Creating Strong Female Characters – Part Two

I’ve just finished reading The Rake, by New York Times best-selling author, Mary Jo Putney. The Rake features a very strong female character, Alys, who is quite an unconventional woman in the context of 19th century Regency England. For a bit of background about the story, here is the back cover blurb:

THE RAKE

Masquerading as a man in order to obtain a position as estate manager of Strickland, Alys fled a world filled with mistrust and betrayal. She was finished with men - yet how could she have predicted that Strickland’s restored owner would awaken a passion more powerful than anything she had ever known? A passion that will doom or save them both… if only they can overcome their pasts and dare to believe in the wondrous power of love…

The Rake, which was rewritten and expanded by the author from an earlier edition entitled The Rake and the Reformer, was a groundbreaking book in Regency romance fiction as it features alcoholism - a theme not usually touched upon within romance novels. Reginald Davenport battles with his alcoholism throughout the book, and Mary Jo Putney features Alys in the role of his good friend (but fortunately never his enabler).

Alys is a very strong woman, and certainly no blushing ingénue. Many romance novels feature heroines that somehow come across as a strange schoolgirl/nun/martyr mix, yet Mary Jo Putney steers well clear of Regency stereotypes in The Rake.

I think what I like best about Alys is her ability to view herself objectively. As the book progresses, it’s clear that Alys is falling more and more in love with Reggie, and it’s difficult for her not to be upset when Reggie behaves self-destructively. However, she sees the situation in a clear-sighted way and realises that being a friend to a man who is trying to attain sobriety is really the best way to love him at that stage of his life. She doesn’t wallow in self-pity, but rather faces life head on with courage and a healthy dose of determination.

This doesn’t mean that Alys is free of insecurities, but as I said in my previous blog about strong female characters, she doesn’t allow her insecurities to govern her behaviour at every turn, but rather grows and changes as the novel progresses.

I think another important element of being a strong female character is the ability not to indulge in selfish love… what I mean by this is when a woman cannot seem to see beyond her own needs to the needs of the man she is involved with. It’s easy as a woman to imagine that a man shares our every need, but wise is the woman who realises this isn’t necessarily the case. This is not to say that men and women don’t have common human needs, but sometimes people can put their own needs and desires before those of their significant other, and then get frustrated when they find out they’re not on the same page.

For instance, if Alys was an immature woman, she might very easily have seen the situation she found herself in purely from her own point of view, without seeking to understand where Reggie was coming from. She ached to love and be loved by Reggie, but she knew that while he was battling the “disease of drunkenness” it wasn’t likely that he was in any fit state to love her properly. And so she sets out to love him in the best way that she can – she becomes his good friend and confidante. That’s true selfless love – and a strong, mature woman will always try and put herself in the shoes of the man that she loves (even if they are rather large and clumsy).

To further the analogy, she’ll also never make the mistake of thinking he enjoys walking around in high heels just because she likes wearing them. I’ll elaborate on this in my next blog…

Read The Dashing Debutante, Lord Fenmore’s Wager and Send and Receive