Despite Plain Bad Heroines having the “bury your gays” trope, I find that there isn’t any subtext to these queer/ LGBTQ+ characters. However, many of these young women who find hope in MacLane’s words soon find their deaths. Given their strength to be “out” in the early 20th century, their death on campus was forever a stain on the legacy of Brookhants. Following the strong-willed writing of MacLane, they created a club called the Plain Bad Heroines where they indulged in being different than what society tells women what they need to be. They publically displayed their love and many on-campus knew of them. It was through MacLane’s writings that they found solace in their love and felt for the first time that their queerness is validated. Flo and Clara are two girls who found each other at Brookhants and secretly fell in love. Mary MacLane wrote about her attraction to other women and how she wished women were allowed to be perceived as anything but pure. For historical context, Mary MacLane was a prominent writer in the early 1900s. One part is a classic-feeling, gothic horror story revolving around young women obsessed with a memoir from the real-life Mary Maclane. Readers will have an easier time knowing that there are two distinct aspects to this narrative. The narrator is present to help tie the two separate timelines together and it does its job well and seamlessly. The narrator’s dialogue is distinct in tone and it is never confusing to follow. There are many moments throughout the novel where Danforth criticizes the lives of the Hollywood elite, the silliness of fear, and the lunacy of online culture. While this doesn’t always hit the nail on the head, Danforth’s curt and satirical tone is wildly funny and utterly brilliant.
It has a metafictional narrator directly talking to readers. Readers follow two different storylines between Flo and Clara, two boarding school lovers who suffer a tragic death in the woods in 1902, and Harper and Audrey as they attempt to tell Flo and Clara’s story on the big screen.įor starters, Plain Bad Heroines is not set up as a typical horror novel. This is a gothic horror satire novel that revolves around sapphics and the horror they find on campus or on a Hollywood set.
Danforth, illustrated by Sara Lautman, and is published by HarperCollins. Plain Bad Heroines is written by Emily M.
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