Novelists on the Novel 9780231887342

Table of contents :
CONTENTS
PREFACE
Part One: THE NATURE OF PROSE FICTION
INTRODUCTION
I. THE NOVEL AND THE MARVELLOUS
II. THE NOVEL AS A PORTRAIT OF LIFE
III. THE ETHICS OF THE NOVEL
Part Two: THE GENESIS OF A NOVEL
INTRODUCTION
I. THE NOVELIST'S APPROACH AND EQUIPMENT
II. GERMINATION
III. THE NOVELIST AT WORK: EFFORT AND INSPIRATION
Part Three: THE CRAFT OF FICTION
INTRODUCTION
I. STRUCTURAL PROBLEMS
II. NARRATIVE TECHNIQUE
III. CHARACTERIZATION
IV. DIALOGUE
V. BACKGROUND
VI. STYLE
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
INDEX

Citation preview

NOVELISTS ON THE NOVEL

NOVELISTS ON THE NOVEL by MIRIAM

ALLOTT

New York: Columbia University Press

© M i r i a m Allott 1959 First p u b l i s h e d in 1959 C o l u m b i a P a p e r b a c k F.ditii.n 19f> P r i n t e d in t h e U n i t e d States of A m e r i c a

CONTENTS PREFACE

XV

Part O n e I

T H E N A T U R E OF PROSE

FICTION

The Novel and the Marvellous

II

The Novel as a Portrait of Life

III

The Ethics of the Novel page

INTRODUCTION

TEXT

3 41

I.

THE NOVEL AND THE

MARVELLOUS

Rejecting romantic improbability. Samuel Richardson 41 A caution against the supernatural. Henry Fielding 42 Romance reformed by the novelist. Tobias Smollett 43 Pleasing delusions. Sarah Fielding 44 Lc belle nature. Jean-Jacques Rousseau 44 Ctmbining the marvellous and the probable. Clara Reeve 45 Rmance lacks unity of design. Thomas Holcroft 46 The difference between the novel and the romance. Clara Reeve 47 Suit certi denique fines Richard Cumberland 47 Mrs. Sarah Green 48 At epic in prose? Anna Barbauld 48 jVwel: romance: epic. Sir Walter Scott 49 The historical romance combines the marvellous and the probable Sir Walter Scott 50 Nathaniel Hawthorne 50 The novelist's sense of conflict Gustave Flaubert 51 Guy de Maupassant 52 The quality of romance. Robert Louis Stevenson 53 A romantic realist. Joseph Conrad 54 Outing the cable. Henry James 55 v

CONTENTS Ghost stories. H e n r y J a m e s Adjusting the exceptional and the non-exceptional. T h o m a s H a r d y II.

T H E N O V E L AS A P O R T R A I T OF

LIFE

A new species of writing. Henry Fielding The bounds of probability. Henry Fielding No 'sudden conversions'. Samuel Richardson Truth to be kept in sight. Richard Cumberland The offspring of nature. Fanny Burney The paths of common life: Jane Austen's 'Emma'. Sir Walter Scott Accidents admissible? Charles Dickens Dickens defends fantasy. Charles Dickens The art of novels is to represent nature. William Makepeace Thackeray Realism compatible with sensationalism. Anthony Trollope Truth lies in the 'exceptional'. Feodor Dostoevsky Scientific realism. Emile Zola Reality only a spring-board. Gustave Flaubert The naturalist modifies nature. Emile Zola Realists are illusionists. G u y de Maupassant Representative art both realistic and ideal. R o b e r t Louis Stevenson The novel 'an artificiality distilled from the fruits of observation'. Thomas Hardy Imitation cannot serve as a standard. Leo Tolstoy Art 'all discrimination and selection'. Henry James Imagined life clearer than reality. Joseph Conrad Is life like this? Virginia Woolf Realism impairs the sense of tragedy. D. H. Lawrence Realism and stylization. André Gide Truth stranger than fiction. Aldous Huxley Not an observer, but a creator. François Mauriac A discussion about categories of fiction: Henry James dismisses them Robert Louis Stevenson remonstrates III.

THE

ETHICS

OF THE

The novelist and the young person. Samuel Richardson Jean-Jacques Rousseau Clara Reeve

56 58

59 60 61 62 62 63 66 66 67 67 68 68 6g 70 70 72 73 74 75 76 76 77 78 79 80 81 82

NCVEL

85 85 86 vi

CONTENTS O l i v e r Goldsmith Sir W a l t e r Scott Anthony Trollope C h a r l e s Dickens Henry James François M a u r i a c Reforming the wicked reader. Daniel Defoe Gilding the pill. S a m u e l Richardson Useful examples provided. Henry Fielding Exemplary ambitions achieved. Tobias Smollett Mo politics? Richard Cumberland Stendhal The reader uninterested in the moral. Sir Walter Scott On not impaling the butterfly. Nathaniel Hawthorne Truth is best. W i l l i a m M a k e p e a c e T h a c k e r a y The writer's responsibility. George Eliot An argument about artistic detachment. Gustave Flaubert George Sand Gustave Flaubert High moral purpose of the naturalists. Emile Zola Foul to tell what is false: unsafe to suppress what is true. Robert Louis Stevenson Maturai truth better than didacticism. Thomas Hardy The artist must set the question, not solve it. Anton Chekhov Is it genuine, is it sincere? Henry James Cherishing undying hope. Joseph Conrad Thumbs off the scale. D. H. Lawrence Best to be without any views. Ford Madox Ford How to present ideas in a novel. H o n o r é de Balzac Ivan Turgenev D. H. Lawrence André Gide Aldous Huxley Poetic justice. I v y C o m p t o n - B u r n e t t Moral tragedy. A n d r é G i d e The Christian novelist. François Mauriac Tailpiece. O s c a r W i l d e

vii

87 87 87 88 88 89 89 90 91 g1 92 92 92 93 93 94 94 95 95 96 97 98 99 99 100 IOI 102 103 103 104 104 104 104 105 106 108

CONTENTS

Part Two I II III

THE

G E N E S I S OF A

NOVEL

The Novelist's Approach and Equipment Germination At Work: Effort and Inspiration

INTRODUCTION

III

TEXT

125 I.

THE NOVELIST'S APPROACH

AND

EQUIPMENT

Invoking assistance. Henry Fielding In the destructive element immerse? Gustave Flaubert Herman Melville George Sand Feodor Dostoevsky The voice of true feeling. Stendhal Leo Tolstoy Only one tool in the workshop. Robert Louis Stevenson Learning the lesson of the master. Guy de Maupassant The soul of the artist. Leo Tolstoy The watcher at the window. Henry James The business of the novelist. Thomas Hardy The novelist's most precious possession. Joseph Conrad The novelist's essential characteristic. Arnold Bennett The novelist's raison d'être. François Mauriac II.

125 125 126 126 127 12 7 128 129 130 131 131 132 132 133 133

GERMINATION

1 Hence

sprung PamelaSamuel Richardson '/ thought of Mr. Pickwick'. Charles Dickens Mary Ann Evans into George Eliot. George Eliot A scarlet letter. Nathaniel Hawthorne The beginning of Barchester. Anthony Trollope Henry lames is inoculated. Henry James The inception of 'Nostromo'. Joseph Conrad Proust recaptures the past. Marcel Proust What is it to be? Virginia Woolf No notebooks. Ivy Compton-Burnett

viii

134 134 135 136 136 138 139 141 142 143

CONTENTS III.

THE NOVELIST AT W O R K :

EFFORT AND

INSPIRATION

Richardson in difficulties. Samuel Richardson A carrier's horse. Richard Cumberland Whom the devil drives. Sir Walter Scott No planning. Stendhal What! what! what! how! how! how! Nathaniel Hawthorne 250 words every quarter of an hour. Anthony Trollope Miseries and splendours of creation. Gustave Flaubert Pain and travail of soul. Feodor Dostoevsky Flesh in the ink-pot. Leo Tolstoy Copious preliminaries. Henry James Wrestling with the Lord. Joseph Conrad Feathering about. Virginia Woolf The novelist inspired. Henry Fielding Charlotte Bronte George Eliot Gustave Flaubert Henry James Virginia Woolf E. M. Forster

Part Three

THE CRAFT OF FICTION

I

Problems

1Structural Unity Plot

and and

The II III IV V VI

144 145 145 146 146 147 148 149 150 150 151 152 154 154 155 155 156 157 158

Coherence Stoiy

Time-Factor

Narrative

Technique

Characterization Dialogue Background Style

INTRODUCTION

161 IX

CONTENTS TEXT

227 I.

STRUCTURAL

PROBLEMS

U n i t y and Coherence Epic regularity. H e n r y Fielding Nothing foreign to the design. Henry Fielding Plot uniform and narrative unbroken. Richard Cumberland Digressions are the sunshine of reading. Laurence Sterne No detached episodes. Anna Barbauld Defending quirks and quiddities. Sir Walter Scott The 'man of the hill' in trouble again. Sir Walter Scott Circulating the blood of the book through the inserted story. Charles Dickens Striving for unity. Gustave Flaubert Two major faults. Feodor Dostoevsky Episodes distract attention. Anthony Trollope The artist must suppress much and omit more. Robert Louis Stevenson The novel all one and continuous. Henry James Focus. Leo Tolstoy Form is substance. H e n r y J a m e s On appearing to digress. Ford Madox Ford Mastery of perspective. Virginia Woolf No superfluities. André Gide Pattern and rhythm. E. M. Forster Symphonic effect. Gustave Flaubert The art of fugue. André Gide The musicalization of fiction. Aldous H u x l e y Plot and Story The novelist must have a story to tell. Anthony Trollope No story at all is best. Gustave Flaubert Writing a story for publication in weekly parts. Charles Dickens A story should be an organism. Thomas Hardy Story the spoiled child of art. Henry James A story must convey a seme of inevitability. Ford Madox Ford Oh dear yes—the novel tells a story. E. M. Forster Doing away with plot. Mary Mitford Plot the most insignificant part of a tale. Anthony Trollope Conventional plot a vulgar coercion. George Eliot Surprising properties of plot. E. M. Forster Plot the support of a novel. Ivy Compton-Burnett Beginnings and endings H e n r y Fielding

x

227 227 227 228 229 22g 230 231 231 232 233 233 234 235 235 235 236 236 237 240 240 240 241 242 242 243 245 245 245 247 247 247 248 249 249

CONTENTS Charles Dickens G e o r g e Eliot A n t o n Chekhov F o r d M a d o x Ford A n d r é Gide The Time-Factor Fielding sets the pace. Henry Fielding Foreshortening: the problem always there and always formidable. Henry James Allegiance to 'time by the clock'. E. M. Forster The presentness of the past. Marcel Proust

II.

NARRATIVE

250 250 250 251 251 251 252 253 254

TECHNIQUE

Epistolary method improper. Henry Fielding Letters much more lively and affecting. Samuel Richardson. Another vagary. Horace Walpole Letters for the author, omniscient narrative for the reader. Richard Cumberland Three ways of telling a story. Anna Barbauld Epistolary form an antiquated affair. Anton Chekhov Advantages of the letter-system. Thomas Hardy Perils of first-person narrative. Anthony Trollope The terrible fluidity of self-revelation. Henry James The narrator's interpolations in the historical novel. George Sand Many good ways of telling a story. George Eliot Form as varied as content. Leo Tolstoy A certain indirect and oblique view Henry James A r n o l d Bennett Joseph Conrad 'Bouncing' more important than the 'point of view'. E. M. Forster Exit author? R i c h a r d Cumberland Sir Walter Scott A n t h o n y Trollope Charles Dickens Gustave Flaubert G u y de Maupassant Henry James Ford M a d o x Ford E. M . Forster xi

256 256 257 257 258 260 260 260 260 262 262 265 265 267 267 268 269 269 270 270 271 272 272 273 273

CONTENTS André Gide Aldous Huxley

273 274 III.

CHARACTERIZATION

The dial-plate or the inner workings? Henry Fielding Sarah Fielding Samuel Richardson Sir Walter Scott JVo pictures of perfection Henry Fielding Richard Cumberland J a n e Austen George Sand William Makepeace Thackeray No portraits Henry Fielding Stendhal Charlotte Brontë George Eliot George Sand Charles Dickens Gustave Flaubert Wilkie Collins Robert Louis Stevenson Henry James Ford M a d o x Ford Ivy Compton-Burnett The novelist's characters must be real to him. Anthony Trollope The novelist haunted by his characters. Joseph Conrad L'image en disponibilité. Henry James 'Flat' and 'round' characters. E. M. Forster Abandoning the 'old stable ego'. D. H. Lawrence All novels deal with character. Virginia Woolf A character has to be conventionalized. Arnold Bennett Authenticity. A n d r é Gide IV.

275 275 275 275 277 277 278 278 278 279 279 280 280 280 280 281 282 283 283 284 284 285 286 286 288 289 290 290 291

DIALOGUE

Strong language. Tobias Smollett Flaubert describes his difficulties to Louise Colet. Gustave Flaubert Relevant, natural, short. Anthony Trollope Organic and dramatic. Henry James xii

292 292 294 295

CONTENTS

Further problems. Ford Madox Ford Styligation. Ivy Compton-Burnett V.

297 297

BACKGROUND

Scott transforms Melrose. Sir Walter Scott The setting of ' Wuthering Heights'. Charlotte Bronte Too much background. George Eliot A new English county. Anthony Trollope Wessex. Thomas Hardy The scientific importance of background. Emile Zola Map and almanack. Robert Louis Stevenson The selection of telling detail. Anton Chekhov Henry James follows the wrong master. Henry James Pursuing the Guermantes' way. Marcel Proust Background reduced to a minimum. Ivy Compton-Burnett VI.

299 300 301 301 301 302 303 304 305 306 307

STYLE

The judgment of style. Henry Fielding Richardson's style. Anna Barbauld The voice of true feeling in epistolary narrative. Jean-Jacques Rousseau Jane Austen becomes self-conscious. Jane Austen Clear and simple. Stendhal Flaubert on the art of writing. Gustave Flaubert A protest. George Sand The familiar style. George Eliot Byron a model. Wilkie Collins How to be intelligible and harmonious. Anthony Trollope Naturalism and the grand style. Emile Zola Exactness. G u y de Maupassant On not having too much style. Thomas Hardy An elegant and pregnant texture. Robert Louis Stevenson The craft of writing. Joseph Conrad Fresh, usual words. Ford Madox Ford Thought charged with emotion. André Gide Effects of the long week-end (igi8-igjg). E. M. Forster

308 308 309 311 312 312 314 314 315 315 316 317 318 318 319 321 322 322

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

323

INDEX

325

xiii

TO THE MEMORY MY F A T H E R

OF

PREFACE O N L Y the practitioner can speak with final authority about the problems of his art. In this book I have gathered together discussions about the nature and craft of fiction by novelists, believing that these are the most likely people to clear up the confusions of novel criticism. In reading what they have to say, with due allowance made for variations of temperament and historical background, their general agreement on essential issues is striking. In a sense, then, their commentaries can be said to contribute to a recognized 'working' aesthetic of the novel. I should, of course, have liked to represent the views of many more English and foreign novelists, especially contemporaries, but my selections are limited by space and matters of copyright. I have included one writer, Mrs. Anna Barbauld, who is not a novelist, for her admirable and too much neglected editorial work in her series, British Novelists, which appeared in 1810. In arranging my materials and in the editorial introductions to the three parts of the book—The Nature of Prose Fiction, T h e Genesis of a Novel and T h e Craft of Fiction — I have aimed at a chronological order, hoping that readers will feel as I do the interest of following from the beginning the gradual evolution of a literary form. I must not end without expressing my gratitude to everyone who has helped me to prepare this book for the press. I should like especially to thank Professor Kenneth Muir of the Department of English Literature at Liverpool University for various helpful suggestions and for reading the book in proof; my mother for advice in translating from the French; and my husband who has done his best to see that my text is accurate and my prose readable, and who has helped me all along in more ways than can be easily acknowledged here. I must also thank warmly Miss Eda Whelan of the Harold Cohen Library (University of Liverpool) for going to so much trouble to obtain books for me, and Miss Margaret Burton, Departmental Secretary, who typed parts of the manuscript. M. A. Liverpool, April igjg xv

Part One T H E N A T U R E OF PROSE FICTION . . . the real, if unavowed, purpose of fiction is to give pleasure by gratifying the love of the uncommon in human experience The writer's problem is, how to strike the balance between the uncommon and the ordinary so as on the one hand to give interest, on the other to give reality. In working out the problem, human nature must never be made abnormal, which is introducing incredibility. The uncommonness must be in the events, not in the characters; and the writer's art lies in shaping that uncommonness while disguising its unlikelihood, if it be unlikely. The whole secret of fiction and the drama—in the constructional part—lies in the adjustment of things unusual to things eternal and universal. The novelist who knows exactly how exceptional, and how non-exceptional, his events should be made, possesses the key to the art. THOMAS

HARDY.

