Humor will not be tolerated!! -Portia

So in one of my grandiose schemes, I imagined a photo spread of myself dressed up as various 19th-century heroines for some magazine. Here were the ones I had in mind:

Emma Bovary, Madame Bovary, 1856
Anna Karenina, 1878
Hedda Gabler, 1890
Lily Bart, The House of Mirth, 1905 (set in 1890s)

They all are unhappy in their relationships, they all strain against the constraints of Victorian society, and they all come to tragic ends. It was somewhat unsettling to me to realize how deeply I identify with this trope. Fortunately, I have the opportunity for work, a vocation, and a lot more personal choice than any woman of that time could have hoped for. Interesting what a dominant theme it was for that fifty-year span, though.

What fictional characters do you identify with?

Dorothea Brooke from Middlemarch! In her youth she is highly religious and feels called to self-sacrifice, but she's also headstrong and does what she wants regardless of others' opinions. Then she marries this old boring religious scholar, but he dies and eventually she marries the right guy.

The primary difference is that I didn't marry the stuffy religious scholar I was once in love with, and therefore got to skip straight to the passionate political activist/vagabond.

I feel like Lizzie Bennet at times. I'm pretty sarcastic and rude at times, but I usually know when to stop. I also don't always put other people's feelings before my own (unlike Jane).