Walter Scott's Art of Characterization in Kenilworth

Art of Characterization in Kenilworth

Scott abandoned Fielding's art of characterization. In Fielding, Jane Austen and Dickens we find a study of man's conscience too. But in Scott the characterization is limited only to the external observation. Hence Scott remains moored to the surface. He does not examine his characters from within.

However, Scott makes his characters lively by the virtue of their vitality and extra embellishment. In his personages he displays a fecundity resembling that of nature itself, fecundity derived from his comprehensive acquaintanceship with all sorts and conditions of men.

Scott is an inspired, and exalted, pageant-master of enormous energy and sparing no expense, who organizes a procession through the ages, from the medieval to the nineteenth-century moment, in which every degree of humanity played a part, and wore the appropriate costume. He is a vast gallery of characters. He portrays kings and queens, outlaws and cut-throats, men of law and of war, girls and crones, witches and even ghosts. But his characters are shaped by a historic living. Some of them are moulded by the forces of religion and religious strife.

On the whole Scott appears a more consummate artist in the portrayal of male characters than those of women. Yet some of his heroines are wholly literary and remembered chiefly as poetic creations. Lucy Ashton, Jeanie Deans, Amy, and Queen Elizabeth are among such poetic creations.

In Kenilworth we find flat characters. Most of them are static : they do not change. Queen Elizabeth is a character who does not change. So are Giles Gosling, Anthony Foster, Janet, Tressilian. However, it is in his static characters that he has excelled more than in the dynamic characters.

Amy is the heroine of Kenilworth. She is simple and innocent creature she is more sinned against than sinning. She can be compared with Shakespeare's heroines. She has been portrayed in a very lively manner. She is present in the novel from the beginning to the end. She is the pivot on whom the whole novel revolves.

The hero of the novel is not Dudley but Tressilian because Trasilian's work appears to be more heroic than that of the Earl. The Earl Dudley is simply a cultured villain ; a serpent under flower.

Then we find the directly-drawn characters in Kenilworth, They are presented directly because they do not appear with a dramatic twist. They are what they are. They are not going to change in any circumstance. They differ in relation to the change in situation but in the essentials and fundamentals of their personality. Scott paints his characters hurriedly. Instead of describing their minds and soul, Scott is satisfied to describe their body and dress.

Scott's characters are more individuals than types. In Kenilworth too, we have individual characters. There are some super-vital characters also. Sir Walter Raleigh is one of them. He is young, ambitious and daring. He is an Elizabethan gallant. He is a man of action. The extra daring on his part wins for him the esteem of the Queen Elizabeth. His thoughts as well as his movements are directed to a purposive end. He has been cut out by nature to rise in life. This character is different from other characters in matters of exuberance. Consciously he does not step on others to enhance his chances of further promotion. He is aided by the vagary of chance now and then.

In Kenilworth we find both the silent and voluble characters. The characters like Gosling, Michael Lambourne and Dick, the pedagogue talk too much, whereas Tony Foster, Amy Robsart, Tressilian, etc. talk too little.

Most of Scott's characters are robust and have guts. Tressilian is the dashing character and the minor character, Dickie Sludge has plenty of guts. Scott portrays his characters with contrast and analogy. Amy has been drawn in contrast to Elizabeth ; Tressilian to Varney; the Earl of Sussex to the Earl of Leicester. Characters are developed not only with the help of conversations between the characters themselves, but also by the direct descriptions.

Scott portrays his characters in Kenilworth minutely and yet he does not make any of his characters grotesque and verbose. The characters in Kenilworth can be read like an open book. They have nothing to conceal. Their secrets are not the secrets of the soul but of the outer circumstances. As human beings live in a glass case, and can thus be seen without any obstruction.

Kenilworth conceives characters in the spirit of romance rather than in that of a scientific novel. The doings of the characters have a shade of romance. Though the characters may be of historical reality yet they behave in a romantic manner. We are reminded of the saying of Somerset Maugham who states that the facts are poor story-tellers. We have to study them with the colouring of imagination. Some of them remain muffled in the cloak of secrecy, but secrecy does not hold long.

