I Am Woman, Hear Me Roar

Well Behaved Women Seldom Make History…

“Don’t underestimate me. I know more than I say, think more than I speak and notice more than you realize.”

I have been referred to as many things in my life; small but mighty, a ball buster, a machine, and a kraken. All literally, figuratively or factually true given a particular set of circumstances. I have been told not to take it personally, that I am over thinking it, and a slew of other vaguely insulting and patently condescending cliches intended to manifest as a physical pat on the head meant to send me on my merry way. Ask around if anyone ever had any luck with that!

I regard myself as having an ample assortment of qualities. I am not any one single thing, but am many things blended together. My character, though uniquely and unquestionably my own, has been influenced by the myriad of literary characters I have kept company with over the years.

While I like a princess story as much as the next girl, I love my ass kickers, sword wielders, gunslingers, blood thirsty broads and verbal barb throwers much more. It’s okay to come across the odd damsel in distress, but so much more compelling when the damsel is causing the distress. I want my female characters to be forces of nature; intellectually, emotionally, and yes, physically. I want her to be flawed and suffering. I want her to make mistakes and messes and then to try to right them. I want her to never be stifled; not ever. I want both she and I to be in it for the long haul, until the last page is turned.

“There are two powers in the world; one is the sword and the other is the pen. There is a third power stronger than both, that of woman.”

Women are imperative, both in the telling of stories and in the stories that are told. While it feels unreasonable to have to call out this truth, I do so for the fathers of daughters, the brothers of sisters and all the lovers of girls and women. In their lives they will be persecuted, excluded, devalued and more due to their gender. And if you cannot find the words that might ease the struggle for them or forge a path through any dilemmas that arise, allow the characters and writers I have recommended to do so.

In the interests of having a bit of fun, I have split these into personality types. There is much crossover here; we women are complex, and none that I am privileged to know or have known are so simply defined.

The Characters

Vixens

Defined As…a woman considered to be attractive, irresistible, a siren leading others into dangerous situations.

Also…bitchy, fierce, ill tempered, quarrelsome, femme fatale

Mathilde – Fates & Furies (Lauren Groff)

· A wifes ruthless machinations have brought her to a point of reflection in her marriage. A complex puppet master who people mistake for dutiful and dull.

Lisbeth Salander – The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (Stieg Larrson)

· Despite being detached and tough, she pulls people to her with little difficulty. A troublesome genius with a tendency towards violence, you won’t be able to look away.

Buttercup – The Princess Bride (William Goldman)

· The fairest in the land, so to speak. She is romantic and passionate with stars in her eyes. While used to others caring for her, she does learn a thing or two along the way about standing up for herself.

Circe – Circe (Madeline Miller)

· A dangerous and powerful enchantress with an iron will. If you think this goddess/woman can be shamed into silence, think again.

Letty Dobesh – Pain Of Others (Blake Crouch)

· An ex-con and meth addict trying to do better. She exhibits the traits of the modern-day anti-hero as she battles what is working against her.

Ballbusters

Defined As…a person who makes great demands on others; a sharp-tongued taskmaster.

Also…bossy, smarty pants, handful, dominating

Victoria McQueen – NOS4A2 (Joe Hill)

· Aka “Brat”. That alone should tell you all you need to know. Suffice to say Vic takes no prisoners as she struggles to understand her power to find lost things.

Harriet – Harriet The Spy (Louis Fitzhugh)

· She’s nosy, thinks unkind thoughts, stubborn and sneaky. So, my kind of girl! She’s got all the qualities for an up and coming spy. A great role model for quirky and independent children.

Annie Wilkes – Misery (Stephen King)

· Definitely at the extreme end of the ball busting scale, she is obsessive and homicidal. A good, solid, cautionary tale for men on what can happen when you piss a lady off.

Wren Connolly – Reboot (Amy Tintera)

· A perfect solider who decides she’s done taking orders. Need I say more…

Eva – Restless (William Boyd)

· Both a secret keeper and a spy, she navigates her life without much passion or emotion. Qualities that make her brilliant at espionage, but not so good at relationships.

Rebel

Defined As…a person who resists authority, control and conformity. Someone who stands up for what they believe in despite the opinions of others.

