CHAPTER V_A Manual of the Art of Fiction

CHARACTERS

Characters Should Be Worth Knowing--The Personal Equation of the

Audience--The Universal Appeal of Great Fictitious Characters--Typical

Traits--Individual Traits--The Defect of Allegory--The Defect of

Caricature--Static and Kinetic Characters--Direct and Indirect

Delineation--Subdivisions of Both Methods--I. Direct Delineation: 1.

By Exposition; 2. By Description; [Gradual Portrayal]; 3. By

Psychological Analysis; 4. By Reports from other Characters--II.

Indirect Delineation: 1. By Speech; 2. By Action; 3. By Effect on

other Characters; 4. By Environment.

=Characters Should Be Worth Knowing.=--Before we proceed to study the

technical methods of delineating characters, we must ask ourselves

what constitutes a character worth delineating. A novelist is, to

speak figuratively, the social sponsor for his own fictitious

characters; and he is guilty of a social indiscretion, as it were, if

he asks his readers to meet fictitious people whom it is neither of

value nor of interest to know. Since he aims to make his readers

intimate with his characters, he must first of all be careful that his

characters are worth knowing intimately. Most of us, in actual life,

are accustomed to distinguish people who are worth our while from

people who are not; and those of us who live advisedly are accustomed

to shield ourselves from people who cannot, by the mere fact of what

they are, repay us for the expenditure of time and energy we should

have to make to get to know them. And whenever a friend of ours asks

us deliberately to meet another friend of his, we take it for granted

that our friend has reasons for believing that the acquaintanceship

will be of benefit or of interest to both. Now the novelist stands in

the position of a friend who asks us to meet certain people whom he

knows; and he runs the risk of our losing faith in his judgment unless

we find his people worth our while. By the mere fact that we bother to

read a novel, thus expending time which might otherwise be passed in

company with actual people, we are going out of our way to meet the

characters to whom the novelist wishes to introduce us. He therefore

owes us an assurance that they shall be even more worth our while than

the average actual person. This is not to say that they should

necessarily be better; they may, of course, be worse: but they should

be more clearly significant of certain interesting elements of human

nature, more thoroughly representative of certain phases of human life

which it is well for us to learn and know.

=The Personal Equation of the Audience.=--In deciding on the sort of

characters that will be worth his readers' while, the novelist must

of course be influenced by the nature of the audience he is writing

for. The characters of "Little Women" may be worth the while of

children; and it is not an adverse criticism of Louisa M. Alcott to

say that they are not worth the while of mature men and women.

Similarly, it is not an adverse criticism of certain Continental

novelists to say that their characters are decidedly unfit companions

for adolescent girls. Our judgment of the characters in a novel

should be conditioned always by our sense of the sort of readers to

whom the novel is addressed. Henry James, in his later years, wrote

usually for the super-civilized; and his characters should be judged

by different standards than the pirates of "Treasure Island,"--a story

which was written for boys, both young and old. One reader may be

bored by pirates, another by super-subtle cosmopolitans; and each

reader has the privilege of avoiding the society of the characters

that weary him.

=The Universal Appeal of Great Fictitious Characters.=--But the very

greatest characters of fiction are worth everybody's while; and surely

the masters need have felt no hesitancy in asking any one to meet

Sancho Panza, Robinson Crusoe, Henry Esmond, Jean Valjean, or Terence

Mulvaney. In fact, the most amazing thing about a great fictitious

figure is the multitude of very different people that the character is

capable of interesting. Many times we willingly absent ourselves from

actual society to pass an evening in the company of a fictitious

personage of a class with which we never associate in actual life.

Perhaps in the actual world we would never bother to converse with

illiterate provincial people; and yet we may not feel it a waste of

time and energy to meet them in the pages of "Middlemarch." For my own

part, I have always, in actual life, avoided meeting the sort of

people that appear in Thackeray's "Vanity Fair"; and yet I find it not

only interesting but profitable to associate with them through the

entire extent of a rather lengthy novel. Why is it that a reader, who,

although he has crossed the ocean many times, has never cared to enter

the engine-room of a liner, is yet willing enough to meet on intimate

terms Mr. Kipling's engineer, Mac Andrew? And why is it that ladies

who, in actual society, are fastidious of their acquaintanceship,

should yet associate throughout a novel with the Sapho of Daudet? What

is the reason why these fictitious characters should seem, for nearly

every reader, more worth while than the very same sort of people in

actual life?

