In this weeks edition of Inspired By, we are featuring Susan Lovell author of The Sandpiper.  Here, Susan shares with us that her inspiration does not come from other novels but from characters.  Susan says her characters write her stories and they come from years of loving other strong fictional women from her favorite novels.  Below , are some of Susan’s most beloved characters that inspired her work.

 

Hester Prynne from The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Hester Prynne is a victim and an object, while also showing immense strength surviving what she is living with.  After committing adultery and the ultimate example of sin, Hester draws on her inner strength and certainty of spirit to emerge as the first heroine of American fiction.

 

Aunt Polly from The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain

Tom Sawyer is a young boy growing up along the Mississippi River.Aunt Polly is Tom’s leading mother figure, and loving aunt.  A disciplinarian to troublemaker Tom, Aunt Polly also provides spiritual guidance and finds difficulty in raising Tom.

 

Miss Havisham from Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

Miss Havisham is a heartbroken, and is determined to never move past her heartbreak.  Wearing her wedding dress everyday and stopping all of the clocks twenty minutes to nine, she adopts Estella and raises her to be a weapon to achieve revenge on men. 

 

Emma Bovary from Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert

Emma Bovary dreams of being in love and living a life of luxury and passion, but she finds it impossible with her husband, Charles, a dull country doctor.  When she realizes her dreams is to take a lover, she begins to spiral into a life of deceit and despair.

 

Skeeter from The Help  by Kathryn Stockett

Twenty-two-year-old Skeeter has just graduated from Ole Miss , and she has returned home to find that her beloved maid Constantine, who raised her, has disappeared and no one will tell her where she is.  Skeeter is determined and selfless as she puts together a project that will put everyone she knows and loves at risk.

 

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