Aspects of the Novel

Forster begins the chapter on plot by disagreeing with the Greek philosopher Aristotle. Aristotle argues that happiness lies in action, rather than character; however, Forster says that the secret inner life of the individual is responsible for that person finding or failing to find happiness. Given Aristotle’s place in history, which predates the novel in its current form, Forster says that it is understandable that Aristotle was referring to drama and reality rather than the world of the novel. Forster attributes to Aristotle a definition of plot that requires “the triple process of complication, crisis, and solution” (129), which Forster argues is appropriate for drama but not the novel.

Forster defines plot as story with causality. While the story is a series of events in time, plot includes the reason for those events. The plot is concerned with pursuing the “why” of the story and the characters. A story relies solely on the audience’s desire for satisfied suspense, while a plot insists the reader think through the events and remember what has come before. Forster makes a distinction between suspense and mystery: Suspense is the curiosity of what comes next, while mystery is the pursuit of answers.

Mystery requires intelligence and memory, while suspense requires only curiosity. Intelligence prompts the reader to both ask “why” and to try to discover the answer with the provided information in the novel. Forster describes memory as “that dull glow of the mind of which intelligence is the bright advancing edge” (133). The neat marriage of memory and intelligence in the pursuit of grasping the plot will, in a well-written novel, deliver the beauty of discovery for the reader.

To illustrate the mechanics of plot, Forster uses George Meredith as his exemplar author. Although Meredith had many flaws as a novelist, Forster says Meredith’s ability to create and resolve mystery is worthy of exploration. In Meredith’s novels, the events often seem contrived, but he weaves disparate events together to create a sense of cohesiveness based on the character’s motivations. Meredith’s The Egoist provides an example of mystery in a plot via hidden emotion in a character.

In The Egoist, Meredith deliberately conceals Laetitia Dale’s attitude from the reader to create mystery and surprise when she refuses an offer of marriage. That concealment is effective, and it privileges the plot over the character. This same strategy can easily fail, as choosing between character and plot can be a delicate balancing act. Forster demonstrates this with examples from other authors who either lost the profundity of the plot or sacrificed a character’s identity in service of the plot, such as Charlotte Bronte’s Villette, which sacrifices character for plot.

In his discussion, Forster identifies two major challenges to a satisfying and successful plot: The conflict between character and plot, and the necessity to bring the plot to a close. Conclusions in novels often require an element of contrivance to bring the plot to a round and complete closure. The novelist solves the mysteries, but sometimes at the expense of complete character development. The plot demands a certain element of planning and overseeing by the novelist, and as a result, can contain obvious notes of artificiality.

Forster then poses a series of questions that ask whether a novel must follow a logical framework to achieve a neat end. He attributes the desire to culminate the plot fully to the traditions of drama and offers examples from more modern novelists that offer alternative approaches to plot, perhaps even eliminating plot altogether.

One example is French author André Gide’s Les Faux Monnayeurs, which contains several plots rather than one unified plot. The only real unifying factor in this novel is the primary character, who is a novelist writing a novel with the same name as the novel being read. The novelist seeks to unify reality and the idealized world of fiction. The consequence of this melding of reality and fiction is the destruction of the plot entirely, which Forster declines to judge the merit of. Instead, he transitions to the next chapter by introducing the concept of fantasy.