Female roles in the works of Jules Verne
This female depiction of spring is a great opportunity to discuss a number of female characters in Jules Verne’s works. He wrote adventure novels which were sometimes set in dangerous countries. He said that this was the reason why there were fewer female than male characters in his novels. There are even major novels without any female characters at all, such as Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, The Mysterious Island and Robur the Conqueror. These works reflect their era, in which women did not play a prominent role.
However, his novels do feature some wonderful female characters, such as the sultry Aouda (Around the World in Eighty Days), the charming Le-ou (Tribulations of a Chinaman in China), the dreamy Helena Campbell (The Green Ray), the courageous Dolly Branican (Mistress Branican), the seductive Stilla (The Carpathian Castle) or the frightening Sangarre (Michel Strogoff). A number of young women also found love at the end of the novel, such as Mary Grant (In Search of the Castaways), Nadia Fedor (Michel Strogoff) and Nell (The Child of the Cavern).
One thing is sure: passionate love is rarely a central aspect to his stories.
In 1889, Jules Verne received a wonderful visit from the young American journalist Nellie Bly, who was trying to surpass Phileas Fogg’s exploits in Around the World in Eighty Days (1872) and came through Amiens on 22nd November 1889.
