Katherine Cowley

#28: Give Antagonists Redemptive Qualities

February 4, 2021/0 Comments/in Jane Austen Writing Lessons /by Katherine Cowley

I spend a lot of time playing with dolls with my 5-year-old daughter. She likes to divide them up and make half of the dolls “good guys” and half of the dolls “bad guys.” The bad guys really like kidnapping other dolls and taking over the ice castle.

Sometimes when she assigns me the bad guys, I try to act out things like them sharing food with each other, or playing a game together.

“No, Mom!” she will exclaim. “They are bad guys. They can’t do anything good.”

In general, I’m really impressed by my daughter’s storytelling skills—I may be biased, but I feel like they are advanced for a 5-year-old—but I partially disagree with her on this one. It’s true that there are some antagonists who don’t do anything good, and there are some villains who are true and complete loners, but for the most part, antagonists often have some good or redemptive qualities. At the very least, there are reasons that other people support them and spend time with them.

John Willoughby is one of my all-time favorite antagonists from Austen. He’s the classic bad boy character, and in the novel Sense and Sensibility he doesn’t end up redeeming himself by giving Marianne the initial happy ending that she initially sought. Yet Austen still gives him some element of redemption.

Initial Good/Redemptive Qualities

John Willoughby is introduced through an act that screenwriter Blake Snyder would call a “save the cat” moment—Willoughby does something selfless and good that immediately endears him to us and to the characters. Marianne has fallen down a hill, and he lifts her and carries her home.

Score one for Willoughby.

"You mustn't walk on it" -- Willoughby carries Marianne

As the story progresses, he demonstrates a number of good qualities, all of which Marianne prizes highly:

Giving his time
Generous with means (offering a horse to Marianne)
Handsome
Reading poetry and literature with Marianne
Friendly and gets along well with almost everyone

And the Antagonism

While Elinor never quite trusts Willoughby, and finds some of these very behaviors problematic (it’s not really appropriate for Willoughby to give Marianne a horse, plus what would they do with it?) his antagonism quickly becomes clear to everyone.

He:

Doesn’t actually solidify or finalize an engagement with Marianne
Leaves and doesn’t return, and when Marianne goes to London, he avoids her and does not return her letter (or, as we would now say, he ghosts her)

Merriam-Webster dictionary: Ghost. Verb. To abruptly cut off all contact with (someone, such as a former romantic partner) by no longer accepting or responding to phone call, instant messages, etc.

Definition of “ghost” from Merriam-Webster dictionary.

It turns out that he has previously gotten a teenage girl pregnant
He marries another woman for financial reasons.

His Motives for Antagonistic Behavior

In the last two lessons I talked about different motives that Jane Austen gives her antagonists in Sense and Sensibility—selfish motives, negative motives, positive motives, and mixed or neutral motives. Having understandable motives, whether or not they are ones we support, give a character depth and reality. Willoughby possesses each of these types of motives:

Selfish motives: Sleeping with an easily influenced teenage girl
Negative motives: Disregarding propriety and societal expectations, playing with Marianne’s affections
Positive motives: helping Marianne when she has fallen, realizing that he has genuine interest in her and trying to find a way to make a relationship possible
Neutral motive: seeking financial stability/security: (in and of itself, the need for financial security is not a negative thing; it’s much more complex than that—many of Austen’s characters grapple with this, including Marianne and Elinor Dashwood in Sense and Sensibility, and, in her other novels, the Bennet sisters, Charlotte Collins, Anne Elliot, Jane Fairfax, and Fanny Price.)

Letting Willoughby Tell His Story

I took a graduate-level class on Jane Austen, and we spent a fair amount of time discussing a particular Willoughby scene that is not included in a number of adaptations.

This scene occurs when Marianne is extremely ill, due to a combination of heartbreak and spending too long in the cold and the rain (deathly illness due to these causes seems to be an occupational hazard of being a young woman in the Regency period).

