Hateful Characters

Irritating Characters in Novels

The first character that comes to mind when I think of being irritated is obviously Mr Collins from Pride and Prejudice. Is there any woman alive who doesn’t pity poor Charlotte Lucas who seems to think that her only marriage choice is to take his proposal? We celebrate when Lizzie Bennet refuses him and then to hear that Charlotte has accepted him only 24 hours later is so sad. When we imagine her choices it is a very pragmatic and realistic choice for her, but all I can imagine is being suffocated in a small cottage with him fussing and being ridiculous. The thought of running around to please Lady Catherine De Bourgh and also listening to him sucking up is awful. When Lizzie visits later in the novel, we learn that Charlotte has found a way of living with him by encouraging him to garden and having her own parlour. I would need my own house and would encourage a different hobby – maybe something risky and reckless? I imagine him as a small, stuffy man with slightly greasy hair and a very picky manner. I see him at the table picking with food and reminding me of the scripture at every opportunity. I would commit murder if I had to live with him.

Another irritating character, but in an entirely different way, is the saintly cousin Helen in What Katy Did. I seem to have been brought up with girl’s fiction that involved a character’s period of illness. Of course it is always an illness that teaches something especially for young ladies. Pollyanna has a fall and learns she cannot walk and has to find the meaning in such an awful disability. She has always played ‘The Glad Game’, taught to her by her missionary parents where she has to find the good in every situation. Now she finds it very difficult to understand the lesson in her accident. Similarly Katy has an accident on the garden swing and is unable to walk. She is a very active tomboy of a girl and finds her immobility very difficult. Luckily she has the example of her saintly Cousin Helen. Helen has an illness that means she cannot walk and she has become this ridiculously perfect, religious, patient woman that Katy should be. Helen has found meaning in her illness and uses it to counsel others and be a saintly figure for other young women. She teaches Katy to become a young woman rather than the tomboy she was. Katy’s illness and Helen’s help allow her to be the replacement for her dead mother. Katy becomes a housekeeper and helps her father with the household and the younger children. Helen shows Katy what she should be a quiet, restrained and modest woman rather than the wild tomboy she was. I find this part of the book infuriating. I want to take Helen to the top of a steep hill and let go of her wheelchair. I would like Katy to recover and be the same girl she was, not some facsimile of a saintly walking cliche. It makes me even angrier now that I have my own disability. I want Cousin Helen to drop the odd swear word and be honest about her experience!

Last year I had the most peculiar experience of reading a novel where I hated every single character! I read The Slap for my book group and as it started and worked its way through the different characters points of view I was waiting for someone I could identify or agree with. The book went on and just when I thought I might be getting along with someone they did something that changed my mind. I have never had this reading experience before but I guess it is an honest and realistic way of looking at life. We all have flaws and this novel was consistent with that. There was no one person who stood out as a hero or heroine. I loved the story telling and the moral issue kept the entire reading group talking for hours, but every single character was either irritating or downright hateful! 

Finally, the weirdest reading experience is when you find the heroine of the book so irritating you actually like the villain of the piece. I was reminded of this yesterday on Twitter when I was reading the tweets for #bookadayuk. If you haven’t come across it, #bookadayuk is a list created by a publisher or book organisation that gives you a prompt every day of the month and gets everyone tweeting about books. It is a great way to get conversation flowing and also publicises some of their books. At the beginning of the week it was about heroes/heroines and anti-heroes/heroines and someone tweeted about Zoe Heller’s novel Notes on a Scandal. Sometimes when you’re tweeting it is easy to go blank and forget certain books but this one is a classic example of a really irritating heroine. Sheba is a teacher with children and a husband who becomes infatuated with a boy at her school. The novel is told in her eyes as we see how she is instantly attracted to him and starts an affair. It is interesting how this doesn’t seem such a breach of ethics and trust when you’re reading, but I found the film very uncomfortable viewing because the characters were visible and the age difference looked wrong. Cate Blanchett actually made this heroine seem interesting and engaging, but in the book Sheba seems to drift ethereally from home to a sexual relationship with a fifteen year old boy. It’s as if she’s living in a dream world simply not comprehending how wrong her actions are. It takes the villain of the piece, fellow teacher Barbara; to make it clear to her that what she is doing is wrong. Barbara is an evil wake-up call who says it like it is, a bored teacher having sex with a fifteen year old boy. Barbara takes action where Sheba seems to drift from one situation to the next without any thought for consequences in her marriage and with her children, or for the boy she is having the affair with. Barbara forces her to see it and blackmails her into take action and stop things before they go too far. She becomes obsessed with Sheba and very dangerous, but it is Barbara’s actions that sometimes seem saner than Sheba’s glassy eyed denial about the situation she’s in. What a great novel, but Sheba is completely beyond any understanding. She makes me want to shake her and I guess that makes me no different than the villain!