/lit/ - Literature

>>22166811
no
/thread

There was a study years ago that took the same story and gender-swapped the protagonist and tested to see what gender of protagonist both male and female audiences responded best to. Both male and female audiences vastly preferred male protagonists.

I think even women know that women don't really do anything. It's just implausible for a woman to "have an adventure."

>>22166811
Elanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine if you don't mind slightly lower brow pop-lit (really fun book about a super autistic lass),

Lucia Berlin's A Manual For Cleaning Women for more high-brow short stories, but that's much more gentle, nuanced, and realistic. One of my favs. Vastly underrated.

>>22166827
That study sounds utterly fucking retarded

>>22166811
>Can anyone recommend me novels or literature of some kind that fit that criteria?
Odyssey has Kirke *AND* Penelope.

>>22166846
Why don't more women write meaningful protagonists then? Why does everything in their real life and in the fiction they produce revolve around sex and romance? Women themselves can't even conceive of going on an adventure. Try to even imagine a woman writing Lovecraft's stories, autistic sexless stories about effectively genderless intellectuals experiencing strange phenomena, with no reference to sex or love. It's like imagining a dog wearing a business suit and carrying a briefcase.

Karana

>>22166811
Antigone, Orlando and Alice in Wonderland are obvious choices here. For something more recent, I guess The Book Thief should suffice, also GRRM's ASOIAF series features a lot of interesting, nuanced and complex female characters and I would also recommend giving Olja Savičević Ivančević's Adios, Cowboy.

Eggplant by Ogden Nesmer

>>22166811
me

Mona Lisa Overdrive has two female POV characters and I liked them both. Especially Mona. Both are rather young and manipulated a lot though so they're mostly reactive.

> Is there such a thing as a well written, likable female protag
NO

>>22166811
Oh wow, its another thread of Incels not shutting the fuck up on how much they don't read and how internet brain rot is actively ruing their perception of reality

Also, OP, my favorite woman protagonist, is Margarita in Master and Margarita, but she isnt the main protagonist

>>22166811
Kiki's Delivery Service
Spirited Away

Úrsula Iguarán from Hundred Years of Solitude.

>likable female

>>22166855
Damn bro you're fucking based but you're right though

>>22166811
Mouchette, except for the prevailing part...

>>22166811
Tenar in Ursula LeGuin's Tombs of Atuan.

>>22166855
>Women can't write autistic sexless stories about effectively genderless intellectuals experiencing strange phenomena
Maybe women are somewhat less likely to be antisocial recluses who can't stand other people.

Even than - um, Ancillary Justice.

>>22170695
>Ancillary Justice
>"Nooooo, not THAT kind of genderless! Genderless is good when it's very explicitly a dude who's just so much above human nature and interactions that his enormous pure unbound intellect simply finds the seks yucky. When it's any other kind of genderless it's just globohomo gay troon niggerassfaggot propaganda made by the Jews!"

>>22166855
>autistic sexless stories about effectively genderless intellectuals experiencing strange phenomena, with no reference to sex or love
Heard you talking shit 'bout me an my boy Hercule like I wouldn't find out, bitch ass nigga!

>>22170695
>Maybe women are somewhat less likely to be antisocial recluses who can't stand other people.
no one is denying that women are very "social," it's just that it's all that they are

>>22166855
>>22166811
>Women can't write autistic sexless stories about effectively genderless intellectuals experiencing strange phenomena

^I second Orlando by Virginia Woolf

>>22166811
Alice's Adventures In Wonderland, should be on your level too OP

>>22166811
I gotchu senpai
>Firekeeper Saga
>Gideon the 9th
>Abhorsen
>The Southern Vampire Mysteries

>>22166811
You can, but they'd all be written by men and they'd act so much like men that if you genderswapped them there'd be no difference.

If you want female protagonists that actually act like girls, pick a lady writer. The only issue is that the adventure part would not be there. At least, I haven't found it.

The thing that I've found about people writing main characters of the opposite gender is that they always make them not as they are, but as the author wishes they were. Which is how you get all the action girls that are basically men with women's bodies and all the male MCs that are emotional like women are instead of the way men are.

Hayao Miyazaki's films have heroines that I like
> namely Nausicaa
But I can't think of one novel which does.

