Three of my posts have been concerned with nothing but explaining that there is a distinction, and what the distinction consists in.
The meaning of the OP is perfectly clear, it has been made more clear in clarification, and the suggestions that have been given are perfectly on point.
Seriously? If you really don’t understand this, do me the following favor: Start from the left, proceed to the right, and explain to me exactly where you stop understanding it.
In fact, my wife has read Snow Crash and really liked it, and thinks it’s probably a good example of the kind of thing she’s looking for. (“Probably,” because it’s been years since either of us read it so we’re not sure how much we’re forgetting. But to our recollection, the main female protagonist isn’t written in a way that is clearly governed by any particular ideal of femininity.)
It seems pretty straightforward to me. I understand the OP to be asking for great characters, who happen to be women, but who would still be great characters if they instead happened to be men. Susan Calvin, for instance, is remarkable as the greatest robopsychologist in the world, and if she were a man, she would still be remarkable for that reason. So she’s an example of what the OP is looking for. Teela Brown would be an example of what the OP isn’t looking for, since her main contribution to the story is falling in love with particular men at particular times, and so her character would not work the same way were she a man.
A common criticism of Neal Stephenson is that he doesn’t have a female voice for his characters. It doesn’t particularly bother me - he writes strong characters, some of whom happen to be female. This impacts how others interact with them and the role they play in sex scenes, but otherwise their faults, strengths, and behaviors are not particularly feminine. I’d recommend Rainbows End. There are a number of strong female characters; the female protagonist is young, but there are interesting female characters covering a spectrum of ages.
Another series with interesting characters who happen to be female is Tad William’s Otherland quartet.
Pretty much–though I did want to allow for the possibility that the character’s being female is somehow essential to the story. But stories like the ones you describe would certainly fit what I was looking for. Absolutely.
When I was a little girl, I used to read and greatly enjoy Heinlein’s works. And I read Stranger when I was somewhere between 12 and 14 (read it in middle school). However, one thing that bothered me was that ALL of his admirable female characters were eager to have babies. ALL of them, except for Friday, and when I was a little girl, *Friday *hadn’t been written yet. If a woman didn’t want to have kids, she was not a real woman, according to Heinlein. Also, if she wasn’t at least TRYING to be sexually interesting to men, she wasn’t a real woman. Similarly, other authors had various standards of what admirable women were and were not interested in. Heinlein was actually extremely progressive for his time, in that his female characters were usually at least as competent as his male characters. For instance, in Rolling Stones there’s Grandma, who had been an engineer (and who stated that her career had suffered from her lack of a penis), the mother (and I can’t remember her name, only that she was a doctor), and the sister of the twin terrors. The terrible twins were the main characters, yet the female characters were shown as having lives and interests that didn’t revolve around the males. Considering that this book was written in the 50s, for boys, that’s extreme feminism there.
I will recommend John Scalzi. I have other recommendations, but I need to pull my thoughts together. There are some excellent recommendations in this thread, though.
And Friday is only uninterested in reproduction because she’s messed up in the head, and once she gets herself straightened out, goes just as baby-crazy as any of the rest of them.
To be fair, most of Heinlein’s male characters also have a pretty strong drive to reproduce.
There are some interesting issues that have been raised.
Frylock, you seem to be after female characters who “just happen to be” female, where the character could work just as easily if you changed the gender.
Now, sometimes this is because an excellent writer, who is able to write multi-faceted characters, where gender is just one aspect of the person as a whole, has sat down and thoughtfully come up with a rounded, yet unconventionally feminine, female character.
And sometimes it is because the writer can’t cope realistically with a female point of view or write with a true to life and authentic female voice- so they just write a male character and change the pronouns.
Now I’m not saying that telling the difference is always easy, and different people may come down on either side of the line when considering particular examples (Starbuck in the BSG reboot anyone?) but IMO I think that there is a difference between:
“This character is female, but an unconventional female in a non-stereotypical role, because that’s just the kinda gal she is!”
and
“Not really sure how to write a girl character…so I’ll just make her behave and think like a man would do in the the various situations she encounters”.
I get stuck on the feminist stuff, and often find that people who want to talk about it don’t actually want to think about it. You know, that they get angry whenever you disagree with any point of theirs about genders.
