Book: Aspects of the Novel by E.M. Forster

Reading E.M. Forster's Aspects of the Novel. It is a series of lectures given in Trinity College, Cambridge, in the spring of 1927. Reminds me of the essays read by Virginia Woolf to the Arts Society at Newnham and the Odtaa at Girton in October, 1928, published as the acclaimed A Room of One's Own. Similar period and both literature critics. Forster divides novels into several aspects: the story, people, the plot, fantasy, prophecy, and pattern and rhythm. I just finished the people chapter. He is sometimes insightful but other times tedious and had the marks of the time. For people, some characters are flat and some are round. All Dickens characters are flat, and most Austen characters are round. "The characters in Jane Austen give us a slightly new pleasure each time they come in, as opposed to the merely repetitive pleasure that is caused by a character in Dickens. They combine so well in a conversation, and draw one another out without seeming to do so, and never perform. Unlike Dickens, she was a real artist, she never stooped to caricature, etc. Her characters though smaller than his are more highly organized. They function all round, and even if her plot made greater demands on them than it does, they would still be adequate. All the Jane Austen characters are ready for an extended life, for a life which the scheme of her books seldom requires them to lead, and that is why they lead their actual lives so satisfactorily." He went on analyzing one sentence in Mansfield Park:

"Lady Bertram did not think deeply, but, guided by Sir Thomas, she thought justly on all important points, and she saw therefore in all its enormity, what had happened, and neither endeavoured herself, nor required Fanny to advise her, to think little of guilt and infamy."

I think of Jin Yong's novels. All his characters are FLAT.