Strong Female Character

Strong Female Character is a 2023 memoir by Fern Brady, an Irish-Scottish comedian. Brady was diagnosed with autism in 2021 at the age of thirty-five, and Strong Female Character chronicles her experiences as an undiagnosed child and young adult through the lens of feminism. The memoir’s audiobook edition, narrated by Brady herself, was awarded the 2024 British Book Award for best nonfiction audiobook of the year.

This guide refers to the 2023 Kindle edition of the text, published by Brazen.

Content Warning: This guide contains discussions of self-harm, suicidal ideation, sexual violence (including rape), eating disorders, domestic violence, medical neglect, sex work, and ableism.

Summary

Fern Brady (referred to within the text by her first name) is raised in the small Scottish town of Bathgate, and she can tell from a young age that she is somehow different from most of the people around her. She recalls struggling intensely with socializing as a child and the anxiety associated with her early realizations about being different, a feeling that would accompany her throughout life. Her parents communicate to her that she is “very, very clever but also very, very bad,” not knowing what to make of her strange behaviors (13). Young and impressionable, Fern accepts these labels without question, internalizing a notion of herself as fundamentally inadequate. At school, she is subjected to similarly negative messaging, enduring “friendships” with other children who bully her for her differences and hostility from educators who expect her to learn in the same ways as other children. Despite this adversity, Fern knows that getting an education may be her only shot at escaping Bathgate, and she becomes an exceptionally advanced student of foreign languages in the hopes of receiving a language scholarship at university.

Starting as an early teen, Fern begins to self-harm in response to extreme stress about doing well in school. When doctors prescribe her antidepressants, her symptoms only get worse, and she eventually overdoses. These incidents culminate in her parents sending her to a medical facility for mentally ill teens called Westleigh Way, which claims to be a nurturing and supportive environment but is actually repressive and neglectful. Fern’s friends at Westleigh Way struggle with self-harm and suicidal thoughts, and it is clear to her that the medical professionals there are more interested in policing them than treating them. After leaving the facility, she is preyed upon sexually by several adults, including a married couple. Rather than responding to these situations in a protective way, Fern’s mother repeatedly kicks her out of the family home. Fern is forced to rely on the kindness of her friends’ families for shelter. Eventually, she leaves Bathgate altogether, moving in with an adult boyfriend in Edinburgh the summer before school starts.

As an undergraduate at the University of Edinburgh, Fern finds herself insufficiently funded, despite receiving a scholarship to study foreign languages. She also finds herself embroiled in an abusive relationship with another student named John and struggles to separate herself from him. After one argument, John strangles her before attempting to suffocate her with a pillow. Even though Fern initially gets a restraining order against him and presses charges, John convinces her to write a letter to the courts asking for leniency on his behalf. The judge decreases the severity of his charges and fines him only £200. Increasingly stressed by her circumstances, Fern overdoses again on antidepressants, and John leaves her while she is in the hospital.

In order to pay the bills, she decides to work as a stripper. In retrospect, she realizes that the working conditions of stripping were particularly attractive to her at the time because of her autism; the dim lighting was sensorily gentle, and the job’s demand for a heightened performance of femininity was similar to the masking she already did on a daily basis. She writes about how it is common for women with autism to become sex workers and how this fact is frequently ignored in popular depictions of sex work, despite its cruciality.

In her last year at university, Fern’s endeavors as a columnist at the student newspaper begin to pay off, and she becomes head editor. The pressure of juggling this responsibility with her other school work and stripping is unsustainable, but she knows that without her stripping income, she will have to drop out. In a turn of luck, the administration recognizes that she is owed four years’ worth of funding, and she is suddenly able to quit stripping. In this same year, she tries standup comedy for the first time while on a writing assignment for a local arts magazine. She finds the experience enthralling and decides she wants to pursue a career in comedy, despite the doubts of her family and then-boyfriend.

As her comedy career takes off, Fern finds herself struggling in several new ways. Allistic conventions of professional networking confuse her, and she relies on her boyfriend Conor to explain what conversations with colleagues mean. When making initial appearances on the UK’s circuit of panel comedy shows, she has an unintentionally off-putting presence, and television producers do not invite her back. At home, she becomes increasingly reliant on Xanax to relax, and she finds herself smashing up her furniture on a regular basis to cope with meltdowns. Conor begins to suspect that Fern has autism and begins implementing comforting strategies based on his independent research. When Fern finds a self-help book for partners of people with autism in the mail, she finally decides to seek a diagnosis. After a long process that includes interviews with both Conor and her mother, a psychiatrist confirms that she is autistic, as Fern had always suspected.

At first, Fern does not know how to respond to her diagnosis. She struggles with feelings of self-disgust. As time goes on, though, the clarity provided by her diagnosis allows her to begin addressing her meltdowns and understand parts of her life story that have always seemed unexplainable. She even begins to move toward forgiving her mother, who she now realizes was in a very difficult position, parenting a child whose needs she did not understand. Reflecting on the ways in which her mother supported her intense interest in languages and music as a child, Fern has the revelation that she was trying her best. Although the meltdowns continue and her familial relationships are still difficult, the memoir is ended on this positive note.