Women heroes in literature

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Women heroes in literature

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1vwinsloe
Jun. 26, 2013, 12:43 pm

Read a blog today http://amazingstoriesmag.com/2013/06/female-heroes-in-literature/ that asked some really good questions, that it might be interesting to talk about.

1. Do or should female heroes embody different characteristics than male heroes?

2. Who are your favorite female heroes in literature? And what are their prominent characteristics?

I think that I need to think about these myself before answering!

2Gelöscht
Jun. 26, 2013, 4:48 pm

I'm not sure what a hero is, female or otherwise. Someone who's good at combat and protects others who can't do it for themselves? Like Katniss Everdeen in "The Hunger Games"?

Or someone who is really good at living life on her own terms, no matter who gets hurt, and "achieves" stuff? Like Ayn Rand's Dagny Taggert?

Or someone who endures despite adversity when others are falling by the wayside? Like Steinbeck's Ma Joad?

3vwinsloe
Jun. 27, 2013, 7:00 am

Here is what dictionary.com says.

hero  

he·ro heer-oh
noun, plural he·roes; for 5 also he·ros.
1. a man of distinguished courage or ability, admired for his brave deeds and noble qualities.
2. a person who, in the opinion of others, has heroic qualities or has performed a heroic act and is regarded as a model or ideal: He was a local hero when he saved the drowning child.
3. the principal male character in a story, play, film, etc.
4. Classical Mythology
a. a being of godlike prowess and beneficence who often came to be honored as a divinity.
b. (in the Homeric period) a warrior-chieftain of special strength, courage, or ability.
c. (in later antiquity) an immortal being; demigod.
5. hero sandwich.

I think that we are talking about definition no. 1 and 2. The dictionary refers to a man--perhaps I should have looked up "heroine." That might be interesting.

4vwinsloe
Jun. 27, 2013, 7:04 am

Okay, here is the definition of "heroine" from dictionary.com

her·o·ine her-oh-in
noun
1. a woman of distinguished courage or ability, admired for her brave deeds and noble qualities.
2. the principal female character in a story, play, film, etc.

Interesting that the no. 2 definition of "hero" (a person who, in the opinion of others, has heroic qualities or has performed a heroic act and is regarded as a model or ideal: He was a local hero when he saved the drowning child) is not repeated in the definition of heroine.

5Gelöscht
Jun. 27, 2013, 11:20 am

I think Ma Joad in Grapes of Wrath fits my definition of a female hero.

It's interesting that I can think of more female heroes from YA lit (Katniss Everdeen, Hermione Granger, Jo March, e.g.) than from books for grownups written by women.

Maybe Anna in Gertrude Stein's The Good Anna would be an unsung hero. Maybe the title character in Kristin Lavransdatter would be an example of brave introspection?

6LolaWalser
Bearbeitet: Jun. 27, 2013, 12:06 pm

I get the impression the blogger meant "hero" in the sense of "principal character", not "heroic person". Bit hard to tell as in that genre all heroes seem to be heroic. One of the reasons I can't abide fantasy...

But if I may answer the OP without special reference to genre:

1.

Unless we are talking literally about genitalia, I don't think men and women embody different characteristics, so neither should fictional characters.

"Man: strong, clever, stern; Woman: weak, dumb, kind" is the most tiresome and pitiful of all clichés. Real people are mixtures of all kinds of features and I expect fictional characters, if they are to have my interest, to exhibit some, if not real-life complexity.

I'd like stories about nasty bitches with bags of charm who may be ambivalent about their goals, and then stab you in the back at the end, but then adopt your kid and grow to genuinely love him. And he thinks she is his mother and--this is the kicker--they live happily ever after!

Or stories about cowardly men who on occasion do something brave, because they might as well. And yet they never obsess over their cowardice/bravery, and scoff at the very word "honour".

I'd like stories about honourable heroines who are never defeated and yet have a fantastic sense of humour and would sooner die than deliver a pompous speech.

I'd like stories about intellectual tomboys who like nothing better than horses and Hegel.

I'd like to see Snow White drifting.

2.

Pippi Longstocking. She is herself and she belongs to her self with complete lack of self-consciousness, worry, doubt, apologetic little gestures so irritating and so common in female characters. She is merry, she is irrepressibly curious, she lives for adventure, she adventures into the world. She is the captain of her ship.

