The most hateful character in fiction?

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Fanny Price, George Eliot, Gilbert Osmond, Grandcourt, Gwendolen Harleth, hateful fictional characters, Henry James, Jane Austen, Mansfield Park, Mrs Norris, The Portrait of a Lady

‘Make your nasty characters ten times nastier,’ advised the creative writing tutor. ‘Readers want strong definition so exaggerate the light and dark.’

She had a point. Even if you aren’t writing crime novels, it’s no good running away from the evil side of human nature. But it’s July 18th, the day that Jane Austen died 201 years ago, and I found myself remembering the careful subtlety of the unpleasant characters in her novels, such as Mrs Ferrars, Lucy Steele, General Tilney, Mrs Norris. Jane Austen never goes over the top.

If asked who we hate most, many of us would probably opt for Mrs Norris, the horrible aunt in Mansfield Park, because of the way she bullies Fanny Price, the terrified little girl taken away from her own family and Portsmouth home to live with her grand relations. Her vindictive spite continues to find fresh expression in the years that follow, but it’s the abuse of a defenceless child that we can’t forgive. Mrs Norris is both loathsome and entirely convincing: we know her. If Jane Austen had overdone Mrs Norris’ awfulness, she might have slid into a caricature and become less real.

Re-reading Henry James’ The Portrait of a Lady, I could see the same elegant restraint in the portrayal of the corrupt and manipulative Gilbert Osmond. We shiver because we see the trap Isabel has walked into, but it is not until chapter 42 that we know what she is suffering: ‘… it was as if Osmond deliberately, almost malignantly, had put the lights out one by one … under all his culture, his cleverness, his amenity, under his good-nature, his facility, his knowledge of life, his egotism lay hidden like a serpent in a bank of flowers.’  Her real offence ‘was her having a mind of her own at all. Her mind was to be his – attached to his own …’

In my mind, Gilbert Osmond and the sadistic, chilling Henleigh Mallinger Grandcourt, husband of Gwendolen in George Eliot’s Daniel Deronda (described in the ninevoices post Emotional abuse from a monster husband – and a complex fascinating heroine)  now tie for first place as the most hateful men in literature, while Mrs Norris is still without a serious female rival. But this is perhaps from a sheltered and limited viewpoint. What other fictional characters do we fear and hate?

 

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On Being A Pedant

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apostrophes, Ed, George Bernard Shaw, Pedantry, Royal Tunbridge Wells, split infinitives, Tanya, The Oxford Comma

On Saturday mornings my other half and I usually stroll into Tunbridge Wells. It’s a pleasant walk alongside the Common and in spring there’s the glory of the municipal daffodils.

Yet on each journey I am affronted, disgusted even, by the lack of an apostrophe on the sign for Major York’s Road. I expect better from Royal Tunbridge Wells. 

Should such things bug me? My husband doesn’t care about Major Yorks Road, yet mutters darkly about split infinitives whenever he catches me using them. He will also place exclamation marks (plural, notice) in the margins of any drafts of mine where a sentence starts with And. Other people’s blood pressure rises at mention of the Oxford Comma.

You might like to see some of our previous thoughts on this often contentious subject.

• https://ninevoices.wordpress.com/2016/10/19/grammar-gripes-less-and-fewer/,
• https://ninevoices.wordpress.com/2017/03/27/punctuation-can-cost-millions/
• https://ninevoices.wordpress.com/2013/05/02/a-plurality-of-grammars/
• https://ninevoices.wordpress.com/2016/06/07/to-be-pedantic-or-not-to-be-pedantic-that-is-the-question/)

As writers we surely have a duty to defend our wonderful language and how it’s placed on the page. However, knowing what is correct, but deliberately bending the rules, can be excusable, and hopefully creative.

So, on that question of split infinitives, let me share something George Bernard Shaw wrote to his publishers:

There is a busybody on your staff who devotes a lot of time to chasing split infinitives. Every good literary craftsman splits his infinitives when the sense demands it. I call for the immediate dismissal of this pedant. It is of no consequence whether he decides to go quickly, or quickly to go, or to quickly go. The important thing is that he should go at once.

