An historic survey of the concept of the heroine in English literature

Abstract

The concern of this thesis is to explore the nature of the heroine in literature and the cleavage between the bulk of women as they appear in literature and women in actual life. The word heroine, besides meaning the major female personality in a poem, play or novel has, through history, taken on preconceived suggestions of the nature of that personality. A heroine not only plays the major role in a work of art, but she also has characteristics - she is, by implication, beautiful, good, clever, faithful and above all, sexually chaste, generally she shows unswerving loyalty to one man which results in either marriage or death. This concept, firmly adopted by western culture not only has great uniformity - that is, all heroines are much alike, but also has little relationship to women in actual life.