; and the Sir Walter Elliot, who united these gifts, was the constant object of his warmest respect and devotion.

Novel Knowledge: JANE AUSTEN’S DEATH

The notion that Jane Austen died of Addison’s disease, a rare illness that affects the body’s production of hormones, has come under scrutiny. Some who live with the disease claim she could have never dictated a poem to her sister two days before her death if she truly died of Addison’s. Some scholars speculate that she may have died from lymphoma. Others believe it is more likely she contracted tuberculosis, a common cause of death during that time.

His good looks and his rank had one fair claim on his attachment; since to them he must have owed a wife of very superior character to anything deserved by his own. Lady Elliot had been an excellent woman, sensible and amiable; whose judgement and conduct, if they might be pardoned the youthful infatuation which made her Lady Elliot, had never required indulgence afterwards. — She had humoured, or softened, or concealed his failings, and promoted his real respectability for seventeen years; and though not the very happiest being in the world herself, had found enough in her duties, her friends, and her children, to attach her to life, and make it no matter of indifference to her when she was called on to quit them. — Three girls, the two eldest sixteen and fourteen, was an awful legacy for a mother to bequeath, an awful charge rather, to confide to the authority and guidance of a conceited, silly father. She had, however, one very intimate friend, a sensible, deserving woman, who had been brought, by strong attachment to herself, to settle close by her, in the village of Kellynch; and on her kindness and advice, Lady Elliot mainly relied for the best help and maintenance of the good principles and instruction which she had been anxiously giving her daughters.

This friend, and Sir Walter, did not marry, whatever might have been anticipated on that head by their acquaintance. Thirteen years had passed away since Lady Elliot’s death, and they were still near neighbours and intimate friends, and one remained a widower, the other a widow.

That Lady Russell, of steady age and character, and extremely well provided for, should have no thought of a second marriage, needs no apology to the public, which is rather apt to be unreasonably discontented when a woman does marry again, than when she does not; but Sir Walter’s continuing in singleness requires explanation. Be it known then, that Sir Walter, like a good father, (having met with one or two private disappointments in very unreasonable applications), prided himself on remaining single for his dear daughters’ sake. For one daughter, his eldest, he would really have given up any thing, which he had not been very much tempted to do. Elizabeth had succeeded, at sixteen, to all that was possible, of her mother’s rights and consequence; and being very handsome, and very like himself, her influence had always been great, and they had gone on together most happily. His two other children were of very inferior value. Mary had acquired a little artificial importance, by becoming Mrs Charles Musgrove; but Anne, with an elegance of mind and sweetness of character, which must have placed her high with any people of real understanding, was nobody with either father or sister; her word had no weight, her convenience was always to give way — she was only Anne.

To Lady Russell, indeed, she was a most dear and highly valued goddaughter, favourite, and friend. Lady Russell loved them all; but it was only in Anne that she could fancy the mother to revive again.

A few years before, Anne Elliot had been a very pretty girl, but her bloom had vanished early; and as even in its height, her father had found little to admire in her, (so totally different were her delicate features and mild dark eyes from his own), there could be nothing in them, now that she was faded and thin, to excite his esteem. He had never indulged much hope, he had now none, of ever reading her name in any other page of his favourite work. All equality of alliance must rest with Elizabeth, for Mary had merely connected herself with an old country family of respectability and large fortune, and had therefore given all the honour and received none: Elizabeth would, one day or other, marry suitably.

It sometimes happens that a woman is handsomer at twenty-nine than she was ten years before; and, generally speaking, if there has been neither ill health nor anxiety, it is a time of life at which scarcely any charm is lost. It was so with Elizabeth, still the same handsome Miss Elliot that she had begun to be thirteen years ago, and Sir Walter might be excused, therefore, in forgetting her age, or, at least, be deemed only half a fool, for thinking himself and Elizabeth as blooming as ever, amidst the wreck of the good looks of everybody else; for he could plainly see how old all the rest of his family and acquaintance were growing. Anne haggard, Mary coarse, every face in the neighbourhood worsting, and the rapid increase of the crow’s foot about Lady Russell’s temples had long been a distress to him.

