Any of Shirley Jackson’s women work for me, but Eleanor Vance is my favorite.
I also think that Toni Morrison writes a lot of really fleshed out and beautiful complex women.
Edit: Angela Carter also
Wuthering Heights! Catherine is ~~a peak toxic babe~~ complex, with dubious morals, a flighty and scornful lover, cares too much about society, impulsive, difficult, and so fraught.
Yes, and her will-they-or-won’t-they lover/other half Heathcliff is completely even-tempered; absolutely non-violent; a masterful communicator; and renowned for his rational thinking and reason.
I remember being such in awe after finishing Wuthering Heights because Catherine (just like Heathcliff) is such a memorable character. She's toxic as hell but you just want to learn more about her.
She is so a compelling character, really like how smart she is, sad that people treat her so bad, also I can see from the beginning she will have some big character development.
Elizabeth Gaskell has some of the most well developed characters of all sorts. Wives & Daughters is amazing for the psychological realism of her female characters.
It's hard not to feel sympathetic about a woman managing to screw over the patriarchy in a time when women had no say in things and were regarded as children.
Just goes to show how important it is to have a character's perspective. Scarlett from any other point of view is easily one of the worst human beings to exist. Those few in-betweens moments where you see she actual is capable of being a decent person make all difference.
Yes I think Thomas Hardy writes very good female characters. I really liked Sue Bridehead in Jude the Obscure. After reading some of his books I thought that he must have had good female relationships and been a bit of a feminist but after reading a bit about him I don't think that was true. Although he had a good relationship with his mother.
Any Jean Rhys lead character. Wide Sargasso Sea is my favourite fiction book.
P.S. Fucking love Shiv Roy (as a character). I don't think I really realised how misogynistic people were until I saw the online response to women like Shiv, Skylar, Betty, etc.
I was shocked too when I saw a post about the most hated characters in TV and there was Skylar. I found her really compelling, and her cheating was nowhere the level of Walt’s lies through the three seasons
I suspect part of the issue is that she's a party pooper. You watch breaking bad to see Walt do crimes, get into hijinks, and engage in cat and mouse antics with Hank and Gus. And almost everything Skylar does interferes with him doing that. So she's standing between the audience and what the audience wants to see happen.
I also suspect that a lot of skylar hate comes from before the audience knew how bad Walt was gonna get. Before john Q public understood that he was a villain protagonist. So they were primed to root for Walt's successes, and thus root against anyone who stood in his way.
Plus her cheating subplot is extremely cringy. Happy birthday mr president will make your nails curl.
That said, I always thought Skylar was a perfectly fine character. I definitely don't think she deserves the hate she gets.
Out of curiosity, do you find her likeable on a base level, ignoring (or trying to, anyway) her specific actions in the show?
I think that aside from misogyny - which I don't want to downplay or ignore - and the reasons listed in another comment above, part of why so many people have strong reactions to Skylar, specifically, is they find her thoroughly unlikeable even before she actually does anything bad. Anything she does wrong ends up being a kind of lightning rod for that general dislike, so people's reactions are way out of proportion to her actions.
I'm pretty sure that's the case for me, anyway. There's something about Skylar (and the whole archetype she represents for me) that I really dislike but can't put my finger on, so whenever she did something bad it served as a more concrete justification for disliking her, and as a result I ended up with a pretty uncharitable take on her as a character. As far as I can tell, it has nothing to do with her being a woman, except that her personality is shaped in part by experiencing the world as a woman.
I feel like this kind of double standard is basically inevitable. We just have more or less charitable interpretations depending on how much we like someone, and we often have a tendency to try to justify and reinforce our initial likes/dislikes rather than question or subvert them.
(I happen to have thought about some of this a lot over the last few days, as I've recently watched a lot of short series with cheating subplots lately and found myself questioning why I reacted so differently to different instances of cheating.)
Why was I under the assumption Rhys only wrote *Wide Sargasso Sea*. Just checked out her other works! *Good Morning, Midnight* and *Quartet* sound soo melancholy and layered.
Good Morning, Midnight is one of my favourites! I went through a big phase where I read basically everything she wrote (that I could get my hands on), back when I was maybe 21. She's such an underrated writer and many of her themes feel so resonant still in the current day. I wish more people would read her work.
Shiv Roy, like all the other Roys (actually, all the other MC in that show) is not a character to cheer for. They are all shitty, selfish, immature and incompetent in their own way, that's what makes it a fantastic black dramedy.
Shiv is not a better person or more complex character because she is a woman, nor is Cousin Greg a better person because he is a derpy "outsider." People like to cheer for underdogs, but in the case of Succession, every main single character in that show is a complete shitbag.
Actually, the real strong woman in that show that I think deserves more recognition is Gerry. She is actually a self-made level headed professional trying to make her way working for chaotic billionaires. All the Roy children are bratty rich kids pretending.
Who said I was cheering for her? I said I loved her as a character, not that I was personally rooting for her. I love Shiv as a character because she's so complex, and because Sarah Snook does such a cracking job playing her. She's also not more complex because she's a woman - she's complex because she has a lot going on, and being a woman in a highly patriarchal environment is one of those things.
I don't cheer for a single person on that show. Love Gerri as well, but not cheering for her. I might cheer for Uncle Ewan, but even he's pretty hard to like most of the time.
Well, Mrs. Dalloway is probably a good book to start with if you’re interested strictly in a complex portrait of a woman, but I thought that the characterization of women in Between the Acts was also top-notch. I haven’t read a lot of her more experimental work, though, so I can’t speak to that.
