“The eyes, like sentinels, occupy the highest place in the body.”
“The face is a picture of the mind with the eyes as its interpreter.”
“The countenance is the portrait of the soul, and the eyes mark its intentions.’ Marcus Tullius Cicero
Christina here – the Roman Cicero seems to have had a lot to say about eyes, but I totally agree with him about their importance – they are “the windows of the soul” as someone said, no matter what colour they are. And we might not always notice other people’s eyes in real life, but when it comes to fictional characters, they are crucial, at least for me, especially when describing a hero. Eyes can be shifty, evasive, not looking straight at you when you’re talking to their owner. That’s not good. A hero has to have an honest, direct gaze, and just looking him in the eyes must make the heroine (and thereby also the reader) feel they can trust him and that he's telling the truth.
“The tongue may hide the truth but the eyes – never!” Mikhail Bulgakov
Of course, it’s great if they stand out in some way to capture the heroine’s attention in the first place. Twinkling with humour is good, or flirty and fun with a mischievous glint. Even scowling works, the way some of the Georgette Heyer noblemen do it, as long as it’s not permanent. And it’s a bit clichéd to say that eyes can “smoulder”, but some men really have that down to a fine art, maybe even without trying. It’s hard to define, but you definitely know it when you see it! And it makes you go weak at the knees for sure, which is the effect you want your hero to have on your heroine.
What about the colour? I have heard that quite a few readers complain about the prevalence of romantic heroes and heroines with green eyes (and usually, for the women, red hair to go with them). It’s supposed to make them stand out in our mind and sound more exciting somehow because they’re unusual, but some people feel this has been overdone. Green eyes are perhaps not quite as common in real life as in fiction, but does it really matter? And is that actually true?
According to the statistics I read, 2% of the world’s population have green eyes, while 3% have grey and 8% blue. Everyone else has brown, amber or hazel (usually defined as a sort of murky green with brown and gold flecks in them). Now by my calculation, if the world’s population is approximately 7.8 billion, that means 156 million people actually have green eyes – so not that uncommon after all, right? Plus, add in the fact that an awful lot of historical romance novels take place in the UK or Scotland, where blue, grey and green eyes are in the majority. That makes the probability of having a hero or heroine with green eyes seem a lot more plausible.
Anyway, I’m not trying to give you a math lesson here – I shudder at the mere word as that was never my favourite subject! – but just want to defend the use of green eyes in fiction. I do try and vary my characters’ eye colour, but when you have written more than four books (one with each colour), with the best will in the world, that means that sometimes you have to have a green-eyed one. Add to that the fact that I have them myself, and therefore am quite fond of the colour, and … well, they do tend to crop up a lot in my stories.
Studio publicity still - Dr. Macro, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org
What about really unusual colours like turquoise, moss green, and violet? The actress Elizabeth Taylor was said to have violet eyes – they were certainly very unusual and definitely real as coloured lenses were not available to her. Whether they were really violet or just a deep bluey-grey, I’m not so sure, but as violet was the colour people saw (and commented on) when they looked at her, I feel it’s fair to use this in a book. Turquoise – yes, absolutely! I have a friend whose eyes are an absolutely stunning combination of green and blue, and I often think of her as I choose eye colour for my characters. As for moss green, who can forget that photo in National Geographic of the Afghan girl Sharbat Gula by photojournalist Steve McCurry (look here)? Just stunning!
“Look not in my eyes, for fear
They mirror true the sight I see …” A E Housman
What appeals to us as readers is, of course, very subjective and we all have our preferences. For some, the deep brown eyes of George Clooney are what they’d like to drown in, or the melting chocolate of Idris Elba’s gaze appeals like nothing else, while others prefer the icy blue stare of someone like Chris Pine or Chris Hemsworth, or the green of Chris Pratt (what is it with all these Chris’s BTW??). What seems to be almost universal, however, is the desire for long eyelashes, both on men and women. And how common is that, really? Most people probably just have average length ones (hence the massive sales of mascara these days!), so it’s just as unlikely that every hero and heroine in our books should have them, as that they have green eyes – and yet they invariably do.
Back in the 1980s when boys started wearing a lot of make-up, there were suddenly lots of them with very long eyelashes indeed. I have to admit I loved that look – it does seem rather unfair that only girls should be allowed to enhance their eyelashes, whereas boys have to make do with what they’ve been born with. And even Vikings, the most masculine of men, apparently wore makeup sometimes in order to look younger. But of course, this doesn’t work in most historical fiction so if we want the hero/heroine to have long eyelashes, they need to have been lucky enough to have them naturally.
“Drink to me only with thine eyes, and I will pledge with mine …” To Celia by Ben Johnson
Yes, a look can be a very powerful thing with no words needed. To me, the eyes are paramount.
What about you - do eyes and eye colour matter to you in a character? What’s your favourite colour, and are you one of the readers irritated by green-eyed heroes and heroines?
