Best and worst female leads

[Chilari]

I'm working on an article looking at female lead characters in fantasy. My intention is to pick some examples of good and bad female leads, but so far, I've only chosen two good ones. I have no idea what to say for the bad examples. I was thinking of picking a secondary protagonist from a Gemmell book, because his female characters invariably sleep with a male protagonist, are rude and confrontational to begin with, and know or learn how to fight. And that's not how I define a strong female lead character. But I also want a couple of examples of female characters who are the primary protagonist, perhaps even the narrator, who are not good role models for all the wrong reasons, or who are flat characters, or who are mary sues, or whatever else.

My plan is to have three of each - three good and three bad. I've got two good already - Tiffany Aching from Wee Free Men by Terry Pratchett, and Robin Hobb's Althea Vestrit from the Liveship Traders books. I'm looking for a third, preferably not from either of those authors, but the trouble is I don't think I've read widely enough (outside Pratchett, Hobb and Gemmell, my fantasy reading has been limited as far as female leads are concerned).

I'll also need two more bad examples. Like I said, the one I already have, sort of, is a Gemmell female character (the one from Legend, if I can find the damn book. I was reading it, and then it was just gone. I was half way through it!) The other thing I was thinking was Bella Swan or whatever her name is from the Twilight books, but then I realised I can hardly judge her based entirely upon the opinions of one close friend and one university tutor, both of whom have read the books, and the world at large, so it's unfair to judge her without having read the books, so I'll leave suggestions open regarding that. If I do end up reading the first book to see if Bella Swan does fit into my article, then I must admit I shall do so from a point of bias, and I'm not entirely certain how useful that will be as a result. So I am inclined to avoid Twilight, if not for my sanity then for the integrity of the article; though I may yet reconsider.

Please only suggest characters from books you have read, not based on what you've heard. Preferably characters whose key points can be discerned from one book alone. That way there's a chance I will have completed my research for the article before Christmas. I might be starting a job in January (interview went well anyway) and will rapidly run out of time to work on the article if I'm reading a trilogy for each of six characters.

By all means post what you think about the characters, but I'd appreciate if you could put all but the book title and author in spoiler tags, which I won't look at. This way I won't be influenced by your opinions or which category you think the character fits into - good or bad female lead.

Oh and finally - being as I am jobless and living off the goodwill of the British government and taxpayers, please endeavour to suggest books which have a good chance of being in a local library, not books that are self-published or unknown. This makes it cheaper and easier for me to find the books, and means that it is more likely that the readers of the article will be familiar with the characters I am discussing. And bonus - it means you're helping me to support a local library not remotely at risk from closure because my local council has categorically stated* that it won't be closing any libraries, thank goodness, but justifies their position.

I've rambled enough. I'd appreciate any help you can offer. Thank you.


*Publicly, during an evening event with author Joanne Harris** last week. Which was a wonderful evening.

**Honestly, if you were wondering "who?", shame on you. Google is your friend, but if you need help, she's best known for Chocolat, though my favourite is Five Quarters of the Orange (my mother disagrees; she prefers Blackberry Wine)

 

[Elder the Dwarf]

Don't you dare trash talk Gemmell! Her name was Virae, I believe, but I can't find the book either. You really need to finish it, the whole Drenai series is great, and I just found every book... except for Legend. I can't think of any others right now, but I'll try to get back to you.

 

[Shadoe]

Oh man. I think I know of the absolute WORST female lead in a book of all time - can't remember the name of the book or the author. Sorry, I have Oldtimer's.

 

[mirrorrorrim]

Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series has a very, um, distinctive take on his female characters, one that I think says a lot about how some fantasy authors view women. Since the series is over a dozen books long, though, that's probably not quite what you're looking for.

Honestly, a lot of fantasy authors just don't seem to write females very well. They either come across as stereotypically helpless, one-dimensionally shallow, or as nothing more than men in lipstick and dresses.

I think the few authentic female characters I've read have mostly all been from female authors:

J. K. Rowling's Hermione Granger, from Harry Potter

Stephenie Meyers's Wanda and Melanie, her two protagonists from The Host

Suzanne Collins's Catniss, from The Hunger Games

Anne Rice's Claudia, from Interview with a Vampire (and I hear her Mayfair Witches are pretty good)

Margaret Weis's Kitiara and Laurana, from Dragonlance Chronicles

None of these are perfect saints, by any means (at least a few of them got on my nerves pretty regularly, and one's just downright creepy), but they all feel real.

Good luck writing your article!

 

[Seth son of Tom]

though not the main character i think hermione is a pretty solid character, esp in HP7

 

[Ghost]

Rhapsody by Elizabeth Haydon. You'll know what you need to know about the characters from the first book, so I think it would be fine to read just the one instead of the whole series if it's difficult to find them at the library.



[I tried to use the spoiler tag to hide my opinion on Rhapsody, but I couldn't figure out how it works. I give up.]