She doesn't care whether she's "good" or "bad", she doesn't live in effort to "be better" or keep others on the straight and narrow, she doesn't give a damn about what anyone thinks about her.

She enjoys people as she meets them, never judging, scolding, measuring, just revelling in novelty.

She is the only perfect heroine I know. The only one who remains what she is, who remains true to what she is. Never tamed, bound, chastened, forced into slavery, to men or custom.

7vwinsloe
Jun. 27, 2013, 12:27 pm

>#6. I think you nailed it with Pippi! Have you read Gone Girl yet? From your comment in para. 1, I think you would enjoy it. Also, Olive Kitteridge who was certainly a complex character.

>#5. Do you think that there are more female heroes in YA now--reflecting the changing roles of women, or do you think that there were always more in YA fiction--i.e., Pippi.

8Gelöscht
Jun. 27, 2013, 1:51 pm

vwinsloe, I don't really know, but it's an interesting question. I never read YA as a teenager; except for "The Five Little Peppers" and "Black Beauty," I moved right on to grown-up novels.

My guess is that YA has always been somewhat more didactic than other literary forms, beginning with Louisa May Alcott's early feminist characters in Little Women on down to the young woman warrior, Katniss Everdeen in The Hunger Games.

I'm less interested in heros than in humans. I want to read about Lola's nasty bitch with bags of charm who adopts your kid and learns to love her. (And if that book exists, please tell.)

9LolaWalser
Jun. 27, 2013, 2:05 pm

#8

(And if that book exists, please tell.)

Not that I know, unfortunately. :)

Maybe someone will write it for us.

10vwinsloe
Jun. 27, 2013, 3:10 pm

>#8. I am interested in humans as well, but it seems to me that sometimes there are more heroic women in reality than in fiction. Rosa Parks, Karen Silkwood, Susan B. Anthony, Amelia Earhart, Malala Yousaev come to mind and I am sure that there are many more. I don't know why not so many in fiction.

I liked the blog author's choice of Boo Radley in To Kill a Mockingbird.

11fearless2012
Bearbeitet: Jul. 21, 2013, 8:23 pm

I personally really *love* Jane Bennet-- far more than her younger sister Elizabeth, actually. I actually feel almost indebted to her, actually, if you can see any sense in that being directed towards a fictional character. I'm so much like Darcy sometimes, and I used to be even more so. And Jane was the only one who saw any good in him, after Wickham performed his slash-and-burn operation on the guy's character-- and after Darcy himself had done.... not a whole alot himself, to give anybody else any real visible reason to like him.
I mean, I don't know how well I'm describing this, and it might not sound like much to you guys, but: if everybody in the world thought that I was a schmuck, except for one girl, that one girl would have my heart for life. Seriously.
I mean, look at Chapter 17 (Vol. 1) of P&P, and see how perfectly Jane behaves; she's the very embodiment of reasonableness and compassion. She's the sort of girl that songs get written about. Like George Harrison's song, "Something". That could have been Jane's song.
I can't describe it. So subtle, so perfect.

12LolaWalser
Jul. 21, 2013, 8:30 pm

Or, such a limp, lifeless drip. How tastes vary, my oh my.

if everybody in the world thought that I was a schmuck, except for one girl, that one girl would have my heart for life. Seriously.

If "everybody in the world" thought one is a schmuck, perhaps the sad truth would be that one IS a schmuck. So, yeah, obviously, the sole brainless twit who'd think otherwise would be very, very precious to said schmuck.

13fearless2012
Jul. 21, 2013, 8:33 pm

I sense hostility. *rolls eyes*

14Gelöscht
Jul. 23, 2013, 10:22 am

Jane is, I think, largely meant as a foil for Lizzie, but a drip? Hmmm, not sure I buy that. She suffers with dignity and without losing her empathy. More sympathetic than Marianne Dashwood, Drama Queen.

"The Lizzie Bennet Diaries" and it's updated treatment of Jane offers an interesting view of the character, "translating" her into a modern context as a loyal sister and friend.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KisuGP2lcPs&list=PL6690D980D8A65D08

15WildMaggie
Jul. 23, 2013, 4:25 pm

8> Bit of a thread jack but I want to respond to something in a post above. Black Beauty was not written or published as YA literature. It was read by adults of all ages, young and not so young, and had significant impact on society. The publication of Black Beauty is credited with popularizing animal welfare much as Uncle Tom's Cabin popularized abolition. (By popularizing, I mean moving the issue into mainstream discussion in society and media.) Is Black Beauty assigned to YA now because we're not comfortable with stories about compassion and animals unless we can label them as "kids' books" and therefore not have to take the content seriously?

