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Jane Austen Writing Lessons. #32: Use Setting to Complement or Contrast Emotion

#32: Use Setting to Complement or Contrast Emotion

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Jane Austen Writing Lessons. #32: Use Setting to Complement or Contrast Emotion

In the last lesson, I discussed the advantages of using a distinctive setting in a major plot turn. In addition to assisting the plot, a setting is one of the most powerful ways to reveal a character’s emotions.

In Jane Austen’s novel Mansfield Park, the main character, Fanny Price, lives with her aunt and uncle and cousins. Fanny is often mistreated and ignored, but when her cousin Maria is married, both of Fanny’s female cousins—Maria and Julia—travel to London. Everyone’s treatment of Fanny improves, and she becomes a more essential and more valued part of the household.

Her friendship with a neighbor, Miss Crawford, also increases. One day, while Fanny is visiting Miss Crawford, the two are walking around the shrubbery at the parsonage, and they stop to sit on a bench. They are both in the exact same setting at the exact same time, but they both engage with it differently, and how they engage and interact with the setting provides insight into their emotions:

“This is pretty—very pretty,” said Fanny, looking around her as they were thus sitting together one day: “Every time I come into this shrubbery I am more struck with its growth and beauty. Three years ago, this was nothing but a rough hedgerow along the upper side of the field, never thought of as any thing, or capable of becoming any thing; and now it is converted into a walk, and it would be difficult to say whether most valuable as a convenience or an ornament; and perhaps in another three years we may be forgetting—almost forgetting what it was before. How wonderful, how very wonderful the operations of time, and the changes of the human mind!”

Fanny not only notices the growth and development of the setting, but she also eloquently expresses her observations. For the reader, Fanny’s musings on the shrubbery are not just a matter of an improved landscape: her musings reflect on how Fanny prefers her new role within the world. Previously, her family “never thought of [her] as any thing, or capable of becoming any thing,” but like the shrubbery, she is now flourishing. And because she is flourishing, she notices the shrubbery.

On the contrary, this is Miss Crawford’s reaction:

Miss Crawford, untouched and inattentive, had nothing to say.

Miss Crawford is naturally less interested in nature, but this character difference is not the full story. In the subsequent paragraphs, it begins to become clear that Miss Crawford is wrapped up in her own thoughts and reflections, as she tries to figure out what her future will look like. She is not a viewpoint character in this scene, yet still we glimpse her emotions by the very fact that she does not notice the setting and is unable to respond to Fanny’s enthusiasm.

Complements and Contrasts

When using setting to reveal emotion, the writer can:

  • Use a setting which complements the character’s emotions.

  • Use a setting which contrasts with the character’s emotions.

  • Use a setting which both complements and contrasts the character’s emotion.

In the above example, the emotion was revealed through speech, action, inaction, and awareness, all of which related or were in reference to the setting. Another effective method of revealing emotion is through the description of setting within the narrative.

Using the Setting to Complement Emotions

In Mansfield Park, Fanny’s uncle Lord Bertram becomes angry with her when she refuses an offer of marriage. He sends her back to her parents, which puts her in a setting that she has not interacted with since she was a young girl. How she feels about this is made clear by the narrator’s insights into her perception of the setting:

She was then taken into a parlour, so small that her first conviction was of its being only a passage-room to something better, and she stood for a moment expecting to be invited on; but when she saw there was no other door, and that there were signs of habitation before her, she called back her thoughts, reproved herself, and grieved lest they should have been suspected.

Several chapters focus almost entirely on Fanny’s interaction with the setting. The setting is not just her parents’ house; the setting is also the people in it (all of her many siblings, most of who she has no connection to), as well as and the behaviors and expectations associated with the house. In one passage, we read:

But though she had seen all the members of the family, she had not yet heard all the noise they could make.

Austen goes on to describe, in great detail, the hustle and bustle and the yelling and the arguing,

the whole of which, as almost every door in the house was open, could be plainly distinguished in the parlour, except when drowned at intervals by the superior noise of Sam, Tom, and Charles chasing each other up and down stairs, and tumbling about and hallooing.

Fanny was almost stunned. The smallness of the house, and thinness of the walls, brought every thing so close to her, that, added to the fatigue of her journey, and all her recent agitation, she hardly knew how to bear it.

There is never a need for Austen to state, “Fanny was not happy with this move and did not feel comfortable with her family. She felt unloved and unwanted.” None of these things need to be said, because we experience through it as Fanny experiences the setting. At the end of one of the chapters, the narrator does state Fanny’s emotions more directly:

In a review of the two houses, as they appeared to her before the end of a week, Fanny was tempted to apply to them Dr. Johnson’s celebrated judgment as to matrimony and celibacy, and say, that though Mansfield Park might have some pains, Portsmouth could have no pleasures.

However, this more direct statement of emotion works because of the artistry of it, because it is a direct revelation of Fanny’s internal thoughts, and because this direct statement of emotion has been earned. We have already experienced the emotion with Fanny by experiencing the setting with her. And so when this statement is made, we agree with her and we feel for her.

Using the Setting to Contrast Emotions

At other times, it can be effective to use the setting to provide a contrast to the character’s emotions. A good, beautiful day could be contrasted with a character’s depressions, just as a terrifying storm could contrast with a character’s happiness.

