There’s an important experience that straight women and gay women have in common — and no, I don’t mean lusting after Angelina Jolie. Falling in love with literary heroines seems to me like something that transcends sexuality, mostly because it isn’t really about sex. The best literary heroines are a mixture of what you can identify with — what you’ve felt and experienced — and what you’d like to be. They are usually smart, strong and not the most beautiful girls in the room; yet somehow they have a charm that puts the most beautiful girls in the shade. Sometimes they don’t even have that outward charm, but because of the internal focus of novels, the reader can still see, and love, their integrity and wit.

Growing up, I liked reading about Jo March in Little Women and Laura Ingalls Wilder in the Little House books. I loved Sara Crewe from A Little Princess and Matilda from the Roald Dahl story. There was Emily Byrd Starr from Anne of Green Gables author L. M. Montgomery’s lesser-known Emily books, and the strange, moody Fuchsia Groan from Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast trilogy. There was shy, secretive, angry Beth Ellen from lesbian Harriet the Spy author Louise Fitzhugh’s The Long Secret.

Here are my 5 favorite literary heroines as a grownup:

1. Elizabeth Bennet from Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice (1813)

Jane Austen wrote of her Lizzy that “I must confess that I think her as delightful a creature as ever appeared in print,” and she will hear no disagreement from me. As well as reading the book, I’ve also watched three “lively and determined” Elizabeths play out the drama on screen: Greer Garson in 1940, Jennifer Ehle in 1995, and Keira Knightley in 2005.

While I like Keira Knightley, I have to say that her performance was lacking something crucial that the two others conveyed to me: Elizabeth’s maturity, her full understanding even at a young age of how degrading it would be to have an unequal marriage like her parents’. Over the course of the book, Elizabeth discovers that her strong moral judgments are not always right: She is mistaken about Mr. Wickham, mistaken about Mr. Darcy. But she still has an intelligence and strength of character that sets her apart from all other heroines for me — and I can never get enough of her telling off Lady Catherine. … continue reading