This is The Heroine's Mirror, a newsletter where I reflect on the best of literature.
Here, I will share essays about literature's best and worst heroines, along with how they've helped me know and live out my convictions.
The first essay, “She Lives on Her Own Stock,” will be released this Sunday morning. You can read or listen to it as a podcast.
Here’s an excerpt of Sunday’s essay:
Hannah More wrote a clever, very didactic novel called Coelebs in Search of a Wife, which is light on the plot but heavy on her life philosophy. I'd describe it as a series of character sketches and philosophical dialogues, so if you enjoy that sort of thing, you should check it out.
In the novel, she wrote,
“The woman who derives her principles from the Bible, and her amusements from intellectual sources, from the beauties of nature, and from active employment and exercise, will not pant for beholders. She is no clamorous beggar for the extorted alms of admiration. She lives on her own stock. She possesses the truest independence. She does not wait for the opinion of the world, to know if she is right, nor for the applause of the world, to know if she is happy.”
I want to be that woman, to walk confidently through life without needing the opinion or applause of crowds to know my worth.
I want to live on my own stock.