would appreciate any feedback on flat and round character essay esp about toni morrison and post modernism bit. Thanks in advance
'We may divide characters into flat and round' (E.M FORSTER) Consider the validity of Forster's distinction with reference to at least two novelists.
This essay shall consider whether E.M Forster's distinction of 'flat and round' indeed amounts to an accurate reflection of characters in the novel or whether it in fact constitutes a redundant generalisation which cannot be applied to an aspect of narrative prose that relies so heavily upon the readers' subjectivity and individual interpretation. Additionally, the idea that the novel is a continuously evolving genre whereby novelists are continuously using new methods to develop characters shall be explored, which will help us to draw a conclusion as to whether or not Forster's distinction holds any validity in the present day.
In Aspects of a Novel, Forster categorises characters of the novel into two types, the 'flat' character who 'in its purest form [is] constructed round a single idea or quality' and the 'round' character that 'has the incalculability of life about them', representing the complex personality possessed by human beings. The flat character can be 'summed up in a single sentence' and therefore be reduced to a 'type' or 'caricature', whereas the round character should surprise the reader 'in a convincing way'. Whilst Forster discusses that the round character is more interesting and a 'bigger achievement' he does not deny that flat characters have a purpose, indeed he believes that some critics often fail to recognise that 'complex' novels often require both types.
Although we could argue that all characters in novels are essentially vehicles for the novelist to write about ideas, Forster's term 'flat' appears to refer to the characters that purely embody a particular quality and do not possess the necessary elements required to represent the complex human being. If one chooses to argue that art can indeed imitate nature, then the 'flat' character would be placed at the opposite end of the spectrum, a figure who acts merely as a function and never 'ready for an extended life' outside of their narrative.
Leaving the issue of the readers' subjectivity until later in this essay, we could suggest that the novelist Choderlos De Laclos makes use of flat characters in Les Liaisons Dangereuses (1782). Since they are all based upon a single quality they can subsequently be viewed as 'types', and as their personalities are extremely exaggerated we can go so far as to call them 'caricatures'. Furthermore, despite a sense of intimacy created by the glimpse into their private world (which we may argue gives the characters a slight sense of depth), most importantly they remain loyal to the idea which they embody, an aspect that overpowers the entire narrative. Revenge is the very essence of Marquise de Merteuil as she never appears to do anything else but manipulate and deceive those around her. In many ways she is typical villain in literature and as a 'type' her fate is somewhat predictable. (I am going to put a quote to support this here)
Madame de Tourvel, on the other hand, is so intensely devout to her religious values that she is often thought to be a walking cliché of virtue. When the 'single quality' that she represents is betrayed by her body and the exploitative actions of the libertine Vicomte de Valmont, Tourvel is reduced to a broken woman:
I see by the light of a terrible truth that my path lies between shame and remorse to a certain and none too distant death p337
This potentially illustrates Forster's observation that flat characters remain true to their single function and are not complex enough to extend beyond this. Certainly, as we read Tourvel almost allegorically, we neither expect nor believe that she has the capability to react in any other way once her quality is compromised:
I look for nothing now but profound darkness which to bury my shame
It is also important to consider the novelist may use utilise two dimensional characters due to the narrative economy. Laclos capitalises on the consistencies of flat characters' as they prove to be easy to control and do not add unintentional complications to the story. This supports Forster's observation that flat characters offer the comforting quality of 'repetitive pleasure'. One can also find agreement with Forster that flat characters are 'easily remembered and easily recognised' which is useful to the epistemological novel as the reader is provided a web of multi perspectives and interactions. ( I intend to write here that Laclos in is perhaps more interested in certain human qualities rather than the human personality as a whole)
So far it does not seem a difficult task to identify the characters using Forster flat distinction, however turning our attention to his term 'round character ' seems much less straight forward and gives rise to a number of implications. The criteria for a round character is quite vague and we may gain a clearer understanding of what the term means if we consider Forster's idea that they appear to perform almost seamlessly as if they have no creator, ' there is not the tiny interval between the touching of the button and the sound of the bell'. Essentially, Forster seems to supports the notion that a skilled novelist can offer the reader a character that captures the multi faceted personality of a living, breathing person. An immediate problem which arises from his approach is the exemplifying use of Daniel Defoe's Moll Flanders as a model for the round character. The limitation being that, as this essay hope to demonstrate, there is no clear criterion from which to draw a definitive answer as to her status and thusly leads us down many paradoxical dead ends.
Forster believes that 'she seems real form every point of view', however by choosing such a character the validity of his distinction can be consequently called into question. We could counter Forster's argument that for in Moll Flanders 'nothing matters but the heroine' and suggest that Defoe is not at all interested in Moll's mental and physical experience in an urban underbelly. Instead, he is most concerned with capitalism, crime and deportation all of which are ideas that his protagonist simply embodies. It is not who Moll is but what she does that motivates Defoe's novel. All of her actions seem to be conveyed in terms of their economic worth, notably love and sex in the novel almost always seem to be motivated by materialist concerns. (I am going to put a quote here) Certainly, there are many occasions that we feel she is 'tethered to [the] qualities' of perseverance and survival and therefore by Forster's own definitions we could quite comfortably label her as flat.
