Learning Emotional Complexity from Women Writers

March is Women’s History Month. When I found this out on that great well of information known as the internet, it got me to thinking about the great women authors who have influenced my writing over the years. Maybe it was because I attended an all-girls school, but as I look back on my literary education, it’s mostly classic authoresses, like Jane Austen, the Brontës, Emily Dickinson, and Harper Lee, who loom large in my imagination.

Jane Austen - Image courtesy of Wikicommons

There’s something about the unique emotional complexity of some of the great female authors that I believe all writers should study and try to emulate. In many cases, the worlds that women write about are far closer and more intimate than the worlds of their male counterparts. Jane Austen was something of a revolutionary for writing about the necessity of a good marriage and what the lack of one meant for women at the time she was writing. Harper Lee took on the injustices she saw around her through the eyes of innocence and feeling. I’m sure you can think of dozens of other examples of women who wrote about the emotional truths of the world through the lens of their own experience and the experiences of their contemporaries.

Emotional complexity is what separates the great characters from the cardboard cut-outs in our prose. It’s easy, as an author, to fall into the trap of wanting to make your main characters the clear-cut heroines and heroes of your story, giving them simple motivations and impeccable morality. But characters that do everything they should tend to fall flat. One thing all of my favorite classic woman authors have taught me is that heroines with feet of clay often have the best character arcs. L. M. Montgomery might not make everyone’s list of Great Women Authors, but for me, reading about an impertinent red-head with a quick temper and her head in the clouds taught me more about creating wonderful characters that are remembered by millions a hundred years later than just about anything else. And when you look into Anne’s history and the emotional battleground that was her childhood, you begin to see how Montgomery subtly deals with the plight of orphans and the abuses they were subject to in her time. But she does it through an intimate portrayal of one girl and the way her life was turned around rather than examining the big picture of the problem, like Dickens did in Oliver Twist. Both books have impact, but the Anne books touch a whole different level of affection in us, and spend more time showing us how everything turned out okay in the end rather than dwelling on the darkness.

L.M. Montgomery - courtesy of Wikicommons

In the Romance world, where I do my writing, editors will quite frequently tell their authors to dig deeper into the emotions behind the characters’ actions. Characters and their relationships and what makes them tick are the heart of a good Romance. At the same time, the larger literary world often dismisses Romance as exaggerated and unrealistic. Needless to say, this irritates me to no end. I also wonder if it would annoy some of these great ladies of literature. The very thing that set them apart from so many of their contemporaries and made them notable falls under attack too often, even now. In some ways, I feel like we’ve taken a step backwards in terms of writing about emotions, particularly in Romance, where Erotica is the flavor of the day. But I could write an entire post about those trends. I’ll spare you for now.

So as you craft your story, whatever the genre and theme, take some time to consider the emotional complexity of your characters. Learn from the shining examples of women writers who have managed to reach a deeper level in the hearts of readers through the unique perspective they provide.

Merry Farmer is a history nerd, a hopeless romantic, and an award-winning author of thirteen novels. She is passionate about blogging and knitting, and lives in suburban Philadelphia with her two cats, Butterfly and Torpedo. Connect with Merry at her Facebook Author Page and Twitter.