>>22166846
>That study sounds utterly fucking retarded
You sound utterly assblasted.
>Lucia Berlin's A Manual For Cleaning Women
>Elanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine
OP asked for a story about a protagonist that goes on an adventure, faces hardship and prevails. Neither of your suggestions even come close. Berlin is slice of life observations, and Eleanor Oliphant is a chick lit story about a girl with a traumatic past and severe mental health problems.

>>22171047
>>22166811
>Is there such a thing as a well written, likable female protag that actually goes on an adventure or faces some kind of hardship and prevails?
Female protagonists are fairly popular in horror-survival stories. Having a vulnerable and physically weak protagonist is often the goal here.
>>22169821
>Incels
If your favorite novels feature female protagonists exploring their emotions and navigating the hardships of everyday life in the modern world, women will guard their vaginas from your inferior seed. They'll be happy to let you chip in for snacks with all the other women at their monthly book chat, if that makes you feel superior to the basement-dwelling sci-fi/fantasy fanatic. But you'll never have sex either.

>>22166811
Kristin Lavransdattr is pretty good, try that one out

>>22166827
>women don't really do anything. It's just implausible for a woman to "have an adventure."
retarded incel...
>Both male and female audiences vastly preferred male protagonists
yeah because all writers are male so they're only good at writing male protagonists, and whenever they try a female one, it's either a man with tits, or some stupid shit like empowered woman
How does the fact that women love books written by women with female protagonists factor into your idiotic midwit theory?

>>22171816
We're talking about adult women from before social media turned them all into the same histrionic retard. Obviously the fact that booktube-watching mixed race puellae aeternae with double digit IQs enjoy reading about vampire action girls in pansexual thruples is irrelevant. The fact is that there are very few compelling female protagonists who aren't defined primarily by their romantic and sexual relationships in fiction. Women (real women, not Marvel-watching retard mulattas) aren't interested in writing them or reading about them. I'm as upset about this as you are, the only difference is I'm willing to face the problem and acknowledge it instead of denying it.

>>22171271
Dif anon responding. Think you're unnecessarily hard on Berlin, whose ouevre really does have the feel of an adventure story. Aar anon's correct, her work's fabulous and a great rec ERGO

>>22166811
Jo in Little Women.. ... ....

>>22171858
You talk like a gay.
>Dif rec wrt w/ desu tho
Stop this.

>>22166811
Surprised no Rand fag's submitted Dagney Taggert in Shrugged

>>22171872
It's not 'talking,' nosebleed
I'll write what I feel like writing, faggit

>>22171885
>nosebleed
You're doing it again, you fucking faggot! Stop!

Does Master and the Margarita count? I don't know that you can truly call Margaret the protagonist
Same goes for McCarthy's Outer Dark
There are several in my native language (Romanian) but I doubt they are translated

>>22171890
kek
Just for you, anon

Lisbeth Salander but only in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. The following books turn her into such a cartoonish character like making her a trained kickboxer even though she's not even five feet tall.

>>22171910
I remember reading that shitfest when I was like 13 cause I saw the movie poster and being genuinely confused at phrases like "she teased him about being a homophobe for not wanting to have a threesome with her husband"

And yeah I always found it hilarious how a waif of a girl is supposed to be able to beat up bikers and stuff, cartoonish girl power fantasy

>>22171929
The novel was written by a man. As has been said before in this thread, male writers just turn femMCs into men with women's bodies. The man who can actually write female protagonists is awfully rare, at least so long as modern genre fiction is concerned.

>>22171816
>they try a female one, it's either a man with tits, or some stupid shit like empowered woman
I'm reading` madame bovary and it's as deep as you can go with a protagonist. She has a lot of time dedicated to her development, her thinking and action patterns are clearly female. However she is completely insufferable
>retarded incel...
kys nigger

>>22169821
Shut the fuck up you cocksucking beta bitch. She'll never fuck you

>>22171984
>madame bovary
Pre-1960s books don't count- back then men weren't full of delusions about what women are like and so they can be trusted to be accurate. (Although of course exceptions exist, as they always do)

>>22170709
Every Poirot book contains a romance subplot. You can automatically eliminate two of the potential killers by figuring out which two are going to pair off.

So are you all looking for a protagonist that's like Mrs. Brisby or what?

>>22166811
Madame Bovary. Provincial doctor's wife seeks to escape a boring marriage and succeeds.

