As a child, were your favorite literary characters of the same gender as you?

Cafe Society
21

I’m female. When I was in the 7-10 age range, The Famous Five were my favourite series of books, and Georgina (or George as she liked to be called) was my favourite character. She was a bit of a tomboy, not unlike myself at that age.

Until I was 12, I think I was at a bit of a loose end for books, and then I discovered Anne of Green Gables. She wasn’t tomboyish, but she was a bookworm, just like me.

At some point I was also a huge fan of Jo from Little Women - again, a tomboyish female character.

So I guess this holds true for me, even though the female character I liked tended to be the less-girly characters.

22

Ozma was magical, Meg was intellectual and nerdy, Poly knew many lanugages, and Emily was a pianist. All qualities I admire.

23

You know, honestly, I can’t really remember…I never really thought about it before. Stories seemed to stand out in my mind more than characters (or even character names, often enough). Odd.

Actually, with a little thought, I can think of a few…mostly male, but mostly all brainy schemers, which was the important part. Like T.D. “The Great Brain” Fitzgerald; most of the “Mad Scientists Club”; “Beanpole” from the Tripods trilogy…etc.

As for female characters…I don’t know if I’d call her a favorite, but I certainly liked Meg Murray (and if I’d been a skosh older and less of a gentleman, I might have hung the my copy of Wrinkle’s cover depiction of her on my wall. Rowr.). Midge Glass, from the Henry Reed books, on the other hand, was cool. Anyone else remember her?

24

Well, I was a child rather longer ago, so keep that in mind.

I mostly liked male protagonists, but most of the protagonists I read about were male. Among females, I kinda had the hots for Clarissa Kinneson, and her daughters. I found the male Kinnesons a bit hard to take. (Of course I liked Nadrek and Worsel the best of the Lensmen, and I don’t think Nadrek had a sex, and with a thirty foot long flying lizard, the question is unlikely to come up.) Podkayne wasn’t my cup of tea, but Girdle Fitz-Snugly was cool. (I really liked Holly Jones too.) Hazel Meade is my kinda girl, although eventually Minerva Long became my Heinlein favorite.

I don’t recall any really strong responses to other female protagonists from my childhood. As I said, there were not all that many. I didn’t like the House on the Prairie books, and never even finished one of them. Dickens heroines were nauseous. Nancy Drew just wasn’t heroic. Just a tattle tale with a good mind and a sharp eye. Nothing for me to find really attractive. Good female protagonists mostly came later, after I was already an adult.

I could take or leave Menolly, but Lessa tripped my trigger. And Helva was nothing but cool. (I was much older than a child for most of Ms McCaffery’s career, though.) Rhiannon was really a tough chick, but man, Celtic tragedy is really tragic. I couldn’t even begin to identify with being around her. Tolkien’s women were all to be loved from afar, and I did. I liked Goldberry better than Arwen, and both of them more than Luthien. Galadriel was another tough babe, and I like tough babes. She was just a bit too mysterious for my tastes, though. Ayla was too good to be true, although I really liked her foster mother. (I don’t know if the whole Neanderthal thing would have been too much for me.) Talut’s old lady was way cool, too. (I forget her name.) I don’t think I would have been able to take Sophie Aubry’s company for more than an hour or so, and although I would have probably really liked Diana Maturin as a casual friend, I have no respect for her, after her actions with respect to Bridget. Clarissa Oakes probably would have been my best friend of all the O’brian women.

I really liked Queen Lucy, the Valiant. Never much cared for her sister, even in the first book. Polly was the sort of girl you can be best friends with, even if you are a boy. I wish had read those stories as a child.

Well, I will probably think of dozen as soon as I hit submit, but I ought to stop somewhere.

Tris

25

Well, let’s see…

I’m a guy, first of all. As a kid, I tended to like the usual guy characters in any given series, though I tended to most prefer the goody two-shoes leader types (Cyclops, Captain America, Leonardo on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Optimus Prime), and the villains, I always love a good villain. However, even as a young kid, I did tend to enjoy seeing female characters who were fairly dynamic in their own right (such as Baroness and Cover Girl* in GI-Joe, as opposed to the milktoast Scarlet or TMNT’s damsel-in-distress April).

I never really got very attached to characters in books (no matter how much I might like the book itself) until I started reading Tolkien as a preteen. And yeah, pretty much the same thing; dug Eowyn, but Aragorn was the character I was really rooting for (and I thought the Ringwraiths were bad-ass).