=Typical Traits.=--The reason is that great fictitious characters are

typical of their class, to an extent rarely to be noticed in any

actual member of the class they typify. They "contain multitudes," to

borrow Whitman's phrase. All idealistic visionaries are typified in

Don Quixote, all misers in Harpagon, all hypocrites in Tartufe, all

egoists in Sir Willoughby Patterne, all clever, tricksy women in Becky

Sharp, all sentimentalists in Barrie's Tommy. But the average actual

man is not of sufficient magnitude to contain a multitude of others;

he is comparatively lacking in typical traits; he is not, to such a

great extent, illustrative of life, because only in a small measure is

he representative of his class. There are, of course, in actual life,

certain people of unusual magnitude who justify Emerson's title of

"Representative Men." Benjamin Franklin, for example, is such a man.

He is the only actual person entirely typical of eighteenth-century

America; and that is the main reason why, as an exhibition of

character, his autobiography is just as profitable a book as the

master-works of fiction. But men so representative are rare in actual

life; and the chief business of fiction is therefore to supply them.

=Individual Traits.=--It is mainly by supplying this need for

representative men and women that the novelist can make his characters

worth the while of every reader. But after he has made them

quintessential of a class, he must be careful also to individualize

them. Unless he endows them with certain personal traits that

distinguish them from all other representatives or members of their

class, whether actual or fictitious, he will fail to invest them with

the illusion of reality. Every great character of fiction must

exhibit, therefore, an intimate combination of typical and individual

traits. It is through being typical that the character is true; it is

through being individual that the character is convincing.

=The Defect of Allegory.=--The reason why most allegorical figures

are ineffective is that, although they are typical, they are not at

the same time individual. They are abstractly representative of a

class; but they are not concretely distinguishable from other

representatives or members of the class. We know them, therefore,

not as persons but merely as ideas. We feel very little human

interest nowadays in reading over the old morality plays, whose

characters are merely allegorical abstractions. But in criticising

them we must remember that they were designed not so much to be read

as to be performed upon the stage; and that the actors who represented

their abstract and merely typical characters must necessarily have

endowed them with concreteness and with individuality. Though a

character in one of these allegorical plays might be called

"Everyman," it was one particular man who walked and talked upon the

boards; and he evoked sympathy not so much for the type as for the

individual. But allegory written to be read is less likely to

produce the illusion of reality; and it is only when allegorical

characters are virtually conceived as individuals, instead of mere

abstractions, that they touch the heart. Christian, in Bunyan's

"Pilgrim's Progress," is so conceived. He is entirely representative

of seventeenth-century Christianity; in a sense he is all men of

Bunyan's time and Bunyan's religion; but he is also one man and one

only, and we could never in our thought confuse him with any other

character in or out of fiction.

=The Defect of Caricature.=--But just as a character may be

ineffective through being merely typical, so also a character may be

unsignificant through being merely individual. The minor figures in

Ben Jonson's Comedies of Humours are mere personifications of

exaggerated individual traits. They are caricatures rather than

characters. Dickens frequently commits the error of exhibiting

figures devoid of representative traits. Tommy Traddles is sharply

individualized by the fact that his hair is always standing on end;

but he exhibits no essential truth of human nature. Barkis, who is

always willin', and Micawber, who is always waiting for something to

turn up, are emphatically distinguished from everybody else in or out

of fiction; but they lack the large reality of representative

characters. They are individualities instead of individuals. They

do not exhibit an agglomeration of many different but consistent

traits rendered unified and single by a dominant and informing

characteristic, such as ambition in Macbeth, senility in Lear, or

irresoluteness in Hamlet. A great fictitious character must be at

once generic and specific; it must give concrete expression to an

abstract idea; it must be an individualized representation of the

typical qualities of a class. It is only figures of this sort that

are finally worth while in fiction,--more worth the reader's while

than the average actual man.

