CHARACTERS AND CHARACTERISATION
The Chief Character
In the plot previously outlined, which figure is supreme? It depends. In
some senses the supremacy is not a matter of choice, but is decided by
the nature of the story. If the man is making the greater sacrifice, it
means that, whether you like it or not, his is the struggle that calls
for a larger measure of sympathy; and you must assign him the chief
place. Still, there are circumstances which would justify a departure
from this law—something after the fashion of respecting the rights of a
minority. But in our projected narrative, the woman is undoubtedly the
supreme character; for the man's battle is mainly one of religious
scruple, and only secondarily a question of race; whereas, the Jewess has a vigorous conflict with both race and religion.
Well, what do you know about women? Anything? Do you know how their
minds work? how they talk? what they wear? and the thousand and one
trivialities that go to make up character portrayal? If you do not know
these things, it is a poor look-out for the success of your novel, and
you might as well start another story at once. It may be a disputed
question as to whether women understand women better than men: the point
is, do you understand them? Perhaps you know enough for the purposes
of a secondary character, but this Jewess is to be supreme; you must
know enough to meet the highest demands.
Where to obtain this knowledge? Ah! Where! Only by studying human lives,
human manners, human weaknesses—everything human. The life of the world
must become your text-book; as for temperaments, you should know them by
heart; social influences in their effect on action and outlook, ought to
be within easy comprehension; and even then, you will still cry
"Mystery!"
How to Portray Character
The first thing is to realise your characters—i.e. make them real
persons to yourself, and then you will be more likely to persuade the
reader that they are real people. Unless this is done, your hero and
heroine will be described as "puppets" or "abstractions." I am not
saying the task is easy—in fact, it is one of the most difficult that
the novelist has to face. But there is no profit in shirking it, and the
sooner it is dealt with the better. The history of character
representation in drama is full of luminous teaching, and a study of it
cannot be other than highly instructive. In the early Mystery and
Morality plays, virtues and vices were each apportioned their
respective actors—that is to say, one man set forth Good Counsel,
another Repentance, another Gluttony, and another Pride. Even so late as
Philip Massinger's "A New Way to Pay Old Debts," we have Wellborn,
Justice, Greedy, Tapwell, Froth, and Furnace. Now this seems very
elementary to us, but it has one great merit: the audience knew what
each character stood for, and could form an intelligent idea of his
place in the piece. In these days we have become more
subtle—necessarily so. Following the lead of the Shakespearean
dramatists, we have not described our characters by giving them
names—virtuous or otherwise—we let them describe themselves by their
speech and action. The essential thing is that we should know our
characters intimately, so intimately that, although they exist in
imagination alone, they are as real to us as the members of our own
family. Falstaff never had flesh and blood, but as Shakespeare portrayed
him, you feel that you have only to prick him and he will bleed. The
historical Hamlet is a mist; the Hamlet of the play is a reality.
This power of realisation depends on two things: Observation with
insight, and Sympathy with imagination. Observation is a most valuable
gift, but without insight it is likely to work mischief by creating a
tendency to write down just what you see and hear. Zola's novels too
often suggest the note-book. Avoid photographing life as you would
avoid a dangerous foe. The newspaper reporter can "beat you hollow," for
that is his special subject: life as it is. Observe what goes on around
you, but get behind the scenes; study selfishness and "otherness," and
the inter-play of motives, the conflict of interests which causes this
tangle of human affairs—in other words, obtain an insight into them by
asking the "why" and "wherefore."
Above all, learn to see with other people's eyes, and to feel with other
people's hearts. For instance, you may find it needful to attend
synagogue-worship in order to obtain a first-hand knowledge of the
religion of your Jewish heroine. When you see the men in silk hats, and
praying-shawls over their shoulders, you may be tempted to despise
Judaism; the result being that you determine not to cumber your novel
with a description of such "nonsense." Well, you will lose one of the
most picturesque features of your story; you will fail to see the part
which the synagogue plays in your heroine's mental struggle, and the
portrayal of her character will be sadly defective in consequence. No;
a novelist, as such, should have no religion, no politics, no social
creed; whatever he believes as a private individual should not interfere
with the outgoing of sympathy in constructing the characters he intends
to set forth. Human nature is a compound of the virtuous and the
vicious, or, to change the figure, a perpetual oscillation between flesh
and spirit. Life is half tragedy and half comedy: men and women are
sometimes wise and often foolish. From this maze of mystery you are to
develop new creations, and actual people are your starting-point,
never your models.
Methods of Characterisation
By characterisation is meant the power to make your ideal persons appear
real. It is one thing to make them real to yourself, and quite another
thing to make them real to other people. Characterisation needs a union
of imaginative and artistic gifts. In this respect, as in all others,
Shakespeare is preeminent. His characters are alike clear in
conception and expression, and their human quality is just as wonderful
as the large scale on which they move, covering, as they do, the entire
field of human nature.
There are certain well-known methods of characterisation, and to these I
propose to devote the remainder of this chapter. The first and most
obvious is for the author to describe the character. This is generally
recognised as bad art. To say "She was a very wicked woman," is like the
boy who drew a four-legged animal and wrote underneath, "This is a cow."
