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• emma Woodhouse
• elinor Dashwood
• Anne elliot
• elizabeth Bennet
Let's dispose of them one at a time.
Fanny Price has always annoyed me a little because she's
such a self-effacing, virtuous, goody-two-shoes little wuss.
Compared to her reckless cousins Maria and Julia Bertram
that's not such a bad thing, but it has never endeared her to
me. Having said that, she does exhibit some proto-feminist
principles: once she has used her own judgment to decide on
what is the right thing to do, she does not allow herself to be
swayed by anyone, for any reason. This extends to the point
of steadfastly refusing a very advantageous marriage, because
she does not respect — and suspects the sincerity of — her
suitor. She's probably wrong about his sincerity, but ultimately
she's right about him as a person. She falls in love with,
and marries, her cousin edmund, who might as well love her,
because in almost every way she is his creation. He has been
her most caring friend and even her tutor for many years. not
a protagonist most feminists would immediately embrace as
one of their own.
Catherine Morland is, frankly, just a silly girl. She is of
fundamentally good character but she cares for little beyond
her family, a nice muslin, and a juicy Gothic novel. She does
have the good sense to reject the arrogant blowhard John
Thorpe in favor of the lively metrosexual Henry Tilney, but I
don't detect any burgeoning feminist principles in Catherine.
Emma Woodhouse takes herself very seriously, even
though in some ways she is just a willful teenager, and states
openly that she fully expects to remain unmarried, obviously
in part because she has the means and ability to live independently.
In fact, Emma is the only one of Austen's heroines
who is wealthy enough in her own right to claim a serious
level of independence. Her older sister is married and she has
no brothers. Her father dotes on her and she stands to inherit
considerable money and property. Her friend Harriet, who
has neither emma's economic independence nor her stiff-
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