INTRODUCTION

I

The Novel and the Marvellous

THERE is plenty of support from other novelists for Hardy's account of the 'real, if unavowed, purpose of fiction'—that is, 'to give pleasure by gratifying the love of the uncommon in human experience'—and for his argument that this purpose will be best realized when the novelist persuades the reader of the 'truth' of his characters. T h e novelist's natural desire to indulge our sense of wonder is modified by his knowledge that he must also compel our assent—'we must first believe before we can be affected', says Hurd in his Letters on Chivalry1—and so whenever he is drawn into a discussion about the question of probability, a harassing problem troubling the artistic conscience ever since Aristotle, the novelist's argument usually proceeds from the value of 'the marvellous' to the necessity of maintaining verisimilitude and consistency in his characters' behaviour. He gives special emphasis to these ideas when he is conscious of evolving a new kind and is not yet quite certain of where he stands in relation to existing forms of narrative such as Epic or Romance. 'Every writer may be permitted to deal with the wonderful as much as he pleases', says Fielding, provided the actions of his characters are 'within the compass of human agency' and 'likely for the very actors and characters themselves to have performed'. 2 A M a r c h e n element survives in all his own stories; the poor boy makes good, the foundling turns out to be the Squire's nephew, the hard-pressed family comes into a fortune. Regret that modern fiction seemed 'to stoop with disenchanted 1 2

Letters on Chivalry and Romance (1762), Letter x . See below, p. 60.

3

T H E N A T U R E OF P R O S E

FICTION

wings to truth' compelled many of Fielding's successors in the eighteenth century to heighten the element of 'the marvellous' in their stories. Horace Walpole is an early example, but, as he tells us in his preface to The Castle of Otranto (1765), he is anxious to avoid the implausible characterization of the old romances, where people were given absurd dialogue to speak and seemed 'to lose their senses' whenever they witnessed marvellous happenings. He tries, without perhaps much success, to persuade his readers of the truth of his characters by making them behave 'as it might be supposed mere men and women would do' when confronted with a giant in armour or a statue bleeding at the nose. His admirer, Clara Reeve, seeks to follow his example in The Old English Baron: A Gothic Tale (1778).' Another eighteenth-century novelist, Richard Cumberland, believes that the author may travel a good distance into 'the fields of fancy' for his own and his reader's enjoyment, but he tries not to make his characters behave unnaturally: although events 'closely bordering on the marvellous' call for heightened effects in character-drawing, there are limits which are not to be transgressed. 2 M a n y novelists other than the Gothic romancers came to feel that their best means of reconciling 'the uncommon and the ordinary' was to set their stories in the past. Scott explains his choice of the reign ofJames I as a setting for The Fortunes of Nigel (1822) on the grounds that this period seemed distant enough in time to allow him to introduce incidents which are 'marvellous and improbable' but was also near enough to the present for the behaviour of his characters to carry conviction for his modern readers. 3 Hawthorne, with the greater meticulousness of a later age, explains that The House of the Seven Gables (1851) must come 'under the Romantic definition' because in attempting 'to connect a bygone time with the very present that is flitting a w a y from us' it dispenses with complete fidelity to the possible and probable. 4 He is careful to add that even a Romance 'sins unpardonably so far as it may swerve aside from the truth of the human heart'. He himself prefers to 'mingle the Marvellous rather as a slight, delicate and evanescent flavour, than as any portion of the dish offered to the public', but an author 'can 1 See below, p. 45. ' See below, p. 50.

2 4

4

See below, pp. 47-8. See below, pp. 50-1.

THE NOVEL

AND THE

MARVELLOUS

hardly be said . . . to commit a literary crime even if he disregard this caution'. 1 Novelists w h o do not write about the past but are nevertheless haunted by it often 'mingle the Marvellous' in their stories by introducing elements of fantasy and the supernatural which leave us with the impression that their 'ordinary world . . reaches back'. T h e phrase is used by E. M . Forster in connection with Dostoevsky, 2 and in M r . Forster's own novels the presence of Pan may upset an English party of sightseers in Italy or Greece, or a ghost cause a car to swerve on an Indian highroad. Henry James, whose novels and stories are filled with his 'sense of the past', encourages his imagination to conjure up ghosts and presences, believing that these best serve the storyteller's fundamental appeal to wonder. 3 But his ghosts, no less than the people w h o m they haunt, must behave as we might reasonably expect them to b e h a v e — R a l p h Pendrel in The Sense of the Past (1917), for example. W h e n James's novels are not dealing directly with the supernatural, they are still accompanied by overtones of fantasy; his figures are 'natural' in motivation but legendary in their extravagant wealth, beauty, intelligence or d o o m — w h a t else is Milly Theale (she is often called a Princess by her friends) but a victim of evil enchantment straight out of a fairy-tale? Conrad recognizes a double allegiance to 'the uncommon' and 'the ordinary' by calling himself 'a romantic realist'. 4 Although, as both he and James agree, w h a t is remote and unfamiliar is not necessarily wonderful in itself,® his stories of the sea and of distant continents derive some of their power from the sense of the supernatural which they evoke. If Conrad's own feeling for the fascination of 'the uncommon' gives us at one extreme The Arrow of Gold (1919), a story so falsified by sentimentality that it forfeits almost all claim to consideration as a serious work of art, at the other it produces such compelling achievements as ' T h e Heart of Darkness' (1902), Nostromo (1904), ' T h e Secret Sharer' (19x0) and Victory (1915). Novelists, then, have continued to gratify 'our love of the uncommon in human experience' in spite of firmly distinguishing their own species of fiction as different in kind from 'the 1 See E. M . Forster, Aspects of the Novel (1927), Chapter vii. Ibid. 4 See below, pp. 54-5. See below, pp. 56-7. * See below, pp. 54-6. 1

3

5

T H E N A T U R E OF P R O S E

FICTION

Romance'. 'What a duce,' writes Richardson in 1762, 'do you think I am writing a Romance? Don't you see that I am copying Nature?' 1 More than a century later, James still recognizes this difference, although he is more acutely conscious of the difficulties of definition. In his view, the romance deals with 'experience liberated, so to speak, experience disengaged, disembroiled, disencumbered, exempt from the conditions that we usually know to attach to it'. 2 The novelist knows that 'the balloon of experience is in fact tied to the earth' and he keeps it that way, however long his cable may be: but 'the art of the necromancer is, "for the fun of it", insidiously to cut the cable'. It says much for the natural imaginative gifts of our earlier novelists that they kept the cable as long as possible, and sometimes cut it, in spite of a certain amount of confusion about the real nature of their 'new species of writing'. In fact their attempts to understand their new kind, and to relate it, however mistakenly, to earlier forms of fiction, may have done much to keep their sense of wonder alive. As long as they were occupied in sorting out the complicated relationships connecting their own art to classical epic and heroic or pastoral romance, they were unlikely to remain completely insulated from the imaginative appeal of these narratives. Brooding over the old stories, the eighteenth-century novelist could however be certain of one thing; whatever the degree of his personal response to 'the marvellous', his finished work was concerned, as little previous fiction had been, with 'natural' behaviour and 'real' people. Sometimes he explained his preference for this realism on moral grounds. Characters who are a convincingly natural mixture of good and bad, he argued, are more likely to provide useful examples than those who are extraordinarily wicked or virtuous; moreover extravagance of any kind misleads the reader and unfits him for ordinary life. Since he was happier with classical support he sometimes tried to claim a precedent in Greek and Roman epic, but this did not really fortify his position. For one thing, the behaviour of the characters in the classical epic did not accord with the notions which a polite age entertained about the ideal way to conduct oneself in society. In The History of Sir Charles Grandison (1754)» Richardson makes Lady Charlotte expand his own 1

1

See below, p. 41.

6

See below, p. 56.

THE NOVEL AND THE

MARVELLOUS

views, already expressed to L a d y Bradshaigh, about the epic's 'savage spirit' and the 'infinite mischief' it had done 'for a series of ages'. 1 Lady Charlotte blames 'the poetical tribe' for encouraging men and women in the deceptions which they practise on each other: With regard to epics, would Alexander, madman as he was, have been so much a madman, had it not been for Homer? Of what violence, murder, depredations, have not the epic poets been the occasion, by propagating false honours, false glory, and false religion?2 Defoe felt that the siege of Troy was for nothing other than 'the rescue of a Whore'. 3 The peculiar numinousness surrounding the epic also helped to place it at a remote distance from the preoccupations of a rational, ordered society. 'The Marvellous and Wonderful is the Nerve of the Epic Strain; But what marvellous things happen in a well-ordered state . . .?' asks Blackwell wistfully in An Enquiry into the Life and Writings of Homer (1735). 4 Blackwell has some community of feeling with Voltaire in the second chapter of his Essai sur la Poésie Epique ( 1727): 'Il faut peindre avec des couleurs vraies comme les anciens, mais il ne faut pas peindre les mêmes choses'.5 Such doubts about the contemporary relevance of the heroic poem were fairly common throughout the eighteenth century, as Ian Watt demonstrates in The Rise of the Novel (1957),® but they provide evidence of the strength of the classical position generally. Homer and Virgil, as Clara Reeve points out in The Progress of Romance (1785), were among 'the School books, that generally make a part of the education of young men'. 7 Men 'of sense, and of learning' continued 'to venerate' them. 8 Clara Reeve does not blame this taste in itself (although she is troubled about effects on the sexual morality of the young: 'Virgil . . . informs them of many things they had better be ignorant of.—As a woman I cannot give this argument its full 1

Correspondence (1804), Vol. I V , p. 287. The History of Sir Charles Grandison, Anna Barbauld's edn. of 1810, Vol. V I , Letter xlv. 5 4 See The Felonious Treaty ( 1 7 1 1 ) , p. 17. P. 26. » Œuvres Computes (1883-5), Vol. V I I I , Chapter i, p. 3 1 3 . 7 • See Chapter viii. Vol. II, p. 81. 8 Vol. I, pp. 17, 21. 1

7

T H E N A T U R E OF P R O S E

FICTION

1 ).

weight.—But a hint is sufficient . . .' W h a t seems to her to be absurd is that people who 'venerate the epic' should at the same time 'decry the romance'. 2 T h e fables 'of the old classic Poets' are often 'far more wild and extravagant, and infinitely more incredible'. 3 I n her view, the romance continued a tradition of fantasy and heroic adventure which the epic had begun. She herself was attracted by the inventive imagination of this tradition, although she admitted its frequent extravagance, and she thought too that on the whole it inculcated high standards of virtue and honour. Those eighteenth-century novelists w h o continued to lean on the epic reserved their disapproval for the romance, refusing to identify the one kind with the other and, unlike Clara Reeve, failing to see any inconsistency in enjoying 'the marvellous' when it was 'classical' and suspecting it when it was not. Fielding may have been aware that the apparent inconsistency needed some thinking out, but he is expert at leaving his reader in two minds about his real meaning. As his novels testify on almost every page, he went through the 'grand old fortifying curriculum' at Eton. W e expect him to be among those whom Clara Reeve describes as 'venerating the epic' while they 'decry the romance', and he seems to come up to expectation in the 'Author's Preface' to Joseph Andrews (1742). He places this work with Archbishop Fenelon's Telemaque (1699) in the same category as the Odyssey because, metre aside, these two narratives contain all the epic's 'other parts' as enumerated by Aristotle, i.e. 'fable, action, characters, sentiments and diction'. It is 'fairer and more reasonable' to relate Joseph Andrews to the epic 'from which it differs only in a single instance than to confound it with . . . the voluminous works, commonly called Romances, namely Clelia, Cleopatra, Astraea, Cassandra, the Grand Cyrus, and innumerable others, which contain, as I apprehend, very little instruction or entertainment'. 4 It is quite possible that Fielding is having as much fun at Aristotle's expense as he is at the expense of the romancers. It is hard indeed to think of any narrative which does not contain 'fable, action, characters, sentiments and diction'. W h a t is certain, however, is that Fielding expresses a general feeling about 1 Vol. II, p. 82. * Vol. I, p. 21.

»Vol. I, p. 17. See below, pp. 59-60.

4

8

T H E NOVEL AND T H E

MARVELLOUS

the romans de longue haleine composed in the preceding century which even the upholders of the romantic tradition show no hesitation in sharing. These voluminous works kept their enormous popularity in England and France until late in the seventeenth century, when they fell into the neglect from which they have never since recovered. Of Fielding's list of titles, the earliest is 'Astraea', written by Honoré D'Urfé (1567-1625), the first part appearing in 1607, the fifth and last, which, was never completed, in 1627. The full title of the book is L'Astrée, ou par plusieurs histoires et sous personnes de bergers et d'autres sont déduits les divers effets de l'honnête amitié—which may explain why it took so long to write. The story of the chequered loves of the shepherd Celadon and the shepherdess Astrée in the fifth century A.D. is told diffusely in a tiresome number of episodes, but then the narrative is no more than a framework for interminable discussions on the theme of virtuous love (l'honnête amitié). Although L'Astrée is strictly the only pastoral fiction, all the other books mentioned by Fielding derive from the same 'Arcadian' tradition, as Dunlop points out in his agreeable History of Fiction (1814). 1 The sentimental analysis and episodic structure recur in La Calprenède's (1614-63) Cassandre (1642-63) and Cléopatre (1646-57). Both are set in heroic antiquity and Cassandre, with Alexander the Great as its hero, runs to ten volumes. The two remaining books are by the most popular romancer of all, Mademoiselle Madeleine de Scudéry (1607-1701). Clélie (165460) is an 'histoire romaine', and Artamène, ou le Grand Cyrus (1649-53), another ten-volume novel, which rivalled in its enormous following even d'Urfé's L'Astrée, is set in the fifth century B.C. and deals with the wooing in disguise of the Princess of the Medes by the Persian conqueror, Cyrus. The English translation attracted hordes of enthusiastic readers, including Mrs. Pepys, whose husband reproved her for narrating 'long stories out of Grand Cyrus, which she would tell, though nothing to the purpose, nor in any good manner'. 2 'These were the books that pleased our grandmothers', says Clara Reeve, speaking in the 1

He seems to feel, however, that many of their elements originate in 'anterior and more spirited compositions': this is why he also relates them to the 'heroic' romance. See John Dunlop, The History of Fiction (1814), Chapter x. • See The Diary of Samuel Pepys, 12 May 1666.

9

T H E N A T U R E OF P R O S E

FICTION

person of Euphrasia in The Progress of Romance, adding that now (1785) such romances have 'become the lumber of a bookseller's shop, and are frequently seen to wrap a pound of sugar from the grocer's'. 1 It is obvious that Joseph Andrews has little in common with these works, from which Fielding seemingly derived so much less 'instruction and entertainment' than from 'the epic kind'. But 'instruction and entertainment' are not peculiar to the epic. An enthusiast for fiction like Dunlop is able to find 'a powerful instrument of virtue and happiness' in every kind of narrative from Theagenes and Charielea to the novels of Mrs. Radcliffe. Joseph Andrews is, in fact, as far from the Aeneid as it is from UAstree. As we have no evidence of what Homer's 'comic epic', the Margites, was really like, Fielding's fiction is to all intents and purposes just what he says it is: 'a new species of writing'. He runs counter to the Romance here in his first novel—written, as he tells us on his title-page, 'in imitation of the manner of Cervantes'—by making his characters not of high degree but of'inferior rank and consequently of inferior manners', and the 'sentiments and diction' not 'sublime' but 'ludicrous'. On the other hand, when he glances at the epic, he does so, as so often in his later novels, in order to make fun of it. Various mockheroic elements which are repeated in the pseudo-Virgilian similes and battle-pieces of Jonathan Wild (1743) and Tom Jones (1749), seem to indicate Fielding's amusement at epical extravagance quite as much as his humorous recognition that the prevailing temper of modern society is profoundly unheroic. Sometimes his play of irony suggests an even stronger feeling. In the first chapter of his moral fable, Jonathan Wild—indeed in the whole book—he indicts all heroic stories more ruthlessly even than Defoe or Richardson for propagating 'false honours, false glory and false religion'. Of course Fielding's irony points in various directions and this particular significance is not a primary one. There is, in any case, evidence throughout Fielding's fiction of a progressive movement away from burlesque and satire towards a different kind of art. Joseph Andrews soon ceases to be a simple parody of Pamela-, the second version of Jonathan Wild tones down the direct political satire and humanizes the theme; Tom Jones, experimental and tentative as 1

Sec The Progress of Romance, Vol. I, p. 70.

