"For our vanity is such that we hold our own characters immutable, and we are slow to acknowledge that they have changed, even for the better"
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Vanity, in Forster's hands, isn’t loud swagger; it’s the quieter arrogance of self-certainty. The line needles a modern reflex: we treat our “character” like a fixed asset, a brand promise, something we defend against revision. The sting is that he frames this stubbornness as vanity, not integrity. Even improvement can feel like an insult to the earlier self, because admitting growth means admitting we once fell short.
The sentence works by reversing the usual moral logic. We expect people to resist change “for the worse,” but Forster points to how flattery can be just as threatening. If you’ve become kinder, braver, less prejudiced, you have to concede you were once smaller than you are now. Vanity prefers continuity over accuracy, so we narrate ourselves as consistent: the same person, same principles, same tastes, merely “more experienced.” It’s a psychological trick that keeps the ego intact while time does its quiet editing.
Context matters: Forster wrote in an England obsessed with class, propriety, and the performance of a stable self. His novels are crowded with characters who discover that identity isn’t an essence but a social script, and that scripts can be rewritten. The subtext is a critique of the self as museum-piece, preserved for admiration. Real moral progress, he suggests, requires the humiliating courage to say: I changed. I was wrong. And yes, it made me better.
The sentence works by reversing the usual moral logic. We expect people to resist change “for the worse,” but Forster points to how flattery can be just as threatening. If you’ve become kinder, braver, less prejudiced, you have to concede you were once smaller than you are now. Vanity prefers continuity over accuracy, so we narrate ourselves as consistent: the same person, same principles, same tastes, merely “more experienced.” It’s a psychological trick that keeps the ego intact while time does its quiet editing.
Context matters: Forster wrote in an England obsessed with class, propriety, and the performance of a stable self. His novels are crowded with characters who discover that identity isn’t an essence but a social script, and that scripts can be rewritten. The subtext is a critique of the self as museum-piece, preserved for admiration. Real moral progress, he suggests, requires the humiliating courage to say: I changed. I was wrong. And yes, it made me better.
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