=Static and Kinetic Characters.=--But there is yet another reason why

it is often more valuable for the reader to meet fictitious characters

than to meet people of the same class in actual life; and this reason

is that during the day or two it takes to read a novel he may review

the most significant events of many years, and thus get to know a

fictitious character more completely in a brief space of time than he

could get to know him, if the character were actual, in several years

of continuous acquaintanceship. We meet two sorts of characters in the

pages of the novelists,--characters which may be called static, and

characters which may be called kinetic. The first remain unchanged

throughout the course of the story: the second grow up or down, as the

case may be, through the influence of circumstances, of their own

wills, or of the wills of other people. The recurrent characters of

Mr. Kipling's early tales, such as Mrs. Hauksbee, Strickland,

Mulvaney, Ortheris, and Learoyd, are static figures. Although they do

different things in different stories, their characters remain always

the same. But Don Quixote and Sancho Panza are kinetic figures; they

grow and change throughout the novel; they are, each in his own way,

bigger and wiser people when we leave them than they were when first

we met them. To show a character developing under stress or ripening

easily beneath beneficent influences is one of the greatest

possibilities of fiction. And to exhibit the gradual disintegration of

a character, as George Eliot does in the case of Tito Melema, is to

teach us more of the tragedy of life than we might learn in many years

of actual experience.

=Direct and Indirect Delineation.=--Only after the process of creation

is completed, and a character stands living in the mind of the

novelist, need he consider the various technical expedients which may

be employed to make the reader conscious of the character as a

personal presence. These technical expedients are many; but they may

all be grouped as phases of one or the other of two contrasted methods

of delineating character, which may be called, for convenience, direct

and indirect. According to the first method, traits of character are

conveyed directly to the reader through some sort of statement by the

writer of the story: according to the second method, characteristics

are conveyed indirectly to the reader through a necessary inference,

on his part, from the narrative itself. In employing the first, or

direct, method, the author (either in his own person or in that of

some character which he assumes) stands between the reader and the

character he is portraying, in the attitude, more or less frankly

confessed, of showman or expositor. In employing the second, or

indirect, method, the author seeks to obliterate himself as much as

possible from the reader's consciousness; and having brought the

reader face to face with the character he desires to portray, leaves

the reader to make his own acquaintance with the character. The

indirect method is of course more difficult, and, when successfully

employed, is more artistic, than the direct method. But seldom is

either used to the exclusion of the other; and it would be possible to

illustrate by successive quotations from any first-rate novel, like

"The Egoist" for example, how the same characteristics are portrayed

first by the one and then by the other method.

=Subdivisions of Both Methods.=--Each of the two methods shows itself

in many different phases. There are several distinct ways of

delineating character directly, and also several distinct means of

indirect delineation. It is perhaps serviceable for the purposes of

study to distinguish them somewhat sharply one from another; but it

must always be remembered that the masters of fiction usually employ a

commingling of them all, without conscious awareness of any critical

distinction between them. Bearing this ever in mind, let us venture on

a critical examination of some of the most frequently recurrent

phases, first, of the direct, and secondly, of the indirect, method.

=I. Direct Delineation: 1. By Exposition.=--The most obvious, and at

the same time the most elementary, means of direct portrayal is by a

deliberate expository statement of the leading traits of the character

to be portrayed. Thus, at the outset of "The Vicar of Wakefield," the

author, writing in the person of the Vicar, thus expounds the traits

of Mrs. Primrose:--

"I was ever of opinion, that the honest man who married and brought up

a large family, did more service than he who continued single, and

only talked of population. From this motive, I had scarce taken orders

a year before I began to think seriously of matrimony, and chose my

wife as she did her wedding-gown, not for a fine glossy surface, but

such qualities as would wear well. To do her justice, she was a

good-natured notable woman; and as for breeding, there were few

country ladies who could show more. She could read any English book

without much spelling; but for pickling, preserving, and cookery, none

could excel her. She prided herself also upon being an excellent

contriver in housekeeping; though I could never find that we grew

richer with all her contrivances."

