I love your reading of Twlight. Very compelling. You’ve captured what appeals (and repels) about Bella & Edward.

I like to say I wouldn’t have put up with some of Edward’s BS, but looking back in my life I am not so sure of that if I’d met him at 17. (BTW I think Edward is exactly what a man who last dated human women in 1918 and has his brain chemistry permanently stuck in late adolescence plus weird vampire powers would be like.)

At any rate…Bella and Edward both have their moments of being toweringly unlikeable, but I do like them–and it’s important to remember that Stephenie Meyer loves Wuthering Heights. Both of them have in common with Heathcliff and Cathy that incredible force of will, and they are going to get their way no matter what. They’re far more likeable and less destructive (I did not like Wuthering Heights), in my opinion. But Bella has a personality and I admire her force of will even when I think she makes horrid decisions.

If you like straight Contemporary, you might try picking up Vision in White, which came out last spring, and is the first in a quartet about wedding planners in Connecticut. The second, Bed of Roses is out now, but I haven’t yet read it.

For Contemporary Supernatural, I would go with either Blue Dahlia, which is the first of a ghost story trilogy set in a nursery (plants, not babies) near Memphis, TN, or Dance Upon the Air (first of a trilogy about witches on a small New England island). Any book you pick up should be able to stand alone as well, so you can skip to other volumes if you prefer. I particularly liked that the second in the nursery ghost story trilogy featured an older (by romance standards, I mean–mid to late 40s) heroine.

I can’t say whether you’ll like any of these, but I definitely feel that Nora Roberts understands something about how to trigger comforting fantasies in a lot of people, and it’s worth exploring a bit of her work just to see how she pulls that off. Plus, like I said before about the women being strong and not blank pages.

I’ve always felt that the point of feminism was that women had more choices. Period. Not that women Had To Kick-Ass or women Had To Pawn Their Boyfriends/Lovers/Significant Others. Today’s culture of condemning women for not being a certain kick-ass type -fierce, ballsy, witty, eccentric – isn’t any different from yesteryear’s culture of condemning women for not being a certain demure type. I’d still have loved Melanie even if she hadn’t been the one to pull that gun. But for a lot of others, that is the moment that redeems her. I’m speaking as someone who has left many theatres going, “What an awesome woman/girl/female alien creature”, only to get to the message boards and see several threads with the varying theme of “Awesome Obscure (Male) Redshirt #37″ (if I’m lucky) and several others with the theme of “Who Else Hated That Mary Sue/Bitch/Whore?” (if I’m not).

In other words, I would have enjoyed the essay more if it had just focused on the things Sarah liked about the female heroines she had read. Intentions are all well and good but fandom really doesn’t need one more item to add to the list of “Why Female Characters Suck.”

@Diana, great explanation. I finally understand what people mean when they talk about “strong female characters.”

I wonder if to some extent, a character appearing to be Blank Page at the beginning of the story might help draw readers in (I feel like this happens in Harry Potter, where Harry starts out as a regular every-kid who happens to have bad things happen to him, but doesn’t show a lot of personality, and then slowly deepens out into a real character). Or should you establish a character’s personality as strongly as you can from the get-go?

That said, had the stories been written from Edward’s POV she might very well have slipped into the BPH role.

While with regards to fiction most things are subjective, I do think that there are heroines out there who do not have inner lives and familial and friend relationships to complicate the course of true love. I agree with Justine that Bella is not a good example of a Blank Page Heroine (Plus, poor Twilight! I’m tired of seeing it bagged on), but when you described her, you described her solely in reference to her boyfriend. Which is very easy to do with lots of books! That’s one of the problems – we’re all really used to seeing men privileged, having what’s going on with them be seen as more important, so we don’t notice things like the heroine’s life being given far less weight than the hero’s when it happens – we’re conditioned to think that’s normal. Which makes it valuable, I think, to step back and say ‘This is something that disturbs me – here are some books with heroines who are chock full of personality and isn’t it awesome’ and have everyone consider the idea, and look for and write heroines with personality. Which can’t be a bad thing!

At the same time, I agree with the article linked to by Johnathan that “love that is self-abnegating, all-consuming, and totally erases any kind of independence looks a lot more like domestic violence than fabulous romance.”

