Favorite Heroines-Top Ten Tuesday 2/24

This week's Top Ten Tuesday at The Broke & the Bookish is Favorite Heroines. I made my list and then did a little online research to see what others have written on this topic, which inspired me to reflect more on my reading and the actual feelings I have about some characters as people.

Arya Stark from George  R.R. Martin's Game of Thrones series is amazing! A little tomboy at the beginning, all she wants to do is learn to ride horses, shoot a crossbow, and wield a sword. She learns sword play secretly from her dancing master, which comes in handy when the world of Westeros erupts in civil war and her family is flung to the 4 corners of the world. She escapes the riotous city only to meet up with a band of thieves, become prisoner of an evil lord, become a hostage, join a religious sect and a variety of other things that are dangerous and unsuitable for children. She's a true bad ass!
Flavia De Luce first appears in The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley. There are currently 7 mysteries in the series. At 11 years old, Flavia is basically raising herself in her family's crumbling manor house, although she lives there with her two older sisters, and father who is in his own little world. Flavia works away in her upstairs chemistry lab, rides her bike all over the countryside with no one knowing where she might be, and gleefully solves murders when the locals don't get in her way. Flavia is a favorite of mine because of her intelligence and spunkiness. She also makes me sad, because even though she is good hearted and smart, all she wants is for her sisters to be kind to her and her father to give her some attention, which it appears will never happen.
Maisie Dobbs by Jacqueline Winspear has her own mystery series set in the "time between the wars". I love how Maisie has accepted help and education, raising herself from the daughter of a chauffeur to a young woman running an inquiry service assisted by a soldier with shell shock. Maisie is a very thorough investigator and doesn't just find the information her client asks for, but helps ease their worries in all areas related to the mystery. She also has several hunky beaux over the course of the years.

Precious Ramotswe  is a lady detective in Gaborone, Botswana in the #1 Ladies' Detective Agency books by Alexander McCall Smith. She is very old-school in her behaviors, proud of being "traditionally" built, philosophizing about her cases, and content to spend her day drinking red tea with her assistant Mma Potakwani as things fall into place. She leads a simple, quiet life and is very content with what she has. I wish I could be like that, instead of always wanting more or better.
Mary Russell by Laurie R. Martin is an independently wealthy British/American woman in the 1920s who befriends a retired Sherlock Holmes who is raising bees in the countryside. Her intelligence and affinity for details inspire him to return to solving crimes, which they do together. I would love to have her intelligence and moxie.
Rina Lazarus first appears in The Ritual Bath by Faye Kellerman. She is a widowed mother to 2 boys living in a very private, sheltered Orthodox Jewish community in Los Angeles. She is dragged into assisting with a police investigation after she witnesses a a brutal crime on the grounds of the yeshiva. She is a very calm person, who does not let her beliefs keep her out of the real world. She is also a wonderful cook. I wish I could be calm and cook!

Meggie Cleary from The Thorn Birds by Colleen McCullough is a character we meet as a young child and follow into the late years of her life. She starts out lively and full of promise but poor choices, the whims of others, and the social rules of the time and world she lives in turn her tough and bitter. I like her as a character because she goes through so much and it doesn't break her, but it does change her.
Harriet M. Welsh, created by Louise Fitzhugh as Harriet the Spy rules her neighborhood of New York City from alleys and closets, collecting the info on all her neighbors, whether she knows them or not. As a kid I wanted to be Harriet so badly! She has free range of the city, sparkling intelligence, and was fearless in her own world. Unfortunately we all know what happened when people in the real world got to know her inner thoughts and actions.

Scarlett O'Hara we all know is the heroine of Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell. She is not a very likable woman, and that's why I like her. How often do authors give us beautiful, poorly educated,, narcissistic main characters? Never! Scarlett is the original mean girl and she's pretty proud of it. That's what makes her enjoyable to me.
Adelia Aguilar, Mistress of the Art of Death by Arianna Franklin solves 12th century crimes using her training as a doctor. While many of us would scoff at the premise, women were educated as doctors at the University of Salerno briefly during this time period. Adelia is working specifically for King Henry II, cousin to the King of Sicily, who has sent her to help him. Adelia travels from Sicily to England and all over with her 2 male companions, a Jew and a Moor. That is quite a motley bunch. Although Adelia knows the problems for which she is setting herself up, she sticks to who she is and who she trusts. She doesn't take BS from anyone, even the King. Unfortunately Arianna Franklin passed away after writing only 4 books in this series.
Something I notice is that most of these ladies are parts of a series. I probably like them because I know them well from reading all their books. Part of the thing that brings us back to a cozy mystery are the well thought out lead characters. The others are very detailed and part of very thick books, their personalities being a huge driving force of the overall story.

Have you met any of these ladies before? Hop on over to The Broke & the Bookish to check out everyone else's Top Ten Tuesday.