Be more Alice! The fictional characters with lessons for lockdown

Anxiety, boredom, claustrophobic relationships... characters from Jane Eyre to Mrs Dalloway can provide vital insights into how to live in these anxious times, writes Josh Cohen

Should we be suspicious of the idea that fiction can help us to live meaningful lives? After all, as Plato observed (via a fictionalised Socrates), Homer's stories were composed to stir and entertain rather than to instruct us. They may be a lot of fun, but they have nothing to tell us about living well. How could fictional characters, shadowy beings who exist only in words, offer any meaningful purchase on the all too solid problems of our daily lives?

If we try to enlist the help of novels by extracting rules and hacks and counsel from them, we will probably prove Plato right. Novels, or at least the ones worth reading, draw us in not by offering moral instruction or practical guidance, but by helping us to see ourselves in all our strangeness and complexity.