10

T H E NOVEL AND THE

MARVELLOUS

it so often appears, is nevertheless more closely organized than the picaresque, episodic Joseph Andrews-, while Amelia (1751) brings us face to face with an altogether new type of structure. Here Fielding seems to have passed beyond his preoccupation with literary 'kinds' and, even if he intends us to hear Virgilian echoes, as George Sherburn suggested in 1936, 1 his interest is now concentrated on the interplay of characters within a domestic setting. He is, in fact, beginning to depict 'such familiar things as pass every day before our eyes'—which Clara Reeve felt to be the true subject-matter of 'the Novel'—and he gratifies his 'love of the uncommon in human experience' simply by heightening the feeling in certain episodes and contriving a happy ending for the trials of the faithful Amelia and her wavering husband, Captain Booth. A more clear-cut attitude to romance and epic is apparently taken up by Tobias Smollett in his preface to Roderick Random (1748) where he gives a rapid sketch, as highly coloured as it is ferocious, of three phases in the evolution of prose fiction.2 In this moral fable, 'the Ancients' represent excellence, the writers of the romances are the villains, and Cervantes and his imitators come to the rescue. Since 'the Ancients . . . had seen so many remarkable events celebrated in verse by their best poets', there was at first little demand for prose fiction. Then came the dark ages, 'when the minds of men were debauched, by the imposition of priestcraft, to the utmost pitch of credulity'. In this depraved age, 'the authors of romance arose'. 3 Unable to match the ancient poets in point of genius they tried to excel them in invention and lost sight of probability. They appealed 'to the wonder rather than the judgment of their readers'. Instead of making their heroes 'dignified in sentiment and practice' they distinguished them by 'their bodily strength, activity and extravagance of behaviour'. Deplorable as the Romances were, people enjoyed reading them. At last Cervantes appeared and with one blow, 1 'Fielding's Amelia-. An Interpretation', ELH, Vol. I l l , pp. 1 - 1 4 . * See below, pp. 43-4. ' Warton in his 'A Stricture on Romantic Literature' also connects the rise of romance with the susceptibilities of a 'superstitious' age. See Warton's History of Poetry, ed. W. Carew Hazlitt (1871), Vol. I, Of the Origin of Romantic Fiction in Europe, pp. 247-8. See also Thomas Holcroft's preface to Alwyn: the Gentleman Comedian (1780), below, pp. 46-7.

11

T H E N A T U R E OF P R O S E

FICTION

by an inimitable piece of ridicule, reformed the taste of mankind, representing chivalry in the right point of view, and converting romance to purposes far more useful and entertaining, by making it assume the sock, and point out the follies of ordinary life. 1

Cervantes, Smollett goes on, was followed 'by other Spanish and French authors', especially 'Monsieur le Sage', whose Gil Bias de Santillane (1715-35) he gave the first English translation of in 1749. Yet in spite of the simplifications of this account, Smollett himself is as far from being a simple didactic realist as Cervantes or Le Sage. 2 His journalistic talents produce fiction which is sprawling, savage and often wildly fantastic in its comic invention. He frequently 'loses sight of probability', he certainly does not appeal more to the reader's 'judgment' than to his sense of 'wonder', and his characters are notorious for their 'extravagance of behaviour'. When we read in Peregrine Pickle of Commodore Trunnion's ride to his wedding on horseback we recognize at once the nature of Smollett's appeal for Dickens. 3 He did not attempt 'to strike a balance between the ordinary and the uncommon', but let invention rip. There may even be a distorted romanticism behind his cruelty and disgust. 'He writes like a man with a skin too few', is Walter Allen's comment in The English Novel ( 1 9 5 4 ) . 4

It may come as a surprise after reading Fielding's and Smollett's attempts to distinguish between different kinds of storytelling to find Thomas Holcroft, twenty or so years later, claiming in the preface to Alwyn: or the Gentleman Comedian (1780) that 'modern writers use the word Romance to signify a fictitious history of detached and independent adventures', and 'under that idea, call the Telemaque of Fenelon, and the Cyrus of Ramsay, 6 Romances'. Holcroft goes even further. Although 1 See below, p. 44. ' Cervantes hints at the limitations of his own anti-romanticism in the sixth chapter of Don Qtiixote. 3 See The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Vol. I, Chapter viii. 4 P. 65. 4 i.e., Andrew Michael Ramsay, A New Cyropaedia or The Travels of Cyrus (1727). See also the same author's A Discourse upon Epic Poetry, printed as preface to Archbishop Fénelon's The Adventures of Telemachus, the Son of Ulysses, Ozell's translation, 1720.

12

THE NOVEL AND THE

MARVELLOUS

they belong to 'a different species' from Le Grand Cyrus and Telemaque both Gil Bias and Roderick Random 'come under the same denomination'. In this judgment all are Romances. Smollett would have been astonished at this opinion. But if we do not allow the term 'Romance' to lead us astray, Holcroft's argument as a whole makes sense. He places these books together not because they resemble each other in their fantasy but because they are all guilty of one kind of extravagance. T h e y all lack unity and coherence of design. As long as their incidents are 'related with spirit, the intention is answered'; their adventures 'pass before the view for no other purpose than to amuse by their peculiarity', and they need not affect 'the main story' — ' i f there should be one', Holcroft pointedly adds. A Novel, on the other hand, is 'another kind of work. Unity of design is its character.' Its incidents are 'entertaining in themselves' but they are combined in a special way and 'made to form a whole'. ' A n unnecessary circumstance becomes a blemish' because it may detract 'from the simplicity which is requisite to exhibit the whole to advantage'. This is subtler and more helpful than Smollett's description of a novel, in the preface to Ferdinand, Count Fathom (1753), as 'a large diffused picture' which depends on 'a principal personage to attract the attention, unite the incidents, unwind the clue of the labyrinth and at last close the scene by virtue of his own importance'. But we should notice that it is not its 'epic regularity' which Holcroft has in mind when he separates 'the Novel' from 'the R o m a n c e ' . Holcroft, like Fielding, had written plays and he found what he needed in the necessities of dramatic structure. Thus, as in dramatic works, those circumstances which do not tend either to the illustration or the forwarding of the main story, or, which do not mark some character, or person in the drama, are to be esteemed unnecessary. Hence it appears that the Novel is a work much more difficult than the Romance, and justly deserves to be ranked with those dramatic works whose utility is generally allowed. 1 Holcroft, the associate of Godwin, translator of Goethe's Hermann und Dorothea (1801) and composer of the Memoirs which Hazlitt was to complete and edit after his death, heralds an age 1

See below, p. 47.

13

T H E N A T U R E OF P R O S E

FICTION

which was to look with a more dispassionate eye on Epic and Romance and was gradually to become familiar with the idea that a novel could be an organized structure, different in kind from either. There is still little sign of this equilibrium in Clara Reeve's The Progress of Romance, published five years after Alwyn, but she uses 'the Novel' as a term indicating a particular literary kind with a fresh note of confidence: T h e Novel is a picture of real life and manners, and of the times in which it is written. T h e R o m a n c e in lofty and elevated language, describes what never happened nor is likely to happen. T h e Novel gives a familiar relation of such things as pass every day before our eyes. . . - 1

Clara Reeve's discussion of the 'Progress of Romance' reflects a mood that makes itself increasingly felt throughout the later eighteenth century. Her study owes a good deal, as she admits, to earlier commentators. Hurd, Beattie, Percy and Mallet are all acknowledged or drawn on and it is obviously of importance to her that these writers, in their enthusiasm for the 'romantic', seek to establish the continuity of romantic fantasy from the classical stories and the Eastern tales to the days of chivalry and beyond. Without their specialized knowledge, she nevertheless makes a brave effort to cut her own path through the tangled undergrowth of story-telling from Homer to her own times, enlivening her argument by casting it into the form of a dialogue between three characters. T h e chief of these, Euphrasia, who speaks for the author, maintains that Homer was the parent of R o m a n c e ; where ever his works have been known, they have been imitated b y the Poets and R o m a n c e writers. — I look upon Virgil as the most successful of his Imitators. 2

Hortensius, who repiesents a more orthodox view, objects that 'this is what I call degrading both these divine men', 3 but Euphrasia is undeterred. 'I venerate Homer as much as one unlearned in his own language can do', she allows, but roundly claims that there is little to choose between him and the author of Sinbad the Sailor's adventures. Both show 'variety of characters', both relate 'marvellous adventures', and in the history of See below, p. 47. * See The Progress of Romance, Vol. I, p. 19. » Ibid. 1

»4

THE NOVEL AND THE

MARVELLOUS

Sinbad 'we have most of the adventures that Ulysses meets with in the Odyssey\ In short, 'Epic Poetry is the parent of Romance'. 1 Clara Reeve, then, in direct contrast to Smollett, is openly attracted by medieval and renaissance romances. It is 'modern' romances which, in common with her contemporaries, she finds less pleasing. The tales of D'Urfe and Madeleine de Scudery were superior to the old romances in some ways, particularly, perhaps, because 'they were written with more regularity, and brought nearer to probability'—what she objected to in them was that they mixed truth and fact insidiously, building 'fictitious stories' on 'obscure parts of true history' so that young people 'imbibed such absurd ideas of facts and persons, as were very difficult to be rectified'. 2 But in spite of her sense of the perils of extravagance and her strait-laced concern for the morals of 'the young person', she remains cool about novels whose simple ambition it is to show vice punished and virtue rewarded. 3 She wants, as she explains in the preface to her own novel, The Old English Baron, 'to unite the various merits and graces of the ancient Romance and modern Novel'. 4 T o achieve this end, she says, there is required a sufficient degree of the marvellous to excite attention; enough of the manners of real life to give an air of probability to the work; and enough of the pathetic to engage the heart in its behalf.5 It is left to Scott finally to tidy up the novelist's remaining confusions about epic, romance and the novel. In Clara Reeve's definitions of the novel and the romance he would not perhaps have found much with which to disagree. Romance, as he describes it in his essay on the subject, is 'a fictitious narrative in prose or verse: the interest of which turns upon marvellous and uncommon incidents', while a novel is 'a fictitious narrative, differing from the Romance, because the events are accommodated to the ordinary train of human events, and the modern state of society'.* There may be compositions 'which it is difficult to assign precisely or exclusively to the one class or the other; and which in fact, partake of the nature of both'. As an 1 Vol. I, pp. 19, 22-5. ' Vol. II, pp. 41-2. 6 Ibid.

Vol. I, pp. 64-5. See below, p. 45. • See below, p. 49.

2 4

15

THE

NATURE

OF

PROSE

FICTION

article on M a d a m e C o t t i n ' s Amelie Mansfield h a d already put it in 1809, novels are, after all, 'often "romantic", not indeed b y the relation of w h a t is obviously m i r a c u l o u s or impossible, but b y d e v i a t i n g , t h o u g h p e r h a p s insensibly, b e y o n d the bounds of p r o b a b i l i t y or consistency'. 1 It is w i t h certain underlying assumptions in studies like C l a r a R e e v e ' s The Progress of Romance, H u r d ' s Letters on Chivalry or P e r c y ' s a n d Ritson's introductions to their various anthologies, that S c o t t is in real disagreement and in discussing this difference he shows his usual c o m m o n sense. H e dissents in p a r t i c u l a r f r o m their 'levelling proposition' that E p i c a n d R o m a n c e b e l o n g u l t i m a t e l y to the same class. H e recognizes, as A d d i s o n , V o l t a i r e a n d B l a c k w e l l recognized before h i m , the irreducible difference in quality b e t w e e n 'the marvellous' o f the earliest heroic p o e m s a n d the fantasy of their successors in the r o m a n t i c kind. T h e feeling, w h i c h was m a d e f a m i l i a r to a later age b y W . P . K e r , that ' E p i c ' implies some w e i g h t a n d massiveness w h i l e ' R o m a n c e means n o t h i n g if it does not c o n v e y some notion o f mystery a n d fantasy', 2 had been experienced b y A d d i s o n : s p e a k i n g o f the epic's p o w e r to combine astonishment a n d belief, h e goes on, 'if the fable is only p r o b a b l e , it differs n o t h i n g from a true history, if it is only m a r vellous, it is no better t h a n a r o m a n c e ' . 3 T h e feeling is again c o n v e y e d t h r o u g h Blackwell's regretful admissions that 'polishi n g diminishes a L a n g u a g e . . . it coops a M a n u p in a C o r n e r . . .' a n d that Ariosto a n d T a s s o quitting life, betook themselves to Aerial Beings and Utopian Characters, and filled their Works with Charms and Visions, the modern Supplements of the Marvellous and the Sublime. 4 F o r similar reasons, V o l t a i r e sets L u c i a n ' s treatment of the ene n c h a n t e d w o o d in the Pharsalia far a b o v e Tasso's portrayal o f a kindred subject in the eighteenth book of the Gerusalemme Liberata.6 L i k e these writers, Scott recognizes the s u p e r n a t u r a l g r a n d e u r of the epic, w h i l e responding to the pleasing a p p a r i 1

See below, pp. 49-50.

2

See W . P. K e r , Epic and Romance

3

Spectator,

4

An Enquiry

(1897), Chapter i.

No. 315. into the Life

and

Writings

of Homer

(1735), pp. 58-9, 6 8 - 9 .

• 'Essai sur la Poésie E p i q u e ' , C h a p t e r viii, Œuvres V o l . V I I I , pp. 3 4 3 - 6 .

16

Complètes

(1883-5),

THE NOVEL AND THE

MARVELLOUS

tions of the romance. He knows that in some works there are properties belonging to each kind which may be almost equally balanced, but our taste and habits readily acknowledge as complete and absolute a difference between the Epopeia and Romance, as can exist betwixt two distinct species of the same generic class.1 The preoccupation ofeighteenth-century novelists with the real relationship of the novel, the epic and the romance had its uses. It kept the creative imagination exposed to the 'appeal to wonder' of the old story-tellers, even in the teeth of the disapproval of reason or the moral sense with their allied demands that probability should be strictly kept. Yet this tug of war of allegiances had obvious disadvantages between 1760 and 1790. Attracted on the one hand by the literary possibilities o f ' a familiar relation of such things as pass every day' and, on the other, by the appeal of 'nature strongly featured and probability closely bordering on the marvellous', 2 the novelists of these years only too easily fell into the trite or the extravagant, 'the Scylla and Charybdis of those who deal in fiction', as Coleridge puts it in his review of Mrs. Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794). 3 The work of the earlier novelists of the eighteenth century has a drive and coherence from their excitement at realizing the congenial possibilities of the 'new species of writing'. They were pioneers. In the novels of Defoe, Fielding and Sterne the tastes and sensibility of their authors are everywhere felt. But the flood of fiction which poured into English bookshops and circulating libraries in the last thirty-five years of the eighteenth century shows little of their distinction. We find that novelists who commented interestingly on the nature of the novel did not themselves produce outstanding novels. Clara Reeve's The Old English Baron (1777), Holcroft's Alwyn (1785) and Richard Cumberland's Henry (1795) are patchy at best. Nor did the sentimental humanitarians, Henry Mackenzie and 1 See his 'Essay on Romance', Miscellaneous Prose Works (1882), Vol. V I , pp. 138-9. He makes a similar distinction between Epic and Romance in the preface to The Bridal of Triermain (1813). 4 See Clara Reeve and Richard Cumberland, below, pp. 47-8. 1 First published in The Critical Review, August 1794; reprinted in Coleridge, Select Poetry and Prose (1933), ed. Stephen Potter, pp. 203-4.

