Who are your favourite female characters in fiction?

[JaneyGee]

I love Eustacia in Hardy's Return of the Native. She is just so sexy and cool. I think it's her detached aloofness that appeals. And also her pride. She never really loses her head over the men who pursue her, and no one manages to beat her down. Above all, I love the way she speaks – that fierce eloquence.

Lizzie Bennett in Pride and Prejudice. So gutsy and funny and full of life.

David's aunt in David Copperfield. People often accuse Dickens of creating nauseating, sexless female characters. Well, maybe some of them are like that, but David's aunt certainly isn't. She's magnificent. The scene in which she kicks Murdstone out of her house is one of the greatest in literature.

Rowan Marlow from the Antonia Forest series Autumn Term, Cricket Term etc.
And Anne Shirley.

I would have liked and respected Alanna but have been Kel’s friend (a very devoted and hero-worshipping one). Temperamentally though I am like Sandry from the Circle books. I think Daja would have been the most suitable friend and I would have been overawed by Tris. I also basically have Lark and Rosethorn counterparts in my life!

Roman is terrifying! So capable and unflappable, so sporty and bossy. I’m always vaguely on evil Lois Sanger’s side…

Ruby Redford. International spy

Haha, maybe that’s why I like her!

Yes Rowan.

Emma Harte from A Woman Of Substance is one of my favourites but my absolute queen bee would have to be Miss Marple. She is living the life i want to have in a few years when i get to 70 or so!

Oh, yes, definitely aspire be Miss Marple in old age. Or possibly Matilda Simpkin from Old Baggage by Lissa Evans.

Just thought of a couple more
Dolly Oblonskaya in Anna Karenina - fully realised and complex, loving and warm and wise - I loved the scene where Anna told this 19thC mother of 4 about contraception and she immediately wants to know more!

And Mrs Harris, the one who goes to Paris.

100% Harriet Vane!

Also the woman who keeps the San Francisco boarding house in Tales of the City.

Any of the witty, game, gutsy young female adventurers in Agatha Christie 's "thriller" novels. Especially Tuppence

Aunt Fidget Wonkham-Strong, in Russell Hoban's Captain Najork books, and equally her counterpart, Bundlejoy Cosysweet.

Marian Halcombe (obviously)
Titty Walker and Dorothea Callum from Swallows and Amazons.
Harriet Vane
Bilgewater (from book of same
name by Jane Gardam)

Harriet Vane and Titty were so cool! I also loved Jill and Ann from Ruby Ferguson’s Jill books when I was little. Gutsy, brave and nonconformist for the time.

Maggie in Hobsons choice

Granny Weatherwax
Minerva McGonagall
Ice Cream Star in 'The Country of Ice Cream Star'

Aunt Fidget Wonkham-Strong, in Russell Hoban's Captain Najork books,

OMG- I've never heard anyone else mention Captain Najork, and I didn't even know there was more than one of the books!

Mary Russell
Miss Marple
And I like Nellie Piggot - a woman who is never beaten down!

I agree re Wilkie Collins' women - hence my user name - Lydia Gwilt is a wonderful villain in 'Armadale'. Also Magdalen Vanstone in 'No Name'.

Nanny Ogg and Granny Weatherwax all day long. Tiffany and Adorabelle get honourable mentions too. Sir TP really knew how to write women we’d love to be. Eleanor Dashwood and Anne Elliot - Jane Austen’s quiet heroines always spoke to me.

I’d have done my best to be Anne Elliott’s bestie, but I suspect I would have ended up hanging on Elinor Dashwood’s every word - I have a lot of sensible, kind and mature women as friends and Anne was a little too beaten down by life to deserve the extra stress from me, whereas Elinor would have coped with me with aplomb and I could help her with Marianne’s crises.

Amber St Clare - from the book Forever Amber

Adorabelle Dearheart

Henrietta Stackpole

I love Lydia Gwilt and Magdalen Vanstone as well. Both more morally dubious than Marian Halcombe (although I suppose the Victorians were likely to be horrified by her unorthodox living conditions by the end of the book!) but all fabulous adventurous women who did not let their sex hold them back.

OMG- I've never heard anyone else mention Captain Najork, and I didn't even know there was more than one of the books!

Yes! There are two. The second one is A Near Thing for Captain Najork. Both huge family favourites with us. "She wore an iron hat, and she took no nonsense from anyone. Where she walked the flowers drooped ..."

Modesty Blaise

Becky Sharp - a lesson in how not to let the bastards grind you down!