Let’s Talk Bookish: Portrayals of Women in Books

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.

Another interesting topic for March! I’m so glad I’ve been able to dive back into these this month, as LTB always have really intriguing topics and often makes me dig deep, at look at things in a different light than I may have before.

Let’s Talk Bookish 20th March:
Portrayals of Women in Books

Prompts: We’ve previously talked about underrepresented women and women in STEM in books, but let’s take a look at portrayals of women in books. Do you think portrayals of women have changed over time? Are ambitious women portrayed differently than ambitious men? Are “unlikable” female characters judged more harshly? Are girls and women written more complexly in books today? Share some of your favourite books featuring complex empowered women being unapologetically themselves!

I do think they’ve changed, and largely for the better! There’s definitely been a shift through the years, and now with self-publishing and better acknowledgment of romance, I think we’re actually seeing more women writers on our shelves as well as more books focused on women. Similarly, I think there’s much more awareness of reader demographics – women typically read more, so there’s more geared towards women than there was in the past. And with that has to come more realistic, complicated, fully dimensional women characters.

I think the ambitious women are portrayed differently than ambitious men – that’s not always a bad thing! Qualities like ambition are nuanced and can tilt either positively or negatively. But the way its handled is dependent on genre and author. I find often, you can tell if a woman is written by a man, but you can’t always tell if a man is written by a woman, and that feeds into most portrayals.

I do think ‘unlikable’ female characters are judged more harshly, and what I find all too often is it’s worse if the character also happens to be a woman of colour. I’ve seen some wonderfully written, complicated female characters slammed as unrelatable and someone the reader strongly disliked, but found I actually really liked reading them, whether I personally liked them or not! It’s also genre dependent, but I think the area where complicated female characters tend to be more appreciated is in romance. Even then, if it’s more of a ‘mainstream’ title, expect stronger and louder opinions. I do find though that whether it’s books or screen, women who make complicated choices are judged much more harshly than characters who are perhaps a little more simplistic.

I do think they are written more complexly now, which is great, but I think it goes back to more people being able to publish and more of an acceptance of ‘female dominated’ genres.

I’m going to spotlight just some of the complex or otherwise on-the-surface-unlikeable women I’ve come across –

• Kaderin, No Rest for the Wicked (Kresley Cole)
  Otherwise known as Kaderin the Cold Hearted – she’s determined to do everything in her power to correct past mistakes, and this puts multiple obstacles between her and her vampire fated mate. And she does, indeed, start the book off cold and emotionless, things some people tend to have a problem with if a woman comes off that way.
• Euryale, Medusa’s Sisters (Lauren J.A. Bear)
  Euryale is definitely strong and complex – her sister Stheno may dotes on their little sister Medusa, but Euryale sits on the other side of their dynamic, and some of the choices she makes throughout the book are incredibly questionable. But just beneath the surface, you can understand her reasons for making them.
• Ruying, To Gaze Upon Wicked Gods (Molly X. Chang)
  The reception to this book and character was…unfair, to say the least. Too many assumptions that the book was a romance, and not enough critical reading to recognise why Ruying makes the choices she makes. And she makes difficult, complicated choices, for complicated reasons. She’s a teen who falls in love with the wrong person, not dissimilar to Lucy Gray in The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes.

If you have favourite complicated female characters you’d like to share, or recommendations for me based on the above, just leave a comment.