Badly Behaved Women Unite!

When I was little, nothing would make me more mad than not being taken seriously. It’s easy to believe that I was prone to the dramatic, but it infuriated me to have what seemed very real angst made light of because I was “overreacting.” One of the most common nicknames for me (which made me crazy, even before I knew why) was “Sarah Bernhardt,” in honor of the legendary stage and film actress known as “The Divine Sarah.” Can’t a girl get her passionate on without being called a diva? If a long history of popular media is to be believed, the sassy girl with attitude always triumphs in the end (think Scarlett O’Hara, Norma Rae or those doctors from Grey’s Anatomy), but being one my whole life, and having to live with the consequences, I don’t know if I totally buy it. Historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich is credited with claiming that, “Well-behaved women seldom make history,” and I believe that, but it’s a hard road sometimes. One spunky girl who has thrived over time, while surviving some serious scrapes, is the French redhead with gumption, Madeline. She first lined up with the other eleven girls in 1938, but is still adventuring thanks to the original author’s grandson, John Bemelmans Marciano, who wrote Madeline And The Cats Of Rome. There are camera thieves, street urchins, mistaken identities, and mishaps galore--but Scarlett never doubted that Madeline would figure it all out in the end. That’s all there is, there isn’t anymore.


http://www.amazon.com/Madeline-Cats-Rome-Bemelmans-Marciano/dp/0670062979

http://biography.jrank.org/pages/2080/Marciano-John-Bemelmans-1970.html