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Kenilworth as a Romance

Romantic Elements in Sir Walter Scott's novel, Kenilworth

Scott's romanticism lies in his rejection of the 18^th century polite tradition and his attempt to write literature of and for far broader sections of the people. In contrast to the Gothic novelists, Scott does not write exclusively from the point of view of the ruling class. There is an escapist, romantic elements in almost all his books but in his best novels, Old Mortality, The Antiquary, The Heart of Midlothian, he makes a serious attempt to capture realistically the strains and tensions of a experiences of the Scottish people.

Kenilworth is a history; but it is a romance also. In action, in treatment of events and characters, in its setting and background it imitates the models of romances.

The novel begins with the romantic secrecy. The opening immediately reminds one of the fables where a few gallants proceed on an expedition of searching a lost lady, or a lover leaves home in search of his lady-love. In Kenilworth also, a lover goes out for the search of this beloved; and in the inn it appears that two gallants, Michael Lambourne and Tressilian take a journey for solving the mystery in the Cumnor Hall.

Kenilworth is filigree. It is embroidered with silver and gold - love and romance. Scott tries to romanticize everything with the help of imagination and poetic faculties which he received as the al gifts from the Muses. He changes history according to his own requirements: he can replace places; dates are of little significance for him. It matters little whether Amy died in 1560 or in 1575: but Scott's interest is in showing how she died at a particular period and this how and why is solved by him with exquisite charm and dramatic turns.

The novel contains some aspects of the fable. Amy's episode is a romance; the tricks of Alasco and Wayland Smith are also on the line of the fables. There are duels and fightings, and there are attempts of violence. Poisons are taken and given; elopements take place, and the villains also try to rape girls. A gallant like Walter Raleigh appears, and throws down his cloak in mud to facilitate the way for a beautiful lady so much renowned as Queen Elizabeth. The way in which the Earl of Leicester proposes for the hand of the Queen; and the way in which Wayland seeks his entry into the Cumnor Hall are also on the tradition of romances.

In design and pattern too, Kenilworth is fashioned on the fable. The events take place with a dramatic thud. Rich colours are there; and there are also high contrasts. The story gains its momentum not at the hand of history, but at the hand of romance. It is not queen and kings, nobles and courtiers, wars and fightings that draw the reader's attention so much as the lovers and beloved, their love-making and efforts of winning one another.

Although Scott does not exploit the supernatural in the ordinary connotation, that is, he does not produce ghost and witches. But he tries to give his novel a mysterious atmosphere by his device of secrecy and intrigue. The role of Wayland Smith and Alasco are good substitutes for the supernatural of the table.

The element of romance can also be found in Scott's descriptions of the various places where his main scenes take place. He chooses spots of considerable interests. The lonely and antique grandeur of Cumnor Place, the bustling life of Black Bear Inn, the magnificence of Kenilworth Castle, and the grandeur of Say's Court Cumnor Place has been described with the passion of romance.

Similarly, Wayland's lodging is a mean place, yet it has a supernatural charm. The Castle of Kenilworth has been coated with heavy descriptions. It has an ample porch, the battlements placed with the gigantic warders, with clubs, battle-axes; and other implements of ancient court life. The vizards and buskins can be seen there. The pageants, the tower, the small rooms, the gates are all imbued with a spirit of imagination. The inanimate things become animate for the time being.

The romantic pathos in the novel occupies a sizable space. Amy Robsart is the hub of this kind of thing. Her civil imprisonment in the Cumnor Place, and the denial of the open acknowledgement as a wife by Leicester are the obvious cause of the same. The romantic pathos makes the figure of Amy sweetly pathetic. Though she does not shed tears over her predicament, yet she is keenly aware of her lamentable fate. There is, however, nothing cloying about the quality of the romantic pathos in the novel.

Like all the Romantic writers, he loathed the new capitalism, seeing the Industrial Revolution as destroying the old social ties which made in the old society if not for equality at least for certain kindliness in human relationship. “To Scott, as to Carlyle,” Professor Grierson has said in his admirable biography, "the main source of the evil was the divorce of any tie between the employer and the labourer but the cash nexus."

However, Scott's romanticism is not airy. It is coloured by a strong realistic sense. He is always led by the realism of the historian, but he also uses the imagination of a writer of the romances.