16fearless2012
Jul. 23, 2013, 4:58 pm

I haven't read that book specifically, but I generally like the modest number of children's/YA books that I do read. I read "Stuart Little" awhile back and I thought it was fantastic. I think there's a sort of unique intelligence that goes into alot of it, since sometimes they do deal with serious topics implicitly and via symbolism, but also without the heavy ('I'm smarter than you') attitude that "adults" often adopt when they think that they're doing something serious.
But yeah, I think that reading a little YA is a good part of being kind holistic in your reading. I don't have a copy of "Black Beauty", but I'll keep it in mind.

17vwinsloe
Jul. 24, 2013, 6:07 am

>15 WildMaggie:. Books in which animals talk to one another are generally thought of as children's books. Unless, of course, they are obviously satirical such as Animal Farm or allegorical, such as Watership Down.

18rockinrhombus
Jul. 24, 2013, 10:23 am

>17 vwinsloe: or Rita Mae Brown's Sneaky Pie Series, or the Chet and Bernie series.

19vwinsloe
Bearbeitet: Jul. 24, 2013, 10:49 am

>#18, of course, you are right! I forgot about Rita Mae Brown. She is definitely not YA-- she just writes for animal lovers.

20Gelöscht
Jul. 24, 2013, 12:29 pm

15: My bad. I did not know that about "Black Beauty." I appreciate the info, and I had no agenda to "assign it" to YA. Just that when I was growing up 50 years ago, it was in the children's library, not the grown-up part.

Animal stories not for children: Kafka's "Metamorphosis" and "The Burrow."

21Sakerfalcon
Jul. 24, 2013, 1:22 pm

Amazingly (to me at least) even Anne of Green Gables was not originally written for children, but marketed with other adult titles. I've never seen it shelved anywhere other than in the children's/teen sections now though. And yes, Black Beauty was written with the intention of stirring up outrage in adults at the maltreatment of horses, which it did with great success. I wonder why we now automatically assume that most books which look at the world from the p.o.v. of a child or animal must be aimed at children?

22Gelöscht
Jul. 24, 2013, 6:22 pm

21, but couldn't the flip side of that be that we want to inculcate the values in those books in children?

Or couldn't the whole YA designation simply be an artificial marketing ploy to sell books?

In the "olden days," there were no "chicklit" or "women's lit" designations, either.

Are WE ghettoizing books? Or are the publishers in order to maximize sales and help consumers find the types of books they like more easily?

23CurrerBell
Jul. 24, 2013, 7:48 pm

21> Incidentally, and as perhaps some sort of standard of canonicity, Anne of Green Gables is available in a Norton Critical edition. One of the critical essays (actually, more a short appreciation) is by Margaret Atwood.

24CurrerBell
Jul. 24, 2013, 7:53 pm

{sigh} Why no mention so far of my namesake's "poor, obscure, plain, and little" but not "soulless and heartless" Jane....? ;->

25Sakerfalcon
Jul. 25, 2013, 5:25 am

>24 CurrerBell:: She is my all-time favourite book character!

>22 nohrt4me2:: Publishers and booksellers certainly do love to categorise books. But "we" do too - not so much the people on here and (I assume) similar book communities, but generally. Even people who know me well will ask "Why are you reading that? Isn't it a children's book?" if I read certain titles, their tone implying "Aren't you beyond that sort of thing?" And for every adult who has enjoyed The hunger games or Harry Potter, there are others decrying this trend as infantilization and dumbing down. Of course, readers of fantasy, romance and maybe other genres/categories get this response too.

>23 CurrerBell:: I have seen Penguin Classics editions of Anne, Daddy-long-legs and Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm among others too, so you are right that these books are becoming recognised as part of the canon. I'd like that Norton edition of Anne.

26CDVicarage
Jul. 25, 2013, 5:48 am

I have an audio edition of Anne of Green Gables with a foreword by Margaret Attwood. Perhaps it's part of her Norton essay.

