Teresa Mederios' Heroines

This Saturday, which as everyone knows was Valentine's day, I went to my favorite bookstore accompanied by my mother. For paperback loves, it is used-book heaven and chiefly among its qualities is the very excellent romance section. I can never walk out of there without at least three books. This time I picked up Teresa Mederios' Thief of Hearts, one of hers I had not read yet. I have always loved Mederios ever since I first read The Beast and the Bride. Not only is she funny, but her heroines are outstanding.

I think one of the chief problems I have with many romance novels is that there is a discrepancy between the heroes and heroines as far as characterization is concerned.  More often than I would wish very compelling heroes are paired with heroines who are . . . flat.  I wouldn't go as far as saying that they are TSTL or TGTBT (Too Good To Be True) but merely lacking in dimension. I suppose that this is because the heroine  in many romances is merely acting as a place-holder for the reader. I know that there are those who enjoy or at the very least, over look this but I have no patience with place-holders, zeroes if you will. I enjoy falling in love with and rooting for the heroine as much as for the hero. Perhaps this is because I have always been a reader (I read early, frequently and everything) and therefore gender, looks, time, place, etc. I have no bearing on whether or not I identify with and want to travel along on the hero's journey. What does have a bearing on my desire to root for the protagonist is whether or not the author lets me see something about their character that is interesting, that develops them into a real flesh and blood person. It doesn't have anything to do with nobility or the classical definition of hero.  It has more to do with me wanting to see their humanity. In this respect, I think many romance novel heroines are lacking. They have this tendency to be paperdolls rather than actual women neither in what they say or what they do.

I have never found this to be so with Teresa Mederios' heroines. I think this is because of the way that she introduces them to the reader. For example in Thief of Hearts we are introduced to Lucinda Snow not by her looks but by her reactions to the events going on around her, we are privy to her thoughts as she overhears a conversation aboard a ship and in a few lines become aware of how she thinks, how she behaves, how she views herself and how she believes other people see her.  This is very typical of Mederios. She shows us who her characters are by their behavior and interior perspective rather than as an object viewed by others. Her heroines are very much subjects. Regardless of whether or not they are fat or thin, beautiful or plain, rich or poor, you always know what sort of person she is in those first few moments.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I have a very low tolerance for heroines defined mainly by their beauty. It isn't that I automatically dislike a story if the heroine is beautiful, it is just that I think that often the author gets lazy and infuses the heroine with beauty alone and no other quality. Georgette Heyer's Venetia is very beautiful but this is not her defining characteristic in the story. Her defining characteristic is her acute sense of the absurd and the ironic. Even before you know she is beautiful,  Heyer gives her an initial dialogue that on the surface seems so very domestic but is, beneath, mocking. Mederios utilizes a similar technique, fixing into the words her heroines speak, their responses to those around them and the way they see the world a unique something that makes them more like real women and less like puppets in side-show. And because they are so very real and likable from the beginning even when they do things that are silly or foolish, I as the reader never feel they are TSTL because the behavior is based on the limitations of their character and perceptions not on the writing. It is very hard to forgive a heroine who you have been told repeatedly, if not explicitly, is perfect when she does something retarded or asinine. It becomes charming or at the very least, understandable, in a  heroine who has from the first been as flawed and as real as an actual person.