I really dislike Mrs Weasley.

[cockneysalad]

She is an awful character, she seems to prefer Harry to Ron and is mean to Fleur. She is also a bit of a stereotype, the apron, the knitting, the homemaker etc. Which literary characters annoy you and why?

Oh not Heathcliff Samtsirch

All that emo brooding and moping around would get old really fast!

Oh yes: Tess of the bloody d'U; and Emma. Equally awful for entirely different reasons.

Oh, thinking about Jilly Cooper @RaingodsWithZippos - Helen Campbell-Black/Rannaldini/Gordon -absolutely awful woman! So whiney and moralising!

Also Rachel Levitsky.

And Perdita MacLeod - such an absolute bitch!

I always thought the same about Mrs Weasley, that she's a bit of a carrot-chopping "mum" cliche. But then some mums do take on that role and some do want to.

I don't exactly hate the characters in Wuthering Heights but I was very confused by how dithery and interrelated they all are - there's this image of the book as being just a passionate storm-blasted love story and actually it's all over the place, with multiple characters who are all vaguely related.

I hate Lola out of Charlie and Lola. Charlie's a saint but Lola is a selfish, smug spoiled brat. Ugh!

Hamlet is annoying, but Ophelia is worse. FFS love he's just not that into you, get over it.

However I have never wanted to slap a character more than Yossarian in Catch 22. Couldn't get past a few pages, he annoyed me so much.

Mellors in Lady Chatterley. A rude, woman hating prick. I can’t fathom the female lead (her name escapes me) going on to have a happy life with him, she just escaped one misery for another.

What about Edward Rochester? One wife he decided to lock up and another who was barely out of school who he abused and lied to. Then he married her after their previous relationship saw her begging for porridge scraps and living life outdoors when she was an independent woman who could have had her own life without the burden of a one-armed, blind? moody husband.

And I don’t know why tess is getting it in the neck instead of Alec and Angel. They were both absolute trash and good on her for murdering her rapist.

@MollyButton I totally agree about Terry Pratchett. He created so many brilliant female characters.

Queenoftheashes
Actually I feel that I stand corrected: you're right that Tess does rather unfairly get it in the neck!

elessar yes I am not a huge fan of Helen, she reads as though JC got bored with her but didn't want to kill her off because Rupe couldn't shag around if he had full custody of the kids. Rachel is similarly dull. I quite like Perdita though, even though she is awful she is vulnerable.

I really dislike the way Mrs Weasley allows her children to wallow in that oh-poor-us-we-are-so-poor mindset. Her husband has a middle class job, there is always oodles of food, and wearing second-hand clothes is hardly a tragedy, their house is big enough for the children (apart from the twins who probably wouldn't want it) to have their own room and to put people up. Yet she always manages to sound guilty about it. It is not good for them and by the time Ron ends up on the run you can see how ingrained that attitude of self-pity has become. I can't for the life of me see how they were any less privileged than my own distinctly middle-class children and I wouldn't have tolerated that attitude for a day!

I've had to restart the Game of Thrones series because I gave up halfway through book 5. The reason? Jaime sodding Lannister. Ugh, so many chapters with him and that Brienne who I can't stand either. While I'm on the subject Daenerys too with her illusions of grandeur.

I never could stand Molly Weasley. She just seems a bit pointless. Actually I feel that way about most of the Weasleys apart from the twins (and Bill to a certain extent). Tonks always annoyed me too. She came across as a right wet blanket over Lupin

Harry is actually my least favorite. He's arrogant while acting as though he isn't. Most issues tend to stem from his inability to trust anyone even though they've given him no reason not to.

Yes to Lily and James Potter!

I could never get my head around the ages either, both died at 21. I doubt many people envisioned them that young in the book. As well as the fact James is shown as a cruel bully as a teenager and we are supposed to understand that people change and Lily fell for him once he’d grown up and matured into a difference person- they were married and expecting Harry at 19, I could understand if it was in later life as older adults but failed to see how he’d come a whole new person so quickly to the extent that Lily decided to marry and get pregnant with him before she was even out of her teens.

James is an arrogant bully. Lily is annoyingly too perfect as a character- beautiful, ‘uncommonly kind’, witty, vivacious, talented, clever and so on. Just found the pair of them irritating.

I can't stand Kitty in Anna Karenina - so weedy, with all the backbone of a blancmange. At least Anna had some passion in her, even if her taste in men was crap.

I don’t really care either way for her but there’s absolutely no way she would have been able to kill Bellatrix. She hasn’t done any fighting for many, many years; most, if not all, of her spells are domestic.

Bellatrix on the other hand lives those fights day in, day out. Not a chance Molly could have killed her.

I don’t understand how poverty can even exist among people who can do magic. Surely if if you can literally transform a human being into a completely different person (okay not that easy but easy enough for school kids to do it), it should be pretty easy to wave a wand and turn rags into Gucci or whatever?

But JK wanted to fall back on the poor but cosy, salt of the earth WC stereotype, to place the Weasleys into contrast with the Dursleys.

Sophie in the Dick King Smith books.
I know what he was trying to write but he actually gets a rather nasty bullying little girl whose family just gushes about how she's special and lets her get away with anything.

It makes me think of the bit the Curtain Up (Noel Streatfield) where Sorrel is comparing her two cousins. One (whose name I can't remember off hand)is "like following a path in a wood. She is so absorbed in following it she doesn't notice other interesting things which might distract her from getting to the other side." Miranda otoh is crashing through the wood, pushing aside anything that gets in her way."

He was going for the former with Sophie, but hit the latter. One of the few books I looked at and got rid of.

As for others...

Bothers me to no end that they made Emma levitate in Miss Peregrine's. She's a fire manipulator and her talent is used later in the story to save people.

Also not a fan of Fade in the razorland trilogy. Deuce was superior to him🤷

@Nancydrawn

Hamlet deserves a smack.

I'm laughing too much at this.

He does, doesn't he?

Nick Dunne in Gone Girl

Why. Why did you not leave the crazy bitch when you had the chance!?!

Cousin Helen in What Katy Did is a sanctimonious dick, shaming the possibly-newly-paralysed Katy for not having a pristine bedroom. Not as if she could leap out of bed and get cracking with the feather duster, is it?

If you think about it, living at Wuthering Heights would be like living in permanent lockdown with no TV or internet

This made me laugh a lot, @Mycatismadeofstringcheese

Wuthering Heights is generally a pile of poo.

I can't believe people are dissing Tess, though. I hope I haven't missed anyone having a go at Eustachia Vye, as she's my heroine.

Romeo and Juliet ought to get hobbies.

Hero annoys me in Much Ado about nothing. FFS say something! Defend yourself!

Oh my fucking God yes!

And when the truth does come out, I would have taken great pleasure to walk up that aisle and given Claudio a bit of his own back. "You thought I was a slag and dumped me at the alter. Now you know I'm not you are happy to marry me. I thought you were and honourable loving man. Now I know you are not, you can fuck off and carry on shagging your mate the Prince....he can fuck off too."

Altar