Also…badass, headstrong, defiant, brazen, brave

Eleanor Oliphant – Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine (Gail Honeyman)

· Eccentric, awkward, judgmental and yet refreshingly honest and highly relatable. She forges her own path to find her place in the world without apology.

Starr Carter – The Hate U Give (Angie Thomas)

· As the only witness to the fatal shooting of her best friend, this character has to balance a foot in two worlds. One that is affluent and one that is poor; one that is protected and one from which you need protection.

Katniss Everdeen – The Hunger Games (Suzanne Collins)

· Tough, loyal and mature beyond her years. Her resourcefulness has her winning not only the Hunger Games, but the game of politics to protect those around her.

Nancy Drew – Nancy Drew Series (Carolyn Keene)

· Described as only happy when she’s making trouble, she is a highly enthusiastic mystery solver with a suspicious mind. A mold for what a rebel is in young reader literature today.

Anda – In Real Life (Cory Doctorow)

· This female gamer out plays the boys at every turn. She knocks down obstacles as she becomes a hero and a leader in a world that comes to embrace her.

Sissy Hawkins – Even Cowgirls Get The Blues (Tom Robbins)

· A bisexual, disfigured woman who takes the world by storm. Bold, beautiful and hilarious.

Feisty

Defined As…someone who is energetic and spirited and is always ready to put others in their place.

Also…bold, scrappy, emotional, quick witted

Ree Dolly – Winter’s Bone (Daniel Woodrell)

· Forced to grow up way too soon in a dysfunctional family, she rallies for the love of her young siblings. There is not a fight she backs down from.

Susie Salmon – The Lovely Bones (Alice Sebold)

· Our brutally murdered narrator watches her family and her killer after she is gone. Love and hate vie for supremacy as she finds the way to move on.

Pippi Longstocking – The Series (Astrid Lindgren)

· Self-sufficient, quick witted and unshakable, she’s a cultural icon. Pippi has liberated children in her books for ages, all the while embracing her own unique style.

Jo March – Little Women (Louisa May Alcott)

· Never afraid to challenge the status quo of gender roles, Jo wants to stand out, to be remembered, and to be part of something bigger than her world. All while being a deeply loving and loyal sister.

Scout Finch – To Kill A Mockingbird (Harper Lee)

· She was ahead of her time, not blindly obedient or pious, but audacious and intent. While some recollections of her childhood are wistful, she never avoids the harsh realities of the crime that steers this story.

Nora Eldridge – The Woman Upstairs (Clare Messuad)

· A dependable woman finds herself on the fringes of who she is and who she is supposed to be. Often, those are frequently in opposition.

Sassy

Defined As…a person that uses sarcasm and impertinence at every opportunity.

Also…funny, saucy, bold, pushy, cheeky

Hannah Payne – When She Woke (Hiliary Jordan)

· A former devout and obedient woman in a totalitarian society, this character refuses to be labelled a criminal.

Jane Whittaker – See Jane Run (Joy Fielding)

· A prototype for the future domestic thriller genre, this books depiction of a female heroine was ahead of its time. Good luck catching her!

Sophie Stark – Life & Death Of Sophie Stark (Anne North)

· An insightful artist whose creations reveal other people’s truths has her story told to us by those on the periphery of her life. There is a cost to borrowing other people’s histories..

Suzanne Vale – Postcards From The Edge (Carrie Fisher)

· A hot mess of a woman who is impossible to resist. Self-described as “something on the bottom of someone’s shoe, and not even something interesting.” The opposite is true; she’s funny, snarky with an uncanny timing for landing in the thick of it!

Thursday Next – The Eyre Affair (Jasper Forde)

· She lives in a parallel universe where literature is a more powerful medium, almost a religion. When something goes wrong inside a story, she is on the case to set things right. Super fun and smart series.

Coraline – Coraline (Neil Gaiman)

· Brave, strong willed and adventurous, Coraline has a thirst for life and longs to explore the world. As she begins to do exactly this, she is confronted by a scary creature and must save other children just like her.

Nurturer

Defined As…a provider of care, knowledge and insight. A supportive and empathic individual.

Also…matriarch, teacher, counselor, protector

Clary Fray – Shadowhunter’s Series (Cassandra Clare)

· Though young in age, Clary is without question a fit in this category. She finds herself with a newfound set of powers and friends. All of whom she champions.

