A memoir structured as a chapter-by-chapter rereading of the literary heroines Ellis grew up idolizing — Cathy Earnshaw, Jane Eyre, Scarlett O'Hara, Lizzy Bennet, Franny Glass, and more — and what they reveal about the life she's actually lived.
Books mentioned in How to Be a Heroine (77)
What Katy Did by Susan Coolidge: “And maybe it had been imprinted even earlier by one of my favourite childhood novels: Susan Coolidge’s What Katy Did.”
Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Nietzsche: “He’d arrived in England with only his oud, cigarettes and a copy of Friedrich Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil.”
Prozac Nation by Elizabeth Wurtzel: “In 1994 came Elizabeth Wurtzel’s Prozac Nation, with the author on the cover, hair tousled, pouting sulkily, fenced in by barbed wire made of pills.”
Sleeping Beauty: “And when, a bit later, I read the story in Grimms’ Fairy Tales, where Sleeping Beauty is asleep for years and years, and the whole palace falls asleep with her, and a forest grows up around them, and it takes a real hero of a prince to hack his way through, I liked”
Grimms' Fairy Tales by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm: “As a girl, I had thought of myself as being, like Catherine Morland in Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey, ‘in training for a heroine’, an activity I thought both important and worthwhile.”
Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen: “And when, a bit later, I read the story in Grimms’ Fairy Tales, where Sleeping Beauty is asleep for years and years, and the whole palace falls asleep with her, and a forest grows up around them, and it takes a real hero of a prince to hack h”
Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys: “I’d got more ammunition against Jane from Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea, her intoxicating 1966 prequel to Jane Eyre.”
A Doll's House by Henrik Ibsen: “Watching Nora in Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, being patronised by her husband, forced to pretend to be a featherbrain and an angel, a lark and a squirrel, while all the time she’d saved his life, I thought nothing was as sat”
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte: “On a pilgrimage to Wuthering Heights, Samantha Ellis found herself arguing with her best friend about which heroine was best: Jane Eyre or Cathy Earnshaw.”
Ballet Shoes by Noel Streatfeild: “But my first and best guide to the theatre was Ballet Shoes, Noel Streatfeild’s 1936 story of the Fossil girls making their way on the stage.”
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott: “It’s the same story with Little Women.”
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen: “So while my friends were reading Judy Blume, Jane Austen felt more relevant to my life, and Pride and Prejudice was my new favourite book.”
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath: “In her novel, The Bell Jar, Plath gave me a heroine who was anything but.”
Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell: “When I first read Gone With The Wind at sixteen, I raided my mum’s sewing box for a tape measure and checked.”
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë: “I wonder if Jane Eyre will pick me up.”
Franny and Zooey by J. D. Salinger: “Emma had given me the slender, perfect novella, Franny and Zooey, when we were fourteen, to fortify me for a field trip to freezing wet Snowdonia (she had wisely chosen not to do geography GCSE).”
Anne of Green Gables by L. M. Montgomery: “Luckily, soon after discovering Sara, I read Anne of Green Gables (1908) and its vivacious heroine Anne Shirley showed me that imagination could do a lot more.”
Just Kids by Patti Smith: “I turn to Patti Smith’s mesmerising memoir Just Kids.”
Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens: “Dickens, in his readings of Oliver Twist, would try to make as many women faint as he could: when I heard that I spent a whole vengeful summer rewriting the book so that girls came out top.”
Little Men by Louisa May Alcott: “And she doesn’t write a word through all of Little Men.”
Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare: “She loves books, especially Romeo and Juliet.”
The Color Purple by Alice Walker: “I brought the same misreading to The Color Purple.”
The Lady of Shalott by Alfred Tennyson: “She nearly drowns herself while reenacting ‘The Lady of Shalott’ in a leaky barge.”
To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf: “I’m seconds away from agreeing to go on a disastrous-sounding blind date when it occurs to me to revisit To the Lighthouse.”
A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett: “The heroine of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s 1905 riches–rags–riches novel A Little Princess is not actually a princess, but her horrid headmistress thinks that because she’s rich she must be as spoilt as a princess (she is not) and the school’s downtrodden scullery maid,”
A Passage to India by E. M. Forster: “After that, he wrote just one more novel (1924’s A Passage to India) and then stopped publishing fiction.”
Ariel by Sylvia Plath: “Famously, in ‘Ariel’ she merges with the horse she’s riding till they become an arrow, the dew and the morning.”
Breaking Dawn by Stephenie Meyer: “Miserably I slog through the last book, the vexing Breaking Dawn, bombarded by pro-abstinence, pro-marriage, anti-abortion messages, and some very reactionary views on men and women.”