Willoughby comes in the middle of the night and insists on speaking to Elinor. To his credit, he is extremely worried about Marianne’s health, and is grateful she has taken a turn for the better. At first, Elinor thinks that he must be intoxicated, but he is not, and he insists on Elinor listening to him, which she is not inclined to do:

“Mr. Willoughby, you ought to feel, and I certainly do—that after what has passed—your coming here in this manner, and forcing yourself upon my notices, requires a very particular excuse.—What is it, that you mean by it?”—

“I mean,”—said he, with serious energy—“if I can, to make you hate me one degree less than you do now. I mean to offer some kind of explanation, some kind of apology, for the past; to open my whole heart to you, and by convincing you, that though I have always been a blockhead, I have not been always a rascal, to obtain something like forgiveness from Ma—from your sister.”

Jane Austen then gives Willoughby page after page after page to explain himself. He admits all his terrible motives, including:

“Careless of her happiness, thinking only of my own amusement, giving way to feelings which I had always been too much in the habit of indulging, I endeavoured, by every means in my power, to make myself pleasing to her, without any design of returning her affection.”

We see his angst, his attempts to justify himself, his pride and selfishness, his arguments good and bad. And we see glimpses of redemption:

“The happiest hours of my life were what I spent with her, when I felt my intentions were strictly honorable, and my feelings blameless.”

Ultimately, Elinor comes to understand him a little, and to truly understand a person is a token of forgiveness, a gift of humanity for them and for the reader:

[Elinor’s] thoughts were silently fixed on the irreparable injury which too early an independence and its consequent habits of idleness, dissipation, and luxury, had made in the mind, the character, the happiness, of a man who, to every advantage of person and talents, united a disposition naturally open and honest, and a feeling, affectionate temper. The world had made him extravagant and vain—Extravagance and vanity had made him cold-hearted and selfish. Vanity, while seeking its own guilty triumph at the expense of another, had involved him in a real attachment, which extravagance, or at least its offspring, necessity, had required to be sacrificed. Each faulty propensity in leading him to evil, had led him likewise to punishment.

Ultimately, Elinor expresses her forgiveness to Willoughby. It’s a fascinating scene, worth reading its entirety. In general, Jane Austen’s antagonists are some of her most memorable characters, because they are full of depth, complexity, and nuance. Often we come to understand their motives and character quite well, but here, Austen gives him a gift not often given to antagonists: he is able to fully tell his own story. Unless the antagonist is a viewpoint character, it’s very uncommon for an antagonist to receive this opportunity. The ability for Willoughby to admit his faults doesn’t make his choices better. But it does force us as readers to truly walk in Willoughby’s shoes, which enhances the themes and tensions of the novel.

Redemptive Qualities

While most of the time an antagonist won’t have a chance to fully tell their story, in many cases we get a glimpse of their story. Their motives—positive, negative, and neutral—should be understandable, even if we don’t always agree with them. And at times, an antagonist should possess some redemptive qualities (for instance, in Pride and Prejudice, Lady Catherine de Bourgh is good and generous to Mr. Collins). This helps make the antagonists complex, nuanced, and memorable.

Writing Exercises - Jane Austen Writing Lessons

Exercise 1:

Take an antagonist that you have written into a story or plan to write. Give them the opportunity to explain themselves, whether through the form of internal monologue, a journal entry, a letter to a close friend, or a conversation.

Exercise 2:

Write a short personal essay about a time in your own life when you’ve had a chance to explain yourself and your behavior, or when you wish that you had gotten a chance to explain yourself.

Exercise 3:

Take a book, movie, or series that you know well and list at least five antagonists or villains present in the story. Then write down as many redemptive qualities as you can for each of these characters.

#27: Give Antagonists Understandable Motives (Part 2)

January 21, 2021/0 Comments/in Jane Austen Writing Lessons /by Katherine Cowley

Jane Austen’s antagonists are some of her most memorable characters—full of depth, complexity, and nuance, and continuously getting in the way of protagonists.

In the last lesson, Give Antagonists Understandable Motives (Part 1), I addressed negative motives for antagonism, like selfishness, a disregard for social norms, spite, cruelty, and revenge.

Yet not every antagonist interferes with the protagonist for negative reasons. Plenty of antagonists have positive or neutral motives for their interference. And these sorts of motives will be the focus of this lesson.

Positive Motives for Antagonism

Sometimes good people, trying to do good things, unintentionally make life more difficult for others.

Positive motives can be antagonistic when:

• A character helps or assists others in a way that they don’t want to be helped
A character helps someone at an inconvenient time or place
Helping someone creates an unwanted sense of obligation
Kind, understanding, or sensitive actions cause additional problems for the protagonist

In Sense and Sensibility, there are a number of people who attempt to do good for the Dashwood family, yet are sometimes unintentionally antagonistic.

