1. The Dark Lady of Shakespeare's sonnets with eyes that are nothing like the sun, and her breath that "reeks."
2. Lady Glencora Palliser from Anthony Trollope's Palliser series.
3. Madame Max Goesler, the independently wealthy, still young and attractive widow, also from the Palliser series.
4. Alice Vavasor of Can You Forgive Her?, also by Trollope.
5. All of the women of Paradise by Toni Morrison.
6. Dorothea Brooke of George Eliot's Middlemarch.
7. Ma Joad from The Grapes of Wrath. She held the family together. Honorary mention for Rose of Sharon.
8. That wacky, hypocrite and know-it-all Grandma from A Good Man is Hard to Find, because as the Misfit says, she would have been a good woman if there had been someone there to shoot her every day of her life. She is positively and absolutely redeemed at the end of Flannery O'Connor's story.
9. Mary Barton from the eponymous novel by Elizabeth Gaskell.
10. My original heroine, Nancy Drew.
10 comments:
Ma Joad is a great choice!
Ma Joad ALMOST made my list, too. And I love Shakespeare's "Dark Lady." Great choice, there, seeing how she's always an object and never an actuality. (Plus, she's just basically one giant walking talking nasty flaw - gotta love it).
Yes, yes, and YES to Nancy Drew. I so wanted to be her. I even had a Nancy Drew Detective Manual and would skulk around the house, looking for fingerprints (which to my 9 year old brain meant that a crime had taken place) and other clues to solve whatever mysteries I had concocted. Good times, good times.
I have yet to read Nancy Drew and, as a children's librarian, I must.
I like your list. Lots of powerful women here.
Mine is at www.readerbuzz.blogspot.com
Three cheers for Nancy Drew! In third and fourth grade, I read nothing but Nancy Drew--and biographies Helen Keller. I keep thinking I need to write a novel about the two of them together...
@Amanda-thanks!
@RoofBeamReader-great minds think alike!
@Suzanne-I almost hate to admit how obsessed I was with Nancy Drew. One result was extreme inquisitiveness!
@readerbuzz-I'm about to check out your list...
@Raven-that is a novel I'd like to read!
How on earth did I forget the women from Paradise? I agree 100%. Great list.
Love Nancy Drew with the original 50s covers, nothing beats that except maybe Hugh Jackman whispering words of love into my ears... Oops back to fave heroines... hmmm door number one please... drum roll... Anne Shirley from L M Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables series.
Who can resist the carrot top headed little girl with an outrageous imagination to live her dreams and grow up into a wonderful woman married to Gilbert Blythe. This is an incredible series for all ages and quintessential for book shelves everywhere.
@AisleB-that's a good idea for another top 10--heroines of childhood favorites. Then I could add Pippi Longstocking and Caddie Woodlawn...
Am totally with you on 'all the women from Paradise'. I never understand why people rave about Beloved when Paradise outstrips it by miles!
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