This is the kind of literary list-making that I dont understand. The article lists major child characters in literature that adults can relate to. I’m an adult. I can relate to any child character in literature as long as they are well written. You know why? Because that’s what writing is all about, relating to the characters. But even then, you do realize that most child characters are actually adults in disguise–insofar as they are fake people who adults created.
This raises the whole issue of relatable characters. It’s the idea that it’s hard for someone from X background to relate to a character from Y background. Or, put simply, girls relate to girl characters and boys relate to boy characters. Adults relate to adults. Kids can only read books about kids.
I once worked on a scholarly exploration of Peter Pan, and the academic I was working with on the project suggested that we each work on interpreting the characters that matched our sex…because boys relate to the boy characters, and girls relate to the girl characters. This made no sense to me, I related equally to Peter and Wendy. You’re weird, I was told.
Am I? Perhaps. But I can’t help but feel that part of literature is all about the leveling of consciousness. If I can inhabit the mind of Wendy, then I can relate to her. If I can inhabit the mind of Peter, I can relate to him. Relating to a character isn’t about saying something as surface level as Hey! You are a fussy little British girl. I am too! or Hey! You are a strange flying immortal British boy. I am too! It’s about seeing their story on their terms and finding yourself in it. I hate sports, but I can still understand what Rudy is going through when I watch his movie.
Can only toasters relate to Caprica Six in Battlestar Galactica? Can only citizens of the 12 Colonies relate to the human characters?
This gets complicated when it comes to race because it would be presumptuous of me to say that I can relate to characters of all races just as well as readers of those races can relate to the same characters. Having said that, because my experience of a character from a different race will likely be different from the experience of someone who shares that character’s race, that doesn’t mean that I can’t ‘relate’ to that character. I can, just differently.
I’ve known girls who idolize Harry Potter and boys who idolize Buffy. And that doesn’t mean they loooooove them (which is the related notion to all of this: boys relate to boy characters, and only like girl characters they find attractive, etc.). It means that they see themselves in that character and are inspired by that character, regardless of or because of their different gender (either can work fine).
I relate to R2-D2. He’s plucky and a little bitchy: I like that. Is he a boy robot? Is there such a thing? What about the clearly gendered robots in shows like Galactica. I share the same technical gender, but I’m not a cylon, so how can I relate to their quest for humanity? What about Data?
I relate to Voldemort for god’s sake. Dude doesn’t want to die. I get that. Not only is he a boy, he doesn’t even have a nose; am I allowed to relate to him?
I love categorizing things; it makes life clear and straightforward in many ways. But the way we categorize taste–with gender, age, background and so on–is limiting.
This is a great point. I tend to think the challenge writers face is finding a way to capture sufficient elements from disparate experiences and backgrounds to present the illusion of authenticity. But when it is done correctly there is absolutely no boundary to prevent a reader from internalizing that character’s struggle. Ultimately, storytelling is about finding snippets (or huge chunks) of humanity all over the place; relatable experiences can be found in the mundane, the familiar, the fantastic and the completely alien. Successful stories, in general, are those that do the best job of making you identify with someone or something that you couldn’t or wouldn’t otherwise.
I think part of it from one end is that there is an imbalance, in genre, of female protagonists. It’s valuable to right that long-standing imbalance because it is valuable for readers, both male and female, to see that women can be protagonists with agency in fantasy and science fiction.
Even if I can relate to Hermione and women can relate to Harry Potter, I don’t want a world which is just strong male characters and expecting both genders to relate just to them…
You’re definitely correct about the imbalance being a major problem. The bigger problem to me is that a lot of people frame the problem as ‘girls need more characters to relate to,’ so we need to throw in some women to the story in order to make it relatable for them. They don’t view it as, ‘both genders need more women to relate to’ because of that imbalance between the world we live in and the world we see on the page and screen.