Heroine

“ It is bewildering to think of the many crowns and coronets that might have rested on the brow of the dramatic heroine, a heroine who appears and disappears in clouds of dust, with regiments of cavalry wheeling and whirling around her to the sound of the trumpets—the stern devotee of reason who dismissed one of her maids because she married for love—the philosopher who debated in her mimic court whether an accepted lover is more unhappy than a rejected lover in the absence of the beloved.... ”

“ The heroine glowed like a precious stone in each act, now sapphire, now pearl, now ruby. She spoke in a thick, throaty murmur and her white shoulders shone like silver, and her wide childish eyes were like wells of light-diffusing liquid. ”

“ The history of our heroine is a striking exemplification of the truth of this remark: when all was darkness without, she had been looked upon by the compassionate as an object of pity, for they could not see the sunshine of the breast; and now that she was considered as the chief favourite of the fickle goddess, there was not one that would have envied her, if the internal conflict she suffered—if that most unpleasant of all feelings, disagreement with herself, had been as visible, as her external fortunes were. ”

“ The new-fashioned heroine is a libel on her sex. As a husband and a father, I solemnly deny that she is in any single respect a natural woman. Am I no judge? I have a wife, and I made her an offer. Did she receive it as the Man-Haters receive offers? Can I ever forget the mixture of modest confusion and perfect politeness with which that admirable woman heard me utter the most absolute nonsense that ever issued from my lips? Perhaps she is not fit for a heroine. ”

“ Why dally with the human race when seals are living such a lurid life? Here is a brand-new field: The heroine a soft-eyed female with a hide like velvet; the hero a dashing, splashing male. Sweet communions on the rocks at sunset, and long swims side by side. ”

“ Our little heroine was mortal, with all her divinity, and had an imagination which sometimes wandered to the things of earth; and this glorious hero in lace and embroidery, who blended rank, gallantry, spirit, knowledge of the world, disinterestedness, constancy, and piety, sometimes walked before her, while she sat spinning at her wheel, till she sighed, she hardly knew why, that no such men walked the earth now. ”

“ It is the heroine, the mother spirit of the woodland world, handsome, richly robed, symmetrical, graceful, sensitive, and steadfast. She, more than any other tree, appeals to the eye and the heart. In her upcurving arms and entire expression there is a yearning. ”

“ I can hardly, however, imagine that this heroine really interests you—a heroine whose thoughts and reasonings are those of a woman who has plunged into the whirlpool of earthly pleasures, and from satiety learned to despise them. ”

“ The heroine, for instance, glides into life full-charged with rank, virtues, a name three-syllabled, and a white dress that never needs washing, ready to sail through dangers dire into a triumphant haven of matrimony;—all the aristocrats have high foreheads and cold blue eyes; all the peasants are old women, miraculously grateful, in neat check aprons, or sullen-browed insurgents planning revolts in caves. ”

“ In English novels, with their insipid sweetness that always reminds me of the smell of frost-bitten potatoes, the heroine sometimes permits herself the luxury of being blind, lame, or disfigured by smallpox. The hero adores her just the same. How false to life! ”

“ Now my ambition is to be a Heroine, and how can I hope to succeed in my vocation, unless I, too, suffer privations and inconveniences? Besides, have I not far greater merit in getting a husband by sentiment, adventure, and melancholy, than by dressing, gadding, dancing, and singing? For heroines are just as much on the alert to get husbands, as other young ladies; and to say the truth, I would never voluntarily subject myself to misfortunes, were I not certain that matrimony would be the last of them. But even misery itself has its consolations and advantages. ”

“ How strange—how nice—for all the world like a story-book—really in love—a romance in three volumes carrying on in the cottage, and she, Madge, a character in it—a sharer in the plot—an important person in the novel—the sister of the heroine—it was almost as good as being the heroine herself. ”

“ But this is the story of a man, and naturally it must have many heroines. For you know men—they are all alike! First, Mrs. Mary Barclay was a heroine—you saw her face, strong and clean and sharply chiselled with a great purpose; then Miss Lucy—black-eyed, red-cheeked, slender little Miss Lucy—was a heroine, but she married General Ward; and then Ellen Culpepper was a heroine, but she fluttered out of the book into the sunlight, and was gone; and then came Jane Mason,—and you have seen her girlish beauty, and you will see it develop into gentle womanhood ”

“ And dukes, and guardsmen, and being very beautiful and deliciously miserable, till just before the end—that's a romance! My milliner used to have it read out to her while she was dressing me for that ball I told you about.'
'Do you mind telling me what a heroine is?' he asked. 'I know I'm very stupid.'
'A heroine? oh, any doll can be a heroine. I felt all the time the heroines were all just like me. ”

“ This is a Tendenz-Roman, written, as he said, 'for the first time in my life wholly and solely to satisfy my own taste and my own conscience.' The heroine is a woman with all the virtues who, out of regard to the dignity of her sex, refuses to submit to the legal tie of marriage. The disastrous consequences of such a scheme of life are developed by the author with remorseless precision. ”

“ Life to her was a series of situations in which she invariably figured as the heroine—a heroine who was always charming and graceful, with feeling enough to be interesting but not enough to be tiresome. ”

“ What more shall I say of my heroine? That sweet and generous soul, ripening by degrees, slow and credulous, not embittered by the petty pains of life, faithful and tender and vibrating to many tones, is no uncommon type. ”

“ Her eyes and her wit are both dazzling; her nose and her morals are alike free from any tendency to irregularity; she has a superb contralto and a superb intellect; she is perfectly well dressed and perfectly religious; she dances like a sylph, and reads the Bible in the original tongues. Or it may be that the heroine is not an heiress—that rank and wealth are the only things in which she is deficient ”

