Friday Five: Women in Books

Recently I read How to Be a Heroine, Or, What I've Learned from Reading Too Much by Samantha Ellis, in which the author revisits the books she read as a child and young woman to see if she still admired the same female characters who had a profound effect on her in her youth.

I will return to this book in a later post, but it made me think about my childhood literary heroines, and whether I still feel the same way about them. The answer is yes - does this mean I had great taste back then, or rather, that I've never grown up?

5 Literary Heroines from My Younger Years:

1. George from The Famous Five books by Enid Blyton: George firmly believes her gender shouldn't prevent her from doing what she wants; she tackles 'the great outdoors' with gusto and is unashamedly physical; she is greatly concerned about animal welfare; her personal integrity crosses class boundaries; she is intelligent without being intellectual; she is fiercely loyal towards her friends. Sure, she scowls a lot, but I still wanted to be her (way more than I ever wanted to be Pollyanna). And I wanted her rowing boat. And her island. 
2. Becky Sharp from Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray - I love the novel, and her cheeky, irreverent adaptability. She is a social outsider, who uses cunning and charm to claw her way to respectability, yet never achieves it. She is also radically non-maternal; one of the few female characters who doesn't go all pathetic and uninteresting once she's had a baby. And she had a thoroughly modern moniker, unlike Pamela, Clarissa or Hester.
3. Susan Pevensie in The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis: as the eldest sister, she is compassionate enough to care for her family and brave enough to fight for them and stand up for her beliefs. She has arrows that never miss their target (who wouldn't want those?) but she is the voice of reason and commonsense - often she prefers to take the easy route rather than plunging recklessly into battle - even as a child, I saw the virtue in that. At the end of the series, she doesn't enter Narnia with the others, because she is more interested in 'nylons and lipstick and invitations'. In other words, she discovers sex and and drugs and rock and roll (or real life, if you prefer), and gets to grow up.
4. Jane Eyre, from the eponymous novel by Charlotte Brontë: she's honest, forthright and powerful, acting with dignity and grace even when burning with shame and rejection. And she addresses the reader directly. She may be plain and unrefined, but she has nothing at all to hide
5. Anne Frank - this is sort of cheating because she was a real person, but I first read her diary as though she were a fictional character, and I related to all her family frictions and teenage pretentiousness, even if I (thankfully) have never had to deal with Nazis battering down the door. Her words and ways to live have a power she could never have expected. 

Friday Five: Children's War Literature

The sad obituary from this week is that Nina Bawden has died, aged 87. She was the author of a fantastic number of books, including Family Money and The Ice House, both of which I thought were excellent when I read them many years ago.

She is probably best known, however, for her children's novel, Carrie's War, which focuses on the plight of two young evacuees during the Second World War as they are sent to a rural world that may as well be alien - it's in Wales. We read it at school, as I think did many people my age, and it left a lasting impression. I loved war stories, and the era in which they were set: the children of the Narnia stories were evacuees and The Famous Five were obssessed with secret passages and food because they were living through the post-war rationing years.

Much is made these days of children needing stories with characters they can relate to. I think this is patronising and doesn't credit the power of childhood imagination or their ability to understand something other than their own immediate environment. Children have amazing war stories now: The Book Thief by Makus Zusak; The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas by John Boyne; and Michael Morpurgo's War Horse spring to mind.

I have since read children's books concerning other wars in China, America, Africa, Canada, India, South America, the Balkan states, and what was once Persia, but up until the early 80s, almost all my reading about war was Euro-centric and (with the notable exceptions of Henry Treece and Rosemary Sutcliffe who wrote thrilling historical fiction) concerned WWII. Because I have already mentioned the highly-influential Carrie's War, I am not including it in this list, although it would otherwise be right up there.

5 Children's Book About War (That I Read When I Was a Child):

1. I Am David - Anne Holme
2. Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl - Anne Frank
3. The Silver Sword - Ian Serraillier
4. Goodnight Mr Tom - Michelle Magorian
5. The Eagle of the Ninth - Rosemary Sutcliffe