Heroines and Heroes for Life

[Guest]

Another thread caused me to recall first reading Thomas Hardy’s The Return of the Native and identifying with the wild heroine, Eustacia Vye. She felt trapped in her provincialism and eventually into marriage despite her passion for a villainous type. (So, what else is new, eh?)

Since first reading fairy tales as a young girl I have identified with heroines, and sometimes heroes: Snow White (esp. because she wasn’t blond), Circe, Calypso, Elektra, Antigone, Anna Karenina, Pushkin’s Tatiana and Onegin, Turgenev’s Zinaida, Dostoevsky’s Grushenka, Mérimée’s and Bizet’s Carmen, Elizabeth Bennet, Countess Olenska, Mary Shelley’s Creature, Byron’s Don Juan, Isolde and Tristan, Joyce’s Gretta Conroy and Molly Bloom, Clarissa Dalloway, Hedda Gabler. And among Shakespeare’s women—Rosalind, Perdita, Hermione, Cleopatra, Imogen, Viola, Cordelia, Beatrice, Desdemona, Isabella.

These female characters (and the males) taught me much about being female, love, life, death, friendship, honor, grace, loss, joy, hope, happiness, despair, men and boys, simply being human.

Who might have taught you something more than empty words on a page? I may expound on one anon, but I put this forth to you reading writers.

Perdita

 

[Parklife]

that immediately come to mind...

Nietzsche's Zarathustra and Camus' Meursault

there are many more.. but those two strike immediate and strong feelings in me.

Park~

 

[Seattle Zack]

Travis McGee, of course. Matthew Scudder. Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot. (Detective novels -- blame my mom.) Perhaps Tarl Cabot, at the risk of starting a completely unrelated discussion.

--Zack

 

[Guest]

Zack: I'll risk it. Who is Tarl Cabot?

Perdita

 

[snooper]

Zack: I'll risk it. Who is Tarl Cabot?

Perdita

I don't know, but he must be famous because in Bristol, England, there is a memorial to him called the Cabot Tower, which is a pointless tower you can climb and which stands in a medium sixed public park!

 

[Weird Harold]

Who might have taught you something more than empty words on a page?

Tom Swift, The Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, Sherlock Holmes, and numerous other mystery and juvenile SF series taught me that brains are far more important than brawn.

Lazarus Long and Valentine Michel Smith (and other R.A.H characters) taught me to be myself no matter what others think of me and introduced me to the Philosphy of "an' it harm no other."

Thousands of fictional characters have taught me that ther is always another POV that just might be as valid as mine.

 

[oggbashan]

A mix of fact and fiction: Odysseus, "Pious" Aeneas, Theseus, Ariadne, Hippolyita, Jason and the Argonauts, Caractacus, Julius Caesar, Robin Hood, Davy Crockett, King Arthur (and Guinevere), Boudicca, St Joan of Arc, Richard the Lionheart and Saladin, William Tell, Hereward the Wake. Sir Walter Raleigh, Sir Francis Drake, Queen Elizabeth 1, Will Adams of Gillingham (fictionalised in Shogun by James Clavell).

More modern fiction: Biggles (W E Johns), Allan Quartermain (Rider Haggard), Kim (Rudyard Kipling), Captain Blood and Bellarion (Raphael Sabatini), Sir Nigel and The White Company (Conan Doyle), Captain John Carter and Dejah Thoris(Edgar Rice Burroughs), The Lensmen especially the "Red" one (Doc E E Smith).

Modern (but dead) people: William Wilberforce, Abraham Lincoln, Florence Nightingale, Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, Emily Pankhurst, Marie Stopes, Madame Curie, Lewis Carroll, Albert Einstein, Winston Churchill, Albert Schweitzer, General Charles de Gaulle.

This list is not exhaustive and I am sure for some of them I will be asked "Who?"

Og

PS Tarl Cabot is from the "Gor" series by John Norman, not to be confused with the real John Cabot although they are both from Bristol. If there is to be a discussion on the "Gor" series I suggest a new thread.

 

[Guest]

Ogg, thank you. I am amazed at how many of your friends I recognize, will add them to my list too.

regards, Perdita

 

[oggbashan]

Today's Heros

The emergency services who responded two years ago today.

