Posts Tagged ‘heroines’

November is an illustrious months for my literary heroines, since so many of them were born in it!

First up, Margaret Munnerlyn Mitchell, born on this day in 1900.  Here are some fun facts about the fearless Peggy:

~ Like me, Peggy was a Smithie who didn’t graduate from the illustrious women’s college.  She attended for roughly a year and lived in Chapin House, but dropped out after her mother’s death.

~ Peggy had mother issues, exacerbated by the fact that her dying mother left a hell of a deathbed letter for her to peruse.  This set the standard of her behavior almost impossibly high…a standard she was quick to break.

~ Kicked out of the Junior League.  Find out why in the pages of my book

~ Woman reporter.  Peggy held her own in a career as an investigative journalist at a time when women simply did not do so.

~ Publishing juggernaut.  For all that Peggy dissembled and pretended her “little book” was just a “little” contribution to American letters, it actually revolutionized and revitalized Depression-era publishing.  Gone With the Wind found readers across all walks of life, and its road to movie adaptation was nothing short of a phenomenon.

~ Philanthropist.  I learned from the Margaret Mitchell House’s website that during World War II, Peggy managed to raise $65 million for a replacement to the sunken U.S.S. Atlanta…in sixty days.

There’s a wonderful body of work about MM out there, but I must admit to being tickled pink about Ellen F. Brown‘s upcoming Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind: A Bestseller’s Odyssey from Atlanta to Hollywood.

Happy birthday to the irascible and charming Peggy!

By Guest Blogger Darren Garnick

This is the first in a series of guest posts on heroines featured in The Heroine’s Bookshelf.  My guests?  Honored authors, writers, experts, historians, and more.  First up is Darren Garnick, an unlikely adherent of everyone’s favorite Anne with an e.  Want to combine some winning with your reading?  Click here to win a galley of the book (and for links to other contests featuring the book).

I grew up reading Judy Blume’s “Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing” series, which was heavily promoted during my elementary school librarian’s story hour. Many of the same themes of awkward adolescence are now the bedrock of Jeff Kinney’s “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” series, which I’ve been reading aloud with my 8-year-old son. I’ve had the pleasure of interviewing Kinney for a newspaper column, and was happy to learn that he’s been using his fame to encourage boys to embrace reading and writing for fun.

For some bizarre reason, as students get older, writing is considered more of “a girl’s thing.” And so is reading “the classics,” which is a theme that pops up in the fourth Wimpy Kid book, “Dog Days.”

Maybe because there’s no braids, but that’s the most masculine-looking Anne I’ve ever seen.

Well, except for this Anne…

That’s me in the green dress at the beginning of my Prince Edward Island vacation last summer. For the record, I did take the costume off a few days after the photo and mostly traveled around the province in my street clothes. But before planning my family trip, I had never even heard of “Anne of Green Gables” or Lucy Maud Montgomery. I’m not sure why this is, because I had been aware of other “girl’s books” when I was a kid. I just didn’t read them.

So along with my wife, son and daughter, I listened to the first Anne book on CD during our endless drive through New Brunswick, Canada. By the time we reached the Confederation Bridge to PEI, I knew Anne was an imaginative, stubborn, ambitious, and melodramatic girl who had the courage to stand up to bullies — and was also someone who appreciated the nuances of every blade of grass. The story kept the attention of everyone in the car.

(I’m fully aware that listening to the audiobook gives me zero literary street cred, but reading at the wheel is far deadlier than texting. Marilla wouldn’t approve!)

When I arrived in PEI, I was blown away by how much a children’s book character can impact a community. Sure, there’s usually the obligatory museum or bronze statue at the birthplace of a famous author, but nothing like this.

At the Cavendish Figurines photo booth, tourists are encouraged to pose in group shots as Anne, almost like a scene from a Lucy Maud Montgomery-inspired science fiction movie. Co-owner Jeannette Arsenault told me that despite the availability of Gilbert (Anne’s boyfriend and hubby) and Matthew (Anne’s guardian) costumes, more than 90 percent of visitors want to be Anne. Even the guys.

Now, that’s quite the star power for a fictitious female character. You don’t see many boys rushing to be Belle, Princess Jasmine or Arielle at Disney World.

Anne Shirley is iconic. Her optimism and upbeat attitude is something that all Canadians are proud to identify with.

A friend of mine who actually has read “Anne of Green Gables” in its original book form told me she was extremely disappointed by the commercialism surrounding the character on the island. I couldn’t disagree more. Take a look at the marketing display on this refrigerator for Raspberry Cordial soda:

Merchants are not slapping Anne’s image on random items, such as toilet paper or breakfast cereal. There’s a literary basis to everything. Sure, the Avonlea Village theme park is rather pricey. But for fans who want to lip sync scenes of the book while they are being performed live, this is their “Rocky Horror Picture Show.”

A little bit down the road from Avonlea is the Fantazmagoric Museum of the Strange & Unusual, which also runs a snack bar and mini golf course. It is here where you will find the only remotely negative portrayal of Anne. And even so, it appears to be a tribute to her, in the satiric spirit of Mad Magazine or Wacky Package stickers:

It’s all fine and dandy when children’s books have life lessons, role models and spark discussion. But if the story doesn’t entertain first, then the book is going to have all the charm of a church sermon. I say this as a former fan of the Davey & Goliath animated series — was that claymation? — which was the only cartoon on TV on Sundays when I was growing up. As an adult, I realize that the producers were attempting to shove a syrupy lesson down my throat from the very first frame.

