Characters I aspire to - some thoughts
I first saw this idea on Aoife's Pretty Purple Polka Dots blog, but it was the brainchild of Steph from alittlebutalot. It appealed to me as an interesting way to think about fictional characters.
When I started to think about characters I'd like to change places with, I first turned to my favourite fictional people. This was a mistake. I love Mildred Lathbury, heroine (for want of a better term) of Barbara Pym's Excellent Women - but would I want to be a woman with almost no money, living in a small flat and sharing a bathroom with other tenants, especially tenants like Rocky and Helena, who put upon me whenever they need something but otherwise go off to lead their own, much more glamorous, lives? No I would not.
Similarly Janet, Elspeth Barker's unforgettable creation in O Caledonia, is one of the best characters I have discovered so far this year, but even though her imagination soars to inspiring heights, and even though she lives in a remote castle in the north of Scotland, surrounded by both wild landscapes and wildlife, Janet leads a miserable and largely misunderstood life as the misfit teenager in a family of hearty outdoors types. And no, she doesn't have a better time at school either. So I think I'd decline an invitation to move to Auchnasaugh.
So who would make a good literary exchange partner? Here are some:
1. Mrs Madrigal - Tales of the City by Armistead Maupin
Anna Madrigal is the landlady of a boarding establishment on Barbary Lane, San Francisco. She presides over a house full of characters, has a charming ground floor apartment of her own, floats about in beautiful robes tending her courtyard garden, and has soirees with interesting people. Into the house moves Mary Anne Singleton, an innocent young girl from Ohio, and it is partly through Mary Anne's eyes that we are introduced to the other tenants, from troubled Mona Ramsey to creepy Norman Williams and lovely Michael Tolliver (Mouse). And although Mrs M has as many secrets as the other inhabitants of Barbary Lane, I still think she lives a pretty enviable life. She's cool, she's exotic, she's ever calm and everyone loves her. Mrs Madrigal's welcoming gift to Mary Anne is a joint taped to her door. This is San Francisco in 1978. I wish I'd been there.
2. Kate Fansler - No Word from Winifred (and many others) by Amanda Cross
Amanda Cross was the pen name of the distinguished Columbia academic Carolyn Heilbrun, who wrote the Kate Fansler mysteries for fun, but also used them to discuss many issues of the late 20th century. Like Kate, Heilbrun came from a wealthy New York family, and again like her, Heilbrun was a committed feminist. I first discovered her books when I was a student myself, and for me they spoke to the radical feminist politics of the time in a unique and entertaining way.
Kate is a smart, rich, well connected, independent academic in the English department of a New York university - and also, as luck would have it, married to the wonderful Reed, a successful lawyer who worships the ground she walks on, is able to keep up with her quick fire, literary-reference ridden, conversation, and provides handy information to help with her unofficial investigations, all of which are solved only by thinking and talking, almost always in a highly academic - and hugely witty - manner.
Kate has no time for children (Heilbrun actually had three), but does have a plethora of adolescent nephews and nieces belonging to her very respectable siblings. These give her access to the student world of her college, and of course all disaffected youths like nothing better than to pour their hearts out to an uber-cool aunt who is nothing like their boring parents.
Reed and Kate live in a fabulous Manhattan apartment, he mixes her a Martini the minute she walks in the door, she smokes like a chimney, eats incredible meals - and yet remains slim and elegant at all times. She even has a summer house in the country (this first appears in The Question of Max) that Reed has given her so that she can 'be alone', the lucky woman. I think Heilbrun must have had a lot of fun imagining herself as Kate, and I'd be more than happy to trade places with her.
3. Cassandra Mortmain - I Capture The Castle by Dodie Smith
So opens this wonderful novel, which Smith wrote when she was living in California during the Second World War and feeling terribly homesick. It is, of course, an idealised version of an eccentric family's life in the 1930s English countryside, but I doubt there are many readers who haven't wanted to change places with the heroine, Cassandra.
Although Smith tells us repeatedly that the Mortmains are impoverished, theirs is of course a very middle class poverty; they live in a tumbledown old castle in Kent, not a neglected tenement flat in the nether regions of London, they still have 'help' in the house, and Cassandra and her sister Rose spend their time either bemoaning their lot or chasing after the wealthy American brothers, Simon and Neil Cotton, who have just inherited nearby Scoatney Hall, and thus become the family's landlords.
Meanwhile James Mortmain is a formerly successful author now suffering from writer's block (hence no money) and his second wife Topaz is a Bohemian artist's model who likes to commune with nature, often swimming in the moat with no clothes on (Tara Fitzgerald gave a perfect performance as Topaz in the 2003 film adaptation.)
