The Patriarchy Wasn’t Quite Ready for Them

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Megan Follows as Anne Shirley in the 1985 Anne of Green Gables miniseries.

Among literature’s memorable people are female characters who can be described as plucky, gutsy, clever, driven, strong-willed, determined, ambitious, etc. This can be especially interesting with female characters in novels written long ago — or set long ago if written more recently. Because women back then had an especially challenging task navigating a society usually much more patriarchal than today’s (admittedly still patriarchal) world.

This came to mind as I continued my recent Daphne du Maurier reading binge with her 1954 novel Mary Anne – whose semi-fictionalized title character was an actual great-great grandmother (I think) of the author. Mary Anne Thompson (1776-1852) grew up in a low-income/dysfunctional family, but rose quite a bit in life (at least during her 20s and 30s) via smarts, charm, humor, quick-wittedness, hard work, ruthlessness, strategic behavior, opportunism, and the compromising of some morals. Being good-looking didn’t hurt, either, as she “used” various men to climb society’s ladder.

Mary Anne reminded me a bit of some other fictional “heroines” – one of them being social climber Undine Spragg in Edith Wharton’s The Custom of the Country (1913). Undine is meaner and generally less-appealing than Mary Anne, but they both share a fierce intelligence and relentless ambition. 

Another self-empowered woman is the title character in Daniel Defoe’s 1722 novel Moll Flanders. The basically good-hearted Moll lives a very checkered life but is confident enough to act outside of societal norms: she’s a con artist, a thief, makes alliances with other women, has sex outside of marriage, etc.

Moving to the 19th century, we have William Thackeray’s Vanity Fair. That 1848 novel’s Becky Sharp is a brainy, funny, talented, conniving, manipulative, amoral young woman seeking a better “station” in life.

Returning to 20th-century literature, Zora Neale Hurston’s 1937 novel Their Eyes Were Watching God stars the admirable, energetic, resilient Janie Crawford — though she does do some backsliding here and there in terms of partly deferring to some problematic men. Janie has the double challenge of being a woman in a patriarchal society and a Black woman in a racist society.

Isabel Allende’s 1998 novel Daughter of Fortune features the half-Chilean/half-English Eliza Sommers who boldly travels from Chile to Gold Rush-era California, disguising herself as a man for much of the trip. She also ignores the prejudices of the time by developing a close friendship with Chinese man Tao Chi’en.

In young-adult fiction (which of course can also be enjoyed by not-so-young adults), three characters immediately come to mind.

The cast of Louis Sachar’s also-1998-published Holes includes Katherine Barlow, who — in the novel’s 19th-century flashback scenes — becomes a vengeful outlaw named Kissin’ Kate Barlow after a tragic racist act I won’t specify to avoid more of a spoiler.

Preteen-then-teen Anne Shirley in L.M. Montgomery’s 1908 classic Anne of Green Gables is feisty, hilarious, imaginative, and precociously intelligent — though she “mellows” somewhat as an older character and parent in the later sequels. 

Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games trilogy of 2008, 2009, and 2010 is set not in the past but rather in a future society that, while brutal, is not super-patriarchal. But courageous and rebellious (as well as compassionate) protagonist Katniss Everdeen is worth mentioning.

Your thoughts about, and examples of, this theme?

Misty the cat says: “That rabbit isn’t running, so it must not like John Updike’s ‘Rabbit, Run.'”

My comedic 2024 book — the part-factual/part-fictional/not-a-children’s-work Misty the Cat…Unleashed — is described and can be purchased on Amazon in paperback or on Kindle. It’s feline-narrated! (And Amazon reviews are welcome. 🙂 )

This 90-second promo video for the book features a talking cat: 🙂

I’m also the author of a 2017 literary-trivia book…

…and a 2012 memoir that focuses on cartooning and more, including many encounters with celebrities.

In addition to this weekly blog, I write the 2003-started/award-winning “Montclairvoyant” topical-humor column every Thursday for Montclair Local. The latest piece — which comedically commented on July 4th and more — is here.

92 thoughts on “The Patriarchy Wasn’t Quite Ready for Them”

  1. An excellent theme and interesting post, highlighting all the memorable female characters I’ve missed over the years. I’ve recently read the Brotherless Night by V.V. Ganeshananthan told through the eyes of a strong and self-determined Sashi who, then sixteen in 1981, wants to become a doctor. Over the next decade, a vicious civil war tears apart their Tamil minority community, seeking separation from Sri Lanka. The choices she makes put her in the midst of the fighting and atrocities.

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  2. Hi Dave!

    Yet another fascinating post about women and the battles they face operating within a framework designed for men!

    All very interesting yet also maddening when female characters have to adopt a wily or cunning personality in order to achieve their goals.

    Makes for great reading through Dave. All the books you have kindly mentioned sound good!