In my teens I came to like quirky characters and losers. Nightcrawler in the X-books for an example of the former, and Arthur Dent of Hitchhiker’s fame for the latter. I began to really enjoy the more bad-ass female heroes in other media, but most of the books I was reading didn’t have female leads (although Natasha Kerensky and Joanna from the Battletech series were awesome).

In highschool I discovered the anime and manga series Ranma 1/2. I don’t know how this character would weigh in for these purposes (the series starts out with Ranma having a shapeshifting curse triggered by water temperatures causing him to spend roughly half the time as a girl), but I would mention that I much more closely identified with Ranma than just about any other character I’ve ever read/watched, despite having nothing in common with him/her. Though I’ll freely admit that this was largely influenced by some incredible fan-fiction which used the framework of the series as a vehicle for stories about coming-of-age experiences and identity issues.

So over-all I guess my experience supports your psuedo-agent’s claim. I would, being a gamer, like to point out that the opposite is usually the case with role-playing games (especially massively multiplayer mnline games); males usually are much more comfortable playing females than vice-versa (I should know: half my mmo characters are female).

*Cover Girl was a minor character, a former super-model who enlisted in the armed services and became an exceptional tank driver. She’s most remembered for her clever (if sanitized for kids’ tv) put-downs of the male heroes who frequently hit on her.

26

Male, and I think I had about a 75/20/5 percentage mix (male/female/other), once you throw Left Hand of Darkness into the mix.

27

I’m 49, so most of the fiction that I read as a child had either exciting male characters doing interesting things or boring female characters either being female, being a love interest, or providing support for the male hero. Males DID things. Females had things DONE to them. So, most of my favorite characters were male, yes, but I would have preferred to read about female characters doing interesting things. Meg Murray has been mentioned frequently, and I believe it’s because she was one of the few female characters in that era who had a brain and used it.

Science fiction and fantasy were my genres of choice, and there were very, very few female protagonists out there when I was young. There were also darn few openly female SF/fantasy writers. I remember being shocked to find out that Andre Norton was a woman. I never liked the typical girls’ books, where the heroine worried about her social situation.

Skald the Rhymer, tell your quasi-agent that the reason that male characters are more appealing to boys is because until quite recently, female characters were extremely boring. It’s getting better (I still read YA fiction) and if you want to write a story with an interesting heroine, go for it!

28

It was Simone De Beauvoir.

Thinking the question over, I remember reading a whole lot of books as a child, but don’t think I can pick out too many specific favorite characters. It was probably a mix of genders.

29

Tell me about it…one of the saddest moments in my adult life* was finding out that there had been a Baroness action figure, and I’d never even known to look for it. :frowning:

I don’t remember April as being that bad, though—she’s certainly no Mona Lisa, true, but at least she wasn’t useless.

*Possibly a slight exageration.

30

Quite often.

Danny Dunn & Tom Swift Jr especially.

31

Skald, when your book is published, I’d really like to know so I can check it out.

As for the question, I’m female, but one of the few female characters I really dug was George, from the Nancy Drew books, because she wasn’t quite as silly-girlish as Nancy and Bess.

I did like books about witches, or girls pretending to be witches. A couple of favorites were: Jennifer, Hecate, Macbeth, William McKinley, and me, Elizabeth by E. L. Konigsberg and The Active Enzyme Lemon-Freshened Junior High School Witch by Wallace Hildick, though I was disappointed with the endings when the girls decided not to try to be witches any longer. Couldn’t these chicks follow through?

Finally, when I was ten, I discovered Scarlett O’Hara, who thought of interestingly bad things and (glory hallelujah) actually did them. I loved her.

32

As much as was possible. Which is why I get so tweaked when folks say it doesn’t matter what pronoun you use when the sex of the person is unknown. It damn sure did/does to me.

A Wrinkle In Time: Meg
Anything Judy Blume wrote
Pippy Longstocking
Nancy Drew
Wizard of Oz

33

Is NOT. I mean, you’re talking about the freaking Scarlet Pimpernel. Who knows what he/she really looks like? Pretending to be male could be part of the disguise.

