Tag: strong female characters

The Different Strengths of Female Characters: A Study of Anna and Elsa in Frozen 2

July 27, 2020 / Katie L. Carroll

Long-time readers of this blog know I’ve been writing about female characters for years and even did a wholes series of “Females in YA” posts. Some topics I’ve covered are unlikable girls, the Bechdel Test, and the feminist world in my first YA fantasy ELIXIR BOUND. One topic in particular I enjoy talking about is the different ways female characters can be strong (see “Females in YA: Part 5 Strong Female Characters”).

Frozen 2, which was the last movie I saw in theaters and is quite popular in my house right now (the whole Frozen franchise really…as evidenced by the requested Frozen Fever cake I made for my 3-year-old’s birthday earlier this month), is a really good example of the different kinds of strengths female characters can have.

Let’s take a look at Elsa. She embodies what a lot of people think about when it comes to strong female characters, à la Katniss Everdeen from The Hunger Games series or Sarah Connors from the Terminator franchise. I’m talking about the butt-kicking, weapon-wielding type. Elsa is powerful and so full of magic she literally cannot control it. These characters are seen as extraordinary and labeled as strong, often in a way that marks them as different from other female characters. Almost as if implying that women are inherently weak, especially since strong isn’t used nearly as often to describe male characters because it’s assumed of them.

These strong female characters certainly have their weaknesses; they wouldn’t be very interesting characters if they didn’t. Elsa can be distant to the people she loves, she has trouble accepting help, and she fails to recognize her own limitations. A character without such flaws is boring and has nothing to overcome internally.

In general, though, the power of characters like these women is in your face and often of the physical variety, so they get the descriptor of strong. Not to say that they aren’t mentally strong, too, (which they absolutely are), but their most obvious displays of strength are physical. These characters are clearly not to be trifled with. They go on adventures and quests. They face dangers and conquer them. I love these types of strong female characters!

But I also am quick to note that this isn’t the only way a female character can be strong (and this is true for male characters and we definitely need male characters to show different types of strength, but that’s for another post). That’s where Anna comes in.

There’s a running joke in the Frozen franchise about how Anna is ordinary. When she calls herself ordinary in the first Frozen movie, Hans (her love interest at the time) agrees by saying, “That’s right, she is.” When Anna shoots him a wounded look, he adds, “In–in the best possible way.” In Frozen 2, Olaf recounts the events of the first movie and describes the sisters by saying, “One born with magical powers, the other powerless.”

Anna is also openly affectionate, is not afraid to be silly, and is all too aware of her powerlessness. She has her moments of physical strength (justifiably punching Hans in the first Frozen movie after he’s betrayed her and Elsa), but I don’t think she would be described as a strong female character in the way Elsa (or Katniss or Sarah Connors) is.

Warning about Frozen 2 spoilers….

Yet one of the biggest examples of an act of strength in the entire Frozen franchise is performed by Anna in Frozen 2. Having come to the realization that her sister has sacrificed herself for the truth and clutching Olaf as he flurries away to his death, Anna lies on a dark cave floor and just wants to give up. In the song “The Next Right Thing,” she sings:

I’ve seen dark before, but not like this
This is cold, this is empty, this is numb
The life I knew is over, the lights are out
Hello, darkness, I’m ready to succumb

By the end of the song, Anna has found the strength within herself to make her way out the cave and has vowed to save her kingdom and the enchanted forest. Despite facing the darkest moments of her life and personally being done with it all, she gets up and moves forward (not on…there’s really no moving on from something like that). Then, despite the heartache and depression and physical fatigue, she proceeds to anger the Earth Giants so they throw boulders at her as they chase her to the dam that she is trying to get them to destroy. Now that’s a show of strength!

I’m not trying to take sides on whose strength is better. None of Anna’s strengths diminish Elsa’s, and vice versa. The point is that there are many different ways for characters (and people) to show strength and to be powerful. Let’s not limit our characters–male or female–to one type.

