Do you ever get crushes on literary characters?

yes sometimes i find myself thinking about edward cullen of twilight

I thought I was the only one to get crushes on literary characters! Hooray I’m not alone!

Sydney Carton from Tale of Two Cities
Nicholas Nickelby from (duh) Nicholas Nickelby
Atticus from To Kill a Mockingbird (I don’t know why, but I really had a thing for him!)
Jude Fawley from Jude the Obscure

I’ve had more but they are too embarrassing to write down. I fill a little embarrassed for admitting to even having these crushes!

when I first read the books before the movies ever came out, I had a thing for Cho Chang from Harry Potter…I know I’m crazy haha

@seeking wolf: tell us, tell us the embarrassing ones! ;)

@qc: yes! The Harry Potter books! I’ve always had a thing for the twins cuz they are so cool!

There’s also Stefan from the Mercy Thompson novels. Yes, he’s a vampire but there’s something about him that makes my heart go pitter-pat.

Hardly high brow, but wow do I have a thing for Kay Scarpetta!

@juniper nooooo I don’t like to admit them to myself, let alone to others blush blush blush

Iago from Othello. Hahaha.

Pippi Longstocking but that was awhile ago, and I’m over her now

Larry Darrell from The Razor’s Edge
Rochester from Jane Eyre
Rhett Butler from Gone With the Wind (I should NOT have read that at 12; I think my idea of what a relationship should be like was forever screwed up).

Kahlan Amnell aka Mother Confessor. Sword of Truth Series

Nobody’s mentioned Mr. Darcy yet??

@Seekingwolf: Lurve for Sydney Carton! I thought I was the only one! :D

@janbb: Omg, Mr. Darcy! Definitely!!!

I forget the name but she was in the Wheel of Time series. :o

@laureth

I know, Sydney is amazing.
When he was down and drinking, I wanted to huggle him (and more)
seriously though, I cried a little when he (SPOILER) died.

Who cannot love a man like that?! even if he is imaginary :)

Gilbert Blythe, from the Anne of Green Gables books (not the one from the movies)! I even went through a phase where I thought that I would name my first son Gil!

@answerjill: Gilbert Blythe, yes! He is one suave fellow. ;)

How about Dan from Little Men? And for that matter, Laurie? Loved them both when I was a girl. Couldn’t imagine why Jo turned him down.

@seekingwolf – Sydney Carton and Atticus Finch are both great, too.

@btko

Moiraine Damodred?
(dark eyes and dark hair hanging in ringlets. A delicate gold chain fastened in her hair supports a small, sparkling blue stone in the middle of her forehead)

Armand from the Interview With A Vampire series. embarassed

@janbb: Never read Little Men, but definitely had a HUGE HUGE HUGE crush on Laurie in Little Women.

Lots of people get literary crushes!

Some of mine, in no particular order (except the first one):
– Remus Lupin (Harry Potter)
– Atticus Finch (To Kill a Mockingbird)
– Gary Stubbs (Poppy Z. Brite’s Liquor series)
– Reginald Jeeves (P.G. Wodehouse’s Jeeves & Wooster stories)
– Tyrion Lannister (A Song of Ice and Fire)
– Lee Scoresby (His Dark Materials)
– Faramir (The Lord of the Rings)

@Macbean: Remus, huh? So many potential crushes in the HP series.

Snape is hot.

Oh – you reminded me:

Aragorn, Aragorn, Aragorn!

(And wasn’t Viggo Mortensen to die for in the movie?)

How about Lady Brett Ashley from The Sun Also Rises? And Viv Stamper from Sometimes a Great Notion?

Atticus Finch
Adam Trask from East of Eden

@btko – which one of the girls? Moiraine, Egwain, Elaine, Min, Avienda…. lol

Aragorn was quite something, but I liked Faramir even better (they completely maligned his character in the movies – booooo).

Mmmm – Rochester….

Haha! I like that some of you know who I mean. I think it was Avienda, she seemed exotic. Such a great story. I haven’t seen the movies and I don’t think I will.

My first literature crush was Miryam Vedreaux, from A Perilous Power by E. Rose Sabin.

Poe from Secret Society Girl
Jacob Black from Twilight

(I’m in college, I need an escape some time, young adult story lines are the most entertaining right now lol)

@ljs22 Yes, totally Rochester! I had to agree since no one else was saying anything.

like you don’t believe haha.
and they’re usually gay men. of course. wouldn’t work in real life anyway haha

Valentine from the Ender books (the later ones, when she’s an adult, of course…)

Definitely.
I think you get so involved it’s hard not to start crushing on one of the characters. My favorite thing is when the book seems real, or when it’s so good that’s all you can think about when you aren’t reading.

Yes yes yes!
Harry Potter (shuddup)
Laurie
Aragorn
Lief
Bartlett

i am so glad that others share my bookish fancy!

when i was a little girl, Travis Coates from Old Yeller

Richard Sharpe from Cornwell’s Sharpe series: rugged, roguish, fearsome, and implacable, not to mention quite handy with rifle and heavy sword. and handsome, too. he has a long scar on his right cheek (received in battle, of course) that gives him a mocking look which softens only when he smiles at pretty women and small children. sigh

i think people will always have crushes on the characters in the good stuff, like Jane Eyre, Twilight and the other ten trillion books that we love.

