Unconventional Heroines and Women of Destiny

The end of this month will mark the first anniversary of the publication of my first novel, Courting Anna.  I wanted to do something to celebrate, and thought it would be fun to have a conversation with a couple of my favorite Prairie Rose authors about a topic dear to all of us.  C. A. Asbrey, author of The Innocents mystery series (most recently the concluding novel, Innocent to the Last) is an online friend who’s become one of my favorite Internet writing comrades.   She introduced me to Prairie Rose, when she posted an announcement for the Women of Destiny series on Facebook.   Mary Sheeran is a friend of several decades’ standing with whom I’ve sung in choirs and ensembles.  She was already the author of three books, when she saw that my project had been accepted to the Women of Destiny line, and realized that her A Dangerous Liberty would fit in well.  Geographically, we’re two New Yorkers and a resident of the original York, across the Atlantic – not an actual Westerner among the lot of us.

Each of us has a heroine who’s not precisely typical of the 19^th century time period in which we’re all writing.  Abigail MacKay, Christine’s heroine, in the 1870s, is a female Pinkerton agent.  My Anna Harrison, in the 1880s, is an attorney.  And Mary’s Elisabeth Winters is a touring musician and composer in the 1860s, a concert pianist at a time when women played piano in the parlor, but men commanded the stage.

I’m guessing that we’ve all read books where the heroine is a modern woman in period costume, with no real concessions to historical veracity.  You know the type – she’s always done exactly what she wanted, she absolutely refuses to wear a corset, and quite possibly she substitutes trousers for long skirts whenever possible.  On the other hand, if you read the fiction actually written in the nineteenth century, for every Elizabeth Bennet, there are dozens of female characters who can be very difficult for twenty-first century readers to relate to.  In historical fiction, there are plenty of appealing traditional heroines who are beloved by readers.  But one approach which can work very well is to create a heroine who operates within the culture and conventions of the time period in which her story takes place, but who is an outlier, pushing at those boundaries.

I know that other Prairie Rose authors have written about such heroines -- I logged in to post this and just saw Becky Lower's post about Revolutionary Heroines!  I hope you’ll join in and share about the characters you’ve created in the comments.  Or, as readers, which characters have you loved reading about.  This post will be in several parts, and I’d love to extend the conversation.

An unconventional heroine in historical fiction is still someone of her time.  What are some ways your Prairie Rose heroine is unusual for her time period, and what are some ways in which she is grounded in it?

Christine:  In the same way as the female attracted to the work in law enforcement in the 19^th century will be out of the norm, she will also be very much part of that society. Abigail understands the social mores, the rules, and the strictures imposed on 19^th century women, even as she rejects them. When she challenges, she picks her battles. Abigail MacKay isn’t a complete rebel. She’s a woman who has found life constrains her skills and intelligence, but is pragmatic enough to understand that there’s more than one way to skin a cat than to constantly turn to direct challenge – although she isn’t afraid to do just that when it’s needed.   

Cate:  Anna is a lawyer, which is obviously unusual in the 1880s, though it’s actually historically plausible.  She’s independent, and she’s able to support herself comfortably through her work, which obviously many women could not do at that time.  Her father was an attorney, as well.  From a very early age, Anna was fascinated by his work and hung around his study, and then his office, as much as she could.  Her parents were followers of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s ideas, and they felt that their daughter should follow her own inclinations and talents.  At the time, some lawyers were educated at law school, but others trained in the offices of senior attorneys.  Anna did the latter, clerking for her father, and later practicing law by his side.  Thus, she was able to avoid some of the worst of the barriers against women in the profession.  After her father’s death, Anna carried on the practice, and because she was already so well-known in her community, it continued to flourish.  Of course, the further afield she went from Carter’s Creek, the more difficulties she encounters in being accepted.  In the book, she’s called to another part of the territory to defend the hero in court, and finds herself treated as quite the spectacle.  People sometimes try to do an end run around her and deal with her male law clerk, later partner, but he’ll have none of it.

Mary: I have spent so much time in the far west during the 1860s that I pretty much think it's MY time.  Elisabeth is of her time and she's also me. When she stays away in Europe, having told herself that the United States has lost the dream and that the country doesn't care that it has lost the dream, she's also me. I wrote A Dangerous Liberty a little more than ten years ago, and I think I still feel that way. As for Elisabeth. Is she of my time, yes.  Is she of her time? Yes, because there have always been expatriates, and she was one early on, having seen her father and Abraham Lincoln killed. Certainly, a dream lost. Her father was an abolitionist US Senator with a powerful voice, respected by many and highly regarded abroad. 

Christine:  Abigail was brought up to expect to marry and have children, and it was a revelation for her to find there was another option. She was educated, but like many of her era, expected that her education would help her sons. It’s only after being widowed that the job accidentally found her. She didn’t seek it out, but accepted the role with gusto as a solely domestic life was not enough for her. She does fit in her era, in that she longs to be a mother and enjoys domesticity. It’s important to her, but she’s not prepared to compromise in her choice of partner – but she’s unusual in wanting a partner, and not to accept the subordinate role, or submit to a husband. He has to accept her as an equal.

Cate:  Anna is simply hopelessly undomesticated.  She can’t cook and she’s terrible at needlework.  She had a fiance, David, who was her father’s law clerk.  He supported her joining the firm and practicing by his side, at the same time that they planned to have a family.  But when he caught sick and died, not long before the wedding was meant to have happened, she decided never to marry.  It took her a long time to get over her broken heart, and besides, she felt that her subsequent suitors expected her to adopt the more traditional role that she knew she’d never fit.   I don’t see her as a stereotypical spinster, but as the late Victorian New Woman – she’s made her own choices.   She loves pretty dresses and she loves talking about the law.  Courting Anna is obviously wordplay, between the courtroom in which she flourishes and the unexpected courtship of Anna by Jeremiah Brown.