On a secular note, the Pixar movie “Cars” accomplishes the same feat. Kids will watch an endearing love story between a sportscar and a racing car with a goofy tow truck tossed in for comic relief. But us adults realize the movie is a warning not to ignore our personal relationships in the mad pursuit of our career goals — and a simple plea to appreciate the journey as much as the final destination.

“Anne of Green Gables” succeeds on this level. As a journalist and a stickler for spelling (please tell me there are no errors here), I love Anne’s militant defense of the “e” at the end of her name. I also resent the adults in her life who advise her to tone down her gregarious personality. But I appreciate the mindless sitcom plots, such as Anne accidentally giving Diana red wine instead of raspberry cordial, and Anne mistakenly dyeing her hair green in an attempt to get rid of her natural red.

Decades after Lucy Maud Montgomery came up with those stories, I saw them duplicated on The Flintstones (Pebbles’ birthday party guests accidentally got served “cactus juice”) and The Brady Bunch (Greg accidentally dyed his hair green, resulting in multiple embarrassing trips to his mom’s beauty parlor).

For the record, Anne is also a lot tougher than Greg, the star of the Wimpy Kid series. If author Jeff Kinney is managing to score a surprising 40 percent female readership, maybe the Anne books can increase their male market share. Bribing boys with sugar might not be the most ethical way to boost readership, but I suspect it might be the most effective:

(Darren Garnick is a freelance journalist and documentary filmmaker obsessed with travel and pop culture. He also happens to be fascinated with Little House on the Prairie, having seen practically every episode as a childhood TV ritual with his grandparents.  If you have ever taken funny travel photos related to your favorite literature, please contact him at darrengarnick (at) gmail.com)

Ever since I blogged about Lily Bart yesterday, I’ve been contemplating a heroine’s clothes.  You know, the lovely (or tattered) duds that either hamper or enhance a woman’s rise to glory.  I’m thinking Jo March’s singed dress, Scarlett’s portieres, the sunbonnets of Laura Ingalls Wilder and the cloche hats of Zora Neale Hurston.

The other day I ran across Aurora, a Jane Austen fan who makes her own gorgeous period clothing.  For this piece, she broke out of her Regency world and made something that, in turn, made me swoon.  Click here to view the lovely gown, which was made out of bedsheets!

Of course, a heroine’s garb need not be period at all.  I thrill to such mundanities as the J.Crew Catalog (those layers!) and the perfect gray coat for fall and mild winter.  What about you?  What’s in your heroine’s closet?

27 days left!  Want to see my clothing in person?  Consider attending an event (right-hand side of the blog, for your convenience)…

I came late to The House of Mirth, having been traumatized by Ethan Frome in high school. So imagine my surprise to meet Lily Bart, in all her decadent-yet-run down glory.

This is a heroine for grown women, a devious, self-centered, and tired thing, a woman who is bound by a need to be discreet, yet in demand; public, yet delicately private.

Does it work?  Not really.

I always think of Lily in terms of clothing. When she drops the line that “a woman is asked out as much for her clothes as for herself,” you know no good can come of a self-image that is so pragmatic and so pitifully dependent on appearances.  She keeps the damning letters in her dress and her insistence that her dressmaker is housed in the Benedick, an apartment building known to be full of bachelors.

Edith Wharton herself lived in decadence and much sorrow, dealing with a husband whose mental illness caused their marriage to dissolve and balancing her marital difficulties, affairs, and family strife with an external appearance all about propriety and beauty.

Ultimately, I love Lily, but felt she was overwhelming when taken alongside other, equally fallible heroines (Scarlett O’Hara, anyone?).  Faced with too many bad girls, I was forced to choose, and choose I did.

Learn more about Edith Wharton, Lily Bart, and the Benedick on my walking tour of Greenwich Village at 6 p.m. on Tuesday, October 26! Stay tuned for details on a fun evening of literary heroines.  Only 28 days until THB hits shelves…

Little Laura Jernegan, a girl who traveled the world on a whale ship during the 1860s, made quite the splash on the Internet yesterday (thanks, Wendy McClure, for passing on the link).  Her journal, written when she was six years old, records her thoughts on various animals, the smells of whaling, her fearsome penmanship, and not knowing what’s for supper.  The overall impression is one of a feisty, feckless girl, a real-life heroine living out an adventure right out of a novel.

To wit:

I am in Honolulu. it is a real pretty place. Mama is making a dress for me. papa is up north where it is cold. he will come back pretty soon. I have two kittens here and one aboard the ship. good by for today.

LOVE.

Anyway, it got me thinking…you don’t have to be a grown woman to be a heroine.  After all, our first encounter with Jane Eyre is when she is a small thing, curled up on the windowsill reading a book.  Francie Nolan transforms from skinny child to woman-too-soon in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.  And Laura Ingalls is young indeed in most of the Little House books.

These young girls remind me of my friend’s daughter Addie, to whom I read approximately 13232532623234623456 books on a recent babysitting excursion, and my niece September, who is spunky and prideful enough for any storybook.

I get excited just thinking about it…what heroism is in their cards?  Did you show signs of heroism as a little girl?