Samuel Oliver-Sherry |1

“Poetry is notoriously ineffective at drawing characters because of its

simplicity: Betjeman is no exception.” Discuss.

Poetry can be distinguished from prose for both its metrically bound speech and its brevity

(Winko, 2010). Both of these factors imply that poetry cannot communicate as much

information to its readers, because the short duration restricts the development of thematic

material, while constraint comes from the strict rhythmic aspect in stanzas. Character

development, it would seem, is also part of this problem: due to the confined space in which

poetry acts upon, surely characterisation would be neglected in favour of evoking imagery

and concentrating on emotions, moods and sentiments (Winko, 2010). This assumption is

unfair, and there is a wealth of great poetry that draws memorable characters despite its

brevity. British poet John Betjeman excelled in this, using witty characterisation to

emphasise the messages he was putting forward in his work. So, from a narrative theory

perspective, analysing how methods of storytelling affect the readers, this essay will explore

how Betjeman uses characters and narrators to highlight meaning in his poetry, particularly

in “Diary of a Church Mouse” and “Hunter Trials”.

John Betjeman is best known for being Poet Laureate from 1972-1984, and his poems often

provide scornful commentaries on society’s habits and flaws. Both poems in this essay fall

into this category: “Diary of a Church Mouse” attacks society’s relationship with religion,

while “Hunter Trials” is more personal, as Betjeman sook revenge on his wife by expressing

his hatred of their horse (Early, 2018) while mocking snobbery. However, the characters in

these poems are interesting, as Betjeman juxtaposes serious claims with whimsical narrators,

such as in “Diary of a Church Mouse” which is narrated by an anthropomorphic mouse. He

looks at life through the animal’s point of view, particularly its daily business of searching for

food (Magee, 1964), as the poet uses hyperbole and emotive language to make the readers

sympathise for the mouse, who’s ‘bread is sawdust mixed with straw’ and ‘jam is polish for the floor’
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(Betjeman, 2006, p.205). This achieves a strangely compelling character, who’s goodwill is

based largely on his own misery (Magee, 1964), caused by so-called ‘bad’ mice who don’t

attend church and take his food while he ‘starve(s) the whole year through’ (Betjeman, 2006,

p.205). The mouse can draw off the point of view for observing human situations from an

unusual perspective (Magee, 1964), as the other mice act as metaphors for the lack of

commitment from humanity towards religion, and the innocence of the character is effective

in heightening Betjeman’s message in questioning our dedication to our faith. Another

advantage to anthropomorphism is the distance between animals and humanity, as the

mouse falsely claims that “Within the human world I know/Such goings-on could not be so” (Betjeman,

2006, p.205). There is a deliberate link between the bad mice and humanity here, and it offers

a chance for the readers to actually stop and think about the relationship between the

metaphor and reality: if a human was narrating instead, the effect wouldn’t be as convincing

because both character and reader are in the same realm, nor would the character be as

engaging for there is no complexity (Maslej, Oatley, & Mar, 2017). The characterisation of a

mouse allows Betjeman to be more creative in presenting his criticisms, as it is successful in

affecting the reader’s mindset, both with an unassuming charm and a perspective away from

the human.

“Hunter Trials”, by contrast, is narrated by a young girl, but contains other non-speaking

characters. They all have remarkably posh titles – “Prunella”, “Smudges”, “Guzzle”, “Diana”, “Miss

Blewitt” (Betjeman, 2006, p.197) are merely designations using fictive names (Winko, 2010)

that evoke an upper-class, yet poignantly distasteful feeling. We know from Betjeman’s

background that class conciousness and snobbery were recurrent themes in his life (Early,

2018), and the pretentiousness of the character’s names are just as valuable as the arrogance

of the young narrator in setting the sneering tone of the poem. Of course, the snobbery of the

speaker takes centre stage: she is always first to criticise the other competitors, such as her
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damning analysis of Prunella – “Why doesn’t she slacken his muzzle/And tighten the breach in his girth?”

(Betjeman, 2006, p.197). Typical of her characterisation is not only personal optimism on her

ability, but a wealth of subject terminology which is designed to be shamlessly unaccessible

for the reader, particularly in Stanza Six in her judgement of Margaret, as her “withers got tied

in a noose” and her “coronets (were) caught in the traces” (Betjeman, 2006, p.197). This puts a

distance between us and the girl, and she becomes less engaging and unlikeable because she

is so unapproachable, thus further emphasising Betjeman’s criticism of upper class high-

handedness. Of course, her over-confidence comes back to bite her, as Betjeman makes her an

unreliable narrator that is part of the story she tells (Lodge, 1992),because her eventual

failure to live up to her own hype in the last stanza is amusing to the reader. But, how this

incident plays out is driven by the nature of the person involved (Abbott, 2002), and

Betjeman’s characterisation of the young girl makes it destiny for her to fail and receive

dutiful karma: even after her turn, she says that it was “naughty of Smudges” and that she’s “sick

with disgust” (Betjeman, 2006, p.197)! Her arrogance and self-indulgence emphasises

Betjeman’s theme of criticising upper-class snobbery, and this character is very effective in

achieving those goals.