Mini-hijack: Anybody remember that episode of the George Reeves Superman series in which the villain-of-the-week decides that Superman is so kind and compassionate he must really be a woman and his/her secret identity is Lois Lane? Because I’ve always wondered what that guy was smoking. Particularly since the Lois he was referring to was Phyllis Coates, who as we all know is by far the hottest of the Loises.

Um…Reepicheep?

You got some 'splaining to do, Lucy.

34

It wasn’t a serious discussion by that point, Lynn; she was being my old buddy at that point, not a prospective agent. She likes my female character; she just thought that, since the character’s reading tastes were mildly important to her, ah, character, that I might want to reconsider her reading only stories with male protagonists, and thus change a Bilbo Baggins reference to Meg Murray.

35

Up to 18 is a big range. Hmm

Pre-adolescent reading was mostly girl-oriented because I had all my mom and older sisters books - Nancy Drew, Cherry Ames, the Little House books, Little Women, etc., so all my favorite characters were by default female.

About age 12, my reading tastes changed to fantasy & Sci-Fi, which meant most of what I read had male protaganists, so many of them became favorite characters. Bilbo Baggins, and later most of the LOTR characters, Captain Nemo, Dr Who (I was exposed to the books long before I saw any of the series). The few with female protaganists didn’t grab me. I didn’t care for the Narnia books, Menolly and Lessa were okay, but not favorites.

Even after I started seeking books with interesting and sympathetic female leads, they were few and far between in the genres I was reading at the time. It was still largely male-aimed. One of the few I remember really liking was the character in “Tombs of Atuan”, whose name escapes me at the moment. I found out that I am unusual in preferring her to Ged who was always too remote for me to really like.

36

Hell, not only were my favorite literary characters the same gender as me, they usually wore glasses as I did.

37

What gender IS “The Little Engine That Could”? That was my favorite.

38

That was my sons favorite recently, “The Little Engine That Could” is a she.

39

I’ll take this moment to remind Skald of a very similar thread we had last May.

Like several others here, I read more for stories than for characters. But looking back at my favorite books as a child, and the characters I liked best:

A Wrinkle in Time and sequels: Charles Wallace (I liked Meg more than most literary characters, but Charles Wallace more than Meg).
Little House on the Prairie and sequels: Laura, of course, but there wasn’t really anyone else to pick from.
Narnia: Tough choice between Lucy and Reepicheep. Lucy is just so sincere, and Reepicheep, well, you have to admire when the king’s bravest knight is a mouse.
Prydain: Gurgi, or Ffleuder Fflam. Both are good comic relief, though in very different ways. I suppose I liked Taran and Eilonwy about equally, but not as much as the two jokers.
The Danny Dunn books: Danny, of course. He gets to play with all those cool inventions.
The Encyclopedia Brown books: Encyclopedia. Again, the super-smart hero.
The Lord of the Rings: Samwise. Absolutely loyal, and he has that everyman thing going for him. Of course, there aren’t too many females to choose from, here.
The Silmarillion: Huan, though I don’t think his gender was too relevant.
Foundation: Irrelevant, since it doesn’t have characters.
Asimov’s various Robot stories: Dr. Susan Calvin, without a doubt. Again with the smarts, plus a generous helping of uncommon common sense.
Varied Heinlein works: The Boy Scout character archetype. Being a boy scout myself probably helped make them relatable. Again, the protagonists of the juvies were mostly male.
Euclid’s Elements (hey, it was one of my favorite books in high school!): Um, I don’t think this one counts… But the Pons Asinorum had a great attitude.

So I guess, yes, most of my favorite characters were male. But I have to wonder how much of that is due to the genders themselves, and how much is due to the books that get written about boys and girls?

40

My female reading tastes are similar to a lot of other female posters here.

At a VERY young age I enjoyed the Bernstein Bears because it was a brother/sister thing. Then I was into both Ramona and Encyclopedia Brown. (very young = mix)

As a pre-teen I adored The Babysitters’ Club. I read that almost exclusively, but my favorite character was the tomboy one. I also loved Anne of Green Gables, and this short series about a girl names Anastasia. (middle school = girls)

Then in high school I got into Robert Cormier, Gary Paulsen and Matt Christopher who happened to write books about boys. But they were the best books I’ve ever read. (high school = boys)

After that I sort of uhm…stopped reading. But I have been enjoying Neal Stephenson’s Baroque cycle which is like 2700 pages and half about a female character. (adult = whatever)