Since yesterday we talked about male characters in literature you want to take out for a beer, it only seems right to go through some of the best female characters in literature as well. We haven’t decided if the characters we are going to talk about next are perfect for going shopping with or having a nice dinner, but since they are strong, independent women, we thought we would let you decide. So, after reading the article, make sure you tells us what fun activity you would go perfectly for a day spent with some of these amazing characters.
1. Elizabeth Bennet
In an era in which, as a woman, you had no another chance to lead a decent life than to marry well, Austen’s character is like an alien. Lizzie not only wants to marry for love, but she manages to do it in the end, as Jane Austen is usually generous with her heroines. But she is smart, she reads, she talks. All attributes that were completely unattractive in woman in Georgian England.
2. Jane Eyre
Charlotte Bronte doesn’t have Jane Austen’s humor and optimism, but you cannot read Jane Eyre and not be impressed by the strength of a woman who, after an unhappy childhood, has the strength to refuse a man who she loves and could make her happy only because he has a mad wife hidden in the attic. Jane is not beautiful, she’s just educated. And she has self-esteem, which not too many women of her era afforded when they wake up with empty pockets.
3. Scarlett O’Hara
Because she can improvise dressed out of curtains. Scarlett is smart, lively, unscrupulous and has only one obsession: her family land. OK, not one obsession, two actually. The land and Ashley. The important thing is that she’s willing to do anything for both. And yet, you simply cannot not lover her, especially when she’s the only widow dancing at the ball, just because she feels like it.
4. Fermina Daza
Love in the Time of Cholera is not really a conventional love story, nor Fermina Daza a conventional heroine. Because when she chooses a man, she chooses with her head and loves and respects him to death, even if Juvenal Urbino wasn’t her great love. Who said that pragmatism must strike a love story?
5. Jessica in Dune
She is part of the Bene Gesserit Sisters, but decided to break the commandments of the order for love, thus giving birth to Paul Atreides, who will definitely change the fate of the Empire. Her strength and stubbornness to protect a family make her a key figure in Dune. Frank Herbert is one of the authors who understood that a woman’s ability to give birth is not a handicap, it is an advantage over males.
6. Maya, Nadia and Ann from Mars Trilogy
Kim Stanley Robinson has created a handful of extremely complex characters and among them stand the three main female characters of the series: Maya, a beauty with a choleric personality, a fighter, a born leader who is behind all three Martian revolution, Nadia, diplomatic and balanced, a leader who does not produce extreme antipathies and sympathies as Maya, but gaining the confidence of all those around her, Ann, withdrawn, but a stubborn woman who is said to love stones more than people and creates a whole ideology centered on stopping the terraformation of Mars.
7. Mariko from Shogun
In a country dominated by male figures such as Shogun, Mariko is the one who determines the end of the story, sacrificing loyalty for daimyo Toranaga. Not the kind of female character who will break your nose, but a woman of iron, who does not detract from debt than by the love for Blackthorne.
8. Moll Flanders from Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe
Because she is a strong girl, unable to control her destiny, who forgets her principles when the situation requires it, but still manage to be saved.
9. Katherina Minola in Taming of the Shrew by William Shakespeare
Katherina Minola is a woman who knows very well her place in society and knows the difference between behavior in public and private life, and understands better than any other that marriage is above all a partnership.
10. Lisbeth Salander in Millennium Trilogy by Stieg Larsson
Salander is violent, antisocial and brilliantly intelligent. She defines the perfect woman of the future.
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