Why So Serious, Heroines?

Posted on 9th February 2010
in Blog
by Erin Blakemore

One of the most gratifying parts of writing The Heroine’s Bookshelf was discovering the backstories behind the women who wrote some of my favorite books. And it wasn’t all fun and friends. During the course of the book, I got to look at the underbelly of some of these women’s lives: depression, chronic illness, opium addiction, adultery, even suicide. And you know what? I loved every minute.

Why embrace the serious sides of my literary heroines when many of them left such happy, pert, intelligent women as their legacy? (Anne of Green Gables or Lizzie Bennet, anyone?) Why not just focus on the picture they wanted to present to the world…the picture of the productive, happy writer who left her dirty laundry between two covers and moved on with life?

I was reminded of this question when reading this article about Louisa May Alcott and Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s dirty little opium secrets (or not-so-secrets, as the case may be). For me, the answer is all about context. When we look at the real lives of these writers, their accomplishments in the face of great trials and hardships are even more impressive. Louisa May Alcott wrote her books in a state of constant, crushing financial worry…and if she hadn’t known what it was like to be poor, she could never have given us the image of four sisters sewing their way through dire straits and attempting to burden the load they must shoulder. Could Charlotte Brontë have made Jane Eyre‘s Lowood School so terrifying if she herself had not survived a similar experience?

Now that I know the backstory behind my favorite books, I feel even more grateful that these women took time out of their lives to give something to us, people they never met or even imagined. Not that I subscribe to the thought that writers must be tortured (that’s probably material for a whole ‘nother post), but I think they’re at least allowed to be human. When we deny a Jane Austen or a Frances Hodgson Burnett her humanity, we miss out on the rest of the story.

Tags: anne of green gables, authors, backstory, charlotte bronte, heroine's bookshelf, jane eyre, little women, louisa may alcott, writers, writing