Alternate post title: “Where all the white women at?”
But seriously, where are all of the ladies? And what are they doing? The answer: Not much. Out of the lovely ladies we do meet, two out of the four are in Dracula, and two are (at least eventually) horrible monsters. But the worst part of it all is:
I didn’t care. I didn’t want them there.
Characters in books can go three ways for me:
1. They can be realistic characters, integral to the plot or perhaps even the star of the plot, who are consistent, flawed, and interesting. They don’t even need to be likable, and often they aren’t. But that doesn’t stop you from liking the story, because its realistic and that’s cool. (It CAN stop you from liking a story, but it doesn’t have to)
2. They can be there simply as a plot device, a person who has as much of a role as a smoking gun or a conveniently placed horse. A random person you meet who JUST so happens to have the information you need/the diamonds that were stolen/the map to a secret treasure. These characters are often brought up, disposed of, and never discussed again.(Mentioning a treasure map brought the character Billy Bones to mind)
3. They can be there for sex, or for shock value. They have habits of doing something visceral to keep you involved. They don’t have a lot of back story or a complex personality, but you usually get a detailed physical description. So you can picture them in your twisted little mind. Their actions are unpredictable, because they don’t make much sense.
Note: I’m not talking female characters here. Just characters in general. Also, of course there are other kinds of characters. I didn’t even go into bad guys here, just good guys. Bad guys are a whole other box of tomatoes. But again, I didn’t mention women. Because the sex of a character shouldn’t affect how awesome they are AS a character. But sadly, lots of writers seem to think if you write about a woman realistically, the world will end. I don’t want all female characters to be LIKEABLE I just want them to be consistent and to have depth, and to not simply be put there as plot devices with tits or something to fuck between conflicts. So, I was kind of glad there weren’t a lot of female characters in these books. The female characters who were around were kind of plot devicey, yes. But there were only four of them! And they weren’t around enough to really bother me at all! If there had been more female characters just thrown in, it would have, because they would have probably felt thrown in. These books were not written in times where women weren’t really respected or viewed as being capable of having personalities that weren’t crazy. Any female characters would probably have been just as terrible as the racism we encountered in many of these books and viewed as outdated ways of thinking since proven and accepted to be horribly wrong.
(EDIT: I had totally spaced out about Lady Ragnall. She was great. Kinda still plot devicey, but she had a lot of personality.)
