Jane Austen/Characters/Heroines

Elinor Dashwood, Sense and Sensibility
""If you can think me capable of ever feeling -- surely you may suppose that I have suffered now.""


 * Birds of a Feather: With Edward Ferrars
 * Deadpan Snarker
 * Did You Think I Can't Feel?
 * Double In-Law Marriage: Half-siblings John and Elinor Dashwood to siblings Fanny and Edward Ferrars.
 * Emotionless Girl/Sugar and Ice Girl
 * Foolish Sibling, Responsible Sibling: Responsible Elinor and foolish Marianne, albeit one where the "foolish" daughter is portrayed fairly sympathetically.
 * Genre Savvy: Elinor is quick at correctly identifying everyone's role in the Love Triangles around her. She deduces that Lucy is a Clingy Jealous Girl probably faster than the reader could at that point.
 * Grumpy Bear
 * Hidden Depths
 * Higher Self: Elinor acts something like this for Marianne.
 * I Want My Beloved to Be Happy
 * Love Triangle
 * Not So Stoic
 * Only Sane Man
 * Platonic Life Partners / Just Friends: With Colonel Brandon
 * Politeness Judo: A true master.
 * The Quiet One
 * Sibling Yin-Yang: With Marianne
 * The Spock
 * Stepford Smiler
 * Stiff Upper Lip
 * The Stoic
 * Surrounded By Idiots
 * Twice Shy: With Edward

Marianne Dashwood, Sense and Sensibility
""I have been too much at my ease, too happy, too frank. I have erred against every common-place notion of decorum; I have been open and sincere where I ought to have been reserved, spiritless, dull, and deceitful -- had I talked only of the weather and the roads, and had I spoken only once in ten minutes, this reproach would have been spared.""


 * Annoying Younger Sibling: Mildly
 * Birds of a Feather: With Colonel Brandon, as revealed via Ironic/Meaningful Echo.
 * Emo Teen
 * Foolish Sibling, Responsible Sibling: Responsible Elinor and foolish Marianne, albeit one where the "foolish" daughter is portrayed fairly sympathetically.
 * Ill Girl: Towards the end of the novel.
 * It's All About Me: Marianne is deeply self-absorbed, considering her feelings (whether positive or negative) absolutely irrepressible and in the process disregarding common politeness and the feelings of others; when circumstances force Elinor to confess that she too has been unhappy, Marianne breaks down in tears of remorse, forcing Elinor to comfort her again, and continues to wallow in her own unhappiness - with added guilt, now - rather than provide emotional support for Elinor. It takes near-death to smarten her up. Granted, she's a teenager, but it's a major contrast with Elinor, who's 19 and displays more responsibility and consideration for others than many people much older than her.
 * Love Triangle
 * May-December Romance
 * The McCoy
 * Oblivious to Love: Marianne seems, through much of the story, like she's deliberately ignoring Colonel Brandon's undeclared love for her. On literally the second-to-last page, it's finally clarified that she honestly had no idea, and is stunned when she realizes it.
 * Sibling Yin-Yang: With Elinor
 * Wrong Guy First
 * You Go Girl: Her anti-Stepford Smiler ways
 * You Got Spunk: According to Colonel Brandon

Elizabeth Bennet, Pride and Prejudice
""I am sick of them all. Thank Heaven! I am going tomorrow where I shall find a man who has not one agreeable quality, who has neither manner nor sense to recommend him. Stupid men are the only ones worth knowing, after all.""


 * Bookworm: Not to the extent of her father and Mary though.
 * Break the Haughty: Delivers three and receives one.
 * Cool Big Sis: The ending implies that Kitty eventually began looking up to her as one. She eventually becomes one to Georgiana Darcy as well.
 * Deadpan Snarker
 * Defrosting Ice Queen: Not to the extent of Mr. Darcy but it is there.
 * Grumpy Bear
 * I Didn't Mean to Turn You On: To Mr. Darcy
 * Love Dodecahedron
 * Oblivious to Love: Elizabeth initially has no idea that Darcy is interested in her (although to be fair, he's not exactly that good at expressing it) and she continually mistakes his interest in her as disapproval.
 * Only Sane Man
 * Plucky Girl
 * Pride
 * "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Lizzy's reaction to the Anguished Declaration of Love.
 * Sibling Yin-Yang: With Jane
 * Single Woman Seeks Good Man
 * The Snark Knight
 * Spirited Young Lady
 * Surrounded By Idiots
 * Well, Excuse Me, Princess!
 * Wrong Guy First
 * Wrong Genre Savvy: the handsome guy who flatters you is morally upright. The brooding loner who does not talk or dance at social events is evil. The first guy's sob story is reliable and needs no evidence, and the second guy must be humiliated in public as a consequence. (Elizabeth is generally intelligent, and her Wrong Genre Savviness only lasts for a limited part of the book.)

