but they have not been great novels. The great novel deals with human
action as well as with mental portraiture and analysis. That "character
in itself is plot" is true only in a limited sense. A plan, a motive
with a logical conclusion, is as necessary to a novel or a romance as it
is to a drama. A group of skillfully made-up men and women lounging in
the green-room or at the wings is not the play. It is not enough to say
that this is Romeo and that Lady Macbeth. It is not enough to inform
us that certain passions are supposed to be embodied in such and such
persons: these persons should be placed in situations developing those
passions. A series of unrelated scenes and dialogues leading to nothing
is inadequate.

Mr. James's engaging epigram seems to me vulnerable at both ends--unlike
Achilles. "Plot is by no means character." Strictly speaking, it is
not. It appears to me, however, that plot approaches nearer to being
character than character does to being plot. Plot necessitates action,
and it is impossible to describe a man's actions' under whatever
conditions, without revealing something of his character, his way of
looking at things, his moral and mental pose. What a hero of fiction
_does_ paints him better than what he _says_, and vastly better than
anything his creator may say of him. Mr. James asserts that "we care
what happens to people only in proportion as we know what people are."
I think we care very little what people are (in fiction) when we do not
know what happens to them.




THE CRUELTY OF SCIENCE