Such mixed messages.

I am still uncomfortable with the realization that Blank Page Heroines is just an acceptable way of hating on a female character that one does not like, as evidenced by some of the comments on this and the other blogs. I still think it’s very subjective, because I honestly have never come across a blank page character. I have come across many characters that I dislike and many flat and unfortunate stereotypes for women and minorities. But BLANK? How is that even possible?

http://www.therejectionist.com/2009/11/todays-book-review.html

N.B. The review does ‘bag’ on a living author’s new novel, so I imagine our hostess would advise to proceed with caution and not to repeat the specific criticism here.

That’s a great distinction. And I’m so glad you brought up Gone With The Wind. I read – devoured, more like – GWTW repeatedly from the time I was about ten. I wasn’t thinking about any of these issues consciously, but I’m sure that even as a young reader, a large part of what held my attention was the vividness and believability of Scarlett and Melanie’s relationship. I’m sure I would have demanded strongly written female characters on my own eventually if I hadn’t stumbled onto them early on, but I also know that that relationship is still incredibly vivid to me (and I haven’t read that book in 25 years). I feel pretty lucky that those were some of the first impressions I had of what female characters could be.

And, yes, there are lots of “arse kicking” heroines who are also BPH because that’s all there is to them. There’s no there there.

The problem is not “strength” or “weakness” but three-dimensionality.

I also agree with Skaldi above who says the word “heroine” is part of the problem.

Characters can be every bit as blank page if they are blankly strong, kick butt kind of girls. There’s are legions of utterly forgettable “kick butt” kind of girls — good with a sword/stake/gun but no discernable personality. The reason Hermione is such a great character is not BECAUSE she’s a powerful witch, it’s because she’s a powerful witch, she’s a stick in the mud when it comes to rules, she’s a total bookworm and utterly unashamed of it, she’s really bossy, she doesn’t fit in with girls her age, and she’s got a cool social justice streak in her. These are all PARTS of Hermione, good, bad, strong, weak, well-rounded.

It’s like that essay on Overhtinking it.
http://www.overthinkingit.com/2008/08/18/why-strong-female-characters-are-bad-for-women/
To paraphrase:
Enough with strong female characters. What you really want are strong characters, female.

And that means sometimes you get scaredy cat female characters. Sometimes you get evil female characters. Sometimes you get bossy ones, stubborn ones, cowardly ones.

Of course, the problem with these Blank Page characters is they aren’t being coded in the text as “hey, this person doesn’t have a strong enough personality to stand up to the overwhelming hero who would like to remold her in the shape of a Stepford Wife!” There is a tacit approval to not having any there there, whether “there” is kick assedness or “i’d like to go run and hide now” ed-ness.

One example (and here I’m going to talk about the movie, because that’s what most people are familiar with) is Scarlet O’Hara and Melanie Wilkes of Gone with the Wind. Now, in the film, Scarlet is an incredibly strong character — literally. She holds Tara together with her bare hands, is incredibly loyal, whips horses and people when necessary, gets s*** done. She is also cruel, selfish, vain, proud… she’s fantastically complex. And she looks down on her sister in law, Melanie, who is a much more proper Southern lady, and is also incredibly kind and generous. But over and over again, you see that Melanie’s strength, though she’s not the kind of person who can do what Scarlet does, has its own beauty. She’s brave in very quiet ways: she refuses to snub the town whore just because it’s the proper thing to do, because she knows the whore saved her husband’s life. When Rhett and other conspire to humiliate Scarlett at Ashley’s party, Melanie trust in her deep personal faith and love for Scarlett and takes her hand. They are quieter moments — the don’t involve a whip and a gun (though Melanie can also kick ass with a gun when the chips are down and Scarlet is about to get raped) but they are very interesting and show that Melanie is a complex individual with ehr own take on things.

I’ll have to go back and read Sarah’s post, too. Thanks, Justine.

I first found out about Crusie because of a series of posts on writing successful sex scenes. (Which I would link to but I can’t find it anymore.) So instead I will leave you with this blog post of Crusie’s:

http://www.jennycrusie.com/for-writers/essays/glee-and-sympathy/