This system of self-assignment of roles is incredibly evident in Charlotte Mary Yonge’s The Clever Woman of the Family, introduces us to Rachel and Grace Curtis. Both Rachel and Grace’s roles are defined to us from the very beginning of the novel: Rachel is our heroine known within her family as the Clever One, Yonge describes her physical appearance and manner of dress and to highlight its superiority she states how Grace’s appearance did not have as much “mark or animation.” Moreover their relationship slots in perfectly with Michie’s analysis of the self-defined identities that would place one, in this case Rachel as the heroine, “Grace implicitly accepted Rachel’s superiority as an unquestionable fact, and the mother, when traversing
