Feisty Females of Historical Fiction: Truth or Trope?

Written by Kathleen Baldwin


My mouth dropped open. “What?”



Lady Caroline Lamb

Were they not feisty females?
















How’s that for feisty?


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Find out more about Kathleen Baldwin on Twitter at @KatBaldwin and on her website.


Photo sources:

Caroline Lamb Public Domain,
Juana Galán: By Cimeg1984 – Own work, GFDL,
Clipper ship:

9 thoughts on “Feisty Females of Historical Fiction: Truth or Trope?

  1. I believe history is full of feisty females. My grandmother told me stories about the ones in our family. My grandmother’s grandmother and her niece, both southern women during the Civil War, were burying family heirlooms in garden, knowing the Yankees were coming. They were women of steel, having only enough powder for one shot with the pistol, if they needed it. My grandmother bobbed her hair in the ’20s, going against her mother’s wishes, and had a career when it wasn’t exactly fashionable. I love that these women blazed the trail for me to be as strong as I want to be with no apologies.

  2. Tripe! Women ruled countries long before Elizabeth ll, we aren’t stupid or defenseless given an ounce, we have a voice and make good use of it combined with knowledge. My brother once asked his wife to repeat a derogatory remark she made. When she didn’t immediately respond he said,” She has a voice I know. Because I’ve heard it.” Women have been down trodden at some points in history but many have used guile, wit, common sense, courage and conning to move forward.
    My Nonnie and her sister both crossed an ocean to marry men they had never even met at the turn of the 20th century. She was only 4’11” tall but not even her husband dared to argue with her when she knew she was right. She chased a man who broke into her home with a broom down the street yelling for the police. As the story goes she decided not to marry my Poppie when she realized he was 31 to her 19 years, but when he threatened to cut her face so no other man would look at her she agreed to marry him but not sleep with him. They called her the” little trunk woman” in Italian because for a time she slept on her steamer trunk. It took her combined family to convince her to sleep with him. If he gambled and lost money she would dress the children in old torn clothes and hide the food at her sister’s house. Then she would point out that they had no money, no food and his children looked like street beggars. Over the next 50 years she learned to love him, handle him and never forgave his son’s when they convinced her she was to old to sleep in a chair next to his bed at night after a fall that disabled him. He died in the night. They had 16 children.

  3. Katy I had a feisty Nonnie too! She ruled the family with love but practiced tough love on her sons. Her mother took care of the children and the farm with only help from her own mother. Where were the men? In America. When 2xs great-Nonnie came to America, she found her long lost husband had lived with and married an American woman, leaving her to survive on her own in Italy. She didn’t want to go back to him but the priest told her she had to. The family story goes she made his life difficult for the next few years they lived together. My Nonnie’s older sister was way ahead of her time. If the Food Network celebrity chef craze had been around when she was alive, she would have had her own cooking show. Back in the day, she wanted to become a licensed undertaker to get rich. The male dominated powers that be refused to grant her license though she passed the test.

    Finally, my personal hero, Louisa May Alcott, was as feisty as they come. She was not a “little woman.” Jo March is nearly autobiographical. Louisa was strong, athletic, brave, a nurse during the Civil War, wrote stories about adultery, drug use, and women who dared to try to have a career in addition to marriage and motherhood. She never married, unlike Jo, was the highest paid woman in Concord and stood up for the causes she believed in. Her mother, Abigail May aka Marmee, was a huge influence on Louisa and also dared to write to the Massachusetts legislature asking for woman suffrage!

  4. Oh wow, Katy! Loved your story. You actually summoned up tears–not easy to do as I am pretty tough. Nothing like the courage of a gutsy woman to touch my heart. Thank you for sharing about your brave little Nonnie, the little trunk woman. Feisty, personified. You got her gumption, I can tell!
    You, too Patience. thank you both for keeping these stories about women of courage alive.

  5. The feisty heroine of my Tor/Forge novels, THE SIXTH STATION and the upcoming (Sept.) BOOK OF JUDAS, Alessandra Russo is a modern day female protagonist and yet, and yet, several editors at several other UNENLIGHTENED houses told my agent, “A female protagonist shouldn’t be flawed,” “Can’t she be in her 20’s because a 42-year old woman is too old to have adventures,” and “A female protagonist shouldn’t be…” etc. etc., etc. No, it’s true. These were comments from FEMALE editors. The more things change the more they don’t.

    1. Oh that’s sad to hear. Sometimes it seems like women have kept themselves in a box. But there are always the brave feisty few. Glad you’re one of them and glad you’re with Tor. The women here are outstanding!

  6. I think the point is that we infer feminist ideology and mindsets went with these brazen actions. I personally have known many strong women who consider feminism a joke. Yes, they’ll rope steers, bitch slap their fathers for having affairs, and make their own money, but still have deeply internalized ideas about gender roles.

    They still see themselves as having a “place” because of the culture they’ve grown up in. They still limit themselves because of what they were told as girls. That seems to me the point the author was trying to make.

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