I’m going to ask you an almost impossible question. You’re washed up on a desert island. You wake uninjured on a lonely but beautiful beach, alongside a suitcase. There are no dangers to worry about, no predators peering out at you from the trees fringing the sand, plenty of fruit clustered in the trees to keep your stomach full, and, drawn by its babbling, you find a stream of pure, clear water.
All you need is a toothbrush, a change of underwear… and something to read, right? So you return to the mysterious suitcase, hoping the contents might satisfy at least one of the above. Clearing the seaweed and sand from the outside, you notice the lettering tooled into the leather:
Your Top Five Romance Heroines.
Which books are inside? I guess for me that’s the almost impossible part, limiting it to just five. But if I had to choose, maybe I’d go for these…
- Jane Eyre. I estimate I read Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre for the first time when I was around eleven, twelve. She is and will always be “the” heroine for me. Small, obscure, plain and little Jane calls herself. To me she is brave, self-contained, passionate, strong, independent, loving, principled, deep. Jane lives and breathes.
- Anne Eliot. Of all the Jane Austen heroines I could have chosen, I’ve chosen Anne from Persuasion because there is a poignancy and a psychological realism present for me, in her situation. Elizabeth Bennett is wonderful, but there’s something profoundly touching for me in the passages where Anne experiences being passed over for the Musgroves, where she plays the piano so they can dance, her downtrodden sense of regret for allowing herself to be persuaded against her heart. I always wonder whether Jane Austen herself wasn’t writing from the heart.
- Sophy Stanton-Lacy. Georgette Heyer’s The Grand Sophy is a delight, a romp, a delicate house of cards with Sophy standing at the centre, bringing everything to fulfilment and ensuring everyone gets their HEA, herself included.
- Lady Georgina Maitland. Elizabeth Hoyt was my way back into Romance reading as an adult, and Lady Georgina in The Leopard Prince remains a favourite. Funny, brave, and true hearted. Lovely.
- Sara Lin. Quiet, complex, determined. Sara in Laura Florand’s The Chocolate Temptation is the perfect foil to her hero Patrick Chevalier. Come back, Laura, we miss you!
So what made me choose these five, out of all the many wonderful heroines I’ve read about and loved? I guess above all, it’s the way they stand as complete individuals, characters who, to me, are recognisable as rounded, authentic individuals. The sort of characters who I feel like I know them, who I can play this game with… when something happens in real life, and I ask myself “What would Jane or Anne or Sophy or Georgina or Sara do in this situation?” and I’ve got a pretty good idea.
And then, knowing these women the way I do, it makes it all the more satisfying when they meet their hero and find their HEA together.
Who would you choose? I’d love to know.