Did you just put Jane Eyre and Twilight in the same category? [blink]

@Nimis: I had that very same thought…

I couldn’t even answer when I saw that. I wandered off to cry.

Hey, come on guys. Just because Twilight is a novel about vampires doesn’t mean it’s not good and certainly doesn’t mean it won’t one day be among the classics. After all, Shakespeare was a hack who churned out plays for money and every one of his works is considered good and a classic.

It’s not because it’s about vampires. I mean, Dracula is certainly a classic. The Twilight series, however, is not only poorly-written but it portrays horribly obsessive and abusive relationships as something that people should strive for.

Actually, I think Meyer is incredibly skilled at drawing in & hooking her reader. Isn’t that what a good writer does? Captivates the mind? Consumes your thoughts when you aren’t reading? I know a lot of times writing is meant to make you think…However, I think before something can change you, it’s got to resonate with you somehow. It’s beautiful how her books have gotten people who NEVER read to start reading. You can’t say that about a lot of other writers or series.

@MacBean: Didn’t Jane Eyre have a man who kept his crazy wife in the attic? Isn’t that an abusive relationship? What about other classics that are poorly written? You have to hold a loaded gun to my head to get me to read any Hemingway yet anything he wrote is considered great and wonderful. Whether or not a book is poorly written is up to the reader.

Again, are you really comparing Jane Eyre and the Twilight series?

Bertha Mason was an actual violent raving lunatic in a time when anyone who was deemed undesirable in any way could be tossed into an asylum where they would be treated as less than human. Considering the day and age in which the story takes place, she had it much better than she could have. Also, Rochester/Bertha is not a romantic pairing. He was forced to marry her because she was rich and he was a younger son. The relationship is in no way, shape or form portrayed as something to strive for.

On the other hand, Bella/Edward is set up as a ~romantic ideal~. But they are completely obsessed with each other in a horribly unhealthy way. She went basically catatonic and functioned on autopilot for four months when he left her. And he’s constantly belittling her, calling her silly, treating her like a child. His moods swing in what I think is supposed to be a romantic and Byronic way but it’s just plain manipulative. He watches her sleep through her window… He tampers with her vehicle so she can’t see her other friends… When people do things like this for real? They go to jail or have restraining orders filed against them.

And re: Hemingway—Hemingway is incredibly well-written. That’s an objective fact. I can’t read it without wanting to gouge out my own eyeballs, that’s my subjective opinion. There’s a difference.

Yes the sad part about it is I had crush like feelings to a character in one of my projects. I guess its not hard when you create everything about them. But when it comes to characters from others fiction you still use a lot of imagination to give the character life in similar ways you would imagine your co-worker you don’t really know or have a crush on, or the guy/girl you saw on the bus this morning. Crushes have a lot to do with imagination and how we see others so its not strange to get these crushes the same as its equivalent to getting a crush on a movie character but not the actor himself. An example of this is I have friends who don’t care for Julia Roberts the actress but absolutely love her character in Pretty Woman.

Oh MY God!! I actually don’t think i have had a crush on literary character yet…but i am so now looking forward to reading reading and doing more reading from now on!! :)))

Haha! Yes, i do! Very seldom though…. :)

Tell us who, JellyB!

@MacBean LOL! I can’t remember! I know they probably featured in some Stephen King book….. and there was this one western story i read once too – heh heh!

I once had a dream that Stephen King and I were madly in love with each other, but since we were each married to other people we were quite noble and did not act on it. It was so sad!

@augustlan: I once dreamt that I was going out with one of the Weasley twins and I couldn’t tell them apart so I just ended up dating both of them.

Yes! Jude Fowley from Jude the Obscure and.. Jacob Black from Twilight!!! And.. Fred Weasley from Harry Potter. I’m pretty sure that’s it. @KatawaGrey.. just saw your response. lol. They are attractive twins!

Recently discussed this in a question on wis.dm. Read a book (Grapes of Wrath) in which, having some prior knowlege of it, i had been certain such a crush would be impossible to avoid on a main character. But, just a second ago on the great books thread, it occurred to me – having just finished the novel – that it was odd basically no crush at all developed.

Not even sure if i can recall, probably having so many, and keeping not even a mental list. Yesterday it occurred to me that i had one on Shevek from the Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia without even realizing it (read a handful of months ago).

Something about Mr. Rochester appealed to me, even tho he had issues. May’ve been partly how their connection developed, and contrasted against the whole rest of the book.

Seen P&P several times (the most recent on, once, the BBC one, several), and liked Mr.Darcy’s character… but Colin Firth doesn’t do it for me at all (maybe he’s too old? am not into guys who are unmistakably a generation above me). Must’ve either been too young, or insane to not’ve noticed how hot the guy who played him in the recent film was. But haven’t yet read the book, so not sure if, technically, it counts as a literary crush. With a modern-version fanfic i’m reading a crush developed despite his clearly being way too rich for me to admire his character/social-conscience (which should be a requirement for crushes, but my crushes don’t follow self-imposed regulation).