I think you're absolutely right. It's like a post I did a while ago on chess pieces, which I think Rowling calls on her characters to do. They have to be what they are to do what they do to move the story along. Like Dickens this means some of them are very dramatic--but it doesn't make them always deep. Magwitch or Estella in Great Expectations, for instance.
It's in fanfic where people are often more complex in themselves, but I think that's also why it's not so odd that a female reader might not be particularly interested in the female characters. I think each of the characters only really contain a couple of spins that they can really support strongly, and if you're not interested in the things that you can do with what they represent, you go to another one.
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Date: 2007-06-02 09:39 pm (UTC)It's in fanfic where people are often more complex in themselves, but I think that's also why it's not so odd that a female reader might not be particularly interested in the female characters. I think each of the characters only really contain a couple of spins that they can really support strongly, and if you're not interested in the things that you can do with what they represent, you go to another one.