 

[Amanita]

I'm really fond or Sabriel and Lirael in Garth Nix's Abhorsen trilogy. Reading book one or two would be enough to give you an idea.
Trudy Canavan's Sonea in book one is quite good as well, but I'm not really happy with her developement later on.
For bad ones, Ginny Weasley in Harry Potter book 6 comes to my mind. She unites many cliches female fantasy characters suffer from in herself.
- overly pretty and attractive to many men/boys
- committs acts of violence that are supposed to be endearing
- is feisty and "self-confident" but has still been pining over one man for years and still needs saving by him.
Using her might be controversal though, the discussions of her character on HP-forums are very much so.
- does nothing plot-relevant besides being the love intereset.

 

[Kit]

The entire female cast of MZ Bradley's The Mists Of Avalon would be fodder for several articles.

 

[Chilari]

Wow, that's a great response already. Thanks so much everyone. I'll do my best to get through as many of those as possible.

Elder the Dwarf: I don't mean to trash talk Gemmell. I have a whole shelf of his books. I have enjoyed reading his books for several years. But his female characters are not good.

 

[Elder the Dwarf]

Sorry, that was meant as a joke. I love Gemmell as well though.

 

[Telcontar]

Bleh. As mentioned above, Jordan's got some howlers. I strongly disliked Nynaeve(sp?) at frequent points in the story.

There's a female character in the Dragonlance books (the main sequence, Dragons of The Various Seasons books) who I vaguely remember being annoyed by, though I haven't read those in years.

Strong female characters include Sabriel - also already mentioned - and a personal favorite of mine, Tazendra from Steven Brust's Khaavren Romances (she's ONE of the main characters, at least).

 

[Easnadh]

Althea Vestrit is a great choice! As a third option I think you should consider Sarra Ambrai from Melanie Rawn's The Ruins of Ambrai. This is one of my all-time favourite books, and she is a very strong female lead.

 

[Erica]

Most of the fantasy books I read seem to be by female writers, so I can think of a few examples of good.

Firestarter in Jane Lindskold's Through Wolf's Eyes Series
Morgane in C.J. Cherryh's Morgane series (though that was technically Sci Fi, it was fantasy-ish)
Tobin/Tamir in Lynn Flewelling's Tamir trilogy
Terelle in Glenda Larke''s Stormlord books
Main character in Maria Snyder's Poison Study
Many of Mercedes Lackey's books

Bad, is a bit harder to come up with for me, because if I'm reading a book with a female main character who is vapid or stupid without a good reason for it (except to tickle male reader' fancies), then I usually stop reading. I remember an awful series of books my HS boyfriends was reading for a while and I tried a couple of them (that was aeons ago)-I think the writer was called John Norman or something like that. The world was called Gor and they were SO sexist that even he stopped reading them eventually (too sexist for a 17 year old boy in the 1980's is saying something). Most of the women in that world were pleasure slaves and they all discovered eventually that they loved being slaves because it allowed them to free their inherent female nature. Argh!

 

[ScipioSmith]

I have a soft spot for Che Maker, from the Shadows of the Apt series, who goes from bad to good over the course. If you want her as an example for bad read book 1 (Empire in Black and Gold) for good read 5 (The Scarab Path, don't worry about diving into the middle as it stands alone pretty well) or alternatively read 7 (Heirs of the Blade) to see her contrasted with her foster sister Tynisa, also a Good example to my mind, as well as the Wasp Empress Seda who is a good example of a female villain who isn't vampish or overly sexualised at all.

 

[Kelise]

Terelle in Lynn Flewelling's Stormlord books

Do you mean the Stormlord books by Glenda Larke?

 

[Benjamin Clayborne]

Ah, Cordelia Naismith Vorkosigan. One of the best.

Also good but in a very different way is Fawn Bluefield from the Sharing Knife series.

No coincidence these are both Lois McMaster Bujold characters. ;-)

 

[Ravana]

The entire female cast of MZ Bradley's The Mists Of Avalon would be fodder for several articles.

I'll second that one in a big way–with the sole qualification that you could safely drop the world "female" from that sentence. So much that if Chilari hasn't read it yet, I'd discourage her from doing so.

Chilari: Don't read it.

I'm sure others of Bradley's fans would cite her Darkover novels as possible sources; unfortunately, the more she wrote women, the worse the novels got, so I can't really recommend those, either.

Erica is correct about author, name and content, as regards that series she'd probably be just as happy not remembering: Gor was S&M wet-dreaming thinly disguised as Conan pulp-fic. (A comparison I make quite deliberately–because by comparison, the Conan novels were not… didn't even come close.) Even when I was a teenager, my standard for both quality and content was so far above these I couldn't manage ten pages of one; be glad they seem to have become somewhat less than a footnote today. (Though Wikipedia claims they're still in print. I'm pretty sure he wrote the article himself: the two paragraphs of his "themes" makes for a truly hysterical read, considering.)

