Ashlinn, I love unlikeable female MCs.

Barb Covett in Notes on a Scandal, the lover in The Reader, or the mother in We Need to Talk About Kevin. They are interesting. So long as their unpleasantness or antisocial behaviour is believable, and the reader gets an opportunity to sit inside their skin for a while, it's far more fun to hang out with them than Bridget Jones's cousin-alike.

C

I tend to have to like the main character. Certainly most of my favourite books have characters I like.

I don't think it's necessary - if a book has a fantastic story or an interesting premise I can forgive it a crappy main character. And I agree that being able to sympathise with them is more important than actually wanting to be their best friend. In children's fiction, especially, the main character is often a stroppy kid who you wouldn't want to babysit for - but if you can read it and think 'yes! i used to feel exactly like that' and if you can want good things to happen to them, rather than wanting to strangle them, it doesn't matter.

Stephen King said he had great difficulty writing Carrie because he disliked the MC so much. And although he understood her better by the end of the book, it was a real struggle to finish it because of these feelings of dislike/distaste.

I like interesting characters. I wonder if the problem with an 'unlikeable' character is that they're maybe a bit one dimensional? If someone is always cold-hearted about everything, that would strike me as rather unnatural and unconvincing. A character might be cold-hearted with her work colleagues and some members of her family but be a real softie over her cat and be pleasant to her next-door-neighbour. To me that would be more realistic and provide some depth. Human beings tends to have inconsistencies, which is what makes them human.

On the other hand, I've discussed books with female readers and now and again been rather shocked about how moralistic some of them can be in their judgements about characters. In particular, mothers seem to have great difficulty allowing themselves to feel any empathy towards 'unmotherly' mothers. (It's okay in a less central character, but doesn't seem to be acceptable in the MC.)

Someone mentioned Notes on a Scandal: I really enjoyed that book but I didn't find the older character completely unlikeable as I could understand why she was as she was. She was complex and interesting, IMO.

Surely the challenge of writing is to make unlikeable characters likeable, isn't that the 'only connect' thing? To understand how people are as they are.

I suppose there is the sub-class of charismatic evil MC, such as Hannabel Lecter and Dracular.

Ashlinn

You may well be correct in assuming that readers are likely to be less tolerant of an unlikeable female character than of a male equivalent. Perhaps we are programmed to expect the feminine anima not to be abrasive. It’s a difficult one but, if one’s motivation for a book is centred around an unlikeable character (who may well be a lot more interesting than a likeable one), then one should go for it.

The real problem with an unlikeable main character (as others have already commented) is the difficulty of keeping readers on board once they realise that they are unable to empathise with the character. The way in which this is sometimes best dealt with is to have the principal characters observed by a nominal main character from whose point of view the narration takes place. These characters may perform a relatively neutral role, like Nick Jenkins in Powell’s A Dance to the Music of Time, Guy Crouchback in Waugh’s Sword of Honour or Nick Carraway in The Great Gatsby, but the reader can identify with them as they observe the more interesting but less sympathetic characters and shape the readers’ reactions to them. Furthermore, in thinking or wondering about the main characters, these observers can unobtrusively explore the reasons why the unlikeable characters are behaving as they are, possibly opening the way for an understanding of why they are as they are and for a degree of empathy or identification with them on the part of the reader.

That way, the MC can behave as repugnantly or exasperatingly as you like, without losing the reader, whose loyalty lies with the observer.

Chris

I think there's a huge difference between unlikeable, and engaging in the proper sense. I think Scarlett O'Hara's a classic example of the unlikeable but engaging, and I suspect it's because she behaves in forceful, selfish ways that women, in particular, are trained not to do: it's like cheering on the vengeful dumped women who do terrible things to their ex's suits or whatever, even tho' we'd never do such things ourselves. (Would we?). Cathartic, that's the word I want. You identify with her to that extent, while thinking she's behaving badly. Whereas as someone said (sorry, only skimmed the thread) the whingey feeble type of unlikeable isn't something most of us would like to be, or identify with.

