Fictional people, of course. *cough*
First on the list (but not necessarily most smack-worthy), Catherine from Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë. “Nelly, I am Heathcliff.” Right. So you married the pusillanimous twit next door instead. Why, exactly? Not that Edgar’s any worse, but hey, I’m not the one who says she’s in love with Heathcliff.
Next up is Holden Caulfield from Catcher in the Rye by J D Salinger. Apparently Catcher in the Rye is one of those love-it-or-hate-it books? Well, I don’t love it. I believe I’ve mentioned this before.
Holden may have a genuine point about everyone being phoney, but when he’s compulsively lying to everyone he meets, his repeated claims that phoniness makes him sick ring a little hollow.
Then there’s Scarlett O’Hara (from Gone With The Wind by Margaret Mitchell). Again with the being in love with one man and marrying another! Or in this case, a number of others.
A friend of mine, once called upon to summarise Gone With The Wind, described it as “there’s this woman who marries three different guys”. The American Civil War didn’t even rate a mention…
I watched the film version with another friend, and we took a walk in the intermission – just after “As God is my witness, I’ll never be hungry again”.
All sounds very stirring and heroic, but out in the fresh air you realise she’s basically saying “I’m going to look out for number one, regardless of what it costs anyone else.” And to think Margaret Mitchell originally planned to call her Pansy…
Just for a change, a man who loves one woman but tries to marry another. St John Rivers is the cousin of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre. The man’s stone cold, and not in a tinsel-faced vampire kind of a way. The one love he has he ruthlessly extinguishes, and then, having told his new-found cousin that he will be her brother, he tries spiritual blackmail to get her to marry him. Not because he loves her but because he thinks she’d be useful: “You were formed for labour, not for love.”
A verse from the Good Book for you, Mr. Missionary: “If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.” Perfectly played by Andrew Bicknell in the 1983 miniseries, in my opinion.
Looking back, I see I am railing against the separation of love and marriage. Well, horse and carriage, people…
What do you think? Is Scarlett your heart’s darling? Or do you think Holden is merely misunderstood? Who are the characters that bug you – that you’d like to slap upside the head (or even rewrite out altogether)? All opinions welcomed!
“tinsel-faced vampire” Oh this made me chuckle. You do have a flare for description.
Apparently, Scarlet O’Hara was based, loosely, on a woman whose estate is now a University in my home town, and who’s name (sometimes first, sometimes last) is on several streets and locals in the city, and even on my best friend (who’s a descendant). Her name was Adelicia Acklen. https://tennesseeencyclopedia.net/entry.php?rec=1
By all accounts, she was anything but boring, though I’m not sure I’d have liked to meet her. My friend who is her namesake is, however, an awesome person. 😉
I would like to smack Mr. Rochester upside the head (or kick him repeatedly). He is selfish and manipulative and even abusive. But then, I’ve never been a fan of byronic heroes.
Hmm. Other people I would like to smack. Thranduil, in The Hobbit. Self-righteous mean meanie. And to be fair, Thorin, at certain times. I would like to smack nearly EVERYBODY in the Wheel of Time series, but then that’s a big reason why I stopped reading it at around book 5. I realized that it was a little silly to waste time reading books when I felt like rooting for the bad guys simply because the good-guys annoyed me so badly.
There are a lot of minor characters in Jane Austen’s novels that I would like to smack, but I am not sure it counts if we are supposed to want to smack them.
That’s one of the things I like about Jane Eyre – Rochester gets smacked by a burning building. And it serves him jolly well right.
Adelicia sounds like a formidable woman – I can’t see Scarlett coping with ten pregnancies and complex business decisions. On the other hand, dying on a shopping trip seems very Scarlett indeed!
Lol! True.
Indeed!