Quiz: Can You Match These Female Characters To Their Authors?

Literature is filled with iconic, admirable, and sometimes pitiful and detestable heroines. William Shakespeare himself knew how to write a memorable woman, and some of his contributions to literature include the obstinate Katherina, the so-called “shrew” from The Taming of the Shrew, and the brave, naïve Juliet from Romeo and Juliet. 

Naturally, female authors like Jane Austen and Charlotte Brontë also knew how to write powerful and autonomous women, and often injected their characters with high levels of intelligence, shrewdness, and morality—sometimes provoking controversy in the process. In more recent times, new iconic female heroines have emerged, ranging from Harry Potter’s highly intelligent Hermione Granger to the defiant Elphaba in Wicked, as well as some truly deplorable female villains.

Read on to see if you can match the author to the unforgettable characters they dreamed up. 

An Extremely Brief and Woefully Incomplete History of Women in Literature

Women have always been writing, and in fact, the earliest named author on record is Enheduanna, a Mesopotamian high priestess and poet who wrote odes to the goddess Inanna. She is also the first author known to have used the first-person in her writing. 

Still, across literature—as in history—women have also often been limited by their relationships to men. In Homer’s The Iliad, female characters like Helen, Briseis, and Andromache are distinct but still defined by their relationships to male characters. In The Odyssey, women are also powerful and complex, though they typically embody certain archetypes; Circe is the crone and the witch, and Penelope is the wife and the mother, for example. Women have also often been relegated to roles like domineering matrons and witches, seductresses, or innocent maidens in literature across time.

Yet that’s not to say there aren’t plenty of complex, well-rounded female characters to be found in great works of literature and ancient stories. Old myths and legends are filled with strong female characters and goddesses, of course, ranging from the Greek goddess Athena to powerful goddesses like Brigid and the Hindu goddess Shakti. In the ancient text The Epic of Gilgamesh, believed to be the world’s oldest surviving epic poem, a temple prostitute named Shamhat plays an important role in the story, guiding the protagonist “Enkidu” to confront Gilgamesh in Uruk. 

In more modern times, Jane Eyre in Jane Austen’s novel of the same name helped to redefine what was possible for female characters, embodying intelligence and strength despite her low status as an orphan. Zora Neale Hurston’s Janie Crawford is another one of countless examples of a well-rounded, powerful, and complicated woman forced to contend with her race and her gender and the limitations of both at the time that she lived.

In modern times, literature has fully embraced and pushed for more well-rounded female characters. While there is no way to summarize the history or scope of women in literature across time, and while this quiz and article merely summarize a small fraction of them, each one of these characters is a powerful and unforgettable fictional woman who has left an undeniable impact on culture and countless readers and fans.