FRIDAY FIVE: YA Heroines

This edition of Friday Five brought to you by this week's celebration of International Women's Day as well as the current YA-reading kick I'm on. I tried not to repeat books I've put on other lists, but some I just love so much!

Katniss Everdeen, The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins
This one's obvious. What first attracted me to Katniss was her introversion. She never seeks to make a spectacle. She never wants to fight. What she does--volunteering in the Hunger Games on Prim's behalf, becoming the Mockingjay--she does out of necessity. A lot of YA I read tends to portray its heroines as brash and angry and vocal about it, which is understandable since YA's main target audience, teenage girls, so often doesn't have a voice. But Katniss's strength is quiet, and I've always loved that.

Vanessa Dahl, The Engelsfors Trilogy (The Circle, Fire, and The Key), Sara B. Elfgren and Mats Strandberg
Oh, Vanessa. She's one of six heroines in The Engelsfors Trilogy, and while I love them all, Vanessa shines the brightest. She struggles with normal teenage worries in addition to having one-sixth of the fate of the world on her shoulders, but she still finds time to love her two-year-old brother, Melvin, and to forge a deep connection with fellow witch Linnea.

Susan Caraway, Stargirl, Jerry Spinelli
It's been so long since I've read this book, but it still sticks out in my mind as the one that made being different and feeling out of place less scary. Preferring to go by the name Stargirl, she marches to the beat of her own drum, one she's probably made herself. She loves flowers. She cheers for both teams at basketball games. She people watches in the mall and has a happy wagon she uses to keep track of good things that have happened throughout the day. Unencumbered by the normal social restrictions of high school, she doesn't really find a place there, but the point is that she doesn't feel she needs to.

Jo March, Little Women, Louisa May Alcott
Jo is the Lizzie Bennet of Little Women. Who doesn't want to be her? She lets her imagination run freely in order to entertain her sisters. She speaks her mind and goes after what she wants, even if that's moving away from the family she loves to pursue a career in writing. Although her healthy temper means lots of sisterly fights, she loves her sisters more than anything.

Sara Crew, A Little Princess, Frances Hodgson Burnett
It's been a while since I've read this one, too, but the thing about Sara that stands out in my mind is her eternal optimism. When she gets word that her father's died, she loses everything. She loses the only family she has left and all the privileges that came with his position, which means she's no longer Miss Minchin's student and is now a servant. And yet, despite this, with her friends at her side, she never loses hope.

HEROINE SPOTLIGHT: Jane Eyre

I first read Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre when I was fourteen and found it dreadfully boring. There's a whole middle section where the characters are happy! How is that exciting? So I put it down for three years, and when I picked it up again at seventeen with a new viewpoint, I was enthralled. The love story between Jane and Rochester was fascinating in its own way, but it was Jane who captured my heart.

Jane, who loomed so large in Charlotte's eyes that the book is named after her. Jane, who grows up feeling unloved and still has tremendous amounts of love to give away. Jane, who decides to work as a governess in order to experience life outside of the one she knew for ten years. Jane, who chooses morality over love. Jane, who finds she can't compromise her ideals. Jane, who learns to love herself and finds love in the process.

She is a wonder and a treasure. To this day, she remains one of my favorite characters ever written. We all want to be more like Lizzie Bennet, who is quick-witted in the face of insult and sure of herself, but in reality, I know I'm closer to Jane. I am not outspoken and lively, but I take comfort in relating to characters who, like Jane, have a quiet strength and a determination of spirit.

HEROINE SPOTLIGHT: Rey

I've been a fan of the Star Wars saga since I was eight years old. The Phantom Menace came out when I was 11, and I spent the next six years waiting for the rest of the trilogy and dragging my friends to midnight showings. But even though the storytelling captured my imagination, one thing was always missing: a central female Jedi.

Princess Leia is a fantastic character. She's smart and brash and loves the Republic, and she lets her anger simmer beneath the surface and drive her. She's important, but Luke is the one who saves the day. In the prequels, Padme has less of a presence than her daughter but nevertheless still plays a significant role in the creation of what would become the Rebel Alliance. I love both their characters, both trilogies are very male driven.

Although I'll be a lifelong fan of the saga and will defend the prequels with my last breath, in the weeks leading up to the new movie, I wasn't all that thrilled about The Force Awakens. I fell for the marketing trap and thought Finn would end up being a Jedi. While that would have been cool, too, in a different way, I couldn't help but feel like the message being sent was: girls can't be Jedis; girls can't be protagonists; girls can't, girls can't, girls can't. So, when I sat in that theater on December 18th and watched as a new episode unfolded before my eyes, I felt my apathy slipping away. I cared about Rey. I cared about her and wanted her to succeed and kind of wanted to be her best friend, too.

Rey is unusual for a movie heroine, but especially for one in a blockbuster, in arguably the biggest franchise of all time. She's strong, able to look after herself after living alone as a scavenger for the majority of her life. When she gets attacked in Niima outpost, she fights off her attackers with her trusty quarterstaff. But being able to take care of herself doesn't mean she has to be unemotional. She's clearly taken aback when Finn asks, multiple times, if she's all right, and she wears her emotions on her sleeve when she sees a green planet for the first time and when she says goodbye to Finn. Making Rey the central character in The Force Awakens allows her to be more than the token female character. It allows her to be complex and to inspire a generation of girls who no longer have to grow up thinking that girls can't be Jedis. There's so much I can say about Rey, but I'll stick with: I'm excited to see where her journey takes her.