This is something I thought a lot about when working on the characters in the Elixir books. I wanted there to be strong female characters in every sense of the word. So if you enjoy stories about sisters and strong female characters (and ice palaces!), I encourage you to check out the award-winning YA fantasy ELIXIR BOUND and its standalone sequel ELIXIR SAVED.

Feminism in YA Fantasy: A Study of ELIXIR BOUND #InkRipples #FemalesInYA

March 21, 2016 / Katie L. Carroll

When I started writing ELIXIR BOUND many, many moons ago, I never intended to write a novel with feminist themes. I set out to write a fantasy adventure about two sisters with a structure modeled on the there-and-back-again journey of THE HOBBIT (a very non-feminist book!). Being the third of five children and a woman, it was important to me that the guardianship of the Elixir wasn’t passed down to the firstborn or a son, but I didn’t necessarily think about it in terms of feminism as I wrote the book.

It was only after I finished the first draft that I realized that I had created feminist characters, a feminist mythology, and a general feminist worldview.

At one point in an early draft, I had an older, male character–Hirsten’s father–in a brief scene question the decision to let Katora, a young woman, lead the quest to find the secret healing Elixir. He wasn’t questioning her abilities as leader, but the fact that Katora’s father was comfortable letting her venture into the dangerous Faway Forest. It stemmed from the fact that he only had male children and young women seemed a bit of a mystery to him.

I remember that as I wrote that scene, something about it wasn’t sitting well with me. I couldn’t pinpoint what the problem was until I had a whole draft, and then I quickly realized it didn’t fit in with the worldview I had created in pretty much every other aspect of the story. The world of ELIXIR BOUND wasn’t a place where the gender of a person was a reason to question whether or not they should do something. And it was only then that I was able to consciously recognize the type of world I had created.

The Greater Peninsula is ruled by Mother Nature, an unseen goddess character, whom Katora often refers to in dialogue as the “Great Mother” in way that in our world would probably be considered blasphemy (though it’s okay in her world). A young women leads the quest to find the secret ingredient for the Elixir, and the other women on the quest, though different, are certainly as worthy as any of the male characters, and believe themselves to be so. And so do the male characters…all of them (once I got rid of that rogue scene with Hirsten’s father). The external antagonist is called a witch, but she is really a minor goddess and has three male characters as her henchmen. No shortage of feminism there.

I suppose my own feminist ideas bled into the world I was creating all of their own accord. Once I was able to take a step back from the work and look at what I had done, it clicked that this was the way it was supposed to be. It’s my world, right, so why shouldn’t it have a more idealized version of women’s rights? I’m not saying it’s a perfect world or that I represent feminism in a perfect way, but it sure filled a need in me to create a world that didn’t paint someone like me in an inferior way.

I’ve read a lot of fantasy, and a whole lot of YA fantasy. Adult fantasies and their portrayal of women has generally been a disappointment; I know there are exceptions to this, but as a whole the genre is seriously lacking. There are many amazing female characters in YA fantasy, too many to list here (but for a sampling, Katsa from GRACELING, any of Tamora Pierce’s female characters, Alina from the The Grisha series, and Elisa from the Fire and Thorns series). The thing about a lot of these awesome female characters is that they often are the outliers: women doing things that men usually do or bucking against a world with inherent sexism. (Again, I recognize I’m generalizing here and that there are exceptions to this, but I’m talking about the greater picture I’ve observed in fantasy.)

So it came as a surprise to me that my world might be considered unique. I didn’t really think of it as such (I mean, everything has been done before, so I never consider anything I do as even remotely close to unique), but after thinking about it and noticing the trends in what I’ve read, I was like, “Huh. Maybe I’ve got something slightly out of the norm here.”

Then I thought, “Well, isn’t that kind of sad.” Even in our imaginary worlds, we can’t seem to break out of the sexist mold that we are pegged into in our real world. Even when we have dynamic, interesting female characters that pass the Bechdel Test, we too often put them in a patriarchal world, or worse a sexist one, or worst one that normalizes violence against women. (Seriously, just Google “sexism and fantasy” for a whole slew of articles about the topic.)

