What makes a character complex?
In a short story a character may be fixed by one defining trait for a few pages. A novel or play gives writers time to show tension within a character, and that is what readers usually mean by complexity. A complex character wants two things that cannot both be had, says one thing and does another, or acts against their own stated beliefs and then has to live with it.
This does not mean a character is simply unpredictable. Complexity is a pattern of tension that the reader can name: duty against desire, loyalty against honesty, pride against need, ambition against conscience. When you can name the tension, you can say what the writer wants the reader to understand about people, and that is a claim about function.
Three channels of evidence
Writers reveal characters in at least three ways, and complexity often appears when the channels disagree.
| Channel | What to look at | Typical question |
|---|---|---|
| Speech | What is said, to whom, in what tone, with what words | Is this what the character believes, or what the character wants others to believe? |
| Action | Choices under pressure, what is done and not done, gestures | Does the action support or contradict the speech? |
| Private thought | Soliloquy, narrated thought, or details from which thought can be inferred | What does the character hide, and why? |
The course points out that inconsistencies between the private thoughts of characters and their actual behaviour reveal tensions and complexities between private and professed values. A character’s competing, conflicting or inconsistent choices or actions contribute to the complexity of the text.
A method: map the tension
- Professed. What does the character say they value or intend?
- Actual. What do they do?
- Private. What do narration, soliloquy, stage directions or small details suggest they feel?
- Gap. Where do these differ? Name the tension in one phrase.
- Meaning. What does the tension suggest about the character’s values, fears or motives?
- Function. What effect does it have on the work: suspense, irony, sympathy, a question about conscience, or a turn in the plot?
Public-domain examples to learn from
Macbeth (Shakespeare, about 1606). Before the murder of Duncan, Macbeth reasons in private, “If it were done when ’tis done, then ’twere well / It were done quickly”. He has doubts, and he knows that Duncan is his guest and kinsman. Yet he commits the act. Lady Macbeth coaches him on how to hide his intent, telling him to “Look like the innocent flower, / But be the serpent under’t”. Here the gap between appearance and intent is spelled out in words. Over the play the gap grows: the couple’s public conduct and private states pull further apart, and the audience feels the strain.
Hamlet (Shakespeare, about 1600). In the scene where Hamlet finds Claudius at prayer, Hamlet says “Now might I do it pat, now he is praying”, and then does not do it. His choice is a competing one: revenge against what he takes to be the fate of Claudius’s soul. The audience, who have heard Hamlet’s repeated urgings to himself to act, sees a man whose words and actions are at odds, and who gives a reason for the gap that may or may not be the whole truth. That doubt is the source of the complexity.
Jane Eyre (Charlotte Brontë, 1847). Jane’s declaration, “I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will”, sits beside the choice she makes later in the novel, to leave a man she loves because she cannot keep her self-respect. The conflict between feeling and principle makes the choice costly, and cost is a sign of complexity.
Worked example 1: professed against private values
Original passage written by Marlbridge for practice. It imitates the register of a nineteenth-century novel and is not taken from any published work.
Miss Tarrant received the Squire’s gift of a hundred pounds with her hands folded and her eyes lowered. “The school has never taken charity,” said she, “and I would not have the girls learn that it may.” The Squire bowed and withdrew. She waited until the carriage had crossed the bridge; then she went to the window and stood a long while counting on her fingers the panes that wanted glazing, and the desks that wanted mending, and the winter that was coming.
Task. Explain how Miss Tarrant’s speech and actions reveal complexity, and say why it matters.
Professed. She says the school “has never taken charity” and she refuses on behalf of the girls’ moral education. Her manner, “hands folded”, “eyes lowered”, suggests propriety and humility.
Actual. She refuses the money. She also waits until the carriage has crossed the bridge, which may suggest that she does not want anyone to see her weaken.
Private. Once she is alone, she turns to the window and counts “the panes that wanted glazing, and the desks that wanted mending, and the winter that was coming”. The list is rhythmic and builds to “the winter”, a threat that is both literal and symbolic of hardship. The count shows that she knows exactly how much the school needs the money.
