Today, and continuing throughout November, I am presenting a series of posts I’m calling The Happiness Plot, which will make up a very brief introduction to storytelling structure. A perfect way to stay in the groove for NaNoWriMo2014.
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Ready to uncover the plot?
To find the beginning of The Happiness Plot, click here or “The Happiness Plot” category listing to the right.
Now, we continue with The Happiness Plot…
Stories as Moral Transformation
6.
“I have been a selfish being all my life, in practice, though not in principle. As a child I was taught what was right, but I was not taught to correct my temper. I was given good principles, but left to follow them in pride and conceit.”
So runs Fitzwilliam Darcy’s self-critique after Elizabeth accepts his second proposal of marriage at the climax of Pride and Prejudice. Mr. Darcy has come a long way. His understanding of himself, the weaknesses of his character, of the kind of wife is he looking for—in a word, of his happiness—have all undergone a deep transformation.
Most stories of any depth portray a character on such a journey of self-discovery. Not all, however. Action-adventure heroes are often morally static. James Bond would never critique himself in the way Darcy does. (Yet interestingly, Christopher Nolan’s Batman wrestles with his character in a way superheroes never did in their comic strip hey day.)
Darcy’s “good principles,” his parents’ sense of “what was right,” have checked his selfishness. He has realized that not any old happiness will do. There is a happiness that is better than selfishness. A happiness that was in some sense external to the bitter and resentful feelings he experienced while writing the long letter to Elizabeth after her rejection of his first proposal.
What good stories show us, then, is moral transformation, a character’s change from a superficial conception of happiness to a more substantial one.
* The image above is reproduced courtesy of the BBC.
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