{"id":12094,"date":"2019-03-15T10:21:13","date_gmt":"2019-03-15T10:21:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ounews.co\/?p=12094"},"modified":"2019-03-15T10:21:13","modified_gmt":"2019-03-15T10:21:13","slug":"imperfect-and-absurd-the-modern-literary-heroine-is-a-woman-of-our-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/arts-social-sciences\/art-literature-music\/imperfect-and-absurd-the-modern-literary-heroine-is-a-woman-of-our-times\/","title":{"rendered":"Imperfect and absurd, the modern literary heroine is a woman of our times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sally O’Reilly<\/a>, Lecturer in Creative Writing at The Open University discusses how the female characters in the books that we read are changing.<\/p>\n

The way women are portrayed is changing. In film,\u00a0The Favourite<\/a>\u00a0has\u00a0won numerous awards<\/a>\u00a0and features three women, variously wild and untameable, as joint protagonists. Other movies such as\u00a0The Wife<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Can You Ever Forgive Me?<\/a>\u00a0show older or unlovely women as sympathetic leads. Brava! But what\u2019s happening in fiction? What are readers looking for in their modern, made-up women?<\/p>\n

In this period of widening gender equality, it seems the time is right for new portrayals of women in fiction. Readers are diverse, and want many different things, and various female \u201carchetypes<\/a>\u201d have existed since storytelling began. Early tales included murderesses and proxy witches such as the Greek figure\u00a0Medea<\/a>\u00a0and Grendel\u2019s mother \u2013 who is nameless \u2013 from the Old English poem\u00a0Beowulf<\/a>.<\/p>\n

There were deceiving femme fatales, such as the Sirens who lured sailors to shipwreck, tragic mistresses, including\u00a0Dido<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Cleopatra<\/a>\u00a0and poor, resourceful girls like\u00a0Gretel<\/a>\u00a0in traditional fairy-tales.<\/p>\n

These enduring archetypes have been customised and reimagined by each succeeding generation. Chaucer\u2019s\u00a0Wife of Bath<\/a>\u00a0is full of worldly wisdom and\u00a0Shakespeare presented women<\/a>\u00a0who were wily and devious like Portia and Lady Macbeth as well as tricked and deceived like Juliet and Desdemona.<\/p>\n

Victorian heroines like George Eliot\u2019s\u00a0Dorothea Brooke<\/a>\u00a0claimed their right to passion and equality \u2013 and in the 20th century female characters engaged with the world of work as well as matters of the heart, battling for self-determination. The eponymous heroine of Muriel Spark\u2019s\u00a0The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie<\/a>\u00a0is one example, setting out to impose her will on her impressionable students, though she is ultimately betrayed.<\/p>\n

Unpredictable women<\/h2>\n

So where do we find ourselves now? One notable characteristic of the modern heroine is that her flaws are not only centre stage, they are celebrated.\u00a0Jane Austen<\/a>\u00a0wondered if\u00a0anyone but herself<\/a>\u00a0would like domineering Emma Woodhouse \u2013 but now every heroine worth her salt has as many vices as virtues. Women behaving badly fill the pages of books in every genre \u2013 from Katniss Everdene, the rebellious heroine of Suzannne Collins\u2019\u00a0The Hunger Games<\/a>\u00a0to Frances Wray and Lilian Barber, the unlikely conspirators in Sarah Waters\u2019 page-turning novel\u00a0The Paying Guests<\/a>.<\/p>\n

There is also a recognition that female experience is as universal as male experience. The heroines of contemporary fiction reflect the rich diversity of female lives. Examples include Hortense Roberts, one of the main characters in Andrea Levy\u2019s seminal novel\u00a0Small Island\u00a0<\/a>who finds tenderness in her bleak new homeland, and Elizabeth Strout\u2019s astonishing\u00a0Olive Kitteridge<\/a>, whose true complexity is revealed in a narrative that spans decades. Their everyday experiences are compelling and heartrending.<\/p>\n

Genres are blending and heroines are complicated. They are morally ambiguous and their behaviour is unpredictable. The doomed mistress is fighting back and taking on the characteristics of the proxy witch. This is demonstrated by the typical heroine of the new crime sub-genre\u00a0domestic noir<\/a>\u00a0which focuses on women\u2019s experience and emotions in the home and workplace. She may find herself married to the\u00a0modern equivalent of Bluebeard<\/a>, but he is unlikely to get away with murder. This is exemplified in novels like\u00a0Gone Girl<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 Amy Dunne outsmarts her husband and excels in trickery, cunningly creating mantraps while seeming to be the perfect wife.<\/p>\n

Scarred, imperfect or absurd<\/h2>\n

Publishing\u2019s latest passion is for redemptive, feel-good fiction, known as \u201cup-lit<\/a>\u201d, and this also reinterprets existing tropes.\u00a0Gail Honeyman\u2019s lonely Eleanor Oliphant<\/a>\u00a0hits the vodka behind closed doors and attempts to conceal her dysfunctionality and traumatic childhood from the world, but is stronger and more able to grow than we first realise. One of the reasons for Eleanor\u2019s wide appeal may be that she springs from a line of literary heroines \u2013 that of the spirited outsider.<\/p>\n

http:\/\/https:\/\/youtu.be\/pv6la7JfidY<\/a><\/p>\n

Honeyman draws parallels between Eleanor and Jane Eyre, another abandoned child who finds her own path. Readers are engaged not only by Eleanor\u2019s predicament, but by her determination to transcend disaster. Her most recent antecedent is Helen Fielding\u2019s Chardonnay-swilling\u00a0Bridget Jones<\/a>, who is herself the direct descendant of Jane Austen\u2019s best-loved heroine, Elizabeth Bennet.<\/p>\n

Women who make their own rules are selling well in literary fiction too. In\u00a0Conversations with Friends<\/a>, Sally Rooney\u2019s young Bohemians Frances and Bobbi are brimming with anarchic attitude, sharing \u201ca contempt for the cultish pursuit of male physical dominance\u201d and luxuriating in \u201cshallow misery\u201d. They lead unapologetically experimental lives, creating ripples of sexual confusion.<\/p>\n

Following the various cases of male bullying and sexual harassment that have hit the headlines, it seems that fictional heroines reflect a mood of noncompliance with the world that men have organised. The 21st-century heroine may be scarred, imperfect or absurd. True love may be on the cards, but so might illicit sex. And while she may change in the course of the narrative, revealing strengths and strategies that surprise us, conformity is optional. Here\u2019s to the good\/bad heroine, long may she remain unredeemed.<\/p>\n

Find out more<\/h2>\n

Sally O’Reilly<\/a>, Lecturer in Creative Writing at The Open University<\/p>\n

The article is republished from\u00a0The Conversation<\/a>\u00a0under a Creative Commons license. Read the\u00a0original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sally O’Reilly, Lecturer in Creative Writing at The Open University discusses how the female characters in the books that we read are changing. The way women are portrayed is changing. In film,\u00a0The Favourite\u00a0has\u00a0won numerous awards\u00a0and features three women, variously wild and untameable, as joint protagonists. Other movies such as\u00a0The Wife\u00a0and\u00a0Can You Ever Forgive Me?\u00a0show older […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":12095,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[297,1332,1525,1874,2427],"class_list":["post-12094","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-art-literature-music","tag-books","tag-literature","tag-news-home","tag-reading","tag-women"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12094","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12094"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12094\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12095"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12094"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12094"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12094"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}