Plain Bad Heroines Quotes

Eleanor Faderman knew many books. But never before had she read a book that seemed to know her.

I like it so much better when nobody expects anything from me and then I surprise them by delivering anything at all." "That bar’s so low you’re gonna stub your toe on it.

Don’t find yourself regretting this. You’re much too young to haunt your own life.

That version, as with so many of the stories we tell about our history, erased a woman- a plain, bad heroine- in favor of a less messy and more palatable yarn about two feuding brothers from New England.

Too much had happened that night, too much had happened before that night, and so too much climbed into bed with them, sat heavily upon them, and kept them up and thinking, even if they did not say the things they were thinking to each other.

I'd rather we didn´t speak anymore. Let's just wait together in unhappy silence.

I never disclose my real desires or the texture of my soul.

And so every day of my life I am playing a part;

Isn’t that what the swell of a crush is, after all? Recognizing the flush of truth in all the love clichés?

She was a person like this: full of opinion and firm standing, she planted her flag in more topics than you could quite believe she could actually care about.

Death was certain, but it was not imminent.

I am a sad person who does sad things. And I am deadly, deadly tired of my unhappiness.

To Be, Rather Than to Seem,

troubling are the deaths of older people submerged in deep regret.

Alex saw very clearly how dangerous a book like Mary’s could become in the hands of such impressionable girls, such privileged girls: girls who kissed and fondled and laughed as they read each other passages out in the woods; girls whose parents' social standing had taught them that there was nothing at all in the world they could not subjugate, purchase, or ignore; girls who set fires only to watch as others tried, and failed, to put them out.

The possibilities of this life are magnificent," Audrey says.-

My bright smile haunts no one. I shoot no opaque glances from my eyes, which are not like the sea by any means. I have never eaten any viands, and my appetite for what I do eat is most excellent. And my voice has never yet, to my knowledge, been full of tears. No, I am not a heroine.

She was not unhappy. But she was alone. Her parents had once seen so much of the world, they had lived in it. But when they'd taught her about what they'd seen and done, it had not made their child want to seek it out for herself. She was content in this cottage on her own land by the water.

What I find consistently scary is ambiguity, uncertain footing. Is the shadow on my floor my imagination, or a trick of the light, or something else, something malevolent or supernatural? How much am I willing to let myself give in to my fear, to believe?

She couldn't admit to these people (pity or doubt on their faces) that her dreams were bigger than whatever lesser option she knew they were imagining for her. Sometimes she couldn't even admit this to herself. It felt daunting to believe in those dreams.

This was the dangerous thing about coming home and being with family: the collision with her previous self

And the most unbelievable part was that she'd pulled it off. Like, she'd (fooled) convinced a lot of people

Grace O'Connell had a smile she offered so easily, though this fact did not cheapen it.

Well you look the part, anyway," Merritt said. "I'm told that's more than half the battle.

I'm not saying you did it alone, nobody does anything alone. I'm just saying that you did it. You did. Take the credit.

the public expectation that she just was this way was mostly fine with Harper except now she felt that she always had to deliver it no matter what.

She felt like Eric saw her the way she wasn't yet but wanted to be, the way she hoped she'd grow into.

Sometimes she thought that she could almost feel her brain learning new ways to think when she was around him.

she could see a shiny version of her future, without having any clue how to get there.

How about you don’t fight me on this, Merritt? What if, for once, you just let it be easy?” “Not in my nature.” “It could be,” Elaine said. “If only you’d allow it.

That’s history for you, my darlings. When you dig it up, it always carries a whiff of rot.

She was acutely aware of the debts she owed others. She felt, sometimes, like that debt had been carved into her bones.

As she lay there, she worried a thought. It was hard and unwelcome, like a popcorn kernel stuck in her gums, something she could run her tongue over

but not properly dislodge. Not without assistance, anyway. Not without pointy instruments and blood and pulling it out into the light, leaving a wound behind.

This felt a whole lot like phone flirting to Merritt, Readers, but judge as you will (because of course you will).

have lived my nineteen years buried in an environment at utter variance with my natural instincts, where my inner life is never touched, and my sympathies

I am sad. I’m a sad person who does sad things. And I am deadly, deadly tired of my unhappiness.

So many things felt so routinely disappointing to her that it seemed a shame to waste this evening on that mild unhappiness, one that she could admit to herself possibly wasn't deserved.

Answered Prayers Answered is a terrifically stupid title. So, so dumb. You don’t know how to write this book. You don’t even know if you should write this book. Certainly no one else is here for it. It might be wise to accept these as things that meaningfully indicate how unwise this idea is. Do better!