>>22166811
Some of the Wheel of Time women are decent. I forget which ones though because they all have the same name and it's been a long time since I read them

>>22173348
Nynaeve was good but it took a while for her to become understandable
Every single other female in that series was shit

>>22172032
tits or gtfo

>>22173348
Interesting since over the years, "shallow, stereotypical female characters" has been the single most consistent criticism of the series from people I've know to have read it (I haven't, myself).
A half-assed search turned up a counter argument from a random Lesbian of all things, which actually makes it sound not that bad to me.
>https://www.thegreatblight.com/post/poorly-written-female-characters-in-the-wheel-of-time
>But if you ask me if the portrayal of female characters is perfect, I’m also going to have to say no. From the frustrating level of snippiness they have towards each other when traveling together (that you do not see among the men in similar circumstances) – and that apparently is only resolved literally by the male gaze (seriously, it’s canon… the women stop fighting each other because a man keeps watching them), to the frankly bizarre amount of times women are stripped naked… it can be hard to swallow. But I do because I know that if I just look past these flaws, there is Nynaeve, my favorite character, who goes on such a tremendous journey in these books, and I cheer for her every step of the way. There is Egwene, a woman with such a strong and defined character that the WoT fandom is divided almost exactly down the middle between fans who stan her and fans who despise her. There’s Moiraine, a woman whose wisdom and serenity hides a depth of passion that has guided her on a 20-year quest, and there’s Tuon, and Siuan, and Elayne, and Faile, and Verin, and Aviendha, and Elaida, and Min, and… the list of complex, fully fleshed out, nuanced, female characters goes on and on.
If anything it sounds annoyingly realistic to me.

>>22173643
I think it's easy to be put off because of how much they bicker and the fact that 3 agree to be sister-wives for the same dude. But in fairness he's a reality-twisting fated hero, destined to be loved by them. It kind of has to be put aside.
Otherwise there are SO MANY female characters sorting out major problems on their own. It's not like they don't occasionally fall into thin or tropish behavior. It's genre fiction, the men are doing it all the time too.
If you ask me it's just a braindead easy-win criticism for social clout.

>>22171837
>The fact is that there are very few compelling female protagonists who aren't defined primarily by their romantic and sexual relationships in fiction.
I wouldn't necessarily say "defined by romantic and sexual relationships" although it's a common focus. I would say more generally that female-oriented literature tends to be more oriented around socially-driven conflicts and emotional experience. Pride and Prejudice, though satirical, is still a good example. The protagonist is not "defined by her romantic relationships," that's the plot. Elizabeth is defined by her combination of cleverness and independent streak, with a flaw of prejudice. She doesn't go on an adventure, her hardships are almost entirely socially imposed (her father's estate will pass to an uncle rather than a daughter).
>>22171816
>How does the fact that women love books written by women with female protagonists
Maybe because they are books about the female experience, which is nothing like the male experience.

>>22171816

Yes, but it's written by a small time author and I'm not sure that I want to direct the attention of /lit/ her way.

>>22173723
It's really absurd the extent to which the delusion that Pride and Prejudice has good characters has penetrated
>Elizabeth is defined by her combination of cleverness and independent streak, with a flaw of prejudice.
That is certainly what we are told in as many words, but she in fact never says or does anything clever and instead is just kind of impulsive and everything works out for her in the end despite, not because of, her actions.
Essentially Darcy just happens to be impressed by her because he has been under an onslaught of offers, and the barest shred of sincerity seems rare to him. He still would have married her if she hadn't rebuffed him, and she would have become aware of all the same stuff anyway. He doesn't change, she doesn't change, they each just become aware of trivial mistakes they made.
Honestly, it's just Cinderella
>The prince has a ball
>He falls for the least pretty sister
>She runs away
>Nothing changes as a result and he magnanimously solves all he concerns by being generous and rich.
Elizabeth, to say nothing of all the secondary characters, is extremely shallow. Almost nothing she does even affects how things play out, it's just flavor for a fetishized love interest to sweep in and solve all the problems of the world.

