Inspiration Month: Heroines

This week I've been posting about some of the female characters—heroines, if you will—who I either admire or just enjoy reading about/watching.

Harriet Vane #

Harriet Vane is the creation of 1930s mystery writer Dorothy L Sayers, whose Lord Peter Wimsey stories are probably my all-time favourite detective novels. A shameless self-insertion, Harriet is an author of mystery stories who is herself accused of murder, until Lord Peter proves her innocence.

Afterwards she becomes a sleuth in her own right, solving murders in the novels "Have His Carcase" and "Gaudy Night" (with a little help from her beloved Peter, of course!). She's an intelligent, independent woman who typifies the new-found freedom of women following the First World War, and I would have loved to be her!

Willow Rosenberg #

Buffy may be the eponymous protagonist of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer", but I always identified far more closely with shy, bookish Willow Rosenberg. The fact that she later turned out to be a powerful witch and a lesbian just made her more interesting, even though I am neither :)

Plus who can forget sexy, evil vampire Willow in the classic episodes "The Wish" and "Doppelgangland"?

Karen Memery #

The sort-of-eponymous protagonist of "Karen Memory", a steampunk novel by Elizabeth Bear, Karen is a sassy sixteen-year-old prostitute in an alternative Wild West. Like the best YA heroines she isn't afraid to take on the bad guys, preferably in an industrial sewing machine "mech" and with her best girl Priya by her side.

Rosalie Calvert #

Rosalie is more of a supporting character - she appears in the urban fantasy TV show "Grimm", in which the protagonists are all guys. However she's always there with an ancient tome and a selection of weird and wonderful ingredients, to help the boys defeat the monster of the week.

Plus she can turn into a werefox-like creature called a Fuchsbau - how cool is that?

Gytha Ogg #

My final heroine is the epitome of the phrase "growing old disgracefully" :)

Nanny Ogg has lived a very full life and is more than happy to cram even more into what she has left, which at my age is something I can definitely get behind. She loves a drink and a good knees-up, especially if there's plenty of food she can stuff into pockets and knicker-legs and anywhere else she can stash it. She doesn't give a rat's arse about what anyone else thinks of her, either!

That's said, she's a scary woman when she puts her mind to it, and I would seriously not want to be married to one of her sons!