Character guide

Unknown Narrator

major

Also known as myself, mine

He opens by sorting his listeners into three voices — the placid bus driver, the aggressive golfer, and himself, the regretful one — and sides, uneasily, with the last. His confession that the story is a 'low atavistic form,' a tapeworm rather than a spine, sets the book's central tension: he loves the novel enough to distrust its oldest engine. That ambivalence is the current running under every chapter that follows, and it is why his voice matters more than any single argument he makes.

Henry James

major

Also known as James, The James

James enters not as a man but as a method — the writer whose people can be understood completely, whose inner and outer lives are laid bare in a way no friend ever is. Forster uses him to draw the line between history's fatality and the novel's intentionality, and to argue that fiction's peculiar gift is the exposure of what politeness or shame hides. He is the test case for whether a novelist can be both pattern-maker and truth-teller, and the book keeps returning to him as its most demanding example.

Moll Flanders

supporting

Also known as Moll, Maria, Mamie

Moll stands at the opposite pole from Miss Bates: a character so self-contained she can be lifted out of her book for the purposes of experiment without dragging a whole society with her. Forster uses her to show that Defoe's world is simpler than Austen's, because his heroine is not woven into a plot or a web of interdependent lives. She matters because she makes visible the difference between a character who merely parallels life and one who is bound to it by a hundred threads.

Strether

supporting

Strether lands in England already uneasy, and by the time he reaches Paris his orders have begun to dissolve — Chad Newsome is not ruined but improved, and the city that redeemed him gleams like a hard, iridescent jewel. His great fear is that liking Paris too much will give his authority away, and that fear becomes the novel's moral weather. He matters because he is the consciousness through which everything is seen, and because his slow conversion from envoy to advocate is the arc on which the book turns.

Chad Newsome

supporting

Also known as Chad

Chad is the errand's object and its undoing: instead of going to the bad he has become distinguished, cordial, and sure enough of himself to be kind to the man with orders to remove him. His fondness for Paris, and Paris's hold on him, quietly reroute Strether's mission before anyone names the reason. He matters because his transformation forces the novel's central question — whether the life that enlarged him is a corruption or a redemption — and because behind him, interpreting the city, stands Mme. de Vionnet.

Lady Bertram

supporting

Also known as Bertram

Lady Bertram belongs to the shrubbery of Mansfield Park, bound by a hundred threads to Highbury's social fabric and impossible to transplant without uprooting the whole. She is Forster's clean example of a flat character: constructed around a single idea, she is convincing without being complex, and she never surprises. She matters because she lets Forster show that flatness is not a failure but a device — one that gives a novel its solidity, its comedy, and the stable ground against which rounder figures move.

Herman Melville

supporting

Also known as Melville

Forster treats Melville less as a man than as a test case: the novelist whose imagination refuses the tidy channels of plot and character and reaches instead for the prophetic. He stands apart from the drawing-room realists, his work charged with a wildness that Forster finds both alien and indispensable. His presence in the argument matters because he proves that fiction can carry a weight beyond manners — that the novel's actors need not always be merely human.

Sir Walter Scott

supporting

Also known as Scott, Walter Scott

Forster uses Scott as a cautionary figure: a writer who can keep a reader turning pages yet whose characters never quite move us, because he has neither artistic detachment nor genuine passion. His reputation, Forster suspects, is tangled with childhood memory and holiday sentiment rather than lasting literary power. He matters to the argument because he forces the question of what a novel needs beyond a good story — and whether suspense alone can ever be enough.

Dinah

supporting

Dinah sits beside Hetty in the condemned cell, and her power lies not in argument but in the sheer solidity of her faith — a living force that George Eliot herself seems to share. Where Hetty is closed and terrified, Dinah is open, pouring her whole soul into the effort to reach her. She matters because she embodies the kind of character whose reality depends on mass and sincerity rather than cleverness, and because her scene shows how Christianity can function in fiction as an active, pressing presence.