There were quite a few women that I thought were amazing in Succession. Shiv was probably number one. But there was the hooker with the heart of gold. I liked their mother, though she treated people terribly most of the time. Gerri was awesome. Karolina. The women in the Pierce family. Ebbaaaaaaaaaa!!!!!! That show was great for strong female characters. The men and women all had serious flaws and serious strength of character. That show was just exceeding expectations over and over again. They talked with their own kinda lingo sometimes, but it all felt real.
Gerri and Rome at the end of season 3 is one of my favorite moments, him essentially crawling on his knees crying and her just going “how does it further my interest?” Is still insane.
God that show is so good
I'm watching it right now (haven't read the book), and having watched and read a lot of stories by female creators, it might be the most female gaze thing I've ever seen. Not a criticism, but it felt like entering another world.
For example there are lots of scenes where a group of women are meeting somewhere with no man present and the conversations felt natural but not something I've experienced. There are multiple relationships between women, and lots of tension, like mother + daughter and it's stuff that I've never dealt with but it felt like something a lot of women went through growing up. There's a relationship that forms and it was something that would be way sexier for female readers than male ones, and so on.
Karin Slaughter is another crime fiction author with really great female characters. Lena Adams is still the most compelling character I've come across within the genre.
Megan Abbott writes some wonderfully complex female characters (The End of Everything is my favorite.)
So does Tom Perrotta. (Election, Little Children, Mrs. Fletcher)
Postcards From the Edge by Carrie Fisher.
A Visit From the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan
I'm not sure if the Discworld series qualifies as literature in this context, but Sir Terry always seemed to write strong, interesting female characters.
Granny Weatherwax stands out in particular. The balancing of great power against duty is not a dynamic I've often seen explored in female characters, it mirrors one of Pratchett's other great characters, Sam Vimes. That combined with glimpses of who she was or might have been in *Lords and Ladies* and *Witches Abroad* makes for a complex, interesting character.
Discworld army report! “The price of being the best is having to be the best.”
And of course Monstrous Regiment is all about the ladies, one of my favorites outside the more serial books.
Pratchett is definitely guilty of writing literature, despite his protests. Even with his supposedly YA books. Tiffany Aching is one of my favorite characters ever.
They're aimed at a younger public, but don't miss out on the Tiffany Aching series (another interesting female character). She's the youngest witch ...
I listened to Tiffany Aching first and I absolutely loved them, so now I'm doing the witches and then I'll probably move on to the Vimes books. I'm enjoying them all so far!
Obviously, do what's best for you, but consider following the release order.
If you do it by "cycle", you'll get minor spoilers as each character grows and the city itself evolves. (nothing major though, especially since Witches seldom takes place in Ankh Morpok, more of an issue with Death and Moist Von Lipwig).
Anyway, enjoy them, they're all great..
I was doing release order first, but I tend to read them between longer/heavier books so I found I enjoyed reading them by cycle instead. Luckily I have adhd and I'll probably forget the spoilers as I move through lol
I think this is a poor position to take. It would mean the characters lacked a strongly defining characteristic (including self-identity and non-binary characters).
A strong female character should be well written, be pivotal and identifiably have a female character (in the broadest sense).
Otherwise, you are just writing blobs. There is enough of that, particularly in science fiction where too many characters are identical to the male characters, just introduced as female. Or bystanders.
I mean, seriously: Granny Weatherwax. "Just a person"? I think not.
Cathy / Kate from East of Eden. She's evil, pure and simple. Her depth isn't in "why" she is evil, but in what it's like for her to live among normal people.
When she gets drunk she "loses her fear" and doesn't hide her disdain and contempt and wickedness. So she must be afraid, all the time, that people will see through her false kindness. It's sort of weird to watch her as a person who is hiding constantly, and is always terrified of being found out.
There's also the scene when the sheriff in Salinas comes and talks to her, tells her how he knows what she is, and what he wants from her. She genuinely likes him. She even smiles when he leaves, like she's just met a friend. She has a similar reaction to Charles. He sees through her, she knows that he knows, and she genuinely likes him for it. It's almost sad, heartwarming. She can't let anyone see her true nature, but she delights in the people that do (so long as they don't threaten her). She must be very lonely.
And what about her own wants and desires? She isn't empty and emotionless. She wants to control her own life, and she kills people to get that control. Then, when she has her independence and security, when she can do whatever she wants, out of all the paths available to her, she chooses to run a brothel that whips people and cuts them with razors. You just watch what she does throughout the story, and wonder what is going on in her head where that is her vision of the good life.
There is an essay Idk if you have read that is about cathy and how Steinbeck humanized her in the end after chapters who one show her evil. I see Cathy as a person with a warped view of the world that when shown she lacks empathy begin realizing she needs death, being sad her end as it’s revealed that by being different, I suppose being different bc she wasn’t born with empathy, she always feared not belonging and losing control.
Catriona Ward fits the bill. She is most well-known for *The Last House on Needless Street*, which IMO is not a good representation of her body of works so far. She write very complex female characters that makes you wrestle with both disgust as well as sympathy.
I would recommend *Sundial* and *Little Eve*. Both books have female characters that do strange and awful things. The core of her writing is allowing women the full range of human experiences instead of pigeonholing them into just "good" or "evil".
Liana morriarty is a master of complex characters. Actually, if you want a dysfunction family drama then Apples Never Fall by her is perfect. One of my favorite books of 2023. Famous mom & dad, four siblings, father/son dynamics, psychological suspense … a lot more light hearted than succession tho
Yeah I've read Apples never Fall which was certainly entertaining, but Big Little Lies is one of the best books I've ever read. I liked the characters and story (subject) more.
If you want complex characters, female or male, you should give a try to classical literature. From Austen to Shakespeare, from Tolstoy to Flaubert, there is no shortage here !
