ts pattern of events produce upon the reader the illusion of living
human beings. We must therefore turn our attention next to a study of
the element of character.

CHAPTER V

CHARACTERS

Before we proceed to study the technical methods of delineating
characters, we must ask ourselves what constitutes a character worth
delineating. A novelist is, to speak figuratively, the social sponsor
for his own fictitious characters; and he is guilty of a social
indiscretion, as it were, if he asks his readers to meet fictitious
people whom it is neither of value nor of interest to know. Since he
aims to make his readers intimate with his characters, he must first
of all be careful that his characters are worth knowing intimately.
Most of us, in actual life, are accustomed to distinguish people who
are worth our while from people who are not; and those of us who live
advisedly are accustomed to shield ourselves from people who cannot,
by the mere fact of what they are, repay us for the expenditure
of time and energy we should have to make to get to know them. And
whenever a friend of ours asks us deliberately to meet another
friend of his, we take it for granted that our friend has reasons for
believing that the acquaintanceship will be of benefit or of interest
to both. Now the novelist stands in the position of a friend who asks
us to meet certain people whom he knows; and he runs the risk of
our losing faith in his judgment unless we find his people worth our
while. By the mere fact that we bother to read a novel, thus expending
time which might otherwise be passed in company with actual people, we
are going out of our way to meet the characters to whom the novelist
wishes to introduce us. He therefore owes us an assurance that they
shall be even more worth our while than the average actual person.
This is not to say that they should necessarily be better; they may,
of course, be worse: but they should be more clearly significant
of certain interesting elements of human nature, more thoroughly
representative of certain phases of human life which it is well for us
to learn and know.

In deciding on the sort of characters that will be worth his readers'
while, the novelist must of course be influenced by the nature of the
audience he is writing for. The characters of "Little Women" may be
worth the while of children; and it is not an adverse criticism of
Louisa M. Alcott to say that they are not worth the while of mat