Aspects of the Novel · Chapter
People explained
Forster shifts focus from story to character, exploring how novelists create people who differ from real humans.
What happens
Forster shifts focus from story to character, exploring how novelists create people who differ from real humans. He contrasts the novelist's access to the hidden life with the historian's reliance on external evidence, and discusses how characters are born, die, eat, sleep, and love in fiction. Using Moll Flanders as a key example, he argues that characters feel real when the novelist knows everything about them, offering a completeness impossible in daily life.
Themes in this chapter
Character and Human Nature
Central theme: Forster examines how novelists create characters, their relation to real people, and the difference between fictional and historical representations of human beings.
The Hidden Life and Human Experience
Key theme: Forster argues the novelist's function is to reveal the hidden life at its source, offering a completeness of knowledge impossible in daily life.
The Nature of Storytelling
Forster discusses how the novelist's temperament modifies evidence, and how characters are conditioned by the other aspects of the novel, linking character creation to the art of storytelling.
Characters to notice
- Moll Flanders
Used as a prime example of a character who is everything in her novel; Forster argues she feels absolutely real yet could never be encountered in daily life because she belongs to a world where the secret life is visible.
- Queen Victoria
Mentioned to illustrate the difference between historical figures and fictional characters; the novelist can reveal her hidden life, producing a character who is not the Queen Victoria of history.
- Mrs. Proudie
Her death in The Last Chronicle of Barset is cited as an example of how novelists handle death with observation and imagination, making the effect terrifying.
- Henry James
Referenced as an extreme case where characters must fall in with other aspects of the novel, modifying their makeup accordingly.
- Defoe
Mentioned in connection with Moll Flanders; Forster notes Defoe makes a slight attempt at plot but is perfunctory, as nothing matters but the heroine.
- Jane Austen
Referenced alongside Fielding as an author whose characters (like Emma) exist only in their own fictional worlds, separated from us by the barrier of art.
Key passages
“The hidden life that appears in external signs is hidden no longer, has entered the realm of action. And it is the function of the novelist to reveal the hidden life at its source: to tell us more about Queen Victoria than could be known, and thus to produce a character who is not the Queen Victoria of history.”
Once inner life shows through outward signs, it becomes part of observable action. The novelist's job is to uncover that inner life directly, giving us a version of a person that goes beyond historical fact.
Forster defines the novelist's unique role in accessing the hidden life, contrasting it with the historian's limitations.
“We cannot understand each other, except in a rough and ready way; we cannot reveal ourselves, even when we want to; what we call intimacy is only a makeshift; perfect knowledge is an illusion. But in the novel we can know people perfectly, and, apart from the general pleasure of reading, we can find here a compensation for their dimness in life.”
In real life, true understanding of others is impossible; intimacy is a poor substitute. Novels offer perfect knowledge of characters, making up for the opacity of real people.
Forster explains why fictional characters can feel more real than actual people: the novelist provides complete knowledge that life denies us.