I love books that have strong female lead characters. Take for example, Emily Carr, from The Forest Lover by Susan Vreeland. She broke boundaries at a time when women were meant to be a good wife or daughter. The book opens in 1906 in British Columbia, and Carr has just travelled alone to a Native village where few outsiders venture. She does this despite the disapproval of both her family and society in general. She befriends the Native people whom others look down upon as "primitives". And she paints like no one else paints. She wants to put on canvas what she feels for nature and for these Native people. I am only about a third of the way into the book, but I can already tell you I like Emily Carr. Books like this fall into a sort of grey area for me, since Carr was a real person and this is a fictional account of her life. How much is real, and how much did Vreeland take artistic liberty with in terms of the story. I have not read too much yet about the actual history of Carr,but I have looked at some of her art so I have an idea of what the paintings described in the book actually look like.
Another character that looks very promsing is Harriet Vane from Dorothy Sayer's Gaudy Night. I think I will have to go back and start at the beginning of this mystery series by the way. In the beginning of the book Vane is thinking about going to her school's (Shrewsbury) Gaudy Night (a college reunion).
"It was all so long ago; so closely encompassed and complete; so cut off as by words from the bitter years that lay between. Could one face it now? What would those women say to her, to Harriet Vane, who had taken her First in English and gone to London to write mystery fiction, to live with a man who was not married to her, and to be tried for his murder amid the roar of notoriety? That was not the kind of career that Shrewsbury expected of its old students."
The book was written in 1936 and I am assuming it was set in that period as well. How can you not be intrigued by Harriet Vane? Since this is my first Sayers mystery, I am not sure exactly of the dynamics of Vane and Lord Peter Wimsey. I believe I read, however, this is the one mystery where she takes the lead so to speak. She seems sort of self deprecating so far, but I think she knows what she's about.
As I am juggling several books at once, the other book that has a strong female protagonist is Jacqueline Winspear's Maisie Dobbs in Messenger of Truth. I have followed Maisie through three previous adventures, and I am sure I have mentioned here that I really like Maisie Dobbs! Maisie grew up with only her father, and went into service as a young woman. She was lucky as the woman she worked for became her benefactress and helped guide Maisie, who proved to be smart and spunky. She went off as a nurse, lying about her age, to France in World War I. She lost her fiance to shell shock. It was through her mentor, Maurice Black, that she came into her own. She became a private detective (or what I have noticed that they call an "inquiry agent"), but her spin is that she also happens to be a psychologist. It is funny--sometimes you read about the same character over and over and they nearly become like real people to you!