Samantha Hahn’s fantastically illustrated book “Well-Read Women, Portraits of Fiction’s most Beloved Heroines” draws its fascination through the watercolour portraits she imagined of the ladies. Those are independent of how we might have seen those famous women in the film adaptions of the books and put them to collective memory.
I was drawn to the book in a second-hand bookshop in Belfast, because the title picture was so captivating. The colours so perfectly matching, the woman pictured giving the impression of being through with the world, although she is still young and everything sparkles.
The selection of the books and the characters chosen by Samantha Hahn is a personal one, some are really well-known in literature, others not so, and that is completely fine. Making a selection always has this personal streak. Samantha Hahn writes about her journey in the foreword of her book. She chose one quote for every heroine that describes her best.
The first character in the book made into a watercolour is Daisy Buchanan, the woman desired so much by ‘The Great Gatsby’. The quote given is that of her hoping her daughter is a beautiful little fool. The watercolour by Samantha Hahn of Daisy Buchanan is in line with those I have in my mind from the book and especially the various movies. It is remarkable how deeply good films touch our inner eye.
On the following pages of her book Samantha Hahn’s portraits often are quite different than the appearance of the heroines made famous through the films. This is the case e.g. with Scarlett O’Hara of ‘Gone with the Wind’ by Margaret Mitchell (Vivien Leigh!), Nora Charles of ‘The Thin Man’ by Dashiell Hammett (Myrna Loy!), and Milady de Winter of ‘The Three Musketeers’ by Alexandre Dumas (Lana Turner!).
It is also the case with the front cover portrait of Lady Brett Ashley, the heroine of Ernest Hemingway’s book ‘The Sun Also Rises’ from 1926. I first bought the book and read it, and then watched the movie classic with Hollywood icon Ava Gardner from 1957. The woman on the front cover of “Well-Read Women- Portraits of Fiction’s most Beloved Heroines” and Ava Gardner could not look more different. In the book we find no full description of Lady Brett Ashley’s looks, only of her short hair, her being 34 years, and her overall beauty.
At first glance I tended to give Ava Gardner’s Lady Brett Ashley the preference, as she transports more of the restlessness than the serene beauty painted by Samantha Hahn. As a 2-hour movie transports more than a single portrait, I checked page 105 where the full picture is printed and also the quote from the book “We could have had such a damn good time together”. The quote is a self-pitting exclamation by a woman who is mainly interested in sex (and can behave as bad as she wants due to her money and beauty) to an impotent man who has helped her many times. His answer “Yes, isn’t it pretty to think so” should be heard with heavy sarcasm.
In the watercolour on page 104 a glass of red wine is in front of Lady Brett Ashley as she is sitting at a table in a bar or bistro in Paris (France) or Pamplona (Spain). The wine glass is almost in the centre of the picture and that is no coincidence. The only people drinking water in Hemingway’s book are bull fighters who need to be aware of their senses and surroundings, because otherwise they might be dead or hurt. Everybody else is semi-drunk all the time because they cannot cope with reality. Ernest Hemingway describes those young Americans in Europe after the Great War (1914-1918) as a ‘lost generation’. An additional quote from the bible (Ecclesiastes) is supposed to emphasise that however unhappy people are (self-made or other) the world goes on. ‘The Sun Also Rises’, the title of the book, sounds like an exaggeration when reading about the rich people enjoying and wasting their lives with alcohol and love affairs, and apparently unable to think straight.
It is quite fitting that in the foreword of Hemingway’s book Mary V. Dearborn informs that ‘The Sun Also Rises’ must have been the reason for even more young Americans coming to Europe in the 1920s and live there in a grand way due to the exchange rate. A lazy luxurious life is something most people want, at least a life without financial worries. Such a life can be wonderful, or can be dangerous – the tight line is how good you know yourself and how grounded you are. Today’s generation, with inheritances coming from all sides, might be the first coming close of the opportunities of the young people exactly 100 years ago.
Probably you can learn about life through every quote and every portrait in the book. Each of them gives you something and gives food for thought – exactly what we want, even if we do not agree with the ladies. Samantha Hahn is a famous artist for all kinds of watercolours, living in New York, and has written more than one book by now, the others celebrating her experiences with motherhood and children.
The combination she did in her book “Well-Read Women, Portraits of Fiction’s most Beloved Heroines” of world class literature and her beautiful art in watercolours is unique. It would be great if one day Samantha Hahn came back to that and wrote more books, maybe about male heroes, or adventurers, or animals and illustrating them in her watercolour way.
The artist is young enough to do so and we shall watch and wait for her inspiration. In the meantime, we can read through all the classics she mentioned in “Well-Read Women, Portraits of Fiction’s most Beloved Heroines”.
All rights to the books and film belong to:
Hahn, Samantha: WELL-READ WOMEN, PORTRAITS OF FICTION’S MOST BELOVED HEROINES”, 2013, published by Chronicle Books LLC, 680 Second Street, San Francisco, CA 94107, manufactured in China, ISBN: 978-1-4521-1415-6
Hemingway, Ernest: The Sun Also Rises, first published in 1926, this edition published in 2022 by Vintage Classics Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York, printed and bound in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, Elcograf S.p.A, ISBN: 978-0-593-46634-6
“The Sun Also Rises” movie from 1957 with Ava Gardner and Tyrone Power, available only through youtube currently (21.08.2026)