Fanny Price, Mansfield Park
""I should have thought that every woman must have felt the possibility of a man's not being approved, not being loved by some one of her sex at least, let him be ever so generally agreeable. Let him have all the perfections in the world, I think it ought not to be set down as certain that a man must be acceptable to every woman he may happen to like himself.""


 * Abusive Guardians
 * Birds of a Feather: With Edmund
 * Bookworm
 * Break the Cutie
 * The Cassandra
 * Character Development: Fanny starts to stand up for herself and take the initiative (such as when she helps her sister Susan with her problem with Betsy).
 * Cinderella Circumstances
 * Emotionless Girl
 * Extreme Doormat
 * Green-Eyed Monster: Towards Mary Crawford
 * Hidden Depths
 * I Didn't Mean to Turn You On: To Henry Crawford
 * Ill Girl
 * I Want My Beloved to Be Happy
 * Kissing Cousins
 * Love Dodecahedron
 * Marry for Love: Fanny is the only young woman in the novel who believes in this, in typical Austen heroine tradition.
 * Naive Newcomer: Fanny in Chapter 2
 * Not So Stoic: Her outbursts surprise people all the more for being so few and far between.
 * Only Sane Man
 * Princess for A Day
 * The Quiet One
 * Real Women Never Wear Dresses
 * Ron the Death Eater: Murder At Mansfield Park
 * Shrinking Violet
 * The Stoic
 * The Unfavorite
 * Victorious Childhood Friend: To Edmund

Emma Woodhouse
""I seem to have been doomed to blindness.""


 * Break the Haughty
 * The Caretaker: To her (hypochondriac) father
 * Deadpan Snarker
 * Desperately Looking for A Purpose In Life: And this purpose becomes shipping, among other things.
 * Green-Eyed Epiphany
 * Hazel Eyes
 * I Didn't Mean to Turn You On: To Mr. Elton
 * Jerk With a Heart of Gold
 * Les Yay: With Harriet. (For people who have not read the book, to avoid misunderstandings: there's no actual Les Yay in the novel. Only, some descriptions are somewhat... odd.)
 * Love Dodecahedron
 * Love Epiphany
 * Manipulative Bitch
 * The Matchmaker
 * Playing Cyrano
 * Pride
 * Rich Bitch
 * Victorious Childhood Friend: Mr. Knightley
 * What the Hell, Hero?: From Mr. Knightley
 * Wrong Genre Savvy: Emma, oh so much. "Look at me, being smart! I will totally mind-read people and matchmake them with their ideal mates! I am an intelligent person and a member of the landed gentry, which makes me a divine ruler who knows what's best for everyone! I am always right! Tra la la!"
 * misreads everyone. Bad things happen*
 * Zany Schemes

Catherine Morland, Northanger Abbey
""I can not speak well enough to be unintelligible.""


 * Ascended Fangirl
 * Black and White Morality: Catherine's firm belief at the opening of the novel.
 * Bookworm
 * Break the Cutie: Catherine gets this treatment when she is pretty much thrown out of Northanger Abbey.
 * Cloudcuckoolander
 * Country Mouse:
 * I Didn't Mean to Turn You On: To John Thorpe
 * Love Triangle
 * Naive Everygirl
 * Single Woman Seeks Good Man
 * Tomboy: In her Backstory
 * Wrong Genre Savvy; not only is it wrong, it's so wrong it leads to Mistaken for Murderer.
 * You Go Girl: Liking a man before he has declared any attraction to her.

Anne Elliot, Persuasion
""All the privilege I claim for my own sex (it is not a very enviable one; you need not covet it) is that of loving longest, when existence or when hope is gone.""


 * Christmas Cake
 * I Regret Nothing
 * I Was Quite a Looker
 * Love Dodecahedron
 * New Old Flame: Captain Wentworth
 * The One That Got Away
 * Only Sane Man
 * Parental Marriage Veto
 * Protagonist-Centered Morality
 * The Quiet One
 * The Stoic
 * The Unfavorite