Who is your favorite female lead character? And why? (And yes, of course, you can name more than one . . . I always have trouble narrowing down these things to one name, why should I force you to?)

Don’t forget to leave a link to your actual response (so people don’t have to go searching for it) in the comments—or if you prefer, leave your answers in the comments themselves!

This is an excellent question heading into Women’s History Month. It’s also one that I would have answered a lot more easily at an earlier point in my own history – although even then, I could never have picked just one.

I was one of those kids for whom books were the ultimate escape into imagination. I would often either envision myself as a character in the stories I read or, alternatively, create places in my own inner world for my favorite characters and myself. Nancy Drew was an early favorite of mine, at an age when being eighteen years old sounded impossibly grown up. A few years later my favorites were even older – Jo March would have been well over 100 years old by then. By the time I was going into my teens, I was getting more attached to characters who were closer to being my contemporaries, like Meg Murry (a four-eyed dork after my own heart, until she ultimately grew from an ugly duckling into a swan) and Vicky Austin.

It occurs to me that the characters I tend to like best are those that I get to know over the course of several books, and it’s harder for me to find examples from more recent times, since I don’t tend to see myself as a “series” reader. However, when I look back over my library, there are several female characters who come to mind with a strong impression, and generally they were key characters in more than one novel, such as:

Taylor Greer, from The Bean Trees and Pigs in Heaven by Barbara Kingsolver, a gutsy Kentucky girl who took off for the west one day and found herself a new life, and an unexpected family, in Tucson;

Corrine Calloway, of Brightness Falls and The Good Life by Jay McInerney, finding her way through times of tumult in New York City;

and Thursday Next, Literary Detective, whose career requires her to travel both through time and into books.

And while she’s not officially a lead character, I have to include Hermione Granger. Harry Potter may have been the only one who could take on Voldemort, but he never would have gotten to that battle without his backup – and eventually, I think he knew that.

Most of my favorite literary “heroines” don’t have superpowers or some of the more typical characteristics one might associate with that term, and that’s OK. I think everyday life is full of little acts of heroism, for one thing. For another, it’s important for me to be able to relate to, understand, and enjoy the company of the women people I spend time with, whether in real life or in books.

It’s well past Thursday, so there are probably lots of other answers you can check out over at BTT by now!

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I know we’re supposed to be talking about book heroines here, but I’m throwing this in anyway (via BirdieRoark at Who’s the Boss?):

Which TV Heroine Are You?

More on Veronica Mars. Created by BuddyTV

Veronica Mars was one of those shows I always thought I’d like, but never got around to watching, so I really can’t say whether I think this is on target or not – although the description sounds pretty good, It’s not like I would have been Buffy Summers or Sydney Bristow anyway – not if I was being honest, that is.

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