One Of The Boys / Literature

• In Fallen Into the Pit by Ellis Peters, the gang of schoolboys Dominic hangs out with also includes a girl with the Ironic Nickname "Pussy", who's as tough as any of them.
• The Great Brain series has Dorretha "Britches Dotty" Blake. Including her beating up the local bully, naturally she's a redhead.
• Pepper (aka Pippin Galadriel Moonchild) in Good Omens. She's a redhead. Sadly, there are some signs that puberty, as it sets in, might start to complicate this a little - not so much for Pep as for the guys, who are already starting to notice that play-wrestling with her has more of an effect on them than it used to.
• Dragon Bones: Stala. It is mentioned that she got her training by pretending to be a man, and now she is the leader of the guard of Hurog. Her men consider her one of them.
• Masques: Aralorn. She grew up with a tolerant father, was allowed to become a mercenary, and later became a spy. She's still best buddies with her fellow mercenaries, who are all male. She mentions that she doesn't care particularly for more rights for all women, she just doesn't want to become a Girly Girl and keep house for some husband, herself. Throughout the story, she's the only female fighter in a mixed group of refugees.
• Encyclopedia Brown's sidekick Sally Kimball. Sally suffered from inconsistent characterization and ranged from this trope to "regular girl who just happens to be able to punch like a truck" and just about everywhere in between.
• Idgie in Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe starts out as this and becomes even more so as she gets older.
• Leslie Burke of Bridge to Terabithia. Her first friend is a guy, and it is implied that she doesn't have any others. The main character befriends and spends time with her to get away from his girly-girl sisters, despite the fact that she's a girl as well.
• Scout Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird. Her real name is Jean Louise but she prefers the nickname "Scout", she plays with boys, hates dresses, and considers "you act like a girl" an insult.
• Sam Fredericks (actually Salome) in Otherland spends her time online as a boy so she'll get taken seriously.
• Birgitte in The Wheel of Time series is like this to Mat; he sees her more as a drinking partner or fellow soldier than as a woman.
• Petra in Ender's Game is one of the only girls in Battle School and wants to be considered by the boys as just one of them. She does so by acting like them during battle and even sleeping in the same dorms with them. In the nude.
• In Harry Potter: Hermione is seen as One of the Boys, much to her chagrin when a dance comes around and neither Harry nor Ron ask her, even when they are talking about getting their own dates. A desperate Ron does eventually think to ask her and even uses the phrase "hey, you're a girl," only to be told (to his extreme disbelief) that she is already going with someone else.
• Karrin Murphy of The Dresden Files, and in her case 'the boys' are police officers and the literal monster-fighting main character. In spite of lacking any magic or supernatural powers, she is Harry's go-to person when he feels a need for back-up against the supernatural. Harry's occasional concerns over including her in his plans aren't as much because she's a woman as because he has Chronic Hero Syndrome and feels guilty when anyone helping him gets hurt. While Murphy normally makes it look easy, a short story written from her perspective mentions how much effort she put into learning to speak "Martian", which to her consists of a lot of different grunts and body postures but not much verbalising, and even though she is now pretty fluent in it, she still doesn't really understand the thought processes behind a lot of it.
• Wilhelmina "Bill" Robinson of Enid Blyton's Malory Towers, the only girl slap-bang in the middle of seven brothers, with whom she mixes easily and on an equal level.
  • Blyton actually uses this trope multiple times, but her most remembered character is George from Famous Five, who actively rebels against being a female and pours scorn on gender roles. However, she also appears to resent it when she meets other girls who feel the same way.
• Queen Christina from The Royal Diaries envies the freedom that boys have and enjoys besting her male friend in sports.
• Tortall Universe
  • Alanna from Song of the Lioness is the short-tempered and blunt girl who posed as a boy to become the kingdom's only female knight.
  • Keladry, the female knight after Alanna. While Kel can openly be a girl, most of her friends are her fellow pages/squires, who are all male. Her friend Owen is astonished when she starts developing breasts (and expresses so just as bluntly) because it's such a visible reminder that she is a girl.
  "I'm scared of girls."
  "You're not scared of me."
  "But you're practically as good as a fellow- and you don't giggle."
• Rachel's father in Animorphs tells her mother in # 7 The Stranger that Rachel is as good as a son because she's a tough as a boy. They go hiking, watch ball games and go to gymnastic events together. Double subverted, though, since Rachel is also characterized as The Fashionista who insists on hiding outfits (not clothes, outfits) in Cassie's barn just because she wants to look immaculate at all times.
• Honor Harrington had a very awkward (and painfully extended, due to the prolonged treatments that give her a lifespan measured in multiple centuries) adolescence that left her feeling "like an overgrown horse". This combined with a pair of traumatic episodes in her time at the Academy to make her eschew romantic entanglements in the early installments.
• Thirteen-year-old tomboy squad leader Jade in Someone Else's War.
• Jean Meredith, the Scout Master in Gene Stratton-Porter's 1935 Keeper of the Bees. Stratton-Porter resists using pronouns all the way through the story. Jean commands a rowdy pack of boys. Jamie, a soldier who becomes Jean's friend, observes that she is wearing herself to exhaustion and falling behind her Scouts in physical development. When the Scouts do mutiny on her (she's menstruating, so won't go skinnydipping with them) Jamie seizes the opportunity to give her a Girliness Upgrade of sorts, enrolling her in the Girl Scouts and calling her "young lady" in front of other people at every opportunity (she still looks masculine, and as a veteran he knows guys may say and do things in front of other guys that they wouldn't/shouldn't in front of women) but emphasizing that she can go right on being an Outdoorsy Gal, there are many girls and women of "her kind".
• Discussed and invoked in Plato's Republic, where this is pretty much the role of female guardians and auxiliaries.
• In Till We Have Faces, Orual only really talks to men in the later stages of her life. She's not trying to appear more masculine, but her political ambition and lack of a family life make it difficult for the women of her patriarchal society to relate to her.
• The Chronicles of Dorsa: ** Joslyn seems fine with being the sole woman in the palace guards. She's friends with several. Later on though another woman does join.
  • Akella is the female captain of a pirate crew. They have mutual loyalty and affection, while no other women were members. Akella it appears was perfectly happy that way.