I am currently enjoying an excellent Creative Writing Course (Online) with Stephen Carver and the UnThank School of Norwich. It is inspiring and very well constructed. Excellent support from Stephen Carver as tutor. I can thoroughly recommend. One exercise asked us to consider characters who had ‘amazed’ us or the reverse. I did the exercise spontaneously as here are my favourites and the villains!
Elizabeth Bennet and Darcy: ‘now despise me if you dare’ ..gorgeous. Austen understood irresistible attraction. Fascination becomes love. Enlarges human spirit and generosity. .
Jane Eyre: Love her rage. She talks as only a shy person could. Still makes me cry.
Mrs Ramsay; Exasperating but solid and tender. Great in a crisis.
Kezia in Katherine Mansfield NZealand tales. Her own person. Love scene in Doll’s House where she befriends the ignored children and KM simply says’ she swung out'( on the gate)
Emilia- best thing in Othello. Brave feisty and brings catharsis!
Gatsby: loves so big, it kills him.
Dick Swiveller. Because he saves the Marchioness in Old Curiosity Shop through reimagining her future, even her name grows. ‘Small Servant’ becomes the Marchioness.’
Not a fan of Henry James’ cowardly men. Wings of a Dove should have been fabulous. He kills any attractions. Doom laden thanatos!
Almost sorry for James in Tobin’s brilliant fictional biography, The Master, but then nothing happens. Kisses no one.
Levin In Anna Karenina. Marries silly Kitty, and misses chance with Anna, ( my reading I admit is bit against the narrative purpose!) Too much working on the land:) Authors directing characters’ love lives I fear.
Othello: Find I want to kill him. Dim. Violent. Great lines never reach his brain.