Sally Owens – Practical Magic (Alice Hoffman)

· Sally is the calm center of a family that is rather impulsive, to say the least. She makes sacrifices for her children’s future that cut her off from her history, which proves challenging when she finds herself needing that history to save her family.

Offred – The Handmaids Tale (Margaret Atwood)

· Loving and full of live before the world changed, she remains keenly observant and hopeful, despite being in the worst possible circumstances.

Liesel Meminger – The Book Thief (Markus Zusak)

· Kind hearted with a moral center that belies the time, our heroine steals books in order to expand her world. Despite everything crumbling around her she finds hope and power in the written word.

Reno – The Flamethrowers (Rachel Kushner)

· A chameleon who can adapt to her situation, no matter what it might be, in the search to find and give love. Fascinating backdrops here.

Charlotte Gray – Charlotte Gray (Sebastian Faulks)

· A woman becomes entangled in the war resistance as she tries to rescue her lover. Although her motives were initially selfish, she finds herself moved in ways she never expected.

The Writers

Agatha Christie

“These little grey cells…it is up to them.”

One of the original prolific authors, she has gifted us with a couple of the most memorable sleuths of all time. Her brilliance in writing short books with a multitude of well-developed characters and intricate mysteries is unprecedented to this day.

J.K. Rowling

“Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision what which is not, and therefore the fount of all invention and innovation. In its most transformative and revelatory capacity, it is the power that enables us to empathize with humans whose experiences we have never shared.”

With the unleashing of her expansive magical world she changed the landscape for readers of all ages far and wide. We owe her a debt that can never be repaid.

Judy Blume

“Let children read whatever they want and then talk to them about it. If parents and children can talk, we won’t have as much censorship because we won’t feel fear.”

She was unafraid to dispense books to young readers with controversial themes. She championed children not only with her words, but with her actions.

Patricia Highsmith

“My New Year’s Eve toast; to all the devils’ lusts, passions, greeds, envies, loves, hates, desires, and enemies ghostly and real with which I do battle; may they never give me peace.”

She wrote books that were rife with creeping menace and highly unsettling characters.

Margaret Atwood

“A word after a word after a word is power.”

One of our Canadian treasures to be sure, she is unsparing in the view she gives us to the pain others experience. She writes the modern woman like no other author I have ever come across.

Gillian Flynn

“Tampon commercial, detergent commercial, maxi pad commercial, windex commercial; you’d think that all women do is clean and bleed.”

Her early love of the macabre certainly led to her unearthing some deeply flawed characters. Terrifying more in their psychology than their physiology.

Shirley Jackson

“I delight I what I fear.”

An indelible inspiration for today’s contemporary horror writers. Her short story, “The Lottery”, is considered one of the greatest ever written.

Beverley Cleary

“Children should learn that reading is a pleasure, not just something teachers make you do in school.”

A writer of adventurous and mischievous characters for children, she is an author whose stories should not be missed.

S.E. Hinton

“Sometimes I felt like I spent the first part of my life wishing I was a teenage boy. And the second part condemned to be one.”

Writing about the pain of adolescence in a way that awakened young people was her gift. The Outsiders can hold up to this day; a fact that is either comforting or terrifying depending on how you look at it.

Toni Morrison

“Everything I’ve ever done, in the writing world, has been to expand articulation rather than to close it.”

Award winning novelist that publishes books focused on relationships and struggles set against the backdrop of African American culture. Beloved is inarguably a masterpiece that has touched the hearts and minds of millions.

Nora Ephron

“Above all be the hero of your life, not the victim.”

Her sharp wit had us laughing out loud both in her books and from her screenwriting. No one in my generation is likely to forget the line, “I’ll have what she’s having”

Maria Semple

“I’m not too good when exposed to people.”

Before becoming a novelist, she was a TV writer for Saturday Night Live and Arrested Development. So, brilliant. And weird.

Bronte Sisters

“Life is so constructed that an event does not, cannot, will not, match the expectation.”

Not much to say about these fine ladies that hasn’t been said a zillion times over. Pardon my hyperbole.

Ellen Datlow

“Genres of the fantastic and the grotesque are far more interesting to me than most fiction.”

An editor more than a writer, she has compiled some of the best volumes of fractured fairytales and horror that I have ever read.