List of the best female characters in literature. Why do female literary characters stay with readers long after they’ve finished reading the novels these characters are featured in? readers love female characters in literature because of the audacity of their actions.
Best Female Characters in Literature
1. Hermione Granger (Harry Potter character)
Hermione Jean Granger is a fictional character in J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series. She first appears in Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, as a new student on her way to Hogwarts.
2. Lisbeth Salander
Lisbeth Salander is a fictional character created by Swedish author and journalist Stieg Larsson. She is the lead character in Larsson’s award-winning Millennium series, along with the journalist Mikael Blomkvist.
3. Elizabeth Bennet
Elizabeth Bennet is the protagonist in the 1813 novel Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. She is often referred to as Eliza or Lizzy by her friends and family. Elizabeth is the second child in a family of five daughters.
4. Scarlett O’Hara
Katie Scarlett O’Hara is a fictional character and the main protagonist in Margaret Mitchell’s 1936 novel Gone with the Wind and in the later film of the same name.
5. Anne Shirley (Fictional character)
Anne Shirley is a fictional character introduced in the 1908 novel Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery.
6. Katniss Everdeen (Hunger Games character)
Katniss Everdeen is a fictional character and the protagonist of The Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins.
7. Dorothy Gale
Dorothy Gale is a fictional character created by L. Frank Baum as the main protagonist in many of his Oz novels. She first appears in Baum’s classic children’s novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and reappears in most of its sequels.
8. Elinor Dashwood
Elinor Dashwood is a fictional character and the protagonist of Jane Austen’s novel Sense and Sensibility. In this novel, Austen analyses the conflict between the opposing temperaments of sense and sensibility.
9. Alice
Alice is a fictional character and protagonist of Lewis Carroll’s children’s novel Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel, Through the Looking-Glass.
10. Bridget Jones
Bridget Jones is a franchise based on a fictional character of the same name. British writer Helen Fielding started her Bridget Jones’s Diary column in The Independent in 1995
11. Bella Swan
Isabella Marie “Bella” Swan is a character and the protagonist of the Twilight series, written by Stephenie Meyer.
12. Milady de Winter
Milady de Winter often referred to as simply Milady, is a fictional character in the novel The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas, père, set in 1625 France. She is a spy for Cardinal Richelieu and is one of the dominant antagonists of the story.
13. Fantine
Fantine is a fictional character in Victor Hugo’s 1862 novel Les Misérables. She is a young orphaned grisette in Paris who becomes pregnant by a rich student. After he abandons her, she is forced to look after their child, Cosette, on her own.
14. White Queen
The White Queen is a fictional character who appears in Lewis Carroll’s fantasy novel Through the Looking-Glass.
15. Nurse Ratched
Nurse Ratched is a fictional character and the main antagonist of Ken Kesey’s 1962 novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest as well as the 1975 film. A cold, heartless tyrant, Nurse Ratched became the stereotype of the nurse as a battleax.