Gap and meaning. The gap is between principle and need. She has refused something she badly needs, and the narrator shows that the refusal is neither mere hypocrisy nor mere pride. It is a choice that costs her and that she cannot easily explain to herself.
Function. The passage builds sympathy and tension. It prepares the reader to see her later choices, for example whether she will accept help or let the school suffer, as the working-out of a real conflict between independence and care for her pupils.
A model sentence. “By setting Miss Tarrant’s composed refusal beside her long silent count of the school’s needs, the narrator reveals a woman whose professed independence is held at a visible cost, and so makes her later choices the working-out of a conflict rather than the following of a rule.”
Worked example 2: competing choices in a dramatic scene
Original scene written by Marlbridge for practice.
The vestry. THEODORA stands at the parish register, which lies open. THOMAS, her brother, waits at the door.
THOMAS: Tear the page out, Theo. No one will ever know.
THEODORA: (closing the book gently) It is not mine to tear. (She does not move away from it.) Go and see to the horses.
THOMAS: Yesterday you said you would do anything for the family.
THEODORA: I said a great many things yesterday. (She opens the book again and reads the entry, slowly and silently, to the end.)
Task. How do Theodora’s words and actions reveal complexity?
Speech. She refuses: “It is not mine to tear”. The phrase frames the choice in terms of ownership and right, not of risk. She dismisses her brother (“Go and see to the horses”), which suggests she wants to decide alone. Her answer about yesterday is evasive; she does not deny that she made the promise.
Action. She closes the book “gently”, a respectful gesture. But she “does not move away from it” and then opens it again and reads the entry “to the end”. Her actions complicate her refusal: she is drawn to what the page contains.
Competing choices. Two values pull against each other: integrity (not destroying a record) and loyalty to family (the promise to do “anything”). The scene’s structure, refusal, evasion, reopening, leaves the outcome unresolved.
Function. Because Theodora’s behaviour does not settle into one pattern, the scene creates suspense and invites the audience to wonder what is in the entry and what she will do. The complexity is both a feature of her character and a feature of the plot.
A model sentence. “Theodora’s refusal is undercut by her refusal to leave the register, and by the way she rereads it, so that the scene stages the clash between integrity and family loyalty not as an argument but as a gesture that the audience cannot yet read.”
Common misconceptions
- “Complex means contradictory for no reason.” Complexity is a pattern the reader can name. Always name the tension.
- “Hypocrite” is a full analysis. It is a label. Go on to say what the gap shows about the character’s values or fears, and what it does for the work.
- “A single moment defines the character.” In a longer work, read the pattern across scenes. One act can mislead if it is not set against the rest.
- “Private thought needs a narrator.” In drama and in much fiction it is inferred from soliloquy, gestures, pauses and details.
- “Inconsistency is the writer’s mistake.” Check first whether it exposes a conflict of values. If it does, it is a deliberate source of meaning.
Where this leads
Complexity in a character often unfolds over time, so Topic 6.3 turns to the order and contrasts of a longer plot. Test yourself with the Topic 6.2 practice questions, review with the revision notes and track your progress with the checklist.
Quick questions
Is an inconsistent character a badly written character?
Usually not. In literature, inconsistency is often deliberate. It exposes a tension between values, such as duty against desire, or between what a character professes and what they privately feel. Ask what the tension shows before assuming a slip.
Is calling a character a hypocrite enough?
No. A label ends the analysis. Say what the gap between words and actions suggests about the character's values or fears, and what it does for the work, such as creating irony or sympathy.
How can I tell what a character privately thinks in a play, where there is no narrator?
Use soliloquy and asides, stage directions, pauses, what other characters notice, and the difference between what is said and what is done. The same method works in a novel, where details of action and narrated thought work together.
Do I need a quotation for every claim about complexity?
You need specific evidence for the key tension: the words that are said, the action that contradicts them, or the detail that reveals the private thought. Quote or point to that detail, and then explain it.