Despite the editor's promise in the preface to disclose a confessional tale from an former petty criminal, "There is in this story an abundance of delightful incidents [...] All the exploits of this Lady of Fame', there is an absence of intimacy between the reader and protagonist, a direct result from Defoe's documental tone which is cold and factual. Indeed, the novel is over powered by the strong attention to mundane detail - a feature associated with realism - which in its obsessive concern with reflecting the world as we see it, crucially neglects an important component of a living person - psychological depth. Defoe reports Moll Flanders in a strictly episodic, journalistic style which is ultimately concerned with facts rather than feeling. It is precisely the lack of emotion observable in Moll that prevents her from striking the reader as an accurate reflection of a complicated individual. Rather than delivering what could potentially be an exciting and adventurous protagonist, we find her unbelievable and prosaic. Furthermore, it has been put forward that Defoe fails to create a convincing woman. Whilst it is fair to say that it would be a huge generalisation to assume that all women have a maternal instinct, one can argue that the holes in Moll's character begin to show with regards to the treatment towards her children. It is not the fact that she does not care for her children that strikes the reader as unreal but her inconsistency. Although Forster implies that a round character should be contradictory, perhaps it is the lack of conviction we gain from Moll when she tells us 'and now I was greatly perplexed about my boy it was death' which makes her seem unbelievable. It is difficult not to think back to when she so coolly speaks of her earlier offspring 'My two children were indeed taken happily off of my Hands, by my Husband's Father and Mother'p59, her indifference makes her too flimsy in order to move the reader and therefore lacks one of the qualities that Forster discusses a round character should possess.
There is, on the other hand, a potential case to be made that rather an artistic failing on the novelist's behalf, Moll's lack of emotion is deliberately employed by Defoe to reveal her 'rational courage based on a constitutional toughness' (p174 novak). Rejecting the previous idea that Moll's impassiveness reduces her ability to convince the reader, it could be argued that Defoe is presenting us with an anti hero that does what ever it takes to survive the materialistic world which perhaps can account for Moll's lack of regard for anything which is of no economic gain for her. Indeed, she confesses that 'poverty, as I have said, hardened my heart'...Defoe may also trick the reader into treating her more like a multi-functioning person due to the features associated with realism evident in his novel.
Certainly, Moll inhabits a familiar world and roams the same named streets of London and Colchester as we the reader could in reality. As she is an ordinary woman in a recognisable setting, we are perhaps better equipped to visualise her pick pocketing her way around recognisable towns. For the contemporary reader the inclusion of real places such as 'Newgate' prison and 'The Mint' may have heightened the sense that Moll Flanders was a real person. (I wanted to talk here about the use of colloquial language)
Drawing from the observations of Moll Flanders, we notice the difficulty in trying to apply Forster's distinction. For while we can define her as flat for lacking psychological depth we can counter argue and claim that Defoe acknowledges that people are mentally affected by their experiences and upbringing, a fairly modern concept considering his novel is a product of the mid eighteenth century. If we argue the latter, then Moll can no longer thought to be merely a tool for Defoe to pin his ideas of crime and punishment upon, rather a personality emerges who displays the complexities of the human mind. Ultimately the angle which the reader chooses to take when reading Moll Flanders decides how her character is to be perceived which highlights another crucial limitation in Forster's theory. Clearly, his approach ignores the factor of subjectivity which is subsequently reductive of the role of the reader.
If the distinction between flat and round were a sufficient enough method to categorise characters in the novel, then surely there would be less ambiguity in deciding as to which category Moll Flanders belongs to. Whilst we can certainly agree that some novelists try harder to create characters that appear 'pulsating' and life like, not all readers necessarily concur as to whether there attempts are successful.
We can also assess the validity of Forster's distinction by testing its usefulness towards a genre that is continuously evolving. Forster discusses that 'serious or tragic flat characters are apt to a bore' arguing that they are at their best when they are being comic. Yet, Toni Morrison is an example of a Post modern writer, who reveals that this is not strictly the case. In her novel Beloved, she fuses mimesis (the setting) and fantasy (the character) and provides us with a character that may be based on a single idea but is most certainly capable of being serious without boring the reader. The nameless baby ghost that haunts 124 is literally lifeless and is an embodiment of grief. There is also much ambiguity surrounding her character from her name to where she comes from.
Morrison, however, uses techniques associated with magic realism to prevent such a character from becoming tedious to the reader. This issue clearly shows novelists rebelling from the constraints imposed by a strict application of Forster's definitions. Rather than restricting characterisation in any way, the supernatural elements that Morrison employs illuminate areas of human beings that cannot be reached or coherently expressed in a realist manner. Denieze Heinze writes;
By using fantasy in her literature, Morrison is able to some extent to articulate a spiritual response to life in which human beings are treated to possibilities for growth and development denied in their real lives.