27overlycriticalelisa
Jul. 25, 2013, 3:08 pm

>24 CurrerBell:

(sorry for the detour, but how did you get the touchstone to go to charlotte bronte when you typed in "my namesake?" thanks!)

28WildMaggie
Jul. 25, 2013, 4:44 pm

22. Yes, I think some books are ghettoized. By classifying books (and the ideas they contain) as only suitable for children, we (as a society, not any individual here specifically) are able to dismiss those books (and the ideas they contain) as not worthy of adult attention and serious consideration. Therefore, transforming Black Beauty into a kids' book says being kind to animals is fine for kids but not important enough for adults to spend a lot of time on. Recent social changes are starting to make it (barely) acceptable (in some circles) for adults to talk about the suffering of animals who end up as food, for example, but these concerns are still pretty strongly marginalized.

Sorry if I'm jacking this thread again, back to women heroes. The definition of hero should be the same for both genders. That fact that references give somewhat different definitions for males and females is another failing of our society.

29CurrerBell
Bearbeitet: Jul. 25, 2013, 8:22 pm

27> I used some HTML code....

<a href="http://www.librarything.com/author/brontecharlotte">my namesake</a>

Instead of http://www.librarything.com/author/brontecharlotte, just substitute whatever is the URL of the page you want to link to. Note that http://www.librarything.com/author/brontecharlotte is enclosed in quotation marks, so when you substitute your own URL for http://www.librarything.com/author/brontecharlotte you have to make sure that you retain those quotation marks.

For the text with which you want to identify your link, just substitute that text for my namesake.

ETA: Actually, I wouldn't call what I did a "touchstone" (at least in the LT sense). What I think of as an LT "touchstone" is text enclosed in single-brackets (for title) or double-brackets (for author), and I assume that there's some PHP or other type of coding used by the LT programming gurus to convert those single-brackets and double-brackets to HTML. I just applied the HTML directly into my post.

30southernbooklady
Jul. 26, 2013, 11:53 am

Re, Pippi Longstocking. I agree that she's is a perfect female hero, but it is noticeable that she has certain advantages: She was raised on a tropical island, and thus not subjected to the social pressures that normally brainwash little girls. She is rich, and thus independent of any controlling influences. And she's without any parental authority. So in a way, in order for a girl to "be herself" she must be completely free of all the social ties we think of as "normal."

Which perhaps was the point.

31LolaWalser
Jul. 26, 2013, 12:13 pm

She grows up free of the usual conditioning, but not, I think, social ties. Only it's a very different social setting--her father's ship and crew and the people they meet on travels--to the bourgeois urban milieu of her new neighbours, Tommy and Annika (there's the example of an ordinary girl undergoing the typical female conditioning...)

But, yes. In real life, what is "normal" is the machine that starts hacking women down to size from the first pink diapers on.

32overlycriticalelisa
Jul. 26, 2013, 2:15 pm

>29 CurrerBell:

thank you, cb! technology is so foreign to me so this was helpful. and looks familiar, i think it must be on that page i bookmarked about cool things you can do in your posts, but as it's all "computery" my brain gets all fuzzy when i look at it. one at a time makes it make more sense to me, so thank you!

33Gelöscht
Jul. 28, 2013, 12:50 pm

Isn't "brainwashing" a two-way street?

More than 50 years ago, my mother put me in brown Hush Puppy oxfords, straight skirts, cadigans, and white blouses with button down collars (girls could not wear slacks to school). Everything was brown or navy blue.

She kept telling me that this was how college girls dressed. She called women who were dressmakers or beauticians morons and bubbleheads.

I was not allowed anything with lace, ruffles, or prints (unless it was plaid). Underwear was plain white. My hair had to be short and uncurled. I was not allowed to wear jewelry.

I inherited a lot of clothes from the neighbor girl, and all of it was carefully altered and remade to fit these rules.

It didn't make me feel empowered. It made me feel stunted and ugly.

34fearless2012
Bearbeitet: Aug. 11, 2013, 2:54 pm

Puritanism, yeah. Not good. Not going to get an argument from me! I was sorta waiting for someone to say something like this.

"I Am The Walrus" comes to mind, since I'm a big Beatles fan. "Corporation tee-shirt, stupid bloody Tuesday, man you been a naughty boy, you let your face grow long.... Boy you been a naughty girl, you let your knickers down.... Sitting in an English garden waiting for the sun, If the sun don't come, you get a tan from standing in the English rain." That song's John at his best, I think.

