Tag Archives: Henry Fielding

Female characters : fun and games with female names

Joanna is having a giggle over female characters…

Charles Dickens had great names for female charactersSomeone, somewhere recommended my old blog on Naming Minor Characters and it resulted in hundreds of hits last week. When I checked, I saw that most of it was about male characters. Certainly the game at the end was about males. So I thought I might do another version focusing on female characters instead.

When I look back at the literary canon, I see more interesting male names than female ones.

There aren’t many female characters with names to rival Mr Pecksniff or Scrooge in Dickens. But search around, and there are some. What about Lady Dedlock in Bleak House? Since much of the plot revolves around the deadlocked court case of Jarndyce vs Jarndyce, the name seems very appropriate.

But there are others, even better. What about this pair of chancers? Continue reading →

Sentimental Romantic

Dirty draft readerThis week I have been considering the nature of a sentimental romantic – and wondering whether I qualify.

Let me put this in context. On Thursday a friend phoned me to say that he had just read a story which he had much enjoyed and thought very romantic. He had told the writer – whom he knew – of this response.

The writer said he was “intrigued”. My friend – let us call him Robert – explained his reasons. Eventually the writer decided that he was OK with the  romantic label “as long as he didn’t mean sentimental.” Continue reading →