Elena

“...where there is a disposition to dislike, a motive will never be wanting”
― Jane Austen, Lady Susan

“I know how betrayal and disillusionment feel, when someone who could give you the world refuses even a tiny piece of it.”
― Mary Kubica, The Good Girl

“But there is nothing a man might not do, with you to encourage him. You make me wish to be a hero." He laughed, but Hester did not laugh. She gave him a keen look, in which there was a touch of disdain. " Do you really think," she said, " that the charm of inspiring, as you call it, is what any reasonable creature would prefer to doing? To make somebody else a hero rather than be a hero yourself? Women would need to be disinterested indeed if they like that best. I don't see it. Besides, we are not in the days of chivalry. What could you be inspired to do— make better bargains on your Stock Exchange?”
― Mrs. Oliphant, Hester

“And Jane all her life would be interested in ordinary, unexceptional girls and what might happen to them. Her quietest heroine of all, Fanny Price, had ‘no glow of complexion, nor any other striking beauty’, while Catherine Morland had ‘nothing heroic’ about her, and was ‘occasionally stupid’. Jane’s great achievement would be to let even the ordinary, flawed, human girls who read her books think that they might be heroines too.”
― Lucy Worsley, Jane Austen at Home: A Biography