Beeinflusst u.a. von Robert E. Howards "Sword & Sorcery"-Kurzgeschichten, wurde Jirel von Joiry als weltweit erste Heldin des Genres gewissermassen zum Archtypus der starken Frauenfigur in Fantasy-Pulp, aus einer Zeit (1930er Jahre), in der das Genre noch ein Nischendasein fristete und hauptsächlich von Männern beackert wurde.
Jedoch ist sie keine weibliche Version von Conan dem Cimmerier und schlägt auch nicht in die gleiche Kerbe wie die spätere Comicfigur Red Sonja. Jirel zeichnet sich dadurch aus, dass sie mit Hilfe von Willenskraft und Intuition triumphiert, was aber nicht heißt, dass sie nie zum Schwert greifen muss. Sie entspricht zwar dem Ideal der aktiven Adelsfrau, jedoch wird sie von ihren Gefühlen hin- und hergerissen (keine stoische Übergestalt), zudem stellt Moore sie auch nicht ohne Makel auf ein Podest. Das macht sie greifbar.
Swords & Sorcery: Stories of Heroic Fantasy, 1963, p. 131. [I]
- "Black God's Kiss" (Oktober 1934);
- "Black God's Shadow" (Dezember 1934);
- "Jirel Meets Magic" (Juli 1935);
- "The Dark Land" (Januar 1936);
- "Quest of the Starstone" (November 1937);
- "Hellsgarde" (April 1939).
Jirel of Joiry (Texts to Borrow)
Weird Tales, Vol. 24, No. 4 (1934-10)
Guillaume's white teeth clicked on a startled oath.
He stared. Joiry's lady glared back at him from between
her captors, wild red hair tousled, wild lion-yellow eyes
ablaze.
"God curse you!" snarled the lady of Joiry between
clenched teeth. "God blast your black heart!"
Guillaume scarcely heard her. He was still staring, as
most men stared when they first set eyes upon Jirel of
Joiry. She was tall as most men, and as savage as the
wildest of them, and the fall of Joiry was bitter enough
to break her heart as she stood snarling curses up at her
tall conqueror. The face above her mail might not have
been fair in a woman's head-dress, but in the steel
setting of her armor it had a biting, sword-edge beauty
as keen as the flash of blades. The red hair was short
upon her high, defiant head, and the yellow blaze of her
eyes held fury as a crucible holds fire.
Jirel of Joiry drew rein at the edge of the hill and sat
awhile in silence, looking out and down. So this was Hells-
garde! She had seen it many times in her mind's eye as she
saw it now from the high hill in the yellow light of sunset
that turned every pool of the marshes to shining glass. The
long causeway to the castle stretched out narrowly between
swamps and reeds up to the gate of that grim and eery
fortress set alone among the quicksands. This same castle
in the marshes, seen at evening from the high hilltop, had
haunted her dreams for many nights now.
"You'll find it by sunset only, my lady," Guy of Garlot
had told her with a sidelong grin marring his comely dark
face. "Mists and wilderness ring it round, and there's magic
in the swamps about Hellsgarde. Magic—and worse, if leg-
ends speak truth. You'll never come upon it save at evening."
Sitting her horse now on the hilltop, she remembered the
grin in his black eyes and cursed him in a whisper. There
was such a silence over the whole evening world that by
instinct she dared not speak aloud. Dared not? It was no
normal silence. Bird-song did not break it, and no leaves
rustled. She huddled her shoulders together a little under the
tunic of link-mail she wore and prodded her horse forward
down the hill.
Guy of Garlot—Guy of Garlot! The hoofbeats thumped
out the refrain all the way downhill. Black Guy with his
thinly smiling lips and his slanted dark eyes and his unnatural
comeliness—unnatural because Guy, within, was ugly as sin
itself. It seemed no design of the good God that such sinful-
ness should wear Guy's dark beauty for a fleshly garment.
The horse hesitated at the head of the causeway which
stretched between the marsh pools toward Hellsgarde.
