CHARACTER vs. PLOT

CHARACTER vs. PLOT

This article is a bit rambling and outdated

It is not enough that Aristotle has said so, for Aris¬totle drew his models of tragedy from Sophotles and Euripides; and, if he had seen ours, might have changed his mind. — JOHN DRYDEN.

The charm of all art will probably be found to be at bottom just this — it quickens and intensifies the sense of life. Art is the spontaneous yet ordered overflow of life. It knows no such thing as age. That is what makes it so precious to us men and women. For the one inevitable misfortune of life is to grow old; to feel the spring of our life less elastic, our perceptions less new and vivid, our joys less fresh, our anticipations less eager and confident. No added philosophy of life's afternoon can ever quite atone for the faded poetry of its morning. But it is the office of art to renew this early freshness of feeling in us. — C. T.WINCHESTER, Some Principles of Literary Criticism.'

IN a highly interesting and provocative article, The Blight,' Melville Davisson Post takes to task the "high-brows" of the thirty-five-cent magazines and of certain examples of classic literature, for failure to provide exciting plots, for neglect of problem and mystery. He decares that, in a good short story, plot comes first and character second: It is a matter of profound regret that men of talent and culture in this country have got the idea, in order to distinguish themselves from the common run of writers, they must avoid the very elements essential to the highest form of literature. Because surprise in the plot and virile incident have the widest appeal, and are therefore usually undertaken by the unskilful, these men have de¬termined to avoid them altogether.

Alas! In doing so they abandon the highest forms of literature. . . . The basic element in the taste of the public is correct. The demand of the human mind for mystery or problem — something to unravel — is universal. It is the desire of everybody to know how persons will act in tragic situ¬ations; how men of individuality and power in high places will conduct themselves under certain conditions of stress. We shall never cease to be interested in these things, and the author who presents them to us will have our attention. It has therefore happened in this country that the men who have had the foresight and courage to give the read¬ing public these universal elements of interest in their fiction have built up great and prosperous publications, while those who have denied the public these elements of interest have fallen into bankruptcy.

Resolute editors, refusing to be influenced by the pretensions of the smaller dilettante class, have been able to run the circulation of their periodicals into incredible figures. This is specious reasoning; but, as in the case of Wordsworth's radical prefaces versus his best poems, Mr. Post's best stories do not illustrate his own theories. Without the remarkably im¬pressive character of Uncle Abner, this author's excellent short stories of mystery and crime would fall apart like a house of cards. And, without the character of Sherlock Holmes — which is a real contribution to literature — Conan Doyle's detective tales would suffer the same fate. What we are principally interested in, after all, is not the "virile incidents" but the way in which "persons will act in tragic situa¬tions" — or comic. In Shakespeare, of course, we find the supreme example of this. The dis¬position to worship all elements in his plays is passing; but his characters need fear no test. Professor Brander Matthews says that the central incidents of The Merchant of Venice are unconvincing, but that Shylock is an unfor¬gettable figure.

1 first an admirable remark by that good crafts¬man, Booth Tarkington: "It seems strange that he [Mr. Post] does not perceive the pro¬founder interest of the mystery and surprise of character." Ah! there is the nub of the matter, stated with a felicity which we have learned to expect from Mr. Tarkington. The "mystery and surprise of character" is in truth the great spectacle of this human life of ours. Even the good business man will testify to that. In a given set of circumstances, how will a certain individual (and no other) act? That is what interests masters of the short story like Rud¬yard Kipling and Guy de Maupassant, masters of the novel like Thackeray, and masters of the drama like Shakespeare. That is what gives us Stevenson's Markheim and Hawthorne's The Birthmark and Kipling's William the Conqueror and the excellent tales in Mr. Tarkington's own volumes, Penrod and Seventeen. It is what gives us Peter B. Kyne's The Three Godfathers, in the Saturday Evening Post (reprinted in book form); and it is what gave vogue to the Letters of a Self-Made Merchant to His Son, by the editor of the Post. "Mystery and surprise," quotha! Why, you don't have to look farther than your next-door neighbor for that.

Probably most editors, if asked whether they insist upon strong character portrayal, would answer that they desire it and that they secure it as often as possible. The editor of Adventure, which might be expected to lay especial stress on plot and rapid action, states that what he is after is "clean stories of action with characters who are people, not mere names." And a fiction editor who has been in the business a good many years, in returning a very promising story to a young author, said: "We like this in many respects, but we shall have to ask for a little more emphasis on character."

