TOP TEN TUESDAY | REBELS IN LITERATURE

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday is a throwback freebie, so I combed the list of past topics on the original blog, The Broke and the Bookish, and found an intriguing option – Rebels in Literature. This seemed like a great post to write, so here I go!

1. Atticus Finch from To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. He went against the prevailing prejudice of his community to defend a Black man. He is one of my favourite literary characters of all time.
2. Severus Snape from the Harry Potter books. I can’t give away too much about why without risking spoilers, so let’s just say if you know, you know.
3. Karin Muller, author of Along the Inca Road/Mary Morris, author of Nothing to Declare/Frances Mayes, author of Under the Tuscan Sun. Now, this may seem like an odd choice, but bear with me. These women all went off on adventures in countries that weren’t their own, and did it either alone or as the leader of that eneavour. I read all of these books when I was a teenager, and it was a wonderful experience to follow women adventuring.
4. The guy from the house in the cerulean sea
5. Rhoda from Black Dove White Raven by Elizabeth Wein. She was a pilot in 1930s America, a time and place where women generally weren’t pilots. Her flying partner, Delia is also a woman, and Black. When Delia dies in an accident, Rhoda adopts her son, and raises him alongside her daughter. But not only that, she moves them to Ethiopia, where the mixed-race family will not face the same racial prejudice they would in America. I loved this book, but I adored Rhoda.
6. Shirley Jackson as a housewife in Life Among the Savages and Raising Demons. She was a woman raising a family in the 1950s, which meant that she was the one responsible for the home and children. The gender issues of the time are perfectly captured, but the part I loved most about these books is that she lifted the veil on the stereotype of the perfect home-maker, and showed all the ways in which she struggled to maintain her home and her frustrations with her role.
7. Trixie Belden from the Trixie Belden mysteries. While she didn’t have the same following as Nancy Drew, she was by far my favourite. This girl detective had short hair, wore dungarees, was usually messy, hated doing any kind of house work, and mostly just wanted to be out in the world having adventures. I adored her for it.
8. Miss Marple from the Miss Marple mystery series by Agatha Christie and the Thursday Murder Club crew from the series by Richard Osman. I love books that prioritize older characters and show them as intelligent, on point, with skills and life experience that can actually mean that they see a lot more than younger folks and understand it better. Our society tends to discount seniors, and I think that’s a shame (to put it mildly). So I like books that turn that stereotype and prejudice on its head.
9. The narrator of Ducks, Newburyport by Lucy Ellmann. It doesn’t seem like it at first. She’s a housewife, and this book is her internal monologue which mainly consists of household concerns. But. As the book progresses we learn about her past, her education and travel, her life experiences and her opinions on some of the most important issues of the day. She’s smart, has life experience, and her thoughts are far-ranging and have depth. She is not your stereotypical housewife. But then, how many are?
10. Matilda from the book by Roald Dahl. Similar to the way older people are discounted and looked past, children are often underestimated and given little agency. I loved that in this book Matilda dealt with the adult bullies that were victimizing her and those she cared about, and created the life she wanted. Sure, children have less experience, knowledge and physical strength. But they’re growing and learning every day, and they need to be seen as people and treated with as much respect as we treat one another as adults (assuming we are doing so).

That’s my list of ten, but here are a few bonus rebels:

1. Anne from Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery
2. Jane Eyre from the book by Charlotte Brontë
3. Anne Frank, author of The Diary of a Young Girl
4. Harriet the Spy from the book by Louise Fitzhugh
5. Franny K Stein from the series by Jim Benton
6. Pretty much all the women and girls in Snapdragon by Kat Leyh
7. Hannah Gadsby based on her book Ten Steps to Nanette and her comedy shows
8. The Mom in My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell
9. Elizabeth from The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Burrows

That’s my post for the week! Can you think of any other literary rebels I missed? Are any of these favourites of yours? I’d love to hear your thoughts!

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly link-up feature created by The Broke and the Bookish and hosted by Jana at That Artsy Reader Girl. Every week TTT has a different topic, and everyone who links up has to create a link of ten items that fit that topic. To see past and upcoming topics, go here.