But this is not a tale of wicked stepmothers and ill-treated children - Topaz is a good egg, as keen as the rest of the family to get her husband writing again - and whatever they may think to the contrary Rose and Cassandra have a pretty nice life. Romantic involvement with the Cotton brothers inevitably leads to all sorts of complications, and Cassandra does end up making a bit of a sacrifice for Rose's happiness, but the ending is intentionally ambiguous, and we come away knowing that Cassandra is going to have an interesting future. I think a swap with her would be great, if only to get to live in that castle - and if I can't be Cassandra, Topaz would do almost as well, so long as nobody saw me in the moat.
4. Belinda Bede - Some Tame Gazelle by Barbara Pym
Now here is a Pym character with whom a swap really might be fun. Belinda and Harriet are spinsters living in a small Oxfordshire village. Harriet is loud and opinionated, Belinda much milder; their comfortable life (they have a private income, a servant called Emily and a dressmaker, Miss Prior) consists of a round of social engagements - 'calls', teas, sherry parties, suppers featuring dishes like boiled chicken and 'shapes' (blancmange) - plus knitting, planning meals, organising Miss Prior, (food and fashion both being interests of Pym's) and regular churchgoing. The latter is important to them both, but for different reasons. Belinda has 'loved (the vicar, Archdeacon Hoccleve) well and faithfully for over thirty years', a love that has never been acted upon in any way, since the self-obsessed, lazy and pompous Henry is married to Agatha. Harriet, meanwhile, likes nothing more than to fuss over the latest curate, whoever he may be; curates are her hobby.
The village year rolls by, visitors (including the brilliantly named Bishop Grote) come and go. Both sisters receive marriage proposals, both turn them down - because in the end they prefer their cosy, eventful life together, and who can blame them? Belinda may occasionally pine for Henry, but really she knows he would be terrible to live with and much easier to keep as a fantasy;
'her passion had mellowed into a comfortable feeling, more like the cosiness of a winter evening by the fire than the uncertain rapture of a spring morning.'
She despairs at Harriet's indiscretions, but the two of them actually jog along quite happily, just as, on retirement, Pym herself did with her sister Hilary, in their own cottage in Finstock. I can imagine being very happy in Belinda's comfortable shoes.
So those are four characters whose lives appeal to me. Who would yours be?
When I started to think about characters I'd like to change places with, I first turned to my favourite fictional people. This was a mistake. I love Mildred Lathbury, heroine (for want of a better term) of Barbara Pym's Excellent Women - but would I want to be a woman with almost no money, living in a small flat and sharing a bathroom with other tenants, especially tenants like Rocky and Helena, who put upon me whenever they need something but otherwise go off to lead their own, much more glamorous, lives? No I would not.
Similarly Janet, Elspeth Barker's unforgettable creation in O Caledonia, is one of the best characters I have discovered so far this year, but even though her imagination soars to inspiring heights, and even though she lives in a remote castle in the north of Scotland, surrounded by both wild landscapes and wildlife, Janet leads a miserable and largely misunderstood life as the misfit teenager in a family of hearty outdoors types. And no, she doesn't have a better time at school either. So I think I'd decline an invitation to move to Auchnasaugh.
So who would make a good literary exchange partner? Here are some:
1. Mrs Madrigal - Tales of the City by Armistead Maupin
Anna Madrigal is the landlady of a boarding establishment on Barbary Lane, San Francisco. She presides over a house full of characters, has a charming ground floor apartment of her own, floats about in beautiful robes tending her courtyard garden, and has soirees with interesting people. Into the house moves Mary Anne Singleton, an innocent young girl from Ohio, and it is partly through Mary Anne's eyes that we are introduced to the other tenants, from troubled Mona Ramsey to creepy Norman Williams and lovely Michael Tolliver (Mouse). And although Mrs M has as many secrets as the other inhabitants of Barbary Lane, I still think she lives a pretty enviable life. She's cool, she's exotic, she's ever calm and everyone loves her. Mrs Madrigal's welcoming gift to Mary Anne is a joint taped to her door. This is San Francisco in 1978. I wish I'd been there.
2. Kate Fansler - No Word from Winifred (and many others) by Amanda Cross
Amanda Cross was the pen name of the distinguished Columbia academic Carolyn Heilbrun, who wrote the Kate Fansler mysteries for fun, but also used them to discuss many issues of the late 20th century. Like Kate, Heilbrun came from a wealthy New York family, and again like her, Heilbrun was a committed feminist. I first discovered her books when I was a student myself, and for me they spoke to the radical feminist politics of the time in a unique and entertaining way.
