# Edouard — Aspects of the Novel character guide

> Edouard in Aspects of the Novel by E. M. Forster.

**Role:** supporting

**First appearance:** 0007-v-the-plot

## Snapshot

Gide's novelist-figure, whose reflections on the two sides of a human being — the historical and the romantic — frame Forster's whole inquiry into character.

## Who they are

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.

## Relationships

### [Bernard](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/aspects_of_the_novel_se/characters/bernard)

_friendship_

Bernard and Edouard are friends and fellow characters in Gide's The Counterfeiters, with Bernard serving as Edouard's secretary.

### [André Gide](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/aspects_of_the_novel_se/characters/andre_gide)

_professional_

André Gide is the author who created Edouard as a character in The Counterfeiters.

## In the story

### [V: The Plot](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/aspects_of_the_novel_se/chapters/v-the-plot)

Novelist character in Gide's work, who keeps a diary and argues for a novel without a subject, aiming to combine truth in life and truth in art.

## Links

- HTML: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/aspects_of_the_novel_se/characters/edouard
- Book: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/aspects_of_the_novel_se
- All characters: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/aspects_of_the_novel_se/characters