    Thought-provoking!

    Thank you for the books, very much appreciated.

    😊 📚

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    • Thank you, Madeline! Glad you liked the post, and I hear you about lengthened reading lists — which also happens to me when I see the comments under my posts. 🙂 I appreciate the mention of Precious Ramotswe, who I’ve heard great things about as a character!

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  4. Hi Dave, so pleased you’re busy reading a lot of books from Daphne du Maurier. Excellent! However, I’m a bit stumped with this week’s one. Apart from Miss Liz Bennett, of course, and rather later the wonderful V.I. Warshawski, oh and also some of Agatha Christie’s: Miss Marple and (Tommy and) Tuppence Beresford. I guess that’s not too bad.

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    • Thank you, Chris! Yes, a Daphne du Maurier binge. 🙂

      Not bad at all to name four strong, memorable female characters! Coincidentally, I just started reading a Miss Marple mystery (“A Murder Is Announced”). Published in 1950, so I guess latter mid-career for Agatha Christie.

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  6. This was such an interesting post and I like all the little extras that you give us to chew on – like this “whose semi-fictionalized title character was an actual great-great grandmother ” – hmmm

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    • Thank you, Yvette! Glad you enjoyed the post! I definitely found that ancestral connection to Daphne du Maurier interesting. 🙂 Daphne had quite a family history; her grandfather George created the character of Svengali in his 1890s novel “Trilby.”

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  8. Brilliant topic, Dave. I haven’t read ‘Mary Anne’, but I’ve loved Moll Flanders for many years. I’m not so keen on Becky Sharpe – I felt sorry for Rawdon and how she treated him – and although Katniss is wonderful in many ways I wanted her to end with Gayle, rather than Pieter. I’ll add Ruth, from ‘The Life and Loves of a She-Devil’, although ultimately I find her ‘success’ pretty worthless. Lesser prominent is Paulina, from Shakespeare’s ‘The Winter’s Tale’, who stands up to the mad Leontes, even against his threat of burning her. She stage-manages the situation, and I’ve always loved her. Okay, I shall have think on this and find a few more, but I’m sure I will. Many thanks! 🙂

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    • Thank you, Laura! I appreciate all the character mentions — including one of Shakespeare’s interesting woman. Yes, Becky Sharp is not particularly likable, but she’s kind of impressive in her striving way.

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      • Here we go, how could I forget Balzac’s Cousin Bette? The poor relation, revenging herself on the wrll-off relatives who she hates. She’s not likeable, and doesn’t have it all her own way, but does plenty of damage. And how about Zola’s Nana? Horrendous! Prosper Merimee’s Carmen, and on the kinder side Dumas’s Marguerite Gautier, who finds love with Armand but nobly gives him up and dies. I knew there were more! 🙂

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      • And let’s not forget Daphne Manners, of Paul Scott’s ‘Raj Quartet’. She refuses to abort her child conceived on the night she’s horrifically assaulted, because she was with Hari beforehand and believes the child to be his. When she dies in childbirth her aunt, Lady Manners, keeps and raises the baby despite the scandal and gossip. Strong women both – as is Edwina Crane, the English missionary of that book, who ‘commits suttee like a good Indian widow’ when she sees India broken. Okay, Dave; I’ll shut up now! 😂😂

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          • It’s a great story, Dave, made popular back in the 80s by a TV series called ‘The Jewel in the Crown’ after the first book of the series. There’s a lot cut, as such a complex book would be difficult to follow to the letter, but it does good justice to Scott’s work. There are also some stellar performances from a magnificent cadt, including the late, great Peggy Ashcroft and Tim Piggott-Smith, and it was shown in the USA because a woman there freaked out after running into Tim P-S, who she was convinced was his character, who was evil. Worth a watch, if you can find it, and the book so great. 🙂

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  10. I love this theme! And good timing, nudge-wise! I need to read Sara Paretsky’s first V.I. Warshawski novel “Indemnity Only” so I can sit in on a book club discussion soon. Paretsky was a featured speaker at an event I attended and was fascinating to listen to, but I think I was the only person in the room unfamiliar with her books and her tough-talking private eye, Warshawski! So many books, so little time! 😜❤️😜

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  11. Dave, another great topic of discussion! I thought about the women created by Mary Roberts Rinehart and Agatha Christie. For example Miss Marple immediately came to mind. On the surface she seems like a gentle village spinster, yet her powers of observation, understanding of human nature, and quiet confidence allow her to solve mysteries that leave others baffled.

    Both Christie and Rinehart gave us intelligent, resourceful women who succeeded not through physical strength but through curiosity, insight, and persistence. It’s interesting that these memorable female characters were themselves imagined by women. Thanks for another thought-provoking discussion. I always come away from your posts with a longer reading list! And you know how high my TBR list is! YIKES!!!

