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flat and round characters
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Black-and-white illustration by William Thackeray showing Sir Pitt on one knee proposing to Becky Sharp, with a woman watching through a window behind them.
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Black-and-white illustration by William Thackeray showing Sir Pitt on one knee proposing to Becky Sharp, with a woman watching through a window behind them.
Becky Sharp and Sir Pitt Crawley, illustration by William Makepeace Thackeray for his novel Vanity Fair (1847–48).

flat and round characters

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History

flat and round characters, characters as described by the course of their development in a work of literature. Flat characters are two-dimensional in that they are relatively uncomplicated and do not change throughout the course of a work. By contrast, round characters are complex and undergo development, sometimes sufficiently to surprise the reader.

The two types are described by E.M. Forster in his book Aspects of the Novel (1927). The example he gives of a flat character is Mrs. Micawber in Charles Dickens’s David Copperfield (1849–50), of a round character Becky Sharp in William Thackeray’s Vanity Fair (1847–48).

This article was most recently revised and updated by Adam Augustyn.