Fictional Women

Some stories you want to relive again and again. I re-read the Chronicles of Narnia over and over, for example. I can't get enough of the adventure. Each time I read them, too, I get something new. Jane Austen for me holds the same type of allure. Austen's books grow with me. I used to think her books were dreamy. As a high school girl, I felt as though I could connect with the characters because I had romance. Now as a ripe old woman, age 24, the dreaminess is gone as I feel more connected with Austen's Fanny, Anne, Elizabeth, and Elinor than ever. Those women are strong, dispite their feeling that they would never be provided for, never loved or even noticed for being women of character. I empathize with Fanny as she struggles to come to terms with the fact that Edmond may never love her, with Anne as she tells a friend, "The one claim I shall make for my own sex is that we love longest, when all hope is gone", with Lizzie as she unflinchingly sticks to what she knows is right, and with Elinor as she quietly bears all.

I draw strength from these fictional women. They are my friends, as strange as it seems. It doesn't even matter that they do end up with the right person at the end. For me, it is encouraging to how they arrive at that point. I have kinship with them as they struggle along. I don't feel bitter when they finally reach their happy endings, only delight because I know the struggles that they had to go through to get there.

So for me, even if I never get the happy ending they do(you know: the Darcys, the Knightlys, etc.), I can be encouraged to make my own endings as joyful as I may. I choose to live a life of strength, and I thank the fictional women who help me.