I'm trying to come up with a "good" candidate for you… unfortunately, I can think of far more in SF than fantasy. If you don't mind "crossover" works–by which I mean what are essentially fantasy novels placed in a minimally-intrusive or unintrusive SF backdrop–some of McCaffrey's leads aren't bad (Lessa, Menolly), but they still don't really compare to her best male characters. C. J. Cherryh's fantasy isn't her strongest work, but the titular character of her Morgaine trilogy would probably qualify for most people. (Erica mentions this, too. Some might also put these into the crossover category… technically it is, in the same way McCaffrey's Pern novels technically are, and, as with the first several of those, nothing in the story absolutely depends on that identification. At any rate, they have nothing to do with the Arthurian lady of the same name. Gate of Ivrel is the first; as I recall, reading one doesn't oblige you to read the others. Oh: MZB's Darkover is also technically SF.)

The best–certainly the "strongest"–female characters I can think of off the top of my head come from my two favorite authors working in the field today; here, however, part of the reason is because the difference between female and male characters tends not to be a factor in the first place. Steven Brust's work is loaded with them (though my favorite from him is (A) from a historical fiction novel he (B) co-wrote with Emma Bull, Freedom and Necessity; I have my suspicions as to whose input was greatest on which characters, but I'd rather not prejudice a reading there). And if you were looking for "strong" in terms of "not a doormat," I doubt you'll find anyone who can come in ahead of a couple of the primary characters in Glen Cook's "Black Company" novels… though, as the (main) narrator mentions in the first book, it doesn't make the slightest difference to him and his mates that they happen to be female. (It turns out he's wrong in one case, in the long run, but that would be getting ahead of things.) You'd probably need to make it to at least the third book for this to be a particularly fruitful option, though after that the amount of space devoted to female characters picks up considerably.

Now, if you were to extend into SF, I could come up with both more and better examples.…

 

[Laughing_Seraphim]

The assumption that females of our species are somehow that much different than the males, unblemishable in a sense, may be where you are going wrong. Being a (presumably) western woman, your interpretation of the females in books is probably skewed inexorably toward the positive.

Men bad, Women good.

In that, realism about human nature in general takes a solid punch in the face. This why you show a clear bias in choosing a topic that amounts to "Great females and slightly less great females."
That being said;

From film, Sigorney in aliens is a great example of a solid female lead. She is still female. She has a softness to her, she is NOT a trained badass. Much like most male underdog heroes, she succeeds in spite of the odds. Outnumbered, outmatched and generally bereft of the tools required to do what she has been tasked with.

Hermione from HP is in truth something of a good example. She is sort of vile and abusive a fair amount of the time, but occasionally comes off as brave, sensitive and candid. She is written as human, vile and beautiful in the same skin. Most of Rowlings characters fit that bill. Hagarid is a nice guy, and a black marketeer, oaf and so on. Snape is a turd, but a deeply loving and committed turd who strives for excellence. As a result, her gender, race or class could be changed and the character would still be strong. Female snape would still be everything that snape is.

Thus, a character who would not be considered a great character if they had a penis, that is to say, one who is remarkable by merit of her sex alone is hopelessly unremarkable.

Read Glory Season. It's a shining example of our cumulative tendency to try and think that women aren't really human, but magical critters who poop flower petals and rainbow dust....Apparently most writers don't date much.

Select your candidates, remove gender from the equation and obvious winners and losers will probably pop right out at you.

 

[Amanita]

Select your candidates, remove gender from the equation and obvious winners and losers will probably pop right out at you.

I completely agree with this, but the rest of your posting?
I highly doubt that anyone here on the forum believes that women are always the better gender. Outside of our forum, this is definitely not believed, which we find out in many situation in real life, in western countries and even more so in others or if we look only a few years into the past.
Female characters in books are actually often judged much more harschly than male ones. Everywhere people go on and on about bad and cliched female characters, while there's hardly anything about writing good male characters.

One thing that often does turn up is the idea that women are inherently peaceful, caring and in tune with nature, while men are violent, cruel and exploitive. If a men committs a crime, he's often viewed as a villain in the media, if a woman does something similar, she usually is supposed to have done it because of love or desperation etc. The idea that women can be "evil" seems very difficult to accept in real life and in fiction. Maybe, because it would also attribute some amount of power to the woman in question no matter how wrong her actions are.
That's something which annoyed me very much about Bellatrix Lestrange in Harry Potter for example. Why did she do everything? Because she was desperatly in love with Voldemort. Can't stand this kind of thing.

 

[Benjamin Clayborne]

That's something which annoyed me very much about Bellatrix Lestrange in Harry Potter for example. Why did she do everything? Because she was desperatly in love with Voldemort. Can't stand this kind of thing.

I can understand being annoyed when this is overly common, but why is it a problem for one character to be primarily motivated by love (even if it's for an evil madman)? Would it be a problem if the details were the same but the genders reversed?