Unity of character

To make characterization, speech, and action harmonize so as to preserve the unity of the character is of no small moment in fiction. Speech and action, each by it¬self, often disclose too much or too little — as, truly, they will often play us false together in daily life.
If, as Stevenson has said, " drama is the poetry of con¬duct" the near approach to the dramatic form in dialogue and action adds life as well as beauty to the story. The same authority has said:
" This, then, is the plastic part of literature: to em¬body character, thought, or emotion in some act or at¬titude that shall be remarkably striking to the mind's eye. This is the highest and hardest thing to do in words; the thing which, once accomplished, equally de¬lights the schoolboy and the sage, and makes, in its own right, this quality of epics. It is one thing to remark and dissect, with the most cutting logic, the complica¬tions of life, and of the human spirit ; it is quite another to give them body and blood in the story of Ajax or Hamlet. The first is literature, but the second is some¬thing besides, for it is likewise art. . . .
" Readers cannot fail to have remarked that what an author tells us of the beauty or the charm of his crea¬tures goes for naught ; that we know instantly better ; that the heroine cannot open her mouth but what, all in a moment, the fine phrases of preparation fall from her like the robes of Cinderella, and she stands before us as a poor, ugly, sickly wench, or perhaps a strapping market-woman."
Category:Character