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chance to win!
Historically, heroines have been eye candy. In 1740 Samuel
Richardson set the bar low in his novel Pamela or Virtue Rewarded. The fifteen
year old heroine is kidnapped and imprisoned by the so called hero. He attempts
to seduce and rape her. Okay, we know he’s a low life, but poor Pamela fell in
love with him. Maybe she was a masochist or something. Not my kind of
heroine.
Fifty years later and women were still victims. In Mysteries of
Udolpho, Emily suffers for love—but she doesn’t escape her terrible situation
until her secret admirer helps her. By then her true love has lost all his
money—and he failed to rescue her. Obviously he hasn’t read the Hero
Manual. Finally this much put on woman develops a backbone, and takes
control of her own finances. A glimmer of hope for heroine, maybe.
Almost twenty years later, a lively, likeable woman reared
her head and took the world by storm. Thank goodness for Elizabeth Bennet and
Jane Austin. Heroines had just moved up a gear.
Then the movies stepped in, and things went downhill fast. Pearl
White starred in the Perils of Pauline, and gosh, did that woman suffer.
(Through twenty cliff hanger episodes to be exact.) Her evil
guardian, Mr. Koerner, must have been the inspiration for Dick Dastardly
in Wacky Races – although I always preferred Mutley myself.
