This week in the Summer Reading Challenge, we’re celebrating Kathleen Shoop‘s novel Love and Other Subjects! For this #SRC edition of Inspired By, Kathleen has chosen five of her favorite women’s literature heroines who inspired the character development of Carolyn Jenkins, the heroine in Love and Other Subjects.

Olive in Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout

“Olive Kitteridge is a great heroine (anti-heroine) to me because there are layers of her that are unlikable and awful and makes me think she deserves what she gets. Of course she is wounded and very, very real.”

 Mary in Mary: Mrs. A Lincoln by Janis Cooke Newman

“She’s Lincoln’s wife and boy she had a hard time of it. Also flawed and very fragile in some ways (also very strong in others) I can imagine how the deaths that surrounded her made her into the woman she was–even the undesirable parts she embodied.”

 Anna Frith in Year of Wonders by Geraldine March

“Anna is a fabulous character. She manages to help her fellow-townspeople during the isolation of the plague, to learn new skills, to feel her pain, while never giving up.”

Aibeleen Clark in The Help by Kathryn Stockett

“Her strength is immeasurable in the face of epic, iconic challenges as well as immediate day to day issues. I can feel her love for children not her own as well as her own flesh and blood, and more importantly her pain is tangible when she loses someone she loves.”

Lily Bart in House of Mirth by Edith Wharton

“I love her. She tries so hard to find her place in the world, weighing and measuring what she wants against what she needs…love that she is tragic, but not pitiful.”

Pinterest PS – Go back to school with this fun Love and Other Subjects themed Pinterest board!