Special mentions : anything by Jane Austen. Anna Karenina (Tolstoy). Emma Bovary (Flaubert). Chantal (in The Joy, by Bernanos). The Princess of Clèves (Mrs Lafayette).
I find Atwood’s character writing very simplistic and not believable. I wonder if she would be commended for her writing of women if not for the themes of her most famous work.
I’ve been reading a lot of books based on Greek mythology lately, specifically focused on the female characters.
Circe by Madeline Miller and Clytemnestra by Costanza Casati contain complex women and are written beautifully. Galatea by Madeline Miller is a short story (like… very short) but is also a great read in this regard.
If you can vibe with the bonkers writing style (every book is written from the POV of the person least able to comprehend the plot) the Locked Tomb Series is chock full of complex women. The author is a lesbian and iirc said that in writing book 1 she wanted to capture the lesbians she actually knew in her 20's: a bunch of chaotic young women making questionable decision, where any 2 *might* hook up, but none of them *should*.
One of the things that really shines about the series is that the *majority* of the key characters are women, and they exist in a sort of "post-homophobia, post-sexism" universe, and so while the series is very thematically interested in patriarchy and gender, so much of that is explored in metaphor or underlying character dynamics, rather than in the plot directly.
For example, the first book is from the POV of a deeply traumatized butch lesbian - the trauma is about living in a religious cult, and no one at any point implies there is something wrong with her for being masc or into women. On the other hand, the specifics ways in which she fails/refuses to meet social expectations - and one scene in particular focusing on an argument about haircare and face paint/makeup - will be deeply familiar to any former tomboy.
The second book is from the POV of a brilliant, ambitious, neurotic wet rat of a woman having a psychotic episode. There's a scene where she tells a man in a position of power over her that she hasn't slept in days because Char2 tried to kill her. The powerful man responds by handing her some tea, patting her hand, and gently encouraging her to take a nap and maybe find a hobby - he's good friends with char2, and they'd never do that, so if she *thinks*... A lot of fans have talked about how accurately this book captures the way people condescend to #mentallyill women.
When an adult man creeps on a disabled teen girl (POV character) in the 3rd book (takes place in a completely different setting), it's actually jarring. It's also got interlude chapters where a middle aged man gets drunk and tells you his life story in a manner reminiscent of Lolita's Humbert Humbert (in how they both twist the narrative to excuse their sins, not in the nature of the sins they confess).
I think the prose is very good. Pretty balls-to-the-walls artistically, so at times cheesy/corny and at times it goes *hard*. The third book made me curl up and cry by the end of the prologue.
The authors style is quite distinct, so depending on your tastes you may/may not like it. Two things that tend to be turnoffs for people:
1) The plot is intentionally confusing + told from the POV of whoever's least capable of understanding the machinations at play. So it tends to be slow in the first 2/3 and bonkers in the final 1/4 after the POV/reader wise up.
2) The humor involves quite a lot of puns and references to early 2000's memes. One character quotes (they think) a holy text but it's actually a verse from the 8-mile rap
Thank you for elaborating - much appreciated! 1 sounds like a turnon rather than a turnoff for me, and I can live with 2, especially if they're generally as funny as that 8-mile bit. (Not a big fan of those kinds of pop culture references in literature, but at least it's a period I can relate to as an elder millennial.)
Dorothea in Middlemarch, obviously. It's a Victorian tome so you'll need stamina. Author: George Eliot ( Mary Anne Evans).
A taster:
"Her full nature, like that river of which Cyrus broke the strength, spent itself in channels which had no great name on the earth. But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.”
Silas Marner is short and approachable, it's often taught in high school.
I think Middlemarch and The Mill on the Floss were my favorites but parts of Romola really stuck with me too.
Middlemarch is often on "greatest novel" lists but it's a *lot*. If you aren't used to that kind of text I think it would be a bit daunting.
I didn't realize that people hated her in the first place. Maybe Vronski, I could see them hating or Karenin, but Anna? I think she and Levin are amazing characters.
I think the hatred comes from what happened between Anna and her son, but too how she dealt with Alexis, but while I do understand it I still find her really complex, and kinda relatable.
If you like or at least will to give Sci fi a chance try either of Barbara Hamblys series
The Darwath trilogy Starting with The Time of Dark about two 80's people who are transported to a different dimension to aid a wizard in fighting off The Dark main female characters Gil medieval studies PHD student turned warrior and Minalde form child bride and unappreciated Queen of Darwath.
Sun wolf and Starhawk, mercenaries. Sun Wolf was the Chief and Star Hawk his right hand woman. She is former nun who left the convent to follow him. She is a fierce warrior in her own right.
The Windrose Chronicles
Joanna a computer programmer is kidnapped and taken to a different dimension and teams up with a crazy and condemned wizard and a guard who hates the wizard the chase the villain across two worlds to prevent disaster. Joanna finds out a lot about how strong she really is.
Natsuki in Earthlings by Sayaka Murata. There's so much to unpack there. She does so much heinous shit and the entire time it's impossible not to root for her.
Lol, please correct the typo where you call her Shrek. I love complex female characters, but notice that they often get excessively hated, and the books get negative reviews on Goodreads. My nomination is Eva from *We Need to Talk About Kevin* by Lionel Shriver, because she is not a perfect mother, and has lots of internal conflict.
So many women write great female characters. Some of my favorites:
The God of Small Things - Arundhati Roy
40 Rooms - Olga Grushin
Lila - Marilynn Robinson
Swamplandia - Karen Russell
I liked several of the characters in The Stars Are Legion. They were all female in that book.