An interesting plot is one essential; but if it were the only thing, or the primary thing, could we reread for the tenth or the twentieth time the masterpieces of literature which all generations have voted great? Could a teacher of Shakespeare take up Hamlet with college classes for forty years, and bring to the final year the same enthusiasm as to the first? There seems to be, among fiction writers themselves, a pretty general agreement that Joseph Conrad is the greatest living master of fiction. Yet he is one of the most unworried as to the necessity for entertaining and carefully woven plots. His magnificent short story, Youth, can hardly be said to have a plot at all; but as an impres¬sion of the energy and romantic yearnings of a young man — of what Hazlitt called "the feel¬ing of immortality in youth" — it is matchless. Here, however, the character is not so indi¬vidualized as usual; it is typical, for a purpose. And, in general, Conrad owes his eminence quite as much to his wonderful atmosphere and his English style as to character portrayal. His Heart of Darkness is a dramatization of Nature, of the fascination and perils of tropical forests — although the degeneration of the char¬acter of the white man who has spent years in these surroundings is, after all, probably the chief point of interest in the story. W. W. Jacobs, on the other hand, is popular. Yet he has seldom shown himself master of more than four plots, says Mr. Wilson, and for some years has used not more than two. "But a lot of us would still tramp a long trail for a new Jacobs story." It is the springs of men's actions, treated from the humorous standpoint, that interest us in Mr. Jacobs' tales. There is an excellent balance, however, between plot and character; for, although his plots may lack variety, they show a deft construction and an economy of means that are of the school of Maupassant. One of Maupassant's own stories, A Coward, may be cited as an illustration of a tale that is, so to speak, all character — the portrayal of the changes of mood in a man who is to fight a duel and is afraid that he may be afraid! This is a masterpiece of psychology in which the rapid shifts of mood take the place of outward action. But there is a strik¬ing dramatic climax. It is not the heavy- footed Henry James psychology. Character in action is the ideal of narrative. In the best fiction, short or long, it is the characters that make things happen. They do not wait for things to happen to them. Let me quote again that comment of a good critic, Professor Stuart P. Sherman, on 0. Henry's surprise climaxes: "His surprises are not generally dependent upon arbitrary arrangements of ex¬ternal circumstances, but upon plausible shifts and twists in the feelings and ideas of the human agents."

An interesting psychological comparison may be made between Maupassant's A Coward and Defoe's Robinson Crusoe. Defoe was, as Leslie Stephen has said, primarily and essentially a journalist. "It never seemed to occur to him to analyze character or work up sentiment." He portrayed merely what he saw, not what he felt about what he saw. He does not even make Friday's death pathetic. And Crusoe displays, in the face of his isolation and hard¬ships, no mental torments whatever —only a "preternatural stolidity." There is certainly a fault in character-drawing here — though Crusoe, we must remember, was a typical Eng¬lishman of the early eighteenth century, who distrusted "enthusiasm" of any sort and was as hard-headed and devoted to reason as any mortal can be. If you don't believe this, read Swift's account of his ideal race, the Houyhnhnms, in the fourth part of Gulliver's Travels.

On the whole, magazine stories reveal much more deftness in plot than in character. The “persons of the story" are often very conven¬tional. A good character tale always stands out by contrast with them. Note, for example, The Friends, by Stacy Aumonier.1 Says Harry Leon Wilson: "I take a dozen monthly maga¬zines. . . . I count it a lucky month when I find four readable short stories in the twelve — say four stories out of seventy-two! Plots evenly good, but oh! the dreadful aridity of their disclosures — their appalling dead con¬ventionalness of character." If Aristotle said, adds Mr. Wilson, that the plot is the first prin¬ciple and that character holds a second place, why, "that will be about all for Aristotle." And some of us are likely to indorse both the sentiment and the slang.

Note, for example, the cheap, melodramatic effect in the following passage. The attempt at characterization is wholly unconvincing. And in this case the plot also is stale. At the doctor's side was seated a woman about thirty years of age. She was still very beautiful. Her wide blue eyes were turned with an intelligent interest to her companion, who was speaking.

"Yes, Mrs. Waverly," he said, "many of the patients are quite sane on most subjects. In fact, one of my best patients is at this very moment playing bridge in there with your husband, my wife and Miss Siebert." His companion leaned forward in her chair, surprise evinced in her features. "There, there," continued the doctor, smiling, "do not be alarmed. He is a perfect gentleman, one of the finest I have ever met. He has only one besetting sin which society will not forgive — insanity. One of my guests did not turn up, so I invited my patient."