It may be painful to remember those who died and were injured trying to save people on 11 September 2001.

It is easy to forget those who may be called upon to risk their lives to serve the public any day. If you dial 911 (999 in the UK) there are people who will respond. Every year some of them are injured, some die, in incidents that barely show in the local news.

The soldiers from a variety of nations serving in Afghanistan, in Iraq, elsewhere as UN blue helmets, and in various parts of the world as peacekeepers are also putting their lives on the line to serve the free world.

I can make a mistake. I can retract, say sorry and hope my mistake is forgotten.

For all those mentioned above, a mistake can be fatal. Yet they are willing day after day to take risks for us.

Heros are alive today. Heros have died and are dying for us. Yet if another accident, natural disaster or act of terrorism occurred tomorrow our heros would be there for us.

Who needs a mythical superhero?

Og

PS. Throughout this post "hero" covers people of both sexes.

 

[Angeline]

This is a wonderful thread, Perdita--really made me smile at the memories that come from seeing the names. Here are some for me:


A few more from Shakespeare--Paulina (Winter's Tale), Portia (Merchant), Miranda (Tempest)

Mademoiselle Reisz in Kate Chopin's The Awakening
Denver (Sethe's youngest daughter) in Toni Morrison's Beloved
David Malter in Chaim Potok's The Chosen; Asher Lev
Celie in Alice Walker's The Color Purple
Nora in Ibsen's A Doll's House
Jo March in Alcott's Little Women
Anne Elliot in Jane Austen's Persuasion
Maggie Tulliver in George Elliot's Mill on the Floss
Daisy Buchanan in Fitzgerald's Great Gatsby
Janie Mae Crawford in Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God
Judith Shakespeare in Woolf's A Room of One's Own (tragic, but I love her)
Orlando with that cool gender change mid-novel
Lots of Dickens characters--Joe Gargery in Great Expectations, Esther Summerson in Bleak House, Newman Noggs and Smike--even Nicholas himself in Nicholas Nickleby
Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird
Augustus McCrae in McMurtry's Lonesome Dove
Owen Meany and Jenny Garp in Irving's novels

plus many of the real folk mentioned here and a few others

William Butler Yeats
Forugh Farrokzhad
Pablo Neruda
Anne Frank
Ralph Ellison
Lester Young
Raoul Wallenberg
Madeleine L'Engle
Dorothy Parker
Duke Ellington

Ok, I'm getting carried away--the thread is just too good. Thanks.

Ange

 

[Guest]

Angeline, these amici of yours struck a special chord in me: Paulina, Mademoiselle Reisz, Nora, Anne Elliot, Daisy Buchanan, Judith Shakespeare, Smike.

Re. characters who are not main protagonists, I love that my old prof. said, "There are no minor characters in Shakespeare."

cheers, Perdita

 

[Angeline]

Angeline, these amici of yours struck a special chord in me: Paulina, Mademoiselle Reisz, Nora, Anne Elliot, Daisy Buchanan, Judith Shakespeare, Smike.

Re. characters who are not main protagonists, I love that my old prof. said, "There are no minor characters in Shakespeare."

cheers, Perdita

Yes, I wondered at first because some of the characters on my list are secondary, but the way you put the question is great--what matters is how a character affects the reader.

BTW, have you ever seen the video of the RSC production of The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby? They used to run it on PBS and you can buy it on VHS (probably DVD now, too). It is magical. David Threlfall, the actor who plays Smike gives a beautiful performance. The death scene (you know where he repeats the his line as the Apothocary in Romeo and Juliet--"Who calls so loud?") is so good it makes me weep. Well worth the (gulp) 9 hours if you loved the novel.

And many of your choices resonated with me, too (loved the Snow White pick).

not blond either,
Ange

 

[Guest]

 

[MathGirl]

Malama Kanakoa
Abner Hale
John Whipple

Don't forget Hale Hoxworth, Whipple Hale, Whipple Hoxworth, and Hoxworth Whipple.
MG
Ps. Oh, Hale Whipple, too.
Pps. Whipple Hale, also. Oops, already mentioned him. I know I'm forgetting someone, though.
Ppps. Hoopoe