A woman thing

Some of my favourite heroines are from days long gone, but their attitudes and beliefs are so incredibly today that you almost expect them to be standing on the front mat when the doorbell rings. Which could be the reason that I prefer books with a strong and sassy women as lead player, be she a lover, a fighter, a doer or a detective.

One such that my mother introduced me to is Flora Poste, star of Stella Gibbons’ Cold Comfort Farm. In spite of the mud, in spite of Big Business the bull, in spite of the Starkadders and, most of all, in spite of the lack of baths, Flora is undaunted. She goes about the process of managing her relatives’ lives with ruthless efficiency, marshalling them into marriage, new careers, psychotherapy and much affection for her, even with her meddling and domineering ways. All using only her admittedly devious mind, her organisational strategies and her infinite and self-admired charm. And, at the end of it all, she was quite willing and ready to sit back and let her man take her home…with her conniving it all, of course. She was perhaps the first heroine of a book that I ‘met’ that had chutzpah – in fact, she probably embodied the word for me.

It took a long time for anyone else who lived between pages to match Flore Poste. Most heroines of novels today, even the most liberated and feisty, tend to wilt rather when they finally meet the man of their (pah!) ‘dreams’. Like Barbara Cartland’s girls, they swoon, at least mentally and emotionally, and become doormats who would do almost anything for a hormone fix. If they wouldn’t, then they moped and whined when they had to cope alone or, at the very least, without the man who made them tingle.

Perhaps Christine Vole from Agatha Christie’s Witness for the Prosecution came close. She didn’t whine and whinge, she did not wait for things to happen, but made them happen, and she certainly did not expect the men in her life, whether her husband or Sir Wilfred Robarts, the lawyer defending him, to do much for her. She was magnificent in Christie’s words, and as regal and contemptuous in the unforgettable role by Marlene Dietrich. While Rebecca (Daphne du Maurier’s heroine) was cold, calculating and self-serving, Christine had a class that transcended all notions of women with power. For me, at least.

Also an Agatha Christie creation, Miss Jane Marple embodied all that is strong and resilient in women. While physically getting frailer as she gets older (naturally), she used her old-lady charm, her amazing mind and her observations of the world around her to make sure that criminals got what they deserved. And she did it with much dignity and old-world sobriety, making her methods and her manner not just believable, but likeable, too.

There are so many women in fiction who can be considered Flora Poste-ish. But they exist today and tend to be macho rather than feminine, scheming rather than gently conniving and blatant rather than just certain of what they want and how they will get it. I have not yet given up looking. Maybe that’s why I buy so many books!