I’d love to read more fantasy books with a feminist outlook and not just the so-called “strong” female characters. So please throw some recommendations out there, and we can work on bringing more attention to fantasy books with feminist worlds.

#InkRipples is a monthly meme created by Katie L. Carroll, Mary Waibel, and Kai Strand. We pick a topic (there’s still time to add to the March topic of feminism), drop a ripple in the inkwell (i.e. write about it on our blogs), and see where the conversation goes. Be sure to check out Kai’s and Mary’s posts this month. We’d love to have you join in the conversation on your own blogs. Full details and each month’s topic can be found on my #InkRipples page.

Females in YA: Part 8 Reading List

July 22, 2014 / Katie L. Carroll

With all these posts about Females in YA, I think it’s about time I offered up some reading recommendations for books that I think have female characters who are worthy of reading. Naturally, this list is limited to what I’ve read, which means it’s subject to my personal reading tastes, and is probably skewed to certain genres (like fantasy). Hopefully you all will offer up your own recommendations in the comments section. 🙂 I aimed to choose characters with varying types of personalities and above all those who are dynamic and complex.

(Note to readers: I’ll try to avoid any big spoilers, but it’s hard to talk about these characters without risking a little bit of spoileryness.)

Let’s start with some classic literature. Granted these aren’t technically YA (since the age designation didn’t exist back then), but I think they have the right kind of YA sensibility to be included in the list.

Fanny Price from Mansfield Park by Jane Austen–though pretty much any of Jane Austen’s novels will offer up some worthy female leads and usually a few females who aren’t exactly role-model material, I wanted to highlight a lead that wasn’t among the most well-known (i.e. a character other than Elizabeth Bennet from Pride and Prejudice). Fanny is a great example of a female who doesn’t fall into the whole “strong female character” trope. She is extremely shy, often fearful, and has a weak constitution, yet she shows an inner strength of character in her morals, she is intelligent, and as she grows, she gains confidence and self-esteem.
The March sisters from Little Women by Louisa May Alcott–this is one of my favorite books of all time (of course, as I’m so partial to stories about sisters). Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy are so different from each other despite being sisters. Meg, the oldest, is beautiful and a bit vain but also loving and dotes on her younger sisters. Tomboy Jo, the principal lead and second oldest, is a passionate, willful, and outspoken. The next sister Beth is a lot like Fanny Price in that she is shy and has a weak constitution, and it is her unselfish and giving personality that is so compelling and ultimately tragic. Yougest sister, Amy, is something of a brat as a child but grows into a talented artist who appreciates the beauty around her and more often than not gets what she wants. What I love about the March sisters is that even when readers identify most with one particular character, it’s easy to see parts of themselves in each of the girls.
Scout from To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee–Scout’s young age would peg her more as a middle grade character, but the subject matter of the book and what she is dealing with is mature in nature, so I think it’s fair to include her in this YA list. A tomboy like Jo March, Scout is also highly intelligent, confident, introspective, and moral. Despite facing the evils of the outside world for the first time and losing much of her childlike innocence, Scout maintains an optimist outlook on life at the end.

Honorable Mentions: Jane Eyre from Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, Anne Shirley from Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery, Laura Ingalls from Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder

YA speculative fiction is getting its own category here, in part because it’s one of my favorite genres to read, but also because it’s full of great females characters. Though many females in speculative fiction fall into the stereotypical “strong” female role, I think each of my examples offers something more.