Near the beginning of the novel, when a young Fanny arrives at Mansfield Park, the wonderful, grand house provides a clear contrast to her emotions, actually serving to make her feel worse:

The grandeur of the house astonished, but could not console her. The rooms were too large for her to move in with ease; whatever she touched she expected to injure, and she crept about in constant terror of something or other; often retreating towards her own chamber to cry.

When a positive setting contrasts with a negative emotion, it can serve to alienate the character from their surroundings, as occurs in this example. This can make the character’s negative emotions feel even weightier to the reader. When a negative setting contrasts with a positive emotion, the character seems to transcend their setting. This can make the character’s positive emotions seem greater or more powerful to the reader.

Using the Setting Both to Complement and Contrast Emotions

Some settings both complement and contrast emotions. This can occur over the course of a novel, as a character’s relationship with the setting changes.

This can also occur within a single scene. When a setting both complements and contrasts emotions in a single scene, it often serves to highlight the complexity of human emotion as well as our nuanced experiences with our surroundings.

The following passage in Mansfield Park occurs when Fanny is still at her parents’ home. She is dreading receiving bad news in the mail. Note how the narrator calls attention to the fact of what the bright sunlight should do versus what it actually does, and how this transitions to Fanny noticing aspects of the setting which reflect her discomfort (such as the low-quality blue milk with motes and the increasingly greasy butter and bread):

The sun was yet an hour and half above the horizon. She felt that she had, indeed, been three months there; and the sun’s rays falling strongly into the parlour, instead of cheering, made her still more melancholy, for sunshine appeared to her a totally different thing in a town and in the country. Here, its power was only a glare: a stifling, sickly glare, serving but to bring forward stains and dirt that might otherwise have slept. There was neither health nor gaiety in sunshine in a town. She sat in a blaze of oppressive heat, in a cloud of moving dust, and her eyes could only wander from the walls, marked by her father’s head, to the table cut and notched by her brothers, where stood the tea-board never thoroughly cleaned, the cups and saucers wiped in streaks, the milk a mixture of motes floating in thin blue, and the bread and butter growing every minute more greasy than even Rebecca’s hands had first produced it.

A bright cheery day is now a curse for Fanny—she normally loves the sun, but not now. Not in this context of this setting, and not in this context of her own emotional agony. The sun contrasts with her emotions until it is subverted into complementing her negative emotions.

In Conclusion

Just as Jane Austen does, we can use the setting to reflect or contrast with a character’s emotions. Often, this is more effective than just stating the emotion, and it allows the setting to perform work on multiple levels of the novel.

Writing Exercises - Jane Austen Writing Lessons

Exercise 1: One Setting, a Multitude of Possible Emotions

Woman in Rain by Mario Cuadros. Displays a woman in a city, walking along the sidewalk. She wears a long brown coat and a backpack. We see her walking away from us with a black umbrella over her head.

Photo by Mario Cuadros from Pexels

A single setting could be described in very different ways, depending on the character’s emotion. Consider the above photograph. Now write three short descriptions of the character within this setting, each which conveys a different emotion. Aim for a one to four sentence description, and choose from the following emotions:

  • Fear
  • Excitement
  • Resignation
  • Love
  • Fatigue
  • Concern for someone else

Exercise 2:

Choose a novel. Now find three different points in the novel which describe the setting while providing insight into emotion. Does the setting complement or contrast the emotion? Does it do both? What specific word choice and sentence structure helps produce the desired emotion?

Exercise 3:

Option 1: As you write a scene, consciously include details about the setting which either complement or contrast with the character’s emotions.

Option 2: Take an early draft of a scene you have written and revise it, focusing on using the setting to shine a light on the character’s emotions.

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#25: Use Antagonists and Villains to Interfere

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Jane Austen Writing Lessons. #25: Use Antagonists and Villains to Interfere.

A number of books and blog posts on writing talk about creating a single main antagonist or villain, who actively works in opposition to the main character over the course of the story.

Yet this isn’t how Jane Austen uses antagonists and villains in her novels. Many of her books don’t have a primary antagonist. And only a few of her books have villains—there’s even some debate over whether any of her characters qualify as villains at all.

Over the coming weeks, we’re going to explore how Jane Austen uses obstacles, antagonists, and villains with great effect. Some of my personal favorites in terms of Austen characters fall into these categories—Lady Catherine de Bourgh, Willoughby, Jane Fairfax, and even Mr. Knightley (yes, he definitely acts as an antagonist!).

This week we’re going to define some of the key terms related to obstacles, antagonists, and villains in a way that helps us understand how Jane Austen uses them and how we can use them in our own writing. Examples will come from Austen’s novel Mansfield Park.

Obstacles

Obstacles

Obstacle=something which gets in the way of the character as they go on their journey. This may be a challenge, a physical or emotional impediment, or anything which must be overcome in order for the characters wants and needs to be met.

I talked about obstacles in two previous posts. In Make Things Hard for Your Character I discussed three types of challenges: external obstacles, successes/triumphs, and internal flaws/challenges. The post on creating character arcs also discusses obstacles, albeit a little more indirectly.

In Mansfield Park, an example of an obstacle is when Fanny Price’s horse dies. Suddenly she has no way to exercise, which has a huge negative impact on her health, and perhaps more seriously, she loses the small amount of autonomy, independence, and freedom she had because of her horse.

