A while ago, I came across a vintage copy of Shakespeare’s Heroines by Anna Jameson, while second-hand book shopping. My edition dates from the late 1800s, and it’s one of those books I keep coming back to, not just because it’s beautiful (it really it though!), but because of what’s inside it.
Jameson first published the work in 1832 under the title Characteristics of Women, and what she set out to do feels surprisingly modern even now. At a time when literary criticism was almost entirely dominated by men, she chose to focus on Shakespeare’s female characters and treat them as complex individuals in their own right.
The book was widely read in its time, reprinted again and again across Britain and America. And yet, somewhere along the way, her work slipped out of the conversation.
She wasn’t interested in summarising plots or repeating familiar interpretations. Instead, she looked closely at personality, motivation, emotion, and contradiction. She treated characters like Ophelia, Lady Macbeth, and Cleopatra as if they were real women with inner lives worth exploring.
It made me realise how often we reduce Shakespeare’s female characters to a single trait. Ophelia becomes “fragile”, Lady Macbeth becomes “ambitious”, Cleopatra becomes “dramatic”. Jameson’s writing pushes back against that kind of simplification.
I kept coming back to that book, and eventually found myself going back to the plays alongside it. Rereading them with a slightly different perspective, noticing details I’d skimmed over before, thinking more carefully about what defines each character beyond the obvious. At some point, that shifted into sketching ideas, then refining them, and slowly the concept for our Shakespeare’s Heroines enamel pin collection began to take shape.
The collection focuses on seven of Shakespeare’s most compelling female characters:
- Ophelia (Hamlet) – often seen as delicate, but far more complex when you look closely
- Queen Katharine (Henry VIII) – dignified and resolute in the face of injustice
- Lady Macbeth (Macbeth) – driven, formidable, and ultimately undone by her own conscience
- Katherina (The Taming of the Shrew) – sharp, defiant, and frequently misunderstood
- Cleopatra (Antony and Cleopatra) – charismatic, theatrical, and impossible to ignore
- Beatrice (Much Ado About Nothing) – quick-witted, perceptive, and emotionally intelligent
-
Hermia (A Midsummer Night’s Dream) – determined and willing to challenge everything for love
Each design started with thinking about who these women are, rather than just what happens to them.
One of the things I find most interesting about Jameson’s work is how relevant it still feels. She was writing nearly two hundred years ago, but the idea that women in literature deserve to be taken seriously, as fully realised characters rather than supporting roles, is still something we’re talking about now.
There’s something quite satisfying about that continuity. A Victorian writer taking these characters seriously, Shakespeare writing them in the first place, and now, in a much smaller way, a collection of enamel pins continuing that thread.
Each piece is designed to be a small, wearable tribute to these characters and the way they’ve been interpreted and reinterpreted over time. If you’re someone who finds yourself returning to certain characters again and again, or seeing something new in them each time, I think you’ll recognise that feeling here.