[computerlab]

> I don't think she actually did any female protagonists at all.

Of course there's Therese, the well-developed protagonist of The Price of Salt (aka Carol), a lesbian romance. This work and its movie adaptation are the reason she's a gay icon - both are popular and well-loved.

Highsmith published The Price of Salt under a pseudonym after her success with "Strangers on a Train", which is driven by the masculine characters you mention. From what I can tell, The Price of Salt is more directly based on her personal life, or rather her fantasies, and part of the reason she used a pseudonym is that her agent warned her that writing a lesbian novel would be career suicide. Wikipedia has more here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Price_of_Salt "Highsmith described the character of Therese as having come "from my own bones"."

[gabythenerd]

I find the fact that it got popular because of it being one of the only lesbian novels with a somewhat happy ending really interesting. From Wikipedia:

> Because of the happy (or at least, non-tragic) ending which defied the lesbian pulp formula, and because of the unconventional characters who defied stereotypes about female homosexuals, The Price of Salt was popular among lesbians in the 1950s and continued to be with later generations. It was regarded for many years as the only lesbian novel with a happy ending.

Before reading the article I actually only knew Patricia Highsmith from The Price of Salt as it's really popular, even more so after the movie adaptation.

[jillesvangurp]

Interesting, never realized that book even existed.