This elementary means of portrayal has the obvious advantage of

succinctness. The reader is told at once, and with a fair measure of

completeness, what he is to think about the character in question. For

this reason the expedient is highly serviceable at the outset of a

story. So excellent an artist as Stevenson, in the "New Arabian

Nights," began each tale in the collection with a paragraph in which

he expounded the main traits of the leading character. But the

expedient has also several disadvantages. In the first place, being

expository, it is not narrative in mood; it savors of the essay rather

than the story; and if it be used not at the outset but during the

course of a narrative, it halts the progress of the action. In the

second place, it is abstract rather than concrete; it does not bring

the reader into the presence of a character, but merely into the

presence of an explanation; and it leaves the reader in an attitude

exactly like that which he holds toward certain actual people,

concerning whom he has been told a great deal by their friends, but

whom he has never met himself. The whole first chapter of "The Vicar

of Wakefield" is a series of little essays on the various members of

the Primrose family. Nothing happens in the chapter; the characters

never step bodily into view; and we feel at the end that we have heard

a great deal of talk about people whom we should like to meet but whom

as yet we have not seen.

=2. By Description.=--It is therefore in certain ways more

satisfactory to portray character directly through a descriptive,

rather than an expository, statement. Thus, in the second chapter of

"Martin Chuzzlewit," we are told of Mr. Pecksniff:--

"His very throat was moral. You saw a good deal of it. You looked over

a very low fence of white cravat (whereof no man had ever beheld the

tie, for he fastened it behind), and there it lay, a valley between

two jutting heights of collar, serene and whiskerless before you. It

seemed to say, on the part of Mr. Pecksniff, 'There is no deception,

ladies and gentlemen, all is peace, a holy calm pervades me.' So did

his hair, just grizzled with an iron-gray, which was all brushed off

his forehead, and stood bolt upright, or slightly drooped in kindred

action with his heavy eyelids. So did his person, which was sleek

though free from corpulency. So did his manner, which was soft and

oily. In a word, even his plain black suit, and state of widower, and

dangling double eye-glass, all tended to the same purpose, and cried

aloud, 'Behold the moral Pecksniff!'"

This statement, being in the main concretely descriptive rather than

abstractly expository, brings us face to face with the character at

the same time that it tells us what to think of him. And whereas we

feel that we have merely heard about Mrs. Primrose, we feel that we

have really seen Mr. Pecksniff.

=[Gradual Portrayal.]=--It was the custom of Sir Walter Scott, at the

introduction of a character, to furnish the reader with an elaborate

set portrayal, partly expository and partly descriptive, of the traits

and features of the character; and to allow this initial direct

statement to do duty through the remainder of the novel. The trouble

with this off-hand expedient is that the reader inevitably forgets the

set statement of the author before the narrative has very far

progressed. It is therefore more effective to make a direct portrayal

of character, whether expository or descriptive, little by little

rather than all in a lump; and to present at any one time to the

reader only such traits or features as he needs to be reminded of in

order to appreciate the scene before him. Thus, in Mr. Kipling's

masterpiece, called "They," we catch this initial glimpse of Miss

Florence:--

"The garden door--heavy oak sunk deep in the thickness of the

wall--opened further: a woman in a big garden hat set her foot slowly

on the time-hollowed stone step and as slowly walked across the turf.

I was forming some apology when she lifted up her head and I saw that

she was blind.

"'I heard you,' she said. 'Isn't that a motor car?'"

And it is only after five pages of narrative that the writer deems it

the proper time to add:--

"She stood looking at me with open blue eyes in which no sight lay,

and I saw for the first time that she was beautiful."

=3. By Psychological Analysis.=--The point that a direct statement of

characteristics should preferably be delivered to the reader little by

little rather than all in a lump is particularly patent when the

statement is not external and objective like those already quoted, but

internal and subjective. In a certain type of fiction, which is

commonly called "the psychological novel," the usual expedient for

delineating character is a statement partly narrative and partly

expository of what is taking place within the mind of the fictitious

person, based upon an analysis of his thoughts and his emotions, at

important moments of the story. This expedient of portraying character

by mental analysis is George Eliot's favorite technical device. Here

is a typical passage, from "The Mill on the Floss," Chapter V:--

"Maggie soon thought she had been hours in the attic, and it must be

tea-time, and they were all having their tea, and not thinking of her.

