Thursday 2 March 2017

You are what you read

When I started out writing this blog, I wanted to write a listicle about those favourite bookworm characters from books. As I started my research I found several blogs in a similar vein that had focused on female book loving characters. I wondered how many had set out to write a list of female characters or had retrospectivly changed the title to be only female characters to excuse the fact that it is nigh on impossible to think of central male characters that read.

I got to thinking why this is. "It is a truth universally acknowledged..." that it is difficult to encourage younger boys to read. Girls get books that are aimed at their feminine side, and in recent years there books aimed at younger girls that encourage them to embrace all aspects of their personality and see each element as a strength. Boys on the other hand get a far more heavy handed list of stereotyped stories.

As a female I fondly remember the book smarts of Hermione Granger, Belle's delight in the Beast's extravagant library (I'd love a man if he had a library like that too, girl...), or Matilda's devouring brain, and Elizabeth Bennett's defence of her reading as one of the many pleasures she takes in life.

Of the male characters I could think of that read, it was a secondary character, and they happen to be readers in order to be helpful to the story. Klaus Baudelaire got a couple special mentions in other lists, but his reading is academic more than anything else, which proves useful in some of the characters' more sticky situations. Mr Bennett retreats to his library often, presumably to read, and perhaps this is where Lizzy learnt to love books, at her father's knee. But he is hardly the focus of the story.

Perhaps the author knows that it wants to appeal to its demographic, so it pays to make your readers read themselves in the characters. One way to do that with female characters is to make them readers, or bookish and therefore similar to the reader. But the difficulty apparently comes with male characters. There are plenty of male characters in books but why don't they read?

If we are what we read, as a reader I identify with classic characters that also read for pleasure. I could not think of a single male character that reads for pleasure. I know that men that read for pleasure exist, why are they not represented in the literature they read? Why are male characters depicted as only reading for knowledge, further pushing the idea of reading as nerdy for boys?

If anyone can think of a male character that is similarly enthusiastic about books as Matilda, Belle, Hermione and Elizabeth Bennett, please let me know! In my experience I am yet to come across one.


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