I have just finished reading The Peabody Sisters (a biography of three smart women in 19th Century New England, who try very hard to express their genius in a male-dominated intellectual circle), and then Little Women, where the author espouses freedom and feminine docility in the same breath. Now I am reading Girls of Riyadh, which is (at least at the beginning) a little depressing regarding the affairs of women. I’ve really enjoyed all of these books, but I’m getting a little tired of reading about women being second to men.
So, can anyone recommend a book to me that portrays women as equals to men, where this is the natural state of affairs? This is probably not all that hard, but I can’t think of any right now, and I’d really like to read something with a little bit of equality to it. To give you an idea of what I’d really like right now: a book version of Battlestar Galactica, where the women are interesting, complex, daring and ambitious, just as much as the men are, but without beating the reader/watcher over the head.
Well, The Baroque Cycle series of books by Neal Stephenson (Quicksilver, The Confusion, System of the World) is a really long series that isn’t just about strong women, but…one of the 3 or 4 main characters in the series is a woman named Eliza who is fantastically smart, sexy and gutsy. I’d say maybe 1/3 of the entire series revolves around her.
Mixed in with the other fictional characters are non-fiction characters including some of the female royalty that was pretty kickass in the 17th century.
Karen Harpen has a series featuring Queen Elizabeth I (The Hooded Hawk, The Poysen Garden, among others).
A favorite of mine is Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum mysteries (One for the Money, (not a favorite), Two for the Dough, etc, up to (her latestFearless Fourteen) My personal favorite is Hot Six, which introduces Bob the dog (love the dognap-after-eating-a-box-of-prunes scene) and features Stephanie’s Grandma Mazzur (I love that woman!)
Also on the strong women list is Sue Grafton’s Kinsey Milhone series (A is for Alibi, B is for Burglar, etc) Kinsey’s stuck in the '80’s, but still the equal to any male opponent she comes up against.
The Nantucket trilogy(Island in the Sea of Time is the first) by S.M. Stirling features as one of it’s most important characters, a woman named Marian Alston. She’s a Coast Guard captain who is caught up in the fantastic Event that overtakes the island. Capt. Alston becomes the island’s warleader. She’s female, black, lesbian, and doesn’t take crap from anyone! She’s one of my favorite characters in the series.
I’d also take issue with you on Stephanie Plum being a strong woman. Headstrong, yes. Strong, no. She only gets by on dumb luck, or did when I quit reading the series. If you’re talking about Grandma Mazzur being the strong woman, yeah, I agree, she is. I told my daughter that I was gonna grow up to be just like Stephanie’s Grandma, and she turned pale.
I do not now, nor do I ever plan to, eat peanut butter and pickle sandwiches.
The Honor Harrington books by David Weber feature a number of strong female characters, particularly the titular character, although as far as the main character goes, it DOES tend to beat you about the head with her awesomeness (but not nearly as much as a few of Honor’s opponents get beaten about the heads by, well, Honor’s forearms. Later books and spinoffs introduce some better balanced characters, but the series is very entertaining).
The Vatta’s War series features a number of female characters who are strong in a wide variety of ways, particularly the Vatta women themselves, in a wide variety of ways (in the first book we mostly only see Ky Vatta’s tactical abilities, but a number of her female relatives and friends are shown to be highly skilled and self-sufficient in a variety of ways (and many of them are shown to start off young and stupid, later receiving degrees from the University of Hard Knocks)
The Horatio Hornblower books feature a few strong female characters, notably Barbara Wellesley Hornblower (who Hornblower only realizes very late in his life is routinely able to outsmart him), Marie du Gracay (widow of a French revolutionary army officer and later a pro-Bourbon guerilla fighter).
Dropped in to second the Honor Harrington series. Space Navy, strong female character, treecats, what more can you ask for?
David Weber also authored ‘Path of the Fury’, a story set in a similar futuristic universe, with sort of an up-to-date bionic woman/soldier theme (with a little Greek mythology tossed in for good measure) Weber seems to enjoy his strong female leads!
Curse of Chalion
Paladin of souls
Hallowed Hunter (?)
They all take place in the same world. 1 and 2 are vaguely related and 3 is completely unrelated. They can easily be read separately.
The place to look for strong and equal female characters is definitely sci-fi and fantasy. The genre often creates cultures that assume equality rather than just having strong female leads in an unequal culture.
Tanya Huff’s *Valor *books are a military sci-fi series featuring a tough-as-nails female marine sergeant. There’s a refreshing lack of attention given to gender: nobody is in the least surprised at the competent female marines. There are a lot of aliens in the book and differences of gender pale in comparison. These are very well written.
And Lois McMaster Bujold’s books are great. I like Miles Vorkosigan, but two of my favorites in this series are the first two books about Miles’ mother.
Anything by Octavia Butler. All of her protagonists are strong women. I particularly love the Lilith’s Brood books, and I’d also recommend Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents. And the Patternmaster series. Hell, everything by Octavia Butler.
Another writer who often features strong/independent women is Salman Rushdie. I’d recommend The Moor’s Last Sigh.
One book that I just finished that I’d also add is The Hummingbird’s Daughter, by Luis Alberto Urrea.
Elizabeth Moon’s “Deed of Paksenarrion” trilogy is good. Paks starts out as a recruit in a mercenary company where it’s assumed women can fight, die and lead on the battlefield.
Joe Haldeman’s sci-fi is usually pretty good about casually portraying women as equals. The Forever War is a classic, a Hugo winner, and his *Worlds *series has a strong female protagonist.
