She doesn't do the things heroines are supposed to. Which is rather Jane Austen's point - Fanny is her subversive heroine. She is gentle and self-doubting and utterly feminine; and given the right circumstances, she would defy an army.
Interpretation
This quote highlights the unconventional nature of Fanny, a character who embodies femininity while possessing the strength to defy expectations.
In this quote, Susanna Clarke discusses Fanny, a character who does not conform to traditional heroic ideals. Instead of being a typical action-oriented heroine, Fanny is portrayed as gentle and self-reflective, embodying femininity while still possessing an underlying strength that could challenge greater forces when necessary. This subversion of typical gender roles not only reflects Jane Austen's narrative style but also invites readers to appreciate strength in gentleness and self-doubt.
In practice
Use this quote in a discussion about female characters in literature.
But when the fairy sang the whole world listened to him. Stephen felt clouds pause in their passing; he felt sleeping hills shift and murmur; he felt cold mists dance. He understood for the first time that the world is not dumb at all, but merely waiting for someone to speak to it in a language it understands. In the fairy’s song the earth recognized the names by which it called itself.
It is these black clothes," said Strange. "I am like a leftover piece of funeral, condemned to walk about the Town, frightening people into thinking of their own mortality.
Houses, like people, are apt to become rather eccentric if left too much on their own; this house was the architectural equivalent of an old gentleman in a worn dressing-gown and torn slippers, who got up and went to bed at odd times of day, and who kept up a continual conversation with friends no one else could see.
I could always imagine more interesting places to be than where I was. And more interesting people than me being there. Eventually, this led to making up stories and writing things down.
All books are doors; and some of them are wardrobes.
I'm aware that many of my friends will be saddened and shocked, or shock-saddened, over some of the chapters in 'The Catcher In the Rye.' Some of my best friends are children. In fact, all my best friends are children. It's almost unbearable for me to realize that my book will be kept on a shelf out of their reach.
Back in my 20s, when I wrote 'A Place of Greater Safety,' the French Revolution novel, I thought, 'I'll always have to write historical novels because I can't do plots.'' But in the six years of writing that novel, I actually learned to write, to invent things.
Literature is that which he can not read without pain, without choking on truth.
And okay, fair enough, but there is this unwritten contract between author and reader and I think not ending your book kind of violates that contract.
A novel is not moral in the usual sense of the word. It can be called moral when it shakes us out of our stupor and makes us confront the absolutes we believe in.
You could compile the worst book in the world entirely out of selected passages from the best writers in the world.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.