Day 15 - Favorite female character

This is even tougher than yesterday's subject.  Because while I'm fond of many female characters, I don't get as attached to them as I do to male characters.  Plus, a lot of the shows I love don't even have regular female characters.  So I could blog about Kaylee Frye, or Willow Rosenberg, or Kate Austin, or Abby Sciuto, or Angela Montenegro, or Kate Wallace, or Yeoman Janice Rand... but I think I'll blog about the one female character that I want to be more like.  And that would be Victoria Barkley (Barbara Stanwyck) from The Big Valley.

Barbara Stanwyck as Victoria Barkley

Victoria is one classy lady.  Whether she's making a shrewd business deal, being kidnapped by outlaws, or reminding one of her children of what it means to be a Barkley, she never loses her dignity and integrity.  She's gutsy, determined, and intelligent.  And she rules the Barkley universe with a suede-gloved fist.

Heath (Lee Majors) and Victoria (Barbara Stanwyck)

But I love her most for her treatment of Heath, her husband Tom's illegitimate son and my favorite character on the show.  When Heath showed up in the pilot episode, claiming he's got a right to the Barkley fortune, she doesn't ignore him, she doesn't order him off the property, and most importantly, she never blames him for her husband's indiscretion.  Once she establishes the validity of his claims, she welcomes him into the family, treats him as one of her own children, and insists everyone else do the same. And she doesn't try to mother Heath -- after all, he had his own mother, even if he never knew his father.  Instead, she befriends him, which is precisely what he needs.

The Barkleys

Plus, Victoria can ride and shoot with the best of them, she helped her husband Tom carve an empire out of the wilderness, and she never lets anyone ramrod her (or anyone else while she's around, either).  Now that's my kind of heroine.