The girls in children's books...

[fajrdrako]

Someone on one of my mailing lists (Dunnetwork) asked an interesting question from a radio program: what girls did you like in books when you were young? The question, as quoted from the 'Women's Hour Newsletter': "Onto this Friday's programme. Is it Mary in The Secret Garden? Kate Ruggles from The Family at One End Street or maybe Harriet in White Boots? I have been trying to remember my favourite female character from a children's book before a discussion on Friday's programme. Whom would you pick and how do you think they'd have turned out as an adult? ... What's come across is the huge affection in which we hold the characters from books in our childhood."

Oddly difficult to answer. I had many favourite characters, starting with Piglet in Winnie-the-Pooh and moving onwards, but the female favourites were in the minority. I'm excluding books that weren't written when I was a kid, that I came to know as an adult. I've come up with a sort of uncertain list:

• Okay, on cue - Mary from The Secret Garden


• Merrylips from the novel of the same name


• Anthea (Panther) from the E. Nesbit books


• Ankhsenpaaten from The Lost Queen of Egypt


• Supergirl. (Kara Zor-El).


• Emily from Emily of New Moon by L.M. Montgomery (I liked Anne, too)


• Sophronia in ... an old-fashioned book whose title I can't recall, though I can remember scenes. Embarrassing!


• Tinkerbell

Maybe I'll think of more later. To some extent, it isn't even that these are favourite characters, but that they were the female leads in books I loved. I could perhaps include Diane - or was it Dinah? - from the Enid Blyton Adventure books. Lucy-Ann was too much of a kid.

Comments

[katkim.livejournal.com]

I have a strange affinity with Tinkerbell too. I actually found the book difficult to read as a child, but I kept re-reading it because of Tink.

And then there was a book by S.I Hsiung, called 'Lady Precious Stream', which I loved. I really liked her character. I think she was the first quippy and independent female I came across in the midst of Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty and Snow-White. I don't know, you may have heard of it. I think it's been translated into a play.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

I saw the Disney "Peter Pan" before I read the story, and I think it at least partly the Disney influence that made me love Tinkerbell. Even now, she's a favourite in the story - funny, smart, and strong-willed.

I never heard of "Lady Precious Stream", must look for it - it sounds good.

[youraugustine.livejournal.com]

Oddly, I never liked Anne. I was a highly imaginitive and inventive child, but I always considered her rather weak and certainly an idiot - I remembered cringing the first time I read her call it "the Lake of Shining Waters." She was just so . . . "little girl."

Yet, because I was imaginitive and went on quests and saw ghosts in the woods, I was compared to her. Constantly. It drove me mad.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Oh, how terrible! I had an experience like that as an adult - my husband kept telling me I was like Maddy in "Moonlighting" and I *never* wanted to be like Maddy!

[msilverstar]

Off the top of my head (I think there were better girl books by the time I got to the library)

Laura Ingalls Wilder!!!

The older girls in Ballet Shoes

Cousin Kate in Kate Seredy's The Good Master

Susan in Narnia (not Lucy, and I'm still furious at Lewis for what he did to her), The girls in Half Magic and the Railway Children and so on

Miranda in Elizabeth Enright's Four Story Mistake and other stories
Portia in Elizabeth Enright's Gone Away Lake

more later!

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Laura Ingalls Wilder

I had been thinking that she was the one who wrote about Sophronia, but she wasn't. So I'm trying unsuccessfully to recall who it was.

Cousin Kate in Kate Seredy's The Good Master

What I remember about "The Good Master" is how much I liked the illustrations. I don't recall the characters or the story.

[attolia.livejournal.com]

Susan in Narnia (not Lucy, and I'm still furious at Lewis for what he did to her)

Do you have Susan and Lucy mixed up? Susan is the one who grows up and loses faith in Narnia, which always annoyed me. Lucy gets back in The Last Battle.

My favorites:

Eilonwy in The Chronicles of Prydain
Tenar from The Tombs of Atuan
Elana in Enchantress From the Stars and The Far Side of Evil
Aerin in The Hero and the Crown
Julie from Up A Road Slowly

[msilverstar]

I felt like Lewis used Susan as an object lesson, rather than as a character. I was too old for Lucy and had always preferred Susan, so I also felt like Lewis was dissing me. The more I learned about Lewis, the more I thought I was right (still do).

Eilonwy, I was trying to remember her name!

[teaphile.livejournal.com]

I loved Trixie Belden. I always wanted to be that brazen and confident (she's very much like Chloe Sullivan, actually) and driven to solve mysteries and whatnot. I also wanted to have a passel of brothers who would tease me but also take care of me. In reality, I was much more like her quiet friend Honey.

OTOH, I hated Nancy Drew. She was so perfect and fake.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Trixie Beldon - ! Yes, she was great. Nancy Drew never struck me as much of a person - she was more of a role than a personality.

[jfc013.livejournal.com]

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned my faves:

Alice (who went to Wonderland)
Wendy (who went to Neverland)
Dorothy (who went to Oz)

(Of course, "The Phantom Tollbooth" might have been better had Milo been a girl!)

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Good choices, all of them!