Why do we love the females too?
Female Character Discussion
by Meesh
We’ve spent quite a bit of time talking about the male side of the vampire world. What it is about males that make them so attractive. Why we fall in love with them – or at least the idea of them. But what about the females in the world of vamp fiction? What is it about the females that attract those hot hunky vamps?
The women in vampire fiction tend not to be raving beauties. Mary is sickly, not overly stacked, certainly not gorgeous by traditional standards. But she attracted the brother with the nickname Hollywood because of his dazzling good looks. In the Dark Hunter series, the human women are very average looking. Most are described as at least being filled out. None fit the stick thin, super model ideal of beauty that we see on television every day. Bella was every girl – pretty, but plain, not stunning by her own description. So what is it about these women that attract these males?
Okay, so we all know that question is silly. The answer is too obvious. It doesn’t matter why the males are attracted to the inside, rather than the outside, of these wonderful women. What matters is that they are. These novels are written so women can put themselves into the arms of the males and lose themselves in the fantasy, that they know their favorite vampire loves normal women. And what’s not to love, right. The vast majority of the world is made up of reasonably attractive, normal looking people, neither grotesquely deformed nor gifted with unnatural good looks. That leaves personality traits to look to for the answer to why are vampires attracted to these particular females.
Most of the women the vamps are attracted to have a quiet strength about them. Not flashy or overbearing, they just know what is important to them. I think that makes them attractive to many of us, but the characters are written so nicely that it’s almost impossible to be envious of them. Most of them have been hurt before, which is something they share with every woman. When they find their one true love, it gives us hope that everyone deserves happiness.
As different as the females are from one another, I still like most of them a lot. I know that “formula” is a really bad word in fiction, but in this case, I think there has to be some formula for keeping characters generic enough for us to be able to relate to them, even when we aren’t like them. It’s has to be why I can see parts of myself in Jane’s dirty mouth as well as Sunshine’s eccentric free spirit (a Dark Hunter female). It’s a stroke of genius that allows us to slip into the story and live it for awhile, which is the best side effect of reading for me – escape into a world that isn’t like this one.
Just to clarify…okay, maybe I do envy them…but why envy someone you could essentially become inside your own head?
I have lived a good portion of my life inside my head. I attribute this to many things, but especially reading. What’s amazing to me, as you’ve touched on here Meesh, is that despite the fact that the female characters in the stories are ending up with these desirable male characters, I can’t hate them. In fact I love them, admire some of them (GO JANE!) and there isn’t a case where I envy them. This is probably due to the fact that I can relate to them: the “every girl” and the “plain Jane.”
It’s much more difficult to hate a character or envy a character who’s image you’ve conjured up in your own head – maybe that’s part of the reason people find it easier to dislike Kristen Stewart vs. the character of Bella. In fact, many people don’t like KStew because they feel protective of their own image of Bella. I don’t know if this response is making any sense…I’m sort of just rambling…haha.
If I could live in a book for a day…I’d be all over it…choosing which one would be the hard part.
You know what amuses me the most about reading books? The fact that no matter where the book is set, it makes you want to live there.
Twilight? People have been going to Forks en masse. BDB? Caldwell almost sounds romantic even though it’s SO not a butterflies and rainbows place to live. SVM? The accents alone make me want to hop a train to Bon Temps.
I love reading for the reasons you described and more. It has that “calgon, take me away” effect. Thanks goodness for books, or my life would be lame-o-la.