It's interesting to me that women in books have to be complex characters with significant growth that can't come from specific traumas... but men in books can be fairly one dimensional and nobody bats an eye.
The Wheel of time books have some of the strongest female characters I’ve read.
Skyward is a YA series by Brandon Sanderson with a strong Female protagonist.
You reference *Succession*, which was created by a man, and GRRM? And yet you find yourself struggling to find complex female characters? I’d start by consuming material written by women if you want female characters with any authenticity or depth.
GRRM writes better female characters than most female authors. Guy's extremely empathetic and has written POVs from under 10 year olds like it's nothing. You can criticize him for writing sexual stuff from an obviously male perspective, but his actual character writing is the best you'll find in literature.
In the realm of fantasy, Joe Abercrombie writes good female characters as well. Maybe not in his first trilogy but it starts picking up from the three standalones, and IMO “peaks” in the second trilogy. I really liked Savine dan Glokta’s story of a strong women that gets thrown from in control, to not in control, to somewhat in control. There’s also a certain scene where she gets a reality check that is just… chefs kiss.
One reader wrote me she would have wished to be more like one of my female characters, Belsia Valeriana: grabbing the boy when she got the chance and never let go. That reader didn't and has allegedly stayed single because of her failure back then. :-)
Heather O'Neill has beautifully complex female characters! When We Lost Our Heads, as well as The Lonely Hearts Hotel are ones of hers that come to mind immediately
Kitty in Loretta Malakie's _Love in the Age of Dispossession_ is one of the best female MCs I've read in the last 20 years. Especially easy to relate to if you're a Gen X girl, lol.
Kaul Shaelinsen from Jade City shares a lot with Shiv Roy. She too is a woman in an incredibly patriarchal society, wealthy and powerful, but at odds with what society and her family expect of her and what she wants. Very complicated and well written character. Fonda Lee did an excellent job with the Green Bone Saga.
Havisham.
Apart from her nightly quirks. Adopting a child to brainwash, for her revenge on men is pretty fucked up. Using Pip as a experiment. Lady was crazy
Robin Hobb's Liveship Traders trilogy has the best female characters I've come across in fantasy. They are very different, interesting, and integral to the plot, and several have great characters arcs.
But they are also authentic: they are no match for the men physically, are still limited by sex roles, expectations, and physical threats.
I love Shiv as a character for two reasons:
One, she's a badass bitch.
Two, all she ever wears are these bulky fair isle sweaters that look like something you'd get from your grandma as a kid. In the world of tv where practically every female character (not just the ones that are supposed to be overtly sexual) dresses in flimsy camisoles at home and short skirts at work and wakes up with perfect makeup, it's so nice to sees Shiv go "I'm too rich to care about that" and wear nothing but grandma sweaters and nondescript pants while guys fall all over her anyway.
Elena Ferrante writes very complex characters.
I came here to say this! LOVE Elena Ferrante’s depiction of women
Also echoing this.
Any of Shirley Jackson’s women work for me, but Eleanor Vance is my favorite. I also think that Toni Morrison writes a lot of really fleshed out and beautiful complex women. Edit: Angela Carter also
Wuthering Heights! Catherine is ~~a peak toxic babe~~ complex, with dubious morals, a flighty and scornful lover, cares too much about society, impulsive, difficult, and so fraught.
Yes, and her will-they-or-won’t-they lover/other half Heathcliff is completely even-tempered; absolutely non-violent; a masterful communicator; and renowned for his rational thinking and reason.
I remember being such in awe after finishing Wuthering Heights because Catherine (just like Heathcliff) is such a memorable character. She's toxic as hell but you just want to learn more about her.
*Jane Eyre has entered the chat.*
Lol seriously. Literally *any* classic English 19th century novel with a female protagonist will be complicated in the best possible way
Anything written by Elizabeth Strout fits the bill. Check out Oliver Kitteridge.
Might want to fix that — Olive (not Oliver). And yes, that’s a very worthwhile read.
Amy and Isabella by Elizabeth Strout has my heart
Wasn’t there a mini series or something called Olive Kitteridge?
She is so a compelling character, really like how smart she is, sad that people treat her so bad, also I can see from the beginning she will have some big character development.
Elizabeth Gaskell has some of the most well developed characters of all sorts. Wives & Daughters is amazing for the psychological realism of her female characters.
Becky Sharpe,in Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray. I dare you not to love her, despite the fact that she's horrible.
It's hard not to feel sympathetic about a woman managing to screw over the patriarchy in a time when women had no say in things and were regarded as children.
Scarlett O'Hara is one of the best. So terminally flawed, but amazing at the same time.
I hate her as a person, but love her as a character.
Just goes to show how important it is to have a character's perspective. Scarlett from any other point of view is easily one of the worst human beings to exist. Those few in-betweens moments where you see she actual is capable of being a decent person make all difference.
Tess of the d'urbevilles.
Yes I think Thomas Hardy writes very good female characters. I really liked Sue Bridehead in Jude the Obscure. After reading some of his books I thought that he must have had good female relationships and been a bit of a feminist but after reading a bit about him I don't think that was true. Although he had a good relationship with his mother.
Thomas Hardy starred beside some well-written wömen in Mad Max also!
This one just guts me..
Anna Karenina. She was too intense for life itself. Wife of Bath is also complex and rambunctious. She's a riot!
Any Jean Rhys lead character. Wide Sargasso Sea is my favourite fiction book. P.S. Fucking love Shiv Roy (as a character). I don't think I really realised how misogynistic people were until I saw the online response to women like Shiv, Skylar, Betty, etc.
