People
E. M. Forster: from (1927)
We may divide characters into flat and round.
Flat characters were called “humours” in the seventeenth century, and are sometimes called types, and sometimes caricatures. In their purest form, they are constructed round a single idea or quality: when there is more than one factor in them, we get the beginning of the curve towards the round. The really flat character can be expressed in one sentence such as “I never will desert Mr. Micawber.” There is Mrs. Micawber—she says she won’t desert Mr. Micawber, she doesn’t, and there she is. Or: “I must conceal, even by subterfuges, the poverty of my master’s house.” There is Caleb Balderstone in He does not use the actual phrase, but it completely describes him; he has no existence outside it, no pleasures, none of the private lusts and aches that must complicate the most consistent of servitors. Whatever he does, wherever he goes, whatever lies he tells or plates he breaks, it is to conceal the poverty of his master’s house. It is not his idée fixe, because there is nothing in him into which the idea can be fixed. He is the idea, and such life as he possesses radiates from its edges and from the scintillations it strikes when other elements in the novel impinge. Or take Proust. There are numerous flat characters in Proust, such as the Princess of Parma, or Legrandin. Each can be expressed in a single sentence, the Princess’s sentence being, “I must be particularly careful to be kind.” She does nothing except to be particularly careful, and those of the other characters who are more complex than herself easily see through the kindness, since it is only a by-product of the carefulness.
One great advantage of flat characters is that they are easily recognized whenever they come in—recognized by the reader’s emotional eye, not by the visual eye, which merely notes the recurrence of a proper name. In Russian novels, where they so seldom occur, they would be a decided help. It is a convenience for an author when he can strike with his full force at once, and flat characters are very useful to him, since they never need reintroducing, never run away, have not to be watched for development, and provide their own atmosphere—little luminous disks of a pre-arranged size, pushed hither and thither like counters across the void or between the stars; most satisfactory.
A second advantage is that they are easily remembered by the reader afterwards. They remain in his mind as unalterable for the reason that they were not changed by circumstances; they moved through circumstances, which gives them in retrospect a comforting quality, and preserves them when the book that produced them may decay. The Countess in furnishes a good little example here. Let us compare our memories of her with our memories of Becky Sharp. We do not remember what the Countess did or what she passed through. What is clear is her figure and the formula that surrounds it, namely, “Proud as we are of dear papa, we must conceal his memory.” All her rich humour proceeds from this. She is a flat character. Becky is round. She, too, is on the make, but she cannot be summed up in a single phrase, and we remember her in connection with the great scenes through which she passed and as modified by those scenes—that is to say, we do not remember her so easily because she waxes and wanes and has facets like a human being. All of us, even the sophisticated, yearn for permanence, and to the unsophisticated permanence is the chief excuse for a work of art. We all want books to endure, to be refuges, and their inhabitants to be always the same, and flat characters tend to justify themselves on this account.
All the same, critics who have their eyes fixed severely upon daily life—as were our eyes last week—have very little patience with such renderings of human nature. Queen Victoria, they argue, cannot be summed up in a single sentence, so what excuse remains for Mrs. Micawber? One of our foremost writers, Mr. Norman Douglas, is a critic of this type, and the passage from him which I will quote puts the case against flat characters in a forcible fashion. The passage occurs in an open letter to D. H. Lawrence, with whom he is quarrelling: a doughty pair of combatants, the hardness of whose hitting makes the rest of us feel like a lot of ladies up in a pavilion. He complains that Lawrence, in a biography, has falsified the picture by employing “the novelist’s touch,” and he goes on to define what this is:
It consists, I should say, in a failure to realize the complexities of the ordinary human mind; it selects for literary purposes two or three facets of a man or woman, generally the most spectacular, and therefore useful ingredients of their character and disregards all the others. Whatever fails to fit in with these specially chosen traits is eliminated—must be eliminated, for otherwise the description would not hold water. Such and such are the data: everything incompatible with those data has to go by the board. It follows that the novelist’s touch argues, often logically, from a wrong premise: it takes what it likes and leaves the rest. The facts may be correct as far as they go but there are too few of them: what the author says may be true and yet by no means the truth. That is the novelist’s touch. It falsifies life.
