Author Guest Post + Giveaway: Elyse Mady

Fiction Vixen is pleased to welcome Author Elyse Mady today talking about vixens in fiction that she likes.

Fiction Vixens I have Loved

Choosing only three fiction vixens was harder than I expected.  Do I go saucy?  Classic?  Romantic?  Sweet?  Tragic?  Ooh, the choices.  OK.  Time to knuckle down.

My first choice has to be Anne Elliot from Jane Austen’s “Persuasion”.  Of course, I could go with Lizzy or Marianne Dashwood but they always get the glory.  Anne is older, less glamorous, more bowed by life when the story opens.

But any woman who can elicit Frederick Wentworth’s glorious letter is a vixen with a capital ‘V’ in my books.

Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you. Unjust I may have been, weak and resentful I have been, but never inconstant. You alone have brought me to Bath. For you alone, I think and plan.

*Swoon*

My second vixen is Countess Ellen Olenska from Edith Wharton’s novel, “The Age of Innocence”.  This is a woman who loves fiercely and lives independently.  The agony of watching Newland Archer and Olenski fall in love and then be separated not by one large sweeping event but the slow incremental calcification of many small events is so painful and authentic.

Happily Ever After doesn’t always happen, as much as dedicated readers of romance would like it to.  In real life, many people live their whole lives with Happy Enough or Not Really Unhappy, Just Vaguely Dissatisfied.  Maybe that’s why there are so many romance readers?   We all want something ‘more’.  I think it takes a brave author to go against the reader’s expectations of romantic resolution and deny the central characters that ending in favour of something much more painful yet true.

Wharton once wrote that “There is one friend in the life of each of us who seems not a separate person, however dear and beloved, but an expansion, an interpretation, of one’s self, the very meaning of one’s soul.”  I’d like to think that that is what Sam and Lily are for each other, once they overcome the burdens of their past – friends, lovers and the very meaning of each other’s souls.

And since vixens can be screen sirens, too, I have to vote for Ada McGrath, the mute pianist in Jane Campion’s haunting film, “The Piano” as my third and final EVF.

Holly Hunter deservedly won a Best Actress Oscar for her portrayal and it’s a film that’s so raw and spare, yet rich and nuanced at the same time.  I watch it at least a couple of times a year.

What do you think of my choices?  Agree?  Disagree?  Who’s on your list and why? 

***Giveaway***

Elyse is offering two give-aways for her tour!

Win an eCopy of either The Debutante’s Dilemma, Learning Curves or Something So Right! To enter Answer Elyse’s question above. Open internationally!  eBook giveaway open until October 26, winner announced soon after.

You can also enter to win a grand prize pack of a a gorgeous hardcover photography book about Muskoka history, a beautiful set of Group of Seven mugs, a set of note cards and some Canadian maple syrup!

Comments from each tour stop also act as an entry into this grand prize give-away. Open US/Canada.  See full contest rules here. You can learn more about Elyse Mady and see a list of tour participants here.