Kate is a smart, rich, well connected, independent academic in the English department of a New York university - and also, as luck would have it, married to the wonderful Reed, a successful lawyer who worships the ground she walks on, is able to keep up with her quick fire, literary-reference ridden, conversation, and provides handy information to help with her unofficial investigations, all of which are solved only by thinking and talking, almost always in a highly academic - and hugely witty - manner.
Kate has no time for children (Heilbrun actually had three), but does have a plethora of adolescent nephews and nieces belonging to her very respectable siblings. These give her access to the student world of her college, and of course all disaffected youths like nothing better than to pour their hearts out to an uber-cool aunt who is nothing like their boring parents.
Reed and Kate live in a fabulous Manhattan apartment, he mixes her a Martini the minute she walks in the door, she smokes like a chimney, eats incredible meals - and yet remains slim and elegant at all times. She even has a summer house in the country (this first appears in The Question of Max) that Reed has given her so that she can 'be alone', the lucky woman. I think Heilbrun must have had a lot of fun imagining herself as Kate, and I'd be more than happy to trade places with her.
3. Cassandra Mortmain - I Capture The Castle by Dodie Smith
'I am writing this novel with my feet in the kitchen sink'
So opens this wonderful novel, which Smith wrote when she was living in California during the Second World War and feeling terribly homesick. It is, of course, an idealised version of an eccentric family's life in the 1930s English countryside, but I doubt there are many readers who haven't wanted to change places with the heroine, Cassandra.
Although Smith tells us repeatedly that the Mortmains are impoverished, theirs is of course a very middle class poverty; they live in a tumbledown old castle in Kent, not a neglected tenement flat in the nether regions of London, they still have 'help' in the house, and Cassandra and her sister Rose spend their time either bemoaning their lot or chasing after the wealthy American brothers, Simon and Neil Cotton, who have just inherited nearby Scoatney Hall, and thus become the family's landlords.
Meanwhile James Mortmain is a formerly successful author now suffering from writer's block (hence no money) and his second wife Topaz is a Bohemian artist's model who likes to commune with nature, often swimming in the moat with no clothes on (Tara Fitzgerald gave a perfect performance as Topaz in the 2003 film adaptation.)
But this is not a tale of wicked stepmothers and ill-treated children - Topaz is a good egg, as keen as the rest of the family to get her husband writing again - and whatever they may think to the contrary Rose and Cassandra have a pretty nice life. Romantic involvement with the Cotton brothers inevitably leads to all sorts of complications, and Cassandra does end up making a bit of a sacrifice for Rose's happiness, but the ending is intentionally ambiguous, and we come away knowing that Cassandra is going to have an interesting future. I think a swap with her would be great, if only to get to live in that castle - and if I can't be Cassandra, Topaz would do almost as well, so long as nobody saw me in the moat.
4. Belinda Bede - Some Tame Gazelle by Barbara Pym
Now here is a Pym character with whom a swap really might be fun. Belinda and Harriet are spinsters living in a small Oxfordshire village. Harriet is loud and opinionated, Belinda much milder; their comfortable life (they have a private income, a servant called Emily and a dressmaker, Miss Prior) consists of a round of social engagements - 'calls', teas, sherry parties, suppers featuring dishes like boiled chicken and 'shapes' (blancmange) - plus knitting, planning meals, organising Miss Prior, (food and fashion both being interests of Pym's) and regular churchgoing. The latter is important to them both, but for different reasons. Belinda has 'loved (the vicar, Archdeacon Hoccleve) well and faithfully for over thirty years', a love that has never been acted upon in any way, since the self-obsessed, lazy and pompous Henry is married to Agatha. Harriet, meanwhile, likes nothing more than to fuss over the latest curate, whoever he may be; curates are her hobby.
The village year rolls by, visitors (including the brilliantly named Bishop Grote) come and go. Both sisters receive marriage proposals, both turn them down - because in the end they prefer their cosy, eventful life together, and who can blame them? Belinda may occasionally pine for Henry, but really she knows he would be terrible to live with and much easier to keep as a fantasy;
'her passion had mellowed into a comfortable feeling, more like the cosiness of a winter evening by the fire than the uncertain rapture of a spring morning.'
She despairs at Harriet's indiscretions, but the two of them actually jog along quite happily, just as, on retirement, Pym herself did with her sister Hilary, in their own cottage in Finstock. I can imagine being very happy in Belinda's comfortable shoes.
So those are four characters whose lives appeal to me. Who would yours be?
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