Most Beloved Fictional Women Meme

Stolen from lizbee

Ten Most-Beloved Fictional Women Meme

(in no particular order, except for #1)

1.  This one will surprise all my flisties -- KATHRYN JANEWAY from Star Trek: Voyager

Tough, sexy, edgy, hot, noble, strong, flawed, principled -- in short, my kind of woman.  She's not particulary self-aware in canon, but fanfic has made up for that lack.

2.  CHRIS CAGNEY from Cagney & Lacey

She wasn't even particularly likeable, and her hyper-heterosexuality (done on purpose by the producers, I'm sure) got on my nerves, but I loved her anyway.

3.  JANE FAIRFAX from Jane Austen's Emma

She suffers for and marries a total twit, which I don't generally recommend, but I do like Jane's independence and self-restraint.

4.  MARY GARTH from George Eliot's Middlemarch

I like the heroine, Dorothea Brooke, too, but in the end, Dorothea is a little too given to noble self-sacrifice for my taste.  Mary Garth, on the other hand, manages to do what's right and get what she wants, too.  (Dorothea gets what she wants in the end, but not without some deus-ex-machina from Eliot.)  Plus, Mary is strong, confident, and capable, all without being pretty or even caring about being pretty.

5.  NANCY DREW

Sure, I'd have hated her if I'd known her in person -- I mean, who could really like a popular, beautiful rich girl who is always right and can do absolutely everything better than anyone else?  But when I was a kid, Nancy was my idol.

6.  EVELYN HALL from Jane Rule's Desert of the Heart

The details are different, of course, but in essentials, Evelyn Hall is ME -- a middle-aged academic prone to guilt who finds happiness (or at least the chance of it) in loving a woman.

7.  GLINDA the GOOD WITCH in The Wizard of Oz

Specifically, the movie Glinda, played by Billie Burke.  As a kid and early teen, I thought she was just so beautiful and magical and unafraid.  I wrote what I now realize was my first fanfic about  her.

8.  LINDA LOMAN from Death of a Salesman

I  could never have lived Linda's life, but in playing her on stage, I came to know and understand this woman in tremendously powerful ways that have stayed with me and that continue to help me understand other people who, on the surface, seem unknowable and even alien to me.

9.  VICTORIA BARKLEY from The Big Valley (60s TV Western)

Another one of the strong, sexy, daring older women that I have had a thing for ever since I was a child.

10.  BEEZUS QUIMBY from the Beverly Cleary children's books

I'm usually attracted to female characters who are unlike me -- strong and confident and daring -- but often I like characters with whom I can really identify, too.  Beezus is the conscientious, sometimes self-righteous big sister to brash, bold Ramona who finds, as I did in my own life, that being the quiet, responsible "good" girl, while it has its rewards, often makes one less interesting and memorable than being the assertive, mischievous, fearless one who drives people crazy but whom everyone often ends up liking best.