17

T H E N A T U R E OF P R O S E

FICTION

H e n r y Brooke, m u c h r e m e d y matters w i t h The Man of Feeling ( 1 7 7 1 ) a n d The Fool of Quality ( 1 7 6 6 - 7 0 ) . S i g n s o f i m p r o v e m e n t a p p e a r w i t h G o d w i n ' s Caleb Williams ( 1 7 9 5 ) — p e r h a p s t h e most o r i g i n a l n o v e l in the later e i g h t e e n t h c e n t u r y — a n d w i t h the books o f F a n n y B u r n e y a n d M a r i a E d g e w o r t h , w h o m J a n e A u s t e n praised in h e r f a m o u s d e f e n c e o f the n o v e l in t h e fifth c h a p t e r o f Northanger Abbey ( 1 8 1 8 ) . A nice e q u i l i b r i u m o f all its elements does not in f a c t a p p e a r in t h e E n g l i s h n o v e l b e f o r e J a n e A u s t e n , w h o w i n s a t r i u m p h for the A u g u s t a n virtues o f prop r i e t y a n d p r o p o r t i o n w i t h o u t in the least r e f u s i n g to g r a t i f y o u r ' l o v e o f the u n c o m m o n ' . O f J a n e A u s t e n ' s f i v e n o v e l s , three are ' C i n d e r e l l a ' stories in w h i c h the h e r o i n e rises t h r o u g h lovea t t a c h m e n t s f r o m s o m e l o w l y or h u m i l i a t i n g s o c i a l position to p r i d e o f p l a c e a n d f o r t u n e . J a n e A u s t e n transposes t h e pleasura b l y ' r o m a n t i c ' i n t o the k e y o f o r d i n a r y e v e r y d a y e x p e r i e n c e , m a k i n g h e r t r a n s f o r m a t i o n o f f o r t u n e a p p e a r , t o use C l a r a R e e v e ' s w o r d s , 'such as m a y h a p p e n to o u r f r i e n d or t o o u r selves'. 1 W h e n she subjects M r s . R a d c l i f f e a n d t h e sensational novelists to her ridicule, she does so b e c a u s e t h e y fail t o 'strike the b a l a n c e b e t w e e n t h e u n c o m m o n a n d t h e o r d i n a r y ' , not b e c a u s e t h e y d a r e to d e a l in t h e ' u n c o m m o n ' itself. I f it w e r e otherwise, she w o u l d h a r d l y h a v e t a k e n to story-telling o n h e r own account. B u t the d i s c r i m i n a t i o n o f h e r a r t is v e r y d i f f e r e n t i n k i n d f r o m later a t t e m p t s to 'strike the b a l a n c e ' . T h e s e a r e o f t e n the result o f a n e w t e n d e n c y , q u i t e alien to the e i g h t e e n t h - c e n t u r y n o v e l , to p r o b e the n a t u r e o f this h u m a n desire for ' t h e u n c o m m o n ' a n d ' t h e e x c e p t i o n a l ' a n d its c o n n e c t i o n w i t h ' s u c h t h i n g s as m a y pass e v e r y d a y ' . T h e i m p u l s e to i n d u l g e a l o n g i n g f o r the u n c o m m o n is o f course e n c o u r a g e d b y c e r t a i n forces at w o r k in the n i n e t e e n t h c e n t u r y a n d this i n d u l g e n c e is c l e a r l y e v i d e n t in G e o r g e S a n d ' s e a r l y novels a n d C h a r l o t t e B r o n t e ' s Jane Eyre (184.7) a n ( i Villette (1853). S t e n d h a l , h o w e v e r , is t h e best exa m p l e of the self-critical artist w h o sets o u t to p o r t r a y in his fictional c h a r a c t e r s w h a t h a p p e n s w h e n this l o n g i n g for ' t h e e x c e p t i o n a l ' conflicts w i t h the d e m a n d s o f c o n t e m p o r a r y society. S t e n d h a l , in o n e sense, belongs to that l o n g F r e n c h t r a d i t i o n w h i c h extends f r o m M a d a m e de L a f a y e t t e to Proust a n d f a v o u r s the m i n u t e analysis o f e v e r y aspect o f amitié, honnête or o t h e r 1 See below, p. 51. 18

THE NOVEL AND THE

MARVELLOUS

wise. His original contribution to this tradition is the selfconsciousness which enables him to do justice, especially in Le Rouge et le Noir (1831), to the logique which he admired and the espagnolisme which fascinated him. Like his creator, Stendhal's Julien Sorel—to use phrases which Flaubert applied to himself 1 — i s 'a lover of great eagle flights', of 'sonority', of the panache and glory of the heroic, which are epitomized for him in the person of Napoleon. This passionate attachment to the heroic and the grandiose of course runs counter to the unheroic values of bourgeois society. T o this society Sorel wishes to stand in the relationship of a conqueror. He goes into battle wearing a priest's cassock instead of a scarlet cloak and carrying a copy of Moliere's Tartuffe. Here 'the uncommon' and 'the ordinary' comment obliquely on each other—the criticism of society in the novel is as illuminating as the analysis of Sorel's romantic attachment to 'the exceptional' (and, one may add, as devastating in its irony). T h e more finished the artist, the more conscientiously he tries to heighten the effect of this commentary. Flaubert is an obvious example and so is Conrad, who deliberately explores in his characters human attitudes which his own 'romantic feeling of reality' helps him to understand. This feeling may be a curse but when disciplined by a sense of personal responsibility and a recognition of the hard facts of existence shared with the rest of mankind becomes but a point of view from which the very shadows of life appear endowed with an internal glow. . . . It is none the worse for the knowledge of the truth. . . , 2 T h e reader may be just as strongly affected by the counterpoint of 'the ordinary' and 'the uncommon' when they are handled by a less self-conscious artist. Henry James found that 'in the men of the largest responding imagination before the human scene'—he mentions Scott, Balzac and 'the coarse, comprehensive, prodigious Z o l a ' — t h e imaginative current remains 'extraordinarily rich and mixed, washing us successively with the warm wave of the near and familiar and the tonic shock . . . of the far and strange'. 3 Maupassant agrees with James about Zola: . . . child of romanticism that he is, and himself a romantic in 1

See below, p. 51.

* See below, p. 54.

'9

3

See below, p. 55.

T H E N A T U R E OF P R O S E

FICTION

method, he has a tendency to the lyrical, a need to exalt, to enlarge . . . Moreover he is well aware of this tendency in himself and fights it unremittingly only to succumb again and again. 1 T h e harshness which Zola uses in portraying contemporary society—a harshness which was to be largely responsible for a belief that 'realism' was necessarily incompatible with 'idealism' in art—can indeed be felt as an expression of sour romanticism. When they tried to incorporate 'the marvellous' into their fiction, what the primitive novelists sensed and the great artists have always succeeded in showing us is that a certain kind of fantasy is a necessary and a valuable ingredient in fiction. This fantasy does not provide a means of escape into a world of fixed ideals—the world conjured up by so many heroic and chivalrous romances—but, in Shelley's words, it 'quickens and enlarges the mind'. T h e novel furthers this quickening process by attempting to realize the wonderful and strange in terms of the near and familiar.

II

The Novel as a Portrait of Life

to create the illusion of'reality' while gratifying our 'love of the uncommon in human experience', the novelist, as we have seen, holds to the Aristotelian view that he must make us believe in the 'probability' of his characters and events. 'Every good author will confine himself within the bounds of probability', writes Fielding. 2 He is at one with Richardson in holding that the novelist should avoid, if possible, extremes of virtue and vice in his characters together with such happenings as 'sudden conversions', which, Richardson says emphatically, have 'neither art, nor nature, nor even probability, in them'. 3 'There is required . . . enough of the manners of real life to give an air of probability to the work', says Clara Reeve when she comments on Horace Walpole's attempt 'to unite the various merits and graces of the ancient Romance and modern Novel'. 4 In 'the fields of fancy, sunt certi denique fines', maintains Richard Cumberland, and 'it requires a nice discernment to find them out, and a cautious temper not to step beyond them'. 5 AccordIN O R D E R

1 4

See below, p. 53. See below, p. 45.

3 See below, p. 61. * See below, p. 61. 6 See below, p. 48.

20

T H E N O V E L AS A PORTRAIT OF LIFE

ing to Hawthorne's definition, a novel 'is presumed to aim at a very minute fidelity, not merely to the possible, but to the probable and ordinary course of man's experience'. 1 Maupassant, who is opposed to the theories of scientific realism, emphasizes nevertheless that the principal effect which the novelist seeks is 'the feeling of simple reality'. 2 Some novelists who seem to stray beyond 'the bounds of probability' take care to explain that they are not really doing so at all. Dickens decides that such 'accidents' as Madame Defarge's death in A, Tale of Two Cities (1859) are 'inseparable from the passion and action of the character' and 'consistent with the entire design'. 3 Dostoevsky implies that it is our own notions of probability which are at fault if we find his events 'exceptional'.* T o Trollope, the distinction which some Victorian readers made between his own 'realistic' work and the 'sensational' stories of 'my friend Wilkie Collins' seemed artificial. 'I do not know that a novel can be too sensational', he says, provided that 'truth of description, truth of character, human truth as to men and women' are maintained. 6 Recent commentators on the novel have helped us to understand more clearly than before some of the reasons which first made story-tellers wish to include in their fiction 'enough of the manners of real life to give an air of probability to the work'. Ian Watt, for example, in The Rise of the Novel, draws an interesting parallel between the new procedures of investigation adopted by the great seventeenth-century innovators of philosophical realism—notably Descartes and Locke—and the narrative methods which the first novelists employed in their 'new species of writing'. Arnold Kettle, on the other hand, in An Introduction to the English Novel (1951) examines the effects on literature of the social changes which were the consequences of the break-down of feudalism. 'The impulse towards realism in prose literature', he tells us, 'was part and parcel of the breakdown of feudalism and of the revolution that transformed the feudal world.' 4 He reminds us of the upsurge of courageous enterprise and creative energy in those crucial periods of 'revolutionary transformation', the sixteenth and seventeenth 1 3 4

See below, p. 5 1 . See below, p. 60. See below, p. 68.

* See below, p. 70. See below, pp. 67-8. • Vol. I, p. 25. 5

21

T H E N A T U R E OF P R O S E

FICTION

centuries. I n these centuries it is in p o e t r y t h a t m e n g i v e t h e fullest expression to t h e m o v i n g spirit o f the a g e , b u t 'in the e i g h t e e n t h c e n t u r y it is in prose'. T h e task o f such writers as F i e l d i n g was not so much to adapt themselves to a revolutionary situation as to cull and examine what the revolution had produced. 1 T h e i r task w a s to ' t a k e stock', to try to g i v e a n ' o b j e c t i v e c o n trolled a n d conscious v i e w o f r e a l i t y ' , a n d they used prose bec a u s e o f its c a p a c i t y to ' m a k e c o h e r e n t s o m e f a c e t o f o u t e r r e a l i t y a l r e a d y a p p r e h e n d e d ' . I n d o i n g so they w e r e f u r t h e r i n g a n advanced, subtle, precise form of human expression, presupposing a formidable self-consciousness, a delicacy of control which it has taken human beings untold centuries to acquire. 1 T h i s seems to b e a r e a s o n a b l e v i e w to take, even if A r n o l d K e t t l e also e m p h a s i z e s the q u i c k e n e d f a n t a s y w h i c h in R a b e l a i s ' Gargantua and Pantagruel ( 1 5 3 2 - 5 ) a n d in C e r v a n t e s ' Don Quixote (1605) b e g i n s to r e p l a c e the less s t i m u l a t i n g i n v e n t i o n o f s o m e o f the c r u d e r m e d i e v a l r o m a n c e s w h e r e ' a static, idealist m o r a l c o d e ' is i m p o s e d u p o n 'the a c t u a l m o v e m e n t a n d c o m p l e x i t y o f h u m a n b e h a v i o u r ' . B u t it is difficult to a v o i d o v e r - s i m p l i f i c a tion i n discussing a s u b j e c t so c o m p l e x as t h e n a t u r e o f r e a l i s m in f i c t i o n , a n d A r n o l d K e t t l e ' s final s t a t e m e n t o f the p r o b l e m w h y t h e n o v e l arose w h e n it did is p e r h a p s t o o g e n e r a l to b e c o m p l e t e l y satisfactory. ' W h y d i d the m e d i e v a l r o m a n c e not c o n t i n u e to satisfy the needs o f the m e n a n d w o m e n o f the b o u r g e o i s revolution?' he asks, a n d finds ' a t b o t t o m ' t h a t ' t h e b o u r g e o i s i e , in o r d e r to w i n its f r e e d o m f r o m the f e u d a l o r d e r , h a d to t e a r the veil o f r o m a n c e f r o m the f a c e o f f e u d a l i s m ' . 3 I n 'bourgeois man', he adds, every need and instinct urged him to expose and undermine feudal standards and sanctities. Unlike the feudal ruling class he did not feel himself immediately threatened by revelations of the truth about the world and so he was not afraid of realism. 4 I a n W a t t rightly stresses that the 'issue w h i c h t h e n o v e l raises m o r e s h a r p l y t h a n a n y o t h e r literary f o r m ' is ' t h e p r o b l e m o f the c o r r e s p o n d e n c e b e t w e e n the literary w o r k a n d t h e r e a l i t y 1 3

Vol. I, pp. 37-8. Ibid.

2 4

22

Ibid. Ibid.

T H E N O V E L A S A P O R T R A I T OF

LIFE

which it imitates'. 1 Because 'this is essentially an epistemological problem' he feels that the nature of the novel's realism, whether in the early eighteenth century or later, can best be clarified by the help of those professionally concerned with the analysis of concepts, the philosophers.2 Philosophy is one thing and literature another, but Ian Watt's analysis places a useful emphasis on the shift in literature and life from the 'objective, social and public orientation of the classical world' to an orientation which is more 'subjective, individualistic and private' 3 — t h e transition period being the eighteenth century itself. T h e philosophical tendency to regard 'the pursuit of truth as a wholly individual matter' has a parallel in the novel's rejection of the traditional plots of classical and renaissance epic: Defoe and Richardson are the first great writers in our literature who did not take their plots from mythology, history, legend or previous literature. In this they differ from Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare and Milton . . .* Individual experience begins 'to replace collective tradition as the ultimate arbiter of reality'. 6 Again, the methods of characterization of the eighteenth-century novelists run parallel with the new philosophical emphasis on the supreme importance of individual consciousness and identity. Ian Watt is interested in the names which early novelists choose to give their characters. T h e type-name survives in Fielding (Allworthy, Heartfree, T h w a c k u m ) but Fielding also finds names (Western, Amelia Booth, Mrs. Waters) which suggest that characters are to be regarded as 'particular individuals in the contemporary social environment'. 8 Certainly, it is the individual peculiarities of temperament, the Shandy-ism, so to speak, of human nature, which increasingly attracts the novelist's attention. He makes it more and more his business 'to number the streaks of the tulip', disregarding the views of Shaftesbury and Johnson alike, both of whom felt that it was not the business of artists to deal in 1

See The Rise of the Novel, p. 11. P. 176. »Ibid. 3

23

2

Ibid. P. 14. «Pp. 18-21.

4

T H E N A T U R E OF PROSE FICTION

particulars, or to become, as Shaftesbury says, 'mere' facepainters and historians. 1 The novelist brings the same particularizing tendencies, logically enough, to his treatment of place and time. Locke's 'principle of individuation', Ian Watt reminds us, was that of existence at a particular locus in space and time: since, as he wrote, 'ideas become general by separating from them the circumstances of time and place,' so they become particular only when both these circumstances are specified. In the same way the characters of the novel can only be individualized if they are set in a background of particularized time and place.2 Thus the novelist sets his scene with care, describing it with increasing minuteness of detail, and he chooses a particular period in time for the unfolding of his supposed events. T h e novelists' management of these elements will be discussed at greater length in a subsequent chapter dealing with his craftsmanship. In this context it is enough to add that almost every narrative technique which he uses has behind it the same intentions which have been noticed here. The autobiographical memoir, the epistolary method, the 'dramatized consciousness', the withdrawal of the author from the scene, the stream of consciousness; all these methods are designed to heighten the desired effect of authenticity and verisimilitude by locating experience in the individual consciousness, and by making that consciousness operate in a particular place at a particular time. These tendencies helped to encourage that effect of 'Dutch minuteness' in the novel which even the earliest critics of eighteenth-century fiction recognized as its most characteristic 'novelty'. Mrs. Barbauld discovers in Richardson 'the accuracy and finish of a Dutch painter . . . content to produce effects by the patient labour of minuteness', 3 and Scott echoes this when he compares Richardson's art with 'paintings which have been very minutely laboured'. 4 Mario Praz in The Hero in Eclipse in Victorian Fiction (1956) tends to overlook the eighteenth-century 1

See Samuel Johnson, Rasselas (1759), Chapter x, and Shaftesbury, Essayon the Freedom of Wit and Humour (1709), Part I V , section iii. 2 7Tie Rise of the Novel, p. 2 1 . 3 See below, Part I I I , p. 309. 4 See below, Part I I I , pp. 366-7.

24

THE

NOVEL

AS A P O R T R A I T

OF

LIFE

literary origins of this care for detail, but his study d e m o n strates the support it f o u n d from R o m a n t i c i s m . H e shows, for example, that G e o r g e Eliot's admiration for the 'rare, precious quality o f truthfulness' w h i c h she finds in D u t c h paintings is representative of a g e n e r a l V i c t o r i a n taste for a p h o t o g r a p h i c or more than p h o t o g r a p h i c a c c u r a c y and for h u m b l e domestic subjects. 1 T h e psychological reasons w h i c h G e o r g e Eliot gives for her preference for certain D u t c h paintings are to the p o i n t here. S h e recognizes t h a t the artist's inborn delight in e l a b o r a tion needs to be disciplined in the interests of truth: T h e pencil is conscious of a delightful felicity in drawing a griffin — t h e longer the claws and the larger the wings, the better; but that marvellous felicity which we mistook for genius is apt to forsake us when we want to draw a real unexaggerated lion. Examine your words well, and you will find that even when you have no motive to be false, it is a very hard thing to say the exact truth, even about your own immediate feelings—much harder than to say something fine about them which is not the exact truth. 2 In its care for precision in the statement of feeling this reminds us of Stendhal's letter to his sister, Pauline, a b o u t the difficulty w h i c h the writer experiences in saying 'exactly' w h a t he intends without falsification or inflation of a n y kind. 3 But in addition to the delight afforded to her b y the 'rare, precious q u a l i t y of truthfulness' in m a n y D u t c h paintings, G e o r g e Eliot finds a source of delicious sympathy in these faithful pictures of a monotonous, homely existence, which has been the fate of so many more among my fellow-mortals than a life of pomp and of absolute indigence, of tragic suffering or of world-stirring action. 4 G e o r g e Eliot is expressing here the interest in the o r d i n a r y or 'Bedford' level of society w h i c h was one of the distinctive c h a r acteristics o f the nineteenth-century novelist, w h e t h e r in E n g land, F r a n c e or Russia. T h e effects of this interest, w h e t h e r g o o d or bad, on the quality of fiction were far-reaching. T h e y extended the novel's range of subject-matter a n d a d d e d to the importance of its social c o m m e n t . But they were also to be responsible for some d a m a g i n g misconceptions a b o u t the nature 1 Pp. 322-7. 2 Adam Bede (1859), Book Sccond, C h a p t e r xvii. 4 Adam Bede, loc. cit. * See Part II below, pp. 127-8.

