Eagleton (2013) describes the difference between modes of characterization in realist and modernist works as a difference in continuity.
Realist characters “are seen as caught up in a web of complex mutual dependencies. They are formed by social and historical forces greater than themselves, and shaped by processes of which they may only be fitfully conscious.” As such, realist characters have a coherent origin and evolution, and act as agents in a collective history.
On the other hand, characters in modernist writing lack autonomy within their inhabited world. Their actions are unconsciously scripted by greater literary subplots, or else their psychological profiles are so stretched that “character in its classical sense begins to disintegrate. … [Human consciousness] begins to spill out over the edges, seeping into its surroundings as well as into other selves.”
Eagleton suggests that this change is a symptom of modern mass culture: today, “human beings come to seem increasingly faceless and interchangeable. … It is becoming harder to identify the owner of a particular experience.”
See also: Character in Virginia Woolf’s fiction