Top 10 uncompromising women in fiction

From Hermione Granger to Scarlett O’Hara to Dolores Claiborne, the strongest protagonists are a law unto themselves

A great heroine, for me, is not necessarily likable or admirable. I look for female characters who are allowed to inhabit their own spaces, women who are allowed to be entirely themselves without any outside constraints. Often, these women are nowhere near perfect, but I find them more admirable for that. The virgin/whore dichotomy has been a powerful force in literature for a long time, but I’m always on the lookout for characters who are allowed to be more complicated than that – to be like real women. I could have expanded this list into the hundreds, but here are 10.

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