25

T H E N A T U R E OF P R O S E

FICTION

of 'realism', in particular the notion that by 'realism' is meant an exclusive concern with 'low' subjects and the seamier side of human life. From this position it is a short distance to the fallacy that 'the real' and 'the ideal' are incompatible in art. 1 The repercussions of this social interest were first felt in France in the art of Balzac and Stendhal (Balzac's enthusiastic salute to the otherwise neglected Stendhal is very largely a gesture of sympathetic recognition*). In England, they were felt in the vigorous social novels of the i84o's and the early 1850's—in, for instance, Dickens's Dombey and Son (1846-8), Bleak House (1852-3) and Hard Times (1854), Mrs. Gaskell's Mary Barton (1848) and North and South (1854-5), and Charles Kingsley's Yeast (1848) and Alton Locke (1850). In Russia, the novel may be said to have come into being as a direct result of this social concern. Gogol is a pioneer and Dostoevsky's remark, 'We have all come from under Gogol's Greatcoat', acknowledges the originality in Russia of the portrayals of humble life in The Greatcoat and Dead Souls (both of 1842). It was in France that writers were to allow this new range of subject-matter to lead them to some damaging theories about the function of the novel. Balzac's grandiose scheme to leave behind a complete record of every aspect of his own life and times is itself an extraordinary project, and so is the conception on which it is based: that human beings who make up society can be 'scientifically' classified. There is, however, a tremendous imaginative vitality which lifts individual novels in Balzac's Comédie Humaine above the limitations of his programme. Zola's scientific programme is a more serious matter since it is more ruthlessly followed. Zola really believed that Balzac had successfully proved the novelist's obligation to carry out 'experiments' which would illustrate the laws of heredity and environment—he cites La Cousine Bette (1846) as an example 3 —and he tried to put his own theories into practice in the huge RougonMacquart series (1871-93). This brings us to the windy and pro1

See Stevenson's discussion of this problem below, pp. 72-3. » See H. de Balzac, 'Etude sur M . Beyle', Œuvres Complètes (1873), Vol. X X I I I , pp. 687-738. Reprinted, with Stendhal's reply, as preface to C. K . Scott-Moncrieff's translation of Stendhal's The Charterhouse of Parma, Phoenix Library, 1 9 3 1 . 5 See below, pp. 68-9.

26

T H E N O V E L AS A P O R T R A I T O F

LIFE

longed controversy over Realism a n d Naturalism, of w h i c h Zola's o w n Le Roman Expérimental ( 1880) is one o f the key documents. It is difficult now to believe in the bitterness released b y these controversies, in the 'telegrams a n d anger' w h i c h they p r o d u c e d . T h e nature of the attacks which the Realists h a d to endure c a n be j u d g e d b y their major principles of defence. T h e y asserted that the final unflattering impression of h u m a n i t y left b y their fantastic accumulation of d e t a i l — d e t a i l in Balzac ' o f every physical feature and material object that the novelist could lay hands on', in Z o l a of physiological processes 'to the point of nausea' 1 — w a s the effect of an observation more dispassionately truthful than any that fiction had hitherto attempted. T h e y then h e d g e d , asserting defensively that this 'scientific' observation was not 'simply photographic'. 2 I n fact, of course, their practice was very often m u c h at odds with their theory. Balzac, having laid d o w n a principle of scientific investigation, 'then elaborated a picture so violently coloured that the reason must reject it, t h o u g h the imagination m a y accept it'. H e writes about his characters 'with an intense excitement'. 3 O n the fascinating romanticism of 'the coarse, comprehensive, prodigious Z o l a ' w e h a v e already discovered Maupassant and Henry J a m e s in agreement. E v e n Z o l a himself has to a d m i t in the end that it is the artist's i n d i v i d u a l sensibility and not his systematic a c c u m u l a t i o n of realistic social detail that gives value to his work. 4 I n fact it is impossible for the artist to confine himself in the strait-waistcoat o f any kind of 'scientific realism'. It is for this reason that so m a n y novelists dislike insignificant detail. Tolstoy ridicules the total recall of the appearances, faces, garments, gestures, sounds, apartments of the acting persons . . . 5 Dostoevsky takes a similar a t t i t u d e — Arid observation of every day trivialities I have long since ceased to regard as realism. 8 1 See Geoffrey Brereton, A Short History of French Literature (1954), pp. 215-16, 225. * See, for example, Zola's defence, quoted below, p. 70. 3 A Short History of French Literature, p. 218. 4 See below, p. 70. 6 See below, p. 68. ' See below, pp. 74-5.

27

T H E N A T U R E OF P R O S E

FICTION

Instead of relying on these 'trivialities' he gives us situations which 'most people regard as fantastic and lacking in universality' but which, he tells us, '/ hold to be the inmost essence of truth'. 1 The vivid impression left by his work does not derive solely from the use it makes of violent acts which were suggested to him by 'real' newspaper reports or by stories which he heard from his fellow-prisoners in Siberia. It owes as much to those strange elements—the hallucinations, nightmares and legends—which contribute to the feeling that his characters and events stand for more than themselves, that, as Mr. Forster says, 'infinity attends them', that their 'ordinary world reaches back'. 2 A similar enlarging effect is obtained in the novels of Hardy, Emily Bronte, Melville, Conrad and Mr. Forster himself, where, at certain moments, things perceived are given a special significance which transforms them into symbols of universal value. The genius for 'particularity' to which the English novel owes much of its vitality and richness of texture is again a gift of the poetic imagination rather than the effect of dispassionate and 'scientific' observation. This is as apparent in the impressionism of Richardson's descriptive method in Pamela and Clarissa as it is in the verbal fantasy of Dickens's Mrs. Gamp, an achievement which cannot be explained as the 'Beiedermeier' art of Professor Praz's thesis. It is true that the English novelist's resistance to literary formulas and his slow development as a selfconscious artist have usually protected this inventiveness at the expense of his acquiring valuable formal disciplines. Many of his novels are indeed 'large, loose, baggy monsters', and his unaristocratically lavish display can be distasteful, especially when his social conscience tells him to load his detail with pathetic or moral significance. Even so, our first great self-conscious artists in the novel, Conrad and James—neither of whom, as it happens, is English by birth—do not allow their distaste for this excess and their admiration for the French novelist's sense of form to blind them to the fact that the French Realist doctrines stultify imagination and interfere with poetic truth. The immediate successors of James and Conrad, however, were less discriminating in following French example. They belonged to the 1 2

See below, p. 68. Aspects of the Novel, p. 173. 28

T H E N O V E L AS A P O R T R A I T OF L I F E

age of H . G . W e l l s — V i r g i n i a W o o l f felt that to ' c o m p l e t e ' their novels it w a s necessary 'to j o i n a society, or, more desperately, to write a c h e q u e ' 1 — a n d they found support for their social d o c u m e n t a t i o n in Realist fiction of the 'School' o f M é d a n . S o w e find A r n o l d Bennett in his Clayhanger trilogy 2 and G e o r g e M o o r e in Esther Waters (1894) s w a m p i n g their i m a g i n a t i v e talents in the a c c u m u l a t i o n of social detail. It is not surprising t h a t Flaubert explodes with r a g e w h e n he is p r o c l a i m e d H i g h Priest of the Naturalists and Realists. ' T h e r e is n o T r u t h , there are only w a y s of seeing', he writes to Z o l a ' s disciple, L é o n H e n n i q u e . ' D o w n w i t h Schools, w h a t e v e r they are, d o w n w i t h e m p t y w o r d s ' , 3 a n d again, to his c o n g e n i a l brother-artist, T u r g e n e v : It isn't enough merely to observe; we must order and shape what we have seen. Reality . . . ought to be no more than a spring-board . . . This materialism makes my blood boil . . . 4 I n E n g l a n d , H a r d y , C o n r a d and J a m e s agree w i t h h i m . ' R e a l ism is an unfortunate, a n ambiguous w o r d ' , says H a r d y a n d he calls for the exercise o f 'the D a e d a l i a n faculty for selection a n d c u n n i n g m a n i p u l a t i o n ' . 5 Life is all 'inclusion a n d confusion', says H e n r y J a m e s , a n d art 'all discrimination a n d selection'.* ' L i b e r t y of the i m a g i n a t i o n ' should be the artist's 'most precious possession', maintains C o n r a d , indignantly r e p u d i a t i n g 'the h u m a n perverseness' w h i c h discovers in 'the free w o r k ' of g r e a t artists 'the fettering d o g m a s of some romantic, realistic or naturalistic creed'. 7 T h e same impatience with literary f o r m u las gives us V i r g i n i a W o o l f ' s acid essay on ' M r . Bennett a n d M r s . B r o w n ' 8 a n d L a w r e n c e ' s scornful dismissal o f ' K o d a k ' fiction.9 T h e transfiguring function of art w h i c h all these writers u p h o l d is given its best description in 1881, in M a u p a s s a n t ' s intelligent preface to his novel, Pierre et Jean: . . . T h e realist, if he is an artist, will seek to give us not a banal 1 See Virginia Woolf, ' M r . Bennett and Mrs. Brown', 1924; first printed in The Captain's Death Bed ( 1950). 2 Clayhanger (1910), Hilda Lessways (1911), These Twain (1916). 3 See René Dumesnil, Le Réalisme et le Naluralisme (1955), p. 367. 5 See below, p. 73. * See below, p. 69. 7 See Part II below, pp. 132-3. 8 L o c . cit. * See below, p. 75. * See 'Art and Morality* (1925); reprinted in Phoenix (1936).

29

T H E N A T U R E OF PROSE

FICTION

photographic representation of life, but a vision of it t h a t is fuller, more

vivid

and

more

compellingly

truthful

than

even

reality

i t s e l f . . -1

This is akin to Conrad's 'form of imagined life clearer than reality' whose verisimilitude 'puts to shame the pride of documentary history'.* I t expresses the same spirit which to-day compels François M a u r i a c to assert that the real novelist is 'not an observer but a creator', 8 and which makes A n d r é Gide declarc through the character of his novelist, Edouard, in Les Faux Monnayeurs (1925), that the novel 'has always clung to reality with such timidity'. 4 But we have to agree that Edouard recognizes the novelist's most crippling dilemma when he declares that he would like to write a novel which might be at the same time 'true' and 'far from reality', 'particular' and 'general' and whose subject might be precisely the struggle between 'what reality offers' and 'what he himself desires to make of it'. 8

III

The Ethics of the Novel

IN THE struggle between ' w h a t reality offers' and 'what he himself desires to make of it', the novelist's sense of moral purpose plays an important part. ' T h u m b s off the scale', cries D . H. Lawrence, announcing as firmly as Turgenev or Flaubert a belief in the artist's impersonality and justice.* Y e t his work, unlike theirs, remains unabashedly subjective and didactic. T h e novelist's theory and practice are most likely to part company whenever his anxiety to grind some special axe urges the preacher to take over from the artist. In general, the novelist's desire to emphasize the utile at the expense of the dulce has usually had damaging effects on his adjustment of 'the uncommon' and 'the ordinary', interfering with the effect of verisimilitude which it is important for him to achieve and also impairing his purity of vision. This is particularly the case in the English novel, which has suffered acutely in the past from the didactic zeal of middle-class Puritanism: it is only with the advent of Hardy, See below, p. 71. See below, p. 80. * See below, p. 79.

Sec below, p. 76. See below, p. 78. • See below, pp. 101-2.

1

:

3

4

30

T H E E T H I C S OF T H E

NOVEL

C o n r a d a n d J a m e s in t h e l a t e r n i n e t e e n t h c e n t u r y t h a t t h e q u e s t i o n o f the ethics o f the n o v e l is p o s e d m o r e s u b t l y . T h e s i m p l i c i t y a n d persistence o f t h e e a r l i e r v i e w m a y b e i n d i c a t e d b y setting R i c h a r d s o n ' s eighteenth-century p r o n o u n c e m e n t Instruction, M a d a m , is the pill; amusement is the gilding . . . b e s i d e T r o l l o p e ' s e x p l a n a t i o n to his V i c t o r i a n r e a d e r s , I h a v e ever thought of myself as a preacher of sermons a n d my pulpit as one w h i c h I could make both salutary and agreeable to m y audience . . . — t h e a u d i e n c e in b o t h cases b e i n g p r e d o m i n a n t l y m i d d l e - c l a s s a n d c o n t a i n i n g m a n y susceptible Y o u n g P e r s o n s . 1 R i c h a r d s o n w i s h e s to ' t u r n y o u n g p e o p l e i n t o a c o u r s e o f r e a d i n g d i f f e r e n t f r o m the p o m p and p a r a d e of romance-writing', substituting f o r ' t h e i m p r o b a b l e a n d m a r v e l l o u s ' s u c h stories as ' m i g h t t e n d to p r o m o t e the cause o f religion a n d virtue'.2 ' L e t h i m never t o u c h a r o m a n c e o r a n o v e l ' , is G o l d s m i t h ' s a d v i c e to his b r o t h e r c o n c e r n i n g his son's r e a d i n g : ' t h e y t e a c h t h e y o u t h f u l m i n d to sigh a f t e r b e a u t y a n d h a p p i n e s s w h i c h n e v e r e x i s t e d ' . 3 T h e r e is m u c h d e b a t e o n t h e e f f e c t s o f r e a d i n g R o u s s e a u ' s n o v e l s . La Nouvelle Héloise, says E u p h r a s i a in The Progress of Romance, is a dangerous book to put into the hands of youth, it awakens a n d nourishes those passions w h i c h it is the exercise of Reason, and of Religion also, to regulate, and to keep within their true limits. 4 She proposes a b r i d g e m e n t v o l u m e s so as

and

alteration

o f the

two

first

to give a different turn to the story, a n d to m a k e the two Lovers, stop short of the act, that m a d e it criminal in either party to marry another, for were they not actually wedded in the sight of Heaven? 6 E u p h r a s i a seems to h a v e i g n o r e d R o u s s e a u ' s o w n c o n t r i b u t i o n to t h e discussion. I n the p r e f a c e to the 1762 e d i t i o n h e r o u n d s o n his a t t a c k e r s a n d , p u s h e d i n t o e x t r e m e v i e w s p e r h a p s b y t h e i r antagonism, declares that the v e r y idea o f m a k i n g literature 'useful to the y o u n g ' is nonsense. M u c h m o r e i m p o r t a n t is t h a t a g o o d e x a m p l e should b e set to y o u n g p e o p l e b y t h e b e h a v i o u r 1 3

See below, p. 90, 87. See below, p. 87.

4

' See below, p. 85. 6 Ibid. See below, p. 86. 31

T H E N A T U R E OF P R O S E

FICTION

a n d actions of their parents. I f mothers b e h a v e circumspectly, t h e n their d a u g h t e r s w i l l t o o . 1 S c o t t is m o r e o p e n l y a n e n t e r t a i n e r t h a n R o u s s e a u . H e is l i b e r a l e n o u g h to b e l i e v e t h a t a n o b v i o u s m o r a l t a g g e d o n to a n o v e l is as i n c o n g r u o u s as a b e g g a r l i m p i n g a t the e n d o f a p r o c e s s i o n . N e v e r t h e l e s s h e feels t h a t t h e r e is s o m e ' a d v a n t a g e t o a y o u n g person' i n a tale w h i c h calls u p o n h i m ' t o a t t e n d t o t h e v o i c e o f p r i n c i p l e a n d selfd e n i a l . ' 2 T r o l l o p e c o n g r a t u l a t e d h i m s e l f o n his c e r t a i n t y that no girl has risen from m y pages less modest than she was before . . . that no youth has been told that in falseness and flashness is to b e found the road to manliness . . . 3 D i c k e n s m a k e s f u n o f P o d s n a p ' s n o t i o n t h a t ' t h e Y o u n g Person's' susceptibilities s h o u l d p r o v i d e the c r i t e r i o n f o r l i t e r a r y e x c e l l e n c e , b u t h e w a s c a r e f u l to a v o i d a n y t h i n g i n his o w n w o r k t h a t m i g h t s h o c k c o n v e n t i o n a l m o r a l susceptibilities. 4 I n t h e p r e s e n t c e n t u r y t h e novelist m a y still b e t r o u b l e d b y t h e p r o b l e m o f the Y o u n g P e r s o n . F r a n ç o i s M a u r i a c k n o w s t h a t t h e r e a r e c e r t a i n i m p o r t a n t limits t o t h e novelist's responsibility f o r w h a t h e w r i t e s — h e m u s t b e t r u e to his i n n e r vision a n d h e m u s t r e a l i z e t h a t there a r e i n c a l c u l a b l e e l e m e n t s in all c r e a t i o n 6 — b u t this s h o u l d n o t b l i n d h i m to t h e d a n g e r o u s effects t h a t his fiction m a y h a v e o n y o u n g i m a g i n a t i o n s . H e tells us t h a t a boy once sent me a p h o t o g r a p h with the words: ' T o the man w h o nearly m a d e me kill m y grandmother.' In the a c c o m p a n y i n g letter he explained that the old lady resembled the heroine of Genetrix to such an extent that he had been on the very verge o f strangling her during her sleep. H o w can readers like that be protected? 6 I n t h e e i g h t e e n t h c e n t u r y a n d i n the n i n e t e e n t h c e n t u r y d o w n to l a t e V i c t o r i a n times E n g l i s h novelists w e r e u s u a l l y w i l l i n g to m a k e s o m e sacrifice o f p r o b a b i l i t y o n m o r a l g r o u n d s . R i c h a r d s o n p l u n g e s the H a r l o w e f a m i l y into swift, w h o l e s a l e r e p e n t a n c e a f t e r C l a r i s s a ' s d e a t h in spite o f disliking t h e i m p r o b a b i l i t y o f ' s u d d e n c o n v e r s i o n s ' . 7 F i e l d i n g presents us w i t h Blifil a n d A m e l i a ( a l t h o u g h A m e l i a , a f t e r all, is c h a r m i n g ) in spite o f his sensible b e l i e f t h a t c h a r a c t e r s in n o v e l s s h o u l d b e a p l a u s i b l e m i x t u r e o f g o o d a n d b a d . 8 E v e n J a n e A u s t e n ' s sense See Sec 6 See ' See 1

3

below, below, below, below,

pp. 85-6. pp. 87-8. pp. 106-8. p. 61.