If that boy had succeeded in drawing a cow there would have been no need
to label it; and, in the same way, if you succeed in realising and
drawing your characters there will be no need to talk about them. The
best characterisation never says what a person is; it shows what he or
she is by what they do and say. I do not mean that you must say nothing
at all about your creations; the novels of Hardy and Meredith contain a
good deal of indirect comment of this kind; but it is a notable fact
that Hardy's weakest work, "A Laodicean," contains more comment than
any of the others he has written. Stevenson aptly said, "Readers cannot
fail to have remarked that what an author tells us of the beauty or the
charm of his creatures goes for nought; that we know instantly better;
that the heroine cannot open her mouth but what, all in a moment, the
fine phrases of preparation fall from her like the robes of Cinderella,
and she stands before us as a poor, ugly, sickly wench, or perhaps a
strapping market-woman."
There is another point to be remembered. If you label a character at the
outset as a very humorous person, the reader prepares himself for a good
laugh now and then, and if you disappoint him—well, you have lost a
reader and gained an adverse critic. To announce beforehand what you are
going to do, and then fail, is to put a weapon into the hands of those
who honour you with a reading. "Often a single significant detail will
throw more light on a character than pages of comment. An example in
perfection is the phrase in which Thackeray tells how Becky Crawley,
amid all her guilt and terror, when her husband had Lord Steyne by the
throat, felt a sudden thrill of admiration for Rawdon's splendid
strength. It is like a flash of lightning which shows the deeps of the
selfish, sensual woman's nature. It is no wonder that Thackeray threw
down his pen, as he confessed that he did, and cried, 'That is a stroke
of genius.'"
The lesson is plain. Don't say what your hero and heroine are: make
them tell their own characters by words and deeds.
The Trick of "Idiosyncrasies"
Young writers, who fail to mark off the individuality of one character
from another, by the strong lines of difference which are found in real
life, endeavour to atone for their incompetency by emphasising physical
and mental oddities. This is a mere literary "trick." To invest your
hero with a squint, or an irritating habit of blowing his nose
continually; or to make your heroine guilty of using a few funny phrases
every time she speaks, is certainly to distinguish them from the other characters in the book who cannot boast of such excellences, but it must
not be called characterisation. It is a bastard attempt to economise the
labour that is necessary to discover individuality of soul and to bring
it out in skilful dialogues and carefully chosen situations.
Another form of the trick of idiosyncrasy is the bald realism of the
sensationalist. He persuades himself that he is character-drawing. He is
doing nothing of the kind. He takes snap-shots with a literary camera
and reproduces direct from the negative. The art of re-touching nature
so that it becomes ideal, is not in his line at all: the commercial
instinct in him is stronger than the artistic, and he sees more business
in realism than in idealism. And what is more, there is less
labour—characters exist ready for use. It is easy to listen to a lively
altercation between cabbies in a London street, when language passes
that makes one hesitate to strike a match, and then go home and draw a
city driver. You have no need to search for contrasts, for colour, for
sound, for passion: you saw and heard everything at once. But the truth
still remains—the seeing of things, and the hearing of things, are but
the raw material: where are your new creations?
The trick of selecting oddities as a method of characterisation is
superficial, simply because oddities lie upon the surface. You can,
without much difficulty, construct a dialogue between a blacksmith and a
student, showing how the unlettered man exhibits his ignorance and the
scholar his taste. But such a distinction is quite external; at heart
the men may be very much alike. It is one thing to paint the type, and
another to paint the individual. Take Sir Willoughby Patterne. He is a
man who belongs to the type "selfish"; but he is much more than a
typically selfish man; he is an individual. There is a turn in his
remarks, a way of speaking in dialogue, and a style of doing things
which show him to be self-centred, not in a general way, but in the
particular way of Sir Willoughby Patterne.
There is one fact in characterisation for which a due margin should
always be made. Wilkie Collins, you will remember, says of his Fosco:
"The making him fat was an afterthought; his canaries and his
mice were found next; and the most valuable discovery of all, his
admiration of Miss Halcombe, took its rise in a conviction that he would
not be true to nature unless there was some weak point somewhere in his
character." You must provide for these "afterthoughts" by not being too
ready to cast your characters in the final mould. Let every personality
be in a state of becoming until he has actually come—in all the
completeness of appearance, manner, speech, and action. Your first
conception of the Jewess may be that of one who possesses the usual
physique of her class—short and stout; but afterwards it may suit your
purpose better to make her fairer, taller, and slighter, than the rest
of her race. If so, do not hesitate to undo the work of laborious hours
by effecting such an improvement. It will go against the grain, no
doubt; but novel-writing is a serious business, and much depends on
trifles in accomplishing success; so do not begrudge the extra toil
involved.
Characterisation is the finest feature of the novelist's art. Here you
will have your greatest difficulties, but, if you overcome them, you
will have your greatest triumphs. Here, too, the crying need is a
knowledge of human nature. Acquire a mastership of this subtle quantity,
and then you may hope for genuine results. Of course, knowledge is not
all; it is in artistic appreciation that true character-drawing
consists.
Excerpt from "How to Write a Novel"
