Abstract form Aspects of the Novel

Abstract form Aspects of the Novel

by Forster E. M.

Chapter 4

People (continued)

We may divide characters into flat and round.

Flat characters were called ‘humorous’ in the 17^th century, and are sometimes called types, and sometimes caricatures. In their purest form they are constructed round a single idea or quality: when there is more than one factor in them, we get the beginning of the curve towards the round. The really flat character can be expressed in one sentence such as “I never will desert Mr. Micawber. ” There is Mrs. Micawber [in David Copperfield by Charles Dickens] – she says she won’t desert Mr. Micawber, she doesn’t, and there she is. There is Caleb Balderstone in The Bride of Lammermoor [by Walter Scott]. He does not use the actual phrase, but it completely describes him; he has no existence outside it, no pleasures, none of the private lusts and aches that must complicate the most consistent of servitors. Whatever he does, wherever he goes, whatever lies he tells or plate he breaks, it is to conceal the poverty of his master’s house. It is not his idé e fixe, because there is nothing in him into which the idea can be fixed. He is the idea, and such life as he possesses radiates from its edges and from the scintillations it strikes when other elements in the novel impinge. Or take Proust. There are numerous flat characters in Proust, such as the Princess of Parma, or Legrandin. Each can be expressed in a single sentence, the Princess’s sentence being, “I must be particularly careful to be kind. ” She does nothing except to be particularly careful, and those of the other characters who are more complex than herself easily see through the kindness, since it is only a by-product of the carefulness.

One great advantage of flat characters is that they are easily recognized whenever they come in – recognized by the reader’s emotional eye, not by the visual eye, which merely notes the recurrence of a proper name. In Russian novels, where they so seldom occur, they would be a decided help. It is a convenience for an author when he can strike with his full strength at once, and flat characters are very useful to him, since they never need reintroducing, never run away, have not to be watched for development, and provide their own atmosphere – little luminous disks of a pre-arranges size, pushed hither and thither like counters across the void or between the stars; most satisfactory.

The second advantage is that they are easily remembered by the readers afterwards. They remain in his mind as unalterable for the reason that they were not changed by the circumstances; they moved through circumstances, which gives them in retrospect a comforting quality, and preserves them when the book that produced them may decay.

< …> The case of Dickens is significant. Dickens’ people are nearly all flat (Pip and David Copperfield attempt roundness, but so differently that they seem more like bubbles than solids). Nearly everyone can be summed up in a sentence, and yet there is this wonderful feeling of human depth. < …> Part of the genius of Dickens is that he does use types and caricatures, people whom we recognize the instant they re-enter, and yet achieves effects that are not mechanical and a vision of humanity that is not shallow.

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For we must admit that flat people are not in themselves as big as round ones, and also that they are best when they are comic. A serious or tragic flat character is apt to be a bore. Each time he enters crying “Revenge! ” or “My heart bleeds for humanity! ” or whatever his formula is, our hearts sink. < …> It is only round people who are fit to perform tragically for any length of time and can move us to any feelings except humour and appropriateness.

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As for the round characters proper, they have already been defined by implication and no more need to be said. All I need do is to give some examples of people in books who seem to me round so that the definition can be tested afterwards:

All the principal characters in War and Peace, all the Dostoevsky characters, and some of the Proust – for example, the old family servant, the Duchess of Guermantes, M. de Charlus, and Saint Loup; Madame Bovary – who, like Moll Flanders [by Daniel Defoe], has her book to herself, and can expand and secrete unchecked; some people in Thackeray – for instance, Becky and Beatrix; some in Fielding – Parson Adams [in Joseph Andrews], Tom Jones; and some in Sharlotte Brontë, most particularly Lucy Snowe [in Villette]. (And many more – this is not a catalogue. ) The test of a round character is whether it is capable of surprising in a convincing way. If it never surprises, it is flat. If it does not convince, it is a flat pretending to be round. It has the incalculability of life about it – life within the pages of a book. And by using it sometimes alone, more often in combination with the other kind, the novelist achieves his task of acclimatization and harmonises the human with the other aspects of his work.

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