In which we talk literary role models

One of the great pleasures of reading, particularly when you're a child, is the chance to find inspiration, role models who demonstrate how to live with courage and verve and style. Here are a few of my favorite heroines from literature:

*Jo March, Elizabeth Bennet, and Scout Finch. Little Women, Pride & Prejudice, and To Kill a Mockingbird. I'm grouping these three together because they are pretty much universal. I have never known a girl from the South who didn't want to be Scout, nor have I ever met a woman who wanted to be any other March or Bennet sister.

*Scarlett O'Hara and Amber St. Clair, Gone With the Wind and Forever Amber. Alright, I know these two are a little unconventional for role models, but hear me out. They both manage to give the impression of being much more beautiful than they really are. They both struggle to create lives during tumultuous times, parlaying their attractions into assets. They are bright, street smart, clever, and courageous, and they are above all, survivors. (It's no accident that at the end of both books, we don't know precisely what happens to either heroine. We don't have to. After all the twists and turns, we have perfect faith that they will land on their little cat feet.)

*Jane Eyre. She was not a role model the first time I read the book, or even the second. She was too mealy-mouthed and meek for my taste. But after years elapsed, I read the book again and was astonished to find that Jane Eyre is feisty. She stands up for herself and scraps with anyone who tries to put her down or make her less than she is. She holds tightly to her moral convictions, and yet when she realizes she has a chance at happiness, she seizes it with both hands in a bold move worthy of Scarlett herself.

*Cathy Earnshaw. Wuthering Heights. I concede, Cathy made a bad end. Haunting a cold, windy moor is not precisely how most of us would like to wind up, but I would like to make the point that Cathy is at all times herself. She is one of the most authentic and self-aware characters in literature. She is not nice, and she knows it. She advertises it in fact, and makes no apologies. (And her speech about loving Heathcliff because "he's more myself than I am" gets me every time.)

*Lucy Eyelesbarrow. 4:50 from Paddington. I know it seems odd to include an Agatha Christie character here, but I am smitten with the idea of Lucy Eyelesbarrow. She is the paragon who took a first in mathematics at Oxford, but decided to become an outrageously overpriced domestic. There is nothing she can't do, and her cool competence is unshaken even in the face of murder. And it drives me MAD that we don't know which marriage proposal she accepts in the end.

*Nancy Drew. Well, of course. She meddles and snoops remorselessly, but she has a convertible and a charge card and she travels a LOT.

*Cassandra Mortmain. I Capture the Castle. I love her for the same reasons I love Jo March. She is always scribbling and always trying to fix her family. Another nebulous ending, but somehow you know everything will come right for Cassandra because she deserves a happily ever after.

*Flora Poste. Cold Comfort Farm. Ah, Robert Poste's child! I adore Flora's sense of adventure, her absolute certainty that she knows best and ought to be allowed to get on with tidying everything up. She reminds me of Emma Woodhouse, but vastly less annoying.

*The nameless heroine of Rebecca. Yes, I despised her at first for her diffidence, but after the discovery of the sunken boat, when she discovers the truth about Maxim and Rebecca's relationship, she becomes assertive and cool, certain of herself in a way she could never have been had she continued to live in Rebecca's shadow.