See below, See below, 6 See below, * See below, 1

4

32

pp. 92, 87. p. 88. p. 89. p. 91.

T H E E T H I C S OF T H E

NOVEL

of proportion is upset by this didacticism. Most of us feel that the utile lugubriously overshadows the dulce in Mansfield Park. The utile clogs George Eliot's intelligent, compassionate novels with stodgy sermons and impairs their integrity by seeing to it that wrongdoers are always made to suffer for their sins. Lawrence, middle-class morality's most spectacular victim, packs his books with angry puritan exhortations and punishes behaviour which he dislikes, in spite of assuring us that art, although 'moral', should not be didactic. It says a good deal for the creative exuberance of our novelists that they have frequently managed to overcome the worst effects of their own didacticism. They often 'bounce' us into acceptance of their characters and events by the sheer strength of their invention. Nineteenth-century social conventions are partly responsible for hindering the development of the English novelist's understanding of his moral responsibilities as an artist. The Victorian attitude to sex was particularly hampering. Charlotte Bronte seems to rebel against some of its conventions when she shows her plain heroines tormented by passion, but it is obvious that she has a less independent spirit than her sister, Emily, who is unique among nineteenth-century English novelists. Thackeray, whom Charlotte idolized until they met, is very conscious of crippling moral and social pressures. The irritable frustration detected in his apology for introducing 'a little more frankness than is customary' into Pendennis helps to account for some of the ambiguity which blurs his character-drawing. 1 Amelia Sedley, for example, lacks the confident definition of Dora Copperfield and Ada Clare largely because Thackeray is less at ease than Dickens in creating the simplified moral universe which satisfied and reassured so vast a proportion of the Victorian reading public. But Thackeray looks back to the vigorous satire of eighteenth-century novelists rather than forward to the subtler discriminations of the later nineteenth century. He envies without daring to emulate the bolder attack and broader humanity of his great model, Fielding. Eighteenth-century attitudes and influences, lingering on from Fielding's day (the Regency period acts as a preservative), do something to enliven the political and social novels of the 1830's and 1840's by warding off, temporarily, the more suffocating encroachments of Victorianism. 1

See below, pp. 93-4.

33

T H E N A T U R E OF P R O S E

FICTION

Even so, a novel like Mrs. Gaskell's Ruth (1853) demonstrates the pitiful constriction on ethical grounds of the valuable Victorian impulse to stiffen the texture of the novel and extend its range of social reference. T o turn from the mid-nineteenth-century English novel to the French or Russian novel of the same period is to enter a world which may be less rich in invention but is certainly governed by a more sensible conception of the utile. It is a world more freely and vividly illuminated by general ideas and often more truthful in feeling. English fiction in the 1830's gained from the freshness and originality of Dickens's Pickwick Papers (1836-7), Oliver Twist (1837-8) and Nicholas Nickleby (1838-9) but the moral assumptions behind these tales make them embarrassingly naive when they are set beside Stendhal's achievement in Le Rouge et le Noir (1831) and La Chartreuse de Parme (1839), and Gogol's in The Memoirs of a Madman and Nevsky Prospect (both of 1835). T h e contrast is not greatly lessened when the English novel reaches a maturer art with Dickens's Bleak House (1852-3) and Our Mutual Friend (1864-5); George Eliot's first full-length novel, Adam Bede (1859); and Thackeray's Vanity Fair (1847-8) and Pendennis (1848-50). In these years Tolstoy and Dostoevsky were transforming the novel into a form more serious and powerful than it had ever seemed likely to become, while Flaubert and Turgenev were increasing enormously its subtlety of texture. War and Peace (1862-9) an< ^ Crime and Punishment (1866), both contemporary with Our Mutual Friend, are obviously achievements of quite a different order. War and Peace, setting aside its wider range, is a more valuable work than Our Mutual Friend if only because Tolstoy is more honest and more intelligent about the nature of ordinary human experience than Dickens. Dostoevsky, of course, depicts in Crime and Punishment, as in his other novels, regions of spiritual suffering which are outside Dickens's conception. Turgenev's novels, A Nest of Gentlefolk (1858) and On the Eve (1859), together with Flaubert's Madame Bovary (1857), belong to the same period as George Eliot's Adam Bede, but these French and Russian novels have a sensitivity to moral complexity which is beyond George Eliot at this stage of her career. It is only with Middlemarch (1872) that the English novel begins to stand comparison with French and Russian fiction. A m o n g its other quali34

T H E ETHICS OF T H E

NOVEL

ties, G e o r g e Eliot's masterpiece is remarkable for the revelation — s o u n w e l c o m e to A n g l o - S a x o n d o m — t h a t good intentions are not e n o u g h a n d that sympathetic understanding of h u m a n relations, w h i c h are affairs of some complexity, is also a function of intelligence. It is easy to distinguish the more adult sense of moral responsibility in French and Russian contributions to ' T h e Ethics of the N o v e l ' . W h e t h e r it is Flaubert, T u r g e n e v or Tolstoy w h o speaks, it is the author's responsibility to the truth of his vision w h i c h is stressed, and only w h e n the English writer has broken out o f his insularity and his provincialism late in the nineteenth century into their fresher cosmopolitan air d o w e hear him echoing their plea for responsible impartiality. I n the case of the Russian, this freedom is connected with the state of Russian society at the t i m e — t h e 'Asiatic' freedom from the pressure towards uniformity of customary opinion w h i c h T o c q u e v i l l e and J o h n Stuart M i l l had discovered in Western societies. W i t h the Frenchman, it is much more a matter of his recognized seriousness about being an artist. H o w far this takes h i m from more blatant 'art for art's sake' simplifications is suggested w h e n w e contrast impassioned pronouncements b y Flaubert or M a u p a s sant with O s c a r Wilde's tripping statement in the preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray ( 1891 ) : There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well-written or badly written. 1 E v e n if he writes, as François M a u r i a c says, 'in fear and trembling under the eye of the T r i n i t y ' , 2 the French novelist recognizes that the validity of his writing must depend on its truth to his o w n vision as an artist. (Failure to recognize this accounts for the falsity of tone in m u c h V i c t o r i a n expression of religious sentiment.) M a u r i a c , w h o is perhaps this age's greatest novelist, naturally rejects outright J a c q u e s M a r i t a i n ' s Zola-like comparison of 'a novelist b e n d i n g over the h u m a n heart with a physiologist over a frog or a guinea-pig'. 3 I n taking into account the 'mysterious, unforeseeable and inevitable elements' in artistic creation, and in emphasizing the artist's need to 'purify the source', he acknowledges the strength of these elements and 1

See below, p. 108.

s 3

See below, p. 80.

35

See below, p. 106.

THE NATURE

OF P R O S E

FICTION

also their close identity with the genuine creative self. 1 It will be seen that Mauriac's explanation of his position as a Catholic novelist is compatible with a Chekhovian view of artistic detachment, i.e. that the artist 'must set the question, not solve it'. Chekhov says of the artist that he observes, selects, guesses, combines—these in themselves presuppose questions; if from the very first he had not put a question to himself there would be nothing to divine nor to select . . . in 'Anna Karenin' and in 'Onyeguin' not a single problem is solved, but they satisfy completely because all the problems are set correctly. 2 Perhaps it is the French novelist's intellectual curiosity which has most consistently protected him from narrow forms of didacticism. It has certainly stood him in good stead in his resistance to middle-class prejudices, which can be far stuffier in provincial France than almost anywhere else. While Dickens was entertaining his middle-class readers and encouraging their cosier prejudices (his narrative vivacity carried them safely past the dangerous areas in his satire), the voices of Stendhal, Flaubert and Zola were almost drowned by the clamour of an outraged bourgeoisie. Nevertheless these writers persisted in exposing the esprit beige of middle-class society with a ruthlessness undreamed of in Victorian England. T h e penetrating analysis of Stendhal's Gina de Sanseverina in La Chartreuse de Parme, a superb manifestation of this truthful spirit, is inconceivable in any Victorian novel—indeed it has no parallel in English fiction until the time of Miss I v y Compton-Burnett: without his melancholy, Gina has much in common with Octave de Malivert, the hero of Stendhal's first novel, Armance (1827), who admits to M a d a m e de Bonnivet, I have no conscience. I find no trace in me of what you call a sens intime, no instinctive repugnance for crime. When I abhor vice it is quite simply as the result of a rational process and because I find it harmful. 3 Stendhal has not the slightest intention of punishing his apparently amoral Duchess, and his novel is vivified by her intelligence and her irrepressible charm. When he makes her tell her lover that she will not be gay 'for a month' after her 'sacri1

1 See below, p. 99. See below, pp. 107-8. 3 Armance, Chapter vi.

36

T H E E T H I C S OF T H E N O V E L

fice' to the youthful prince, 1 he makes us gloomily conscious of Little Emily's different fate and reminds us by contrast of the muddle about sex which hangs like a miasma over almost the entire English novel. T h e nineteenth-century Russian novelist is as far as his French contemporaries from regarding the relationships between human beings as a matter for simple moral condemnation or approval. The characters in all Dostoevsky's novels react to each other with the nakedness of feeling which reveals in the individual conflicting impulses of pride and submission, hatred and love. Turgenev establishes the relationship between pairs of friends and lovers with an impartial tenderness which does not depend on the art of understatement alone for the avoidance of sentimentality. The friendship between the angular, aggressive Nihilist, Bazarov, and his unassailably gentle disciple, Arkady, in Fathers and Sons (1861) is handled with the same delicacy and insight as the love-affair between Liza and Lavretzky in A Nest of Gentlefolk. Tolstoy recognizes as dispassionately as Flaubert that such victims of adulterous passion as his own Anna Karenina are doomed to suffer, but he enters into their situation with an intelligent compassion which relegates L a d y Dedlock and Edith Dombey to the world of East Lynne and the penny novelette. No female characters comparable in stature or truth with Anna Karenina or E m m a Bovary appear in the English novel until J a m e s describes tormented creatures like Charlotte Stant or Madame de Vionnet —and even then, as his Notebooks reveal, he had to contort plot and story in order not to offend English susceptibilities by making 'the adulterine element' over-explicit. 2 Even if the Russian novelist has not had to contend until quite recently with the same public prejudices as English and French novelists (there is perhaps a parallel to be drawn between his difficulties now and their difficulties a hundred years ago), he has always been subjected to the strain provided by the very preoccupations—social, moral, religious—which stimulated him to write. All that one can finally say is that in the nineteenth century in Russia the strain was not too much for him. 1

La Chartreuse de Parme, Chapter xxvii. See The Notebooks of Henry James (1947), ed. F. O. Matthiessen and Kenneth B. Murdock, pp. 187-8, 170. 2

37

T H E N A T U R E OF P R O S E

FICTION

Until late in his history, the English novelist has to substitute for such French a n d Russian gifts the splendid inventiveness which is the 'gilding' for his moral pill. But invention fails to ensure that his art will be, as M a u p a s s a n t desires, 'compellingly truthful' as well as 'vivid'. A s their contributions in ' T h e Ethics of the Novel' reveal, our later nineteenth-century novelists are only too conscious of this shortcoming in their predecessors. Envious of the freedom of their fellow-writers abroad and anxious for the dignity and integrity of their o w n art, their pleading sometimes betrays an edge of desperation. I n 1881 w e find Stevenson u r g i n g that 'it must always be foul to tell w h a t is false; and it can never be safe to suppress w h a t is true'. 1 Seven years later H a r d y re-states the case, arguing that novels 'without a moral purpose' are more v a l u a b l e in the end because 'the didactic novel is generally so devoid of vraisemblance as to teach nothing but the impossibility of tampering with natural truth to a d v a n c e d o g m a t i c opinions'. 4 L o o k i n g b a c k to the eighteen-eighties from the first decade of the twentieth century, H e n r y J a m e s remembered that even then the only questions which mattered to him in considering the moral significance of a work of art were, 'Is it valid . . . is it genuine, is it sincere, the result of some direct impression or perception of life?' 3 T h e intense seriousness with w h i c h these later novelists sometimes discuss their art m a y take us b y surprise. W e expect a sombre sense of vocation f r o m the acknowledged 'sage' (George Eliot) or the religiously committed writer (François M a u r i a c ) , but the so-called 'pure' novelist can display an even more exalted sense of responsibility. C o n r a d , for example, tells us that the artist must make ' m a n y acts of faith', the greatest being 'the cherishing of u n d y i n g hope', w h i c h involves 'all the piety of effort and renunciation'. 4 H e defines the novelist's art as 'rescue work carried out in darkness against cross gusts of w i n d swaying the action of a great multitude'. I t is the snatching of vanishing phrases of turbulence, disguised in fair words, out of the native obscurity into a light where the struggling forms may be seen, seized upon, endowed with the only possible form of permanence in this world of relative values—the permanence of 1 3

See below, pp. 97-8. See below, p. 99.

1 4

38

See below, p. 98. See below, p. 100.

T H E E T H I C S OF T H E

NOVEL

memory. And the multitude feels it obscurely too; since the demand of the individual to the artist is, in effect, the cry, 'take me out of myself!' meaning really, out of my perishable activity into the light of imperishable consciousness. 1

A confession of faith of this kind is unlikely to appear in England, France or any other country much before the end of the nineteenth century, although there are signs of a similar mood being implicit earlier in the sensitive, sceptical utterances of such artists as Flaubert and Turgenev. George Eliot betrays a sufficient trace of an analogous feeling for one of her Victorian critics to express uneasiness about the 'profoundly melancholy' implications of Middlemarch,2 but, in intention at least, she is as anxious as her Victorian predecessors and contemporaries to subdue troubled speculation about the dark side of the moon. Conrad's confession belongs to an age when her 'meliorism' finally loses its efficiency. It looks pale among the dark colours of the tragic universe experienced by Michael Henchard and J u d e the Obscure. Paradoxically, it is in this context of doubt and scepticism that the novel acquires its most potent supernatural ambience—we are particularly aware of it in the novels of Hardy, James and Conrad, where it is associated with a vivid sense of hostile or evil forces at work in the world. This mood of pessimism approximates the later nineteenth-century novel more closely than at any other time in its history to a recognizable tragic form. T h e nineteenth-century Russian novel, of course, with its profound feeling for religious conflict is remarkable for its powerful interpretation of tragic dilemma— the central book of The Brothers Karamazov containing the legend of the Grand Inquisitor is perhaps its greatest achievement in this respect. The French novel has had to wait longer for such qualities to appear, perhaps because of the very intellectual gifts which bring it to its early maturity: it has had to wait, in fact, until Proust prepared it formally to accommodate the new dimensions of spiritual conflict explored by Mauriac, Sartre and Camus. Joyce exemplifies how the serious twentieth-century novelist 1 See below, p. i o I. ' See R. H. Hutton, 'George Eliot as Author', Essays on Some of the Modem Guides of English Thought in Matters of Faith (1887).