Well, the novelist’s touch as thus defined is, of course, bad in biography, for no human being is simple. But in a novel it has its place: a novel that is at all complex often requires flat people as well as round, and the outcome of their collisions parallels life more accurately than Mr. Douglas implies. The case of Dickens is significant. Dickens’ people are nearly all flat (Pip and David Copper-field attempt roundness, but so diffidently that they seem more like bubbles than solids). Nearly every one can be summed up in a sentence, and yet there is this wonderful feeling of human depth. Probably the immense vitality of Dickens causes his characters to vibrate a little, so that they borrow his life and appear to lead one of their own. It is a conjuring trick; at any moment we may look at Mr. Pickwick edgeways and find him no thicker than a gramophone record. But we never get the sideway view. Mr. Pickwick is far too adroit and well trained. He always has the air of weighing something, and when he is put into the cupboard of the young ladies’ school he seems as heavy as Falstaff in the buckbasket at Windsor. Part of the genius of Dickens is that he does use types and caricatures, people whom we recognize the instant they re-enter, and yet achieves effects that are not mechanical and a vision of humanity that is not shallow. Those who dislike Dickens have an excellent case. He ought to be bad. He is actually one of our big writers, and his immense success with types suggests that there may be more in flatness than the severer critics admit.
Or take H. G. Wells. With the possible exceptions of Kipps and the aunt in all Wells’ characters are as flat as a photograph. But the photographs are agitated with such vigour that we forget their complexities lie on the surface and would disappear if it was scratched or curled up. A Wells character cannot indeed be summed up in a single phrase; he is tethered much more to observation, he does not create types. Nevertheless his people seldom pulsate by their own strength. It is the deft and powerful hands of their maker that shake them and trick the reader into a sense of depth. Good but imperfect novelists, like Wells and Dickens, are very clever at transmitting force. The part of their novel that is alive galvanizes the part that is not, and causes the characters to jump about and speak in a convincing way. They are quite different from the perfect novelist who touches all his material directly, who seems to pass the creative finger down every sentence and into every word. Richardson, Defoe, Jane Austen, are perfect in this particular way; their work may not be great but their hands are always upon it; there is not the tiny interval between the touching of the button and the sound of the bell which occurs in novels where the characters are not under direct control.
For we must admit that flat people are not in themselves as big achievements as round ones, and also that they are best when they are comic. A serious or tragic flat character is apt to be a bore. Each time he enters crying “Revenge!” or “My heart bleeds for humanity!” or whatever his formula is, our hearts sink. One of the romances of a popular contemporary writer is constructed round a Sussex farmer who says, “I’ll plough up that bit of gorse.” There is the farmer, there is the gorse; he says he’ll plough it up, he does plough it up, but it is not like saying “I’ll never desert Mr. Micawber,” because we are so bored by his consistency that we do not care whether he succeeds with the gorse or fails. If his formula was analysed and connected up with the rest of the human outfit, we should not be bored any longer, the formula would cease to be the man and become an obsession in the man; that is to say he would have turned from a flat farmer into a round one. It is only round people who are fit to perform tragically for any length of time and can move us to any feelings except humour and appropriateness.
So now let us desert these two-dimensional people, and by way of transition to the round, let us go to and look at Lady Bertram, sitting on her sofa with pug. Pug is flat, like most animals in fiction. He is once represented as straying into a rose-bed in a cardboard kind of way, but that is all, and during most of the book his mistress seems to be cut out of the same simple material as her dog. Lady Bertram’s formula is, “I am kindly, but must not be fatigued,” and she functions out of it. But at the end there is a catastrophe. Her two daughters come to grief—to the worst grief known to Miss Austen’s universe, far worse than the Napoleonic wars. Julia elopes; Maria, who is unhappily married, runs off with a lover. What is Lady Bertram’s reaction? The sentence describing it is significant:
“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.”
