Why am I re-blogging this?
I was a plain female protagonist in my own early life and I searched for plain woman heroes who were at the centre of things. Jo March in Little Women, Jane Eyre.
They still got the man, which seemed to be the prize to aspire to, albeit not the MAIN man.
But a blind Rochester was better than no Rochester, apparently. And Jo seemed happy with the old professor bloke, not Laurie. (Ah, but why not Laurie? WHY NOT LAURIE?)
In playground games I wanted to be Sabrina in Charlie’s Angels – she was clever but not ‘hot’. It was a binary decision in the 1970s.
I remember thinking I had to choose ‘clever’ over ‘pretty’. Which turned out to be just as well.
Anyway, pleased to read this article, which reminded me of all that.
Not long ago, I re-read Milan Kundera’s 1984 novel, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, which is about the lives of a priapic surgeon named Tomas and …
Whither the Plain Female Protagonist? On “Great Beauty” in Literature
Just waving 
Yes! Jane Austen in particular ‘gets it’. I was thinking of Fanny Price from Mansfield Park. And yes, P&P too – although Lizzie Bennet has the sparkling eyes and sparkling wit, the reader is left in no doubt at all that it is Jane who is the beauty.
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Pippi Longstocking. Anne of Green Gables. Oh, especially Anne. Although she grew up pretty, which was a disappointment.
I remember being very concerned as to what high cheekbones looked like, and did I have them, because if I did it seemed as if I would be sorted. I knew I didn’t have rosebud lips. I suspect my mum’s choice of library books (which I read after her) has a lot to answer for …
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Thanks for sharing this, Jackie, and I could relate to the strange choice between pretty and clever as a teen. Is the desire to be beautiful and catch a man hormonal, a primitive survival instinct that persists? I think it might be, but wow does our cultural media ever reinforce that slant. Here’s to being clever, resourceful, independent, and self-confident. 🙂
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It’s a while since I’ve had that many hormones, but boy the urge was strong. Though I do remember being disappointed in men who ‘fell’ for the whole beauty thing, when the woman they were pursuing didn’t seem interesting in any other way.
Sour grapes maybe?
After all, their hormones must all have been pumping too. 😂
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🙂
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