Characters Who Change or Remain Unchanged: Study Guide (English Literature 3.2)

Change is shown by comparison

A character who changes or remains unchanged across a novel or play is one of the main ways a long work makes meaning. The terms are:

• A dynamic character develops over the course of the narrative. The change may be visible and external, or internal and psychological.
• A static character remains largely unchanged, or is largely unaffected by events.

Change can be external, such as wealth, health, position or place, or internal, such as attitude, understanding or self-knowledge. External changes can lead to internal ones, and the reverse. A man who loses his fortune may become humble (external then internal); a woman who recognises her own prejudice may begin to act differently (internal then external).

How to show that a character has changed

Change cannot be shown from a single moment. You need at least two points in the text to compare.

1. Find an early detail: how the character speaks, what they notice, what they choose.
2. Find a later detail of the same kind.
3. Say what has changed between them, and what caused it if the text tells you.
4. Name the turning point, the event or realisation that marks the change.
5. Say whether the change is external, internal or both.

Why change matters to the plot

A dynamic character who develops over the narrative often makes choices that directly or indirectly affect the climax or the resolution. In a novel of manners, a character’s change of mind may lead to the decisive conversation. In a tragedy, a character’s change, for the worse as often as for the better, drives the ending. Ask: If this character had not changed, how would the climax differ?

Why a character may stay the same

A character who remains unchanged is not a failure of imagination. The constancy may:

• measure the change in others (the same words or manner, answered differently),
• represent a value or attitude that the work tests (rigidity, loyalty, innocence),
• show that some people are unaffected by events, which is itself a comment.

Worked example 1: internal change in a public-domain novel

In Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice (1813), Elizabeth Bennet begins by trusting her judgement of people. Early in the book she forms a strong first opinion of Mr. Darcy and later accepts a very different account from Mr. Wickham. After she reads Darcy’s letter about Wickham (handed to her in Chapter 35), the narrator reports in Chapter 36:

She grew absolutely ashamed of herself. Of neither Darcy nor Wickham could she think, without feeling that she had been blind, partial, prejudiced, absurd.

and Elizabeth exclaims:

“How despicably have I acted!” she cried. “I, who have prided myself on my discernment! … Pleased with the preference of one, and offended by the neglect of the other, on the very beginning of our acquaintance, I have courted prepossession and ignorance, and driven reason away where either were concerned. Till this moment, I never knew myself.”

Step 1: The earlier perspective. Elizabeth “prided” herself “on my discernment” and “valued myself on my abilities”. She trusted her ability to read people.

Step 2: The turning point. The reading of a letter that gives her evidence she cannot dismiss. The narrator marks the change at once: “She grew absolutely ashamed of herself.”

Step 3: The later perspective. She describes herself as “blind, partial, prejudiced, absurd”, and says “vanity, not love, has been my folly”. She now judges her own earlier judgement.

Step 4: Kind of change. Internal: a change in self-understanding. It is expressed in her words (“Till this moment, I never knew myself”) and in the string of four adjectives, each a harsh word about her earlier perspective.

Step 5: Effect on the narrative. Her change makes it possible for her to treat Darcy differently later in the novel, so it affects how the plot resolves.

Model sentence: “Elizabeth’s declaration ‘Till this moment, I never knew myself’ marks an internal change: the character who had ‘prided’ herself on her ‘discernment’ now calls herself ‘blind, partial, prejudiced, absurd’, and the new self-knowledge allows the narrative to move towards a different resolution.”

Worked example 2: change for the worse in a public-domain play

In Shakespeare’s Macbeth, early in the play a wounded soldier reports Macbeth’s courage in battle:

For brave Macbeth (well he deserves that name),
Disdaining Fortune, with his brandish’d steel,
Which smok’d with bloody execution,
Like Valour’s minion, carv’d out his passage …

Late in the play, as the enemy approaches, Macbeth says:

I have almost forgot the taste of fears.
The time has been, my senses would have cool’d
To hear a night-shriek …
I have supp’d full with horrors;
Direness, familiar to my slaughterous thoughts,

Step 1: The earlier detail. “Brave Macbeth” is praised for violence done in a lawful cause. “Valour’s minion” presents him as favoured by courage.

