Character contemplations: the importance of being Jessamine

[thanate]

We begin with three girls, almost done growing up in an village of an idealized* late-medieval-ish society. Our narrator, Caroline, is the blacksmith's daughter: clever, cheerful, and good at the mundane things women do to keep life tidy and comfortable. At sixteen, she hasn't yet figured out her calling in life, and so she assumes that she's ordinary because she's good at ordinary things. Her sister, Mathilda, is a couple years older and has always been the difficult one, full of endless curiosities and poorly-thought-out magical experiments. Their triad has recently been broken up by Mathilda's going off to the magic school in the city, and it's left a hole in Caroline's life that she spends a lot of time talking around because she doesn't quite want to talk about it head-on.

And then, there's her best friend, Jessamine. In the lost version Jess was called Alison (because she's the innkeeper's daughter) and I'm sort of thinking of reinstating that for reasons of naming consistency. In any case, she's drop-dead gorgeous, daydreamy, and is far more interested in gossip and inventing stories than in living in a small town, even in the inn where she's bound to see everything the place has to offer. The sixteen year old solution to this is the girl who wants to marry the prince and live happily ever after; the ten year old solution is the girl who decides she is the princess, hidden away instead of long dead. Right now, she's stuck with the latter, having (presumably) come up with it at an early age and made the mistake of telling Caroline. On the whole, this is all a bit of a side-note; Jess is the Belle who wanted so much more than they'd got planned, didn't get it, and eventually moves on with her life while her friends grow up to move worlds. We see her once, and after that she's pretty much just background for Caroline to refer to. This doesn't make her unimportant; her crazy dreams and ambitions are definitely a cornerstone of how Caroline has constructed her own identity, but I'm wondering if the 16-year-old (and more ordinary to YA) daydream wouldn't be a better character trait to drop in and paint with a few broad strokes.

Thoughts? Which would you prefer to read about?


*There's a reason for this, too, but it's not a large part of the first book.

Comments

[queenoftheskies.livejournal.com]

To me, the difference between the two would be differences in the character's personality.

If she wants to grow up to marry the prince, she's the daydreamy type, not necessarily dissatisfied with her life, but would love for something grand and wonderful to happen that never will.

If she believes she's a princess hidden away, then she's dissatisfied with her life and delusional, too. If she really believes it.

Which I'd rather read would depend on what (if any) effect that would have on your protagonist.

[podisodd.livejournal.com]

I think the daydreaming track is the one I'd want to read. Jess's dreams could be a catalyst of sorts for Caroline, like actually going out and doing something.

[aamcnamara.livejournal.com]

Both feel pretty predictable to me. I definitely did the secret-princess one, less of the prince-charming one, so I empathize with secret-princess more.

If you want to over-emphasize the fact that she's a dreamer, though, why not both?

[thanate.livejournal.com]

The easily "available" prince would be her brother, if she's the long-lost-princess, so that wouldn't work out too well.

The secret-princess thing comes from the first two lines I wrote in high school sometime, and then pulled back out and novelized much later, so I think the initial impetus from when I was sixteen myself was that just wanting to be Cinderella sounded too ordinary. Now that the character is only background, I'm second-guessing that, since it's only really Caroline who has to think that's not ordinary, and her field of comparison isn't very large.

[l. blankenship (from livejournal.com)]

Is it useful for Caroline to feel some sympathy/understanding toward someone with serious delusions (which is what Jess would be if she really believes she's a lost princess)? Would that sort of flexibility be useful to your story? (where "useful" is not necessarily good for the character of course :D )

As for which I'd want to read about... Matilda sounded interesting to me, actually :)