This week on Night Bazaar we’re talking about our favorite female characters. One of my favorites is the main character of Zelde M’tana by F.M. Busby. I was 16 when the book first came out in 1980, and I still remember the impact the cover had on me. Zelde, facing the viewer, with a gun in her hand and that expression. There were a lot of books with female protagonists, and sometimes the covers didn’t show them as just sexy victims, but they aren’t as memorable to me as this one. The book more than fulfills the promise of the cover, as Zelde fights her way up from street kid enslaved by a dystopian government to become a space pirate captain and a rebel. It’s a rough raw R-rated story, and I was probably a little young for it, but I feel like it was what I needed to read at that time.
I’ve had a lot of female protagonists in my books but I think my favorite is still Tremaine Valiarde, from the Fall of Ile-Rien trilogy. The daughter of Nicholas Valiarde and Madeline Denare from The Death of the Necromancer, she was a failed playwright who had been raised by a master criminal father and an adopted uncle who was the most powerful and mentally unstable sorcerer in Ile-Rien. Having learned everything she needed to know about housebreaking, paranoia, how to hide the bodies, and making sure your enemies never bother you again from Nicholas, Tremaine instigates or controls much of the action in the books. And despite the fact that Tremaine was an expert shot, I still got told by someone that Tremaine was a doormat because she couldn’t fight like Xena.
Now, I like female characters who are fabulous sword fighters or martial artists or both, especially both. (Like the characters from Jessica Amanda Salmonson’s Amazons anthologies, the first of which came out in 1979 and was also a big influence on me.) But there are people who judge female characters only by that standard: it doesn’t matter if they’re a leader, a doctor, a scientist, a high priestess, a scholar, an explorer, a survivor, a sorceress, an officer on a starship, someone who walks across continents to save the world, or whatever. Either you fight like Xena or you’re a doormat, and there is nothing in between.
What that says about real-life women, I have no idea.
Tremaine has also been described as a “plucky girl.” Which was funny to me, because at the end of the last book Ander still thinks of Tremaine as a plucky girl, while Tremaine thinks of herself as that woman who shot an innocent man in the head to steal a truck, because she needed one to save her friends. Because some people will always see us the way they want to see us, no matter what we’ve done, and what we really are.
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There’s a contest this week to win free copies of Kameron Hurley’s God’s War. It’s available now, and Publishers Weekly says Hurley’s world-building is phenomenal… (she) smoothly handles tricky themes such as race, class, religion, and gender without sacrificing action.
The contest information is at http://night-bazaar.com/gods-war-giveaway.html. All you have to do to enter is comment on one of the Night Bazaar posts this week (starting with this guest post), and talk about your favorite strong female character and the novel she was in. Kameron will do a random draw at the end of the week to pick 5 lucky winners.
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That’s it for me this week here. My web site is at www.marthawells.com and my regular blog is http://marthawells.livejournal.com/.
Doc Nebula on January 16, 2011
Tremaine is one of my favorite female characters as well. Others would be Heinlein’s Podkayne, O’Donnell’s Modesty Blaise, Hambly’s Starhawk (and several of Hambly’s other female characters as well), your own Kade Carrion, Lois McMaster Bujold’s Cordelia Naismith, John Varley’s Cirocco Jones… I’m sure there are more, I just can’t think of them right now.
Jessica Reisman on January 16, 2011
One of my very favorite female characters is still Bet Yeager from Cherryh’s Rimrunners. In somewhat the same tradition (completely effed up, but determined to do the best she can in impossible situations), I do love Tremaine.
Melita on January 16, 2011
I was going to say Maskelle (Wheel of the Infinite), or Rissa Kerguelen (by F.M.Busby) but thought I’d bring in a new author. I’d like to suggest Miri Robertson (by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller)–martially competent, she has to overcome a difficult childhood.