Well, then, she would stay up there and starve herself--hide herself

behind the tub, and stay there all night; and then they would all be

frightened, and Tom would be sorry. Thus Maggie thought in the pride

of her heart, as she crept behind the tub; but presently she began to

cry again at the idea that they didn't mind her being there. If she

went down again to Tom now--would he forgive her?--perhaps her father

would be there, and he would take her part. But then she wanted Tom to

forgive her because he loved her, not because his father told him. No,

she would never go down if Tom didn't come to fetch her. This

resolution lasted in great intensity for five dark minutes behind the

tub; but then the need of being loved, the strongest need in poor

Maggie's nature, began to wrestle with her pride, and soon threw it.

She crept from behind her tub into the twilight of the long attic, but

just then she heard a quick footstep on the stairs.

"Tom had been too much interested in his talk with Luke, in going the

round of the premises, walking in and out where he pleased, and

whittling sticks without any particular reason, except that he didn't

whittle sticks at school, to think of Maggie, and the effect his anger

had produced on her. He meant to punish her, and that business having

been performed, he occupied himself with other matters, like a

practical person."--

And so on. It is only after four hundred words more of this sort of

analysis that the author tells us: "It was Tom's step, then, that

Maggie heard on the stairs." This is George Eliot's way of portraying

the characters of two children who have quarreled.

Much is to be said in favor of this expedient of depicting character

by analysis. It is the only means by which the reader may be informed

directly of those thoughts and emotions of a character which are the

mainsprings of his acts. And since we cannot feel that we know a

person intimately unless we understand the workings of his mind at

characteristic moments, we derive a great advantage from this

immediate presentation of his mental processes. On the other hand, the

use of the expedient destroys the very desirable illusion that the

reader is an observer actually looking at the action, since the

details depicted do not happen to the eye but rather to the analytic

understanding. The expedient has the disadvantages of being

exceedingly abstract, and of halting happenings while the author tells

us why they happened. It is certainly unfortunate, for instance, that

it should take Tom a whole long page to get to Maggie after she has

heard his "_quick_ footstep on the stairs." Furthermore, this

expedient tends to destroy the illusion of reality by forcing the

reader into a mental attitude which he seldom assumes in looking on at

actual life. During actual occurrences people almost never pause to

analyze each other and seldom even analyze themselves. They act, and

watch other people act, without a microscopic insight into motives.

And surely the purpose of narrative should be to represent events as

they seem to occur in actuality, rather than to present a dissertation

on their causes in the manner of an essay.

An important point, however, remains to be considered. Events are of

two kinds, external and internal; things happen subjectively as well

as objectively: and in representing the sort of occurrence which takes

place only inside a person's mind, the expedient of analysis is by far

the most serviceable means of making clear the elements of character

that contribute to it. But if the same expedient be employed

habitually in the depiction of external events as well, it is likely

to give the impression of unwarrantable vivisection. There is a

certain falsity of mood in giving an objective event a subjective

rendering.

=4. By Reports from Other Characters.=--When, therefore, it is desired

to depict a character by direct comment on his actions or his

personality, there is a great advantage in allowing the comment to be

made by one of the other characters in the story, instead of by the

author himself in an attitude of assumed omniscience. Jane Austen

deftly exhibits this subtler phase of the expedient in many admirable

passages. For instance, in Chapter XXXIII of "Emma," Mrs. Elton thus

chatters to Emma Woodhouse:--

"'Jane Fairfax is absolutely charming, Miss Woodhouse. I quite rave

about Jane Fairfax--a sweet, interesting creature. So mild and

lady-like--and with such talents! I assure you I think she has very

extraordinary talents. I do not scruple to say that she plays

extremely well. I know enough of music to speak decidedly on that

point. Oh! she is absolutely charming! You will laugh at my

warmth--but upon my word, I talk of nothing but Jane Fairfax.'"