39

T H E N A T U R E OF P R O S E

FICTION

may feel called upon to purify his art in the service of a perplexed and rudderless human consciousness. Such writers pursue their vocation with dedicated passion: Welcome, O life! I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race. . . . Old father, old artificer, stand me now and ever in good stead. 1 And so their writing becomes an act of faith, their art a form of religion. In the rhythms of Stephen Dedalus's peroration, as in James's invocation to his muse 2 and Conrad's description of 'wrestling with the Lord' about Nostromo,3 we hear the chant of the high priest inaugurating a ritual of great complexity and sacredness. What has happened is that art as religion finds power to resist moral views external to itself. It now strikes 'a balance between the ordinary and the uncommon' and adjusts 'things unusual to things eternal and universal' according to its own terms of moral reference. ' J a m e s Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916), concluding paragraphs. * See Part II below, pp. 156-7. 3 See Part II below, pp. 151-2.

40

TEXT I

The Novel and the Marvellous

REJECTING ROMANTIC

IMPROBABILITY

(i) . . . W h a t a duce, do you think I a m writing a Romance? Don't you sec that I a m copying Nature . . . Samuel Richardson. Letter to Miss Mulso (5 October 1752), Correspondence (1804).

(ii) . . . there were very few novels and romances that my lady would permit me to read; a n d those I did, gave me no great pleasure; for either they dealt so m u c h in the marvellous and improbable, or were so unnaturally inflaming to the passions, and so full of love and intrigue, that most of them seemed calculated to fire the imagination, rather than to inform the judgment. Titles and tournaments, breaking of spears in honour of a mistress, engaging with monsters, rambling in search of adventures, making unnatural difficulties, in order to shew the knight-errant's prowess in overcoming them, is all that is required to constitute the hero in such pieces. And what principally distinguishes the character of the heroine is, when she is taught to consider her father's house as an enchanted castle, and her lover as the hero who is to dissolve the charm, and to set her at liberty from one confinement, in order to put her into another, and, too probably, a worse: to instruct her how to climb walls, leap precipices, and do twenty other extravagant things, in order to show the mad strength of a passion she ought to be ashamed of; to make parents and guardians pass for tyrants, the voice of reason to be drowned in that of indiscreet love, which exalts the other sex, and debases her 4i

T H E N A T U R E OF P R O S E F I C T I O N own. A n d what is the instruction that can be gathered from such pieces, for the conduct of common life? Samuel Richardson. Pamela, or V i r t u e Rewarded {1740), Part II, Letter cii. A CAUTION AGAINST THE SUPERNATURAL . . . I think it may very reasonably be required of every writer, that he keeps within the bounds of possibility; and still remembers that w h a t it is not possible for man to perform, it is scarce possible for man to believe he did perform. This conviction perhaps gave birth to m a n y stories of the ancient heathen deities (for most o f them are of poetical original). T h e poet, being desirous to indulge a wanton a n d extravagant imagination, took refuge in that power, o f the extent of which his readers were no judges, or rather which they imagined to be infinite, and consequently they could not b e shocked at any prodigies related of it. This hath been strongly urged in defence of Homer's miracles; and it is perhaps a defence; not, as M r . Pope would have it, because Ulysses told a set of foolish lies to the Phaeacians, w h o were a very dull nation; but because the poet himself wrote to heathens, to w h o m poetical fables were articles of faith. For my o w n part, I must confess, so compassionate is my temper, I wish Polypheme had confined himself to his milk diet, and preserved his eye; nor could Ulysses be much more concerned than myself, when his companions were turned into swine by Circe, w h o showed, I think, afterwards, too much regard for man's flesh to be supposed capable of converting it into bacon. I wish, likewise, with all m y heart, that Homer could have known the rule prescribed b y Horace, to introduce supernatural agents as seldom as possible. W e should not then have seen his gods coming on trivial errands, a n d often behaving themselves so as not only to forfeit all title to respect, but to become the objects of scorn and derision. A conduct which must have shocked the credulity of a pious and sagacious heathen; and w h i c h could never have been defended, unless by agreeing with a supposition to which I have sometimes almost inclined, that this most glorious poet, as he certainly was, h a d an intent to burlesque the superstitious faith of his own age a n d country. But I have rested too long on a doctrine which can be of no use to a Christian writer; for as he cannot introduce into his works any of that heavenly host which make a part of his creed, so it is horrid puerility to search the heathen theology for any of those deities w h o have been long since dethroned from their immortality. Lord Shaftesbury observes that nothing is more cold than the invocation

42

T H E N O V E L A N D T H E MARVELLOUS

of a muse by a modern; he might have added, that nothing can be more absurd. A modern may with much more elegance invoke a ballad, as some have thought Homer did, or a mug of ale, with the author of Hudibras; which latter may perhaps have inspired more poetry, as well as prose, than all the liquors of Hippocrene or Helicon. The only supernatural agents which can in any manner be allowed to us moderns, are ghosts; but of these I would advise an author to be extremely sparing. These are indeed, like arsenic, and other dangerous drugs in physic, to be used with the utmost caution; nor would I advise the introduction of them at all in those works, or by those authors, to which, or to whom, a horse-laugh in the reader would be any great prejudice or mortification. As for elves and fairies, and other such mummery, I purposely omit the mention of them, as I should be very unwilling to confine within any bounds those surprising imaginations, for whose vast capacity the limits of human nature are too narrow; whose works are to be considered as a new creation; and who have consequently just right to do what they will with their own. Man, therefore, is the highest subject (unless on very extraordinary occasions indeed) which presents itself to the pen of our historian, or of our poet; and in relating his actions, great care is to be taken that we do not exceed the capacity of the agent we describe. Henry Fielding. The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling (1749), Book VIII, Chapter i. ROMANCE REFORMED BY T H E NOVELIST

It is no wonder that the ancients could not relish a fable in prose, after they had seen so many remarkable events celebrated in verse by their best poets. But when the minds of men were debauched, by the imposition of priestcraft, to the utmost pitch of credulity, the authors of romance arose, and, losing sight of probability, filled their performances with the most monstrous hyperboles. If they could not equal the ancient poets in point of genius, they were resolved to excel them in fiction, and apply to the wonder rather than the judgment of their readers. Accordingly they brought necromancy to their aid, and instead of supporting the character of their heroes by dignity of sentiment and practice, distinguished them by their bodily strength, activity, and extravagance of behaviour. Although nothing could be more ludicrous and unnatural than the figures they drew, they did not want patrons and admirers, and the world actually began to be infected with the spirit of knight-errantry, when

43

T H E N A T U R E OF P R O S E

FICTION

Cervantes, by an inimitable piece of ridicule, reformed the taste of mankind, representing chivalry in the right point o f view, a n d converting romance to purposes far more usefijl a n d entertaining, by making it assume the sock, and point out the follies of ordinary life. T h e same method has been practised by other Spanish a n d French authors, a n d by Monsieur L e Sage, who, in his Adventures o f Gil Bias, has described the knavery and foibles of life, with infinite humour a n d sagacity. Tobias Smollett. Preface to Roderick R a n d o m PLEASING

(1748).

DELUSIONS

F r o m the same taste of being acquainted with the various surprising incidents of mankind, arises our insatiable curiosity for novels or romances; infatuated with a sort of knight-errantry, w e draw these fictitious characters into a real existence; a n d thus, pleasingly deluded, w e find ourselves as warmly interested, a n d deeply affected by the imaginary scenes of Arcadia, the wonderful achievements of D o n Q u i x o t e , the merry conceits of Sancho, rural innocence of a Joseph Andrews, or the inimitable virtues of Sir Charles Grandison, as if they were real, and these romantic heroes had experienced the capricious fortunes attributed to them by the fertile invention of the writers. Performances of this kind have indeed one advantage, that, as they are the works of fancy, the author, like a painter, m a y so colour, decorate, and embellish them, as most agreeably to flatter our h u m o u r , and most highly promise to entertain, captivate a n d enchant the mind. Sarah Fielding. Introduction to T h e Lives of Cleopatra and O c t a v i a (1757) LA BELLE

NATURE

N . . . . These letters are not letters, this novel is not a novel: your characters are people from another world. R . I ' m sorry for this world then. N. D o n ' t w o r r y ; there are plenty of m a d people here too. Y o u r characters, however, are not to be found in nature. R . . . . W h y make up your mind about them in this w a y ? D o y o u really claim to know just how far men can differ f r o m each other, how m u c h characters vary, or to just what extent customs a n d prejudices alter with time, place and period? W h o dares to set

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precise limits to nature and say: man can go as far as this, but no further? N . By that remarkable reasoning, unheard-of monsters, giants, pygmies, fantasies of every kind, could all be admitted as parts of the natural order a n d portrayed. W e should no longer possess any c o m m o n standard. I repeat, in representations of human nature, everyone must be able to distinguish the human being. R . I agree with that, provided that one also knows how to distinguish w h a t makes for differences of type from what is essential to the species. W h a t would you think of people who could only recognize members of our own species when they are dressed as Frenchmen? N . W h a t would you think of the man who, without describing form or feature, sets about portraying a human being with a veil for clothing? W o u l d n ' t one have the right to ask him where the h u m a n being was? R . Without describing form or feature? Are you being fair? T h a t there are no perfect people—that is the really unlikely thing . . . I must ask you to look once more at the inscription on the copy. N . Les Belles Ames! Fine sounding words! R . O philosophy, what pains you are at to shrivel h u m a n hearts and make men paltry. N . But the romantic spirit exalts and deceives . . . Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Preface {1762) to L a Nouvelle Heloise (/76b). COMBINING THE M A R V E L L O U S AND THE

PROBABLE

T h e business of R o m a n c e is, first, to excite the attention; and secondly, to direct it to some useful, or at least innocent end. H a p p y the writer who attains both these points, like Richardson; a n d not unfortunate, or undeserving praise, he w h o gains only the latter, a n d furnishes out an entertainment for the reader. Having in some degree opened my design, I beg leave to conduct m y reader back again till he comes within view of The Castle of Otranto; a work which, as already has been observed, is an attempt to unite the various merits and graces of the ancient R o m a n c e and modern Novel. T o attain this end, there is required a sufficient degree of the marvellous to excite attention; enough of the manners of real life to give an air of probability to the work; and enough of the pathetic to engage the heart on its behalf. Clara Reeve, Preface to T h e O l d English Baron (1778).

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FICTION

R O M A N C E LACKS U N I T Y O F D E S I G N

In the dark ages, when bigotry and zeal had, almost, obliterated every trace of ancient literature, the only writings, meant for amusement, were the legends of saints; in which the marvellous was, alone, predominant. Secure from criticism, by the tremendous alliance between their works and T H E F A I T H , the more improbable the story, the greater was its merit, with this species of writers. Their imaginations thus emancipated, their saints became warriors, the extravagant fables of the old poets were outdone, and the champions of Christendom rivalled the worthies of Greece. They overcame monsters and giants; pursued necromancers through lakes of fire; till by their prowess, and prayers, they sent the enchanters, blaspheming through the air, on the backs of fiery dragons, and made their castles vanish. These authors seem to have had a confused idea of the Grecian fables: a similarity to the Cyclops, Hydras, Minotaurs, Syrens and Circes, may easily be traced. T h e Phoenicians, Egyptians, Libyans, Grecians, Gauls, each had a Hercules, who performed wonderful, and impossible things. The monks invented one for the Christians; only they called him St. George. But as he was, more particularly the hero of England, by being its tutelary saint, each powerful state was allotted a champion. One of these, St. Denis for France, Voltaire has made a principal personage in the machinery of his Henriade. These miraculous tales were succeeded by romances of voluminous magnitude, in which the passion of love was drawn in the most hyperbolical manner; such were Clelia, the grand Cyrus, etc. A sameness of character, of incident, of language, pervaded the whole. Plot they had none, and but one moral distributed through the endless pages of endless volumes: yet these were the entertainment of the gay and the politic; and were held in estimation so late as at the end of the last century. Modern writers use the word Romance, to signify a fictitious history of detached and independent adventures; and under that idea call the Telemaque of Fenelon, and the Cyrus of Ramsay, Romances. Le Sage's Gil Bias, and Smollett's Roderick Random, though of a different species, come under the same domination. A Novel is another kind of work. Unity of design is its character. In a Romance, if the incidents be well marked and related with spirit, the intention is answered; and adventures pass before the view for no other purpose than to amuse by their peculiarity, without, perhaps, affecting the main story, if there should be one. But in a Novel, a combination of incidents, entertaining in themselves, are

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made to form a whole; a n d an unnecessary circumstance becomes a blemish, by detaching from the simplicity w h i c h is requisite to exhibit that whole to advantage. T h u s , as in dramatic works, those circumstances w h i c h do not tend, either to the illustration or the forwarding the main story, or, w h i c h d o not mark some character, or person in the drama, are to be esteemed unnecessary. H e n c e it appears thai the legitimate Novel is a work m u c h more difficult than the R o m a n c e , a n d justly deserves to be ranked w i t h those dramatic pieces whose utility is generally allowed. Thomas Holcroft. Preface to A l w y n : or T h e G e n t l e m a n C o m e d i a n {¡780) THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE NOVEL THE ROMANCE

AND

Euphrasia. . . . T h e word Novel in all languages signifies something new. It was first used to distinguish these works from R o m a n c e , t h o u g h they have lately been confounded together a n d are frequently mistaken for each other. Sophronia. But how will you d r a w the line of distinction, so as to separate them effectually, a n d prevent further mistakes? Euphrasia. I will attempt this distinction, a n d I presume if it is properly done it will be f o l l o w e d , — I f not, y o u are but where you were before. T h e R o m a n c e is an heroic fable, w h i c h treats of fabulous persons a n d t h i n g s . — T h e Novel is a picture of real life a n d manners, a n d of the times in w h i c h it is written. T h e R o m a n c e in lofty a n d elevated language, describes w h a t never happened nor is likely to h a p p e n . — T h e Novel gives a familiar relation of such things, as pass every day before our eyes, such as m a y happen to our friend, or to ourselves; a n d the perfection o f it, is to represent every scene, in so easy and natural a manner, a n d to make them appear so probable, as to deceive us into a persuasion (at least while w e are reading) that all is real, until w e are affected by the j o y s or distresses, of the persons in the story, as if they were our own. Clara Reeve. T h e Progress of R o m a n c e Vol. I, Evening vii. SUNT C E R T I D E N I Q U E

{1785),

FINES

(i) T o represent scenes of familiar life in an elegant a n d interesting manner, is one o f the most difficult tasks an author can take in h a n d ;

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for of these every m a n is a critic: N a t u r e is in the first place to be attended to, a n d probability is not to be lost sight of; but it must b e nature strongly featured, a n d p r o b a b i l i t y closely bordering on the marvellous; the one must t o u c h u p o n e x t r a v a g a n c e , a n d the other be highly seasoned w i t h a d v e n t u r e s — f o r w h o will thank us for a dull a n d lifeless j o u r n a l o f insipid facts? N o w every peculiarity o f h u m o u r in the h u m a n c h a r a c t e r is a strain u p o n nature, a n d every surprising incident is a degree o f violence to probability. H o w far shall w e g o t h e n for o u r reader's a m u s e m e n t , h o w soon shall w e stop in consideration o f ourselves? T h e r e is undoubtedly a land-mark in the fields o f f a n c y , sunt certi denique fines, but it requires a nice discernment to find t h e m out, a n d a cautious temper not to step b e y o n d t h e m . Richard Cumberland. H e n r y (7795), Book the Fourth, Chapter i.

(ii) W o u l d that, like the monster Briareus I c o u l d strike a h u n d r e d blows in the same instant, a n d that all the v a m p e r s of romance, w h o merit annihilation, w e r e in m y p r e s e n c e ! — t h e y are the v e r m i n o f l i t e r a t u r e — t h e i r s p a w n creep to o u r firesides, a n d cover our tables, our chairs, o u r sofas a n d our mantel pieces. . . . T h o s e w h o read m a n y romances are, I i m a g i n e , insensible to the inconsistencies w h i c h I a m u n f o r t u n a t e e n o u g h to detect, e v e n in works written b y m e n o f talents a n d genius; a n d thus I a m deprived o f that interest in the perusal o f them, w h i c h others enjoy to an intense degree. Sometimes I notice incongruities that the most a c c o m m o d a t i n g a n d indulgent critic w o u l d b e at a loss to reconcile: sometimes I read a picturesque description that turns nature into a second state o f chaos; a n d sometimes I meet w i t h a n author w h o does all he c a n to m a k e the h u m a n shape m o r e than divine. T h u s is the spell dissolved, nor c a n it b e w o n d e r e d at if I throw the book from m e in disgust. Mrs. Sarah Green. 'Literary Retrospection', R o m a n c e R e a d e r s and R o m a n c e Writers, A Satirical N o v e l (1810). A N E P I C IN

PROSE?