Mary:  Elisabeth loves to wear great clothes, too. She does feel lonely without a man, and she does seek male companionship, not always wisely. In fact, hardly ever wisely. The safety she seeks is part of a time when women were supposed to have a male protector always around, and if they didn't - what was wrong with them, and although she tosses out her guardians and doesn't sleep with that playwright and feels sorry for that banker, she is of her time even as she fights it. 

Christine:  Abigail has a scientific bent, and enjoys studying, something which was not seen as very feminine in her day, but she is confident enough not to care.   She also has enough insight to understand that she alienates certain types of men, as well as women. That doesn’t matter to her either, as they bore her.   My heroine doesn’t defer to men, which is unusual in her époque, unless they have a greater degree of skill or experience in an area. She also isn’t prepared to let the man take the lead all the time. She’s not a side-kick, or a woman looking for security, or social position. Abigail is as skilled as anyone else, and isn’t afraid to challenge up.

Mary:  Already a precocious musical talent, Elisabeth entered the professional music scene just before women were entering the professional music world ever so slowly. Girls and women could play instruments at home, but entering the professional world of music was tough. Men were certainly in the majority of professional pianists. Women were not admitted into conservatories until the 1870s, and then, very few. From reading music critics of the time, it's apparent that the music world assumed women did not have the upper body power to perform the piano music of Beethoven, Schubert, and Liszt. Critics usually regarded women in this light, excusing their deficiencies or, if the woman did play with "masculine" power, noted it as an oddity - the hint being that the woman was unwomanly.

Elisabeth has difficulty in presenting her own voice. Certainly talented, she was respected because of her father. Audiences in Europe - and those when she returned the US - considered her playing as the voice of her father. Thus, her powerful musical phrases were not unwomanly - her father's voice was coming through her. She also composed piano concerti, and although these were not seen as being on the level of Chopin or Liszt, they were considered as her hearing her father's voice. So she was perceived as a good daughter. However, conductors who supported her piano artistry would not conduct her compositions. She conducted her choral symphony.  Women conductors were unheard of - pretty much almost to our lifetime.

Christine:  None of that means Abigail isn’t a woman of her time, though. Some educated 19^th century women were pushing for more rights and greater equality, since they turned their attention to social causes after the abolition of slavery. Abigail finds herself drawn to these people, and very much agrees with their causes.  She is motivated by a need for improvement for all, rather than simple personal security and happiness. Even at the end of the series, there’s every indication that she intends to continue to work when the children are old enough for her to do so. I think it is rare to see a progressive feminist as a heroine in a romantic role in a historical novel. She fits squarely into a movement within the time the stories are set, even if that was a minority view at the time. Some of the other characters are loosely based on real people. In fact, the more outrageous they are, the more likely they are to be based on real people. Vida is inspired by Mary Edwards Walker, who was captured in the Civil War as a spy, while working as a nurse (she had been refused permission to enter as a doctor despite being qualified), and became the first female surgeon in the army. She found female clothes restrictive and often wore men’s clothes and a top hat. The night hag is based on a Hungarian killer, Viktoria Foedi Rieger. Basing some characters around real people is another way of anchoring characters in time and place with a degree of veracity.     

Cate:  Anna is also firmly grounded in her time period.  The germ of the novel came from my watching some Westerns while I was in graduate school specializing in the 19^th century novel.  The British Victorian novel, especially, portrays such a different world than the Western does, even while they’re happening at the same time.  So while Anna has grown up in Montana territory, there’s also that Victorian element to her.  As a lawyer, she’s lived in a more masculine world, but some things still easily shock her.  Her family came from Massachusetts, and were great readers of Emerson and some of the more progressive thinkers of the day.  She’s been exposed to big city culture:  her parents have taken her to San Francisco, Chicago, and even to New York and to Boston, where they have relatives.   So, in addition to the books her parents have had shipped to them regularly, she’s also been exposed to art and music.   She enjoys her afternoon tea, with good china cups and silver service.   And despite her nonconformity to certain gender roles, she’s aware that as a guest in a man’s world, she needs to guard her respectability in other ways, quite strictly.  With her wards, Sarah and Caroline, she tries to protect their innocence, as she assumes they will live more conventional lives than she has done.     

She does have a commercial law practice, but she takes some cases for the money so that she can afford to do pro bono work, representing people who need her help.  And she does legal work for several of the Native American nations in the area.  If I ever get the chance to write the sequel, that’s how Sarah will find her father, who’s a Blackfoot.

Mary:  It's not that Elisabeth doesn't push the boundaries as her father would. She hires a black singer for her vocal piece, attends black churches, and rescues a Chinese prostitute being beaten on the street when no one else will help the girl. She engages in discussions about women voting and lobbies legislatures for women's rights - with liquor. Of course, having someone out to kill her can be a little unsettling, so being a public face takes considerable courage. People want her bloodline at an end; that's how crazed they are. She suspects she is a target, but she still stays. She has work to do.  Is she ahead of her time in these situations? I hesitate to say that a courageous woman is ever ahead of her time, and the more we delve into history, we keep finding women who were ahead of our time. 

It's always going to be a struggle for Elisabeth to have her own career with her own voice heard. Will she give up on the country? On her place in it? I'm not sure, given the ending of the book, if she'll be able to find a way for her voice to be heard. Readers should wonder: Is that a happy ending? Maybe it is, maybe it isn't.

For more of this conversation, tune in next month -- Monday, August 17!  Read our books!  Tell us about your favorite heroines, that you've written, or that you've read!

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