This is a farce,” Alex said. “It’s a farce. That or I never woke up this morning. Maybe I’m still asleep on the train crossing Ohio.” “Aren’t they funny?” Madame Verrett said to her. “They don’t match at all.” “Aren’t what funny?” Alex said. “The things you say aloud,” the Madame said. “Compared to the things you think, I mean.

Clara’s parents, on the other hand, were fourth-generation Americans shaped predominately by the conventions of their gilded social class. A few smart investments—steel and timber did the trick—and they’d watched their inherited wealth grow to numbers so high that even they could scarcely conceive of them. As such, they had a fastidious respect for the orderly following of the rules and systems from which they benefited. It all made them feel quite secure in the correctness of their position within the social order, and security was Clara’s mother’s favorite feeling, outranked only by virtuous womanhood. (She was cousin Charles’s favorite aunt, after all.)

It was, after all, the book, the one that brought her and Flo together, the one that said, printed there on the page, things Clara had once believed were her private thoughts alone. It was the book that Clara so often thought that truly, truly, she could have written herself. She could have had it sewn to her palm and still be unencumbered by it.

Merrit gets very uncomfortable when I talk like this,” Elaine said. “It embarrasses her.” “No, it does not embarrass me, Lainey.” “It does,” Elaine said. “Always has. The stories you love, you do love them, but never as the truth, only ever as containers. You want to put it all down in words and trapped in the maze of a narrative. But you don’t want to contend with it in the actual.

You both can hear the buzzing,” Audrey asks. “Right?” Harper and Merritt both nod. They all squeeze hands. They have to go in now. Because what else? “I have read of women who have been strongly, grandly brave,” Harper says as they turn towards the doors. “Sometimes I have dreamed that I might be brave,” Merritt says. “The possibilities of this life are magnificent,” Audrey says.

Yes,” Harper said. “But tomorrow, when we’re done at Bo’s, come out with me.” When Merritt didn’t answer right away, she added, “I promise we’ll do something you can be all kinds of prickly about.” “I can be all kinds of prickly about anything,” Merritt said, glad to be back in the realm of sarcasm and deflection, sure footing for her. “In fact, I dare you to find an activity that challenges my ability to be prickly.” “Game on,” Harper said.

She looked in display windows and read, really read, the flyers on telephone poles: yard sales, lost pets, cash for ugly houses. She’d pass a flooring place and imagine her life selling carpet. She’d pass a beauty salon and imagine her life doing hair. Mostly, she tried to imagine contentment: the state of being content. She didn’t think it was something she’d ever been before, so it was difficult for her to accurately imagine how it might feel. But she did try.

You wonder why we hate you? You are the visible manifestation of the parts of ourselves we hide.” There is truth in that too. Fat people wear their shit on the outside, with sagging breasts and swollen ankles and heavy thighs. Unlike a heroin addict, who might be able to cover track marks with long sleeves, a fat person cannot hide the fact that something has gone awry. Fat people have secrets, and you may not know what those secrets are, but they can be plainly seen.

It was an exquisite kind of torture, cycling through those posts. Merritt judged the clothing, the poses, the captions, the hashtags, all with a level of snark and bile that embarrassed her. She felt immensely sorry for herself, and then immediately congealed thst feeling into one of self-loathing. Why the fuck did she care? What was any of this for and why couldn’t she leave it alone and do something worth doing? But she didn’t. She’d eat some things. Fall asleep for awhile. And the next night she’d haunt again.

