Top Ten Tuesday (4) - Favourite Heroines

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme created and hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. Follow the link to know more about the meme and join up! 

This week the topic is, well, a freebie. You can find their post here. 

After the women's marches that happened all over the world on Saturday, I decided to go for my favourite heroines. I'm sure that has been done in the past, but I haven't made such a post yet, and I do have a few favourite heroines, I'd like to talk about. Not sure if 10, but definitely more than one.

Look at this gallery showing women's marches around the world on the website of The Guardian. And here an article on the New York Times.

Let's start with my favourite heroines.

1. Elizabeth Bennet: Definitely my favourite. A bit of a cliché, but oh well. I've loved Pride and Prejudice for a very long time and read it more than twenty-five times in the last twenty years. I also appreciate Emma Woodhouse (Emma) and mostly I adore Anne Elliot from Persuasion, but no other heroine quite has the wit Elizabeth has.
2. Lisbeth Salander: I've not actually managed to finish the Millenium trilogy. The abuse Lisbeth suffers is almost too much in places. But she kicks ass. And she's a great female character, so I decided to put her onto this list.
3. Kay Scarpetta: I've just recently started to read the Kay Scarpetta novels again. They're written by Patricia Cornwell and they're about a chief medical examiner in Virginia. Great novels. Great series. But be warned, the first one is from the mid 80's and computers and DNA are a fairly foreign thing to the cast at first. 
4. Marquise de Merteuil: Cruel Intentions, Dangerous Liaisons, Les Liaisons Dangereuses... whether played by Sarah Michelle Gellar, Glenn Close or Annette Bening, I love this character. Originally the book is by Choderlos de Laclos and it's an epistolary novel (a novel told in a series of letters).
5. Natasha Rostova: War and Peace. I was first introduced to this character by Audrey Hepburn's performance. Wonderful film. And such a tragic character. The book is very long, but not very difficult to read.
6. Jane Eyre: One of my favourite books when I was a teenager. I loved Jane Eyre and read the book several times.
7. Luna Lovegood: I had to include at least one Harry Potter character and whilst I love Hermione I always had a soft spot for Luna.
8. Claire Beauchamp: Claire. I love Claire. She's almost as witty as Elizabeth Bennet and has a lot of sarcasm on offer. She's the main character in the Outlander novels by Diana Gabaldon. Wonderful series.

I hope everyone is having a good week. Let me know about your posts in the comments and I'll make sure to drop by!