A few moments later the physician was called away, and Mrs. Waverly remained alone. The fire was very low now. Its cheeriness seemed to have vanished. The voices from the other room sounded indistinct and far away. Suddenly the plush curtains over the doorway parted and a tall, not unhandsome man quietly entered. He advanced toward Mrs. Waverly and, bowing politely, seated himself in the vacant chair.

"Pardon me" — his voice was very pleasant — "the doctor sent me in to talk to you for a moment or so. He was called to the telephone. He will not be long." As he turned and looked at her face, suggestively sil¬houetted by the firelight, he started and paled. Then he laughed quietly and smiled like a weary child. "Strange! At first I thought you were some one else — some one I knew a long, long time ago. But that, of course, is very foolish of me. She died years and years ago."

He had turned to the fire and could not see the look of terror in the blue eyes of the woman beside him. His eyes seemed to search the center of the flames for some secret of the past. "Yes. At first I thought you were some one else, some one I used to know, out there in the world; a girl named Vera. We were in love, Vera and I — but she died. All that was long ago." Suddenly he started. "You will excuse me, Mrs. Waverly? I suddenly remember that I counted up the score in the last rubber incorrectly. Good evening." He bowed politely.

This has all the earmarks of the old-style melodrama, and to even a moderately sophisticated reader it is full of unconscious humor. Of course the heroine drops a handkerchief em¬broidered with a V — for Vera — and the doctor picks it up after she has left!

An even worse example of amateurishness was recently printed (with an editorial note) as a jest by the Smart Set.i The author con¬fided that he had been writing stories for eight years; so the editor thought he ought to have a chance! The reader may judge how many more years would be necessary to make this author successful. I quote from the beginning and the end:

Ed Miller and his wife were sitting together in their private lounging-room on this special evening, when Ed spoke to his wife suddenly, and said:. "Cora, I think we should have some children, now that we have been married seven years — and seven years of honeymoon represents a barren moon." "Possibly so," agreed Cora with carelessness. "But I'm not inclined to favor children, Eddy, in just that manner. Life is too short, and time too precious to be wasting my poor blood in reproduction." Now, Ed was breaking down with overwork, and was not prepared to shake off his wife's flippancy. "Cora," said he, "this will never do! Are you going to die a barren woman, never to be remembered by posterity, and forgotten in your tomb?"

now, Eddy!" pouted Cora. "You are too solemn this evening, and I cannot agree to listen with patience. It would seem that I have sufficient grievance with life to resent anything that pertains to having children. The picture of that little grave hanging on the wall is quite enough to arouse my bitterness."

Eddy disappears on that "cold and stormy night" and is not heard from for a long time, although Cora offers a reward of fifty thousand dollars for information! Finally a letter arrives. It contains only four words: "Come see Black Mantle." She goes, is met by two Indians and taken a hundred miles by river to meet the chief. In a little green valley she finds him and his wife, Queen Mantle, "a born lady of the wilderness," who has seven children. Also Eddy turns up:

"Poor Cora!" came a heavy voice. "So you have come at last. Good little girl!" "Oh, Eddy! My own, my own! I'm afraid to open my eyes lest I see your poor ghost a-vanishing."

"Open your eyes, Cora. It is I — what there is left of me." So Cora opened her eyes slowly, fearing lest she should awake in Hades, with this last, least hope coming to haunt her nights of sorrow. But she was in her Eddy's arms, drawn up close to his living heart, and they gazed upon one another speechless, until the stars came out to twinkle in the heavens. And they were left alone, for Black Mantle and his wife had slipped away, and were gone all night.

"Well," said Ed, "my life has been made complete once more, except that I do not know how I got here. I recall a night when it was raining, and I was talking to you, when a mist rose up around me. In that mist I could see the Colorado River, and it seemed that I was already there — though I must have traveled a great distance to get there, for Black Mantle found me a month ago, and he said that I was asking for him, but I did not know him in person."