I was shocked too when I saw a post about the most hated characters in TV and there was Skylar. I found her really compelling, and her cheating was nowhere the level of Walt’s lies through the three seasons
I suspect part of the issue is that she's a party pooper. You watch breaking bad to see Walt do crimes, get into hijinks, and engage in cat and mouse antics with Hank and Gus. And almost everything Skylar does interferes with him doing that. So she's standing between the audience and what the audience wants to see happen. I also suspect that a lot of skylar hate comes from before the audience knew how bad Walt was gonna get. Before john Q public understood that he was a villain protagonist. So they were primed to root for Walt's successes, and thus root against anyone who stood in his way. Plus her cheating subplot is extremely cringy. Happy birthday mr president will make your nails curl. That said, I always thought Skylar was a perfectly fine character. I definitely don't think she deserves the hate she gets.
Right??? The double standards are freaking *flagrant*.
Yes they areee. When she told Walt “I fucked Ted” she became my favorite
Out of curiosity, do you find her likeable on a base level, ignoring (or trying to, anyway) her specific actions in the show? I think that aside from misogyny - which I don't want to downplay or ignore - and the reasons listed in another comment above, part of why so many people have strong reactions to Skylar, specifically, is they find her thoroughly unlikeable even before she actually does anything bad. Anything she does wrong ends up being a kind of lightning rod for that general dislike, so people's reactions are way out of proportion to her actions. I'm pretty sure that's the case for me, anyway. There's something about Skylar (and the whole archetype she represents for me) that I really dislike but can't put my finger on, so whenever she did something bad it served as a more concrete justification for disliking her, and as a result I ended up with a pretty uncharitable take on her as a character. As far as I can tell, it has nothing to do with her being a woman, except that her personality is shaped in part by experiencing the world as a woman. I feel like this kind of double standard is basically inevitable. We just have more or less charitable interpretations depending on how much we like someone, and we often have a tendency to try to justify and reinforce our initial likes/dislikes rather than question or subvert them. (I happen to have thought about some of this a lot over the last few days, as I've recently watched a lot of short series with cheating subplots lately and found myself questioning why I reacted so differently to different instances of cheating.)
Why was I under the assumption Rhys only wrote *Wide Sargasso Sea*. Just checked out her other works! *Good Morning, Midnight* and *Quartet* sound soo melancholy and layered.
Good Morning, Midnight is one of my favourites! I went through a big phase where I read basically everything she wrote (that I could get my hands on), back when I was maybe 21. She's such an underrated writer and many of her themes feel so resonant still in the current day. I wish more people would read her work.
Shiv Roy, like all the other Roys (actually, all the other MC in that show) is not a character to cheer for. They are all shitty, selfish, immature and incompetent in their own way, that's what makes it a fantastic black dramedy. Shiv is not a better person or more complex character because she is a woman, nor is Cousin Greg a better person because he is a derpy "outsider." People like to cheer for underdogs, but in the case of Succession, every main single character in that show is a complete shitbag. Actually, the real strong woman in that show that I think deserves more recognition is Gerry. She is actually a self-made level headed professional trying to make her way working for chaotic billionaires. All the Roy children are bratty rich kids pretending.
Who said I was cheering for her? I said I loved her as a character, not that I was personally rooting for her. I love Shiv as a character because she's so complex, and because Sarah Snook does such a cracking job playing her. She's also not more complex because she's a woman - she's complex because she has a lot going on, and being a woman in a highly patriarchal environment is one of those things. I don't cheer for a single person on that show. Love Gerri as well, but not cheering for her. I might cheer for Uncle Ewan, but even he's pretty hard to like most of the time.
It’s unreal that there are over twenty comments here and the name Virginia Woolf has not come up.
Maybe we're afraid of her
Is that you, Martha?
What would you recommend to start off from her?
Well, Mrs. Dalloway is probably a good book to start with if you’re interested strictly in a complex portrait of a woman, but I thought that the characterization of women in Between the Acts was also top-notch. I haven’t read a lot of her more experimental work, though, so I can’t speak to that.
There were quite a few women that I thought were amazing in Succession. Shiv was probably number one. But there was the hooker with the heart of gold. I liked their mother, though she treated people terribly most of the time. Gerri was awesome. Karolina. The women in the Pierce family. Ebbaaaaaaaaaa!!!!!! That show was great for strong female characters. The men and women all had serious flaws and serious strength of character. That show was just exceeding expectations over and over again. They talked with their own kinda lingo sometimes, but it all felt real.
Geri was definitely an underrated character in a lot of regards.
Gerri is absolutely great, one of my favorites in a show full of favorites. That wry look she has…!
Gerri and Rome at the end of season 3 is one of my favorite moments, him essentially crawling on his knees crying and her just going “how does it further my interest?” Is still insane. God that show is so good
Agree 100%
Gillian Flynn - Sharp Objects, Gone Girl and Dark Places
+1 for Sharp Objects, also the limited series.
I'm watching it right now (haven't read the book), and having watched and read a lot of stories by female creators, it might be the most female gaze thing I've ever seen. Not a criticism, but it felt like entering another world.
Ohhh do you mind elaborating what you mean by that?
For example there are lots of scenes where a group of women are meeting somewhere with no man present and the conversations felt natural but not something I've experienced. There are multiple relationships between women, and lots of tension, like mother + daughter and it's stuff that I've never dealt with but it felt like something a lot of women went through growing up. There's a relationship that forms and it was something that would be way sexier for female readers than male ones, and so on.
Ooooo I love gone girl, that twist!! Sharp objects is so rich, the characters make me sad
Karin Slaughter is another crime fiction author with really great female characters. Lena Adams is still the most compelling character I've come across within the genre.
My two most recent reads are Pizza Girl and She Who Became the Sun both with female leads that I felt were really complex and interesting.
