Last Friday, I posted a video on how to write a helpless heroine that readers will love. After all, I think we can all think of an example or two in which a powerless female has grated on readers’ (or viewers’) nerves. But no character is strong in every situation. There are always times or situations that highlight our areas of weakness as humans. In that video we talked about types of powerlessness that readers will accept. And one that almost never works. If you’d like to check out that video, you can find it here.
In keeping with that theme, I thought we’d build on that idea and take a look at some helpless female characters that have been very popular and how these woman have managed to rise above their powerless situations.
The first is the titular character in Jane Eyre. Jane is interesting in that it’s easy to forget how powerless she really is. She grows up in a home with a family that doesn’t claim her as their own other than as a distant nuisance. Later, she attends a boarding school where the students live in a virtual state of abject poverty – with no heating, little or poor food, and almost no affection. Then she moves on to a great house in which she is the governess, working for a man who seems cold and aloof, but for whom she develops a great fondness. But even there, she is nothing but a servant, dependent on her master’s benevolence. And then, when she discovers the secrets that he has tried so hard to hide, the only response she can live with leaves her homeless. Until she is taken in by the charity of others…
It isn’t until the end of the book that Jane has any means of her own, or any independent say over her life. And yet, it’s easy to overlook that fact.
It’s not that we don’t see her hard circumstances and her powerlessness amidst them. It’s that Jane’s strength as a person overshadows her weakness in any of these situations. How did Charlotte Bronte accomplish this?
Through Jane’s responses. As a child she is willful and difficult and it’s not that we don’t see that or that we necessarily condone it, but we can hardly blame her in light of her difficulties. We see her defend herself physically against her cousin John and verbally to her aunt, Mrs. Reed. At the Lowood Institution, Jane speaks vehemently to her friend Helen, telling her that she would not accept the sort of public humiliation that Helen suffers for her inappropriate grooming. At Thornfield Hall, Jane holds her own and speaks her mind to Mr. Rochester on more than one occasion. She doesn’t faint or withdraw in the midst of the fire that nearly takes his life. And with her cousin, St. John Rivers, Jane repeatedly refuses to marry him, shunning a loveless marriage.
On the outside, until the very end, she’s powerless. But on the inside, Jane is strong.
Our second example is a very different character: the second Mrs. de Winter in Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier. She’s a wilting flower in so many respects. She is controlled by Mrs. Van Hopper, for whom she works as a companion. Later, she is cowed by the head servant at Manderley, Mrs. Danvers, up until very late in the book. She’s fearful of everyone and everything in Maxim’s world at Manderley – everything except perhaps Frank Crowley and the dog, Jasper. And yet readers love this character. They root for her. Why?
Again, it comes down to how she responds to her circumstances. When Mrs. Van Hopper falls ill, the future Mrs. de Winter abandons the tennis lessons her benefactor has arranged for her and instead uses the time to see Maxim de Winter. After she is married, when she and Maxim are out walking and Jasper runs off, she ignores her husband and goes in pursuit of the dog. After the costume party and despite her fear of Rebecca’s memory and the bedroom suite that still houses the ghost of that memory, she makes her way there and faces the shell of the woman whom she has elevated to a god-like status in her mind. And at the trial near the end of the book, when things start to spiral out of control, she feigns a fainting spell in order to shut down the line of inquiry.
Even though this character is a timid, shy woman, du Maurier shows readers that she is consistently trying to face her fears, do what is right by those she loves – Maxim and Jasper, and make her own choices. And increasingly so. From her very naïve start, to her gentle, quiet personality at the end, she grows into a mature, confident woman. But still a shy, introverted one.
A third example, and again, a very different one, is Eleanor Vance in Shirley Jackson’s novel The Haunting of Hill House. After eleven years spent caring for her aged mother, she sets out to find a life of her own. Only to find herself in a house where the ghosts speak to her own demons. Her immaturity emerges in strange social situations such as her desire for more attention even when it means being haunted by the house, or her consistent lies about her lifestyle and background, or her desperate need to be wanted in order to find a place to belong. Readers watch her descend from a low point – one controlled by her family – to a lower point – one in which her mind is arguably coming unhinged. But no one laments her weakness or paints her as an intolerably helpless heroine. Despite the fact that she is certainly helpless. Why?
Because Eleanor – for all her psychological instability and weakness – takes action from beginning to end.
She steals the car she and her sister share in order to travel to Hill House. Once there, she pursues a friendship with Theodora. And then considers whether she should “batter her with rocks” after Theodora gains more [particularly negative] attention from the house’s ghosts than she does. Eleanor goes to Hill House to find a house where she will belong. A house that will claim her, keep her safe and give her the fanciful illusions her mind has conjured. Arguable, a house that will hold her mind together. And when that fails, she progressively retreats into her own mind – a house of her own making. In the end, when the doctor tries to drive her away from Hill House, she commits suicide rather than be left homeless.
These are women plagued by very different types of weakness. They have very different personalities – one willful and sullen, another timid and shy, and the third fanciful and desperate to the point of mental illness – but readers have lauded them as characters who are both interesting and worth rooting for.
Because they try.
Within the bounds of each character’s personality, the writers have given them opportunities to press against their circumstances, to repeatedly test the bars of the cages that life has dealt them. And sometimes they prevail. Either way, we care for them and don’t see them as intolerable or weak because we see their will, their desire to act independently, to make what they can of their situation.
I read an interesting article recently. In it, the writer lamented the fact that female characters are generally characterized as weak or strong, whereas no one thinks to ask if a male character is weak. Her contention is that, in truth all characters are weak in many ways or at various times. I would agree with much of what she wrote.
However, what I would say in addition to that is that when female characters are described as weak, it’s very often the case that the writer has placed the female in a situation in which she shows no will to attempt to alter or optimize her plight. Rather, writers sometimes leave a female character to the side, resigned to wait for help. That’s the type of weakness that makes readers cringe. And it’s a form of weakness that rarely infects male characters. For some reason, writers rarely place a male character in a situation without giving him a plan of action.
Let’s do the same for our female characters. Whether they succeed or not, let’s show them working out their lives in the best ways that they know how. That’s the kind of strength that readers respect.