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Books about defiance

A governess who refuses to be small, a prisoner who comes back with a plan, a young woman in Thebes who buries her brother against the king's order: what these books share is a person standing firm when it would be easier not to. If you want defiance with a face and a voice, start with Jane Eyre or Antigone; both make the cost of refusing clear without making it simple.

A page that shows it

The first time you say the true thing to someone who ruled you.

Ere I had finished this reply, my soul began to expand, to exult, with the strangest sense of freedom, of triumph, I ever felt. It seemed as if an invisible bond had burst, and that I had struggled out into unhoped-for liberty. Not without cause was this sentiment: Mrs. Reed looked frightened; her work had slipped from her knee; she was lifting up her hands, rocking herself to and fro, and even twisting her face as if she would cry.
— Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë (1847)

  1. Jane Eyre

    Charlotte Brontë, 1847

    An orphan with no money, no beauty and a ferocious sense of her own worth takes a job at a strange house. A first-person voice that still feels startlingly direct.

  8. Antigone

    Sophocles, -441

    A young woman defies a new king to bury her brother, and discovers how much a city will sacrifice to enforce its own order.

  16. Paradise Lost

    John Milton, 1667

    A blind poet turns the fall of Adam and Eve into an epic of free will, ambition, and married love, and gives the devil its most persuasive voice.

  21. The Book Thief

    Markus Zusak, 2005

    A girl steals books in Nazi Germany while Death, tired and curious, narrates her story. A voice-driven novel about words, courage, and ordinary people.

A taste of the feed

  1. How the upper classes turn a bereavement into a background check.

    To lose one parent, Mr. Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness. Who was your father? He was evidently a man of some wealth. Was he born in what the Radical papers call the purple of commerce, or did he rise from the ranks of the aristocracy?

    The Importance of Being Earnest · Oscar Wilde

  2. A body gone silent, and one light still signalling from inside.

    Sight and hearing were the only senses remaining, and they, like two solitary sparks, remained to animate the miserable body which seemed fit for nothing but the grave; it was only, however, by means of one of these senses that he could reveal the thoughts and feelings that still occupied his mind, and the look by which he gave expression to his inner life was like the distant gleam of a candle which a traveller sees by night across some desert place, and knows that a living being dwells beyond the silence and obscurity.

    The Count of Monte Cristo · Alexandre Dumas

  3. Spring has never looked more beautiful—or more dangerous.

    Ο Απρίλης με τον Έρωτα χορεύουν και γελούνε, Κι’ όσ’ άνθια βγαίνουν και καρποί τόσ’ άρματα σε κλειούνε. Λευκό βουνάκι πρόβατα κινούμενο βελάζει, Και μες στη θάλασσα βαθιά ξαναπετιέται πάλι, Κι’ ολόλευκο εσύσμιξε με τ’ ουρανού τα κάλλη. Και μες στης λίμνης τα νερά, όπ’ έφθασε μ’ ασπούδα, Έπαιξε με τον ίσκιο της γαλάζια πεταλούδα, Που ευώδιασε τον ύπνο της μέσα στον άγριο κρίνο· Το σκουληκάκι βρίσκεται σ’ ώρα γλυκιά κι’ εκείνο. Μάγεμα η φύσις κι’ όνειρο στην ομορφιά και χάρη, Η μαύρη πέτρα ολόχρυση και το ξερό χορτάρι· Με χίλιες βρύσες χύνεται, με χίλιες γλώσσες κραίνει· Όποιος πεθάνη σήμερα χίλιες φορές πεθαίνει.

    Οι Ελεύθεροι Πολιορκημένοι, σχεδίασμα Β΄ · Διονύσιος Σολωμός

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