Monday, June 24, 2013

Do female characters have to be likable?

I'd go with a solid "no," but that readers are less likely to accept an unlikeable female protagonist than a  male one doesn't surprise me, and that marketing has a lot to do with it surprises me even less. From Writer Unboxed:
Much has been written about the “likeability” quandary of literary characters. The Publishers Weekly interview with Claire Messud about her new novel The Woman Upstairs resurrected this debate. When the interviewer mentioned she wouldn’t want to be friends with Messud’s protagonist, Nora, Messud shot back, “For heaven’s sake, what kind of question is that? Would you want to be friends with Humbert Humbert? Would you want to be friends with Mickey Sabbath? Saleem Sinai? Hamlet? Krapp? Oedipus? Oscar Wao? Antigone? Raskolnikov? Any of the characters in The Corrections?…If you’re reading to find friends, you’re in deep trouble. We read to find life, in all its possibilities. The relevant question isn’t ‘is this a potential friend for me?’ but ‘is this character alive?’” 
When I first read her response, I felt an inward divide between my perspectives as both a writer and a reader. The writer in me thrilled. Right on, Claire! Tell it like it is! As a debut author of a women’s fiction novel, The Repeat Year, I find my characters are often judged based on “the friend factor”—would the reader want to be friends with Olive, Kerrigan, Sherry, and the others? Or as Tessa Hadley put it in The New Yorker, “If ever I go to talk to book groups when they’re reading my book, this likeability issue is always what comes up—‘Oh, I didn’t like her’, ‘she’s so selfish,’ or ‘I couldn’t find anyone to like.’ Or—more comforting for the author but, in the end, part of the same problem—‘I really liked your character.’” Many readers review books based on how pleasant their time spent with the characters was and if they morally agree with the characters’ choices, and this can be a problematic disconnect between readers and writers.
Every time I set foot in a writer's workshop, I brace myself for the same criticism: "I just don't like this character." Or "I just don't relate to her." I wonder what people are reading, because it's rare that I "relate" to characters in books, ever. Maybe I just gravitate toward bad eggs: those undeniably flawed characters whose lessons don't have to be tied up in neat little bows by the end of the story. There are plenty of fictional examples of the great male "anti-hero," but it's a little harder to swallow a female one. Sitting on my hard drive right now, I have a former child prodigy who's also a compulsive liar; a punk who hooks up random strangers in bathrooms; and a bitter, aging hippy photographer. I don't want to be friends with any of these people -- and I created them!

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