What I've Been Reading

Great Female Characters

A friend sent me a link to a list of "Most Unforgettable Female Protagonists" posted by the Accredited Online Colleges Blog

http://www.accreditedonlinecolleges.com/blog/2011/the-50-most-unforgettable-

female-protagonists-in-literature/

Not all of them are actually "protagonists," but who cares? Interesting characters aren't always the main characters.

Of course, whenever I look over someone else's Top 50 list I always find that most of my favorites aren't there.

So here, off the top of my head and in no particular order, are some of my favorite female characters:

The women of the Gospels: Really, the wrong people protested The Last Temptation of Christ. It should have been feminist Christians protesting the disservice done to the many strong female characters in the Gospels. Martha, who greets Jesus with the accusation, “If you had been here, my brother would not have died.” Mary Magdalen, who goes to the tomb after the crucifixion and, finding it empty, demands to be told where she can find the body of the executed enemy of the state whom she claims as her rabbi. The unnamed woman at the well, who responds to Jesus’s promise of living water with the first-century equivalent of “Yeah, right.” These are brave women.

The unnamed girl/sister/bride/princess of many Grimm fairy tales: the girl who travels to the moon and the sun looking for answers, who cuts off her finger to make a key to the prison where her brothers are locked, who blows the whistle on the Robber Bridegroom, who sews seven shirts out of aster-flowers to restore her brothers to humanity, who breaks the taboos, talks to the birds, sifts lentils from peas, takes on impossible quests. Jane Eyre is probably descended from her.

Alice of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, another undaunted adventurer, who talks back to all the strange adults in Wonderland and Looking-Glass Land, opens every door she can open, and drinks from any bottle not marked poison.

Two contrasting characters from Lloyd Alexander’s Prydain Chronicles: the good princess Eilonwy, who finds the sword Dyrnwyn, rescues the hero, and travels all the way across Prydain and back without ceasing to talk in run-on sentences; and the evil queen Achren, who is defeated and gradually converted to good, remembering her former grandeur with bitter irony all the way until she finally sacrifices her life for her former enemies.

Ramona the Pest, creative and impulsive, who despite the best of intentions somehow can never stay out of trouble. Nowadays she’d probably be on Ritalin, but in the era she was first written for, all this childish energy was much more taken in stride.

Psyche from Cupid and Psyche, a story-within-a-story in the middle of the Latin romance The Golden Ass by Apuleius. Psyche is a kindred spirit to the girls of the fairy tales, an ancestor of Beauty in "Beauty and the Beast."

Raederle from Patricia McKillip’s Riddlemaster trilogy, who inherits the lawless elemental power of the shape-changers but balances it with love and kindness.

Jenny Wren from Our Mutual Friend, a tough independent girl with a crooked back, a talent for needlework, and a sense of irony.

Cordelia Vorkosigan of Lois McMaster Bujold’s Vorkosigan Saga, who has the courage to bring to term a disabled child in a society intolerant of any physical imperfection, and fights against a would –be dictator and other forces of evil to build a better world for her child and all his generation.

Sergeant Taura of the Vorkosigan Saga, an eight-foot-tall genetically engineered super-soldier, who looks like a monster but is actually the gentlest and most compassionate of characters — and, beneath the tough exterior, reallly enjoys being a girl.

All the women in Margaret Atwood’s The Robber Bride, including Charis (the innocent), Roz (the mother), Tony (the Amazon), and the ever-changing villainess, Xenia, who messes up their lives, messes with their heads, and forces them to discover their own dark sides.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Need I say more?

Susan Ivanova in Babylon 5, who complains aloud to God while dealing with strange alien menaces and bumbling subordinates, fakes sex with an ambassador to get a treaty, accidentally becomes Green Leader in the Drazi conflict, wins an alliance with mysterious First Ones by suggesting that the Vorlons said they might not be up to snuff, and never seems to get any sleep.

Zhaan in FarScape, mystic and outlaw.

Sophie in Diana Wynne Jones’ Howl’s Moving Castle, who has a gift for talking life into things.

Kiki the apprentice witch in the Miyazaki movie Kiki’s Delivery Service.

Dola the pirate captain in the Miyazaki movie Castle in the Sky (Laputa). A real tough old lady, and it pisses her off when the crew calls her Mom.

Grushenka in The Brothers Karamazov, a notorious bad girl who turns out to have a soft side for the would-be monk Alyosha, the one man she meets who has no sexual designs on her.

Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing, ancestress of Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice and every other witty, fast-talking romance heroine who starts out verbally fencing with the leading man before she actually decides she likes him.

Enide in Chretien de Troyes’ 12^th-century chivalric romance Erec et Enide, who makes her husband snap out of it when he’s too sexually satisfied to go on quests any more, and gets him back on the horse and out conquering bad guys.

Nadia, the Siberian engineer in Kim Stanley Robinson’s Red Mars, who goes into ecstasies of creativity with a whole empty world to build in.

Rogue in X-Men, who is so powerful she can’t touch anyone without harming them, but desperately craves touch.

The heroine of Flora Segunda, an inventive YA fantasy by Ysabeau Wilce. Flora, who narrates the story in a quirky, individual voice, is fourteen, impulsive, cocky, and fun. Not half as world-wise as she thinks she is, Flora gets herself into trouble both for her kind heart and for her fine disregard for rules and regulations.

Annie Jason Masmajean in Janet Kagan's Mirabile, part biologist, part adventurer.