This is a little more absurd than the average amateur manuscript, but the present writer has seen many that were close rivals of it. It is necessary to read only a few such exaggerated examples of faulty character portrayal and improbable plot to realize that story writing is a difficult art — so difficult that the tyro is likely to supply, here and there at least, passages of unconscious humor to sub-editors whose duty it is to run through the day's volunteer manu¬scripts. It is only by a rare ability to realize one's characters so intensely that they seem to be actually present as one writes that natural, convincing dialogue and brief, pregnant com¬ments upon these characters can be produced. Too many personages, in tales with skilful plots, are but half-animate or wholly inanimate puppets moved about in a toy theater. You catch the author studying his moves. Even in crafts- manlike stories one who is himself a writer of fiction can often see the machinery which is hidden from the casual reader. To conceal one's art perfectly, either in dialogue or in structure, is an achievement reserved for a few acknowledged masters. But how briefly, some¬times, is a great effect secured! Lear expresses his intolerable grief over the death of Cordelia by saying simply — as he tugs at his throat — "Pray you, undo this button. Thank you, sir."

Poe's greatest defect was his lack of interest in individuals. Take as an extreme example his remarkably vivid narrative of the Spanish Inquisition, The Pit and the Pendulum. The man lying bound under the descending crescent of steel is not an individual. As Professor Bliss Perry puts it, he is anyone in that situation, "Richard Roe or John Doe." Here the situa¬tion itself is exciting enough and memorable enough to carry the story; but it is not usually ranked as one of Poe's greatest efforts. By common consent it is a kind of art which is lower than the highest. What would Savonarola have done in such a situation? That is the kind of question which a writer profoundly interested in character would have asked himself. It is said that Browning was intimately acquainted with the details of all celebrated murder cases for half a century — not for delight in the gory deeds of the criminals but for the delight and wonder of searching for their motives.

Stevenson's beautiful tale, The Sire de Male¬troit's Door, is well worth comparing with his Will o' the Mill or A Lodging for the Night, with respect to character. The young lovers in the first-named story are largely typical rather than individual. What they do is what youth would always do in a similar situation. There is no attempt at careful individualization. But the Sire de Maletroit himself is, in contrast, remarkably individualized:

On a high chair beside the chimney, and directly facing Denis as he entered, sat a little old gentleman in a fur tippet. He sat with his legs crossed and his hands folded, and a cup of spiced wine stood by his elbow on a bracket on the wall. His countenance had a strongly masculine cast; not properly human, but such as we see in the bull, the goat, or the domestic boar; something equivocal and wheedling, " something greedy, brutal, and dangerous. The upper lip was inordinately full, as though swollen by a blow or a toothache; and the smile, the peaked eye¬brows, and the small, strong eyes were quaintly and al¬most comically evil in expression. Beautiful white hair hung straight all round his head, like a saint's, and fell in a single curl upon the tippet. His beard and mustache were the pink of venerable sweetness. Age, probably in consequence of inordinate precautions, had left no mark upon his hands; and the Maletroit hand was famous. It would be difficult to imagine anything at once so fleshy and so delicate in design; the taper, sensual fingers were like those of one of Leonardo's women; the fork of the thumb made a dimpled protuberance when closed; the nails were perfectly shaped, and of a dead, surprising whiteness. It rendered his aspect tenfold more redoubt¬able, that a man with hands like these should keep them devoutly folded like a virgin martyr — that a man with so intent and startling an expression of face should sit patiently on his seat and contemplate people with an un¬winking stare, like a god, or a god's statue. His quies¬cence seemed ironical and treacherous, it fitted so poorly with his looks. Such was Alain, Sire de Maletroit.

The Sire de Maletroit illustrates admirably what is true of most of the effective character studies in short stories — that the persons are unusual and striking, perhaps even eccentric. This kind of man or woman can be handled in the brief space of the short tale much more easily and vividly than can an average person. Ste¬venson's Olalla, Will o' the Mill, Villon, and Dr. Jekyll are all out of the ordinary. And so are most of Kipling's characters, including that capable young lady, William the Conqueror. Only one such figure is necessary, however, in a short story. The others — of whom there should be few — may be nearer to the normal. Character contrast, between the two principal figures, is often used very skilfully, as in - the case of Dravot and Carnehan I or Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson. In both these cases one is weaker and is used merely as a foil to the other. What Hamlet says, jestingly, of himself is profoundly true if applied to Watson versus Holmes:

"I'll be your foil, Laertes; in mine ignorance Your skill shall, like a star i' the darkest night, Stick fiery off indeed."

