[...]Placeholder Heroines « All About Romance’s News & Commentary Blog[...]…

I’m the shallow person who reads fictional romance for the romance and finds television entertaining. Sometimes I imagine what it would be like to live in a given time period or what life would be like if I were in the heroine’s place. I’m not sure if these means I imagine myself as the heroine in a romance novel per se but I do completely immerse myself in the book. This makes 45 minutes on the stair master fly by and makes it appear as if I am attentive while day dreaming during a boring meeting.

“Strong, kick-ass” heroines can be as one dimensional as any other female archetype. As far as I’m concerned passive aggression, flattery and guile are underrated and often judged harshly. Speaking of which, I’m not sure the extent the ‘placeholder heroine’ can be analyzed without acknowledging that women tend to judge heroines harshly. As Laura Kinsale mentioned, it is a complex topic and one (in my view) that while enlightening has the potential to be overly intellectual, volatile and lacking in insight if the topic takes a wrong turn.

I too don’t care for placeholder heroines. If a character of either sex and any sort is to grab my attention, I must be able to relate to, but not necessarily identify with, this figure. And that takes some work on the part of the writer. As my creative writing prof once said, “A character should have both complexity and consistency.” I think he meant contradictions that make sense.

Having said that, I must note that when I’m reading or writing fiction (romance and otherwise), I rarely see a protagonist as myself. I see him or her as someone I’d like to be. I’m already pretty familiar with myself. When I’m reading or writing fiction, I’d like to get to know someone more interesting, preferably fascinating.

Also, I’m uncomfortable with the way some—better make that many—romance writers avoid placeholder heroines and endeavor to make a female protagonist more of an individual, someone who will stick in the readers’ minds. They do so by making her more feisty (a word I hate), more combative, more spoiling-for-a-fight. A fight with the hero, of course. In short, they make her obnoxious.

I simply can’t identify with Frances Feisty. Nor do I care to read about her alternately arguing with Arnold Arrogant and making love with him.

If they do nothing but fight each other when they’re not getting it on, it implies that all they have going for each other is sex. What else can it possibly be? There’s no chemistry of the more interesting kinds between them.

What’s more, in real life a man and a woman who can’t stand each other to this degree typically don’t fall in love with each other. Or even fall in lust with each other. If some plot device is keeping these characters together, such as a marriage of convenience or he’s holding her captive, it’s a sheer contrivance on the part of the author.

Real love can’t be forced. To paraphrase a famous quote from John Keats, if love doesn’t come as naturally as the leaves to a tree, it had better not come at all. And if the author insists on turning her heroine into a harpy, it definitely won’t.

So much for the wrong way to make a heroine interesting; what’s the right way? IMHO, the author should put her in a situation that’s at least as interesting as the hero’s. Or more precisely, since the overall situation of the story matters most, the heroine’s part of the overall situation should be at least as interesting as the hero’s.

She doesn’t have to be strong and assertive. Much can be made about a weak, passive woman dealing with the consequences of her weakness and passivity, and (if fitting) overcoming these traits. But there must be something going on in her life, and hers alone, that grabs the reader’s sympathy, or at least allows her to relate to the heroine. In short, it’s not just what she says, or even what she does. It’s who she is.

Did I get a little long-winded? Okay, I got a little long-winded. But this discussion is so fascinating I just had to put in my thoughts.

Keep up the good work!

I love the bitchy flawed heroines and I love the sweet shy heroines as long as they are written consistently and developed well. If the heroine is perfect, beautiful, accomplished etc with no flaw or no room to grow, then I will generally not like the book. As a woman I like to fall in love with the hero through the heroine. In other words, I certainly don’t imagine myself as the heroine because if the story is written correctly you wouldn’t want the hero with anyone but the heroine and vice versa.

Like Wendy, I probably appear to be heroine-centric, and it’s partly true, but mainly because of the issues often raised by interesting female characters. Of course, the appearance of preference is heightened because I tend to show up and disagree when there’s a discussion assuming the hero as the focal point of the genre And that’s connected to one of Lynn’s points:

On a deeper level, the argument that a heroine functions only as placeholder irks me because it does little to support what I really believe, which is that good romance empowers women.

I don’t believe that the genre as a whole necessarily empowers women, or even that the best of the genre necessarily empowers women. (That is, I don’t believe it’s an innate characteristic of the genre.) However, I absolutely agree that it’s a quality that individual books in the genre can have, and in my experience *do* have more often than books I read in other genres. That’s precious to me, and motivates me to argue with the “heroine = placeholder = blank slate = role-playing porn for women” viewpoint.

@Jenn – You’re not alone! I enjoy the more complex heroines too!

@LeeAnn – LOL…at least you’d get to be the most colorful of characters!