ENGL 817AL - Field Notes: Literature as Artificiality

In Aspects of the Novel, E.M. Forster writes:

"In daily life we never understand each other, neither complete clairvoyance nor complete confessional exists. We know each other approximately, by external signs, and these serve well enough as a basis for society and even for intimacy. But people in a novel can be understood completely by the reader, if the novelist wishes; their inner as well as their outer life can be exposed. And this is why they often seem more definite than [Pg 74]characters in history, or even our own friends; we have been told all about them that can be told; even if they are imperfect or unreal they do not contain any secrets, whereas our friends do and must, mutual secrecy being one of the conditions of life upon this globe."

This passage stuck with me... like profoundly.

He writes about how that not only do/can characters have a totality that is outlined and provided by the author, but that characters, in some ways, are (possibly) more full beings than we are in reality. 

We will never know as much about the people in our daily lives and real life that we will about the fictional people on the pages of the books we read. This could potentially even apply to ourselves—our inner selves—as there are many aspects about ourselves that we refuse to outwardly show or even personally acknowledge. We play parts, we put on false facades, we act, we perform roles; all parts of ourselves that are as artificial as the made-up people detailed in words.

Do we even know our own real selves as those characters in books?

I mean, ok, book characters aren't self aware, but there is no question about if they do or do not know things about themselves. It is implied that whatever there is to know, the author knows, and they let the character come out of the page. Real People do not do that. As Forster states, "mutual secrecy" is a requirement of reality. We are about as real as the artificial people made up of words. And yet, in ways, they are more real than us.

It is a circular logic that can keep going and going and I'm going to be thinking about it for a long time...