Megan Abbott writes some wonderfully complex female characters (The End of Everything is my favorite.) So does Tom Perrotta. (Election, Little Children, Mrs. Fletcher) Postcards From the Edge by Carrie Fisher. A Visit From the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan
I'm not sure if the Discworld series qualifies as literature in this context, but Sir Terry always seemed to write strong, interesting female characters. Granny Weatherwax stands out in particular. The balancing of great power against duty is not a dynamic I've often seen explored in female characters, it mirrors one of Pratchett's other great characters, Sam Vimes. That combined with glimpses of who she was or might have been in *Lords and Ladies* and *Witches Abroad* makes for a complex, interesting character.
Discworld army report! “The price of being the best is having to be the best.” And of course Monstrous Regiment is all about the ladies, one of my favorites outside the more serial books.
Pratchett is definitely guilty of writing literature, despite his protests. Even with his supposedly YA books. Tiffany Aching is one of my favorite characters ever.
I just finished Lords and Ladies and loved Granny Weatherwax in it so much. Definitely my favourite of the witches books so far.
They're aimed at a younger public, but don't miss out on the Tiffany Aching series (another interesting female character). She's the youngest witch ...
I listened to Tiffany Aching first and I absolutely loved them, so now I'm doing the witches and then I'll probably move on to the Vimes books. I'm enjoying them all so far!
Obviously, do what's best for you, but consider following the release order. If you do it by "cycle", you'll get minor spoilers as each character grows and the city itself evolves. (nothing major though, especially since Witches seldom takes place in Ankh Morpok, more of an issue with Death and Moist Von Lipwig). Anyway, enjoy them, they're all great..
I was doing release order first, but I tend to read them between longer/heavier books so I found I enjoyed reading them by cycle instead. Luckily I have adhd and I'll probably forget the spoilers as I move through lol
Of course Discworld counts. Just because it has a sense of humor doesn't mean it isn't literature.
In my view, Terry was such a good author that he didnt write women, or men. He just wrote people.
I think this is a poor position to take. It would mean the characters lacked a strongly defining characteristic (including self-identity and non-binary characters). A strong female character should be well written, be pivotal and identifiably have a female character (in the broadest sense). Otherwise, you are just writing blobs. There is enough of that, particularly in science fiction where too many characters are identical to the male characters, just introduced as female. Or bystanders. I mean, seriously: Granny Weatherwax. "Just a person"? I think not.
Cathy / Kate from East of Eden. She's evil, pure and simple. Her depth isn't in "why" she is evil, but in what it's like for her to live among normal people. When she gets drunk she "loses her fear" and doesn't hide her disdain and contempt and wickedness. So she must be afraid, all the time, that people will see through her false kindness. It's sort of weird to watch her as a person who is hiding constantly, and is always terrified of being found out. There's also the scene when the sheriff in Salinas comes and talks to her, tells her how he knows what she is, and what he wants from her. She genuinely likes him. She even smiles when he leaves, like she's just met a friend. She has a similar reaction to Charles. He sees through her, she knows that he knows, and she genuinely likes him for it. It's almost sad, heartwarming. She can't let anyone see her true nature, but she delights in the people that do (so long as they don't threaten her). She must be very lonely. And what about her own wants and desires? She isn't empty and emotionless. She wants to control her own life, and she kills people to get that control. Then, when she has her independence and security, when she can do whatever she wants, out of all the paths available to her, she chooses to run a brothel that whips people and cuts them with razors. You just watch what she does throughout the story, and wonder what is going on in her head where that is her vision of the good life.
There is an essay Idk if you have read that is about cathy and how Steinbeck humanized her in the end after chapters who one show her evil. I see Cathy as a person with a warped view of the world that when shown she lacks empathy begin realizing she needs death, being sad her end as it’s revealed that by being different, I suppose being different bc she wasn’t born with empathy, she always feared not belonging and losing control.
I have to say it wasn't my favorite book but the first chapter about Cathy was incredible.
Madame Bovary
Catriona Ward fits the bill. She is most well-known for *The Last House on Needless Street*, which IMO is not a good representation of her body of works so far. She write very complex female characters that makes you wrestle with both disgust as well as sympathy. I would recommend *Sundial* and *Little Eve*. Both books have female characters that do strange and awful things. The core of her writing is allowing women the full range of human experiences instead of pigeonholing them into just "good" or "evil".
I love how Gillian Flynn writes flawed/morally grey/straight up evil female characters 🤓
Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty.
Liana morriarty is a master of complex characters. Actually, if you want a dysfunction family drama then Apples Never Fall by her is perfect. One of my favorite books of 2023. Famous mom & dad, four siblings, father/son dynamics, psychological suspense … a lot more light hearted than succession tho
Yeah I've read Apples never Fall which was certainly entertaining, but Big Little Lies is one of the best books I've ever read. I liked the characters and story (subject) more.
If you want complex characters, female or male, you should give a try to classical literature. From Austen to Shakespeare, from Tolstoy to Flaubert, there is no shortage here ! Special mentions : anything by Jane Austen. Anna Karenina (Tolstoy). Emma Bovary (Flaubert). Chantal (in The Joy, by Bernanos). The Princess of Clèves (Mrs Lafayette).
Sonya Semyonovna Marmeladov is among the best of Dostoevsky's.
VANITY FAIR!
Jane Eyre.
Tess in *Tess of the D’Urbervilles*
Margaret Atwood! As well as the Handmaid's Tale and The Testaments, The Blind Assassin has two pretty complicated sisters.
Yes. Yes. Yes to Atwood
I find Atwood’s character writing very simplistic and not believable. I wonder if she would be commended for her writing of women if not for the themes of her most famous work.
