Female character deaths

Women character deaths exemplify the problems with female characters generally: They are often not fleshed out as real people; as stand-ins for collections of stereotypes, archetypes, and plot functions, their deaths are also treated as symbols and plot functions.

See:

• women in refrigerators
• death by childbirth - of course, because women are seen largely as childbearers and mothers, death by childbirth is a preoccupation of writers, even when the death is wholly unrealistic (e.g., Star Wars Episode 1)
• women die so men can take revenge