Katniss Everdeen from The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins–do I even really need to mention this one? Probably not, but for those of you who may not have read The Hunger Games books (and even if you’ve seen the movies, I still recommend actually reading the books), Katniss is female character to be reckoned with. She is physically strong, mentally tough, a skilled hunter, independent, and a survivor. Yet she is often clueless when it comes to reading emotions and has a narrow world view for a good part of the series, not realizing her own role in the revolution until long after it was evident to many others.
Katsa from Graceling by Kristin Cashore–though possessing many of the same characteristics as Katniss (“What’s with all the ‘K’ names?” I ask with irony because the name of the main character of my own novel starts with a “K”), Katsa is one of my favorite female characters of all time so I had to give her a shout out here. She is intense, independent, a natural-born killer (her special talent, called a Grace, is killing), skilled in combat, brave, and a leader. And yet another female character who is somewhat clueless about not only her own emotions but of others’ as well. As you get deeper into the story, you find there is more to Katsa’s Grace than she thinks and it ends up softening up her personality a bit. I found her views on sex refreshing as well.
Beka Cooper from Terrier by Tamora Pierce–pretty much any female character written by Tamora Pierce is worthy of this list. I chose Beka because she is a more recent creation among Tamora Pierce’s long list of characters and is one my favorites. Born into poverty and adopted into a better life, Beka has just joined up with the Dogs (the nickname for law enforcement members). She is skilled in fighting and brave, but interestingly she is also very shy and has a hard time talking to strangers and even reporting back to her superiors. Despite her shyness, she is very confident in her abilities, bordering on arrogant. Beka also has a strong sense of right and wrong and fights very hard for justice.

Honorable mentions: Alina from Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo, Elisa from The Girl of Fire and Thorns by Rae Carson, Quintana from Quintana of Charyn by Melinna Marchetta, Tris from Divergent by Veronica Roth

Let’s now take a look at contemporary YA.

Hazel Grace from The Fault in Our Stars by John Green–this is another one of those “duh” choices that I’m not even sure needs a mention. Frank about her cancer and prognosis, Hazel approaches life and the inevitability of dying young with a realistic attitude and a dose of humor. She doesn’t sugarcoat anything, but she still maintains a wonderful sense of innocence, particularly as you watch her fall in love. With a fervent love of reading, Hazel is also highly intelligent, attending college classes at the age of sixteen.
Lennie Walker from The Sky is Everywhere by Jandy Nelson–I love, love, love this book and Lennie. Mourning the sudden death of her sister, Lennie is a hot mess for a good part of the book. A talented musician and poet, Lennie comes from a quirky family and has some adorable quirks of her own. Even with the emotional turmoil she is feeling, she maintains a much-needed level of humor. It’s her realness and her flaws (she makes some truly ill-advised decisions in the story) that make her so wonderful. Ultimately she is able to see that she has flaws and has made mistakes and tries to make amends for that. Seriously, I can’t recommend this book enough.
Lia from Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson–suffering from anorexia and having recently lost her best friend to the disease, Lia is a heart-wrenching character. She tries so hard to overcome her crippling body image issues, but keeps sliding down the self-destructive slope that is anorexia. You root for her to succeed and cry for her when she doesn’t. She is a frustrating and beautifully flawed character, so desperate for love yet also almost incapable of accepting it.

Honorable mentions: Melinda Sordino from Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson, Anna from Anna and the French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins, Hannah Baker from Thirteen Reason Why by Jay Asher, Caitlin from Hold Still by Nina LaCour

And finally with all the discussion in the kidlit world lately about diverity, I thought I would include a section devoted entirely to diverse female characters in YA.

Ash from Ash by Malinda Lo–in this Cinderella retelling, Ash lives half in a fairy tale world of the fairies and half in the human world. Very much a dreamer and with little ties to the human world, she is challenged to stay there by another great female character in Kaisa, the King’s Huntress. The most rewarding part of Ash is her transformation throughout the story, which is largely due to her relationship with Kaisa, who is not only a skilled huntress but brave, beautiful, strong, and confident.
Ai Ling from Silver Phoenix by Cindy Pon–never one to be defined by the men who have rejected her, Ai Ling is another wonderfully independent female character in a fantasy novel. On a quest and faced with challenge after challenge, Ai Ling’s bravery, ingenuity, and powerful inner self rises to the occasion again and again. It was also so refreshing to read about how much she enjoys food because there are some girls who, ya know, actually like eating.
Dellie from The Trouble With Half a Moon by Danette Vigilante–though this story is a little more on the middle grade line than most of the other examples, I think it’s worth being on this list because of Dellie. Despite having to face down the dangers in her neighborhood and her own personal grief, Dellie’s big heart shines through. She is courageous, curious, kind, and not afraid to defy her mother’s protective ways take a chance to help a young boy in need.