Obstacles can be inactive or active.

Inactive Obstacle: a present and existing obstacle which is a challenge for the character, but does not have active force applied to create this challenge.

One of Fanny’s sources of inactive opposition is her poverty. Her poverty makes her beholden to her uncle and aunts, and it robs her of power and decision-making. This poverty is not something that has changed over time, and there seems to be no way that it could change. No one is actively making her poor, no single event has created this poverty—it’s just the way it is.

Active obstacle

Active Obstacle: an obstacle which includes the active application of negative force on a character. This can be a one-time obstacle, an obstacle that happens multiple times, or an obstacle that happens continuously.

One example of the active obstacle is the choice of her cousins and their friends to perform what to her is a rather objectionable play. Then they try to force her to act in it against her wishes.

Another active obstacle, which is more continuous, is Henry Crawford’s proposal. Crawford devotes huge amounts of time attempting to manipulate Fanny, and Fanny’s uncle, Lord Bertram, also convinces her to accept the proposal and punishes her when she does not.

Antagonism

Antagonism=active opposition to a character, often with hostility.

According to the New Oxford American Dictionary, in the field of biochemistry, antagonism “inhibition or interference with the action of one substance or organism by another.” To me this is really useful for stories, particularly the sense of “inhibition or interference” of someone’s actions.

Whenever one character opposes another character, whenever a character inhibits or interferes with another characters actions, they are showing antagonism.

Antagonism with hostility – Much antagonism is accompanied by hostility, which includes negative emotion, often unfriendliness.

An example of characters that show antagonism with hostility are Lord and Lady Bertram. They feeling that Fanny should be treated as lesser and separate than their children, and that she should be reminded of all she has been given that she does not deserve. This results in many things, including her sleeping in a cold room in the attic (with no fire in the winter!), apart from the rest of the family.

Antagonism without hostility – some antagonism or active opposition occurs without any hostility or ill-will.

Edmund, Fanny’s cousin, is her closest friend and confidante. And yet he does things which inhibit and oppose Fanny, though with no ill will. When the horse she uses dies, he gets her a new horse to use, but then he lends it out constantly to his love interest, which inhibits Fanny. Edmund also tries to get Fanny to marry Henry Crawford, and does not listen to her perspective or her reasoning for not wanting to marry Crawford.

Antagonism vs. Antagonist

I’ve included antagonism as a separate category than an antagonist, because while all antagonists manifest antagonism, not all characters who manifest antagonism at some point in a story are true antagonists.

Personally, I would categorize Lord Bertram as an antagonist, because he truly is actively opposing Fanny on a regular basis, while I would categorize Lady Bertram and Edmund simply as characters sometimes behaving with antagonism to the main character.

Antagonist

Antagonist – a person who actively opposes the main character and tries to interfere with them achieving their wants and needs, typically over multiple scenes or a large portion of the story.

An example of this is Mrs. Norris.

Gif of Filch rocking his cat, Mrs. Norris, from the Harry Potter films

I’m not talking about the cat in Harry Potter (though I’ve heard that the Mansfield Park character is the namesake for the Harry Potter antagonist, which makes me very happy). I’m talking about Fanny’s aunt.

Despite all their years in close proximity, Mrs. Norris never gives Fanny any love. She is constantly belittling, disregarding, and mistreating Fanny. She attempts to put Fanny in her place, and at times even threatens her at times. Not only does she make Fanny’s life miserable, she also influences others to mistreat Fanny.

Villain

Villain – an antagonist who causes significant, lasting, and often irreversible harm in the main character’s life or in the lives of those the main character cares deeply about.

Henry Crawford decides to make Fanny love him as a sort of game, simply because she’s the only unwed female who isn’t interested in him. Thus begins his manipulations, and his antagonism/interference in Fanny’s life.

Ultimately [SPOILERS IN THIS SENTENCE!] he ends up seducing Fanny’s cousin Maria Bertram, and not long after Maria’s marriage they elope together. This brings shame to the whole family, and, because it’s the Regency, “ruins” Maria.

(Some readers classify Henry Crawford as an antagonist but not a villain. Other people find him to be the most interesting character, and some authors have even written fanfiction in which he does end up with Fanny and they’re both happy as a result. He does fit well into the “loveable bad boy” archetype.)

In Conclusion

There’s a lot of reasons to use obstacles, antagonism, antagonists, and villains, some of which I talked about in the post on making things hard for your character. There are three key reasons that I’d like to highlight today.

Reasons to use obstacles, antagonism, antagonists, and villains:

  1. To apply pressure to your character. Only with pressure and challenge can a character change, grow, and prove themselves.
  2. Story is conflict, and one of the most powerful forms of conflict comes through these sorts of opposition. Antagonists and villains in particular actively interfere with the character’s internal and external journeys.
  3. It creates verisimilitude to life. All people are on paths, striving, and often our paths interfere with each other.

Next week we’ll go in depth on motives for antagonism. In the coming weeks, we’ll also talk about shifting, temporary, and minor antagonists; unusual antagonists; giving antagonists redeeming characteristics; and specific impacts that antagonists have on both plot and character.