Step 2: The later detail. Macbeth himself says that “The time has been, my senses would have cool’d / To hear a night-shriek”: he used to feel fear at a sudden cry. Now he has “supp’d full with horrors”, a metaphor of feeding on horror until it is familiar.

Step 3: What changed. Fear of horror has been replaced by habit. The same man who was praised for bloody action in the king’s service is now numbed by bloody action of his own.

Step 4: Kind of change. Internal, and a decline: he has lost a capacity for feeling. There are also external changes (from loyal general to king and tyrant), which lead to the internal change.

Step 5: Effect on the narrative. His choices (the killings he has ordered) lead to the opposition that forms the climax. The change in him is both a result of earlier choices and a cause of the final action.

Model paragraph opening: “Macbeth’s change is shown by contrast between the soldier’s ‘brave Macbeth’ and Macbeth’s own admission that he has ‘almost forgot the taste of fears’. The man who once felt horror at a ‘night-shriek’ has ‘supp’d full with horrors’, so the play presents a loss of feeling that follows from his own acts.”

Worked example 3: a static character who measures change (original extracts, written by Marlbridge)

Early chapter.

Aunt Hester sat at the head of the table, as she had since her husband’s death, and carved the joint into slices of an exactness that discouraged conversation. “We do not discuss money at table,” she said, when her nephew Leo, nineteen and ambitious, began to ask. He looked at his plate.

Late chapter.

Aunt Hester sat at the head of the table, as she had for twenty-two years, and carved the joint into slices of an exactness that discouraged conversation. “We do not discuss money at table,” she said, when Leo, forty-one and the owner of the mill, began to explain what he had spent. He looked at her. “Then we shall discuss it after,” he said, and picked up his fork.

Step 1: What is repeated? Almost word for word: the seat, the carving, the exactness, the rule about money. The repetition is deliberate.

Step 2: Who is static? Aunt Hester. Her manner, her rule and even her sentence (“We do not discuss money at table”) are unchanged.

Step 3: Who is dynamic? Leo. Early: “He looked at his plate.” Late: “He looked at her”, and he answers. The change is external (age, “owner of the mill”) and internal (he has become willing to look at her and to respond, courteously but firmly).

Step 4: What does the static character do? She provides a fixed point against which his change can be measured. The writer repeats her words so that the reader can see exactly what has changed: not the rule, but Leo’s response to it.

Step 5: Say what it shows. The pair of extracts presents authority that has not moved and a nephew who no longer treats it as absolute.

Model sentence: “Aunt Hester’s unchanged rule, repeated almost word for word, becomes a measure of Leo’s change: the same sentence that once made him look ‘at his plate’ is met with ‘Then we shall discuss it after’, so the constancy of one character makes the development of the other visible.”

Strong and weak statements about change

Weak	Why it is weak	Stronger
“Elizabeth changes in the book.”	No evidence, no kind of change	“Elizabeth moves from pride in her ‘discernment’ to calling herself ‘blind, partial, prejudiced, absurd’, an internal change prompted by Darcy’s letter.”
“Macbeth gets worse.”	Vague	“Macbeth loses the capacity for fear, shown in ‘I have almost forgot the taste of fears’.”
“Aunt Hester is boring because she never changes.”	Evaluates; no function	“Aunt Hester’s repeated rule measures Leo’s growth.”

Checking your inference

1. Have you quoted both ends? An early detail and a later detail.
2. Have you named the turning point? The event or recognition that marks the shift.
3. Have you said which kind of change it is? External, internal or both.
4. Have you said what the change does to the plot or meaning?

Common misconceptions

• “Change must be for the better.” Characters may decline as well as improve.
• “A character who stays the same is badly written.” Constancy can be a deliberate tool.
• “Any new event means the character has changed.” An event may leave the character untouched, and that is also worth explaining.
• “Change always happens in one moment.” It may be gradual, with a turning point that makes it visible.
• “External change equals internal change.” A man can become rich and remain the same inside.
• “The change is the author’s opinion.” It belongs to the character and the narrative. Say what the text shows.

Where this leads

Try the practice questions, then use the checklist and revision notes. The next topic, Setting in longer works, looks at how the social and historical world shapes characters like these. For the earlier skill of reading one moment of character, see Character in longer works.