Spineless, Witless, Silly Heroines

You remem­ber that hero­ine who drove her car clear across another sev­eral state(s) when her car could barely make it to her house? Or the hero­ine who was scared of her own shadow but didn’t need a bodyguard? Or how about the hero­ine who decides to let a stranger sleep in her bed only because he was pass­ing through town (pop. 20) and didn’t want any strings attached? Or how about the hero­ine who decides to go to Colum­bia and res­cue her brother even though she had zero con­tacts there and only went because of an email she received from some­one who might have been her brother? Oh, here’s my favorite one: how about the hero­ine who ends up preg­nant but the father wants noth­ing to do with the baby? Are any of these women your hero?

There’s a big rea­son why my pur­chases of romances has been on the decline. The spine­less, wit­less, silly hero­ine is only part of the prob­lem. Next would be the hero and the plot. Each I will address in another seg­ment but right now, it’s the spine­less, wit­less, silly hero­ines who seem to pop­u­late romance nov­els and raise my blood pressure.

Like any reader out there, I do enjoy a good story. How­ever, when a story fea­tures the wit­less, spine­less, silly ass hero­ine, I get annoyed. I throw my book at the wall and I scream why? Why am I being pun­ished and I want my money back.  Are the major­ity of read­ers out there clue­less or what? Why is the clue­less hero­ine so pop­u­lar among read­ers? Yeah, you. Focus of my rant: Anne Stu­art. Love her books and her ear­lier books. I don’t know if it’s delib­er­ate or not but her hero­ines are com­pletely clue­less. They do some of the stu­pid­est things known to man and I’m to believe that the hero who usu­ally is an assas­sin ends up with the clue­less hero­ine and they live hap­pily ever after in a big red house with a white picket fence around it. Give me a break. I know it’s escapism but it’s a bad escapism or fan­tasy. It doesn’t evoke hap­pi­ness in me. None at all. It’s more akin to annoy­ance, con­fu­sion, baf­fle­ment and an “if you say so” attitude.

Yet there are fans of Anne Stuart’s books out there who see these heroine’s as any­thing other than stu­pid. They are pas­sive, mousy, someone with bag­gage or need­ing ther­apy or com­pletely help­less to the sit­u­a­tion they find them­selves in. Uh, no. They are stupid. I don’t care how you spin it — they’re still stu­pid as a door­bell. How­ever, I am curious. Is Anne Stu­art being delib­er­ate in writ­ing these spine­less, wit­less, silly hero­ines or what? Is there a plot nec­es­sary for their exis­tence? Obvi­ously so because any real woman wouldn’t end up with these men and the story wouldn’t even be 200 pages long but I digress.   All I ask is that authors give me a half-way decent hero­ine who can at least stand on her own and I’m good. She doesn’t have to be a rocket sci­en­tist. Just let her think for her­self and stand up for her­self. That’s all I ask.  I don’t like door­mats, mousy hero­ines and please don’t let them nar­rate the story, that’s like adding injury to insult.

Any­way,  I’ve  thought it over and con­cluded that if Anne Stu­art had her hero’s nar­rate the story alone, then I’m good to go. Clue­less heroine’s make bad narrators. The heroine’s POV would only serve to raise my high blood pres­sure. OK, it’s time for reader’s to speak up. Why do you enjoy spine­less, wit­less, silly hero­ines? Yeah, you. What is the point of their exis­tence in fic­tion? Do they serve an impor­tant pur­pose?  Some­body clue me in please. A spokesper­son? Any­one will­ing to speak up for these spine­less wimps of fic­tion? I’ll take answers like: “because” or “just don’t read them” or “I agree with you but I still read them any­way, hee,hee,hee”. I say good rid­dance to the spine­less, wit­less hero­ine. We’re smarter than that. On a more seri­ous note, it’s insult­ing and demean­ing to have to read about clue­less, spine­less women. They don’t rep­re­sent me. How about you?

For Fur­ther Reading

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