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Kenilworth as a Historical Novel

Walter Scott's Kenilworth as a Historical Novel

Scott's conception of historical novel is different from the common and traditional concept of history. Generally speaking, a historical novelist enlivens the great historical episodes in his novel but Scott is not so much interested in historical episodes as he is interested in historical characters. He never showed history in the making: he chose to show characters as they were made by history. He wanted to produce the spirit of English history more than the flesh and form.

Kenilworth is a historical novel in the sense that it is set against a historical background. The time is that of Queen Elizabeth's reign. The characters bear historical names, and the main events are also distilled from history. Above all, the spirit of Elizabeth's age is exhibited most artistically and realistically.

A number of historical inaccuracies can be mentioned in Kenilworth. Scott always treated history with perfect disregard of inconvenient facts and dates. There are many illustrations of this in Kenilworth. Robert Dudley was the fifth son of the Duke of Northumberland, who was executed by Queen Mary for his attempt to crown his son, Lord Guildford Dudley, the husband of Lady Jane Grey. In the year 1550, Robert Dudley had married Amy Robsart when he himself was but nineteen years old. The ceremony contained no element of secrecy, Edward VI himself being present.

Thus in1560, Dudley had been married for ten years but Kenilworth represents the marriage as of recent occurrence, and Amy's father and lover in distress because they had not yet been able to find tidings of her whereabouts. Dudley was not at this time Earl of Leicester, title being conferred on him in 1563, three years after Amy's death, when Elizabeth put him forward as a suitable husband for Mary Queen of Scots.

There are, as historical evidence, letters, written by the then Spanish ambassadors in England. In 1559, De Feria wrote to Philip of Spain that Elizabeth was "enamoured of my Lord Robert Dudley, and will never let him from her side. His wife has a cancer on the breast and the Queen only waits till she dies to marry him."

Another letter written by De Quandra in 1560, states that Cecil had told the writer, "Dudley had made himself master of the business of State and of the person of the Queen.....and that they were thinking of destroying Lord Robert's wife ..... They had given out that she was very ill, but she was not ill at all; she was very well, and taking care not to be poisoned."

The conclusion of Kenilworth is mysterious. It is different from the historical records. Leicester determines to kill his wife but relents; his servants go beyond their orders and kill her before their master can prevent them. In real life, however, Varney and Foster have no share in the tragedy and no evidence against them has been found. Scott in his notes has accepted this fact. He says. "If faith is to be put in epitaphs, Anthony Foster was something the very reverse of the characters represented in the novel."

Scott has also altered Sir Walter Raleigh out of history. Though the gallant incident of the cloak is the traditional and his historical account of this celebrated statesman's rise at court, but Raleigh's pride and boldness have been put to a stake in the novel. In his descriptions of the Cumnor Hall and the Kenilworth Castle, Scott makes use of his poetic gifts; his imagination overpowers his sense of fact. The bedsteads with their furniture, chairs, stools, cushions, carpets, pictures have been described with capitalized details.

Scott was competent to deal with history. He knew a lot of English history. He was called the 'glutton of books,' as he had read almost all the great romances, old plays, and epic poetry. He had the contemporary life, such as most of Miss Edgeworth's. His handling of history in Kenilworth may not be precisely historical, but it is plausibly historical. He aims at depicting the manners and customs' of the time of Queen Elizabeth.

The main interest in Scott's historical novels is often not historical and the historical interest is at least always divided with purely fictitious interest. In Waverley, the hero and heroine are historical ; and the same is true of Old Mortality, Ivanhoe, The Fortunes of Nigel and The Abbot. Kenilworth is different only in appearance. Amy Robsart bears a historical name but she is really the typical tragic heroine, and Leicester is the conventional villain with some facts taken from Dudley's life for a historical semblance. The attention is thus distracted from Elizabeth, Mary, James, Cromwell, and the young Stuart Pretenders. In adopting this method of dealing with history, which was in part Shakespeare's also, Scott was able to give within the vaguely defined boundaries of fact and legend, a very free play to his imagination.

Hence Kenilworth is realistic when it deals with lowly life, but the prevailing mood is romantic with historical bias. It is not a pure history; it is a beautiful blend of history and romance.

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