In Chapter XXI the same character has been thus commented on by Emma

Woodhouse and Mr. Knightley. Emma speaks first:--

"'Miss Fairfax is reserved.'

"'I always told you she was--a little; but you will soon overcome all

that part of her reserve which ought to be overcome, all that has its

foundation in diffidence. What arises from discretion must be

honored.'

"'You think her diffident. I do not see it.'"

These passages not only serve to portray, more or less directly, the

personality of Jane Fairfax, but serve also at the same time to

portray indirectly the personalities of the people who are talking

about her. Mrs. Elton, in particular, is very clearly exhibited. And

this point leads us to an examination of one of the most effective

means of indirect delineation.

=II. Indirect Delineation: 1. By Speech.=--If the mere speech of a

fictitious figure be reported with sufficient fidelity to truth, it is

possible to convey through this expedient alone a very vivid sense of

character. Consider the following bits of talk:--

"'You're not a gun-sharp? I am sorry. I could have surprised you.

Apart from my gun, my tale don't amount to much of anything. I thank

you, but I don't use any tobacco you'd be likely to carry.... Bull

Durham? _Bull Durham!_ I take it all back--every last word. Bull

Durham--here! If ever you strike Akron, Ohio, when this fool-war's

over, remember you've Laughton O. Zigler in your vest pocket.

Including the city of Akron. We've a little club there.... Hell!

What's the sense of talking Akron with no pants?'

"'Did I talk? I despise exaggeration--tain't American or scientific--but

as true as I'm sitting here like a blue-ended baboon in a kloof, Teddy

Roosevelt's Western tour was a maiden's sigh compared to my

advertising work.'

"'But the general was the peach. I presume you're acquainted with the

average run of British generals, but this was my first. I sat on his

left hand, and he talked like--like the _Ladies' Home Journal_. J'ever

read that paper? It's refined, Sir--and innocuous, and full of

nickel-plated sentiments guaranteed to improve the mind. He was it. He

began by a Lydia Pinkham heart-to-heart talk about my health, and

hoped the boys had done me well, and that I was enjoying my stay in

their midst.'"

These passages are taken from Mr. Kipling's story called "The

Captive." The action is laid during the South-African war. Is it

necessary to add that the speaker is an American gun-inventor who has

fought upon the Boer side and has been captured by the British?

One point must be considered carefully. The art of these passages lies

mainly in the fact that we learn more about Zigler indirectly, from

his manner of talking, than directly, from the things which he tells

us of himself. His statement that he comes from Akron, Ohio, is less

suggestive than his fondness for Bull Durham. Any direct statement

made by a character concerning himself is of no more artistic value

than if it were made about him by the author, unless his manner of

making it gives at the same time an indirect evidence of his nature.

The subtlest phase of indirect delineation through speech is a

conveyance to the reader, through a character's remarks about himself,

of a sense of him different from that which his statement literally

expresses. Sir Willoughby Patterne, in "The Egoist," talks about

himself frequently and in detail; but the reader soon learns from the

tone and manner of his utterance to discount the high esteem in which

he holds himself. By saying one thing directly, the egoist conveys

another and a different thing indirectly to the reader.

=2. By Action.=--But in fiction, as in life, actions speak louder than

words: and the most convincing way of delineating character indirectly

is by exhibiting a person in the performance of a characteristic

action. If the action be visualized with sufficient clearness and if

its dominant details be presented to the reader with adequate

emphasis, a more vivid impression of character will be conveyed than

through any sort of direct statement by the author. As an instance of

characterization through action only, without comment or direct

portrayal, let us consider the following passage from the duel scene

of "The Master of Ballantrae." Two brothers, Mr. Henry and the Master,

hate each other; they fall to altercation over a game of cards; and

the scene is narrated by Mackellar, a servant of Mr. Henry's:--

"Mr. Henry laid down his cards. He rose to his feet very softly, and

seemed all the while like a person in deep thought. 'You coward!' he

said gently, as if to himself. And then, with neither hurry nor any

particular violence, he struck the Master in the mouth.