Writing Exercises - Jane Austen Writing Lessons

Exercise 1: Make a list of your favorite antagonists and villains from books, movies, or any other stories. Which ones or antagonists? Which ones are villains? Why do you like them?

Exercise 2: Hobby Trouble

Choose a character name and give your new character a hobby—knitting or fencing, stamp collecting or competitive cheesemaking, or anything else. Now write a scene in which antagonism is shown towards the main character and their hobby. This should be opposition, large or small, to the hobby or some aspect of it, or it could be something that inhibits or interferes with the hobby. First the character should receive this sort of interference from some sort of enemy or adverstary, someone who has hostile or unfriendly intent. Then the character should receive some sort of antagonism or interference from a friend or a loved one. As you write this scene, consider how your character will react differently depending on who is providing the antagonism.

Exercise 3: From Antagonist to Villain

Take a story you have written and choose one of your antagonists. Brainstorm what you could do to shift this character from an antagonist to a villain (using the definitions of antagonist and villain provided in this post).

As an alternative, do the reverse and choose a villain you have written. Brainstorm what you could do to shift this character from a villain to an antagonist.

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Jane Austen Writing Lessons. #23: Reveal Characters Through Other People's Perceptions of Them

#23: Reveal Characters Through Other People’s Perceptions of Them

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Jane Austen Writing Lessons. #23: Reveal Characters Through Other People's Perceptions of Them

In the past two lessons, I talked about how Jane Austen reveals characters through moments of tension and through character dialogue. Yet there is another method which she frequently uses to introduce and reveal characters to the reader: through the perceptions of others.

One of the ways she does this is by having her characters both think and reference other characters before they physically appear in scene in the story—sometimes long before they physically appear.

Mansfield Park Title Page, 1st Edition (1814)

Title page for the first edition of Mansfield Park–from 1814! (Image in the public domain)

One example of this is in Austen’s novel Mansfield Park. At the age of ten years old, Fanny Price goes to stay with her aunt and uncle at Mansfield Park. She’s ripped from her home, her town, and her family. Only her cousin Edmund shows her true kindness, and he gets her to talk about her home. As she does so, we are introduced to the character of William:

On pursuing the subject, [Edmund] found that, dear as all these brothers and sisters generally were, there was one among them who ran more in her thoughts than the rest. It was William whom she talked of most, and wanted most to see. William, the eldest, a year older than herself, her constant companion and friend; her advocate with her mother (of whom he was the darling) in every distress. “William did not like she should come away; he had told her he should miss her very much indeed.” “But William will write to you, I dare say.” “Yes, he had promised he would, but he had told her to write first.” “And when shall you do it?” She hung her head and answered hesitatingly, “she did not know; she had not any paper.”

“If that be all your difficulty, I will furnish you with paper and every other material, and you may write your letter whenever you choose. Would it make you happy to write to William?”

“Yes, very.”

“Then let it be done now. Come with me into the breakfast-room, we shall find everything there, and be sure of having the room to ourselves.”

William continues to be a character that Fanny talks and thinks about throughout the story. He doesn’t actually appear in person until Chapter 24, about halfway through the novel. Yet he plays an essential role in the story:

  • He is the only character who never hurts Fanny.
  • Fanny loves him with all her heart, and his letters and presence bring her joy, as do mere thoughts of him.
  • Because of William’s visit, their uncle throws a ball, which creates a pivotal scene in the story, as Henry Crawford gives his attentions to Fanny and she attempts to reject him.
  • Henry Crawford uses his connections to obtain a huge promotion for William, basically making his future career, in an attempt to put Fanny in his debt and make her fall in love with him.

William is introduced to us entirely through Fanny’s perceptions of him. This not only flavors our perceptions of him, but it sets up his role in the story and makes us truly experience Fanny’s agony when she must decide what to do: should she marry Henry Crawford when he proposes to her, especially given what he did for her brother?

Mansfield Park is not the only Austen novel to introduce and reveal characters to us before we see them interacting on the page.

A Selection of Works by Jane Austen

Image by Eymery, Creative Commons license

Further examples of Austen introducing characters before we meet them physically:

Persuasion

-The cousin and heir, Mr. Elliot, is talked about in the very first chapter, focusing on the poor way he has treated the Elliot family. He doesn’t appear in person in the book until about halfway through, but then plays a pivotal role in the second half of the book as he courts Anne. When she is skeptical of his intentions, we sympathize with her, in part because of the way he was introduced at the start of the book.

Pride and Prejudice

–Mr. Bingley is discussed in the first chapter as a prospective suitor for one of the Bennet daughters. This builds anticipation for him as a character, so we, like the daughters, are longing to meet him when he arrives at the Meryton ball.

–Lady Catherine de Bourgh is referenced constantly by Mr. Collins, who reveres her (she is his patroness!). Her influence and power is set up before we meet her, which provides a foreshadowing for the end of the novel, when she attempts to convince Elizabeth not to marry Mr. Darcy.

–Georgiana, Mr. Darcy’s sister, is also frequently referenced by Mr. Darcy himself and the Bingleys throughout the story, as well as by Mr. Wickham. Her story plays a pivotal role on multiple story levels, even though she doesn’t get much time in person on the page.

