Or female central protagonists. Groups of multiple protagonists don’t count unless the group is strictly female.
Antigone by Sophocles (with the titular Antigone)
A Vindication of the Rights of Women by Mary Wollestonecraft (well, I’m counting it anyway)
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (with Lizzy Bennet; this is a romance from the 1800s)
I’ll count Grimm’s fairy tales, I guess (…sigh, yeah, fairy tale princesses and stuff)
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne (with Hester Prynne; this was written in the 1800s)
Bleak House by Charles Dickens (with Esther Summerson; this is from the 1800s)
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy (with the titular Anna; this is a somewhat a romance from the 1800s)
Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert (with the titular Emma Bovary; this is a romance from the 1800s)
Tess of the d’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy (with the titular Tess; this is apparently sexual, and is from the 1800s)
The Cherry Orchard by Anton Chekhov (with Madame Lyubov Andreievna Ranevskaya)
I’m also counting Flannery O’Connor short stories (with a variety of women)
11 out of 100 titles. 6 of which are from and/or about the 1800s. But considering how many of these were nonfiction, religious or philosophical texts, I’m not wholly surprised.
–your fangirl heroine.