"The Master sprang to his feet like one transfigured; I had never seen

the man so beautiful. 'A blow!' he cried. 'I would not take a blow

from God Almighty.'

"'Lower your voice,' said Mr. Henry. 'Do you wish my father to

interfere for you again?'

"'Gentlemen, gentlemen.' I cried, and sought to come between them.

"The Master caught me by the shoulder, held me at arm's length, and

still addressing his brother: 'Do you know what this means?' said he.

"'It was the most deliberate act of my life,' says Mr. Henry.

"'I must have blood, I must have blood for this,' says the Master.

"'Please God it shall be yours,' said Mr. Henry; and he went to the

wall and took down a pair of swords that hung there with others,

naked. These he presented to the Master by the points. 'Mackellar

shall see us play fair,' said Mr. Henry. 'I think it very needful.'

"'You need insult me no more,' said the Master, taking one of the

swords at random. 'I have hated you all my life.'

"'My father is but newly gone to bed,' said Mr. Henry. 'We must go

somewhere forth of the house.'

"'There is an excellent place in the long shrubbery,' said the

Master.

"'Gentlemen,' said I, 'shame upon you both! Sons of the same mother,

would you turn against the life she gave you?'

"'Even so, Mackellar,' said Mr. Henry, with the same perfect quietude

of manner he had shown throughout."

It is not necessary for Mackellar to tell us that, whereas Mr. Henry

is phlegmatic and deliberate, the Master is impulsive and mercurial.

It is not necessary for him to attempt analysis of the emotions and

thoughts of the leading characters, since these are sufficiently

evident from what they do and say. The action happens to the eye and

ear, without the interpretation of an analytic intellect; but the

reader is made actually present at the scene, and can see and judge it

for himself. The method is absolutely narrative and not at all

expository,--entirely objective and concrete. Surely this is the most

artistic means of portraying those elements of character which

contribute to external, or objective, events: and even what happens

inside the mind of a character may often be more poignantly suggested

by a concrete account of how he looks and what he does than by an

abstract analytic statement of the movements of his mind. When

Hepzibah Pyncheon opens her shop in the House of the Seven Gables, her

state of feeling is indicated indirectly, by what she does and how she

does it.

=3. By Effect on Other Characters.=--Perhaps the most delicate means

of indirect delineation is to suggest the personality of one character

by exhibiting his effect upon certain other people in the story. In

the third book of the "Iliad," there is a temporary truce upon the

plains of Troy; and certain elders of the city look forth from the

tower of the Scæan gates and meditate upon the ten long years of

conflict and of carnage during which so many of their sons have died.

Toward them walks the white-armed Helen, robed and veiled in white;

and when they mark her approach, they say to each other (old and wise

and weary with sorrows though they be):--

"'Small blame is theirs, if both the Trojan knights

And brazen-mailed Achaians have endured

So long so many evils for the sake

Of that one woman.'"

--(Bryant's Version.)

Perhaps the most remarkable instance in modern literature of the use

of this expedient is Mr. Kipling's tale of "Mrs. Bathurst." The story

is all about the woman from whom it takes its title; but she never for

a moment appears upon the scene of action, and is portrayed entirely

through her effect upon several different men. Here is a bit of

conversation concerning her. Note her effect upon the humorous and not

especially sensitive Pyecroft.--

"Said Pyecroft suddenly:--

"'How many women have you been intimate with all over the world,

Pritch?'

"Pritchard blushed plum color to the short hairs of his seventeen-inch

neck.

"''Undreds,' said Pyecroft. 'So've I. How many of 'em can you remember

in your own mind, settin' aside the first--an' per'aps the last--_and

one more_?'

"'Few, wonderful few, now I tax myself,' said Sergeant Pritchard,

relievedly.

"'An' how many times might you 'ave been at Aukland?'

"'One--two,' he began. 'Why, I can't make it more than three times in

ten years. But I can remember every time that I ever saw Mrs. B.'

