Character     by Ferdinand Bordewijk, Translated by E.M. Prince Original title: Karakter Original language: Dutch Original year: 1938 Published by Dee, Ivan R. Publisher Pub. Date: 1999 Format: Paperback Dimensions: (in inches): 0.84 x 7.24 x 5.02 ISBN: 1566632277 List Price: $14.95 Buy online from Amazon.com for $10.47 Published by Ivan R. Dee, Chicago Pub. Date: 1999 Not available for ordering

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This is a novel from the 1930s, showing all the hard edges and sharp contrasts of an Expressionist painting. Bordewijk wrote a robust, angular style bent on creating types rather than individuals, bare-knuckle conflicts rather than subtle moods or emotions. He was at his best in stories and novels set in hard-nosed industrial worlds where people go to extremes to get their way and meet equally dogged resistance. Unsentimental as it is, Bordewijk’s work also shows that the obsessive pursuit of a single ideal is ultimately impoverishing.


Character has as its subtitle ‘A Novel of Father and Son’, and that sums up the book. But unlike, say, Stijn Streuvels’s The Flaxfield, which acts out a generational conflict against the backdrop of rural Flanders, Character is about a clash of wills, and the setting is urban—Rotterdam in the first decades of the twentieth century, up until the Great Depression.


Bordewijk’s novel tells the story of young Katadreuffe, the illegitimate son of the bailiff Dreverhaven and the servant girl Joba Katadreuffe. Dreverhaven, larger than life, dressed in a long black coat and wearing a wide-rimmed black hat, is a ruthless brute, a seedy character, a miser and man of granite who strikes terror into the poor wretches he kicks out into the street as their homes are repossessed. Although he is used to having his way, he fails to break down the stubborn pride of Ms Katadreuffe, who declines his offer to marry her when the baby is born and refuses to have anything to do with the child’s father. As the son grows up, the mother is determined he must learn to fend for himself. When he comes of age young Katadreuffe sets up a small business, borrows money, fails miserably and is made bankrupt. Only then does he find out he borrowed from a bank owned by his father, who pursues the son mercilessly. In a gesture of defiance the young man decides to borrow even more money from his father. He wants to build a career in the law and needs money to study. Before he can sit his exams the father bankrupts the son again. Young Katadreuffe goes on regardless, proud, stubborn and unflinching.


As the father turns into a monster of lust and corrupt power who obstructs his son’s progress at every turn, Katadreuffe’s self-discipline and total dedication take him to the top. He triumphs over his father — or so he thinks. During their last meeting, to Katadreuffe’s consternation, Dreverhaven tells him he was actually ‘working for him’ all the time: overcoming the obstacles the father put in his way steeled the son’s character. Too late Katadreuffe recognizes that the lifelong pitched battle with his father has exacted a horrible price: he sacrificed everything, including a budding relationship with the girl of his dreams, for the sake of his career. Having systematically removed every chink in his armour and extinguished every human spark in himself, his single-minded struggle has left him emotionally dead — no better, really, than the heartless monster that is his father.

‘By God,’ he said, and his tone was strangely solemn, ‘I’ll strangle him, I’ll strangle nine tenths of him, and the other tenth I’ll leave him — and that little scrap I leave will make him great — he’ll become great, by God, he will great.’

She looked at him with a smile. She was not afraid; he had never been able to make her afraid. But now it was her turn to answer and she said:

‘No Mr Dreverhaven, I shall never marry you. I’m not marrying anybody. But I don’t mind you knowing there is no man I’ve ever liked more than you. So it was and so it remains.’

He had not moved and he said, acting as though he had not understood her words, as though he were just picking up his own thread:

‘And, Joba, that one tenth, that small scrap — I may even take that from him.’ (p. 233, tr. E.M. Prince)