Is independence still independence if it's learned, not known?

Women come into this world weak as kittens & malleable as putty.

At least, that's what rows upon rows of fiction claim. I'm not talking about the obviously subordinate & fragile ladies, with their egos of porcelain & backbones of glass. No, this is about the women who've tricked us.

Recently, I've consumed a vat of fiction centered on strong, independent, intelligent women. But something kept itching at the back of my own intelligent female skull. Finally, The Point managed to ply open my closeted mind using an article by the fabulous Bitch magazine questioning Stieg Larsson's universally accepted title of feminist. Although I do in fact believe Larsson to have been a feminist, this helped to section off the issue I have with a long line-up of strong female characters: They require obstacles, oppression & tragedy before they manage to transform from house cats to lionesses.

Strong fictional men generally grab their internal strength as embryos, embracing independence & wit from within long before they come up against external problems. But the vagina-clad equivalent almost without exception requires some major backlash before she casts off her shell of virginity (or her good girl act, or her innocence, or her femininity, or whatever the story calls for) & instead dons armor made of talent, perseverance & autonomy.

Beyond Lizbeth Salander, other recent excursions into weak-turned-strong women include Dolores Price from the young adult novel She's Come Undone, by Wally Lamb. A book about a woman overcoming all odds, Dolores only becomes a healthy, well-adjusted & self-assured woman after her parents divorce, her mom goes to a mental institution, her father abandons her, she's raped, she becomes obese, she's the victim of bullying, she goes to a mental institution & she marries a sleaze who undermines her.

In a more recently popular example, Nina in Black Swan only breaks from her childhood trappings of pink walls & music boxes when she absolutely must for the sake of her career. She cannot become the Black Swan -- say what you will about her morality, but that Swan had spunk & absolute sovereignty over herself & her life -- until she's overcome herself, her mother, her predecessor, her competitor & her director, in aggressively gory succession.

Possibly, my vision has become limited in that lens of "feminism," but example after example keeps waving at me daintily (princess-style, you know, with the cupped palm) from the recesses of my mind -- The Clan of the Cave Bear series, Grease, Ferngully, The Princess Diaries, & on & on. Of course, many organically powerful fictional women exist as well, such as my personal favorite, Philip Pullman's Lyra Belacqua of His Dark Materials. On the other side of the gender-equality chasm, many thoroughly vapid, one-dimensional females hide in crannies of our entertainment too. Entertainment requires various roles to properly caress our imaginations -- but why do so many women require lessons in the difficulty of life before they effectively embrace self-assurance & tenacity?


Theory: Women use external oppositions to evolve internally. In other words, we over-think everything. These fictional women use each obstacle to gain just a smidgen more perspective on their issues, slowly building the esteem necessary to become newly self-reliant characters.

& looking back on the past 533 words of over-analysis, it seems this theory successfully stands the test of personal application.