The strongest female protagonists aren’t defined by how much freedom the world gives them. They’re defined by what they do with the freedom they claim. That’s the heart of agency in fiction, as Jenna Moreci argues in her article on character agency. Active characters make their own decisions and take actions that affect the plot, rather than simply being pushed by other characters or the plot itself.
This is especially useful when reading or writing WWII fiction, because war stories often place women inside systems that restrict them. Jane Rosenthal’s The Serpent Bearer is a World War II spy thriller involving a glamorous aristocrat, Jewish gambler, and Hollywood screenwriter who must confront danger to save themselves and the people they love. In contrast to soldiers, officers, or agents who have institutional agency, these characters move through “outsider” social spaces that men often underestimate.
In Del Rio, a contemporary parallel, Callie McCall is a district attorney whose ambitions are tested when a migrant teen’s body is found near her hometown. Callie begins with political calculation, but is soon drawn into morally dangerous territory involving family power, corruption, trafficking, and personal responsibility. Like the women in wartime narratives, Callie becomes compelling because she actively investigates, risks her position, and changes under pressure.
Power within limits
Agency becomes most compelling when it exists inside social constraints. A female character doesn’t need unlimited power to be active; in fact, limitations often reveal character more clearly.
In The Serpent Bearer, the WWII setting includes political danger, buried secrets, and global conflict stretching from Hollywood to the Yucatan. In that world, women are often unable to act openly, and so their power depends on secrecy, reputation, timing, and disguise.
This kind of “soft” power is a form of resistance. Resistance is not always a speech, weapon, or public stand. Sometimes it’s arranging information, protecting a vulnerable person, concealing a motive, or inhabiting a role that society dismisses as harmless. The Hollywood screenwriter, Grace, is especially symbolic of indirect power: a writer who understands narrative, performance, misdirection, and people’s motivations. Those skills can become tools of survival and influence.
In Del Rio, Callie’s limitations are different but equally important. As a district attorney, she has institutional authority, yet she’s also trapped by family loyalty, political ambition, and the social hierarchy of a Central Valley town dominated by wealth and farming power.
But her strategy changes as the story develops. Callie begins by wondering how to leverage her new post for her political future. By the end, she’s more concerned with helping others. That shift is agency in motion: both Callie and the plot expose corruption, yet Callie decides who she will become.
Choice under threat
A character’s autonomy matters most when the only options carry danger. And in stories like The Serpent Bearer and Del Rio, choice is rarely uncomplicated. Characters are surrounded by espionage, violence, trafficking, political pressure, family secrets, and moral compromise. Rosenthal asks her characters to confront their worst fears and take courageous action, with the world they know and the people they love at stake.
That kind of pressure creates consequence. If a person lies, someone may live. If she hesitates, someone may disappear. If she investigates, she may expose her own family. If she loves, trusts, or forgives the wrong person, she may endanger herself. Callie’s pursuit of the truth in Del Rio places her against powerful people, including her own politically connected family circle.
In these situations, resolve can be more important than fearlessness. But active women in fiction do not have to be invincible. They can be frightened, compromised, ambitious, grieving, or wrong. Solly Meisner in The Serpent Bearer may be the named spy, but Grace, Estelle, and Izzy’s agency preserves memory, reveals truth, and complicates the moral landscape.
In the end, strong agency depends on trusting the reader. Writers don’t need to explain every moral conflict or underline every brave act; readers recognize courage and female agency when they see it. Women who act, not react, simply need meaningful choices, real consequences, and the narrative room to change the story.