>>22172032
You are right, only the generations that normalized women casually murdering their unborn children, taking research chemicals to neutralize their menstrual cycles (that also poison the oceans and turn frogs gay), and lopping their tits off and encouraging their sons to lop their cocks off, can truly understand women

Only the generations that 60%+ of the female population to be on cocktails of antidepressants, antipsychotics, mood stabilizers, and sleeping pills can truly understand women

Only the generations whose actions led to over 50% of women over 30 being single and borderline suicidal wine aunt catladies by 2030 can truly understand women

Fuck all those thousands and hundreds of thousands of years in which women loved their husbands, their children, and themselves, and lived in harmony with their bodies. Only in the last 50 years are women finally who they really are: titless depressed psychotics who fuck dozens of men a year and grind up a baby in their womb once in a while for fun, brag about it to other women, and then die alone as a cougar drinking a bottle of wine a night

>>22166811
I really like the women in Tamora Pierce's books. They are realistic to a degree, (realistic for the time) and fun and cool. My favorite is the second series about Diane. I also like So you Want to be a Wizard series very much.
Growing up most of my children's books in the 90s were written by women with a few exceptions (Abhorsen by Garth Nix comes to mind).
The only thing necessary to make a good woman MC which so many books can't do is make them actually self-deprecating. Some try and can only manage a few lines like "I'm too beautiful and that sucks" but if you look before the 2000s there are many sane women in books. Which makes sense considering you have to be smarter than average to be a woman and any woman smarter than average must acknowledge their privileges and therefore be somewhat self deprecating.

I can't remember the last work of literature with a character I actually liked as a person though. It's quite rare to make a character thats meant to be liked or loved in literature in my experience. I guess I liked this guy in the Sorcerer's Apprentice by François Augiéras even though he was a pederast because he was incredibly based even about pederasty.

>>22173832
Good women literature authors are
Clarice Lispector
Renata Adler
Hiromi Kawakami

>>22166811
I find that certain types of stories tend to favor one gender over another.

Most horror favors a female protagonist, because the main character being a girl naturally increases the feeling of being in peril, someone less physically defensive, etc.
Example: Alien

Most westerns have male protagonists, because if the lead isn't male, it almost doesn't feel like you're watching a classic western, like the setting, genre, or formulas has been tainted. Example: Unforgiven

There are exceptions to both of these however, for horror, look at the movie Misery.
While the protagonist is a strong successful adult male, the female antagonist is given a role that makes sense for her to have power over him: as a maternal figure, albiet crazy. That, coupled with the fact he is injured then crippled, always lets us know she holds the power in this dynamic. If we didn't see his car accident, or show the hobbling scene, people would probably be upset at the movie and ask questions like "Why didn't he just fight back?" Since we're changing a major component of the genre, the viewer expects and explanation why.

For westerns, The Quick and the Dead. While this isn't nearly as good as Unforgiven, Sharon Stone plays a cool drifting gunslinger that wanders into a town where duels happen twice a day in a fight to the death tournament. At the beginning of the movie her character feels ridiculous, you expect she can outshoot every other cowboy here, but the movie plays it pretty straight. She doesn't do anything crazy or super human, she just really wants revenge. She's involved in three duels: first duel, she gets a pro-tip to listen to the clocktower by the best shot in the tournament (she's also fighting a drunk), duel two, she goes up against the best shot and loses to him (she's shot in the arm), in her third duel, she plans a giant distraction to ensure she can kill the main antagonist and get her revenge. At the end we also learn she's been training and wanting her revenge since she was a little girl, so her entire character makes a lot of sense. If it was a male character, you probably wouldn't need to give explanations for why he can shoot so well, etc, but since you're changing such a big part of the genre, you need to explain yourself more.

>>22173099
>Madame Bovary
>likable
Mate the whole point of that book was that she was a dumb, money-hungry whore and that men should avoid women like that

>>22172124
1. No, not everyone one. In fact, less than half do.
2. When they are present, they are still not relevant. If that still counts as "revolves around sex and romance" then so does half of Lovecraft's works.

>>22174419
>Mate the whole point of that book was that she was a dumb, money-hungry whore and that men should avoid women like that
So just like with Notes from Underground, but did that ever stop anyone on this board from going "wow that's literally me"?

>>22173805
Sounds like you just watched the movie version, and not even the miniseries.
In the book it's very obvious the way Elizabeth struggles to overcome her prejudice. And my point wasn't to say that she was a good or bad character. Just that she is a very FEMALE character. And that it's way too lazy to dismiss as being defined by romance only. Point is that you could not swap a male in her role and have it make sense to any sane person.

>>22174460
Yes? I haven't seen anyone on this board say that character is desirable. Just because someone identifies with a character doesn't mean they think they're a good person. In fact it's mostly the exact opposite on /lit/