The unlikeable female character of the page and screen. She is, almost always, unapologetic and cold. She is likely lacking in maternal instincts and may not want children. She can be selfish and does not necessarily champion all women. She is generally self-destructive and deeply unhappy, but likes to give the impression of total independence. She can be inconsiderate and dismissive, and can hurt people without caring. She can be some or one or all of these things which combine to make her unlikeable. The term “unlikeable” is, in itself, limiting, in presupposing the traits that should be worthy of our approval. This supposed likeability is generally evaluated through a patriarchal lens, with unlikeable women often being those who embody the traits that we scorn in women and celebrate in men. The unlikeable female character may not be a feminist herself, but her existence on the screen or page is an act of feminism, for she blows open the scope of what a woman can be, levelling the field for men and women. I think there are plenty of reasons why we should like this woman, or at least thank her for what she has done for us.
“These unlikeable female characters are important because they show us that two things can be true at once; that we can embody contradictions and be multifaceted”
Some examples from modern literature; Marianne in Normal People and Frances in Conversations with Friends, both of whom are cold and cerebral and somewhat self-destructive; Martha in Meg Mason’s Sorrow and Bliss, who cruelly hurts her husband without seeming to care; the unnamed protagonist in Ottessa Moshfegh’s My Year of Rest and Relaxation, who has had most things in life handed to her on a plate and yet is extremely self-pitying and self-absorbed. As Anna Bogutskaya argues in her nonfiction book Unlikeable Female Characters, the stories we consume create “our framework for deciding what is acceptable” and are “vital in forming our ideas of behaviours and social norms.” We model ourselves off the characters that we see on screen and page, whether we intend to or not, and “how harshly we judge them tells us so much about what we’re willing to embrace in women.” These unlikeable female characters are important because they show us that two things can be true at once; that we can embody contradictions and be multifaceted; that overcoming oppression does not mean rejecting all domains of femininity; that feminism can be embodied in both embracing and rejecting our desires; that we can do things that aren’t feminist and still be good feminists.
“What warrants celebration is these women’s lack of apology for how they choose to live, the space that they create for more than one form of woman’s existence”
The unlikeable female character is far from a modern phenomenon – Eve’s greatest sin lay simply in taking what it was that she wanted, when what she wanted was off limits. But Eve has a lot to give. For in having enacted that first act of taking, she has allowed us to take more. Personally I would rather be Eve than the Virgin Mary, who found herself toiling through the trials of pregnancy without even getting to experience the prior pleasure of sex. Take the women of Chicago in Cell Block Tango. They spin lies and embrace their sexuality as they command the room and own their space (nevermind that that space is a prison cell). These women are self-aware and sarcastic. They are murderers, and they are a delight to watch. In Elizabeth Smart’s novel in prose poetry, By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept, the protagonist identifies the man that she wants to marry through reading his published poetry. She then sets out to get him without regard for consequences or costs. Annie Ernaux’s The Young Man similarly creates space for a woman’s desire in a society that does not want such a dimension to exist. In her romantic engagements with a younger man, Ernaux achieves pleasure that is usually only granted to her male counterparts (she is an older professor sleeping with a younger student). In Toni Morrison’s Beloved, Sethe attempts to murder her children in order to save them from the suffering of slavery. Infanticide is not in anyone’s conception of good motherhood, and yet Sethe is one of the strongest women I have ever seen come to life on the page. It goes without saying that I do not condone these individual acts – murder, breaking up relationships, affairs with inequitable power dynamics, infanticide. None of these women’s acts are aspirational in themselves. What warrants celebration is these women’s lack of apology for how they choose to live, the space that they create for more than one form of woman’s existence.
“They do the best that they can with the cards they have been dealt. They try to play the patriarchy. They wonder if they are the ones being played”
These characters are women who go after what they want, who are not just defined by one act or trait or preference, who can think bad things and do good ones, who have good thoughts and act immorally. They are women that say one thing and do another, that think one thing and say another. They are intelligent and self-aware and tormented by being imbued with both. They see the gap between what they want and what they do, and continue to do what they are doing anyway. They do the best that they can with the cards they have been dealt. They try to play the patriarchy. They wonder if they are the ones being played. I suppose what I’m saying is that my feminist hero of literature and film is not the hero. She might not even be a feminist. Instead she is the character that gives me the space to exist as I am. I don’t think that having your apple and eating it should be too much to ask for. I thank the female characters of the page and screen who allow me to think I might deserve to taste that sweetness.