Edouard

supporting

Edouard articulates the distinction Forster leans on throughout: that observable actions belong to history, while the dreams, joys, and self-communings we hide belong to fiction. He is less a personality than a lens, a mind through which the novel's own methods become visible. He matters because he gives Forster a vocabulary for why fictional people can seem more legible than our friends — and why that legibility is both the novel's gift and its limitation.

Dickens

supporting

Forster uses Dickens to argue that flatness is not failure: his people can be summed up in a sentence, yet they carry a wonderful feeling of human depth. The trick, Forster suspects, is Dickens's own surplus of life, which galvanizes the caricatures into motion. He matters because he complicates the easy hierarchy of round over flat, showing that a novelist's force can make even a gramophone-thin figure seem to weigh something.

André Gide

supporting

Also known as Gide

Gide enters the argument as a theorist as much as a novelist, offering the distinction between what is observable in a person and what shame or politeness keeps hidden. Forster borrows this to explain why fictional characters can be known completely while real friends never can. He matters because he supplies the philosophical scaffolding beneath Forster's practical observations about plot, character, and the novelist's peculiar access to inner life.

Lovel

minor

Character from Scott's The Antiquary, discussed in relation to plot and mystery.

Bernard

minor

Character from Virginia Woolf's The Waves, used to discuss pattern and rhythm.

The Heroine

minor

Also known as the heroine, hers

Generic term for female protagonists across novels, analyzed for their narrative roles.

H. G. Wells

minor

Also known as Wells

Science fiction writer and critic, referenced for his views on character and society.

Mme. de Vionnet

minor

Also known as Mme, de Vionnet

Elegant Frenchwoman from The Ambassadors, key to Strether's awakening.

Scheherazade

minor

Storyteller from One Thousand and One Nights, used to discuss narrative structure.

George Meredith

minor

Also known as Meredith, George Meredith . Sleep

Novelist and poet, cited for his comic characters and psychological insight.

James Joyce

minor

Also known as Joyce, D. H. Lawrence, Lawrence, James Joyce or D. H. Lawrence

Modernist author, referenced for stream of consciousness and character innovation.

Jane Austen

minor

Novelist whose characters and plots are frequently used as examples of craft.

Emily Brontë

minor

Also known as Milly

Author of Wuthering Heights, discussed for prophetic and passionate character creation.

Aristotle

minor

Ancient philosopher, cited for his Poetics and theories of plot and character.

Moby Dick

minor

Also known as Moby

The white whale from Melville's novel, used to discuss symbol and prophecy.

Defoe

minor

Early novelist, discussed for his realistic characters and episodic plots.

Queen Victoria

minor

Also known as Queen

Monarch referenced in discussions of historical context and character types.

Gertrude Stein

minor

Modernist writer, cited for her experimental approach to character and narrative.

Caleb Balderstone

minor

Servant character from Scott's The Bride of Lammermoor, used to discuss flatness.

Mr. Percy Lubbock

minor

Also known as Mr. Lubbock, Percy Lubbock, Lubbock

Literary critic, referenced for his work on the craft of fiction.

Laura

minor

Character from various novels, used in discussions of flat and round types.

Homo Fictus

minor

Term for fictional human, used to discuss the nature of character in novels.

Lord Glenallan

minor

Character from Scott's The Antiquary, involved in the novel's subplot.

Mrs. Proudie

minor

Domineering character from Trollope's Barchester Towers, exemplifying flatness.

Esther Summerson

minor

Also known as Esther

Narrator and heroine of Dickens's Bleak House, used to discuss point of view.

Dostoevsky

minor

Russian novelist, discussed for his psychological depth and prophetic vision.

Marcel Proust

minor

Also known as Proust

French novelist, cited for his intricate character development and memory themes.

Fanny

minor

Also known as Anatole France

Character from various novels, referenced in discussions of flatness.

Laetitia Dale

minor

Also known as Laetitia

Character from Meredith's The Egoist, used to discuss romantic subplots.

Sterne

minor

Author of Tristram Shandy, discussed for his experimental narrative techniques.

Evelina Nevile

minor

Also known as Evelina

Heroine of Burney's novel, used to discuss epistolary form and character.

Mrs. Micawber

minor

Also known as Mrs. Micawber⁠—she

Character from Dickens's David Copperfield, exemplifying flat comic type.