Honorable mentions: June from Legend by Marie Lu, Cinder from Cinder by Marissa Meyer, Saba Khan from The Art of Secrets by James Klise

So that’s my shortlist of females in YA, though I know there are many more worthy of reading. Now it’s your turn to share who’s on your list…

Females in YA: Part 5 Strong Female Characters

October 28, 2013 / Katie L. Carroll

There’s no shortage of strong females characters in YA, and the likes of Katniss from The Hunger Games, Tris from Divergent, and Katsa from Graceling come to mind. Strong female characters are equated with physical strength. And a physically strong character is a nice change from the damsel in distress that has been so prevalent in literature and movies.

But why stop at physical strength? Dictionary.com does have physical strength as the first definition, but definition 3 is “mentally powerful or vigorous”; definition 4 is “especially able, competent, or powerful in a specific field or respect”; and definition 5 is “of great moral power, firmness, or courage.”

I’m not the first to pose this question. An article called “I Hate Strong Female Characters” by Sophia McDougall (though more about film and TV than books) states, “No one ever asks if a male character is ‘strong’. Nor if he’s ‘feisty,’ or ‘kick-ass’ come to that.” She argues that male characters are often assumed to be strong, so there’s no need to label them as strong. The label of strong female character means that these characters are not the norm, she uses the word anomalous, meaning females are assumed to be the weaker sex.

So what does Ms. McDougall want instead of strong? She says, “I want a wealth of complex female protagonists who can be either strong or weak or both or neither, because they are more than strength or weakness.” Amen to that!

Several bloggers wrote their own posts in response to this article. YA Confidential had a roundtable discussion on the topic. A somewhat lengthy discussion, but worth the read as they cover topics from double standards, love triangles, the Harry Potter books, and George R. R. Martin’s characters. One person mentions Melina Marchetta’s Lumatere Chronicles (fabulous books b.t.w.!) and how her female characters “aren’t just strong; they have depth, emotions, motivation, feelings… they represent what actual people (women in this case) would be like.”

In a post by the YA Guy, he takes issue with Katniss “unwittingly” starting a revolution. In an astute observation about Katniss, he points out, “Strong as she is, Katniss both relies on and is manipulated by the male characters who surround her… While she’s running around kicking butt…it’s the men who are plotting behind the scenes, whether they’re coaching her through her televised interview, figuring out a strategy to survive the Games, or attempting to double-cross her. She’s strong. But they’re smart.”

Katniss’ ignorance of the stirring revolution and her role in it was the answer to the question that had been bothering me throughout the whole series. While I was reading, it was more of a feeling, and it wasn’t until I read the YA Guy’s post that I was able to put words to it.

Another post worth reading is Rebecca Rogers Maher’s “Flawed Heroines and the Likeability Standard.”

Over at YALSA‘s The Hub (article appears to no longer be available), Molly Wetta offers some alternatives to the typical “strong” female character in her post “What We Talk About When We Talk About ‘Strong’ Heroines in Young Adult Fiction.” She asks that we “celebrate the quiet(er) strength of realistic characters as well as the dramatic, death-defying strength of sci-fi, action/adventure, and fantasy heroines. Strength is more than physical prowess or fighting skills.”

During my Elixir Bound blog tour, I offered my own thoughts on strong female characters. Seems I’m preaching to the choir when I ask readers and writers to think of more than just physical strength when considering whether or not a female character is strong. Because, for me, a strong female character is one who is strong in character. Whether that be a physical strength, an emotional strength, or an intellectual strength. And hopefully we see more female characters who exhibit several types of strengths, and shows some weaknesses as well.

Females in YA: Part 2 My Writing

July 22, 2013 / Katie L. Carroll

The discussion about females in YA continues. If you missed Part 1 Growing Up Female, be sure to check the comments section as well as the blog post because there is some great stuff there.