Muccamukk on January 16, 2011
The first woman I thought of from Martha’s description of heroines who are Not Xena (though I do love Xena), was Saranna Stowell from Andre Norton’s The White Jade Fox. She can’t fight like Xena, she’s a woman of precarious social position in the US in the early 1800s, so she does what she has to do to survive: make allies and out smart and out manoeuvre her enemies. It was, in it’s own quiet, well-mannered way, glorious.
Edith on January 16, 2011
Your Fall of Ile-Rien trilogy is my favorite trilogy hands down. I’ve re-read it several times and adore all the main characters, the snarky dialogue, the fabulous world-building. And Tremaine is the perfect heroine; smart, funny, conflicted, not-perfect. Wish you would write more books in that world.
Vanamonde on January 16, 2011
Molly from William Gibson’s ‘Neuromancer’.
Was my first encounter with a literary female character that wasn’t waiting around for the hero to save her.
thomrit51 on January 16, 2011
Your image of Gina Torres as Zoe from Firefly is the perfect example of a powerful woman character. Whedon may tend to rely on 17-year-old girls to saver the universe, but in Zoe he created a character who kicked ass and took names and even in tragedy had the Captain’s back.
Sasha on January 16, 2011
IRight now my favorite strong female protagonist has got to be Tiffany Aching, of the Wee Free Men (and many sequels) by Terry Pratchett. She defeated Jenny Green-teeth with a frying pan, stared the headless horseman in the eyes he has no got and defeated the Queen of Fairy by being herself, down to the ground
katayoun on January 17, 2011
i loved Maskelle in Wheel of the Infinite, also really liked Mirasol in Chalice. i prefer the wise, the surviror, the stand on her feet ones.
Tony on January 17, 2011
Not your everyday granny, Gertie Johnson ignores the law and solves murders in Murder Grins and Bears It by Deb Baker
Lindsey on January 17, 2011
I’ve had a lot of favorite female protagonists over the years, though I certainly enjoyed Tremaine. I think the reliance on physical violence as a sign of toughness and “strength” says more about the normalization of “masculine” values as “strong” than it does about women in society this time–action heroes kill their enemies more often than not in movies and other non-book media. I don’t really like that categorization, of violence as a thing that is solely masculine, or of violence (that we approve of) as the highest measure of strength.
Rob Blake on January 18, 2011
Hard to choose. Overall, I loved David Eddings’ Polegara. Most recently, however, I thing that Charles de Lint’s Jilly Coppercorn is pretty good. For really strong female characters, I think that Briar Wilkes from Cherie M. Priest’s Boneshaker and Mercy Lynch from Dreadnought are a couple of pretty tough, no-nonsense female characters. It is hard to choose which one is better, especially after they meet at the end of Dreadnought. Between the two of them, they’ll eventually whip Seattle back into shape.
Leah Petersen on January 18, 2011
So many of my favorites always default back to the Anne McCaffrey books I read as a teen. The Dragonsinger books were my first intro to the sci-fi genre and I read them over and over still. Menolly was a good strong character in the way she found the strength to be herself and follow her own road no matter what it took. That made a huge impression on me as a 13 year old.
Simone Cooper on January 18, 2011
I loved Jenny Casey in Elizabeth Bear’s _Hammered_. She is a mature woman bearing up under the physical and emotional pains of her past as a soldier. She can take charge of her relationship choices and doesn’t let them define her. She tries everything she must with no guarantee of success and sometimes without full hope of success, because she can’t _not_ try.
Her transformations at the end of the first book put her in a place that is satisfying to her and fascinating to the reader, but also full of weaknesses and challenges to come that are the prices for that transformation. She’s a terrific female character.
Jean Tatro on January 21, 2011
It might be an odd choice, but I love Ginny in the Harry Potter series. You can almost read through the series without really noticing her outside of her plot involvement, but she’s there in the background – a strong independent girl growing into young woman who knows her mind and stands up for her friends. She not the most powerful, but she’s not a push over either.