Sir John Middleton has offered his cottage to the Dashwoods because of their lack of their home, which is very generous of him, but also creates a lot of obligation for Mrs. Dashwood, Marianne, and Elinor.

Marianne especially finds Sir John antagonistic toward her goals, as well his wife, Lady Middleton, and her mother Mrs. Jennings and sister Mrs. Palmer. They are constantly interfering with Marianne’s sense of self, her need for independence and solitude, and her desires for certain types of company. They also are trying to matchmake a relationship between Marianne and Colonel Brandon, and they do this out of good motives—they seem like they would make a good match, and it would give Marianne a very advantageous marriage and help her out of poverty. But that’s not what Marianne wants.

Elinor finds the Middletons less antagonistic than Marianne does, yet sometimes their teasing and their mannerisms do make her uncomfortable and act in opposition to her journey.

Another example of an antagonistic character in Sense and Sensibility is Mrs. Dashwood herself. At the beginning of the novel, she does not want to economize, which makes finding their family a home very difficult. She also overprioritizes her love for Marianne, to the point where she refuses to act as a parent figure and talk to Marianne about the pitfalls of her behavior. She’s so afraid with damaging their relationship that she won’t even ask Marianne if she is engaged, and rather than helping Marianne, this contributes to Marianne’s difficulties (and also to Elinor’s). To me, she is one of the most interesting characters, because she is likeable and good and yet so very flawed in her behavior.

Neutral Motives for Antagonism

While a lot of antagonistic motives are clearly either negative or positive, some motives are more neutral.

A few types of neutral motives that can be antagonistic:

A character is forced to choose between their wants and needs.
A character is faced with no good paths and no good options; no matter what choices they make, it will have a negative impact on themselves and others.
Two characters have colliding paths. Their motives are often a mixture of good and bad, and as both characters strive for what they want and need, their paths interfere and collide with each other.
A character believes they know better than other characters what the right path is and chooses to impose their will on others.
A character believes that a greater good is worth some negative actions to achieve.
A character lacks the perspective to see the impact of their choices.

A sometimes-antagonistic character who has neutral motives is Edward Ferrars. Elinor falls in love with Edward, and while at Norwood Park he seems to return her affections. But when Elinor, her sisters, and her mother move, he becomes entirely absent from her life, which causes a lot of angst and sadness for Elinor. He eventually visits, but the visit is a rather uncomfortable one.

It turns out that several years before Edward became secretly engaged to Lucy Steele. Because he is a man of his word and trying to do the right thing, he won’t break off his engagement to Lucy, because that would hurt her and break his word. Yet in being honorable to Lucy, he is breaking Elinor’s heart, and giving his attentions to Elinor in the first place wasn’t very fair, knowing that he did not intend to act.

Neutral motives that create antagonism are some of the most interesting to explore in literature because they cause so much tension and they allow writers to explore the nuances and complexities of relationship and morality.

In Conclusion

Story is about conflict, it’s about a character on a journey interrupted, a journey that has challenges, many of them caused by other characters. As a protagonist goes about their journey, they face antagonism not just from Antagonists—people that are actively and intentionally opposing the core journey—but also from characters, large and small, who might be friends, family members, or acquaintances. Considering the full range of motives for antagonism can help you write more complex and interesting stories.

Next lesson we’ll focus on one final antagonist in Sense and Sensibility, my favorite Jane Austen bad-guy, John Willoughby. He has positive motives, he has negative motives, and he has neutral motives. Ultimately Jane Austen treats him with a certain kindness, allowing him some level of redemption, by giving him a chance to tell his story.

Exercise 1:

Think about someone in your life—currently, or in the past—who has good motives, and yet makes your life more difficult or negatively interferes in certain areas of your life. Write several paragraphs about this person and their behavior. Make sure to examine specific actions they take (whether physical actions, dialogue, text, etc.) that act antagonistically in your life, and record also your reaction to these actions in the moment and over time.

Exercise 2:

Write several paragraphs from the viewpoint of an antagonist who is forced to choose between two competing principles:

Telling the truth; being sensitive to the feelings of others
Being on time; being prepared
Helping someone else; taking care of your own basic needs
Saving for the future; enjoying the moment
Another pair of competing principles you create

After they make the choice between the principles, have the character experience both positive and negative consequences as a result of their choice.

