Fictional women

In the spirit of participation in things blog-like and literary (Good Lord! The juxtaposition of those two words!) I've decided to join in the weekly revels initiated by the similarly named Egotist's Club. It is a ten-week series, but I'm afraid my participation will be limited to nine.

This first week is dedicated to all the characters on which one has a "crush". This is problematic for me for a number of reasons. Most importantly, there aren't very many attractive female characters in most of the books I read. What is the ratio of male to female characters in The Lord of the Rings? The Aubrey-Maturin series? Raymond Chandler? PG Wodehouse? Which is not to say that there are none.

Secondly, I have never been one for having "crushes" on people, real or imagined. I have a notion what that means, but it is not something I've really experienced. The other participants to this point in this phase of the game all seem to be women and that, so far, gives them a two-fold advantage over me with both a larger field from which to choose and temperaments more conducive to this emotion.

Finally, I'm a married man approaching middle-age with alarming speed. I just wouldn't be on to claim a crush on, say, Susan Pevensie. As used to be said in my youth, grody to the max. Not to mention that most women of fiction pale in comparison to my lovely bride. This is so obvious and evident to me, that I nearly forgot that my readers (assuming there are any) will not be similarly aware.

Having said all that, however, I'd like to consider a few women from fiction briefly. Elizabeth Bennett would almost take the prize away without competition. She is good and kind without being quite as namby-pamby as her elder sister. She's intelligent, clever and witty and, by all accounts, not unpleasant to look at. Close to being Mary Poppins, in fact: Practically perfect in every way.

Too many other heroines are flawed in some fundamental ways. Diana Villiers is a bit of an alley-cat. Susan Sto Helit is rather aggressively feminist. Haydée is rather a delicate flower and doesn't seem like she'd be too useful in a world where she didn't have a half-dozen servants to wait on her hand and foot. The women of PG Wodehouse are all rather crazy and overly wilful. I've never been fond of elves, so that counts out Galadriel and Arwen, and Éowyn is a bit too much... Xena-warrior-princess?

Anyway, the only woman in fiction who, along with Miss Elizabeth, comes close to qualifying for this sort of thing is Anne Riordan. If you don't know who that is, go now and get a copy of Farewell, My Lovely by Raymond Chandler. She's a writer, she's smart, fairly tough and witty enough to trade quips with Marlowe; most of the time, anyway. Not only that, but she's a red-headed girl with a sense of appreciation for domesticity as well.

Still and all, I wouldn't classify my appreciation for Anne Riordan as a "crush". It's too much a mature assessment of her virtues and attractions to be something so emotionally loaded. Subsequent weeks should be easier than this one.