Elizabeth did not quite equal her father in personal contentment. Thirteen years had seen her mistress of Kellynch Hall, presiding and directing with a self-possession and decision which could never have given the idea of her being younger than she was. For thirteen years had she been doing the honours, and laying down the domestic law at home, and leading the way to the chaise and four, and walking immediately after Lady Russell out of all the drawing-rooms and dining-rooms in the country. Thirteen winters’ revolving frosts had seen her opening every ball of credit which a scanty neighbourhood afforded, and thirteen springs shewn their blossoms, as she travelled up to London with her father, for a few weeks’ annual enjoyment of the great world. She had the remembrance of all this, she had the consciousness of being nine-and-twenty to give her some regrets and some apprehensions; she was fully satisfied of being still quite as handsome as ever, but she felt her approach to the years of danger, and would have rejoiced to be certain of being properly solicited by baronet-blood within the next twelvemonth or two. Then might she again take up the book of books with as much enjoyment as in her early youth, but now she liked it not. Always to be presented with the date of her own birth and see no marriage follow but that of a youngest sister, made the book an evil; and more than once, when her father had left it open on the table near her, had she closed it, with averted eyes, and pushed it away.

She had had a disappointment, moreover, which that book, and especially the history of her own family, must ever present the remembrance of. The heir presumptive, the very William Walter Elliot, Esq., whose rights had been so generously supported by her father, had disappointed her.

She had, while a very young girl, as soon as she had known him to be, in the event of her having no brother, the future baronet, meant to marry him, and her father had always meant that she should. He had not been known to them as a boy; but soon after Lady Elliot’s death, Sir Walter had sought the acquaintance, and though his overtures had not been met with any warmth, he had persevered in seeking it, making allowance for the modest drawing-back of youth; and, in one of their spring excursions to London, when Elizabeth was in her first bloom, Mr Elliot had been forced into the introduction.

He was at that time a very young man, just engaged in the study of the law; and Elizabeth found him extremely agreeable, and every plan in his favour was confirmed. He was invited to Kellynch Hall; he was talked of and expected all the rest of the year; but he never came. The following spring he was seen again in town, found equally agreeable, again encouraged, invited, and expected, and again he did not come; and the next tidings were that he was married. Instead of pushing his fortune in the line marked out for the heir of the house of Elliot, he had purchased independence by uniting himself to a rich woman of inferior birth.

Sir Walter has resented it. As the head of the house, he felt that he ought to have been consulted, especially after taking the young man so publicly by the hand; For they must have been seen together, he observed, once at Tattersall’s, and twice in the lobby of the House of Commons. His disapprobation was expressed, but apparently very little regarded. Mr Elliot had attempted no apology, and shewn himself as unsolicitous of being longer noticed by the family, as Sir Walter considered him unworthy of it: all acquaintance between them had ceased.

This very awkward history of Mr Elliot was still, after an interval of several years, felt with anger by Elizabeth, who had liked the man for himself, and still more for being her father’s heir, and whose strong family pride could see only in him a proper match for Sir Walter Elliot’s eldest daughter. There was not a baronet from A to Z whom her feelings could have so willingly acknowledged as an equal. Yet so miserably had he conducted himself, that though she was at this present time (the summer of 1814) wearing black ribbons for his wife, she could not admit him to be worth thinking of again. The disgrace of his first marriage might, perhaps, as there was no reason to suppose it perpetuated by offspring, have been got over, had he not done worse; but he had, as by the accustomary intervention of kind friends, they had been informed, spoken most disrespectfully of them all, most slightingly and contemptuously of the very blood he belonged to, and the honours which were hereafter to be his own. This could not be pardoned.

Novel Knowledge: A FAN OF THE NAVY

In Persuasion, high society types like Anne’s father, Sir William Elliot, turn up their noses at navy men. The naval officers, however, prove to be the finest men in the novel. Jane Austen’s brothers Francis and Charles — both naval officers whom she adored — most likely inspired her.

Such were Elizabeth Elliot’s sentiments and sensations; such the cares to alloy, the agitations to vary, the sameness and the elegance, the prosperity and the nothingness of her scene of life; such the feelings to give interest to a long, uneventful residence in one country circle, to fill the vacancies which there were no habits of utility abroad, no talents or accomplishments for home, to occupy.

But now, another occupation and solicitude of mind was beginning to be added to these. Her father was growing distressed for money. She knew, that when he now took up the Baronetage, it was to drive the heavy bills of his tradespeople, and the unwelcome hints of Mr Shepherd, his agent, from his thoughts. The Kellynch property was good, but not equal to Sir Walter’s apprehension of the state required in its possessor. While Lady Elliot lived, there had been method, moderation, and economy, which had