Furthermore, there are links between the two poems’ approach to character. They could be

described as a variation in what E.M. Forster calls ‘flat’ characters (1956), in that while

things certainly happen to them in the poem (particularly in Hunter Trials at the end when

the rider fails in her equestrian), their stances and outlooks on life never change. They

declare themselves in their motifs, like Popeye says, “I yam what I yam” (Abbott, 2002).

There are benefits to this for Betjeman’s cause: they are easily recognised by the reader, and

remembered by them afterwards (Forster, 1956), but it also means that there is no need for

any backstory or unnecessary development. Due to the aforementioned brevity of poetry,

there is no room for irrelevant information (Winko, 2010), so by creating ‘flat’ characters he
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is able to concentrate solely on effectively delivering his mantras while merely letting the

nature of the characters speak for themselves: surely a talking mouse and a snotty girl is

suffice to be engaging, capture our interest and hold our attention (Maslej, Oatley, & Mar,

2017) without requiring major developments. However, what is most impressive about

Betjeman’s characterisation is his ability to make his readers identify with his characters as if

the events were happening to them, in a process Jonathan Cohen calls “identification” (2001).

Take the “pagan mice” (Betjeman, 2006, p.205) in “Diary of a Church Mouse” – Betjeman is

forcing the reader to identify with them in finding similarities between the characters and

themselves (Cohen, 2001), but in an undesirable fashion due to the bias of the “good church

mouse” (Betjeman, 2006, p.205), who makes us dislike ourselves if we identify with the other

mice. Identification requires that we forget ourselves and become the other (Cohen, 2001),

and while that may seem rather extreme for what is comedic poetry, the result is convincing

– even the most dedicated of religious people would even question their own commitment,

thus changing their position to the characters (Cohen, 2001), rather than maintaining belief

in themselves. The narrator in “Hunter Trials” works in a similar fashion, but with a more

selective and narrow group of people in just the upper class, allowing the rest of society to

not only mock the character, but the people associated with it. This is where identification

could be implemented as a persuasion technqiue, as we may wish to make other arrogant

people relate to this girl to open new perspectives which may result in attitude changes

(Cohen, 2001), a technique that Betjeman uses very often in his other works. Both characters

are effective in opening new outlooks, pressing readers to question their own morality and

think about their attitudes.

To conclude, John Betjeman is successful in drawing out meaningful and memorable

characters despite the short operating space of poetry, with his charactersation a pivotal

aspect of emphasising his poetry’s messages. In “Diary of a Church Mouse” and “Hunter
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Trials”, the characters we meet help us both ridicule the folly of society, while also to reflect

on our own attitudes, and they are equally effective in achieving these goals. Betjeman is able

to juggle character development and rhetoric equally well in his works, and this produces

very impactful and profound commentaries on society.

Works Cited

Abbott, H. P. (2002). Characters and self in narrative. In H. P. Abbott, The Cambridge Introduction to

Narrative (pp. 33-58). Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511816932

Betjeman, J. (2006). Collected Poems. (A. Motion, Ed.) United Kingdom: FSG Adult.

Cohen, J. (2001, August). Defining Identification: A Theoretical Look at the Identification of

Audiences With Media Characters. Mass Communication and Society, 4(3), 245-264.

doi:10.1207/s15327825mcs0403_01

Early, P. (2018, January 20). John Betjeman - a brief introduction. Retrieved October 28, 2022, from

Medium: https://medium.com/@patrickearly.early/john-betjeman-c9f32d4e762c

Forster, E. (1956). Aspects of the Novel (1 ed.). Mariner Books.

Lodge, D. (1992). The Unreliable Narrator. In D. Lodge, The Art of Fiction (pp. 154-157). Secker &

Warburg.

Magee, W. H. (1964). The Animal Story: A Challenge in Technique. The Dalhousie Review, 44(2), 156-

164. Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/10222/58929

Maslej, M. M., Oatley, K., & Mar, R. A. (2017, November). Creating fictional characters: The role of

experience, personality, and social processes. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts,

11(4), 487-499. doi:10.1037/aca0000094

Winko, S. (2010, November 15). On the Constitution of Characters in Poetry. Characters in Fictional

Worlds, 208-231. doi:10.1515/9783110232424.3.208