Flat Protagonists. A Theory of Novel Character by Marta Figlerowicz (review)

This is a book not about characters in novels generally, but about a specific type of character, called here the 'flat protagonist' after E. M. Forster's celebrated distinction, in Aspects of the Novel, between flat characters 'constructed round a single idea or quality', and 'round characters' who are more complex ((London: Mariner Books, 1956), p. 67). Marta Figlerowicz adds a number of qualifications to the term 'flat'. Her flat protagonists change in the course of the novel to the extent that they 'contract and simplify' (p. 2) in the course of the story. Their 'behaviors are increasingly stereotypical and predictable' (ibid.). Among those so classified in this study are, as the author notes, many who are often perceived as 'deep' (i.e. presumably round). The examples of such characters presented here come from six novels, three of them English and three French: Aphra Behn's Oroonoko, Françoise de Graffigny's Lettres d'une Péruvienne, Isabelle de Charrière's Lettres de Mistriss Henley, Thomas Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure, and Marcel Proust's À la recherche du temps perdu. In addition to the even split between the two languages, the six protagonists studied are also divided between three whose primary focus is writing and three whose attention lies elsewhere. The six works are chosen for their atypicality and idiosyncrasy (and, in the author's view, are exceptions to the general thrust of realistic novels). The study might well have been given the title 'futile protagonists', since the recurring and recognizable trait in each case is the protagonist's failure to have any impact (or at least the impact that she or he desires) on the fictional world of the other characters. Oroonoko fails to lead a slave revolt; the Peruvian Zilia fails to recover her lover through her letters; Mistriss Henley fails to modify her standing in her household; Tess and Jude fail to realize their own insignificance for those around them; and Proust's Marcel is trapped in his solipsism, unable to interest anyone in his serial fascinations with different people. Futile, self-centred, shallow, and lacking awareness, such characters help us understand, the author concludes, that 'each gesture of putting away a novel we are reading is a gesture of hope' (p. 172) insofar as we can return to the real world. In addition to the texts of the six novels analysed, Figlerowicz's book also dialogues with a certain number of recent critics and theorists, most notably Martha Nussbaum, Nancy Armstrong, Franco Moretti, Judith Butler, and Elaine Scarry. On the other hand, the novels are not contextualized with regard to social, philosophical, or political developments during the two and a half centuries over which they were written. It would also have been useful to see a contrastive study of one or two non-flat protagonists or characters, so that we could better appreciate the distinction that the author perceives. Figlerowicz's purpose is ultimately a moral one: she points in her Conclusion to the utility of the flat protagonist as a sobering lesson about the deluded self-importance not only of the characters of novels but also of their readers.