It set me casting about
for a really homely heroine.
There never has been a really ugly heroine in fiction.
Authors have started bravely out to write of an unlovely woman, but
they never have had the courage to allow her to remain plain. On
Page 237 she puts on a black lace dress and red roses, and the
combination brings out unexpected tawny lights in her hair, and
olive tints in her cheeks, and there she is, the same old beautiful
heroine. Even in the "Duchess" books one finds the simple Irish
girl, on donning a green corduroy gown cut square at the neck,
transformed into a wild-rose beauty, at sight of whom a ball-room
is hushed into admiring awe. There's the case of jane Eyre, too.
She is constantly described as plain and mouse-like, but there are
covert hints as to her gray eyes and slender figure and clear skin,
and we have a sneaking notion that she wasn't such a fright after
all.
Therefore, when I tell you that I am choosing Pearlie Schultz
as my leading lady you are to understand that she is ugly, not only
when the story opens, but to the bitter end. In the first place,
Pearlie is fat. Not, plump, or rounded, or dimpled, or deliciously
curved, but FAT. She bulges in all the wrong places, including her
chin. (Sister, who has a way of snooping over my desk in my
absence, says that I may as well drop this now, because nobody
would ever read it, anyway, least of all any sane editor.
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