No one who had ever seen Catherine Morland in her infancy would have supposed her born to be an heroine. Her situation in life, the character of her father and mother, her own person and disposition, were all equally against her. Her father was a clergyman, without being neglected, or poor, and a very respectable man, though his name was Richard — and he had never been handsome. He had a considerable independence besides two good livings — and he was not in the least addicted to locking up his daughters. Her mother was a woman of useful plain sense, with a good temper, and, what is more remarkable, with a good constitution. She had three sons before Catherine was born; and instead of dying in bringing the latter into the world, as anybody might expect, she still lived on — lived to have six children more — to see them growing up around her, and to enjoy excellent health herself. A family of ten children will be always called a fine family, where there are heads and arms and legs enough for the number; but the Morlands had little other right to the word, for they were in general very plain, and Catherine, for many years of her life, as plain as any. She had a thin awkward figure, a sallow skin without colour, dark lank hair, and strong features — so much for her person; and not less unpropitious for heroism seemed her mind. She was fond of all boy's plays, and greatly preferred cricket not merely to dolls, but to the more heroic enjoyments of infancy, nursing a dormouse, feeding a canary-bird, or watering a rose-bush. Indeed she had no taste for a garden; and if she gathered flowers at all, it was chiefly for the pleasure of mischief — at least so it was conjectured from her always preferring those which she was forbidden to take. Such were her propensities — her abilities were quite as extraordinary. She never could learn or understand anything before she was taught; and sometimes not even then, for she was often inattentive, and occasionally stupid. Her mother was three months in teaching her only to repeat the "Beggar's Petition"; and after all, her next sister, Sally, could say it better than she did. Not that Catherine was always stupid — by no means; she learnt the fable of "The Hare and Many Friends" as quickly as any girl in England. Her mother wished her to learn music; and Catherine was sure she should like it, for she was very fond of tinkling the keys of the old forlorn spinner; so, at eight years old she began. She learnt a year, and could not bear it; and Mrs. Morland, who did not insist on her daughters being accomplished in spite of incapacity or distaste, allowed her to leave off. The day which dismissed the music-master was one of the happiest of Catherine's life. Her taste for drawing was not superior; though whenever she could obtain the outside of a letter from her mother or seize upon any other odd piece of paper, she did what she could in that way, by drawing houses and trees, hens and chickens, all very much like one another. Writing and accounts she was taught by her father; French by her mother: her proficiency in either was not remarkable, and she shirked her lessons in both whenever she could. What a strange, unaccountable character! — for with all these symptoms of profligacy at ten years old, she had neither a bad heart nor a bad temper, was seldom stubborn, scarcely ever quarrelsome, and very kind to the little ones, with few interruptions of tyranny; she was moreover noisy and wild, hated confinement and cleanliness, and loved nothing so well in the world as rolling down the green slope at the back of the house.

Eleanor Faderman had read many books in her short life. She had read books that she enjoyed and books that bored her. She had read books that made her disputatious and books that soothed her. She had read histories and poetry, philosophy and science. And she had read novels. It was, after all, usually novels that she chose, at least when choosing for herself, and so many different kinds of novels at that—adventurous orphans and brave battle-goers; careful, teasing courtships and once-ripe friendships gone to rot. Eleanor Faderman knew many books. But never before had she read a book that seemed to know her. By that I mean, Readers, to know her in ways she did not yet know herself, could not have named, would likely have denied, even, until Mary MacLane spoke them from her pages.

Though I am young and feminine—very feminine—I am not that quaint conceit, a girl: the sort of person that Laura E. Richards writes about, and Nora Perry, and Louisa M. Alcott,—girls with bright eyes, and with charming faces (they always have charming faces), standing with reluctant feet where the brook and river meet,—and all that sort of thing. I missed all that. And then, usually, if one is not a girl, one is a heroine—of the kind you read about. But I am not a heroine, either. A heroine is beautiful—eyes like the sea shoot opaque glances from under drooping lids—walks with undulating movements, her bright smile haunts one still, falls methodically in love with a man—always with a man, eats things (they are always called “viands”) with a delicate appetite, and on special occasions her voice is full of tears. I do none of these things. I am not beautiful. I do not walk with undulating movements—indeed, I have never seen any one walk so, except, perhaps, a cow that has been overfed. My bright smile haunts no one. I shoot no opaque glances from my eyes, which are not like the sea by any means. I have never eaten any viands, and my appetite for what I do eat is most excellent. And my voice has never yet, to my knowledge, been full of tears. No, I am not a heroine. There never seem to be any plain heroines except Jane Eyre, and she was very unsatisfactory. She should have entered into marriage with her beloved Rochester in the first place. I should have, let there be a dozen mad wives upstairs. But I suppose the author thought she must give her heroine some desirable thing—high moral principles, since she was not beautiful. Some people say beauty is a curse. It may be true, but I’m sure I should not have at all minded being cursed a little. And I know several persons who might well say the same. But, anyway, I wish some one would write a book about a plain, bad heroine so that I might feel in real sympathy with her.

Fat people wear their shit on the outside, with sagging breasts and swollen ankles and heavy thighs. Unlike a heroin addict, who might be able to cover track marks with long sleeves, a fat person cannot hide the fact that something has gone awry. Fat people have secrets, and you may not know what those secrets are, but they can be plainly seen.

And then, usually, if one is not a girl one is a heroine - of the kind you read about. But I am not a heroine, either. A heroine is beautiful - eyes like the sea, shoots opaque glances from under drooping lids, walks with undulating movements, her bright smile haunts one still, falls methodically in love with a man - always with a man, - eats things (they are always called “viands”) with a delicate appetite, and on special occasions her voice is full of tears. I do none of these things. I am not beautiful. I do not walk with undulating movements - indeed, I have never seen any one walk so, except, perhaps, a cow that has been overfed. My bright smile haunts no one. I shoot no opaque glances from my eyes, which are not like the sea by any means. I have never eaten any viands, and my appetite for what I do eat is most excellent. And my voice has never yet, to my knowledge, been full of tears. No. I am not a heroine.