It must be borne in mind also that the short story does not give sufficient scope for the de¬velopment of character. Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter lends him opportunity denied to his brief tales. In them, character is largely static. But it may be tested at some moment of crisis. And it is in such moments that the real man comes out. Half of us do not even know our¬selves until we have been tested by some crisis that calls for immediate action. Browning was extraordinarily fond of these "eminent mo¬ments" of life. Of the meeting of the Grand Duke Ferdinand and the unnamed lady, in The Statue and the Bust, he finely says: "The past was a sleep and her life began." The short- story writer who can seize upon such moments as these can etch a memorable portrait. But he must not hope to rival the novelist or the dramatist — except the dramatist in the one- act play. His is a literary form with strict limitations.

Those short stories are greatest which, in addition to good structure and good character portrayal, show fine humanity, with a touch of elevation, of nobility.' They must lift us out of the commonplace and inspire us. And they do it largely by the touch of elevation in even such hardened characters as that of Oakhurst, the professional gambler.' Literary conscience and the touch of elevation mark all great literature of a serious turn — all literature which the generations finally agree to call classic.

The ambition of the two adventurers, Dravot and Carnehan, in The Man Who Would Be King, certainly shows this elevation; and A Municipal Report reveals that kindness of heart which prevents us from losing faith in human nature. Ingenious as are the plots of some of these best stories, it is treatment of character which overtops all else. What was that illu¬minating remark that Lamb made when some one asked him whether he didn't hate a certain man? "Hate him?" replied Lamb in surprise. "How could I hate him? Didn't I know him?" In that answer is contained a whole textbook of character study. Only in melodrama is there such an anomaly as an out-and-out villain or an out-and-out hero. The writers of the greatest short stories know human nature. They are enthralled and uplifted by the "mystery and surprise of character."

In A Lodging for the Night there is a fine balance between plot and character. The mur¬der supplies sufficient excitement; and there is also a vivid tableau when Villon confronts the honest old gentleman in his doorway and asks him for a lodging. Here, however, it is clear that Stevenson was interested chiefly in the contrast in appearance and character between the two — the rogue and the honest man. The description of the latter, as he stands in the strong light, framed in a doorway picture, is not likely to be forgotten even by the casual reader. The vagabond poet, with all his clever¬ness, makes but a poor figure beside simple and soldierly uprightness. Yet of didacticism there is hardly a trace in the tale.

The Outcasts of Poker Flat, though often listed as a local-color story, gains its high rank chiefly from its sympathy and penetration in treat¬ment of character. It is in many respects intensely American; and this doubtless accounts for the large number of votes cast for it by American authors. But its appeal is universal. As an illustration of the "soul of goodness in things evil" it would be difficult to surpass it. Peter B. Kyne's The Three Godfathers, which is also laid in the Far West and founded on a similar theme, affords a suggestive comparison among short tales. It has the same touch of nobility. Three desperadoes, after committing a crime, meet a woman at the point of death and agree to take her baby out of the desert to civilization. Two of them perish of weariness and thirst, but the youngest finally staggers to his goal. For sentiment without sentimen¬tality there are few magazine stories that can match it. John Oakhurst, however, in Bret Harte's tale, is probably better drawn than any of the three characters in Mr. Kyne's. There is an almost epic largeness about his figure which lifts the story out of the realm of the popular periodical into the domain of permanent literature. It would be rash, however, to pre¬dict that The Three Godfathers will not eventu¬ally find entrance into the same domain. Mr. Kyne at his best has more than mere talent — felicity rather than facility.

In The Brushwood Boy it must be the author's power of imagination which is chiefly admired. Here also, nevertheless, the character portrayal should not be overlooked. George Cottar makes the story convincing because he is such a normal, healthy, and efficient human being. He is not a creature of nerves; and his psychical experi¬ence is therefore better suited to Kipling's purpose than is that of the blind woman in They. When he declares his love for the girl who has shared his remarkable dream voyages that start from the brushwood pile on the beach, he is surprised to find himself saying things to her which he had previously imagined to exist only in story-books. It is his matter-of-fact¬ness which individualizes the tale quite as much as the strange plot. Here again, therefore, is an admirable example of the balance between plot and character which should mark any great story. Analyzing character while the nar¬rative stands still is not good art in the short story — and not the highest art in the novel. Considered as a story, George Eliot's Adam Bede is superior to her later novel, Middle- march. The same is true of Henry James' early works as compared with his later ones. Character is of genuine story value only when it is shown in action. In the short story it should generally be shown at some "eminent moment" of life, some crisis which will put it to a severe test.