These are strong words, and they used to worry me because I thought Jane Austen’s moral sense was getting out of hand. She may, and of course does, deprecate guilt and infamy herself, and she duly causes all possible distress in the minds of Edmund and Fanny, but has she any right to agitate calm, consistent Lady Bertram? Is not it like giving pug three faces and setting him to guard the gates of Hell? Ought not her ladyship to remain on the sofa saying, “This is a dreadful and sadly exhausting business about Julia and Maria, but where is Fanny gone? I have dropped another stitch”?
I used to think this, through misunderstanding Jane Austen’s method—exactly as Scott misunderstood it when he congratulated her for painting on a square of ivory. She is a miniaturist, but never two-dimensional. All her characters are round, or capable of rotundity. Even Miss Bates has a mind, even Elizabeth Eliot a heart, and Lady Bertram’s moral fervour ceases to vex us when we realize this: the disk has suddenly extended and become a little globe. When the novel is closed, Lady Bertram goes back to the flat, it is true; the dominant impression she leaves can be summed up in a formula. But that is not how Jane Austen conceived her, and the freshness of her reappearances are due to this. Why do 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? Why do they combine so well in a conversation, and draw one another out without seeming to do so, and never perform? The answer to this question can be put in several ways: that, unlike Dickens, she was a real artist, that she never stooped to caricature, etc. But the best reply is that 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. Suppose that Louisa Musgrove had broken her neck on the Cobb. The description of her death would have been feeble and ladylike—physical violence is quite beyond Miss Austen’s powers—but the survivors would have reacted properly as soon as the corpse was carried away, they would have brought into view new sides of their character, and though Persuasion would have been spoiled as a book, we should know more than we do about Captain Wentworth and Anne. 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. Let us return to Lady Bertram and the crucial sentence. See how subtly it modulates from her formula into an area where the formula does not work. “Lady Bertram did not think deeply.” Exactly: as per formula. “But guided by Sir Thomas she thought justly on all important points.” Sir Thomas’ guidance, which is part of the formula, remains, but it pushes her ladyship towards an independent and undesired morality. “She saw therefore in all its enormity what had happened.” This is the moral fortissimo—very strong but carefully introduced. And then follows a most artful decrescendo, by means of negatives. “She neither endeavoured herself, nor required Fanny to advise her, to think little of guilt or infamy.” The formula is reappearing, because as a rule she does try to minimize trouble, and does require Fanny to advise her how to do this; indeed Fanny has done nothing else for the last ten years. The words, though they are negatived, remind us of this, her normal state is again in view, and she has in a single sentence been inflated into a round character and collapsed back into a flat one. How Jane Austen can write! In a few words she has extended Lady Bertram, and by so doing she has increased the probability of the elopements of Maria and Julia. I say probability because the elopements belong to the domain of violent physical action, and here, as already indicated, Jane Austen is feeble and ladylike. Except in her school-girl novels, she cannot stage a crash. Everything violent has to take place “off”—Louisa’s accident and Marianne Dashwood’s putrid throat are the nearest exceptions—and consequently all the comments on the elopement must be sincere and convincing, otherwise we should doubt whether it occurred. Lady Bertram helps us to believe that her daughters have run away, and they have to run away, or there would be no apotheosis for Fanny. It is a little point, and a little sentence, yet it shows us how delicately a great novelist can modulate into the round.
All through her works we find these characters, apparently so simple and flat, never needing re-introduction and yet never out of their depth—Henry Tilney, Mr. Woodhouse, Charlotte Lucas. She may label her characters “Sense,” “Pride,” “Sensibility,” “Prejudice,” but they are not tethered to those qualities.