And it also reminds me of a passage from a book I read awhile ago, "The Girl Who Chased The Moon", let me go and find it. *goes and finds it*

*leafs through it* Okay, it's hard to give you a sense of it by quoting, but let me try.

"Emily wondered if her mother had been disappointed in her. She didn't have her mother's passion, her courage, her drive. Emily was cautious, but her mother had never met a person that she didn't want to help. It had been an awkward dynamic. Emily had always been in awe of her mother, but it had been hard to get close to her. Dulcie had wanted to help, not be helped.....
The business end of Main Street was lined with benches, so she made it to the nearest one and sat. She'd broken out into a cold sweat. She wouldn't faint. She *wouldn't*....
A pair of expensive men's loafers suddenly appeared on the sidewalk in front on her....
"Are you sick?"
"Just light-headed." She looked down at her feet, in ankle socks and cross-trainers, and seemed strangely detached from herself. *Socks that only cover the ankle are not acceptable. Socks must be crew or knee socks only*. So said the Roxley School for Girls handbook. She'd been at the Roxley School all her school career. Her mother had help found it, a school to empower girls, encouraging activism and volunteerism....
The young man in the white linen suit had returned. He was sitting beside her now, extending a can of Coke.
"Go on, " he said. "Take it."
She reached for the can, her hand shaking slightly. She took a long drink and it was cold, sweet, and so sharp it made her tongue burn. She couldn't remember the last time she had tasted something this good. She couldn't stop drinking. In no time she had emptied the can."

She wasn't in the girls schools anymore, but she was still emotional scarred from the puritanism of it. But a little compassion and a little simple pleasure helped make her feel a little better.

It's better to be happy.

35jennazark
Sept. 26, 2013, 8:44 pm

I think we are seeing more leading female characters in current books who are more apt to behave like guys; but the emotional trajectories seem the same. Have we really changed that much? Or are we just seeing "girls" in "guys clothing?"

36fearless2012
Sept. 27, 2013, 6:55 pm

Have we changed our ideas about what, since when. Have we changed our essential nature as humans since the Stone Age? Have we changed our Puritanical ideas since the 1690s? Have we changed our ideas of peace and love since the 60s?

As to the 'emotional trajectories', I think it depends on the individual. Jane Bennet has one sort of-- forgive me if I don't repeat your term borrowed from the study of guns-- path, and Elizabeth has another. Or, Liv Rooney and her sister and Maddie from "Liz & Maddie" have different sorts of emotional paths; it has to do with what sort of a person you are. There are different kinds of people, and, more specifically, there are different kinds of girls. Different archetypes, if you will.

As to the girls in guys clothing, I think we have seen alot of that, and I think alot of it has to do with the pressure that was put on girls to behave more like guys-- especially in the past, past decades, there was a strong stigma attached to girls who behaved in a feminine way, which seeped very deep into the culture, I think: it even influenced the way that Disney acted. Girls were basically told, I think, that they had to behave more like guys, in order to prove they could evolve and be part of the future, etc. But alot of the most hard-edged incarnations of that are already slowly receding into the past, I think. The stigma against girls acting in a feminine way-- in a long sense inherited all the way from Puritan times, which went batshit whenever girls did themselves up pretty-- is gradually softening and receding. That's what I see.

And I think that's a good thing, since it isn't *always* good to 'act like a guy', and especially if that is interpreted in a very narrow psychopathic killer kind of a way. Personally I think that in the future we'll see more than men can be intellectuals in a distinctly masculine way-- that we don't have to be psychopathic killers all the time.

I mean, there are still people who wave the Bible and denounce the media and who take the Puritan stance towards women, but I think that's going more out than in, in the long term. In the future I don't see that stigma placed on things for being feminine.

37Gelöscht
Sept. 28, 2013, 2:46 pm

Am reading Joyce Carol Oates' novella Patricide, which seems to have some interesting things to say about femininity and "being like a guy," or remaking oneself to fit certain circumstances. Also loaded up with Freudian daddy issues.

Oates' protagonist Lou (that androgynous name isn't an accident, I'm sure) isn't a hero, but I understand her, and she's fascinating. Maybe that's really better than a hero?

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