Your views on grammar pedantry are welcome. Don’t be shy, we’d love to hear from you!

 

Diversity

At a recent meeting one of our members (bless) suggested that we should have homework that we would bring to the next session. The first theme set was on being awoken by a galloping horse at 3am. Ghost stories, a wife’s revenge and a rant on royal pageantry followed. Maybe these will be developed into fully-fledged stories (not the rant). Is it a good idea? Or does it distract us from other writing?

There’s a PS to this. We’ve had two other “homeworks” since and one of our members has become a poet.

Under attack – when it hurts

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Barbara Pym, Crampton Hodnet

Anyone who has ever given or lent a copy of a much-loved novel to a friend is likely to be familiar with the occasional disappointing response. It might include the suggestive silence, or the apologetic, half-embarrassed ‘sorry, not my kind of thing’ or even (and this is worse!)  ‘I can see why you enjoyed it, but…’

It may still surprise and even disconcert when the people we love don’t ‘get’ an author who means so much to us, but we’ve learnt not to allow this unaccountable gap to mar our friendship. It doesn’t change what we feel about them.

But comedians Kathy Burke and Tom Allen savaging Barbara Pym as ‘twee’ and ‘boring’ in a Radio 4 discussion of the novel Crampton Hodnet provoked bewilderment among Barbara Pym readers. How was it possible that these two critics had entirely missed the point of her novels?

One comment among the extensive online discussion which especially resonated was that criticism of Barbara Pym feels personal to him in a way that it doesn’t with other authors. But why should we mind when Barbara Pym is dismissed or mocked when we can shrug off adverse criticism of other authors we enjoy?  Perhaps it is because Barbara Pym writes so tellingly (and with a sharp wit that is always funny but somehow never cruel) about ordinary people, dealing with the small things of life which are also the big things.  Twee and boring seem to be the wrong words for such richness.

But it’s more than that. When Barbara Pym’s characters make reappearances in her later novels, it’s like being given news of old and dear friends. They have an extraordinary habit of living alongside us; in wilder moments we may even feel we are becoming one of them. No wonder an attack can hurt…

 

 

Today we have Naming of Characters

Tags

Class, Dickens, Names, Nicole J Simms, TV soaps

We all have to give names to our characters. I’ve just read Nicole Simms’ latest blog (http://www.nicole-j-simms.co.uk/6-ways-i-find-names-for-my-characters/) which shows how systematically she sets about this task. It’s good of her to share these trade secrets!

Particularly helpful is the suggestion of going to baby name websites for names that were popular in the decade your story is set. And I like too the idea of noting the names of the cashier on receipts you get at the checkout. Thanks, Nicole.

I think the nearest I’ve got to being that systematic is poring over an atlas of Britain looking for suitable place names to use for my characters. Place names and occupation names are good sources: look at the traditional practice of TV soaps of using the latter for working-class characters – think of Butcher or Slater in ‘Eastenders’, or (I’m showing my age here) Elsie Tanner in ‘Coronation Street’.

The British class system can make this a minefield. You’d think that centuries of social movement would have muddled it all up more than it has, but you wouldn’t call your dustman character Piers Devereux or your son of an earl Gary Thackenthwaite.

One option is to go the Dickens route, and make up absurd names that actually are just right: Mr Bumble, Wackford Squeers, Ebenezer Scrooge!

And then there’s the whole world of names of overseas origin to choose from. Patel and Singh have been common English names for at least two generations. Poniatowski, Novotny, Fontanelli, van Dijk, Schmidt, Papadopoulos, Gomez, Le Blanc – take your pick when thinking about arrivals from the EU.

In my last story I came up with Freckleton Jessop as the name of a firm of solicitors: Freckleton from the Lancashire home village of a college friend and Jessop from the high street store (other camera shops are available).

I enjoy the search for a good name. It can take time, but it’s worth it if you get it right.

How do you set about it?

Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells – and a story of splendid ladies

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Charlotte Bartlett, Disgusted Ladies, Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells, E M Forster, Tunbridge Wells, Votes for Women

The expression ‘Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells’ may have entered the English vocabulary in the 1950s onwards as a byword for middle class conservative moral outrage, but this elegant spa town in the south east of England has a habit of regularly cropping up in literature well before that. We find references in Dickens’ Bleak House, Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest, Fanny Burney’s Camilla, and Jane Austen’s unfinished novel Sanditon for a start.

It’s often depicted as the residence of genteel aunts and maiden ladies – a favourite being Charlotte Bartlett in E M Forster’s 1908 novel A Room with a View: ‘I am used to Tunbridge Wells, where we are all hopelessly behind the times’.

But not all of the good ladies of Tunbridge Wells were like Charlotte Bartlett then, any more than they are now. Just published by Matador is Disgusted Ladies by local author Anne Carwardine. It tells the fascinating story of how the town was home to a series of ordinary yet extraordinary VOTES FOR WOMEN campaigners – remarkable and courageous women who were disgusted for all the right reasons.

Tunbridge Wells in 2018, a hundred years after women were given the right to vote: no longer disgusted but still a town with a distinguished literary presence, past and present…

 

 

 

Authors & their detectives – the answers

Tags

Detectives, Quiz

The answers to the quiz in my last posting are in the first Comment to this post.

Authors & their detectives

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Agatha Christie, Caroline Graham, Colin Dexter, Dashiell Hammett, Detectives, Dorothy L Sayers, Ellery Queen, G K Chesterton, Georges Simenon, Golden Age, Ian Rankin, Josephine Tey, Margery Allingham, Ngaio Marsh, PD James, Raymond Chandler, Ruth Rendell

A chance conversation in Waterstone’s the other day* showed me that my knowledge of Golden Age detectives wasn’t as good as I thought it was. Either that, or time’s wingèd chariot is taking its toll of my little grey cells …

So here’s a quiz so you can reassure yourself that your memory is fine. Just match the detectives with the authors, some from the Golden Age and a few beyond.

Detectives                                                                    Authors

Roderick Alleyn                                                             Margery Allingham

Tom Barnaby                                                                Raymond Chandler

Father Brown                                                                G K Chesterton

Albert Campion                                                             Agatha Christie

Adam Dalgliesh                                                             Colin Dexter

Alan Grant                                                                    Caroline Graham

Jules Maigret                                                                 Dashiell Hammett

Philip Marlowe                                                               P D James

Miss Marple                                                                   Ngaio Marsh

Inspector Morse                                                             Ellery Queen

Hercule Poirot                                                                Ian Rankin

Ellery Queen                                                                  Ruth Rendell

John Rebus                                                                    Dorothy L Sayers

Sam Spade                                                                    Georges Simenon

Tommy & Tuppence                                                        Josephine Tey

Chief Inspector Wexford

Lord Peter Wimsey

*             *

I’ll post the answers in a day or two.

*I couldn’t remember the name of Margery Allingham’s detective.  The kind man at the till very politely reminded me.  He’s in the list above (the detective, not the kind man in Waterstone’s).

What would you call your own detective?

Writing comp with a Slovak or Czech dimension

Tags

Anniversary, BCSA, Communism, Czech, Defenestration of Prague, Munich, Prague Spring, Slovak, Thirty Years War

A writing competition with a Central European twist! Exercise your imagination in a Slavic dimension in the British Czech and Slovak Association’s 2018 International Writing Competition, now open. If you win, £400 could be yours, presented at the Association’s annual dinner (so you and a companion would get a free meal as well), and your entry would be published in the British Czech & Slovak Review.

Anniversary – this year is the centenary of the creation of Czechoslovakia in 1918, but there are many other anniversaries to choose from in the history of the Slovak and Czech peoples: 1618 (the Defenestration of Prague and the outbreak of the Thirty Years War), 1848 (the Year of Revolutions), 1938 (Munich), 1948 (the Communist takeover) and 1968 (the Prague Spring and the Warsaw Pact invasion). (1989 was a year out!) You may know of others. So ‘Anniversary’ is the suggested theme in the 2018 BCSA writing competition.