Exercise 3: A No Good, Very Bad Day

Set a timer for 5 or 10 minutes and do a rush write about a character, in which everything they do over the course of the day has negative or unforeseen consequences for other people.

#26: Give Antagonists Understandable Motives (Part 1)

January 6, 2021/0 Comments/in Jane Austen Writing Lessons /by Katherine Cowley

As I discussed in the previous post, an antagonist is a person who actively opposes the main character and tries to interfere with them achieving their wants and needs, typically over multiple scenes or a large portion of the story.

One of the things that makes Jane Austen’s protagonists so effective is that they always have understandable motives. As readers, we don’t always know these motives immediately, but ultimately these motives are explainable and understandable.

We’re going to consider four different categories of antagonist’s motives, with examples from Jane Austen’s novel Sense and Sensibility. In today’s post, Part 1, we’ll look at more negative types of antagonism, and in the next blog post, Part 2, we’ll consider more positive or neutral types of antagonism.

Self-Interested Motives

The first major category of motives held by antagonists is self-interest.

All characters, antagonists and protagonists, act with a certain amount of self-interest. It’s the only way, as people, we can survive—it’s the only way we get our wants and desires. And we often support characters striving for their wants and needs, and we become frustrated with characters like Fanny Price in Mansfield Park when they don’t actively strive for their wants and needs.

Self-interest becomes antagonism when:

A character’s self-interest interrupts the protagonist’s journey.
A character’s self-interest harms other characters, or is done with a regard only for oneself.

In the second category of self-interest as antagonism, we often see:

Selfishness
Emphasis on bodily passions
A focus on gaining power
A focus on gaining wealth or material objects
Disregard for social or societal norms

Ultimately, self-interest is a prioritization of ones own needs and wants over the needs and wants of others.

An example of an antagonistic character acting with self-interest from is found in Fanny Dashwood (of Sense and Sensibility). Fanny does not want to see any of her husband’s inheritance go to his half-sisters or stepmother.

“It was my father’s last request to me,” replied her husband, “that I should assist his widow and daughters.”

“He did not know what he was talking of, I dare say; ten to one but he was light-headed at the time. Had he been in his right senses, he could not have thought of such a thing as begging you to give away half your fortune from your own child.”

Slowly Fanny works her husband down, appealing to their sons supposed needs and other self-focused arguments, until ultimately her husband decides not to give them any money, and only occasionally assist them with minor things:

“Your father thought only of them. And I must say this: that you owe no particular gratitude to him, nor attention to his wishes; for we very well know that if he could, he would have left almost everything in the world to them.”

This argument was irresistible. It gave to his intentions whatever of decision was wanting before; and he finally resolved, that it would be absolutely unnecessary, if not highly indecorous, to do more for the widow and children of his father, than such kind of neighbourly acts as his own wife pointed out.

Another character who acts with self-interest is Lucy Steele. She has been secretly engaged to Edward Ferrars for four years, and now he is in love with Elinor Dashwood. It’s quite understandable that she would act in her own self-interest and attempt to maintain her engagement. She obviously has (or at least, had) feelings for Edward, and this is her chance for a better life. She is a dislikeable character because of the things she does in the name of self-interest, but we’ll talk about that more in the next section.

Outward-Focused Negative Motives

The second major category of antagonist motives are those which are outwardly-negative.

There are a number of these outward-focused negative motives, including:

Spite
Bitterness
Jealousy
Anger
Revenge
Cruelty
A desire to control others
Intentional breaking of social rules, laws, and expectations

All of these motives are manifestations of natural human emotions and inclinations. All people feel them, and most of us have acted with them to some degree or another.

Some characters are fixed in these sorts of motives, embracing them; other resist these motives, or turn to them in moments of extreme pressure, struggle, or pain.

In Sense and Sensibility, Mrs. Ferrars is generally cruel, controlling, and unpleasant to those around her. When Edward and Lucy’s secret engagement is revealed, she lashes out. In an act of anger and revenge, she disinherits Edward.

