Let’s Talk Bookish: Underrepresented Types of Female Characters

Let’s Talk Bookish is a weekly meme that was originally created and hosted by Rukky @ Eternity Books starting in August 2019, and was then cohosted with Dani @ Literary Lion from May 2020 to March 2022. Book Nook Bits has hosted since April 2022, with Dini at Dini Panda Reads as co-host from February 2025.

Well, I love this topic. It’s a really good one and very fitting for Women’s History Month. Definitely one I think I’m going to have quite a lot of thoughts on, but I’ll do my best to not let this run on too long!

Let’s Talk Bookish March 28th:
Underrepresented Types of Female Characters

Prompts: For the final week of March, here is another Women’s History Month topic! What types of female characters do you want to see more of in fiction? Do you notice certain female character archetypes that you think are used to often? Who are some female characters that inspire you?

I want to see more messy and flawed characters. I love reading angry, burn the world down type women, but I have a huge worry that too many people are trending towards the idea of fiction equalling endorsement, and I don’t want to lose nuanced, complicated characters who make mistakes and act selfishly and don’t always do the right thing, whether knowingly or unknowingly.

I also think it’s important to see female characters who are comfortable in their own femineity – and the femineity of others. It’s fine if a character isn’t a ‘girly girl’, but I’m so, completely over the ‘not like other girls’ trope that some writers can easily fall into. Characters can push against the ‘binds’ of womanhood without discarding or being overly critical of so-called ‘feminine’ forms of dress, or hobbies, or ideas etc. A stay at home mum can be just as kickass as any other character. That said – older characters! Especially in genres like fantasy and romance. Give me older women changing the world alongside the teens. Show me mothers burning down the world for their children. There’s so many opportunities for different characters and I’d love it if we could embrace all these areas of ‘womenhood’.

I think too often, even now, female archetypes fall into particular tropes. Rebellious girl or reluctant heroine are two examples that spring to mind. We want female characters to be plucky and rebellious and push back against the status quo, but in a way that’s acceptable. Or they’re thrust into herodom against their will, but do what they have to because it’s right. We get uncomfortable when women fall outside this, and act selfishly or in their own interests. It’s a societal issue, but the way people view women tends to be in a very particular box, and if you push outside this and dare embrace being a woman, some people don’t like it (see: the reaction to Sabrina Carpenter’s Paris show).

I also want to touch briefly on a book I’ve recently finished. To Gaze Upon Wicked Gods was targeted prior to release as part of a campaign by an author who largely tried to discredit books from BIPOC writers. Following this, a lot of people criticised the book because the main character – Ruying – ends up working for a prince who has had a hand in colonising her country. People were apparently ‘offended’ by the ‘romance’ with a coloniser and the way the book glorified ‘enemies to lovers’. Except…that’s not what happens in the book. Ruying isn’t the type of FMC we’re used to seeing. She isn’t a hero. She’s not a rebel. Her sister is eager to fight against the invading force, and in other books it’s probably the sister we would have followed through the book. Ruying is selfish, yes, and desperate, and trapped in a situation she has no other way out of. She does what she does because she thinks it will protect herself and her family, and repeated through the book is the idea heroes die, cowards live.

To me, this book is a realistic exploration of the different paths people can and do take under these circumstances. Some will fight, others will do nothing, and there will be those who will take a path that allows them to survive, even at the expense of others. It’s a dark side of humanity and it’s right that we have fiction exploring that. It’s completely and utterly fair for people not to like the book, and as a reviewer, of course people are free to criticise books where they see fit, but I feel like a lot of the criticism aimed at this book centred around the idea of a coloniser romance is missing a huge part of the book and approaching this kind of unfairly. And this book came out in the wake of the Hunger Games novel, A Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes.

It’s worth comparing the two, or rather than reception of the two – S&S was hailed, as it really is an excellent book, and the writing focuses on the POV of someone who has been through quite a harsh time and come out the other end to inflict pain on the rest of the world. There are some slight similarities between Ruying and Snow, but largely, if there are parallels, it’s between Ruying and Lucy Gray Baird, and Prince Antony and Snow. There are similar backgrounds, but different choices made. I don’t want to spend much longer on this as I haven’t even written my actual review for the book yet, and I have so much to say it might end up being a Substack post about it, but I think it’s interesting how differently the two books landed considering there are similar themes and parallels between the characters, the main differences being that they’re POVs from the two different sides, the genders of the POV characters, and the ethnicity of the authors.

Here’s the thing: as a whole, people seem to be much more willing to accept these kind of storylines from male centric stories. We’re falling back into old patterns, and I really hope we can pull back from them, because seeing people restricting female characters to the Madonna-Whore tropes is not something I want to return to! So, to sum up – I want messy, complicated, flawed female characters who sometimes make the wrong choices and aren’t always there to ‘save the world’ or who need some time to realise what they’re doing is wrong.

I’ve largely been focusing on Fantasy here (and the same can extend to Sci-Fi), but it’s because it’s where I think a lot of this can be explored deeply. Horror is also a good genre for exploring characters, but I think we’re kind of well serviced in that area, though it’s always great to again see the kind of flawed, nuanced female characters in horror when we already have a load of male characters. As for romance, well, it’s a hugely female dominated area, and I think in general, female characters in romance tend to be quite well serviced.

As a whole though – always, always want to see more diverse voices and characters. More nuance to characters, more flawed characters, alongside those who are more clearcut in their motivations. Older characters, too, as stated before. I hope authors embrace these kind of characters and aren’t afraid to push against boundaries, and show women as messy and complicated.

As for characters who inspire me…I’d rather talk about some memorable characters from works I’ve read recently. Ruying, as mentioned, I particularly like, as someone who is desperate to do whatever it takes to protect herself and her family. A tongue-in-cheek example, Roz from Garth Marenghi’s TerrorTome and Incarcerat, because she kind of represents the worst sides of female characters in horror, while still able to have some agency and control and still being a standout character. Serena Barton in The Governess Affair, who pushes against a society that would rather condemn her. Then there there, to return to The Hunger Games, Lucy Gray Baird and Katniss, both who in their own ways stand against the darkness around them, and who despite starting in District 12, despite starting as people are relative ‘nobodies’ to The Capital, manage to change the course of history.

That’s just a small number – there really are so many excellent female characters out there! Tell me some of your favourites, and I’d love to hear your thoughts on this topic, too.