For instance if you make a female character that is a strong leader, a tactical genius and exceptional in combat and make her less than ideally feminine in sexual attractiveness is that saying, “Women who have these qualities probably have to sacrifice their femininity to do so.”
and if you do make her ideal in feminine sex appeal does that say, “A woman has to be just as capable as a man, but also keep up appearances and if a female lead isn’t attractive people just don’t want to see or read about that.”
Then theres the obviously unattractive female competent lead and ya you can see where that cuts for people, just the first but even worse.
I wish I had some book suggestions for you, but I haven’t been a novel reader for some time and find what you’re asking for in movies and tv to be fairly absent.
Major Kira from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine seems to me to be an obvious example of this. The traits and backstory that define her and made her so interesting to watch could easily have been given to a male and made just as great a character. Her terrorist past, her love for her homeworld, her temper and passion, her religious convictions, her tendency to rail against any pressure of authority. Yes, later there were love interests and even (surrogate) motherhood, and a nurturing connection to the child she gave birth to, and her care of a teenage Cardassian girl, but they were only a small part of the rich tapestry of the character, and came a long time after she was established as a smart, vital, complex and fascinating person.
(Not that she was a perfect example of this, either. They stuck her in skin-tight cat-suits and showed off Nana Vistor’s sex appeal whenever they could. And there was certainly a lot of male-gaze fixation in the way they played her off against her mirror-universe counterpart. But she was a great character despite all that, and even including all that, not just because of it.)
I’ll agree on Susan Calvin, but as much as I love the book Podkayne of Mars, the character isn’t even a woman; she’s a naive little kid. Oh, I’m sure she would have grown up to be a remarkable woman, but in the story she’s … well … not impressive except in terms of the potential she showed.
Poddy is very much an adolescent girl, and quite naive in some ways. Also, see my post about Heinlein’s females wanting to have babies. At the start of the book, Poddy was quite rational about the problems of balancing a career and motherhood, and at the end, she was starting to act like a woman on the verge of menopause with extreme baby hunger. Poddy was smart, and she was learning how to manipulate men, but she didn’t really know what she wanted to be when she grew up, other than a mother.
Sure. That’s why I say that she had the potential to be a great woman. (I’m in the camp that says she died.)
If she has a flaw, it’s that she’s too awesome.
Seriously, I’m whipping through these books (just finished #4) and the ultra-perfection of this character is a real drawback. Her flaw, if she has one, is an inability to tolerate the less-perfect characters around her. She’s like a Ayn Rand protagonist, with a spaceship and an equally awesome alien pet.
Oh, the version where she died is a much better version. I always have to stop and remember that there was this version, though, because I read the version where she lived when I was very young and impressionable.
Can you clarify? What types of faults, strengths, and behaviors are particularly feminine, in your opinion?
I would second the 1632 series. You can find almost any kind of female character you want. Uptimer or downtimer.
Rebecca Sterns
Gretchen Richter
Julie Sims
Sharon Nichols
Anne Jefferson
Noelle Murphy (I think she is my favorite)
Of course, you can find almost any kind of woman you want. The wiki has page after page of characters.
http://ericflint.wikia.com/index.php?title=Category:1632_Characters&from=A
Seconded. Ellen Ripley is without doubt the most iconic example of what I think the OP is looking for.
At the point where you assume there are different criteria for being an excellent human being and an excellent woman. That’s where all your examples about "“X is an excellent Y. X is also a Z (for values of Z that have little to no overlap in qualities with Y). So X is an excellent Z…except he’s not. Mindfuck!!!111!!!” miss the point.
For your wording of the OP to make any real sense, you have to automatically assume that there are different characteristics that make someone a good man, a good woman, and a good person–basically, you have to assume that gender roles of some ilk are valid. That strikes me as a pretty goddamn stupid thing to expect people to assume because it’s such an obviously ridiculous idea. If you want to look for something with female characters who are good characters without worrying about how they do or don’t fit into some sort of gender norm, why didn’t you just say that? Seriously. It would save you this entire digression, and it’s what the people who have been offering suggestions have guessed you mean. Wouldn’t it be a lot simpler to just, you know, say what you mean and save people the damn guesswork?