The Smurfette Principle / Literature

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• Artemis Fowl: Deconstructed in the first book, when Holly point-blank asks Root if he's harder on her because she's a girl. He admits it, and then points out that she's the first female in Recon, and needs to set an example. It's also worth noting that the only other female up for the job Holly considers a 'bimbo'. The series itself barely averts this trope because of Juliet, Butler's Action Girl sister, though she doesn't do much of anything until Book 3.
• Isaac Asimov:
  • Dr Asimov, until he married his second wife, had issues with women due to relations with his beloved Smother. Susan Calvin was the shining exception in the 400+ books he wrote until he was old (in fact, her dealing with the sexism inherent with being the Smurfette of US Robotics was dealt with in a few of the short stories).
  • Foundation Series:
    • "The Mule": Bayta is the first female protagonist in the Foundation series, and has more lines than the rest of the previous female characters put together (not that they had many to begin with). She travels with her husband Toran, the clown Magnifico, and Ebling Mis, meeting leaders of many groups; the Foundation, the Trader revolution, the lieutenants of the Mule, and the imperials of the Galactic Empire, all men. Only occasionally do we see her interacting with other female characters.
    • "Search by the Foundation": When Dr. Darell and Pelleas Anthor create their anti-Second Foundation rebellion, they invite fellow males Jole Turbor, Dr. Elvett Semic, and Homir Munn. Together, these five men discuss how to find evidence of the Second Foundation and what must be done when they have. However, Arkady, the daughter of Dr. Darell, has decided to make herself a member of the group without informing them. She's only fourteen, and decides that a secret mission away from home to discover the Second Foundation sounds much more interesting than merely sitting around at home and doing school work. While Arkady is the only female protagonist, there are several other women who appear in this story. None of them, however, are shown to have knowledge of the First Foundation's rebellion against the Second Foundation.
• Belgariad: The only female disciple of Aldur is Polgara. Well, also Poledra, but she's a Missing Mom most of the time. And these women are Belgarath's wife and daughter, so apparently to be a female member of the group you have to have a connection to a male member of the group.
• In A Brother's Price, the principle is Gender Inverted because men in the series are uncommon due to their fragile health. A boy can feel lucky if his father is still around when he reaches adulthood, and a man will be considered handsome if he has both eyes and all of his teeth. Families consist of a group of sisters, the husband they married, and children. Children within a family can have up to thirty girls with only one boy. A family with four boys and twenty-eight girls is considered uncommonly lucky. It is mentioned that, at social meetings, men gather together for the rare opportunity to talk to someone of their own gender who isn't their father.
• Adaptations of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory tend to present the Greek Chorus of Oompa-Loompas as a One-Gender Race, despite the novel clearly using females. While hundreds of Oompa-Loompas are seen in the 2005 film only one is depicted as female.
• Most film, stage, and TV adaptations of A Christmas Carol tend to make the Ghost of Christmas Past a woman; they're a being of Ambiguous Gender and age in the book, although the description hews a little closer to male. Typically, Christmas Past is the only major female character in these adaptations. There's just one other woman, Mrs. Cratchit, who gets two scenes (which are themselves rather brief), and all of the other women (Fan, Belle, Mrs. Fezziwig, etc.) show up for one each.
• The Chronicles of Dorsa: Joslyn was the only women in the palace guards and, prior to that, in the Imperial Army. It's Played for Drama a bit, as in the latter case she'd been forced to defend herself from other recruits attacking her at the recruiter's instruction, killing several, and only was accepted for the Army after this.
• Cthulhu Mythos
  • Shub-Niggurath, the Smurfette of the H. P. Lovecraft canon, being the only female Great Old One of many referred in his works.
  • Also Cthylla, who is the only "daughter" of Cthulhu's numerous offspring.
• Dave Barry's Complete Guide to Guys parodies this in the fictional "macho" cartoon "Commander Brock Gonad and His Hard Punchers of Justice," whose cast is proud to include a "Lieutenant Woman" characterized primarily by an "anatomically impossible set of hooters."
• Harry Harrison's Deathworld trilogy has exactly two female characters who are named, speak or appear in more than a single scene: the hero's Action Girl love interest Meta and, replacing her for the bulk of the second novel, the tag-along slavegirl Ijale.
• In The Deptford Mice, Audrey is the only girl in the main group of friends who are the protagonists. However, she does stands out as the lead character due to the trilogy being mostly about her heroic journey.