Emma

–Jane Fairfax is someone long spoken of before she appears on the page. In this case, the main character, Emma, has known her for basically their whole lives. But we as readers only get to hear Jane spoken of through Emma’s negative viewpoint until Jane actually comes to visit. This awareness of Jane as a potential rival for Emma infuses the text. This negative perception of Jane is counterbalanced by Mr. Knightley’s perception of her, who sees her virtues and criticizes Emma’s treatment of her.

–Frank Churchill is loved and anticipated by (almost) everyone, even though he has never visited. We do know that Mrs. Weston is frustrated by the fact that she has never met her stepson, for he has never managed to visit, but in general, people look upon Frank Churchill as a darling. Emma in particular is fascinated by the idea of him:

Now, it so happened that in spite of Emma’s resolution of never marrying, there was something in the name, in the idea of Mr. Frank Churchill, which always interested her. She had frequently thought—especially since his father’s marriage with Miss Taylor—that if she were to marry, he was the very person to suit her in age, character and condition.

While Emma is predisposed to like Mr. Churchill before meeting him, Mr. Knightley already dislikes and distrusts him. Emma’s and Mr. Knightley’s divergent perspectives of two other important characters sets up much of the major conflict and raises some of the novel’s important themes. Who is correct, and what will be the results of everyone’s judgments and behaviors?

As you can see from these examples, there are a lot of potential uses for introducing a character through the perceptions of others. Here’s my attempt to categorize these reasons.

6 Reasons to Introduce Characters Through the Perceptions of Other Characters (Jane Austen Writing Lessons)

6 Reasons to Introduce Characters Through the Perceptions of Other Characters:

  1. It predisposes us to feel a certain way about unmet characters (this can be positive or negative).
  2. It focuses our attention on the character and the role that they will play.
  3. It allows a character to influence the plot before they appear physically on the page.
  4. It sets up a sense of relationships and can add a community focus to the story—it is not just individual relationships at stake, but an integrated network of people.
  5. It draws attention to the lens through which we see characters. The narrator is already providing a lens through with which to see the characters and the story, but this adds lenses. As the story progresses, sometimes we find that we agree with the lenses we’ve been given, while other times we disagree.
  6. It reveals character for all the characters: both the character we have not yet met, and the characters who are thinking or speaking of that character.

Even once a character has appeared in scene, the evolving perceptions of various people in the story continue to reveal things about character to the reader. For example, in Emma, the way that each of the characters interpret Frank Churchill’s behavior informs us both about them and about Frank. Differing perceptions of character can also be revelatory: in Pride and Prejudice, Mr. Darcy’s negative perceptions of Mr. Wickham warn us of Wickham’s true character, even though many of the characters, such as Elizabeth, do not yet trust Mr. Darcy’s perceptions because of his pride.

Character perceptions are a powerful narrative tool, and using these perceptions to reveal character can be a powerful way to both introduce characters and show their relationships with others throughout the story.

Writing Exercises - Jane Austen Writing Lessons

Exercise 1: Spend about five minutes brainstorming a character. Then play Enemy, Friend, Lover to introduce the character to the reader.

Enemy, Friend, Lover: A Writing Game (Jane Austen Writing Lessons)

Enemy, Friend, Lover: The character you have brainstormed is not present. How would they be talked about by an enemy, by a friend, and by a lover?

You can interpret enemy, friend, lover in any way you choose. For example, an enemy could be a coworker the character doesn’t get along with or a member of a multi-family feud. A friend could be a BFF or a new acquaintance with a shared interest. A lover could be a boyfriend, a spouse, someone involved in an illicit liaison, etc.

Consider also that an enemy, friend, or lover may at times attempt to hide, disguise, or downplay their relationship with the character. If they do that, that reveals things about both the character and themselves.

Write three brief introductions, one each by the enemy, friend, and lover. These descriptions could range from a brief sentence to several paragraphs long.

Exercise 2: Read the first thirty pages of a book or watch the first 30 minutes of a film. Write down every time a character is introduced, and how they are introduced (moment of tension, in dialogue with another character, being talked about while they are not physically present, or through a different method—if a different method, please categorize). Does the story use multiple types of character introductions, or mostly one type? How does the manner in which they are introduced impact the audience?

Exercise 3: Take a story that you have written and choose one of your characters that you have introduced by showing them physically present in a scene. Write a new scene which would introduce them through another character’s perceptions of them.

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Jane Austen Writing Lessons. #18: Use Passive Characters Effectively

#18: Use Passive Characters Effectively

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In Pride and Prejudice, Charlotte Lucas makes the decision that Elizabeth refuses: she marries Mr. Collins. Molly Greeley’s recent novel, The Clergyman’s Wife, is a compelling story which features Mrs. Charlotte Collins three years later. Charlotte is rather unhappy in her marriage, and begins the story as a rather passive character: she suffers in silence, she struggles to know what to write in her letters to Elizabeth, and she follows the edicts of Lady Trafford and Mr. Collins.

Mr. Collins has never visited or shown real concern for those living in his parish, and neither has Charlotte. But Charlotte decides she wants to change—she decides she wants to do something for those around her, so she visits the elderly Mr. Travis, and then the solitary Mrs. Fitzgibbon. As a result of her visits, Charlotte is criticized by both her husband and Lady Catherine. Yet Charlotte holds her own, and justifies her actions in a way that does not allow them to prevent them in the future.