If you say someone's 'likeable' in real life it does always sound like damning with faint praise, but in fiction I don't think 'likeable' need just be fluffy or saintly or boring. 'Care-about-able' might be a better word.

But I also think Comprendre tout c'est pardoner tout (sorry, probably spelt that wrong) and so you can make just about any character engaging for at least some readers, if there's a really organic sense of how and why they're like that.

But just as some people love having edgy, disturbing Expressionist pictures hung at angles on their walls, and others magnificent, grand Classical images carefully balanced and spaced, you're always going to get a range of tastes on this one, because it is about taste.

Emma

Hi Chris,

I didn't really mean that a unlikeable female character is more unacceptable than a male one. What I meant was that having a feeling of 'warmth' (this is Rosy's definition of 'likeable' and I agree with it) towards the main character of a novel seems to me to be more important for a female reader (generally speaking) than a male one. I can understand this. For example, the character of Mary in 'The Grass is Singing' by Doris Lessing is totally unlikeable, I felt no warmth towards her at all and she was not in the least 'engaging' either. Nevertheless I thought it was an amazing book with harsh but truthful characterisations, wonderful writing, etc etc. Still I hesitate to read another of DL's books because of that lack of warmth.

Emma, the use of the word likeable is a bit of a trap because I certainly don't mean 'fluffy' or 'saintly'. In fact perfection is terribly off-putting. I mean unlikeable in the instinctive way we sometimes dislike someone we know.

As for empathy, do you think that there is such a thing as positive empathy and negative empathy? i.e. that we recognise things in a character that we don't want to acknowledge exist in ourselves. Positive empathy being when we recognise things that make us say 'oh yes, I do/think/feel exactly that'. But it's harder to accept vindictiveness, bitchiness, coldness, agressiveness, violence, racism or whatever as part of our own make-up. A poor analogy: it's comforting to see ourselves in a soft-focus, flattering mirror but it can be very tough to keep looking under very bright light when every imperfection and pore is highlighted and visible.

I'm not sure you have to like a character - but they have to be interesting?

I'm all for twisting expectations - having an anti hero or a villain who isn't all bad? One of my favourite characters - always great fun to write - does dreadful things but is 'damaged' and has limited awareness of the consequences of her actions...

It's interesting that often an anti hero has a strong female character (or 2) to compensate/balance - like Artemis Fowl has Holly and Dill in Scar Night has Rachel - and of course there is the extraordinary Carnival - a brilliantly realised morally ambivalent character - she defies easy categorisation.

Sarah

But Sarah, would it be a problem if you actively disliked the main character?

I'm not sure. The weak answer is I don't know - it depends.

I don't like the MC in L'Etranger - who could? - but the story is compelling.

Richard III - Steerpike - these characters repel yet fascinate?

I hate manipulative fiction - having my strings pulled - when I can see the strings.

'The president of the immortals had finished his sport with Tess' - yeurch!!!***!

There are characters I've hated - not seen the point of at all - and characters you love to hate? (Alan Rickman - Sheriff of Nottingham - 'bring a friend' - LOL)

I suppose they have to be 'believable' - you have to be convinced that within the constraints of the story - this might just happen - you might behave like that - but if you feel the author is just making the character do something appalling for effect - it doesn't work.

But then how does Shakespeare get away with female characters like Lady Anne and Queen Elizabeth in the great seduction scenes in Richard III? 'I think you killed my sons so I'll let you marry my daughter?'

I suppose - I don't have to like them but I do have to believe in them?

Sarah

These threads get long so I haven't read every word - in a rush - but I think there's a difference between likeability and identification. Personally I have to identify with a protagonist, even if they're unlikeable - though I think it takes more skill to get you to identify with someone unlikeable.

However (since you mentioned gender), my husband says he never identifies with any character, but I think that's rare - that he's just (in a nice way of course) weird.

Good writing can cause the reader to identify with someone they have nothing in common with - like Edmund White making me feel like a gay man in 1950s America, or (in another novel) identifying with a criminal whose morals were completely different to mine.

Deb