Fiction or fact – either is welcome. The first prize of £400 and the second prize of £150 will be awarded to the best 1,500 to 2,000-word pieces of original writing in English which must be on (1) the links between Britain and the lands now comprising the Slovak and Czech Republics, or (2) describing society in transition in the Republics since 1989. Topics can include, for example, history, politics, the sciences, economics, the arts or literature. ‘Anniversary’ is this year’s suggested theme, but is not compulsory.

Submissions are invited from individuals of any age, nationality or educational background. Entrants do not need to be members of the BCSA.  Entry is free. Entries must be received by 30 June 2018. An author may submit any number of entries. The competition will be judged by a panel of experts.

Entries should be submitted by post to the BCSA Prize Administrator, 24 Ferndale, Tunbridge Wells, Kent, TN2 3NS, England, or by e-mail to prize@bcsa.co.uk.

For full Submission Guidelines and the Rules of the competition apply to the Prize Administrator at the addresses given above. Details are also shown at http://www.bcsa.co.uk/2018-bcsa-international-writing-competition/ .

Administrator’s tip:  If I could pass on one lesson from recent years, it is to read the instructions: in 2016 and 2017 several entries were disallowed (no matter how well written) because they did not deal with the prescribed subjects. Enjoy the writing!

The Case of the Prolific Penman

Tags

Courtroom drama, Della Street, Erle Stanley Gardner, Fleeting fame, Hamilton Burger, Paul Drake, Perry Mason, Raymond Burr

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Another case of fame in a writer’s lifetime, but absence from the bookshop shelves today, is Erle Stanley Gardner (1889-1970). I loved his books when a schoolboy. I had quite a collection, now shrunk to the three pictured (following the domestic mishap mentioned in my post about John Creasey at https://ninevoices.wordpress.com/2018/02/19/no-longer-on-the-bookshop-shelves/).

In the 1960s he was in the Guinness Book of Records as the world’s most prolific author, as I recall. Wikipedia lists over 150 of his novels, plus short stories. American editions of his books alone sold 170 million copies, and he was America’s best-selling novelist for a chunk of the 20^th century. He wrote by dictating, and sometimes had more than one book on the go at a time. Given the successful and repeated formulas of his books this might have caused confusion, but if it did I never noticed. According to his obituary in the New York Times he liked being called “the fiction factory” and even “the Henry Ford of detective novelists.” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erle_Stanley_Gardner_bibliography)

I can’t find him in first-run bookshops now – though I can still come across Perry Mason films late at night in the upper reaches of my cable channels.

The ever-present characters: Perry Mason, the intrepid and skilful defence lawyer, who always unmasks the real villain in a courtroom climax, to the relief of his unjustly accused client; Della Street, his loyal and efficient secretary; Paul Drake, the private detective who has an apparently inexhaustible number of employees able to drop everything to help Perry, with hardly ever a mention of a bill being presented; and Hamilton Burger, the hapless District Attorney who loses to Perry Mason almost every time. I came to feel sorry for Hamilton Burger. My own image of Perry Mason wasn’t the Raymond Burr of the TV series: my Mason was more, er, youthful, and slimmer. However, I read now that Raymond Burr actually auditioned for the part of Hamilton Burger, but when ESG saw him he said he was just how he imagined Mason.

ESG wrote other characters as well as Perry Mason, including his ‘DA’ series, possibly as a change from the victorious defender Mason, or to show that he could sympathise with the prosecution too?

His titles are great come-ons: to take some at random from the list, The Case of the Daring Divorcee, The Case of the Phantom Fortune, The Case of the Horrified Heirs, The Case of the Troubled Trustee.

And we all love a courtroom drama, don’t we?

ESG never claimed to be a great literary novelist. But he brought pleasure to millions. Thanks, Erle.