of escape; and yet there
are plenty of bridegrooms, intelligent fellows too, who would be ready
to confess themselves Podkoleosins in the depths of their consciousness,
just before marriage. Nor does every husband feel bound to repeat
at every step, "Tu l'as voulu, Georges Dandin!" like another typical
personage; and yet how many millions and billions of Georges Dandins
there are in real life who feel inclined to utter this soul-drawn cry
after their honeymoon, if not the day after the wedding! Therefore,
without entering into any more serious examination of the question, I
will content myself with remarking that in real life typical characters
are "watered down," so to speak; and all these Dandins and Podkoleosins
actually exist among us every day, but in a diluted form. I will just
add, however, that Georges Dandin might have existed exactly as Moliere
presented him, and probably does exist now and then, though rarely; and
so I will end this scientific examination, which is beginning to
look like a newspaper criticism. But for all this, the question
remains,--what are the novelists to do with commonplace people, and how
are they to be presented to the reader in such a form as to be in
the least degree interesting? They cannot be left out altogether, for
commonplace people meet one at every turn of life, and to leave them out
would be to destroy the whole reality and probability of the story. To
fill a novel with typical characters only, or with merely strange and
uncommon people, would render the book unreal and improbable, and
would very likely destroy the interest. In my opinion, the duty of the
novelist is to seek out points of interest and instruction even in the
characters of commonplace people.

For instance, when the whole essence of an ordinary person's nature lies
in his perpetual and unchangeable commonplaceness; and when in spite of
all his endeavours to do something out of the common, this person ends,
eventually, by remaining in his unbroken line of routine--. I think
such an individual really does become a type of his own--a type of
commonplaceness which will not for the world, if it can help it,
be contented, but strains and yearns to be something original and
independent, without the slightest possibility of being so. To
this class of commonplace people belong several characters in this
novel;--characters which--I admit--I have not drawn very vividly up to
now for my reader's benefit.

Such were, for