I don’t have a hard time with unlikeable characters. I can understand curmudgeons. The characters I have hard time with are lovers who are so self-involved that they destroy lives around them. Romeo and Juliet. Wuthering Heights. A book that I just recently finished called A Castle in Romagna. These characters baffle me.
For some reason, Romeo and Juliet is taught to junior high students here in the States. I used to joke that it was supposed to turn teenagers off of dramatic and idiotic grand gestures. The problem is that teenagers will always do dramatic and idiotic things because that’s what teenagers do. Years later, it seems like people can only remember the beautiful words and completely forget the ending. Romeo and Juliet is invariably used by people as shorthand for romance—unless they say it around English majors, in which case, they’re corrected faster than the people who call the monster Frankenstein.
I’ve been thinking about why I don’t like these characters. Perhaps it’s the sudden, overwhelming feelings that the characters profess to. Wuthering Heights has lines that I found hilarious when I read them. (“I am Heathcliff!”) While authors usually do sterling work explaining curmudgeons’ backstories, avengers’ righteous anger, depressed characters’ woes, but I’ve yet to find an author who can adequately explain great passion. I thought that both Heathcliff and Cathy could both have done better.
Just as well authors don’t try to write these stories very often. I much prefer novels where characters fall in love more organically, when they don’t respond to setbacks with plans involving poisons, and where I’m much more likely to believe they’ll stay together beyond the last page. I am fairly convinced that Juliet and Romeo and Cathy and Heathcliff would’ve broken up if they’d actually gotten together. Give me the characters with flaws, insecurities, and unperfect looks. Those books go to my heart faster than anything else.
Since it’s Valentine’s and I’ve been slagging off the great romances for most of this post, here’s a list of believable love stories I actually, well, loved:
- Castle of Water, by Dane Hucklebridge
- These is My Words, by Nancy Turner
- Persuasion, by Jane Austen
“I am fairly convinced that Juliet and Romeo and Cathy and Heathcliff would’ve broken up if they’d actually gotten together.” > me too! I loved Wuthering Heights when I was a teenager, but to me they weren’t real people living real lives whatsoever. I have yet to meet people like that, and IMHO I don’t think I would get along with them anyway. It’s better that they stay safely stuck in the pages of a book.
Agree. One of the funniest things I ever read was in one of the Jasper Fforde Thursday Next books. At one point, the protagonist had to assist with therapy sessions for the characters of Wuthering Heights between the chapters.