Heroine?


Wherein Our Heroine Explains Why She Is An Heroine.
"No one who had ever seen Catherine Morland in her infancy would have supposed her born to be an heroine. Her situation in life, the character of her father and mother, her own person and disposition, were all equally against her..."
- Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey

Several people have had several different takes on each day's "Wherein Our Heroine..." titles. One friend thinks them "Victorian," and (I believe) a bit twee. The ubiquitous Mark sees them every morning and thinks of injectable drugs. My mother enjoys them, savoring them as a hint to what lies beyond before she reads the daily text. Other friends have taken to e-mailing me and referring to me as "Our Heroine," which is rather kind and gratifying.

None of this tells me or anywhere else where this delusional affectation came from, but it was really there from the beginning. It's one of those things that just came straight out of the back of my brain, unannounced and without warning. Pretty soon I was wondering if I could keep thinking up "Wherein Our Heroine" titles. Soon I realized that the writing of the daily essay was the difficult thing and the Whereins mostly take care of themselves.

Heroines are decidedly different critters from Heroes. The use of the word "Heroine" is decidedly old-fashioned, but the term "Hero" is currently bandied about with alarming regularity and inaccuracy. To me, "Heroine" has a kind of sepia-toned, Mack Sennett, tied-to-the-train-tracks, silly sensibility about it. On the other hand, the term "Hero" is still in constant modern usage: lately, it has even been used as a stand-in for the word "victim," which is a tidy but dishonest bit of linguistic sleight-of-hand. As such, I much prefer to see myself as an heroine.

F. Scott Fitzgerald said, "Show me a hero and I will write you a tragedy." Well, I am an heroine and I am not planning on living a tragedy. If anything, I'm living in a post-postmodern comic melodrama. So, if you will excuse me, I'm off to bean a villain with a cream pie.
Posted: Friday - June 18, 2004 at 08:50 AM         | |

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