Why only literature, you ask? Because my patience for new cinema and television is much shorter than for new novels & short stories, I answer,
Why no science fiction & fantasy, you ask? Because I’m a jerk, I answer. That can’t be news. Anyway, I don’t like playing tennis without a net, and if the thread gets any legs, people will start talking about Susan Ivanova around post 15.
Why only female characters, you ask? Eat your goddamn broccoli, I answer. And your liver. No pie until that plate is clean, mister!
I will open the bidding with LuAnn Arceneaux, whose name I probably just misspelled, but since I don’t know how to search the internet we’ll just have to live with it. Anyway, LuAnn is protagonist of several short stories by the great (and greatly missed) Andre Dubus. All the LA stories are collected in this slender volume, I think, though of course I could be wrong. The first one I read was probably the third Luann story–“The Timing of Sin”–which I encountered in Esquire and immediately felt shamed by. (Shamed by my own relative lack of writing talent, that is).
I always think of Cassandra Mortmain, from I Capture the Castle. I think she’s a terrific character, and very strong (or at least strong by the end of the book) because she’s a young person who is put in the unusual position of making decisions and taking action for herself and her family at a time when most young girls would live lives very proscribed by society and parents.
And about half the characters from In This House of Brede by Rumer Godden, which is about a convent, and several of the sisters really demonstrate an inner strength (given the subject matter, the book is primarily concerned with the internal qualities possessed by people of faith).
Both the women in Code Name Verity were amazingly strong, and while this is a fictional novel, I believe it was inspired by the British women who volunteered as civilian aviators during WWII.
They’re popcorn, but it’s hard not to enjoy Tommy and Tuppence trying to one-up each other in Agatha Christie’s mystery novels – especially since Tommy is genuinely competent as a sleuth right out of detective fiction, but his distaff better half keeps getting the win as an upbeat crook unhampered by, y’know, ethics.
Any protagonist of a novel written by Margaret Atwood and A.S. Byatt. I’m particularly fond of Tony from Atwood’s The Robber Bride and Maud from Byatt’s Possession. Very intelligent, observant, emotionally sensitive women who bury their feelings under thick layers of reserve and are natural-born scholars who can put their brains to intimidating purpose (I get the feeling this is not unlike Atwood and Byatt themselves).
From 19th-century lit – Dounia from Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment and Dorothea from Eliot’s Middlemarch. Two of my favorites (especially Dorothea, with whom I empathized so much). And Jane Eyre, of course. And Anne from Austen’s Persuasion. And Anne of Green Gables.
Well, Scarlett O’Hara from Gone With The Wind is classic ‘strong female’. She went from spoiled young Southern Belle to enduring the Civil War, pressed into service as a nurse for a while, suffering penury and doing hard manual labor on Tara after the war, marrying and giving birth three times, buying and running the sawmill, enduring the disapproval of the faded society matrons, losing her daughter…just goes on and on. And yet she endured and overcame grievous obstacles as no proper Southern lady could be expected to do. She saved her family, saved Tara, married Rhett, made a ton of money. All at a price, of course, but her final words were ‘tomorrow is another day’.
Gertie Nevels from The Dollmaker by Harriett Arnow. 1940’s, Appalachia, woman who provides for her family from what grows in her yard follows her husband to Detroit when he gets a job in a factory. Incredibly strong, resourceful woman whose only weakness is loyalty. My favorite book of all time. Haven’t seen the Jane Fonda movie. Can only imagine she fucked it up.
I love Christopher Tietjens much maligned bad-girl wife, Silvia, in Parade’s End, the indomitable Ree Dolly in Winter’s Bone (who I’d like to adopt), swashbuckling crazy-smart Jennet Stearne from The Last Witchfinder and Margaret from Metzger’s Dog. I expected her to be standard love interest window-dressing, but she turned out to be sly, dry, funny and smart.
I also feel compelled to mention Mrs. Danvers. I’m not proud of this.
