The Oppression Of Women's Unlikable Characters

Meanwhile, the other more down to earth type of unlikable women make people feel uncomfortable precisely because they are too relatable. While the women of reality television are applauded for their unlikableness, Gay considers why unlikable characters such as Nora from The Woman Upstairs are unappealing. She reasons that it is because, “perhaps, then, unlikable characters, the ones who are the most human, are also the ones who are the most alive. Perhaps this intimacy makes us uncomfortable because we don’t dare be so alive” (Gay 89). Here Gay reasons that unlikable women are the most human, the most real, and as such they are the most heavily criticized because they do not fit into the perfect frame of what is allowed. While there are some women who fear these forms of raw and real women, Gay believes they are the most fascinating.
They create a more accurate portrayal of what women are permitted to be and what society fears in women enough to feel uncomfortable. There is critique in these unlikable characters because there is fear in women who do not desire to be likeable or fit in to polite society. Women like Nora who are bitter, bereft, angry, and unpleased with society transgress the unspoken complacency of social rules and thus are the wrong type of unlikable. For everything that is unacceptable in unlikable women, Gay finds appealing, “this is what is so rarely said about unlikable women in fiction — that they aren’t pretending, that they won’t or can’t pretend to be someone they are not. … They are, instead, themselves. They accept the consequences of their choices, and those consequences become stories worth reading” (Gay 95). Gay revels in the unlikableness of characters because they illustrate the interesting and powerful aspects of womanhood that fight against the limited views of how women are