So in Part 1 I asserted that though boys were an important part of my teenage life, they weren’t everything. I had goals and dreams that had nothing to do with boys, and I think this is similar to how many teen girls feel today. This lead to the question of whether or not YA books reflect this. Before I think about other people’s YA books, I’d like take a moment to look at my own writing, specifically my YA book Elixir Bound and what my goals were with the female characters.

I originally conceived Elixir Bound as a there-and-back-again quest, a sort of tribute to my sister Kylene, who died at the age of 16. I had hoped to give her a fantasy tale of her own. When it proved too hard to write the story from the POV of a character inspired by her, I decided to try from a different charcater’s POV: her sister’s Katora.

This really changed the direction of the story. Where Kylene was sweet, sensitive, and wore her feelings on her sleeve, Katora was stubborn, independent, and also sensitive but would never want to show it. Elixir Bound then became a story about a young woman (Katora) who must go on a quest to find out whether or not she will become guardian to a secret healing Elixir and bind herself to it.

The binding part was key because it wouldn’t allow to just use the Elixir as she wanted to; the binding would force her to use it in a way that also served the Great Mother (who is also called Mother Nature, and is basically the highest form of being in Katora’s world). Now I had a story where a very independent character was forced to make a decision that would seriously hinder her independence and impact the path the rest of her life would take.

This whole story line was a personal journey that was paralleled by a physical journey in which Katora and her companions had to find the secret ingredient for the Elixir. Notice the total lack of mention of a love interest. It was really important to me that Katora’s motives for the quest had nothing to do with a boy.

It was also important that Katora be chosen for this quest, not either of her two older sisters or her younger brother. I’ve always wondered why in so many real and fictional worlds the oldest son is the one who is entitled to the inheritance, so I wanted Katora to be neither the oldest nor a boy. The reason Katora was chosen as the next guardian of the Elixir, taking over for her father, was she was person who was best suited for the job.

As I started writing Elixir Bound, I realized I wanted these themes to be reflected in Katora’s world as well. I think a lot of these themes spilled out of me unconsciously and only in revision did I become consciously aware of the feminism in them. Suddenly Katora’s world had turned very pagan with the people following a female deity (the Great Mother) closely tied to nature. From there I sort of ran with the idea that females would, in a sense, rule this world. Though I kept it that Katora would take over for her father because I wanted some balance in the world. Women didn’t need to rule everything.

And Kylene was still there on the quest and plays an important role (though not the starring one). I wanted her there to contrast Katora’s personality because there are other strong female characters besides the bulldozer type, which is kind of how I think of Katora. I even wrote a guest blog post about this different type of female character, strong in character but not in your face about it. Also, Zelenka, a member of the miniature demick species, was an interesting female character. In many ways very much like Katora, but also a bit of an adversary to Katora. They never quite get along, mostly because they are so alike.

There does end up being a love interest on the quest. One I had to emphasize and play up more as I went through revisions of the story because several of my early readers didn’t think it played a big enough role in the story. Katora initially resists forming a relationship with Hirsten, the handsome son of a famous mapmaker. She doesn’t want anything to distract her while on her mission and while she has such an important decision to make. Though the quest part of the story is not driven by romance, Katora’s ability to realize her capacity for love (and in turn why she has resisted her feelings for Hirsten) does play into her decision on whether or not to become guardian of the Elixir.

As you can see, I thought a lot about the role of females in the made-up world of Elixir Bound as I was writing it. I’d like to think my story offers a feministic look at females and hopefully speaks to teenage girls in a positive way. Although, I didn’t want to force any certain didactic message about feminism in the story…more an offering of female characters and how they take control of their lives and futures. Themes I certainly plan on considering while writing future works as well.

Thanks for letting me wax philosophical about my own book! Next up I’ll take a look at some of the YA books I’ve read recently and what messages about females in YA I took away from them. Any requests on what books you’d like me talk about (can’t guarantee I’ve read them, but I’m open to suggestions)?