I don't know if it's because I have a habit of trying to find complex characteristics in fictional characters or what, but I noticed that "strong female characters" are not recent at all???
Pretty much everything we've been taught about Ancient Greece is that they're sexist and smart and artistic, but mostly sexist and extra misogynistic. That apparently women were sooo much more emotional than men and that they were stupid, and that it was a woman's fault if she got raped, or that she couldn't vote or go to school and all that other stuff. And yet, (from what I've read) Greek writers were still able to make sympathetic and extremely good Female characters?
Like, say, Helen of Sparta. She's like... she's basically an object in the entire premise of the Trojan War. She's taken here and there and no one ever asks for her opinion (we're still not sure if she left with Paris willingly). And yet, she is even more of a sympathetic character than Paris (whom everyone except his own parents hate) because she actually portrays guilt and remorse. She gets homesick and reminisces the days where she wasn't the cause of a ten-year-long war. She apologizes to Hector. She's so pissed off that she actually snapped at Aphrodite and tells her to go sleep with Paris herself if she loved him so much! She has an actual personality that, surprisingly, doesn't revolve around her beauty (THE most important fact about her character). (In fact, Helen is not described at all in the Iliad. What we see is people call her amazingly stunning. And that's it that's all they say.)
Clytemnestra, Agamemnon's wife, is basically a feminist icon. She finds out that her husband has a (couple of) concubine(s) and has been cheating on her for like 2 decades (the time it took to get to Troy, to fight in Troy, and to come back from Troy is surprisingly long). So she kills him and takes his place a long with her own lover, a guy who's name I can't be bothered to remember. Her daughter, Electra, loved her father a lot so she plots to avenge him along with her brother, and before both of them (inevitably) succeed, Clytemnestra actually calls them out on the unfairness that Greek women have to go through, specially because her own kids are angry at her for having a lover, while her husband had so many mistresses (and actually admitted that he loved some of them more than his own wife) and no one called him out on it.
Medea makes some decisions that pretty much designate her as insane, but she still cries a lot and suffers a lot from her willing actions. She also has a pretty legit reasoning, just a very terrible objective. Medea is also the true reason why I've started to be interested in characters that make awful and wrong decisions (and I mean like MORALLY TERRIBLE) but are still capable of feeling good things, so much that their immorality is not the only thing that defines them. (And yet, their immorality is a very important aspect of their character. One that you can't skip over. You can NOT talk about Medea in any way without referring to her murder of her children. It's literally wrong to say that "she had to" or that she "was a victim." She came up with that decision herself and committed it herself. So even though she feels guilt and remorse about it it does not, and will never, justify her actions. It just makes her a more human character.)
And, like, I'm just feeling a little surprised that that was an actual thing that happened in Ancient Greece? That in an actual culture where women can be taken as prizes and possessions there were still female characters who very well thought out and weren't made for men to fantasize about? (I can't imagine what kind of man would fantasize about Clytemnestra, for once. Or Medea. HAHAHA these are anti-villains though so I guess they were made to look un-appealing to the possibly-all-male audience) Like, evidently, Helen is very beautiful. But I don't think many Ancient Greeks that read or heard about her would actually want to marry her themselves. After all, to actually "have" her you have to pay a pretty crazy prize. (Her beauty is really more of a curse than a blessing, really) Like really, Euripides could have left the story with Medea turning crazy and killing her children because she was fucking messed up and overreacting, but he decided to portray her in a human light and actually show her descent into despair and sadness (and an even bigger anger) and also show how Jason was really unfair and pretty much deserved all of it.
I don't know. This is really just a premise of the paper I am about to write for my Classical Cultures class. But it's still interesting to see :> Then again, this "strong female character" is really more of a myth to me because I see a good character in literally all the females I encounter. All of them. I love Kairi and Aqua from Kingdom Hearts equally, and Orihime and Rukia from Bleach, and HINATAAA and Sakura and all those female Naruto characters that are tossed to the side :'D
Today in my Classical Cultures lecture, my prof was saying that Greek gods are able to become invisible with a cloak of air. I didn't hear anything else he said after invisibility cloak, turned to my friend and said HARRY POTTER!!! People who sat around me probably thought I was crazy but I don't care =D