Fear of Flying by Erica Jong: “I thought if I had a name as fantastic as Isadora Wing, the heroine of Erica Jong’s 1973 novel Fear of Flying, I could do anything.”
Jamaica Inn by Daphne du Maurier: “She might, in fact, have written Jamaica Inn.”
The Journals of Sylvia Plath by Sylvia Plath: “The Journals are a bit jejune in places (whose diaries aren’t?), but they’re full of Plath’s omnivorous curiosity, her frank sexuality, her hunger for ‘a life of conflict, of balancing childre”
Killing Floor by Lee Child: “I even read a Lee Child novel with a tough title, Killing Floor, as a sort of palate-cleanser, thinking it will be the most male book I’ve ever read.”
Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder: “In the evenings, reading in the rocking chair, it all felt very Little House in the Big Woods, and for all that I was 32, I still held a candle for Laura Ingalls Wilder.”
Rilla of Ingleside by L. M. Montgomery: “She’s barely there in the last novel, Rilla of Ingleside – her lisping, unambitious daughter has become the central heroine, while Anne is referred to, in the narration, as ‘Mrs Blythe’.”
The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger: “As a stroppy teenager I sympathised with her hatred of pseuds and charmers (the same people Holden Caulfield, the anti-hero of Salinger’s novel The Catcher in the Rye, calls phonies).”
The Female Eunuch by Germaine Greer: “I first read The Female Eunuch in the school library, because its cover, with the limp, hollow skin of a female torso hanging off a clothes rail, was too racy for home.”
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte: “Men who write in books by women are usually villains, and Mr Mybug is worse than most because he’s (again!) trying to prove that Branwell wrote all his sisters’ books (even The Tenant of Wildfell Hall).”
The Well of Loneliness by Radclyffe Hall: “Those who had never wanted to marry a man anyway, but didn’t have the confidence to rock a suit, tie, cropped hair and monocle like Radclyffe Hall (whose novel The Well of Loneliness came out in 1928), took the opportunity to quietly move in with their partners.”
Twilight by Stephenie Meyer: “Racing for a train to rehearse a play in Edinburgh, I pick up Rivals, and read it all the way to Scotland.) If I were twelve or thirteen now, I’d be reading the Twilight novels.”
Valley of the Dolls by Jacqueline Susann: “All my ideas about being a young woman at work came from Valley of the Dolls.”
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy: “We had once spent a whole week lying side by side on a beach, both reading War and Peace.”
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? by Edward Albee: “It was a Generation X melodrama, heavily influenced by Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”
Dress Reform by Abba Goold Woolson: “She reads to her sewing circle from the very latest feminist books – I particularly like the sound of Mrs Duffy’s No Sex in Education and Mrs Woolson’s Dress Reform, both of which were real books Alcott was taking the opportunity to champion.”
Anne's House of Dreams by L. M. Montgomery: “In Anne’s House of Dreams, sullen beauty Leslie Moore steals the limelight.”
Anne of Windy Willows by L. M. Montgomery: “ring her something to help her ‘sleep out this great gap of time / My Antony is away.’ Instead I knuckled down to an epistolary relationship modelled closely on Anne and Gilbert’s in Anne of Windy Willows.”
The Bacchae by Euripides: “This time, we read Euripides’ The Bacchae and I got the plum role.”
The Empty Space by Peter Brook: “I stayed up one night to read Brook’s The Empty Space as if it was a thriller; he made theatre seem important, human and alive.”
The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell: “In his storytelling bible, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Joseph Campbell says a hero must cross a border, defeat a dragon and return with treasure that will heal his people.”
Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons: “I’d stashed Stella Gibbons’s 1932 classic Cold Comfort Farm, in my suitcase as a salve for homesickness.”
Fever 103° by Sylvia Plath: “In ‘Fever 103°’ she wrote about ‘My selves dissolving, old whore petticoats’, just like Esther in New York, standing on the roof of her hotel and throwing all her fashionable clothes into the ni”
Holy Sonnets by John Donne: “(When I read the ‘Holy Sonnets’ now, though not insensible to their passion and wonder, I also think how much I’d love to open a Batter My Heart Chip Shop.) So I got it, about the Jesus Prayer.”
The Caged Bird by Emily Brontë: “She painted a watercolour of him, and in her poem, ‘The Caged Bird’, she imagined him longing for ‘Earth’s breezy hills and heaven’s blue sea’.”
The Glass Essay by Anne Carson: “In her dazzling poem, ‘The Glass Essay’, Anne Carson casts them just this way, imagining: .”
