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 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 CharacterThe 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 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 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 Methods of CharacterisationBy 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 pre-eminent. His characters 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 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 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 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 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 Characterisation is the finest feature of the novelist's art. Here you will have |