Literature's Feistiest Females - Books - Stylist Magazine

Anne Shirley

Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud

“There's such a lot of different Annes in me. I sometimes think that is why I'm such a troublesome person. If I was just the one Anne it would be ever so much more comfortable, but then it wouldn't be half so interesting.”

Lisbeth Salander

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

“There were not so many physical threats that could not be countered with a decent hammer.”

Little Red Riding Hood

Little Red Riding Hood by Roald Dahl

"The small girl smiles. One eyelid flickers.

She whips a pistol from her knickers.

She aims it at the creature's head,

And bang bang bang, she shoots him dead."

Beatrice

Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare

"What should I do with him - dress him in my apparel and make him my waiting gentlewoman? He that hath a beard is more than a youth, and he that hath no beard is less than a man; and he that is more than a youth is not for me, and he that is less than a man, I am not for him.”

Becky Sharp

Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackery

"I have brains," Becky thought, "and almost all the rest of the world are fools."

Jean Louise "Scout" Finch

To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee

"I split my knuckle to the bone on his front teeth. My left impaired, I sailed in with my right."

Matilda Wormwood

Matilda by Roald Dahl

"Never do anything by halves if you want to get away with it. Be outrageous. Go the whole hog. Make sure everything you do is so completely crazy it's unbelievable."

Scarlet O’Hara

Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell

"Marriage, fun? Fiddle-dee-dee. Fun for men you mean"

Cleopatra

Antony and Cleopatra by William Shakespeare

"I will not be triumphed over."

The Wife of Bath

The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer

"Telle me also, to what conclusioun

Were membres maad of generacioun

And of so parfit wys a wright y-wroght?

Trusteth right wel, they were nat maad for noght."

Kay Scarpetta

Postmortem by Patricia Cornwell

"The dead have never bothered me. It's the living that I fear."

Marquise de Merteuil

Dangerous Liaisons by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos

"The shame love causes is like its pain; we only feel it once. We may feign it afterwards, but we do not feel it. However, the pleasure remains, and that is indeed something."

George Kirrin

Five Are Together Again by Enid Blyton

"If Julian can do it, then so could I."

Catherine Earnshaw

Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

"I wish I were a girl again, half savage and hardy, and free ... Why am I so changed? I'm sure I should be myself were I once among the heather on those hills."

Anna Karenina

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

"Above all, I wouldn't want people to think that I want to prove anything. I don't want to prove anything; I merely want to live."

Lucy Honeychurch

A Room with a View by E.M. Forster

"It was unladylike. Why? Why were most big things unladylike?"

Joan of Arc

The Tale of Joan of Arc by Christine de Pizan

"Oh! What honour for the female sex! It is perfectly obvious that God has special regard for it when all these wretched people who destroyed the whole Kingdom - now recovered and made safe by a woman, something that 5,000 men could not have done - and the traitors exterminated. Before the event they would scarcely have believed this possible.”

Kinsey Malone

D is for Deadbeat by Sue Grafton

“I love being single. It's almost like being rich.”

Mary Frith

The Roaring Girl by Thomas Middleton and Thomas Dekker

"Tis impossible to know what woman is thoroughly honest, because she's ne'er thoroughly tried; I am of that certain belief there are more queans in this town of their own making than of any man's provoking. Where lies the slackness then? Many a poor soul would down, and there's nobody will push 'em: Women are courted but ne'er soundly tried, As many walk in spurs that never ride."

Aurora Leigh

Aurora Leigh by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

"You misconceive the question like a man,

Who sees a woman as the complement

Of his sex merely. You forget too much

That every creature, female as the male,

Stands single in responsible act and thought

As also in birth and death."

Moll Flanders

The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe

“As for Women that do not think their own Safety worth their Thought, that impatient of their present State, resolve as they call it to take the first good Christian that comes, that run into Matrimony, as a Horse rushes into the Battle, I can say nothing to them, but this, that they are a Sort of Ladies that are to be pray'd for among the rest of distemper'd People...”

Laura Ingalls

Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder

“We had no choice. Sadness was a dangerous as panthers and bears. the wilderness needs your whole attention.”

Mary Poppins

Mary Poppins by P. L. Travers

"Mary Poppins, practically perfect in every way."

Connie Chatterley

Lady Chatterley's Lover by D.H. Lawrence

"She felt a triumph, almost a vainglory. So! That was how it was! That was life! That was how onself really was! There was nothing left to disguise or be ashamed of. She shared her ultimate nakedness with a man, another being.”