"'So can I--an' I've only been to Aukland twice--how she stood an'

what she was sayin' an' what she looked like. That's the secret.

'Tisn't beauty, so to speak, nor good talk necessarily. It's just It.

Some women'll stay in a man's memory if they once walked down a

street, but most of 'em you can live with a month on end, an' next

commission you'd be put to it to certify whether they talked in their

sleep or not, as one might say.'"

=4. By Environment.=--Another very delicate expedient is to suggest a

character through a careful presentation of his habitual environment.

We learn a great deal about Roderick Usher from the melancholy aspect

of his House. It is possible to describe a living-room in such a way

as to convey a very definite sense of its occupant before he enters

it. Notice, for example, how much we learn about Mr. and Mrs. Boffin

(especially the latter) from this descriptive passage of Chapter V of

"Our Mutual Friend." Silas Wegg has come to fulfill his engagement to

read aloud to them the "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire:"--

"It was the queerest of rooms, fitted and furnished more like a

luxurious amateur tap-room than anything else within the ken of Silas

Wegg. There were two wooden settles by the fire, one on either side of

it, with a corresponding table before each. On one of these tables the

eight volumes were ranged flat, in a row like a galvanic battery; on

the other, certain squat case-bottles of inviting appearance seemed to

stand on tiptoe to exchange glances with Mr. Wegg over a front row of

tumblers and a basin of white sugar. On the hob, a kettle steamed; on,

the hearth, a cat reposed. Facing the fire between the settles, a

sofa, a footstool, and a little table formed a centrepiece devoted to

Mrs. Boffin. They were garish in taste and color, but were expensive

articles of drawing-room furniture that had a very odd look beside the

settles and the flaring gaslight pendant from the ceiling. There was a

flowery carpet on the floor; but, instead of reaching to the

fireside, its glowing vegetation stopped short at Mrs. Boffin's

footstool, and gave place to a region of sand and sawdust. Mr. Wegg

also noticed, with admiring eyes, that, while the flowery land

displayed such hollow ornamentation as stuffed birds, and waxen fruits

under glass shades, there were, in the territory where vegetation

ceased, compensatory shelves on which the best part of a large pie and

likewise of a cold joint were plainly discernible among other solids.

The room itself was large, though low; and the heavy frames of its

old-fashioned windows, and the heavy beams in its crooked ceiling,

seemed to indicate that it had once been a house of some mark standing

alone in the country."

Neither Boffin nor Mrs. Boffin appears in this descriptive paragraph;

yet many of the idiosyncrasies of each are suggested by the

conglomeration of queer belongings that they have gathered round

them.

The student of the art of fiction may find profitable exercise in

practising separately the various means of portraying character which

have been illustrated in this chapter; but, as was stated at the

outset, he should always remember that these means are seldom used by

the great artists singly, but are generally employed to complement

each other in contributing to a central impression. The character of

Becky Sharp, for instance, is delineated indirectly through her

speech, her actions, her environment, and her effect on other people,

and at the same time is delineated directly through comments made upon

her by the author and by other figures in the story, through analysis

of her thoughts and her emotions, through expository statements of her

traits, and through occasional descriptions of her. In all of these

ways does Thackeray exert himself to give the world assurance of a

woman.

It would, however, be extremely difficult to imagine Becky Sharp

divorced from her environment of London high society. She is a part of

her setting, and her setting is a part of her. We have just noticed,

in the case of that queer room of the Boffins', how the mere

representation of setting may contribute to the delineation of

character. But setting is important in many other ways; and it is to a

special consideration of that element of narrative that we must next

turn our attention.

REVIEW QUESTIONS

1. What combination of traits makes a character worth knowing?

2. Distinguish between the method of allegory and the method of

caricature.

3. Imagine a fictitious person; and, after you have become

sufficiently acquainted with this imaginary character, write eight

distinct themes, in each of which the selfsame figure is projected

in accordance with a different method of delineation:--1. By

Exposition, 2. By Description, 3. By Psychological Analysis, 4. By

Reports from Other Characters, 5. By Speech, 6. By Action, 7. By

Effect on Other Characters, and 8. By Environment.