1 Fictional friends
Have you ever re-read a novel several times, eagerly awaited the next book in an ongoing series or indeed watched a TV series multiple times or become addicted to a long-running programme? Of course, sometimes it is the excellent writing or acting that brings us back but more often it is a sense of familiarity, like we are visiting old friends. In other words, we form a relationship with the characters depicted in the story, and it is these relationships that bring us back. It is also, of course, possible to read a novel only once, but become so deeply immersed in the story that you form a relationship with the people within it. This raises an important question, and one which we will look at this week, which is whether our relationships with fictional characters are similar to those we form with real people?
Below, the course authors (Graham, Zoë and Siobhan) reflect on some of the relationships they have built with fictional characters.
Graham
I am a big fan of sci-fi and one of my favourite authors is C.J. Cherryh. I started reading her novels as a teenager and still have them in a cherished place on my bookshelf to this day. Two of her books, Downbelow Station and Merchanter’s Luck, which depict life in an interstellar war-torn future, became firm favourites of mine, and reading either is like returning home to catch up with much loved old friends. Admittedly I am prone to getting lost inside my own fantasies, but I have spent many, many hours not just reading these two novels but imagining myself as a new character within them: maybe an interstellar hitchhiker with a dark origin story that saves the hero before becoming their best friend and falling in love with the shy and unassuming ship’s navigator. These books, and many others, have great meaning to me because of the relationships I have with the characters and because of the time I have spent (mentally) visiting the worlds in the stories. Unlike relationships in the real world, these never become problematic and can be revisited after many years without any awkwardness.
Zoë
I absolutely love the novels in the Bridget Jones series. I discovered them when I was in my thirties, and the protagonist Bridget is a 30-something single woman, working in London. The group of friends who form Bridget’s ‘urban family’, and who convened in the pub most nights after work, reminded me of my own friendship group at the time, but it was Bridget herself who I particularly bonded with. Because the books are quite comic and Bridget repeatedly gets into scrapes, often involving too much wine and not enough self-control, I found her to be light-hearted company. A character who was able to laugh at herself and the ridiculous situations she found herself in. I felt like I knew her, like she could so easily be in my own circle of friends if she were real. I have read all of the novels several times and must have spent countless hours listening to them on audiobooks. Years later they came out in film format, and so of course I had to watch the films too. Even now, at the time of writing in my early fifties, if I am ever feeling like I need cheering up, or have had a stressful day, I would turn back to these books so that I can hang out with Bridget. I can’t imagine it will be much different when I am 70.
Siobhan
It’s the enduring appeal of Jane Austen’s sharp wit and social observation, that brings me back to her books again and again. One character in particular, who draws me in every time, is Charlotte Lucas in Pride and Prejudice. Charlotte is the particular friend of Elizabeth Bennet, the heroine, but Charlotte is not particularly striking in terms of looks, nor are readers given much access to her inner life. We do however see that she is pragmatic and makes key decisions about her own trajectory. Understanding fully the social scaffolding that essentially requires women of no fortune to marry, she becomes engaged to the odious Mr Collins just hours after Elizabeth Bennet rejects him. This leads to an awkward encounter between the friends as Elizabeth cannot believe that Charlotte would marry so far beneath her own level of intelligence. But this is what is so appealing about Charlotte – she is a woman of many parts. When we see her later in the novel, she has carved out quite an independent life, even while being the wife of Collins and having to operate carefully within the patronage of the insufferable Lady Catherine de Bourgh. At one point, her husband reveals how she encourages him to spend more time in his garden while we, the readers, totally get that this is Charlotte’s way of being as free as she can! Charlotte is driven by reason and realism, rather than by the pride or the prejudice of Elizabeth or of Mr Darcy. She doesn’t subscribe to the underlying romantic notions which seem to imply that the match of Darcy and Elizabeth is destined to be happy-ever-after. She’s a deliciously portrayed character to my mind and I’m glad she’s in the novel.