power pussy says: My List of Notable Fictional [Woman] Power Pussies:
1. Hermione Granger (well, just about every female character in Harry Potter)
2. Veronica Mars
3. Daria
4. Scout (from To Kill a Mockingbird)
5. Lizzie Bennett (Pride and Prejudice) [also, Elinor Dashwood from Sense and Sensibility]
6. Eve (from All About Eve)
7. Grendel’s Mother (…
Wait. Eve—really? Anne Baxter’s character is looking for a power grab, sure. But George Sanders (“I am Addison Dewitt; I am nobody’s fool, least of all yours”) makes more than clear that she’s his pawn, forcing a marriage out of her in the process. Why not Margo Channing? Granted, she has that rather schlocky speech in the car about marriage and its making you a woman, but she maintains a jealous control over her world, macro- and microcosmically, and the restaurant scene near the end shows the match between Davis’s and Merrill’s characters a very mutual one.
Incidentally, I read somewhere recently that that film was the beginning of the proverbial beautiful friendship between Baxter and Davis. Fascinating.