“Dragon” and “Valkyrie” in John Ringo’s Paladin of Shadows series. The rest of the females (except Mother Lenka!) are cartoon bimbos, but the two helicopter pilots are bad-ass. Especially Dragon. Never get the lady pissed at you when she’s flying that Hind.
Austen’s heroines Elizabeth, Anne, and Fanny are conundrums, because they’re all strong people, hewing to their values despite pressure, and not falling into the stereotypical soft, dumb, frivolous woman type. But they also strongly enforce what we now consider outdated, sexist mores (especially Fanny!). It’s a testament to Austen’s genius that she can make this liberated, sex-positive feminist completely sympathize with the Bennet family’s scandalization at Lydia’s premarital affair.
I intended to post this, but since you beat me to it, I can at least mention the two strongest by name: Catherine Ismay and Philippa Talbot.
Also, Jane Marple from Agatha Christie’s novels.
And, since someone brought up Anne of Green Gables and you didn’t (if I remember the OP correctly) exclude children’s novels, then Ann Putney from Understood Betsy, Senora Forteza from Debbie of the Green Gate, Cherry Ames (from a series of “nurse detective books”–dated, true, but she was a career woman, not just a detective), and Rachel Lynde, Marilla Cuthbert, and Cornelia Bryant from the Anne of Green Gables novels.
[QUOTE=Dendarii Dame;16113438
And, since someone brought up Anne of Green Gables and you didn’t (if I remember the OP correctly) exclude children’s novels[/QUOTE]
Children’s novels are fine. Mystery novels are fine. Just no sf/fantasy.
Irene Alder, from the Sherlock Holmes stories. OK, she’s only actually in one story, but she’s still the only person ever to have outwitted Holmes.
Sally Kimball, from the Encyclopedia Brown books. Smart and independent, but also strong in the literal sense, in that she’s the only one who can take Bugs Meany in a fight.
Lydia wasn’t just involved in a “premarital affair.” She was silly, underage & in the power of a known cad & bounder–in the big city of London. It was sheer luck that she wasn’t cast out on the street pregnant!
I agree that Jane Austen wrote some very strong women.
How about Flora Poste from* Cold Comfort Farm*? The novel is funny (& has made at least two excellent BBC series). But her lively intelligence saved a whole family from depressing lives as characters in a D H Lawrence-knockoff novel. (Strictly speaking it’s “futuristic”–but in a very odd & subtle way.)
Oh, and Harriet Vane from several of Dorothy Sayers’ Lord Peter Wimsey detective novels…
(Jo Marsh, her mother & her sisters all had their own types of strength. As did Laura Ingall Wilder’s female characters.)
Agreed that Lizzie Bennet in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice is a strong, funny, likeable heroine. Keira Knightley’s portrayal of her is a favorite of mine; probably her best role yet.
“Charlie” Maguire, an American reporter, puts herself in great danger to expose Nazi crimes and does it with style and wry humor in Robert Harris’s Fatherland.
Angela McCourt, author Frank McCourt’s mom in Angela’s Ashes, overcomes some terrible obstacles and does her best to keep her family together.
The plucky Scout in Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, of course.
Can’t forget the resourceful, worldly young Addie Pray in the Joe David Brown novel Addie Pray and the Bogdanovich movie Paper Moon. (If you liked the movie, read the book! It has lots more good stuff that didn’t make it on screen).
Don’t mess with Jackie Brown in the Elmore Leonard novel Rum Punch and the Tarantino movie Jackie Brown.
Precious Ramotswe in Alexander McCall Smith’s The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series - she has grace under fire, and a calm intelligence that’s very endearing.
Dinah in the Biblical-extrapolation novel The Red Tent by Anita Diamant is smart and tough.
Oh, and Dr. Elizabeth Kerslake in Jeffrey Archer’s fantastic political novel First Among Equals - a beautiful doctor and politician’s wife with a spine, a brain and opinions of her own.
