Characters are persons who perform actions in stories. In realist novels they are generally present in the action, substantively complete in their composition and therefore fully “in character,” structurally solid as a coherent unit, stable in basic identity over time even as they respond to changing circumstances, admirable (as protagonists) if not classically heroic, and oriented to life in a purposive way. In modernist novels the formal features of presence, substance, structure, stability, stature, and purpose change in subverting and reworking the historical content of the master narratives.

PRESENCE: CONSPICUOUS ABSENCE

That main characters are present and center in the action that moves stories would seem to be a truism. Throughout the realist period such was the case, but in the modernist period some characters began to disappear significantly. Realist presence gave way to modernist absence in stories about a black, a lesbian, and a young man, who subvert conventionally biased distinctions that ground the imperial, courtship, and national narratives.

In Conrad's The Nigger of the “Narcissus” (1897), the black seaman James Wait is from the British West Indies and as a colonial subject is the victim of racial prejudice. His presence is announced prominently in the title, but he is conspicuously absent in the story even as he dominates the action. He is late to board the Narcissus, his name on the ship's list is a smudge, and he spends most of the time below deck.