The Little Mermaid by Hans Christian Andersen: “As I’m wondering if The Little Mermaid could be rewritten too, I ask my small god-daughter why she likes her so much, and she’s indignant.”
The Minotaur by Ted Hughes: “In his poem ‘The Minotaur’, he describes his savage admiration as Plath smashes up his desk, cheering her on with ‘That’s the stuff you’re keeping out of your poems!’ I wanted to cast off my false self too”
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy: “She’s not tormented like the old adulteresses of fiction – and when Goodlove leaves, she doesn’t throw herself under a train like Anna Karenina or poison herself like Madame Bovary.”
Every Night, Josephine! by Jacqueline Susann: “He’s a press agent, just like Susann’s husband, who made her first book, Every Night, Josephine!, a bestseller, despite the fact that it was an extended love letter to her poodle by a woman famous for wanting to be famous.”
Good Wives by Louisa May Alcott: “But I was confused by the end of Good Wives, where Jo marries a portly, bearded German professor nearly twice her age, and gives up her literary dreams to run a school.”
Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert: “She’s not tormented like the old adulteresses of fiction – and when Goodlove leaves, she doesn’t throw herself under a train like Anna Karenina or poison herself like Madame Bovary.”
Mansfield Park by Jane Austen: “Plus there was the problem of Mansfield Park.”
Mary Poppins by P. L. Travers: “Travers’s unflappable, imperious magical nanny Mary Poppins (first in print in 1934), and Lady Slane, the heroine of Vita Sackville-West’s 1931 novel All Passion Spent, who is ecstatic to finally be single, when she is widowed at 88 after”
Notes on a Scandal by Zoë Heller: “I cringed at bitter Barbara Covett, in Zoë Heller’s fantastic, terrifying Notes on a Scandal, who destroys a young, pretty colleague out of loneliness and jealousy.”
The Taming of the Shrew by William Shakespeare: “Recently I was watching The Taming of the Shrew and when the shrew, Kate, raged across the stage, her father shrugged and threw up his hands as if to say ‘What can I do with such a daughter?’ This was how I felt at sixteen, exc”
Where Angels Fear to Tread by E. M. Forster: “He wrote intrepid heroines who put love first (I also have a soft spot for Lilia, the middle-aged English widow in Where Angels Fear to Tread who rushes headlong into marriage with an Italian hunk), while all the time he was living with his finicky, proper mother and putting love very low on his list.”
Excellent Women by Barbara Pym: “Barbara Pym is often called the patron saint of spinsters, and Excellent Women, her 1952 debut, is hilarious too.”
The Information by Martin Amis: “I edited other people’s writing, not even at a proper publishing house but at a vanity press (allegedly the one that inspired Martin Amis’s The Information).”
Frost in May by Antonia White: “felt connected to heroines who believed in something bigger than themselves: heroines like Nanda Grey, the nine-year-old protagonist of Antonia White’s autobiographical 1933 novel Frost in May, whose complex feelings about faith informed all of mine.”
Marjorie Morningstar by Herman Wouk: “Marjorie Morningstar made me love the theatre.”
Lolly Willowes by Sylvia Townsend Warner: “All single women should have a ‘mental fur coat’; after reading Lolly Willowes, I compiled my own list of small pleasures, like reading a book in a hot bath scented with orange flower water, walks on Hampstead Heath and pistachio baklava.”
A Room with a View by E. M. Forster: “OceanofPDF.com 7 LUCY HONEYCHURCH IT’S EMBARRASSING TO admit how wildly I misread A Room with a View when I was 20.”
A Taste of Honey by Shelagh Delaney: “One afternoon, I was reading about the premiere of A Taste of Honey, a play which shocked audiences in 1958 with its story of a working-class white teen who goes out with a black sailor, gets pregnant and, after he goes away to sea, sets up house”
Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret by Judy Blume: “I should have had a lot in common with Margaret Simon, the sweet heroine of Blume’s 1970 novel, Are You There God?”
Lady Lazarus by Sylvia Plath: “And if it fell apart, I could become Lady Lazarus, the fearsome virago of Plath’s late poem who rises out of ash, with flame-red hair.”
South Riding by Winifred Holtby: “And then there’s Sarah Burton, the heroine of Winifred Holtby’s 1936 novel South Riding.”
The Whicharts by Noel Streatfeild: “But that book was not Ballet Shoes; it was The Whicharts.”
All Passion Spent by Vita Sackville-West: “Travers’s unflappable, imperious magical nanny Mary Poppins (first in print in 1934), and Lady Slane, the heroine of Vita Sackville-West’s 1931 novel All Passion Spent, who is ecstatic to finally be single, when she is widowed at 88 after years of blameless duty as a diplomatic wife.”