Ladies of Hive asked two questions this week - one, about our favourite female characters in books or films, and secondly, whether we prefer a house with or without a garden.

Whilst the garden question seems perfect for a Hive chic who runs the Hive Garden community, I feel like you know that about me. Of course I can't live without a garden, although sometimes I think just living in a forest without having to tend a freaking garden might be nice. Dream garden? Go out and pick bananas and mangoes from the trees, and mushrooms - nothing I have to cultivate. Still, a lot of my creative energy goes into my garden, and I can't imagine not having that outlet. Even if I lived in an apartment or a caravan I'd find a way to grow something - basil on a windowsill, spring onions poked into a pot.

As for heroines, one think you might not know about me is how much I loathe Jane Eyre. This is blasphemy for an English teacher, apparently, and I'm not allowed to utter it out aloud, lest I find myself with daggers in my back. Don't give me a 'heroine' that's always agonising and self sacrificing. She's not strong, she just endures. I can't stand female characters that spend so much time brooding and moralising - give me someone raw and apolegetic. Such internal debates are so dull. There's also a sense she's good because she's suffered trauma, something I also absolutely loathed about Jude from A Little Life - vomit.

I don't like a polite anti heroine - I want someone decidedly unproper and unneat. I'd rather a woman who sets fire to the building, thanks very much, even if it appears fucked up on the surface. Give me a woman with scars. Give me a woman who doesn't sit in her cage moaning about it - give me someone who'll cut off her right up to get out of there and doesn't care about what people think.

Give me a woman that isn't beautiful. Even asking Midjourney for an ugly anti heroine was problematic. A woman can't be ugly, can she, even if she's scarred, because how could we possibly connect with an old woman, an ugly woman, a disfigured woman?

So this question has to be more about flawed woman, to me. Woman who take life by the horns and give society the middle finger. Loudly and unapolegtically. Woman that make us feel uncomfortable because they challenge us.

Give me Medea.

Honestly, Medea's the only woman I can say I liked in literature - sure, she killed her kids but hey, she wasn't afraid to take action against a husband who took her for a fool. She absolutely refuses to sit down and take it and totally defies what society suggests should be a woman.

Medea is a heroine because she breaks every rule about what a woman (and especially a mother) “should” be. She’s raw, ruthless, and unapologetic in her pursuit of justice (or vengeance) in a world that has betrayed her utterly. Unlike traditional heroines who suffer silently or seek forgiveness, Medea claims her power through fury and refuses to be a victim. Her agency is radical, her decisions absolutely autonomous, and even though what she does is horrific, she utterly fucks the patriachy with her rage and defiance. She forces us to confront uncomfortable truths. Yes, she's terrifying, but she's utterly unforgettable.

Of course woman like this never truly win, in the same way woman find it hard to win unless they take on male traits.

Look at Lady Macbeth - she's not afraid to be ambitious, and though she doesn't go through with the murder herself and ends up killing herself because she can't cope with her guilt and responsibility for what her husband does. For her to act, she has to stop herself feeling womanly at all - no compassion, no regret, only ruthlessness and coldness. Her struggle to maintain this is what makes her so awesome. The image of her constantly trying to wash the blood of her hands is an enduring and unforgettable scene. There's always this criticism of Macbeth being 'pussy whipped' which I think is worth looking at too. They were very much a partnership and it was Macbeth's own weaknesses that led to him listen to his wife in the first place. He knew what it was like to murder someone on the battlefield, and she didn't, so there's always more sympathy for her, a woman who dared to dream, then the bloodiest of Shakespearean kings.

There's one female character in a little known YA novel called Mortal Engines. Hester is gorgeous precisely because she's scarred. She's a survivor of a violent attack in her childhood and carries her anger and grief in a tough exterior. She literally has a scar on her face which defies the whole concept of Disney heroines of exceptional beauty. I loved her because she's so raw and unpolished, and refuses to be a victim, but she's also strong because of her pain and how she's had to survive.

It's these female characters I like - strong and bloodied yet compassionate, the Furiosas, the Lady Macbeths and the Medeas.

You go girls.

I wish you every success, and to end your lives in peace, with a garden.

Both of these images were created in Midjourney. I've been creating a few AI videos which are simultaneously amazing me and annoying me at the same time. Please question everything you see on the internet, people. We are living in strange times.

With Love,

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