The look Lady Catherine bestows upon me puts me in mind of the looks she used to give Elizabeth, when my friend dared to speak her true thoughts to her ladyship upon visiting me in the early days of my marriage.

Charlotte’s action is small but it feels heroic, and it shifts her from being a rather passive character to becoming a more active one.

Cover of The Clergyman's Wife by Molly Greeley

As discussed in the previous post on active characters, there is no true dichotomy between active and passive characters, but rather, it is a spectrum, and many characters shift to different points of this spectrum throughout the course of the story. At times it may even be useful to keep a character relatively passive for the entire story.

Character Scale: Passive to Active Characters (Jane Austen Writing Lessons)

Yet choosing to write a passive character—whether for a portion or the entire novel—is challenging: it is easier to effectively write an active character than a passive one, because interest and empathy is automatically given to active characters, and must be gained in other ways by passive characters.

Jane Austen’s novel Mansfield Park features a generally passive character: Fanny Price.

As a young child, Fanny is brought to live with her aunt and uncle, the Bertrams, at Mansfield Park. Now that she is older, the Bertrams decide Fanny will live her terrible Aunt Mrs. Norris. Fanny is surprised, and this reaction shows, but she does nothing to try to change her situation. She complains a little to her one confidant, her cousin Edmund, but she does nothing active to change her fate. She is saved by outside forces: Mrs. Norris does not want her.

Later, the old horse she uses for exercises dies. This is something that happens to Fanny, and Fanny does nothing—in fact, because of her precarious situation as someone who has been taken in by the family, there is nothing she can do without risk of losing her home.

Edmund eventually notices what this loss has done to Fanny, and he takes it upon himself to put things to right. He is the active character in this situation, not Fanny.

Illustration of Fanny Price in Mansfield Park by C.E. Brock in 1908

1908 illustration of Fanny Price by C.E. Brock (in public domain)

After the arrival of the Grants and the Crawfords in the area, the narrator even comments on Fanny’s passivity:

And Fanny, what was she doing and thinking all this while? and what was her opinion of the new-comers? Few young ladies of eighteen could be less called on to speak their opinion than Fanny.

The number of people who claim Mansfield Park as their favorite Austen novel is a smaller number than those who love her other novels, and many readers find Mansfield Park a challenging book to read. I would argue that this is in part because Fanny is a passive character for much of this novel, and this makes it less accessible for some readers. Fanny also does not have a strong, forward-moving want or desire: at the beginning of the novel, Fanny wants to be left alone—she wants peace. And she does not take decisive actions to achieve this. Yet the novel is brilliant on so many levels, and Fanny’s character is an essential aspect.

In general, readers like forward motion and are drawn to characters with strong desires who reach for them. Readers can lose patience if it feels like the characters or the story is stalled.

One approach is to make passivity a part of the journey, as Molly Greeley does in The Clergyman’s Wife. By page fifty, Charlotte has taken a number of steps to being more active.

In Mansfield Park, it is much longer before Fanny becomes an active character, yet Austen uses other techniques to maintain interest and forward movement.

One of the ways Austen does this is by making Fanny’s character needs so great. At the beginning of the novel, some of Fanny’s basic survival needs are not being met: the Bertrams do not even allow her a fire in her rooms during the winter. (I am still pretty angry at Fanny’s relatives for this!) She also needs basic security: at any point, she knows that she could be thrown out of her home without warning, and this is threatened by her aunt Mrs. Norris even when Fanny expresses distaste for acting in a play.

If we move further up Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, which I discussed in lesson 15, Fanny’s needs continue. Her psychological needs are great: she needs kindness, she needs acceptance, she needs friendship. (At the start of the novel, Edmund is her one friend, but plenty of his behaviors throughout the novel cause her further anxiety). Finally, Fanny needs love.

Fanny’s needs create sympathy from the reader: we want her situation to improve.

Writing Excuses Podcast

In the long-running (and Hugo award-winning) podcast Writing Excuses, author Brandon Sanderson talks about an approach to characters that he calls character sliders. For him, there are three sliders, or components of character:

  • Sympathetic/Relatable/Nice
  • Active
  • Competent

These sliders are like sound mixing: the three combine to create characters. One slider may be set low and then move higher; another slider component may stay at a certain level; one of the sliders may start high and then lower over the course of the novel. If one of the sliders is really low—for example, a character is very passive—then the character should probably be higher at one or both of the other sliders. Typically, the sliders do move up and down throughout the course of the novel.

In Mansfield Park, not only do we sympathize with Fanny because of her situation, but because she has competence in a particular area: her sense of morality and her innate goodness. Because she is sympathetic and competent in a particular area, we like her as a character even though she not often active.

A few other points to consider when working with passive characters:

  1. If your main character is passive, other characters and events must create forward movement in the story. For example, in Mansfield Park, forward movement is created by the visit to Mr. Rushworth’s estate, the decision to stage a theatrical, and the engagement of Maria Bertram.
  2. Everyone has moments when they are passive. Consider how you can use this to help your character on their internal and external journeys.
  3. If the main character is externally passive, their thoughts and interior emotions can be revealing and insightful. For example, as her cousins their friends began to plan the theatrical, Fanny’s internal thoughts engage the reader and provide additional insight.