    I had to add this quote:

    “I like living. I have sometimes been wildly despairing, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow, but through it all I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing.” Agatha Christie, Agatha Christie: An Autobiography

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    • Thank you, Rebecca! Miss Marple is definitely a great Agatha Christie creation, and you described her VERY well. I hadn’t heard of Mary Roberts Rinehart until seeing your comment, but, after reading what you said and also taking a peek at Wikipedia, I’m intrigued! Yes, many MANY strong female characters were thought up by women authors.

      I hear you about overflowing reading lists. 🙂 😦

      Words to…live by…from Agatha Christie!

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      • Thank you, Dave! I think you’d enjoy Mary Roberts Rinehart. I’ve been reading both her and Agatha Christie lately, and one of the things I find so fascinating is that I’m learning not only about their writing styles, but also about the societies in which they lived. There are comments, attitudes, and assumptions in those novels that would almost certainly be written differently today. They become little time capsules, reminding us how much has changed, but also how much human nature has remained the same. I had coffee with Sarah yesterday and we somehow ended up talking about the Complete Beau Geste Trilogy by P.C. Wren. I read it years ago and now had decided to read it again. Have you ever noticed that books have a stickiness to them? Once you pick up a book, it is difficult to put it down. It seems that books have glue on their covers.

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    • Thank you, Dingenom! Maggie was definitely a brainy, admirable, wonderful character living in a challenging patriarchal time as her much-less-impressive brother was treated better by family and society in general. 😦

      George Eliot of course created a number of other memorable female characters with a lot of overt or quiet strength — including Dinah Morris (“Adam Bede”), Eppie (“Silas Marner”), Dorothea Brooke (“Middlemarch”), and Gwendolen Harleth and Mirah Lapidoth (“Daniel Deronda”).

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      • Thank you! You’re so well-read. Dorothea in Middlemarch is a singular example. Her religious beliefs led her to accept a position that was far beneath her intellectual prowess and perspicacity. I felt it hard to sympathize with that proposition. I forgot to mention Alma Whittaker in Elizabeth Gilbert’s novel The Signature of All Things.

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        • Thank you, Dingenom. 🙂 You’re very well-read, too!

          Dorothea did make some bad choices (during a not good time for strong women) before learning some things. Definitely was capable of growth, and it was nice to see that as the novel went on. And, yes, organized religion — then and now — too often puts pressure on women to be second-class citizens.

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  13. Brave, smart, and likable girls and women appear in so many of the books I read that I feel overwhelmed when it comes to coming up with titles. I’ll mention one. I recently read ATMOSPHERE, by Taylor Jenkins Reid, which is about women training to be astronauts in the early 1980s. The heroine, Joan Goodwin, and her fellow trainees are as smart and brave as they come, and this is an exciting and moving book that I highly recommend. Harriet Vane, who appears in some of Dorothy L. Sayers’s Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries, is also an intelligent and courageous character and a favorite of mine.

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    • Thank you, Kim! Excellent mentions! I thought Harriet Vane was a great character when I read two of those Dorothy L. Sayers mysteries: “Strong Poison” and “Gaudy Night.” And “Atmosphere” sounds terrific. Reminds me a bit of Mary Robinette Kowal’s very good “The Calculating Stars,” about a woman astronaut.

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  14. Such a fantastic list! When
    I think of courageous women in literature, Lucia Mondella from Alessandro Manzoni’s “The Betrothed” (1827) immediately comes to mind. Although she is often considered a meek woman, her quiet moral resilience and unwavering determination to survive and defy a powerful and tyrannical nobleman make her incredibly strong-willed.

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  15. I have always been drawn to strong, gutsy, female characters. One I would like to mention is Jo March from Little Women. She was determined to follow her dreams and not cave in to convention.

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    • Thank you, Marie! Glad you liked the post! Sounds like a very compelling character in “My Friends.” I loved Fredrik Backman’s “A Man Called Ove,” which had a couple of great female characters in addition to Ove.

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  17. One of the reasons why Pride and Prejudice is considered one of the greatest novels of all time is that it has a Bennet daughter and mother than run the gambit of “female characters who can be described as plucky, gutsy, clever, driven, strong-willed, determined, ambitious, etc.”

    My favorite line in literature is the last sentence of Chapter 1: The business of her life was to get her daughters married; its solace was visiting and news. Now that’s a great sentence!

    Eric

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  18. I’m currently reading Edna Ferber’s Giant. The female protagonist Leslie Lynnton is a very strong character questioning the status quo and questioning the treatment of the Mexican farmhands. I’m only a quarter finished

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    • Thank you, Ada! I love those books, too!

      Like many 18th-century novels, “Moll Flanders” can be a bit challenging to read at times but I liked it overall. I’ve never seen a screen adaptation of it; glad you did!

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