Often, as with Austen's Elizabeth Bennet or Trollope's Alice Vavasor, they make themselves positively miserable trying to escape the worthy men who will make them happy.
In a statement on its website, the company says it wants Barbies to look more like real people, and to give girls everywhere infinitely more ways to spark their imagination and play out their stories.
That's right. My research investigated the way players see their role as a musician and how this is linked to the type of clothing they decide to wear.
When we talk about empowered women we are talking about women who are not dependent on men or anyone else for the direction of their lives, they make their own choices.
That's a tough question, it's different if you think about how ladies might see themselves or how they might see men and how men might see themselves and how they might see ladies.