Sir Willoughby

minor

Egoistic hero from Meredith's The Egoist, analyzed for character flaws.

Mr. Asquith

minor

Historical figure referenced in discussions of political context in fiction.

Tolstoy

minor

Russian novelist, discussed for his epic scope and character depth.

Miss Bates

minor

Also known as Even Miss Bates

Garrulous character from Austen's Emma, exemplifying flat comic type.

Stephen Dedalus

minor

Also known as Stephen

Protagonist from Joyce's works, used to discuss modernist character.

George Eliot

minor

Novelist, discussed for her psychological realism and moral vision.

Samuel Richardson

minor

Also known as Richardson

Epistolary novelist, discussed for his psychological character development.

Flecker

minor

Poet and novelist, referenced in discussions of fantasy and prophecy in literature.

Zuleika Dobson

minor

Also known as Zuleika

Fictional enchantress from Beerbohm's novel, used to illustrate fantasy and parody.

Thomas Hardy

minor

Also known as Hardy

Novelist and poet, discussed for his use of fate and character in tragic plots.

The Hero

minor

Also known as the hero, The hero

Generic term for male protagonists, analyzed for their function in narrative.

Ulysses

minor

Homeric hero and Joyce's novel, referenced for pattern and mythic structure.

The Narrator

minor

Also known as the narrator, The narrator

Generic narrative voice, discussed in relation to point of view and reliability.

Charlotte Brontë

minor

Novelist, discussed for her passionate heroines and Gothic elements.

Sir Arthur Wardour

minor

Also known as Sir Arthur

Character from Scott's The Antiquary, used to illustrate comic relief.

Vinteuil

minor

Composer character from Proust, used to discuss pattern and rhythm in fiction.

Swann

minor

Central character from Proust's In Search of Lost Time, analyzed for depth.

Tristram Shandy

minor

Also known as Tristram

Narrator of Sterne's novel, used to discuss digression and narrative time.

Virginia Woolf

minor

Modernist writer, discussed for her stream of consciousness and character innovation.

Dousterswivel

minor

Comic charlatan from Scott's The Antiquary, used to illustrate flat character.

Becky Sharp

minor

Also known as Becky

Ambitious heroine from Thackeray's Vanity Fair, analyzed for roundness.

Emma

minor

Heroine of Austen's novel, used to discuss character growth and point of view.

Edie Ochiltree

minor

Wandering beggar from Scott's The Antiquary, used for comic relief.

Sophia

minor

Heroine from Fielding's Tom Jones, discussed for her role in the plot.

Mr. Norman Douglas

minor

Also known as Mr. Douglas

Writer and critic, referenced in discussions of character and style.

Mr. Pickwick

minor

Also known as Mr. Pickwick edgeways

Comic hero from Dickens's Pickwick Papers, used to discuss flat character.

Beauchamp

minor

Character from Meredith's Beauchamp's Career, used to discuss political themes.

Miss Austen

minor

Polite reference to Jane Austen, used in discussions of her technique.

Sir Walter Raleigh

minor

Also known as Raleigh, The late Sir Walter Raleigh

Historical figure and literary critic, referenced for his views on fiction.

Isabella Wardour

minor

Also known as Isabella

Character from Scott's The Antiquary, involved in romantic subplot.

Constance

minor

Character from various novels, used in discussions of flat types.

Heathcliffe

minor

Byronic hero from Wuthering Heights, used to discuss passionate character.

Blake

minor

Poet and artist, referenced for his prophetic and visionary qualities.

Newton

minor

Scientist referenced in discussions of pattern and order in fiction.

Thaïs

minor

Courtesan from Anatole France's novel, used to discuss character transformation.

Tom Jones

minor

Hero of Fielding's novel, discussed for his role in comic plot.

Billy Budd

minor

Also known as Billy

Innocent sailor from Melville's novella, used to discuss allegory and character.

Claggart

minor

Antagonistic master-at-arms from Billy Budd, used to discuss evil character.

Mrs. Newsome

minor

Offstage character from The Ambassadors, driving the plot's conflict.