“ But it is a mixture of all these—a composite order of feminine fatuity—that produces the largest class of such novels, which we shall distinguish as the mind-and-millinery species. The heroine is usually an heiress, probably a peeress in her own right, with perhaps a vicious baronet, an amiable duke, and an irresistible younger son of a marquis as lovers in the foreground, a clergyman and a poet sighing for her in the middle distance, and a crowd of undefined adorers dimly indicated beyond. ”

“ I was very well pleased to see so great a Crowd of them assembled at a Play, wherein the Heroine, as the Phrase is, is so just a Picture of the Vanity of the Sex in tormenting their Admirers. The Lady who pines for the Man whom she treats with so much Impertinence and Inconstancy, is drawn with much Art and Humour. ”

“ In order to accentuate the primitive and yet highly civilized nature of the life I chose my heroine from a race and condition more unsettled and more primitive than that of Lebanon or Manitou at any time. I chose a heroine from the gipsy race, and to heighten the picture of the primitive life from which she had come I made her a convert to the settled life of civilization. ”

“ I bring back my heroine to her home in solitude and disgrace, and no sweet elation of spirits can lead me into minuteness. A heroine in a hack post-chaise is such a blow upon sentiment as no attempt at grandeur or pathos can withstand. ”

“ The heroine, a brown, lanky child of fourteen, dissatisfied with her world, develops into a most attractive young woman, the joy of her father, the relief of her invalid mother, and the confidante and help of her numerous brothers and sisters. There is much wholesome fun, there is trouble, incident, and, above all, real human nature. ”

“ The knowledge does not raise within her breast—as of course it should do—feelings of virtuous indignation: indeed, I regret to say that my heroine feels nothing but a deep and earnest pity, that betrays itself in her expressive face. ”

“ Thus, then, for a time shall we leave our heroine, whose fortunes, like the gentle flowing course of a glistening river, we have hitherto so undeviatingly pursued; whilst we turn aside, not willingly, to trace through their darker, wilder mazes, the fate and fortunes of those two beings, whom an inscrutable Providence had ordained should hold such important influence over her destiny. ”

“ You take a pride in humbling him before your pretensions; and the title of being the sister of a hero is, with you, reason for believing yourself a heroine. Believe me, my sister, that character, with the qualities which it supposes, becomes us not. ”

“ Before matters arrive at this desirable issue our feelings are tried by seeing the noble, lovely, and gifted heroine pass through many mauvais moments, but we have the satisfaction of knowing that her sorrows are wept into embroidered pocket-handkerchiefs, that her fainting form reclines on the very best upholstery, and that whatever vicissitudes she may undergo, from being dashed out of her carriage to having her head shaved in a fever, she comes out of them all with a complexion more blooming and locks more redundant than ever. ”

“ I want to introduce you to Jay, a 'bus-conductor and an idealist. She is not the heroine, but the most constantly apparent woman in this book. I cannot introduce you to a heroine because I have never met one. ”

“ In the same way, what is called wantonness in a little minx with a flat face, is called only susceptibility in a heroine with an oval one. We weep at the letters of Heloise; but were they written by an alderman's fat wife, we should laugh at them. The heroine may permit an amorous arm round her waist, fly in the face of her parents, and make assignations in dark groves, yet still be described as the most prudent of human creatures; but the mere Miss has no business to attempt any mode of conduct beyond modesty, decorum, and filial obedience. ”

“ It seemed to her that in a case of this description it was her duty to be a heroine. In all the stories she had read when at boarding-school in Pennsylvania, the girl characters, confronted with such difficulties, invariably did hair-breadth things. True, they were usually bent upon rescuing and recovering their lovers, and neither the calm man in grey, nor any of the three in the feed-box, was lover of hers, but then a real heroine would not pause over this minor question. Plainly a heroine would take measures to rescue the four men. ”

“ Our intention, in short, is to introduce our heroine with the utmost solemnity in our power, with an elevation of stile, and all other circumstances proper to raise the veneration of our reader.—Indeed we would, for certain causes, advise those of our male readers who have any hearts, to read no farther, were we not well assured, that how amiable soever the picture of our heroine will appear, as it is really a copy from nature, many of our fair countrywomen will be found worthy to satisfy any passion, and to answer any idea of female perfection which our pencil will be able to raise. ”

“ Hitherto she has been buoyed up by the sublime enthusiasm which inspires the martyr; but now that the sacrifice has been consummated, what wonder if the nerves so tightly strung give way, if for a moment nature reasserts herself, and the heroine becomes the woman? ”

“ Heroine and her Father never above a fortnight together in one place, he being driven from his Curacy by the vile arts of some totally unprincipled and heart-less young Man, desperately in love with the Heroine, and pursuing her with unrelenting passion. ”

“ In a brittle and sarcastic novel of a brittle and sarcastic woman, the heroine, a capable businesswoman, alternately repulses and warms toward her adoring secretary—though she secretly scorns the girl’s devotion, she feels it would be a nuisance to break in a new secretary, so wishes to keep her captivated. ”

“ We will take a look at our heroine, as she sits lazily rocking, the sunshine touching her hair. She is of medium height, with black hair and eyes and a winning smile that makes friends for her everywhere. ”

“ We have shown how in all the ages since the landing, woman has proved her title to the possession of the manly virtues. We have shown her as a heroine, battling with the hostile powers of man and nature, and yet, even in those cases, if we were to analyze the motives which prompted her heroic acts, we should find them to spring at last from the source of power whereof we are speaking. It is out of her abounding and forceful emotional nature that she becomes a heroine. ”

“ Let me mention, to begin with, that we wish no change to be made in our respectable, recognised, old-fashioned Heroine, who has lived and loved and wept for centuries. I have taken her to my bosom thousands of times already, and ask nothing better than to indulge in that tender luxury thousands of times again. ”