Fanny looked on and listened, not unamused to observe the selfishness which, more or less disguised, seemed to govern them all, and wondering how it would end. For her own gratification she could have wished that something might be acted, for she had never seen even half a play, but every thing of higher consequence was against it.

  1. Finally, a passive character can be a thematic choice or provide social commentary. Fanny is a woman who has almost no choices, and whose situation makes it impossible for her to be truly active. Yet through it all, she does find inner strength, and she does ultimately assert herself, sometimes with dire consequences. Many readers who love Mansfield Park see part of themselves in Fanny; they admire her quiet strength, and find her slow resistance both inspiring and empowering, for there truly are many life circumstances where we have no control, no power.
Writing Exercises - Jane Austen Writing Lessons

Exercise 1: Draft a short scene using one of your characters you’ve already developed, or an entirely new character. Have the character change how passive or active they are throughout the scene. They could:

  • Start the scene active and become more passive
  • Start passive and then become more active
  • Start passive and then become even more passive
  • Move back and forth several times between passive and active

Exercise 2: Choose a character from a book or a film that you typically think of as an active character. Find at least three examples in their story where they are more passive than normal or become a completely passive character. What is the impact of these moments on the story?

Exercise 3: If you are outlining, plan a point in the story where you want your character to be passive. If your character is generally active, one common place to make your character more passive is at the moment before the climax, where it seems like all is lost (this is also called “the night of despair”).

If you are revising a story, find a point where your character is passive (or more passive than in the rest of the story). How can you increase sympathy for the character at this point? Is there still a sense of forward movement in the story? What do we learn from the character’s thoughts and emotions? Is the character’s passivity a conscious choice or forced upon her? How could this passive scene be used to strengthen the theme of the story? Revise the scene to strengthen the impact of using a passive character.

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Jane Austen Writing Lessons. #13: Start the Story Early (If Necessary)

#13: Start the Story Early (If Necessary)

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Jane Austen Writing Lessons. #13: Start the Story Early (If Necessary)

Most stories start not long before the inciting incident, providing a brief description, moment, scene, or a few chapters which encapsulate the period BEFORE—before everything changes for the characters. Emma and Persuasion provide good examples of this.

Other stories, like Pride and Prejudice, start after the inciting incident—in medias res.

Yet other stories take a very different approach to exposition and start long before the inciting incident disrupts the story (note that starting long before the inciting incident does not necessarily mean that the telling of the exposition needs to be long—expositions that start early can still be brief). Jane Austen uses this technique in two of her novels: Northanger Abbey begins at Catherine Morland’s birth, and Mansfield Park begins years before Fanny Price is born.

These two novels start the exposition early for two different purposes:

  1. Northanger Abbey: To show the main character’s life trajectory, and to contrast the inciting incident (and what comes as a result) against the character’s entire life.
  2. Manfield Park: To demonstrate a prior formative moment which caused a drastic shift in the main character’s life, and created a new normal, which is then disrupted by the inciting incident.

Life Trajectory in Northanger Abbey

Northanger Abbey demonstrates the main character’s life trajectory prior to the inciting incident. The novel begins with the line:

No one who had ever seen Catherine Morland in her infancy, would have supposed her born to be an heroine.

After this establishment of theme (and the delightful, rather satirical approach of the entire novel), we learn of Fanny’s birth:

Her mother…had three sons before Catherine was born; and instead of dying in bringing the latter to the world, as anybody might expect, she still lived on—lived to have six children more…

We follow Catherine Morland’s childhood, learning that she prefers cricket to dolls, seeing her disinterest in learning and watching her quit music after only a year or instruction. The narrator jumps from Catherine at age ten to age fifteen, and we see her continued development:

To look almost pretty is an acquisition of higher delight to a girl who has been looking plain the first fifteen years o her life, than a beauty from her cradle can ever receive.

Catherine reaches seventeen, with nothing to interrupt the path that she is on, a point that the narrator draws attention to:

She had reached the age of seventeen, without having seen one amiable youth who could call forth her sensibility; without having inspired one real passion, and without having excited even any admiration but what was very moderate and very transient. This was strange indeed!

All this in the first chapter. By creating a life trajectory, it establishes a shared set of reference points with the reader, reference points that help us understand the main character and who she is prior to the inciting incident. These references are essential, because without them, we would be unable to understand Catherine’s choices throughout the novel—her life trajectory informs her naivety, her desire to be liked, her fascination with new people and places, and how she constantly turns to books as an escape.

The last paragraph of the first chapter establishes the inciting incident, which is placed in direct contrast with the main character’s life to this point:

[Mrs. Allen], a good-humoured woman, fond of Miss Morland, and probably aware that if adventures will not befall a young lady in her own village, she must seek them abroad, invited her to go with them.

The other benefit of this approach to exposition is that it allows the narrator to avoid infodumps later—it would be difficult to include all of these details as backstory later in the story without unnaturally piling them on.

The elements included in Northanger Abbey are referred to again and again throughout the story, both directly and indirectly. By journeying with Catherine from her birth to age 17, we are prepared for the much bigger journey she will take throughout the novel.

Prior Formative Moment/Shift in Mansfield Park

While the exposition of Mansfield Park covers a lot of ground, the main purpose is for us to experience a formative moment, a huge shift, in Fanny Price’s early life.