(As an interesting note, some scholars and other readers have noted that Mrs. Ferrars and Fanny Dashwood are both characters of power who are using and maintaining power in a society where traditionally women don’t hold any power. Even though I still find them to be unlikeable characters, this perspective helps me understand, and in some ways sympathize, with their motives.)

Sometimes acting on negative motives happens in the moment. At other times, as in the case of Lucy Steele, it’s planned and premeditated.

Lucy realizes that Edward has fallen in love with Elinor, so she is intentionally manipulative. She “confides” her troubles about her secret engagement to Elinor, after extracting a promise that she will not tell a soul. And then she continues to be intentionally cruel and manipulative, manifesting a fair amount of spite towards Elinor.

In Conclusion

These negative motives for antagonism are very common in literature: even in Sense and Sensibility, there are numerous examples. In a sense, they are an answer to the question—what happens if we stop following societal rules and expectations for “good behavior”? This makes for good storytelling, because it creates the opportunity for conflict.

In the next lesson, we’ll focus on positive (as well as neutral and mixed) motives for antagonism.

Exercise 1: Negative Perspectives

Some stories explore the perspective of a character fueled by negative motives. For example, in The Count of Monte Cristo, we see someone driven by revenge. And in the story of Robin Hood, a transgression of societal rules and laws (continuous theft of money and property) is shown to be justified as we see his reasons and what he does with this wealth (gives it to the poor).

Other stories, like The Wizard of Oz, give understandable motives to the villains, but still do not allow us to sympathize with them (the wicked witch is understandably angry at Dorothy for killing her sister, yet we are ). Some stories, like Wicked, explore more fully the seemingly negative motives of antagonists—here, the “wicked” witch is not truly wicked, despite some of her negative motives and choices.

Choose a story that does not explain or develop the antagonist’s motives, and write a paragraph or two exploring what their motives might be.

Writing Exercise: Good Actions, Negative Motives

Exercise 2: Good Actions, Negative Motives

Many times, we assume that good actions must have positive motives behind them. Yet good actions can just as well be driven by negative motives. Good actions can be driven by self-interest, or by outward-facing negative emotions, like jealousy, revenge, or a desire to control others.

Set a timer for 3 to 5 minutes. During the time, come up with a negative motive that could drive each of the following actions. If you have time, write extra details about how this motive would play out during the scene.

Donating to a charity/volunteering at a food bank
Throwing a large party and inviting the whole neighborhood
Revitalizing a city’s downtown
Running for the school board
Creating a new work of art

Exercise 3: Protagonists with Negative Motives

Antagonists with negative motives are interesting, but sometimes, protagonists with negative motives can be even more interesting.

Option 1: Brainstorm a protagonist that is sometimes driven by negative motives. In what sorts of circumstances do they act on these negative motives? When do they resist these negative motives? What are positive and negative effects of theme acting on these negative motives?

Option 2: Analyze a draft that you have written. At what points is your character driven by negative motives? Is there a point where it would be useful to give the character a negative motive?

2020 In Review, and Writing like Alexander Hamilton

December 29, 2020/3 Comments/in Secret Life of Miss Mary Bennet, Updates, Year in Review /by Katherine Cowley

The time has come—the long-awaited time of year in which I interrupt your life with charts, beautiful charts!

It’s year in review time. And despite the trash fire that 2020 has been overall, it’s been a really good writing year for me.

(Now I do feel a little self-conscious about it having been a good writing year. So many people have struggled with so much this year—loss of loved ones, personal health, jobs, etc. And as a result of those things or just general 2020ness, many people who have wanted to write have found themselves unable to write. I have a friend who has dozens of published books, and she has not been able to write much this year at all. If this is what your year was like, don’t need to beat yourself up for it. There are times and seasons for everything, and if you weren’t able to write or progress towards your personal goals this year, there will be years where you can.)

And now, on to my charts.

This Year I Wrote for 909 Hours

Note: by “writing” I include research, outlining, revision, planning, writing group, critiquing, listening to writing podcasts, writing accounting, etc…. For example, the “marketing” category includes a multitude of things, including my website (which I revamped this year), blog posts, writing-related social media posts, and conferences and library presentations (I gave two presentations this year). Development includes critiquing, writing group, networking, listening to writing podcasts, and reading books about writing craft.

909 hours works out to an average of 2.5 hours every single day including weekends (if you only include weekdays, it would be an average of 3.5 hours per day). So basically, it was my part-time job.

