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Applepicker, I think this is a great question! I'm ashamed to say, I'm having a really hard time answering it despite the fact that I read a lot of books by female authors and/or with female characters. Not sure whether that says something about female characters in general or something about me. Maybe my memory fails me...
Lyra Belacqua from Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy springs to mind, but surely I can come up with something from adult lit. I don't know, Lyra impresses. I also loved the narrators from Sandra Cisneros's Caramello and Lynne Tillman's American Genius, A Comedy.
Maybe share some of yours and it will jog some others into responding.
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Thanks mmolino54 for a try on this question. I'm afraid you are not much into classics. There are in fact many characters. Like Ibsen's Nora, Shaw's Ann Whitefield, Flaubert's Madame Bovary, Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre, V.Woolf's Lily Brisco ( in To the Lighthouse), Thackeray's Becky Sharp,to name a few.
Go ahead. Hope I've jogged your memory a little.
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first of all, thanks for starting the discussion.what a topic!!
my personal favourites would include ibesn's nora, mahasveta devi's dopdi mejhen, the protagonist of kate chopin's awakening, esther greenwood from plath's bell jar, .........
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You did jog my memory! For some reason, I was trying to think more contemporary, but I think I've heard of a couple of books you mentioned ; )
In no particular order, the following female characters impressed me: Elinor Dashwood (from Sense & Sensibility), Scout Finch (from To Kill a Mockingbird), the 9 muses from Greek mythology, and Grendel's mom.
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Hi mmolino,
Your 9 muses and Grendel's mother are wonderful mentions. I think Demeter and her daughter Kore( Greek Mythology) also deserve pioneer status as feminist characters. Eowyn (Lord of the Rings) is the slayer of the deadly king of nine black Ringwraiths. No man could do that. Orual from C.S Lewis's novel Till We Have Faces. Lewis has re-examined the ancient myth of Eros and Psyche. Orual is like a female Job.
Brunhilde from Richard Wagner's Ring of the Nibelungs cycle is another feminist character. I've mentioned for you some not very easily/often discussed as feminist characters. you can come up with more.
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zawadi
- Saturday, October 20 2007
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I can't say favorite because frankly I tend to forget characters names and titles of books until something jars my memory.
I am a fan of Alice Munro and I really enjoy many of her characters. One notable character is Pru. Had a very different take of her from my classmates when I took a course in women writers. I was surprised by how my peers read through conservative, traditional lenses and therefore pitied her instead of seeing her for the free-thinking, progressive woman I saw her to be.
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I certainly hope Moll Flanders counts. I just love her character.
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H.
- Saturday, January 19 2008
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It's interesting how many of these feminist characters are written by men. Any thoughts?
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I think one reason is that the "canon" that professors teach and Norton continues put in their anthologies are the books written by old, dead white guys. (This is changing however). In my recent experience reading more contemporary lit, I find that female authors tend to make some of their female protagonists harder to pin down as blatantly feminist characters. Some of their actions may look like self-sabotage, while at other times you feel like they are ready to burn their bras. It's more 3-D I think. I'm thinking of books by Edna O'Brien as an example.
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zawadi
- Sunday, April 27 2008
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I readly predominately women author with strong female characters. Short list:
Barbara Kingsolver
Joyce Carol Oates
Toni Morrison
Octavia Butler
Margaret Atwood
Alice Walker
Alice Munro
Edwige Danicat
Julia Alveraz
Sandra Cisneros
Jacqueline Woodson
I have to remind myself to read men so it is not my experience that men dominate in writing feminist characters. The idea of men writing more feminist characters is strange, as strange as the idea that white men write more and impressive African American literature.
Now of all of the authors I listed, some are not considered literary, but they do write strong, flawed, feminist characters. And I am not sure that women writers are writing characters harder to pin down. Maybe it is our own perceptions and biases about what constitutes a feminist character or maybe it's simply who we're reading. I think those who read chicklit are not necessarily looking for feminist characters, but anyone who is reading Morrison or Butler, expect nothing less than a strong, breaking the mode female lead. And if you want to see what the feminist looks like today among the young, I suggest investigating the graphic novel.
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Wow, so many good female protagonists and women writers mentioned in this thread! I feel among friends. :)
I think the most intense female character I've ever read (and it's probably the most intense in all of English fiction) is Judith Hearne from The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne by Brian Moore.
He was this old Irish Catholic writer who moved to Canada, but a lot of his novels center around the Catholic experience. This one is about an "old maid" in her 40s living in Dublin, who has a secret problem (I won't spoil it). It's this really short but intense story of how she copes with the fact that her life never really "started", and now it's all coming to an end, and how it makes her consider the choices in her life. I LITERALLY started crying when I finished the book because I felt such a close connection to Judith and all of her feelings and emotions . . . and I'm only 22! It's still my favorite book on Earth.
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Mmm, Jane Eyre will always be my favorite. But Antonia is the female character who has crept up closest. I just love that being a great mom is her crowning achievement. My favorite Feminist author has to be Charlotte Perkins Gillman. I love the Yellow Wallpaper. Especially now that I've had my own "mental breakdown." We women are so fragile and there can never be too much literature that portrays our beauty or our weakness.
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