One of the striking features of the current fantasies about evil is their thoroughgoing maleness: Tolkien's work includes examples of female monstrosity (Shelob, a gigantic, malignant spider) but not of female heroism.

Kathleen Karlyn, an assistant professor of English at the University of Oregon, criticizes it suggesting "In order to even imagine female heroism, we're placing it in the realm of fantasy".

I at last owed my deliverance to female heroism: a young woman, who was likewise in the field, took hold of a cord which I threw out, and calling to the men for their assistance, they yielded to her entreaties.

Judith: A Parting from the Body is a retelling of the Apocryphal story of female heroism in the form of the Jewish Judith challenging and killing general Holofernes.

New Jersey's leading symbol of female heroism is still Molly Pitcher - now immortalized as the namesake of a rest stop on the New Jersey Turnpike.

The General Court of Massachusetts verified her service and wrote that she "exhibited an extraordinary instance of female heroism by discharging the duties of a faithful gallant soldier, and at the same time preserving the virtue and chastity of her gender, unsuspected and unblemished".

A singular circumstance attended this Lady, which may not be generally known, but deserves to be recorded as an almost unexampled instance of female heroism and filial affection.

Gareth will next be producing Zaytoun with Far Films to be directed by Eran Riklis and The Lady Who Went Too Far, which sees Bedlam re-unite with King's Speech writer David Seidler for a tale of female heroism in the early 19th century.

Hambling's painting conveys tragic female heroism as well as fury against the nexus of constraints on her subject's life (as I see it).

The Dawns Here Are Quiet was the first of Vasiliev's sentimental patriotic tales of female heroism in the Second World War ("Not on the Active List", 1974; "Tomorrow There Came War", 1984) which brought him renown in the Soviet Union, China, and other communist countries.