Free from the constraints of realism, Morrison enjoys the creative freedom to develop her character without limitations. She invites the reader to suspend their disbelief and if we are willing to do so, an interesting character caught between the spiritual and physical world emotionally moves us, to which according to Forster's approach, should not be possible. We seem to identify with the raw pain and eternal grief that the baby ghost so forcibly tries to vocalise but can only express through violence ' who could have thought a little old baby harbours so much rage'. The baby ghost is clearly not alive and for this reason alone can not be labelled 'round' yet she is very successful at being serious and there is an undeniable sadness which is transferred from her character to the reader.
In identifying the weakness of Forster's model to the post modern novel we are reminded of the limitation of the realist approach to character on a broader scale. It raises questions as to whether the novel as a literary form is ever really capable, on any level, of creating characters that reflect human life in a mirrored manner. We may question the usefulness of this measure in respect to a genre which seems no longer afraid of being literary. If we reject models such as Forster's, the reader as well as the novelist is given much more freedom to interpret characters which requires us to use our own imagination. The post modern novel, for example, often uses fragmentation to tell a story. In Beloved, Morrison mixes the past and present in the narrative structure and employs different literary genres and techniques from poetry to abstract monologues. Therefore, it could be proposed that she does the same thing with character. Beloved and Sethe, can potentially be seen as fragmented facets of the human being; Sethe possesses a physical body anf is capable of reflecting human behaviour. We can identify with her as she eats, sleeps, makes love and essentially functions mimetically as the reader. In contrast Beloved as a spirit conveys the inexplicable layer of the human beings. We often talk about the human possessing a spiritual energy and it seems possible that Beloved as well as being Sethe's biological daughter can also be viewed as an extension to herself. ( I NEED TO DEVELOP THIS POINT BUT AM NOT SURE WHETHER IT IS RELEVENT)
Whilst Forster over simplifies the nature of character in novels, he does illustrate the inherent impulse in readers to treat characters as literal people. The critic Ann Snitow commented on her first essay on Beloved in which her literal reading of Beloved the character affected her ability to recognise Morrison's overall objective:
'I criticised Morrison for writing a clunky ghost, but maybe the one taking that ghost too literally was myself. The ghost is a figment, with the power to stop the action and contaminate the air. She is a projection of grief. We never get half the chance to love Beloved, and her name becomes a pure and bitter irony'
Morrison's treatment of character leads us to believe that Forster's distinction is far too narrow as we notice that characters in Beloved are difficult to pigeon hole according to his approach. (TALK HER ABOUT LACK OF IDENITY BEING THE POINT OF THE NOVEL - THIS IS THE NOVELS MESSAGE)
Despite the undeniable status achieved by Forster's distinction, this essay has dared to argue that for all its accuracies, it possesses an insurmountable inherent failure.
It is clear that whilst 'flat' characters can be easily identified in the novel, his idea of the round character is far more problematic. We have discussed the implications of trying to fit a character into the round definition, for once we believe we have done so, we face the paradox that they can be defined by the flat term too. Forster reduces the reader's interpretation and subjectivity and assumes too generally that we all perceive characters in the same way. The possibility that readers bring to the novel their own personal experiences and perceptions of the world are overlooked which arguably plays an important role as to whether we believe a certain character is convincing or not. It could be argued that in fact Forster's definitions are so vague, that we are realistically not provided with enough of an insight into his reasoning to be able to apply the definition with sufficient credibility.
Additionally, this essay has considered to what extent novelists are concerned with representing complex personalities and whether they are interested in exploring human psychology or personality or use characters for another purpose as Jeremy Hawthorn reminds us 'They can be used to tell a story, to exemplify a belief, to contribute to a symbolic pattern in a novel, or merely to facilitate a particular plot development' p107. We have discussed that Laclos uses characters in a very dramatic fashion to explore certain qualities and behaviour of human beings who which also assist the narrative plot. The idea that novelists associated with post modernism, experiment with character by challenging the features of realism has also been commented upon and we have looked at Beloved as an example that combines the novelistic tradition of mimesis with the fantastical and in many ways marks a return to the novel prior to the realism movement. As a novelist, she experiments with characters and possibly uses them to reflect dissected layers of human beings which allow her to explore the spiritual realm and effectively offer a body and soul perspective. If we do however approach the character Beloved as a character, we face a contradiction in Forster's argument for she appears to fit his flat category but she indeed conveys a serious idea without boring the reader. It seems that perhaps we are asking more of Forster than could be reasonably expected, to create a distinction and definition which withstands the effects of time. However, since we are considering the validity of his distinction we could conclude by proposing that perhaps it is an out dated model which is no longer applicable to a genre that is continuously challenging its own conventions.
