A lot has already been written about the importance of strong women in fiction, particularly in young adult fiction. I don’t mean to add to that–I think it’s a given that as we read we want to see characters like ourselves, who are a mix of strength and weakness, failures and successes. And of course, we generally like to see the characters triumph over their flaws, unless we’re reading a tragedy.
But I think that sometimes we understand strength too narrowly. I love a good kick-ass heroine as much as the next reader–it’s fun to imagine a life so unlike my own. But the truth is, I’m not particularly strong physically, and I was even less so (sadly) as a teenager. What I wanted then–and what I want to see now–are women who are strong in ways that are unique to them. Women who can be strong without having to be strong in the ways that men are strong (most often, in physical terms).
When I set out to write THE BLOOD ROSE REBELLION, it was important to me that my main character, Anna, be strong in ways that made sense for a nineteenth-century woman to be strong. She hasn’t been trained in physical combat. While she’s physically active and loves horseback riding and dancing, she’s not going to be able to take a soldier in a fight. What I wanted for Anna was to find other ways to be strong. I wanted her to use her wit, her sense of moral justice, her courage (even, sometimes, her impulsiveness) and her own unique gifts for breaking spells to succeed in the world she finds herself in.
I see so many remarkable people–young women especially–who don’t see their gifts for what they are, because they don’t look like the kinds of strengths society commonly values. But there are so many ways of being strong, nearly as many as there are individuals. I recently read Julie Murphy’s Dumplin’, and I loved that resident “fat” girl Willowdean found strength in her humor and her affection for other people and her championship of underdogs.
What kinds of strengths do you value in the characters you read about or write? What unconventionally “strong” women characters have resonated with you recently?
Portrait of a young woman by Peter Baranet
I like ordinary girls, meaning just normal or maybe a few magical tricks, who find themselves in extraordinary circumstances and they must rise to the occasion. I know you probably haven’t read it. But in The Coldest Girl in Coldtown, this silly young girl changes the fate of everyone because of her ability to care about others, her courage (because she is scared all the time and makes all these mistakes) to reach out and help people. In other words, she offered to help someone at the right time, at a time when it could have cost her everything, and because of that one act of kindness, she won a great deal. I like those kinds of stories. Transformative. Strong heroines do not have to be great at any activity, they have to want to do something good in spite of bad things. And to show mercy. The heroine in that book showed mercy when she didn’t have to and in the end, she was given mercy. I found it moving.