• Discworld:
  • The Nac Mac Feegle (or Pictsies) have a hundreds-to-one sex ratio, explained by females being rarely born, but are "Queen Bees" (Keldas) who rule over their sprawling, brawling sons, brothers-in-law, and husband. Keldas may, when fully grown, be larger than the males of the species (Big Aggie of the Long Lake Clan, for example).
  • The Watch books began with a trio of lads, plus Carrot. Sergeant Angua joins the Night Watch as the first w-erewolf. Later on, some of the dwarves start to express the desire to display themselves as female (which is heretical in dwarf culture), so the audience sees a slow growth of female characters in an originally all-male organization.
  • Monstrous Regiment begins with a Sweet Polly Oliver plot with a girl trying to find her brother who's been lost in the national army. As time goes by, the trope is subverted, because the "boys" she joined up with are slowly revealed to be women. Until the trope is completely inverted, with The Reveal that the only one in the squad that was male was Lt. Blouse.
• In Dragon Bones, Stala is, at the same time, the armsmaster and only woman of the Blue Guard, the famous army of castle Hurog where the protagonist lives. It is never mentioned whether she would take women if any applied. She herself is an exceptional woman, who disguised herself as man to get her training, and worked her way up to her present rank.
• In Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game, Petra is the only girl ever mentioned at the Battle School; when Ender is first recruited, it is mentioned that girls rarely pass the tests to get in.
• In the Extreme Monsters book series, the witch Jinx is the only female member of the Extreme Monsters.
• Fate/Zero has Saber, a Gender Bender version of a traditionally male character to start with and the only female amongst five individual servants, each summoned by a single master. None of the masters are female.
• Good Omens has a massive cast. In a gang (well, four) of children, only Pepper is female. Of the five Horsemen of the Apocalypse, only War is female. Pepper is even War's Good Counterpart.
• Harry Potter:
  • Ginny, of the seven Weasley children, is the only daughter.
  • The Grey Lady is the only female house ghost, representing Ravenclaw. There is another prominent female ghost in Hogwarts, Myrtle, but she does not represent a house. (Interestingly, though, Myrtle was a Ravenclaw student when she was alive.)
  • Fleur Delacour is the sole female champion in the 1994 Triwizard Tournament.
  • Of the seven Defence Against the Dark Arts professors seen throughout the series, Dolores Umbridge is the only female.
• Played with in The Haunting of Drearcliff Grange School. The protagonist encounters a team of Kid Detectives called the Brain-Boxes. The team includes one girl, Gertrude Smarthe, who wears a cute pink version of the team outfit and tends to get left out of things by the team's leader because she's a girl — and also includes Jonathan January, who is counted as one of the boys by the rest of the team but identifies as female and hopes to be accepted into Drearcliff (an all-girl school) when she's old enough.
• The Heroes of Olympus:
  • Periboia, daughter of King Porphyrion, is the sole female Giant.
  • Inverted with Orion, who was the only male Hunter of Artemis. She exempted him from her females-only rule because he was the only man she took a liking to.
• In The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Trillian is the only major female character for the first three books, and was Put on a Bus for the second half of the original radio show. Douglas Adams explained why he stuck to the Smurfette Principle in an interview; he wasn't comfortable writing female characters because he didn't understand women. He allowed Trillian (instead of Arthur, as he had originally planned) to make the deductive leaps that narrowly prevent a galaxy-wide war. Then was able to avert the Principle in Books four and five by adding Fenchurch and Random, respectively.
• R.A. Salvatore's The Icewind Dale Trilogy series (of the Forgotten Realms) originally did not have any major female characters. But soon he learned that further books of his would be rejected if he didn't add one. And thus Catti-Brie was given the literary equivalent of Promotion to Opening Titles.
• Beverly Marsh is the only female in The Losers Club in IT. This has its consequences later.
• In the Jennings series, the setting is a boys' boarding school, reducing the chances of female characters being introduced. Matron is the only female regular character (though an elderly woman, Miss Thorpe, is a minor recurring character).
• Kirsty from the Johnny Maxwell Trilogy is the only girl, but does not accept her status, going so far as to call the others 'four token boys'.
• The Last Days Of Krypton: The eleven-member Kryptonian Council only has one female member.
• Light And Dark The Awakening Of The Mageknight: There is precisely one female among the White Rock Academy Instructors.
• Mildly deconstructed in Mistborn: The Original Trilogy. The setting's criminal underworld is heavily male-dominated, and as a result heroine Vin- raised to be a thief by her thief half-brother- has been the only (or one of the only) girl or woman in any given situation for most of her life. This has a very visible influence on her personality.