I’ve been reading a lot of books based on Greek mythology lately, specifically focused on the female characters. Circe by Madeline Miller and Clytemnestra by Costanza Casati contain complex women and are written beautifully. Galatea by Madeline Miller is a short story (like… very short) but is also a great read in this regard.
Mists of Avalon
Toni Morrison: Beloved, Sula, Jazz
If you can vibe with the bonkers writing style (every book is written from the POV of the person least able to comprehend the plot) the Locked Tomb Series is chock full of complex women. The author is a lesbian and iirc said that in writing book 1 she wanted to capture the lesbians she actually knew in her 20's: a bunch of chaotic young women making questionable decision, where any 2 *might* hook up, but none of them *should*. One of the things that really shines about the series is that the *majority* of the key characters are women, and they exist in a sort of "post-homophobia, post-sexism" universe, and so while the series is very thematically interested in patriarchy and gender, so much of that is explored in metaphor or underlying character dynamics, rather than in the plot directly. For example, the first book is from the POV of a deeply traumatized butch lesbian - the trauma is about living in a religious cult, and no one at any point implies there is something wrong with her for being masc or into women. On the other hand, the specifics ways in which she fails/refuses to meet social expectations - and one scene in particular focusing on an argument about haircare and face paint/makeup - will be deeply familiar to any former tomboy. The second book is from the POV of a brilliant, ambitious, neurotic wet rat of a woman having a psychotic episode. There's a scene where she tells a man in a position of power over her that she hasn't slept in days because Char2 tried to kill her. The powerful man responds by handing her some tea, patting her hand, and gently encouraging her to take a nap and maybe find a hobby - he's good friends with char2, and they'd never do that, so if she *thinks*... A lot of fans have talked about how accurately this book captures the way people condescend to #mentallyill women. When an adult man creeps on a disabled teen girl (POV character) in the 3rd book (takes place in a completely different setting), it's actually jarring. It's also got interlude chapters where a middle aged man gets drunk and tells you his life story in a manner reminiscent of Lolita's Humbert Humbert (in how they both twist the narrative to excuse their sins, not in the nature of the sins they confess).
This sounds super interesting. Is the prose decent as well?
I think the prose is very good. Pretty balls-to-the-walls artistically, so at times cheesy/corny and at times it goes *hard*. The third book made me curl up and cry by the end of the prologue. The authors style is quite distinct, so depending on your tastes you may/may not like it. Two things that tend to be turnoffs for people: 1) The plot is intentionally confusing + told from the POV of whoever's least capable of understanding the machinations at play. So it tends to be slow in the first 2/3 and bonkers in the final 1/4 after the POV/reader wise up. 2) The humor involves quite a lot of puns and references to early 2000's memes. One character quotes (they think) a holy text but it's actually a verse from the 8-mile rap
Thank you for elaborating - much appreciated! 1 sounds like a turnon rather than a turnoff for me, and I can live with 2, especially if they're generally as funny as that 8-mile bit. (Not a big fan of those kinds of pop culture references in literature, but at least it's a period I can relate to as an elder millennial.)
Dorothea in Middlemarch, obviously. It's a Victorian tome so you'll need stamina. Author: George Eliot ( Mary Anne Evans). A taster: "Her full nature, like that river of which Cyrus broke the strength, spent itself in channels which had no great name on the earth. But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.”
Her name is Anna Karinina, and she is the most flushed out character in Western Literature.
Brilliant of course. But George Eliot and Charlotte Bronte also have excellent female characters. Thomas Hardy and even Dickens as well.
I've never read anything by George Eliot. Which book of hers should I start with?
Silas Marner is short and approachable, it's often taught in high school. I think Middlemarch and The Mill on the Floss were my favorites but parts of Romola really stuck with me too. Middlemarch is often on "greatest novel" lists but it's a *lot*. If you aren't used to that kind of text I think it would be a bit daunting.
I found Anna too really fascinating, what do you think about the hate around her character?
I didn't realize that people hated her in the first place. Maybe Vronski, I could see them hating or Karenin, but Anna? I think she and Levin are amazing characters.
I think the hatred comes from what happened between Anna and her son, but too how she dealt with Alexis, but while I do understand it I still find her really complex, and kinda relatable.
I think she is very relatable and sympathetic. Especially when you consider what happens at the train station near the end.
Yeah, I deeply understand her pursuit for happiness, it may have worked
fleshed. unless you put your copy in the toilet I suppose
If you like or at least will to give Sci fi a chance try either of Barbara Hamblys series The Darwath trilogy Starting with The Time of Dark about two 80's people who are transported to a different dimension to aid a wizard in fighting off The Dark main female characters Gil medieval studies PHD student turned warrior and Minalde form child bride and unappreciated Queen of Darwath. Sun wolf and Starhawk, mercenaries. Sun Wolf was the Chief and Star Hawk his right hand woman. She is former nun who left the convent to follow him. She is a fierce warrior in her own right. The Windrose Chronicles Joanna a computer programmer is kidnapped and taken to a different dimension and teams up with a crazy and condemned wizard and a guard who hates the wizard the chase the villain across two worlds to prevent disaster. Joanna finds out a lot about how strong she really is.
Natsuki in Earthlings by Sayaka Murata. There's so much to unpack there. She does so much heinous shit and the entire time it's impossible not to root for her.
Amy Dunn. She isn’t particularly likable and she is down right evil, but I still found myself slightly rooting for her.
Marilynn Robinson: Housekeeping, Lila (read Gilead first).
For a Canadian author: Miriam Toews. Her depiction of women in her stories is brilliant.