As for the round characters proper, they have already been defined by implication and no more need be said. All I need do is to give some examples of people in books who seem to me round so that the definition can be tested afterwards:
All the principal characters in War and Peace, all the Dostoevsky characters, and some of the Proust—for example, the old family servant, the Duchess of Guermantes, M. de Charlus, and Saint Loup; Madame Bovary—who, like Moll Flanders, has her book to herself, and can expand and secrete unchecked; some people in Thackeray—for instance, Becky and Beatrix; some in Fielding—Parson Adams, Tom Jones; and some in Charlotte Brontë, most particularly Lucy Snowe. (And many more—this is not a catalogue.) The test of a round character is whether it is capable of surprising in a convincing way. If it never surprises, it is flat. If it does not convince, it is a flat pretending to be round. It has the incalculability of life about it—life within the pages of a book. And by using it sometimes alone, more often in combination with the other kind, the novelist achieves his task of acclimatization and harmonizes the human race with the other aspects of his work.
Notes:
参考译文：
我们可以把人物分成两类：扁形人物和圆形人物。
扁形人物在17世纪被人叫作“体液性人物”，现在他们有时被称作“类型性人物”，有时又被称作“漫画式人物”。这个类型里的那些性质最最纯粹的人物，是作者围绕着一个单独的概念或者素质创造出来的。如果他们的言行表现出一个以上的概念或者素质的话，他们就会让人发现，其形象正处在朝圆形发展的那条曲线的起点。真正的扁形人物可以用一句话来概括，例如“我永远不会抛弃米考伯先生”，这就是米考伯太太。她说她不会抛弃米考伯先生，她确实没有抛弃他——这句话把她一生的事迹全部概括出来了。……
扁形人物的一大优点是：不管他们在小说里的什么地方出现，都能让读者一眼就认出来——读者用的是感情之眼，不是用只会注意人物的姓名重复出现的那双视觉之眼。在俄国小说里，难得出现扁形人物，他们一旦出现，就会对整部小说产生明显的好处。小说家若能全力以赴一举而毕全功，那是一个方便的手段，而扁形人物就对他非常有用。他们从来不需要作者重新介绍，从来不会逃之夭夭，从来不需要作者寻觅使之得以有所发展的时机，也不需为他们提供属于他们自个儿的情调，他们恍若预先定好了尺寸、炯炯发光的一个个小小的圆盘，像筹码一样，在茫茫的空间或者星辰之间，非常惬意地任人推来搡去。