Manfield Park starts before Fanny’s birth, and focuses on the weddings of the prior generation. Three sisters become, respectively, Lady Bertram, Mrs. Norris, and Mrs. Price. Mrs. Price is the one whose marriage has disappointed her family by being beneath her station. Mrs. Price loses contact with her family, and only reestablishes it when expecting her ninth child. At this point, her oldest daughter, Fanny, is nine years old, and is about to experience a cosmic shift, caused by her aunts, Lady Bertram and Mrs. Norris, and her uncle, Lady Bertram’s husband, Sir Thomas.

Mrs. Norris was often observing to the others, that she could not get her poor sister and her family out of her head, and that much as they had all done for her, she seemed to be wanting to do more: and at length she could not but own it to be her wish, that poor Mrs. Price should be relieved from the charge and expense of one child entirely out of her great number. “What if they were among them to undertake the care of her eldest daughter, a girl now nine years old, of an age to require more attention than her poor mother could possibly give? The trouble and expense of it to them, would be nothing compared with the benevolence of the action.” Lady Bertram agreed with her instantly. “I think we cannot do better,” said she, “let us send for the child.”

Sir Thomas is initially resistant the idea but is won over by his sister-in-law and wife. As the scene continues, we come to understand the character of these three adults, and without having met Fanny, we know intuitively that this is not going to be a warm, welcoming place for her.

We meet Fanny in Chapter 2, as she begins her “long journey.” We are with her throughout this epic change; we feel her discomfort as she is introduced to the family, and we see into her mind and character:

Her consciousness of misery was therefore increased by the idea of its being a wicked thing for her not to be happy.

Fanny struggles on and on. Through her eyes, we see how inferior she feels compared to her cousins, and how unrefined. In this exposition, we also come to know, in more depth, one of the other key characters of the novel, Edmund Bertram.

A week had passed in this way, and no suspicion of it conveyed by her quiet passive manner, when she was found one morning by her cousin Edmund, the youngest of the sons, sitting crying on the attic stairs.

“My dear little cousin,” said he, with all the gentleness of an excellent nature, “what can be the matter?”

A touching scene follows in which Edmund helps Fanny share her thoughts. He comes to learn about her family and her relationships with her siblings. He also helps her write and send a letter, promising she will not have to pay for it. This first real moment between Edmund and Fanny sets up their entire relationship, which is such a huge part of the novel, and it is better experienced in scene rather than through summary or flashback.

Thus, in chapter 2, we experience this great upheaval in Fanny’s life, and we see her adjust to the new normal, the new status quo.

If there has been a formative moment, a grand shift in a character’s life, there is power in allowing the reader to experience it with the main character. If this sort of shift merits being part of the exposition, it is typically large enough that in a different story it could be the inciting incident. Yet if used as exposition, it establishes a new normal, which is then disrupted by the inciting incident.

If Fanny’s removal to Mansfield Park was the inciting incident, the novel would be about ten-year-old Fanny and the internal and external journey she takes as she adjusts to her new life. Instead, this adjustment is covered in a single chapter, paving the way for the actual inciting incident, which is Mr. Norris’ death and the arrival of a new set of rather disruptive characters: Mr. and Mrs. Grant, Mr. Crawford, and Miss Crawford. These new characters disrupt not just Fanny’s life, but the lives of the entire family. But for Fanny, this disruption, this inciting incident, feels deeper, because this is not the first huge disruption she has experienced.

In Conclusion

In Northanger Abbey and Mansfield Park, Jane Austen uses two of the major approaches for starting a story early: providing a life trajectory, and depicting a prior formative shift. Yet starting the story early is not the only good approach to exposition, nor should it be the default. In Persuasion there are several formative shifts for Anne prior to the start of the novel—her mother’s death and her short-lived engagement. Yet Anne’s experience of these moments is revealed effectively through backstory, and in fact, their placement later in the story serves to reveal Anne’s character and her regrets at key moments.

If you want to start the story early, there needs to be a good reason for us to experience these scenes with the character. This experience should be enlightening to us, and, like in Northanger Abbey and Mansfield Park, there needs to be a reason that they must be experienced at the beginning. We should start our stories early if it helps us understand the logic of everything else.

Writing Exercises - Jane Austen Writing Lessons

Exercise 1: Find another story—a book or a film—that starts early. Now analyze it. Is it painting a character trajectory? Is it showing a prior disruptive moment? Or is it doing something else entirely?

Exercise 2: Take one of your characters (or an idea you have for a character) and write a 500-word life sketch, that begins either before or at their birth. Once you’re finished, analyze the results:

  • What new things did you learn about your character?
  • What were the biggest, most defining moments in your character’s early life? What shaped them into who they are as they enter the story?
  • Are there elements of your character’s early that should be woven into the story as backstory? Or is this a case where it would be useful to experience the character’s early life as part of the exposition?

Even if none of the life sketch is incorporated into the story, writing it is a useful practice that can help you understand your character, their personality, and their choices.

Exercise 3: Take a fairy tale or classic story that does not give many specific details about a character’s younger years (for example, Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice). Brainstorm specific events and incidents that could have occurred before the start of the story, and would be in keeping with their character, the story world, and what we do know.

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