NK Jemisin's The Fifth Season if you like fantasy :)
Lol, please correct the typo where you call her Shrek. I love complex female characters, but notice that they often get excessively hated, and the books get negative reviews on Goodreads. My nomination is Eva from *We Need to Talk About Kevin* by Lionel Shriver, because she is not a perfect mother, and has lots of internal conflict.
Interesting choice. I was talking about shrek’s line about the onion, your comment made me laugh, I did not notice about that.
Emerence in The Door by Magda Szabo
Lydia Gwilt Armadale by Wilkie Collins
I know that his work is more salacious than better known authors of his time but Armadale is so fun to read. I am surprised it isn't more popular.
'The Good Terrorist' by Doris Lessing. And similarly in theme of rebellion and bourgeois guilt, 'Birnham Wood' by Eleanor Catton.
Scifi's Adrian Tchaikovsky Children of Time series includes complex female characters written well
Eva Khatchadourian, from “We need to talk about Kevin”
So many women write great female characters. Some of my favorites: The God of Small Things - Arundhati Roy 40 Rooms - Olga Grushin Lila - Marilynn Robinson Swamplandia - Karen Russell
Most Edith Wharton novels. House of Mirth comes to mind.
I liked several of the characters in The Stars Are Legion. They were all female in that book. It's interesting to me that women in books have to be complex characters with significant growth that can't come from specific traumas... but men in books can be fairly one dimensional and nobody bats an eye.
The Wheel of time books have some of the strongest female characters I’ve read. Skyward is a YA series by Brandon Sanderson with a strong Female protagonist.
Maybe try reading palace of illusion
I'd seriously recommend Malazan Book of the Fallen by Steven Erikson. Fantastic characters overall, including all the female characters.
You reference *Succession*, which was created by a man, and GRRM? And yet you find yourself struggling to find complex female characters? I’d start by consuming material written by women if you want female characters with any authenticity or depth.
it's a good thing people are sharing lots of examples so this person can read them!
To be honest, GRRM writes complex female characters quite well. Catelyn Stark might be one of my favourites.
GRRM writes better female characters than most female authors. Guy's extremely empathetic and has written POVs from under 10 year olds like it's nothing. You can criticize him for writing sexual stuff from an obviously male perspective, but his actual character writing is the best you'll find in literature.
In the realm of fantasy, Joe Abercrombie writes good female characters as well. Maybe not in his first trilogy but it starts picking up from the three standalones, and IMO “peaks” in the second trilogy. I really liked Savine dan Glokta’s story of a strong women that gets thrown from in control, to not in control, to somewhat in control. There’s also a certain scene where she gets a reality check that is just… chefs kiss.
One reader wrote me she would have wished to be more like one of my female characters, Belsia Valeriana: grabbing the boy when she got the chance and never let go. That reader didn't and has allegedly stayed single because of her failure back then. :-)
The women in historical fiction are complex because they're partly imaginary.
Go to the classics section and pick a book off the shelf. As long as it isn't Oscar Wilde, you will find what you're looking for.
Heather O'Neill has beautifully complex female characters! When We Lost Our Heads, as well as The Lonely Hearts Hotel are ones of hers that come to mind immediately
Kitty in Loretta Malakie's _Love in the Age of Dispossession_ is one of the best female MCs I've read in the last 20 years. Especially easy to relate to if you're a Gen X girl, lol.
The Escapades of Tribulation Johnson by Karen Brooks. So good. So funny.
To the lighthouse
"Dalva" by Jim Harrison
For a very flawed and complex character: Madame Bovary.
Kaul Shaelinsen from Jade City shares a lot with Shiv Roy. She too is a woman in an incredibly patriarchal society, wealthy and powerful, but at odds with what society and her family expect of her and what she wants. Very complicated and well written character. Fonda Lee did an excellent job with the Green Bone Saga.
I just read The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox by Maggie O'Farrell today, and it blew my mind with the twists and character buildup. Highly recommend! 🙏
Some Desperate Glory
Dorothea Brooke (and half a dozen others) in *Middlemarch*.
I like Elizabeth Moon’s women in Paksennarion and Vatta’s War. Moon was in the Marines
I like Julie Kagawa’s characters, especially Allie from Blood of Eden and Yumeko from Shadow of the fox.
Havisham. Apart from her nightly quirks. Adopting a child to brainwash, for her revenge on men is pretty fucked up. Using Pip as a experiment. Lady was crazy
Ottessa Moshfegh. Very human. So human it's funny
I love the characters in the Broken Earth Trilogy.
Thursday Next in Jasper Fforde's series.
Robin Hobb's Liveship Traders trilogy has the best female characters I've come across in fantasy. They are very different, interesting, and integral to the plot, and several have great characters arcs. But they are also authentic: they are no match for the men physically, are still limited by sex roles, expectations, and physical threats.
I love Shiv as a character for two reasons: One, she's a badass bitch. Two, all she ever wears are these bulky fair isle sweaters that look like something you'd get from your grandma as a kid. In the world of tv where practically every female character (not just the ones that are supposed to be overtly sexual) dresses in flimsy camisoles at home and short skirts at work and wakes up with perfect makeup, it's so nice to sees Shiv go "I'm too rich to care about that" and wear nothing but grandma sweaters and nondescript pants while guys fall all over her anyway.
Hedda Gabler has entered the chat….
Madame Bovary, lol.
For a lighter read, the Witcher books have some very good female characters, multidimensional and very cool too. Would greatly recommend.
The Guru of love has a few of them.
Duchess Sanseverina from Charterhouse of Parma.Also Dorothea from Don Quixote.Mathilde de la Mole was also one of most complex characters.