扁形人物的第二个优点是：读者容易在事后把他们回想起来。他们在读者的记忆里历久常新，因为他们并不随着环境的改变而有所变化。他们历经坎坷，却依然故我。这一特征使读者回想起来深感宽慰。而且，把这些扁形人物创造出来的那本小说，纵或会在读者的头脑里变得印象淡薄，这个特征却仍然会使那些人物本身的形象栩栩如生地留在读者的心里。……我们全都向往永恒，即使世情练达之士也在所难免。而对于那些天真纯朴的人来说，把一件艺术品创造出来的主要原因，就是为了要使它永垂不朽。我们都希望文学作品传诸后世，成为让人逃避现实的庇护之所，都希望作品里的人物历久常新、始终如一，于是扁形人物往往就得以大行其道。
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一部内容复杂的小说，往往既需要圆形人物，也需要扁形人物。他们互相碰撞的结果，要比道格拉斯先生所暗示的更加正确地接近生活。狄更斯笔下的人物几乎全是扁形的(匹普和大卫·科波菲尔想要变成圆的，但是却又畏缩不前，以致他们看上去倒更像两个气泡而非实体)。在他的小说里，几乎每个人物都可以由一句话予以概括，但是他们却又给人以具有奇妙的人性深度之感。也许这是由于狄更斯自己旺盛的生命力使他笔下的人物也都变得生动活泼起来，以致他们凭借狄更斯的生命力，一个个都显得好像正在过着各自分内的生活似的。这简直像在变魔术。我们可以在任何时候从边上观察匹克威克先生，并且发现他的形象薄如一张唱片。可是我们却永远看不到他的侧面。匹克威克先生太机灵、太训练有素了。他老是带着一副正在权衡利弊得失的神情。当他被人家塞进女子学校的那个衣柜里去的时候，他的分量仿佛和在温莎被人家装在洗衣篓里去的福斯塔夫一样沉得厉害。狄更斯的一部分天才即表现在这个方面：尽管他在小说里用的是类型性的、漫画式的人物，他们一旦重新上场，我们就可以辨认出来。然而，他取得的效果却并不呆板，还显示出具有深度的人性。那些不喜欢狄更斯作品的人理由很充分——他理应是一个蹩脚的小说家。实际上他却是为我们所拥有的大作家之一。他在塑造类型性人物方面取得的辉煌成就表明：扁平的形象里包涵的内容，也许要比那些态度比较严苛的批评家们乐于承认的更为丰富。
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我们必须承认，就塑造人物的成就来说，扁形人物本身并不和圆形人物一样地巨大。而且我们也得承认，扁形人物被塑造成为喜剧性角色的时候最为出色。严肃的或者悲剧性的扁形人物往往惹人生厌。如果他每次露面的时候都得嚷嚷“复仇！”或者“我的心在为人类的不幸而流血！”或者无论他的什么口号的话，我们的情绪就会立即沉落下来。在某一位颇受欢迎的当代作家写的一部传奇里，故事围绕着一个老是嘀咕着说什么“我要犁掉那块荆豆田”的塞赛克斯郡的农民而展开。那部小说里有着那么个农民，他有着那块荆豆田。那农民说他决心要把那块田犁掉，而且后来他也确实把它犁掉了。可是他的这个宣言，却和声明说“我永远不会抛弃米考伯先生”的那个宣言不同。因为这个农民在他的宣言里表现出来的那股子韧劲儿只会使我们感到腻烦——使我们厌烦得产生反感，以致根本不在乎他到头来究竟有没有把那块荆豆田犁掉。可是，如果作者在小说中把他的口号加以分析，并且把它和人性中的别的内容联系起来，我们就不会感到厌烦了。这句口号也就不会就是那个人本身，而会变成使他耿耿于怀、始终未能忘怀的一桩心事了。这就是说，他就会从一个扁形农民蜕变成为一个圆形的农民。惟有圆形的人物才宜于扮演一个悲剧性的角色而不受时间长短的限制，才能够使我们产生除了幽默诙谐和恰如其分以外的任何感觉。
