Last month we explored what a protagonist wants, and this month, we’ll dive into the mentality of an antagonist. While I enjoy reading an antagonist who’s sole focus in life is to destroy the protagonist’s life, I’d prefer to read how external and internal forces affect their conflict.
For instance, what happens when…
- Characters compete for the same desire but only one person can obtain it (think of a romance)?
- Characters want mutually exclusive desires. One character wants to save their lumber farm and the other wants to preserve the spotted owl growing in the farm’s property.
- Or the characters misunderstand and oppose each other? Perhaps the antagonist is set to avenge his brother’s death and is led to believe the protagonist is the murderer? Can the protagonist prove his innocence before he’s killed?
It’s important when portraying an antagonist to provide their humanity instead of showing a trope of a vile human solely created to afflict the protagonist. The antagonist is alive aside from the protagonist, so give them life independent of your hero. Then have their paths converge and clash.
An antagonist that had distinct desires and humanity:
Mrs. Fanny Dashwood in Jane Austen’s novel, Sense and Sensibility: What does she desire?
Fanny, the daughter of a wealthy family, desires to extend her family’s social standing and wealth at all costs. She’s very selfish but feels justified in her ambitions, even at the expense of her in-laws’ and brother’s happiness and comfort. She doesn’t want her husband’s half sisters and stepmother to receive a penny of her father in-law’s inheritance. She wants all the monies entailed to them, although they’re wealthy. She uses her toddler son’s inheritance and her own mother’s experience with having to pay annuities to dependents as justification for her selfishness.
“Had he been in his right senses, he could not have thought of such a thing as begging you to give away half your fortune from your own child.” Of course, her husband is merely discussing a small annuity to dole out to his family, but his wife exaggerates the amount, not wanting to part with any of the fortune.
But the second conflict with Elinor and Marianne Dashwood and their mother with Mrs. Fanny Dashwood is the frequent visitation of Fanny’s eldest brother, Edward Ferrars. Fanny expects him to marry into aristocracy to further cement their family’s standing in society, but her brother is too modest and introverted. He wants a quiet, simple life without barouches and balls.
“But Edward had no turn for great men or barouches. All his wishes centred in domestic comfort and the quiet of private life.”
And Elinor, who has a similar gentle and quiet disposition, wins Edward’s heart. Elinor and Fanny clash because their desires are mutually exclusive. Elinor wants to marry Edward Ferrars for love; Fanny and her mother wants Edward to marry for status and wealth. But since Fanny has prevented Elinor from receiving a fair share of her father’s inheritance, Elinor lives a modest life in a cottage (after Elinor and her sisters and mother leave Norland, the family home that her brother inherits).
Fanny and her mother, who rules over Edward’s inheritance, doesn’t approve of John marrying just any woman he’s in love with. They want him to marry a wealthy aristocrat’s daughter. They have their eyes set on Miss Morton, a nobleman’s daughter worth thirty thousand pounds (estimated to be almost $4 million dollars).
But even Fanny meets opposition. For the past four years, Edward has been secretly engaged to Lucy Steele, orphaned and raised by her uncle. Edward has sense fallen out of love with Lucy and hoping that over time, she’ll find another suitor. But she’s very much enamoured with the idea of marrying Edward, not so much for who he is now, but he’d provide a stable life and family.
Throughout the novel, Fanny ambitiously works to get Edward married to Miss Morton or prevent him from marrying Elinor or anyone else less than worthy in her estimation. Before she discovers the engagement, she invites Lucy Steele and her sister to her home as her companions. But her charity comes to a screeching halt when she discovers the secret engagement. She kicks Lucy and her sister out of the home and becomes increasingly agitated and sick.
But as she recovers, she focuses her attention on her brother Robert’s marriage prospects. “We think now,” said Mr. Dashwood [Fanny’s husband], after a short pause, “of Robert marrying Miss Morton.”
Hearing of this incident, Elinor pays Fanny a visit, but met by her brother, John. Then after a short conversation with John, he leaves to retrieve Fanny. When Fanny does appear, she acts slightly welcoming to Elinor.
“…Elinor could see its influence on her [Fanny] mind, in that something like confusion of countenance with which she entered and an attempt at cordiality in her behavior to herself. She even proceeded so far as to be concerned to find that Elinor and her sister were so soon to leave town, as she had hoped to see more of them; an exertion in which her husband…and hung enamoured over her accents, seemed to distinguish everything that was most affectionate and graceful.”
One of the driving forces in the story is the mutually exclusive desires of the two characters: Elinor and Fanny Dashwood. One of them will be disappointed or heart broken. Fortunately for Elinor, Fanny fails in her attempt to match Edward with Miss Morton, and soon after, for Robert to marry the heiress. At least, Elinor is engaged and extremely happy despite not receiving her rightful inheritance.
What’s your favorite antagonist and protagonist clash? Please share in Comments below.