How To Be A Heroine

How To Be A Heroine

Or, what I’ve learned from reading too much

Summary

Cathy Earnshaw or Jane Eyre?
Petrova or Posy?
Scarlett or Melanie?
Lace or Valley of the Dolls?

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. She was all for wild, passionate Cathy; but her friend found Cathy silly, a snob, while courageous Jane makes her own way.

And that’s when Samantha realised that all her life she’d been trying to be Cathy when she should have been trying to be Jane.

So she decided to look again at her heroines – the girls, women, books that had shaped her ideas of the world and how to live. Some of them stood up to the scrutiny (she will always love Lizzy Bennet); some of them most decidedly did not (turns out Katy Carr from What Katy Did isn’t a carefree rebel, she’s a drip). There were revelations (the real heroine of Gone with the Wind? It's Melanie), joyous reunions (Anne of Green Gables), poignant memories (Sylvia Plath) and tearful goodbyes (Lucy Honeychurch). And then there was Jilly Cooper...

How To Be A Heroine is Samantha’s funny, touching, inspiring exploration of the role of heroines, and our favourite books, in all our lives – and how they change over time, for better or worse, just as we do.

Reviews

  • Any woman with a remotely bookish childhood will find great pleasure in How to be a Heroine... like Ellis, I find it reassuring that Lizzy Bennet can admit that she was wrong about Darcy, have used Scarlett's indomitable mantra in times of adversity, and have every sympathy with the women who keep their bank accounts separate as in Lace
    Daisy Goodwin, Sunday Times

About the author

Samantha Ellis

Samantha Ellis is a playwright and journalist. Her first book How to be a Heroine was published in 2014. Her plays include Cling to me Like Ivy, Operation Magic Carpet and How to Date a Feminist. She has written for the Guardian, Observer, TLS, Spectator, Literary Review, The Pool, Exeunt and more. She lives in London.
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