This is by far the most I have ever written in a year. As evidence, I present another chart:

Hours Spent Writing Per Year. KatherineCowley.com. 2014: 520 hours. 2015: 600 hours. 2016: 530 hours. 2017: 400 hours. 2018: 675 hours. 2019: 734 hours. 2020: 909 hours.

The bulk of my time this year was spent working on my Mary Bennet series. (Which relates to my biggest writing news of the year—I got a three-book-deal with Tule!)

This year I spent 60 hours on the first Mary Bennet book (revisions and copy edits for Tule), 347 hours on the second Mary Bennet book (starting with the second draft, and revising it until it was ready to submit to Tule), and 9 hours on the third Mary Bennet book (this is the one I wish I had spent more on, because I really need to make progress on book 3).

Here’s the cover of the first book, which will be out on April 22nd, 2021:

The Secret Life of Miss Mary Bennet (Cover)

(If you use Goodreads and haven’t yet added the book to your shelves, here’s the link!)

Another task that I put a lot of hours into was my Jane Austen Writing Lessons. I spent 125 hours on them, and I feel like the posts are really useful in terms of writing craft (and writing them has been a great diversion for me—it’s refreshing to write something that’s more essay-ish rather than fiction). Interesting note—of the 94,500 new words I wrote this year, 36,500 words were on Jane Austen Writing Lessons. So I’ve basically blogged half of a nonfiction book, which is pretty cool, to be honest.

How in the World Did I Write 909 hours during a Global Pandemic?

In part, this was due to the fact that I sort of lost my job this year.

I wasn’t fired. But due to university budget constraints, I wasn’t assigned a section to teach this fall, so I’m not working, and I’m not getting paid. Because I wasn’t actually fired, I can still access the university library (including the Oxford English Dictionary online) and keep my subscription to the New York Times.

Not working has had the side effect of giving me extra hours to write.

Also, the lack of going places and doing things this year has given me extra hours. For instance, I typically write a lot less in the summer, due to driving my kids to lessons and activities, as well doing a bit of travel. Suddenly, this summer, I had a lot more time, and my kids have now hit an age where they were better at entertaining themselves and each other.

Yet the biggest reason I’ve managed to write so much is that I’ve been channeling Alexander Hamilton (or at least the Lin-Manuel Miranda version of him)

Two of my favorite lines from Hamilton are in the song “Non-Stop”:

Why do you write like you’re running out of time?

How do you write like you need it to survive?

Why do you write like you’re running out of time?

This year, I’ve felt like I’m running out of time. And I accept full responsibility for this. When my agent started pitching The Secret Life of Miss Mary Bennet to publishers at the beginning of the year, I already had written a first draft of the second book in the series. So I was confident that if the series was picked up by a publisher, I could revise book 2 this year.

Lo and behold, Tule acquired the entire trilogy, and in my contract listed the date by which I would submit book 2 to them. November 1^st, 2020. This was the date I provided, but it ended up being a challenging date to reach.

The book needed a lot more work than I realized—it was a hard book to write, a hard year for me to resolve story problems and actually get words onto the page, and so I spent the entire year writing and revising like I was running out of time. But I made the deadline, and I’m really happy with the results!

(The thing is, I would probably set a similar deadline for myself if I was writing a new trilogy. I would just keep my fingers crossed that there wouldn’t be a global pandemic during the process of writing.)

Why do you write like you need it to survive?

Writing has been one of the things that give me joy, that makes me feel steady and centered, and that gives me purpose and direction. And it truly helped me get through this year. So yes, I need writing to survive.

That and chocolate. Does anyone have chocolate? (I’ve somehow ran out of chocolate…)

Goals for 2021

Successful launch of my debut novel, The Secret Life of Miss Mary Bennet
Write and revise Mary Bennet book 3
Finish up a quick revision of an old steampunk mystery novel that I shelved for a few years

If I do these three things, I will be happy. (Also, I have to do the first two, because I’ve signed a contract, so…so I better go listen to some more Hamilton.)

Thanks for joining me on my writing journey!

(Also–side note. If you’re not subscribed to my newsletter, I sent out a newsletter today about how I recently deleted 100 pages from the aforementioned steampunk mystery novel. You can read about it by clicking on that link. And if you don’t want to miss future newsletters, subscribe below.)

