To ask for your favourite literary heroines?

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I've just finished a book and I'm looking for inspiration.

My all time favourite is Scarlett O'Hara from Gone with the Wind. I love Rebecca (from Rebecca) too, and Cathy Earnshaw from Wuthering Heights.

Amber from Forever Amber is a recent discovery too. Any recommendations for what to read next?

She’s awful in many ways, but I find her intensely relatable — too clever and plain to have ever been a marriage prospect, a social misfit who is at the same time a chameleon, one moment taking tea with the Dyserts and the next hobnobbing in Irish with her lowly tenants, in love all her life with a completely unworthy man who takes advantage of her adoration. I think her vileness is created by her circumstances. She’d have been better and happier as a Prime Minister, with her brains and cunning, than as a spinster in late Victorian small town Ireland.

And it’s so well done! The scene where she has to decide whether to pretend to fall, fail to shut a gate and let a stampede of horses trample an unwitting Francie on a narrow lane is one of the most genuinely chilling in literature.

Sorry, that was to @Dapplegrey.

Madame Max Goesler is a favourite - she features in more than one of the Palliser series. (Anthony Trollope).

She refuses to become the mistress of a very rich and debauched old duke who's besotted with her, and later takes herself off to Prague to gather the evidence to save - by a whisker - the man she loves from being hanged for a murder he didn't commit.

Trollope wrote some brilliant female characters. I also love Lizzie Eustace (The Eustace Diamonds), a shameless little gold digger who gets herself into all sorts of trouble after refusing to hand back to her husband's family after he died a fabulously valuable heirloom necklace after he died.
A great read IMO.

Brittle that’s a brilliant analysis! I’d never considered circumstances playing a part in Charlotte’s character so that’s very interesting.
Yes about shutting the gate - genuinely chilling. But considering how overwhelmed with jealousy she was I wonder why she did run and shut it.
That last ride with Hawkins when Francis battles with her conscious over the (what seems to her) wonderful future he is offering is so well done and I enjoyed the scene when Christopher tells his mother that he did in fact propose to Francie.
Nice to find a fellow fan of the book as it deserves a wider audience.

Yes, the Christopher—Francie (non-)relationship is comical and touching. Plus with both Christopher and Pamela Dysert both ending the novel unlikely to marry because they’re too gentle and vague, Somerville and Ross were definitely making a point about the bred-out Ascendancy and the vigour of the up and coming Catholic middle classes (even though they made Charlotte Protestant, it’s fairly clear what she represents).

It’s a wonderful novel, and I wish someone would adapt it for TV again, as the old one with Jeananne Crowley, while it has some brilliant performances, now looks very dated.

Jane Eyre for me. I always felt drawn to her as she was described as plain and sensible looking, and genuinely seemed surprised that Rochester would ever reciprocate her romantic feelings.

A more recent choice would be Jenny Bonnet from Frog Music. The story is set in 1876 and the character is repeatedly arrested and fined for "cross dressing"...which in this case just means that she preferred to wear trousers.

Ronica Vestrit and Kettricken from Robin Hobb's Farseer/Liveship series. Both of them stand firm in the face of immense hardship.

Bathsheba Everdene was my absolute hero growing up. I lived in rural Dorset so Hardy was a big deal! I used to wander around the fields pretending to be Bathsheba

and genuinely seemed surprised that Rochester would ever reciprocate her romantic feelings.

The problem with this is that it's less 'romantic feelings' than preying on a penniless teenage employee after he's just spent years faffing around Europe trying on mistresses of different nationalities for size and got bored -- and it's very clear from the text that at the beginning he's not considering marriage (not even bigamous marriage with a mad wife concealed upstairs!), but just seducing her.

And part of the reason he eventually does propose is not just because she holds out against seduction but that she has no family to make awkward enquiries into his background and the source of his wealth. It's just unfortunate that long-lost Uncle John in Madeira happens to run into Richard Mason...

None of which is Jane's fault, obviously, but it does rather taint the love story!

Rebecca's Tale by Sally Beauman is an interesting prequal to Jane Eyre.

Apart from Salanander I can't think of many unforgettable female characters.

Sugar in The Crimson Petal and the White

Jeanette in Oranges are Not the Only Fruit

Granny Weatherwax, Nanny Ogg, Tiffany Aching

Livia from I, Claudius (more of an anti-heroine)

I am a bit surprised people still read Mapp and Lucia books, I really like them plus the first TV series was better than the recent one, Prunella Scales was Mapp.

Anne Elliot, Elizabeth Bennett, Lyra in His Dark Materials, when re-reading Rebecca, Max de Winter is a bit creepy and he killed Rebecca as I recall. It is well written but I feel the second Mrs de Winter was very badly treated.

Anne Shirley and Laura Ingalls weren't just favourites, they were friends. Love them to bits.

Elizabeth and Anne in P&P/Persuasion
Charlotte the spider
Frederica, Sophie and Venetia from Georgette Heyer
Kinsey Milhone from the Sue Grafton books
Sharon Mchone from Macia Muller books
VI Warshawski from Sara Paretsky books
Scout, Calpurnia and Miss Maudie from Mockingbird
Livia from I, Claudius was one of my favourite villians, she was pure evil

I love Catherine Earnshaw too, even though she is a selfish horror she is a wonderful creation, so vibrant and natural at a time when women were supposed to be anything but. I can feel Heathcliff's utter adoration of her, when he describes how, when she was caught by the Lintons' dog, seriously injuring her, how brave and bright she seems to him compared to the Linton children. My favourite Bronte heroine though is Helen in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. If you can look past her piety she was wonderfully arsekicky and independent.

I do admire Amber in "Forever Amber" I wonder why this film was never remade because it is a good story.

Anne Shirley. Love Anne.

I always found Jane Eyre a bit too... I don't know, worthy? Love Emma, she's such a realistic character - likes a bit of a bitch and sometimes can't bite her tongue to be polite. My English teacher at school named her daughter after her and I wanted to do the same but was vetoed!

I also really liked Mary Challoner in Devil's cub - She is such a practical heroine.

Amber St Clare OP, I remember reading those.
Anne Shirley
Laura Ingalls wilder
Lyra Belacqua
Matilda

And as an adult
Melanie and Helen from the Girl with all the Gifts
The wonderful Marie-Laure from All the Things I Cannot See

Another vote for Flora Poste.

Also Aunt Augusta, from Graham Greene's "Travels with my Aunt".

Eustacia Vye

Gudrun Brangwen

Jane Eyre, she was completely true to herself. She gave kindness but expected none in return, forgave where others wouldn’t and had a quiet strength about her. In a time where being Edward’s mistress could have given her a worry free life (after all the horrors she’d faced I wouldn’t have begrudged her choice), she refused to compromise her morals. She knew her own worth and would accept nothing less.

Bathsheba Everdene

Hence my username.

Sara Crewe is my all time favourite.

Magrat. I love Granby Wetherwax and Nanny Ogg, but Magrat doesn’t allow himself to be cowed by GW.

Agree with Pelagia, especially at the end of the book when she gives Corelli what for about not asking who’s baby it is.

Professor McGonagall - what a woman.

The whore with lime green panties.

Lucia, and Mapp too, because it was like meat and bread to her.
Anne
Jo March
Lyra
I don't much like the Austen heroines but I do quite like Mary Crawford.
And all of the PG Wodehouse aunts.