  • Sanderson has admitted that he considers having Vin be the only female member of Kelsier's crew a definite flaw in the first book, and something he would have made sure to avert if he were writing the story in the present day.
• The Maze Runner:
  • The plot starts thickening the moment the Glade — which up to Thomas' arrival has been a male-only community — ends up welcoming a girl, Teresa. She's "the last one ever," meaning the Gladers will stop receiving any more aid from their mysterious supplier, and have to think outside the box if they want to survive.
  • Inverted with Group B, which features Aris as its only male member.
• Gender-inverted in the Rainbow Magic series: of the hundreds of fairies that have appeared, we've only seen three male fairies — King Oberon, Jae the Boy Band Fairy, and Prince Arthur. Some sources have said that Jack Frost is also a fairy.
• The Scream: Jesse is the only female member of The Jacob Hamer Band, and Tara the only female member of The Scream.
• In Vikas Swarup's Six Suspects, Shabnam Saxena is the only woman among the eponymous six suspects. She is perceived as a Brainless Beauty, partly because she's a Bollywood actress, partly because she downplays her intelligence so as not to intimidate her fanbase. However, she does tear a strip off an interviewer who actually calls her a "brainless bimbo" to her face. All the other women in the story are either minor characters or Satellite Love Interests.
• A Song of Ice and Fire:
  • Although a lot of women have ruled behind the Iron Throne (*cough* Cersei Lannister *cough*), there is only one known queen regnant in the history of the Seven Kingdoms: Rhaenyra Targaryen. The fact that she ruled during a civil war, coupled with her own personality flaws as well as the inherent misogyny of the setting ensured that there is no more queen regnant; Rhaenyra's granddaughter Daena almost inherited the Iron Throne, but she was displaced by her uncle (and Rhaenyra's son) Viserys because she was "too wild".
  • In the present day, Daenerys Targaryen is the only female claimant to the Iron Throne. In A Feast for Crows, Arianne Martell tries to crown Myrcella Baratheon as queen regnant, but she does so mainly to rebel against her father, her plans go awry, and she stops doing so upon her reconciliation with her father. Excerpts from The Winds of Winter suggest that Stannis Baratheon has designated his daughter, Shireen, to continue his crusade to inherit the Iron Throne, in case he gets killed in battle.
• Shannara: It takes 456 pages to reach a female character in The Sword of Shannara. Even her rescuer is very surprised.
• The main group in Tailchaser's Song consists of two-to-three tomcats (depending on whether Eatbugs is around) and one female named Roofshadow.
• Tamora Pierce has stated she writes stories with female leads precisely because of Gender Inequality. When she was starting the Circle of Magic series, she saw an article that mentioned that 75% of recently published fantasy books had male heroes, so she inverted the figure by having three girls and one boy as the main characters (a male character with stereotypically "girlie" plant-based magic at that).
• Tolkien's Legendarium:
  • There is only one known dwarf woman in history — Fíli and Kíli's mother, Dís (who is briefly mentioned in The Hobbit and in the appendices to The Lord of the Rings). Others certainly exist, but she is the only one he named.
  • Tolkien later regretted he didn't have more females in The Lord of the Rings, claiming he didn't know how to write for them. Eowyn's crucial role in the Battle of the Pelennor Fields, where she slays the Witch-King, can perhaps be seen as apology for this (On the other hand, most of the female characters he did write are generally regarded as well-written. Even those who didn't get a lot of ink like Arwen and Goldberry).
    Witch King: Hinder me? Thou fool. No living man may hinder me!
    Then Merry heard of all sounds in that hour the strangest. It seemed that Dernhelm laughed, and the clear voice was like the ring of steel
    Eowyn: But no living man am I!
  • Brought up in The Fall of Númenor, where the Numenorean queen consort Erendis at one point gives a lecture to her daughter about how little women feature in the great tales and histories of Middle-earth, a fact she attributes to its patriarchal nature and the lack of care and interest men pay to the women of their lives.
• The Tribe: Sully Tulliver is the sole female member of the titular group, as all the other members are boys.
• The Twilight Saga: Leah Clearwater is the sole female werewolf not only in her pack, but in history.
• In Sharon Creech's The Wanderer, Sophie is the only girl among the surly crew of the titular sailboat, made up of her three uncles and two (male) cousins. And they didn't even want to take her in the first place. Their main reasoning was "wouldn't you rather stay at land, where you can take shower every day?".
• Wolf Pack: Tora is the only female werewolf of the four in the pack.

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