#25: Use Antagonists and Villains to Interfere

December 9, 2020/0 Comments/in Jane Austen Writing Lessons /by Katherine Cowley

A number of books and blog posts on writing talk about creating a single main antagonist or villain, who actively works in opposition to the main character over the course of the story.

Yet this isn’t how Jane Austen uses antagonists and villains in her novels. Many of her books don’t have a primary antagonist. And only a few of her books have villains—there’s even some debate over whether any of her characters qualify as villains at all.

Over the coming weeks, we’re going to explore how Jane Austen uses obstacles, antagonists, and villains with great effect. Some of my personal favorites in terms of Austen characters fall into these categories—Lady Catherine de Bourgh, Willoughby, Jane Fairfax, and even Mr. Knightley (yes, he definitely acts as an antagonist!).

This week we’re going to define some of the key terms related to obstacles, antagonists, and villains in a way that helps us understand how Jane Austen uses them and how we can use them in our own writing. Examples will come from Austen’s novel Mansfield Park.

Obstacles

Obstacle=something which gets in the way of the character as they go on their journey. This may be a challenge, a physical or emotional impediment, or anything which must be overcome in order for the characters wants and needs to be met.

I talked about obstacles in two previous posts. In Make Things Hard for Your Character I discussed three types of challenges: external obstacles, successes/triumphs, and internal flaws/challenges. The post on creating character arcs also discusses obstacles, albeit a little more indirectly.

In Mansfield Park, an example of an obstacle is when Fanny Price’s horse dies. Suddenly she has no way to exercise, which has a huge negative impact on her health, and perhaps more seriously, she loses the small amount of autonomy, independence, and freedom she had because of her horse.

Obstacles can be inactive or active.

Inactive Obstacle: a present and existing obstacle which is a challenge for the character, but does not have active force applied to create this challenge.

One of Fanny’s sources of inactive opposition is her poverty. Her poverty makes her beholden to her uncle and aunts, and it robs her of power and decision-making. This poverty is not something that has changed over time, and there seems to be no way that it could change. No one is actively making her poor, no single event has created this poverty—it’s just the way it is.

Active Obstacle: an obstacle which includes the active application of negative force on a character. This can be a one-time obstacle, an obstacle that happens multiple times, or an obstacle that happens continuously.

One example of the active obstacle is the choice of her cousins and their friends to perform what to her is a rather objectionable play. Then they try to force her to act in it against her wishes.

Another active obstacle, which is more continuous, is Henry Crawford’s proposal. Crawford devotes huge amounts of time attempting to manipulate Fanny, and Fanny’s uncle, Lord Bertram, also convinces her to accept the proposal and punishes her when she does not.

Antagonism

Antagonism=active opposition to a character, often with hostility.

According to the New Oxford American Dictionary, in the field of biochemistry, antagonism “inhibition or interference with the action of one substance or organism by another.” To me this is really useful for stories, particularly the sense of “inhibition or interference” of someone’s actions.

Whenever one character opposes another character, whenever a character inhibits or interferes with another characters actions, they are showing antagonism.

Antagonism with hostility – Much antagonism is accompanied by hostility, which includes negative emotion, often unfriendliness.

An example of characters that show antagonism with hostility are Lord and Lady Bertram. They feeling that Fanny should be treated as lesser and separate than their children, and that she should be reminded of all she has been given that she does not deserve. This results in many things, including her sleeping in a cold room in the attic (with no fire in the winter!), apart from the rest of the family.

Antagonism without hostility – some antagonism or active opposition occurs without any hostility or ill-will.

Edmund, Fanny’s cousin, is her closest friend and confidante. And yet he does things which inhibit and oppose Fanny, though with no ill will. When the horse she uses dies, he gets her a new horse to use, but then he lends it out constantly to his love interest, which inhibits Fanny. Edmund also tries to get Fanny to marry Henry Crawford, and does not listen to her perspective or her reasoning for not wanting to marry Crawford.

Antagonism vs. Antagonist

I’ve included antagonism as a separate category than an antagonist, because while all antagonists manifest antagonism, not all characters who manifest antagonism at some point in a story are true antagonists.

Personally, I would categorize Lord Bertram as an antagonist, because he truly is actively opposing Fanny on a regular basis, while I would categorize Lady Bertram and Edmund simply as characters sometimes behaving with antagonism to the main character.

