Literature meme
Via oursin:
1. Comment on this post and ask for a letter.
2. I will give you one.
3. Think of 5 fictional characters whose names begin with that letter, and post their names and your comments on these characters in your LJ.
She gave me the letter 'E':
Esther, from the Book of Esther. This is one of my favorite books of the Bible, perhaps my top favorite. And it has only 10 chapters - bonus! OK, the heroine does start off by winning a beauty contest, but then she goes on to rescue a whole nation. Nail-biting stuff.
Electra. She came from a dysfunctional family.
Enide, the heroine of Chretien de Troyes' 12th-century romance Erec et Enide. She starts off as a kind of Cinderella figure, dressed in rags and rescued by a charming prince, but unlike most medieval romances, this one goes on to relate the problems that the couple face after marriage. At one point Erec has the brilliant idea of making Enide ride around behind him on his adventures, with the all-important caveat that in no circumstances on the trip is she allowed to talk. He then keeps falling into mortal danger, and she has to decide what to do: obey her husband and be silent? or speak and save his life? She speaks, his life is saved, he is predictably ungrateful, wash, rinse, repeat, until finally it dawns on him that he's being a prick.
Emma from Madame Bovary. Because she wants something more fulfilling than what she has, even if she never finds out what that something is.
Eva. The mother in William Boyd's excellent novel Restless. Are you a language teacher living in North Oxford, and do you find your mum hard to talk to? Well, that would be because she is actually RUSSIAN! And a former WWII spy who is still being hounded by her dark past!
A tie between Elizabeth Ann in Understood Betsy and Evangeline Knapp in The Home-Maker, two under-read books by Dorothy Canfield Fisher. Elizabeth Ann escapes her adoring but neurotic mother and learns to stand on her own two feet. Emmeline and her husband are wretchedly unhappy until they switch career roles. I owned both these books as a child (they were library book sale acquisitions) and read them again and again.
That makes six. I can't count.
1. Comment on this post and ask for a letter.
2. I will give you one.
3. Think of 5 fictional characters whose names begin with that letter, and post their names and your comments on these characters in your LJ.
She gave me the letter 'E':
Esther, from the Book of Esther. This is one of my favorite books of the Bible, perhaps my top favorite. And it has only 10 chapters - bonus! OK, the heroine does start off by winning a beauty contest, but then she goes on to rescue a whole nation. Nail-biting stuff.
Electra. She came from a dysfunctional family.
Enide, the heroine of Chretien de Troyes' 12th-century romance Erec et Enide. She starts off as a kind of Cinderella figure, dressed in rags and rescued by a charming prince, but unlike most medieval romances, this one goes on to relate the problems that the couple face after marriage. At one point Erec has the brilliant idea of making Enide ride around behind him on his adventures, with the all-important caveat that in no circumstances on the trip is she allowed to talk. He then keeps falling into mortal danger, and she has to decide what to do: obey her husband and be silent? or speak and save his life? She speaks, his life is saved, he is predictably ungrateful, wash, rinse, repeat, until finally it dawns on him that he's being a prick.
Emma from Madame Bovary. Because she wants something more fulfilling than what she has, even if she never finds out what that something is.
Eva. The mother in William Boyd's excellent novel Restless. Are you a language teacher living in North Oxford, and do you find your mum hard to talk to? Well, that would be because she is actually RUSSIAN! And a former WWII spy who is still being hounded by her dark past!
A tie between Elizabeth Ann in Understood Betsy and Evangeline Knapp in The Home-Maker, two under-read books by Dorothy Canfield Fisher. Elizabeth Ann escapes her adoring but neurotic mother and learns to stand on her own two feet. Emmeline and her husband are wretchedly unhappy until they switch career roles. I owned both these books as a child (they were library book sale acquisitions) and read them again and again.
That makes six. I can't count.