Romance Novel Characters — Is There Anything That’s Unforgivable
January 26th, 2010 | 
Author: The conversation about characters, particularly heroes has been developing in the comments about what makes a to die for hero and how important it is that a hero be sensitive, understanding, compassionate, at least with the heroine — at least by the end.
I thought today I would turn the conversation in a new direction and ask — is there anything a character (hero or heroine) could do either in the course of the story or in their backstory that you would find utterly unforgivable…no matter how remorseful they were, what they did to make amends, or anything else?
There are not many things that a character could do that I don’t have the potential to forgive…IF the character changes…IF the character feels true remorse for whatever he or she did. In some cases forgiveness depends on the character’s motivation for doing what he or she did. Did he or she know it was wrong when he or she did it? Was it an angry act, something that happened in the heat of the moment or was it a planned act, something the character considered before he or she did it?
Also important for some major bad acts are how long ago they occurred. I might be able to forgive a character who did time for robbery if the robberies happened when he/she was a teenager and he’s cleaned up his act since then.
I would have a very hard time forgiving purposeful pre-meditated cruelty of any sort…but especially cruelty to kids and animals. I think I would find this very hard even if the character had changed a great deal and felt tremendous remorse.
Can you think of any books where the hero or heroine did something that challenged your ability to forgive? In the end, were you able to forgive the character, like them, root for them? What did the author do/show/write that allowed you to forgive the character? If you didn’t forgive the character is there anything they could have done that would have made it so you could forgive the character?
Posted in Romance Novel Characters
Wow, I have to think about ths. I’m not sure if I have read anything like that. My father in law read a book,that was made in to a movie that just came out before xmas and we were talking about the book. there were things in that book that did challenge my beliefs. They were killing unborn babies for food. I told him I did not want to read that book at all. So i would say anything that has to do with hurting children or animals would be my line. I know the book was fiction but when I read I see those words in my head like a movie and thats one scene I don’t want to see.
I agree with you Heidi.
Pre-meditated purposeful harm against children or animals is a hard line for me too.
I agree with you…I would not want to read a book or see a movie that had images/descriptions/anything that would make me see images in my head of people hurting children or animals…and especially not killing unborn babies to eat.
Children are hurt, abused, animals are hurt and abused as well. I’ve written about children being abused — as I cover that fairly graphically in His Perfect Submissive. The heroine was kidnapped and raped when she was seven. The ramifications of that event (which happened 20 years before the opening of the story) are not glossed over. The reason that it is covered is to show the reality. Too often I think we “nice it up” for romance. The heroine was raped, or abused, or neglected, and the ramifications on her psyche and soul are given short shift, we don’t really show the damage…to her family…to her ability to trust…to her self-confidence…to her feeling of safety, competence, etc. In His Perfect Submissive I wanted to show the damage.
In His Perfect Submissive the man who kidnapped and raped the heroine when she was a child is not the hero. He’s obviously a bad guy and no one is supposed to forgive him. The reader is supposed to hate him.
I find shaming behavior hard to forgive. I think Gladys mentioned that in her comments on one of the other posts about heroes where she mentioned a hero who called the heroine every bad thing he could think of again and again…and yet she fell in love with him. I’d find that kind of behavior in a hero pretty difficult to forgive.
In romance I want to see a hero who makes a heroine feel good about herself…not bad…not shamed…not guilty…not incompetent or stupid. The same is true of the heroine. I want her to be a good influence on the hero. I want her presence in his life to bring out the best in him.
I guess that’s why I like to read romance. I like to see the good in people. I like to think that there is hope for everyone to see themselves in a better light and to behave better because of it. Still, much as I believe that, there are some behaviors that I find very difficult to forgive. Your example would be one….anything to do with hurting children or animals.
If the hero is truly remorseful and makes the appropriate restitution/apologies then I’m pretty much able tobe forgiving. I did read one book where the hero did the unthinkable near the end of the book, which ruined what had been and interesting story up to that point. I mean, in a romance, even an erotic romance, you need either a happily ever after or a happy for now, right? Well this hero killed himself one chapter before the end, thus committing his lady to an existance in limbo, neither alive or dead. I couldn’t even find one reason it had to end that way.
Harming a child or animal is a turn off for me too.
Laurie, what a thought-provoking post.
I never really thought about unforgiving behaviors in romance. But there you have it…I certainly agree with you about not forgiving pre-meditated purposeful harm towards anything, but I haven’t come across that in the stories I’ve read, so far. And I can’t abide a hero calling every bad name to the heroine and her falling in love with him in spite of it. That book would be thrown right against the wall and straight into the trash. I read romance for love and HEA.