Antagonist

Antagonist – a person who actively opposes the main character and tries to interfere with them achieving their wants and needs, typically over multiple scenes or a large portion of the story.

An example of this is Mrs. Norris.

Gif of Filch rocking his cat, Mrs. Norris, from the Harry Potter films

I’m not talking about the cat in Harry Potter (though I’ve heard that the Mansfield Park character is the namesake for the Harry Potter antagonist, which makes me very happy). I’m talking about Fanny’s aunt.

Despite all their years in close proximity, Mrs. Norris never gives Fanny any love. She is constantly belittling, disregarding, and mistreating Fanny. She attempts to put Fanny in her place, and at times even threatens her at times. Not only does she make Fanny’s life miserable, she also influences others to mistreat Fanny.

Villain

Villain – an antagonist who causes significant, lasting, and often irreversible harm in the main character’s life or in the lives of those the main character cares deeply about.

Henry Crawford decides to make Fanny love him as a sort of game, simply because she’s the only unwed female who isn’t interested in him. Thus begins his manipulations, and his antagonism/interference in Fanny’s life.

Ultimately [SPOILERS IN THIS SENTENCE!] he ends up seducing Fanny’s cousin Maria Bertram, and not long after Maria’s marriage they elope together. This brings shame to the whole family, and, because it’s the Regency, “ruins” Maria.

(Some readers classify Henry Crawford as an antagonist but not a villain. Other people find him to be the most interesting character, and some authors have even written fanfiction in which he does end up with Fanny and they’re both happy as a result. He does fit well into the “loveable bad boy” archetype.)

In Conclusion

There’s a lot of reasons to use obstacles, antagonism, antagonists, and villains, some of which I talked about in the post on making things hard for your character. There are three key reasons that I’d like to highlight today.

Reasons to use obstacles, antagonism, antagonists, and villains:

To apply pressure to your character. Only with pressure and challenge can a character change, grow, and prove themselves.
Story is conflict, and one of the most powerful forms of conflict comes through these sorts of opposition. Antagonists and villains in particular actively interfere with the character’s internal and external journeys.
It creates verisimilitude to life. All people are on paths, striving, and often our paths interfere with each other.

Next week we’ll go in depth on motives for antagonism. In the coming weeks, we’ll also talk about shifting, temporary, and minor antagonists; unusual antagonists; giving antagonists redeeming characteristics; and specific impacts that antagonists have on both plot and character.

Exercise 1: Make a list of your favorite antagonists and villains from books, movies, or any other stories. Which ones or antagonists? Which ones are villains? Why do you like them?

Exercise 2: Hobby Trouble

Choose a character name and give your new character a hobby—knitting or fencing, stamp collecting or competitive cheesemaking, or anything else. Now write a scene in which antagonism is shown towards the main character and their hobby. This should be opposition, large or small, to the hobby or some aspect of it, or it could be something that inhibits or interferes with the hobby. First the character should receive this sort of interference from some sort of enemy or adverstary, someone who has hostile or unfriendly intent. Then the character should receive some sort of antagonism or interference from a friend or a loved one. As you write this scene, consider how your character will react differently depending on who is providing the antagonism.

Exercise 3: From Antagonist to Villain

Take a story you have written and choose one of your antagonists. Brainstorm what you could do to shift this character from an antagonist to a villain (using the definitions of antagonist and villain provided in this post).

As an alternative, do the reverse and choose a villain you have written. Brainstorm what you could do to shift this character from a villain to an antagonist.

Initial Good/Redemptive Qualities

And the Antagonism

His Motives for Antagonistic Behavior

Letting Willoughby Tell His Story

Redemptive Qualities

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Positive Motives for Antagonism

Neutral Motives for Antagonism

In Conclusion

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Self-Interested Motives

Outward-Focused Negative Motives

In Conclusion

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This Year I Wrote for 909 Hours

How in the World Did I Write 909 hours during a Global Pandemic?

Yet the biggest reason I’ve managed to write so much is that I’ve been channeling Alexander Hamilton (or at least the Lin-Manuel Miranda version of him)

Why do you write like you’re running out of time?

Why do you write like you need it to survive?

Goals for 2021

Obstacles

Antagonism

Antagonist

Villain

In Conclusion

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