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Literary Heroine Spotlight: Clary Fray

There have been many a movie heroines over the past couple decades but Clary Fray, from The Mortal Instruments by Cassandra Clare, is a fairly new character. This heroine is not the most popular, but she holds her own amongst a smaller fan base.

Clary Fray is a young adult who is living alone with her mother in a small apartment. She has been living a fairly normal life for a character her age, until everything changes. The world she lived in is no longer the same, and she begins to realize that the stories of fairies, vampires, werewolves, and demons are all very much real. In the novel there are also orders or groups, who work to keep peace in this type of realm. Clary finds that she is a shadowhunter. Throughout the series, readers can find ways to look up to Clary Fray as a heroine and to let imaginations expand into realms were the stories we were told as children are all very much true.

There are many characteristics that make Clary a heroine, but the biggest one is her unique talent as a shadowhunter that give her the abilities to make new rules and magic. She is able to explore her unique abilities as an individual which help her to become independent from her peers. She handles her talent with grace and uses her talent to help save the organization of the shadowhunters, as well as using it to help keep the peace in the world full of the supernatural.

Spoiler alert! Clary also overcomes the issues of being the offspring of a villain and therefore looked upon with much suspicion. She does not allow her father’s evil intentions and decisions to get to her and impact her decisions negatively. Clary actually strives harder to thwart her father and fights him throughout the entire series. She helps break this convention that children will become what their parents are or taught them to do. This goes into the characteristic that Clary stands up for herself and those she cares about, she follows the beat of her own drum and does what she feels is right and necessary. This is a characteristic that many readers may attribute to Clary being a heroine.

While in many novels, we see how many of the female characters have romantic interests or male characters that they stand apart from. Clare writes the character Clary to rely on her romantic interest, Jace, particularly in the beginning of the series. As Jace and Clary begin to approach a relationship that pertains to more than friends, there is a dynamic shift in the plot. Clary begins to not only drift apart from Jace, but she also begins to question almost all of his decisions throughout the rest of the series. There is another main male character, named Simon, who has been Clary’s best friend since the beginning. He also holds romantic feelings for Clary throughout the majority of the series. Readers could compare Jace and Simon to Edward and Jacob from the Twilight series, and the way that they pine after the leading female character. There is much more depth to Clary than there is to Bella Swan however.

Clary Fray is a relatively newer heroine in the 21st century. There are many characteristics that Clary displays that help to make readers view her as another heroine. Her heroine is quite different than many of the ones displayed in other popular novels, but this just makes Clary that much more unique.

Join me next week to discuss Tris from the Divergent series.

-Jessica Jordan, Managing Editor


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