Wow, Laurie, that’s a difficult question.
I don’t think you can hold childhood or teenage acts against someone. We’ve all done stupid stuff! Unfortunately, many criminals did things as children that should have been warning signs to parents and teachers that the child had a serious problem.
I’ve known police officers who would laugh and tell stories about the things they did as children and comment about how the kids in their neighborhood had only two options when they grew up – cop or criminal. So yes, people do change. They grow up and move on.
But in general, I don’t see that many people who are capable of turning their lives completely around. You can smooth the coat of the tiger but you’ll never change his stripes. That self-centered, selfish twenty-year-old jerk will still be a selfish, self-centered fifty-year-old one. Maybe not as bad because his coat has been smoothed by the years, and he’s learned to be more socially acceptable, but his stripes are still there.
On the other hand, history is fraught with stories of men and women who have done horrific things such as cannibalism to survive. I’m sure such acts have a profound impact on them and are definitely life changing events. So that twenty-year-old jerk goes off to war, or volunteers to help after a catastrophic event, or finds himself in the middle of such an incident is going to change.
I think heroes need to be good guys. Isn’t that what every woman craves? A man who is a rock? The kind of person who is strong enough to put on a suit of armor and slew the dragon (the spreadsheet, stock market, the Indy 500), yet come home and cuddle the love of his life?
Bad things happen to good people. Good people do stupid things. Cataclysmic events happen. We march onward.
Personally, I think romances should be positive stories. Romances are a means of escape from daily life. If the reader can identify with the hero’s or heroine’s past, and see that person progressing and overcoming a victimization, that’s good. We’ve all been victims at some point in our lives. But to portray the hero or heroine as the persecutor, antagonist, et cetera is wrong. Leave that for mainstream novels.
I’m not saying the hero can’t accidentally back his car into the heroine’s. But I don’t want to read about the drunk driver on a revoked license who causes a fatal accident and then falls madly in love with the nurse in the emergency department and to prove his love quits drinking. Sorry, I’m not going to buy that story much less pay to read it.
Schindler’s List (not a romance) was about a good guy, albeit flawed, in a bad situation, who did his best to save those he could. Osker Schindler was a true hero. But a romantic story about Adolf and Eva…Never!
There have been a few times while reading a book when I can’t imagine why the lady doesn’t slap the guy silly. but eventually they work things out. I have never really encountered a book where one of the main characters did something to terrible to forgive. Although there is one book in a series that I love that I have been avoiding for a while. The “hero” in that one is just getting out of jail after serving his sentence for something he did to the main characters in one of the earlier books.
I read a book once where the hero raped the heroine she forgave him. But it made me hate the entire book and I don’t know if I even finished it or not. I can’t even remember who wrote the book now.
There are lots of interesting comments here.
Yes, Nancy, in my book you do need a happily ever after ending in romance. Though there are books which are called dark romance in which the happy ever after ending isn’t quite as guaranteed. A lot of these fall into the horror-romance or paranormal romance category. Frankly I read romance for the happy ending…so I’m not much interested in dark romance…and I would be really ticked off by a hero who killed himself and left the heroine in limbo.
E, you make some very interesting points about the things that can and do happen to change people’s lives and their outlooks. I don’t necessarily think that people who are selfish at 20 are selfish at 50. Most of them are…but some people have experiences like those you mentioned that change them. Others spend their lives working to become better people…perhaps because of some wrong that they committed that they feel they need to pay for.
I personally find these kinds of characters interesting…much more interesting than characters who have always had it easy and who have always made the right decisions. It’s not that I don’t like characters who are more perfect. But characters who have had problems, who have made mistakes, who have done some bad things are very interesting to me.
I guess that’s one of the reasons I posed the question.
My one of my big story killers for a romance is when someone who has been abused and had their child/children abused takes the abuser back. I do agree that sometimes people can change, but working in a situation where I’m in close contact with these situations on a daily basis, it’s the miraculous exception, not the overwhelmingly general rule… it’s one thing that turns me off so much I simply have to put the book down and walk away.
I also have a serious issues with animal (current or past) or child abuse (active) being part of the story line if the hero or heroine is the abuser. I simply can’t admire someone who “is doing” those things, and I need to find something I admire in the hero or heroine of my books in order for them to be interesting to me. Again, I would tend to simply put the book down and walk away from it.