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@deeprun

Personally, I think that the large focus on war and combat in popular, mainstream genres like action/adventure and fantasy led to the idea that strength = physical prowess because otherwise your character, female or otherwise, would not have much agency or relevance in the plot. Jane Eyre and Elizabeth Bennet, who you gave as examples of strong female characters, are not from settings where swinging around sword is necessary for survival. That’s why I prefer reading stories that do not focus so much about war and fighting (in the physical combat sense) nowadays, as the characters from more “peaceful” genres are allowed to have greater variety in their lives and skills and be “differently powered” and “differently strong” in more relateable ways.

There always seems to be this strange pressure for female characters to be “strong” in order to be “good representations” and “role models”, which is not something that is expected from male characters. I mean, if a male character is a coward, the reader can accept that that is his personal flaw and judge him accordingly. But if a female character is a coward (as a woman in real life may be), she becomes a bad character (not just a weak person) and the author is at fault for writing women poorly (?). I think this is just the consequence of trying to avoid the damsel-in-distress like the plague when it’s really not. An interesting, well-written character is one with compelling vulnerabilities and flaws. But the “strong female character” is not allowed to have any.

I think writing a good strong female character requires brave writing, in that the character must be free to be herself without the writer worrying too much about what others may say. She must be as determined, weak-willed, sensible, foolish, hardworking, lazy, whimsical, down-to-earth, polite, rude, honest, manipulative, gentle, cruel, calm, neurotic, sociable, reclusive, brilliant, unintelligent, bossy or laidback as she naturally is. Forcing her to just be “strong” would be dull.