现在让我们把只占两度空间的扁形人物撇在一边，而且，为了转而讨论圆形人物，让我们到《曼斯菲尔德公园》里去走走，去看看和她的那只叭儿狗一起坐在沙发里的贝特兰夫人吧。那只叭儿狗和所有小说里的大多数动物一个样，它是扁的。书中提到它有一次闯进了一个玫瑰花坛，动作生硬得看上去好像让人在硬纸板上剪出来得，不过也就如此而已。在这部小说的大部分篇幅里，它的女主人好像也是让人用和它一样简单的材料剪成的。贝特兰夫人的行动口号是：“我的心肠很好，但是我可劳累不得。”她对这个做人的准则恪守不逾。可是临到末了，一场大祸从天而降。她的两个女儿遭了大难——遇到了你在奥斯丁小姐笔下的那个世界里可能会遇到的一个最大最大的灾难。它比拿破仑战争还要可怕得多。朱丽亚和人私奔了。玛丽亚则因婚后并不幸福，也和情人离家出走了。那么，贝特兰夫人对此大难做何反应呢？书中描写的那个句子很有意思：
贝特兰夫人并未深思熟虑，但是她在托马斯爵士的指点下适当地考虑了所有的重要之点，从而充分地认识了业已发生的事情的严重性，然而她却既不勉强自己，也不需要范妮的任何规劝，就不把恶行劣迹和出丑露乖当做什么不得了的大事了。
这句话说得斩钉截铁，铿锵有力。它曾使我一度觉得疑虑不安，还以为简·奥斯丁的道德观念忽然出了毛病，变得难以驾驭了。她自己也许反对——当然，她确实反对——恶行劣迹和出丑露乖，而且她有没有权利使那位遇事不慌、言行一致的贝特兰夫人焦虑不安呢？如果这样的话，岂不就如同她让那只叭儿狗长出三个脑袋来，并且打发它去看守冥府的那些大门一样地荒谬？贝特兰夫人岂不应该依旧安然坐在她的那张沙发里，说道，“朱丽亚和玛丽亚干出来的可是一件可怕而又会让人累坏的事情。可是范妮跑到哪儿去了？我又漏编了一针？”
由于我误解了简·奥斯丁的创作手法，所以我以前曾经这么想过——正如司各特误解了它而向她表示祝贺，说她的文笔细腻得好像在一方象牙上面绘画似的。其实，她笔下的那些人物纵然纤巧，但是他们绝对不是平面的。她的人物都是圆形的，或者可以朝着圆形人物发展的。甚至连贝兹小姐也有头脑，连伊丽莎白·艾略特也有感情。一旦我们发现那个扁扁的圆盘突然膨胀起来、成为一个小小的球体的时候，贝特兰夫人在道德观念方面表现出来的热情也就不会使我们感到惊讶了。不错，在小说结束的时候，贝特兰夫人又恢复了她的原样，成为一个扁形的人物，以致她给人留下的那个主要印象可以用一句行动口号来概括。不过那不是简·奥斯丁所构思的她的那个样子了。她重复出现的时候给予读者的新鲜之感即由此而来。为什么简·奥斯丁笔下的人物每次出场的时候，都使我们觉得他们变得有点新鲜味儿，因而感到趣味盎然，而狄更斯小说里的人物，却只由于他们一再重复自己的形象，从而使我们获得快感？为什么简·奥斯丁笔下的人物在对话里契合无间，互相应对周旋，丝毫不着痕迹，而且他们的举止谈吐纯真自然，从不矫揉造作、忸怩作态？对这个问题，可以用几种不同的方式来回答。譬如，简·奥斯丁和狄更斯不同，她是个真正的艺术家；又如，她从来不屑于用漫画的手法来描绘她的人物，等等。然而，最好的回答是：她笔下的人物固然要比狄更斯的人物渺小一些，但是他们却让她组织得更加紧密。他们在小说里处处发挥作用。即使她小说里的情节对他们提出更大的要求，他们也会胜任愉快。让我们假定《劝导》里的路易莎·摩斯格鲁夫在码头上摔断了脖子。这样的话，简·奥斯丁笔下的关于她死于非命的描绘就会显得软弱无力，就会显得婆婆妈妈地女人腔十足。这是因为关于暴力行为之类事件的描写，并非简·奥斯丁所擅长。但是等到人家把尸体一抬走，那些在场的人的反应就会让她描绘得丝丝入扣，恰如其分。他们会表现出各自性格里的一些新的方面。这样一来，尽管作者会把作为一部小说的《劝导》写砸了，但是我们对温特渥斯舰长和安妮的了解就会比现在深刻得多。简·奥斯丁笔下的每个人物都具有旺盛的生命力，足以使他们跳出小说的范围，去过上一种拓展了的生活，去过上一种小说里规划的并不需要他们过的生活。这也就是为什么他们在小说里的实际生活会过得令人如此满意的缘故。现在让我们回过头去看看贝特兰夫人和那个关系重大的句子吧，去看看那个句子多么巧妙地从描述她的行为准则开始，逐步转变为把她转移到她的准则不起作用的那个领域里去的吧。