Scribble, Meet the New Editors

they die’ moments which off er security and comfort that you will be safe. Whilst I know that this makes out that as women, we are weak, need protecting and can be insecure with relationships that we need characters like these to take away our fears, that couldn’t be further from the truth. It is commonly women authors who are writing these male fi gures. It is the women authors who have realised that this is what they, and possibly you, needed from literature. But why? These men who, lets be honest are rather toxic, off er us a way to experience this without any of the repercussions of real life. For example, if we actually dated a Mr Rochester we wouldn’t want to be locked up in an attic. If we dated Cardan, we wouldn’t want to be humiliated in front of everyone. And if we dated a Mr Darcy we wouldn’t want to be insulted about our entire lifestyle. I can imagine that these could be the kind of men who would control what you wore, who you saw, your fi nances and perhaps more aspects of your life, however inside these novels they aren’t painted in this light. They are shown as an almost antihero, a villain with a backstory which we sympathise with and want to know more. These types of relationships also convey the excitement mixed with nervousness at their volatile and unpredictable nature.

I have described these men as brooding, mysterious, toxic, controlling and many more adjectives with rather negative connotations. I’d like to turn your attention back to the question of why we fall for these men. It can’t just be purely excitement and intrigue, can it? As I briefl y touched on, these men are like antiheroes. If they are ever constructed to be villains, we then get a detailed backstory evoking sympathy. They almost have a come back story and we have an explanation for their behaviour. This explanation seems to validate their behaviour and allows us to see past this such as if they say “you can’t go outside, someone might harm you” we would think ‘aww they care so much about me getting hurt’ whereas in reality I’d probably say “whatever, I can do what I want, don’t tell me what to do”.

The key fact that I have only come across women writing these men is not a coincidence. With women authors, they know what women want to have out of male characters and this creates their audience of women. They are women writing for women and these types of male characters show this. Women authors will be aware of this fascination for this kind of toxic men as they probably think this too. If a man were to write a male character such as this, he might feel uncomfortable and not quite understand what it is he needs to communicate for this character to be successful. Of course, there are some male writers who have done this successfully such as Bret Easton Ellis and his character Patrick Bateman from ‘American Psycho’ but these are few and far between.

As a whole I think that this ‘ideal’ we have created is both peculiar and perfect. We can experience a romantic version of a relationship that would be horrible in reality but in a novel, or even in fi lm, it is captivating. There are many novels out there about falling in love with the ‘villain’ or getting kidnapped but falling for your kidnappers. These are of course the extremes of this but they still provide a safe and secure place in a world of violence and unpredictability. This could just be me but I think I will continue to fall for these men whether they are portrayed as ‘the boy next door’, ‘the bad boy’ or even just ‘the villain’. Will you continue to fall for them too?