Posts Tagged ‘heroines’

Wintry Colorado can be an unforgiving place, especially with single-digit temperatures and March (usually our snowiest month) still ahead.  I’ve got tea to warm my fingers, but my thoughts are turning to food…the kinds of food my literary heroines would have enjoyed.  This morning I saw an article featuring a Mock Cherry Pie (recipe below) attributed to none other than Lucy Maud Montgomery of Anne of Green Gables fame.  It made me wonder what other recipes actually attributed to “my” authors could be found online?

The yummy results follow.  Each is directly attributed to one of my favorite authors or one of her family members.  Also, how awful is it that I’ve given up sweets for Lent?  I know what I’ll be preparing Easter Sunday.

Lucy Maud Montgomery’s Mock Cherry Pie

Food fakery is a vital heroine skill.  Don’t have cherries?  Cranberries and raisins will do just as well!  This recipe is attributed to Maud, whose Marilla admonishes:  “You’ve got to keep your wits about you in cooking and not stop in the middle of things to let your thoughts rove all over creation.” (Prefer raspberry cordial or some other dishes mentioned in the Anne books?  This link’s for you.)

Pastry for a double-crust 9-inch pie
2 cups cranberries, chopped
1 cup raisins, chopped
1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
2 tablespoons flour
1 cup cold water
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla

Line a 9-inch pie plate with half the pastry. Make a lattice crust with remaining dough.  In a saucepan, combine cranberries, raisins, sugar, flour and water; bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer for 15 minutes, stirring occasionally. Remove from heat and let cool slightly. Stir in vanilla.  Turn filling into pastry-lined pie plate. Moisten edge with water and top with lattice crust.  Bake at 425 degrees F for 15 minutes. Reduce heat to 350 degrees F and bake another 20 to 30 minutes, or until crust is nicely browned and filling is bubbly. Serves six.

Louisa May Alcott’s Blancmange

Did you ever read Little Women and wonder, like me, what the heck blancmange is?  I am led to believe that it is a kind of sweet, white flan, as sweet and white as the plump hands of Meg March, whom I can imagine creating this blancmange and complaining over her unfashionable gowns.  You will recall that Jo brings a blancmange to Laurie when he is sick as a sort of wedge into his house and heart.  She succeeds.  This recipe is attributed to Abba Alcott, Louisa’s mother.

2 tbsp arrowroot
1 quart milk
1/2 cup sugar, more to taste
1 pinch salt
Something savory – orange water, rose water, or lemon peel

Take two tablespoonfuls of arrowroot to one quart of milk and a pinch of salt. Scald the milk, sweeten it with sugar to taste and then stir in the arrowroot, which must first be wet with some milk. Let it boil once. Orange water, rose water, or lemon peel can be used to flavor it. Pour it into molds to cool.

Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Gingerbread

Whenever I gain a pound, I blame Laura, whose description of crackling pig tails, bountiful pies, and tables laden with the goodness of hardy, sensible pioneer cooking are enough to drive any girl face-first into a pile of biscuits.  Though it’s easy to find recipes inspired by the Little House books, it’s harder to find ones directly attributed to Laura that aren’t protected by copyright.  Here’s one to start with:

1 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup lard (fine, shortening will do)
1 cup molasses
2 tsp baking soda
1 cup boiling water
3 cups flour
1 tsp ginger
1 tsp allspice
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp nutmeg
1 tsp ground cloves
1/2 tsp salt
2 eggs

Blend brown sugar with lard.  Mix in molasses until well-coated.  Dissolve baking soda in boiling water (be sure cup is full of water after foam runs off into cake mixture).  Mix well.  In a separate bowl, mix flour with spices and salt.  Sift into wet mixture and mix well; mixture will be “quite thin.”  Finally, add two well-beaten eggs and bake in a moderate (350 degrees) for thirty minutes.

At the beginning of this whole entire process, I faced a nervewracking choice:  I wanted to write about great heroines of literature.  But did I want to limit my perspective to just female authors?

In the end, I decided yes and focused on heroine/author pairs whose qualities complimented or offset one another.  But with the same stroke, I cut out a whole set of incredible heroines written by men.  In apology, and in tribute, here are some of my faves:

• Mary Mackenzie – The Ginger Tree by Oswald Wynd:  This book was given to me by a friend who apparently knew my tastes inside and out.  Mary is a proper English girl who travels to China to fulfill an engagement to a man she barely knows.  Her slow liberation from a corseted existence and her torrid affair with a mysterious Japanese nobleman makes for gut-wrenching, page-turning reading.  Better yet, this book is epistolary (and pulls it off!) and deals with a facet of imperialism I had never thought of before.
• Lucy Honeychurch – A Room With a View by E.M. Forster:  Oh, A Room With a View.  I have watched your Merchant Ivory loveliness a million times, but I never really appreciated you before reading the book upon which you were based.  Lucy is annoying, flawed, and hopelessly muddled, and her story is easily one of my favorites ever.
• Matilda Wormwood – Matilda by Roald Dahl:  A reader, an adventurer, and a brave little soul, Matilda stands at the center of a book that completely galvanized eight-year-old me.  Her antics may be unrealistic, but her pluck and spunk aren’t.
• Anna Karenina – Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy:  You know those characters you love to hate?  This was a book I loved to hate…it just didn’t resonate with me the first time around.  But I gave it a second chance (somehow), and discovered a petty, selfish, insecure, nuanced, and miserable character in the lovely, corrupt Anna.  If you were forced to read this book in high school or college, consider giving it a second chance (I recommend the Pevear/Volokhonsky translation).

This is a woefully incomplete list, but it’s good to remember that women aren’t the only people who can write incredible heroines.  So…who’s on your list of favorite guy-authored heroines?

I’m done writing the book, but I can’t stop thinking about heroines and their particular pull.  I just read a great post by a dear friend about the power of heroines in young adult literature, even for thirtysomething women, and it reminds me once more that heroines matter, both for our adult selves and the childish ones we keep inside.

What is it about heroines?  Why do they exert such a seductive pull, calling me away from the dishes and the to-do list?

Here are some ideas:

• They’re not us: Heroines exist in a world outside of ourselves, something to escape into and crawl inside for a while.
• They are us: Heroines possess that which we ourselves have:  personalities, strong wills, the ability to adjust to circumstance.
• Possibilities and warnings: Heroines present another road, one in which we could do the mundane or the spectacular, transcending ourselves or destroying ourselves in the process.

How about you?  Why are heroines important to you?