那句子开头说，“贝特兰夫人并未深思熟虑”。一点不错，这和她为人处世的准则相符。接着它又说，“但是她在托马斯爵士的指点下，适当地考虑了所有的重要之点”。托马斯爵士的指点——这是她的行为准则的一个部分——她的行为准则仍然在起作用，但是它却促使这位夫人产生一种独立的、并非她所企求的道德观念。然后，“从而充分地认识了业已发生的事情的严重性”。这是她的道德观念发出的最强音——它非常强烈，但是被作者小心翼翼地引了进来，显得自然而熨帖。随之而来的是一个非常巧妙的、用否定的语句构成的渐弱音：“她却既不勉强自己，也不需要范妮的任何规劝，就不把恶行劣迹和出丑露乖当做什么不得了的大事了。”她的行为准则在这儿重新出现了，因为她通常确实总要想法子尽量减轻烦恼，也确实需要范妮给她出主意，教她怎样才能做到这一点。说实在的，小说里交代，在过去的十年中，范妮所做的无非就是这件事情。除此以外，她什么都没做过。句子最后的那部分虽然是从反面来表达这层意思的，可是它使我们想起了这一点，于是她那正常的状态就重新展现在我们面前了。就这样，在同一个句子里，她先被作者扩展成为一个圆形人物，然后又瘪了下来，又成为一个扁形人物。你看，简·奥斯丁的手法多么高明！她只用寥寥数语就扩展了贝特兰夫人的形象，从而在读者的心目中增加了玛丽亚和朱丽亚私奔的可信性。我之所以说“可信性”，是因为私奔之举属于暴力行为的范畴，而简·奥斯丁在写作中一涉及这个领域——我在前面已经说过——她的文笔就显得软弱无力，娘娘腔十足。除了她在学习写作期间写的那些小说以外，从来没能描写过暴力冲突的场面。她的小说里的暴力行为都得在“后台”进行——路易莎意外受伤和玛丽安·岱许伍德染上糜烂性咽喉炎可算是两个最接近例外的事件了。因此，一切关于那两个女儿私奔的议论，都必须写得真实可信，不然的话，读者就会怀疑，究竟是否真的发生过这些事情。贝特兰夫人的言行使我们相信，她的那两个宝贝女儿的确已经逃跑。而且她们也非逃跑不可，不然范妮就无法施展她那非凡的本领了。这只是小事一桩，只是一个短短的句子，然而它却对我们宣示，伟大的小说家只要大笔一挥，就能够把一个扁形人物巧妙地转变成为一个圆形人物。
在简·奥斯丁的每一部作品中，我们都能够发现这类人物。从表面上看来，他们显得那么单纯，那么扁平，从来不需作者重新介绍。然而，他们也从来不会显得计穷力绌、举措失当：如亨利·蒂尔妮、伍德豪斯先生、夏洛特、卢卡斯等等，均系如此。她不妨给她笔下的人物分别贴上一个标签，如“理智”、“傲慢”、“情感”、“偏见”等等，以此来供人识别，可是他们并不各自局限于其中的某一品性。
关于正宗的圆形人物定义，我们在论及扁形人物的时候，已经有所论及，不必赘述。我现在需要做的，只是列举几个我认为是小说中的圆形人物，然后用他们来检验这个定义。
《战争与和平》里的所有主要人物都是圆形人物；陀思妥耶夫斯基笔下的全部人物，以及普鲁斯特笔下的一些人物——如那个老佣人、盖尔芒特公爵夫人、德·莎尔勒斯先生和圣·鲁普；包法利夫人——包法利夫人和摩尔·弗兰德斯一样，以她的名字命名的那本书里讲的都是她一个人的事情，而且她在小说中任意扩展和衍生；萨克雷的小说里的某些人物——如蓓基和毕亚特里克斯；菲尔丁作品里的某些人物——如亚当斯牧师、汤姆·琼斯；以及夏洛蒂·勃朗特笔下的某些人物，尤其是鲁西·斯诺威，也都是圆形人物。(我还可以举出不少来，可是我在这次演讲里想做到的可不仅仅是开列一张人物名单而已)对于一个圆形人物的检验，要看他是否令人信服地给人以惊奇之感。如果他从来就不使人感到惊奇的话，他就是个扁形人物。圆形人物变化莫测，如同生活本身一样叫人难以逆料——我在这里说的生活，是指充塞在小说篇幅里的生活。小说家运用圆形人物——有时单独运用他们，在更多的场合里，是把他们和扁形人物结合在一起——使人物和小说里别的那些“面”融合在一起，成为一个和谐的整体。
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