. . . A good novel is an epic in prose, w i t h m o r e o f character a n d less (indeed in m o d e r n novels nothing) o f the supernatural m a c h i n e r y . Anna Laetitia Barbauld. 'On the origin and progress of Movelwriting', T h e British Novelists (1810), Vol. I. 48

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MARVELLOUS

NOVEL: ROMANCE:

EPIC

D r . J o h n s o n has d e f i n e d R o m a n c e in its p r i m a r y sense, to b e 'a m i l i t a r y fable o f the m i d d l e ages; a tale o f w i l d a d v e n t u r e s in love a n d c h i v a l r y . ' B u t a l t h o u g h this definition expresses c o r r e c t l y the o r d i n a r y idea o f the w o r d , it is not sufficiently c o m p r e h e n s i v e to answer o u r present purpose. A c o m p o s i t i o n m a y b e a l e g i t i m a t e r o m a n c e , yet neither refer to l o v e nor c h i v a l r y — t o w a r n o r to the m i d d l e ages. T h e ' w i l d a d v e n t u r e s ' a r e a l m o s t the o n l y a b s o l u t e l y essential ingredient in J o h n s o n ' s d e f i n i t i o n . W e w o u l d b e r a t h e r inclined to describe a Romance as ' a fictitious n a r r a t i v e in prose or verse; the interest o f w h i c h turns u p o n m a r v e l l o u s a n d u n c o m m o n incidents;' thus b e i n g o p p o s e d to the k i n d r e d t e r m Novel, w h i c h J o h n s o n has described as ' a s m o o t h tale, g e n e r a l l y o f l o v e ' ; b u t w h i c h w e w o u l d r a t h e r define as ' a fictitious n a r r a t i v e , d i f f e r i n g f r o m the R o m a n c e , b e c a u s e the events a r e a c c o m m o d a t e d t o the o r d i n a r y train o f h u m a n events, a n d the m o d e r n state o f society.' A s s u m i n g these definitions, it is e v i d e n t , f r o m the n a t u r e o f the distinction a d o p t e d , t h a t there m a y exist compositions w h i c h it is difficult to assign precisely or exclusively to t h e o n e class or the other; a n d w h i c h , in fact, p a r t a k e o f the n a t u r e o f b o t h . B u t , generally speaking, the distinction will b e f o u n d b r o a d e n o u g h to answer all general a n d useful purposes. Sir Walter Scott. 'Essay on Romance' (1824); reprinted in M i s c e l l a n e o u s Prose W o r k s (1882), Vol. VI.

T h e epic p o e m a n d the romance of chivalry transport us to the w o r l d o f wonders, w h e r e s u p e r n a t u r a l a g e n t s a r e m i x e d w i t h h u m a n characters, w h e r e the h u m a n c h a r a c t e r s themselves a r e prodigies, a n d w h e r e events a r e p r o d u c e d b y causes w i d e l y a n d manifestly different f r o m those w h i c h r e g u l a t e t h e course o f h u m a n affairs. W i t h such a w o r l d w e d o not think o f c o m p a r i n g o u r a c t u a l situation; to such c h a r a c t e r s w e d o not p r e s u m e to assimilate ourselves or our neighbours; f r o m such a c o n c a t e n a t i o n o f m a r v e l s w e d r a w n o conclusions w i t h r e g a r d to o u r e x p e c t a t i o n s in real life. B u t real life is the v e r y thing w h i c h novels a f f e c t to i m i t a t e ; a n d the y o u n g a n d inexperienced will sometimes b e t o o r e a d y to c o n c e i v e that the picture is true, in those respects at least in w h i c h t h e y wish it to b e so. H e n c e b o t h their t e m p e r , c o n d u c t , a n d happiness m a y b e m a t e r i a l l y injured. F o r novels a r e o f t e n romantic, not i n d e e d b y t h e relation o f w h a t is o b v i o u s l y m i r a c u l o u s or impossible, b u t b y

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deviating, though perhaps insensibly, b e y o n d the bounds of probability or consistency. Review of Madame Cottin's A m é l i e Mansfield (¡8og), Q u a r t e r l y R e v i e w , Vol. /; reprinted as a footnote to Sir Walter Scott's 'Essay on RomanceMiscellaneous Prose Works (1882), Vol. VI. THE HISTORICAL ROMANCE COMBINES THE MARVELLOUS AND THE P R O B A B L E

(i) It appeared likely, that out of this simple plot I m i g h t w e a v e something attractive; because the reign of J a m e s I , in w h i c h G e o r g e Heriot flourished, gave unbounded scope to invention in the fable, w h i l e at the same time it afforded greater variety a n d discrimination of c h a r a c t e r than could, with historical consistency, h a v e been introduced, if the scene h a d been laid a century earlier. L a d y M a r y W o r t l e y M o n t a g u e has said, with equal truth a n d taste, that the most romantic region of every country is that w h e r e the mountains unite themselves with the plains or lowlands. F o r similar reasons, it m a y be in like manner said, that the most picturesque period of history is that when the ancient rough and wild manners o f a b a r b a r o u s age are just b e c o m i n g innovated u p o n , and contrasted, b y the illumination of increased or revived learning, a n d the instructions of renewed or reformed religion. T h e strong contrast p r o d u c e d by the opposition of ancient manners to those w h i c h are g r a d u a l l y subduing them, affords the lights a n d shadows necessary to give effect to a fictitious narrative; and while such a period entitles the author to introduce incidents of a marvellous a n d i m p r o b a b l e character, as arising out of the turbulence, independence a n d ferocity, belonging to old habits of violence, still influencing the manners of a people w h o had been so lately in a barbarous state; yet, on the other h a n d , the characters and sentiments of m a n y o f the actors m a y , w i t h the utmost probability, be described w i t h great variety of shading a n d delineation, w h i c h belongs to the newer a n d m o r e improved period, of w h i c h the world has but lately received the light. Sir Walter Scott. Introduction (1831) to T h e Fortunes o f N i g e l (1822).

(ii) W h e n a writer calls his work a R o m a n c e , it need h a r d l y b e observed that he wishes to claim a certain latitude, b o t h as to its

50

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fashion a n d material, which he would not have felt himself entitled to assume h a d h e professed to be writing a Novel. T h e latter f o r m of composition is presumed to aim at a very m i n u t e fidelity, not merely to the possible, but to the probable a n d ordinary course of m a n ' s experience. T h e former—while, as a work of art, it m u s t rigidly subject itself to laws, a n d while it sins u n p a r d o n a b l y so far as it m a y swerve aside from the t r u t h of the h u m a n h e a r t — h a s fairly a right to present that t r u t h u n d e r circumstances, to a great extent, of t h e writer's own choosing or creation. If he thinks fit, also, he m a y so m a n a g e his atmospherical m e d i u m as to bring out or mellow t h e lights a n d deepen a n d enrich the shadows of t h e picture. H e will be wise, no d o u b t , to m a k e a very m o d e r a t e use of the privileges here stated, a n d , especially, to mingle the Marvellous r a t h e r as a slight, delicate, a n d cvanescent flavour, t h a n as a n y portion of the actual substance of the dish offered to the public. H e can hardly be said, however, to commit a literary crime even if he disregard this caution. I n the present work, the a u t h o r has proposed to himself—but with what success, fortunately, it is not for him to j u d g e — t o keep undeviatingly within his immunities. T h e point of view in w h i c h this tale comes u n d e r the R o m a n t i c definition lies in the a t t e m p t to connect a bygone t i m e with the very present that is flitting a w a y f r o m us. I t is a legend prolonging itself, f r o m an epoch now gray in t h e distance, d o w n into o u r own b r o a d daylight, a n d bringing along with it some of its legendary mist, which the reader, according to his pleasure m a y either disregard, or allow it to float almost imperceptibly a b o u t the characters a n d events for the sake of a picturesque effect. T h e narrative, it m a y be, is woven of so h u m b l e a texture as to require this a d v a n t a g e , a n d , at the same time, to render it the m o r e difficult of a t t a i n m e n t . Nathaniel Hawthorne. Preface to T h e House of t h e Seven Gables (1851).

T H E N O V E L I S T ' S SENSE OF C O N F L I C T

(i) . . . T h e r e are in me, f r o m the literary point of view, two distinct personalities: one w h o is fascinated by b o m b a s t , lyricism, great eagle flights, all the sonorities of style a n d the high summits of ideas; a n o t h e r w h o burrows a n d digs for the t r u t h , excavating as m u c h as he can, who likes to gi%'e the h u m b l e detail as m u c h emphasis as the grandiose, who w a n t s you to feel the things he represents w i t h a n 51

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FICTION

a l m o s t physical i m m e d i a c y ; this person likes t o l a u g h a n d enjoys t h e a n i m a l side of m a n ' s nature. . . . Gustave Flaubert. Letter to Louise Colet (¡6 January C o r r e s p o n d e n c e (igoo).

1842),

. . . h u m a n life is a sad s h o w , u n d o u b t e d l y : u g l y , h e a v y a n d c o m p l e x . T h e o n l y o b j e c t o f A r t , for m e n of feeling, is ' t o m a k e all disagreeables evaporate' 1 . . . Gustave Flaubert. Letter to Amélie Bosquet (July C o r r e s p o n d e n c e (1900).

1864),

(") B r o u g h t u p in the a t m o s p h e r e o f r o m a n t i c i s m , s a t u r a t e d w i t h its masterpieces, carried a w a y b y lyrical flights, at first w e e x p e r i e n c e the enthusiastic phase w h i c h is the period o f initiation. B u t h o w e v e r b e a u t i f u l it m a y b e , o n e literary f o r m c a n b e c o m e fatally m o n o tonous, p a r t i c u l a r l y for those whose o n l y c o n c e r n is w i t h literature, w h o m a k e it f r o m m o r n i n g to night a n d live b y it. T h e n a strange n e e d for c h a n g e grows in us; even the greatest o f t h e w o n d e r s w h i c h w e so passionately a d m i r e turn us against t h e m , b e c a u s e w e k n o w o n l y t o o w e l l h o w they a r e p r o d u c e d : w e b e l o n g , as t h e y say, t o t h a t f r a t e r n i t y . So w e look out for s o m e t h i n g else, or, r a t h e r , w e turn b a c k to s o m e t h i n g else; b u t w e seize o n this ' s o m e t h i n g else', re-cast it, a d d to it a n d m a k e it o u r o w n : a n d then w e believe, sometimes q u i t e sincerely, that w e h a v e i n v e n t e d it ourselves. . . . Z o l a , in this sense then, is a r e v o l u t i o n a r y . B u t he is a r e v o l u t i o n a r y b r o u g h t u p to a d m i r e w h a t h e n o w wishes to destroy, like a priest w h o forsakes the a l t a r . . . this novelist, w h o has described himself as a naturalist, in spite o f his consistently v i o l e n t a t t a c k s on t h e r o m a n t i c s , uses the s a m e m e t h o d s o f a m p l i f i c a t i o n as they do, t h o u g h h e applies t h e m in a different w a y . H i s t h e o r y goes like this: life is o u r o n l y m o d e l since w e c a n n o t c o n c e i v e a n y t h i n g b e y o n d o u r senses; c o n s e q u e n t l y t o distort life is to p r o d u c e a b a d w o r k o f art, since it w o u l d b e a w o r k of falsification. H o r a c e has defined the i m a g i n a t i o n in this w a y : H u m a n o capiti c e r v i c e m pictor e q u i n a m J u n g e r e si velit, et varias i n d u c e r e p l u m a s U n d i q u e collatis membris, ut turpiter a t r u m Desinat in piscem mulier f o r m o s a s u p e r n e . . . 1

'. . . escamoter le fardeau et l'amertume.' 52

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MARVELLOUS

This is to say that the strongest effort of imagination can do no more than set the head of a beautiful woman on the body of a horse, cover the creature with feathers, and give it a hideous fish's tail: in fact, produce a monster. Conclusion: everything which isn't exactly true is deformed, in other words, becomes a monster. This is not far from saying that imaginative literature can produce nothing other than monsters . . . For Zola, then, truth alone can produce works of art. W e are not to use our imagination, we are to observe and describe meticulously what we have seen. . . . However, child of romanticism that he is, and himself a romantic in method, he has a tendency to the lyrical, a need to exalt, to enlarge, to make symbols of beings and objects. Moreover he is well aware of this tendency in himself and fights it unremittingly only to succumb again and again. His theory and his practice are perpetually in conflict. Guy de Maupassant. 'Emile ^'ola', Les Célébrités Contemporaines (1883).

T H E Q U A L I T Y OF

ROMANCE

T o come at all at the nature of this quality of romance, we must bear in mind the peculiarity of our attitude to any art. No art produces illusion; in the theatre we never forget that we are in the theatre; and while we read a story, we sit wavering between two minds, now merely clapping our hands at the merit of the performance, now condescending to take an active part in fancy with the characters. This last is the triumph of romantic story-telling: when the reader consciously plays at being the hero, the scene is a good scene. Now in character-studies the pleasure that we take is critical; we watch, we approve, we smile at incongruities, we are moved to sudden heats of sympathy with courage, suffering or virtue. But the characters are still themselves, they are not us; the more clearly they are depicted, the more widely do they stand away from us, the more imperiously do they thrust us back into our place as a spectator. I cannot identify myself with Rawdon Crawley or with Eugène de Rastignac, for I have scarce a hope or fear in common with them. It is not character but incident that woos us out of our reserve. Something happens as we desire to have it happen to ourselves; some situation, that we have long dallied with in fancy, is realized in the story with enticing and appropriate details. T h e n we forget the characters; then we push the hero aside; then we plunge into the table in our own person and bathe in fresh experience; 53

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and then, and then only, d o w e say w e h a v e been reading a romance. It is not only pleasurable things that w e imagine in our day-dreams; there are lights in w h i c h we are willing to c o n t e m p l a t e even the idea of our own death; w a y s in w h i c h it seems as if it w o u l d amuse us to be cheated, w o u n d e d or calumniated. It is thus possible to construct a story, even of tragic import, in w h i c h every incident, detail and trick of circumstance shall be w e l c o m e to the reader's thoughts. Fiction is to the g r o w n m a n w h a t p l a y is to the child; it is there that he changes the atmosphere and tenor of his life; a n d w h e n the g a m e so chimes with his fancy that he can j o i n in it with all his heart, when it pleases h i m w i t h every turn, w h e n he loves to recall it and dwells upon its recollection with entire delight, fiction is called romance. Robert Louis Stevenson. 'A Gossip on Romance' (1882); reprinted in Memories and Portraits (1887).

A ROMANTIC

REALIST

I have not sought for special imaginative freedom or a larger play of fancy in my choice of characters and subjects. T h e nature o f the knowledge, suggestions or hints used in my imaginative work has depended directly on the conditions of m y active life. I t d e p e n d e d more on contacts, and very slight contacts at that, than o n actual experience; because my life as a matter of fact was far f r o m being adventurous in itself. E v e n n o w w h e n I look back o n it with a certain regret (who would not regret his youth?) a n d positive affection, its colouring wears the sober hue of hard w o r k a n d exacting calls of duty, things w h i c h in themselves are not m u c h charged w i t h a feeling of romance. I f these things appeal strongly to m e even in retrospect it is, I suppose, because the r o m a n t i c feeling of reality was in m e an inborn faculty. T h i s in itself m a y b e a curse but w h e n disciplined by a sense of personal responsibility a n d a recognition of the hard facts of existence shared with the rest o f m a n k i n d becomes but a point of view f r o m w h i c h the very shadows of life a p p e a r endowed with an internal glow. A n d such romanticism is not a sin. It is none the worse for the knowledge of t r u t h . It only tries to make the best of it, hard as it m a y b e ; and in this hardness discovers a certain aspect of b e a u t y . I a m speaking here of romanticism in relation to life, not of romanticism in relation to imaginative literature, w h i c h , in its early days, was associated simply w i t h medieval subjects sought for in a remote past. M y subjects are not medieval a n d I h a v e a natural right to them because my past is v e r y m u c h m y o w n . I f their course

54

THE NOVEL AND THE MARVELLOUS lie out of t h e b e a t e n p a t h of organized social life, it is, perhaps, because I myself did in a short break a w a y f r o m it early in obedience to a n impulse which must have been very genuine since it has sustained m e t h r o u g h all the dangers of disillusion. But t h a t origin of m y literary work was very far f r o m giving a larger scope to m y imagination. O n the contrary, the m e r e fact of dealing with matters outside the general r u n of everyday experience laid m e u n d e r the obligation of a m o r e scrupulous fidelity to t h e t r u t h of m y own sensations. T h e problem was to m a k e unfamiliar things credible. T o d o that I h a d to create for them, to reproduce for t h e m , to envelop t h e m in their proper atmosphere of actuality. This was the hardest task of all a n d the most i m p o r t a n t , in view of t h a t conscientious rendering of t r u t h in t h o u g h t a n d fact which has always been my a i m . Joseph Conrad. Preface to W i t h i n the Tides ( / 9 / j ) .

CUTTING THE CABLE By w h a t art or mystery, w h a t craft of selection, omission or commission, does a given picture of life a p p e a r to us to surround its theme, its figure a n d images, with the air of r o m a n c e while a n o t h e r picture close beside it m a y affect us as steeping the whole m a t t e r in the element of reality? It is a question, no d o u b t , on the painter's p a r t , very m u c h m o r e of perceived effect, effect after the fact, t h a n of conscious design . . . a n d I d o u b t if any novelist, for instance, ever proposed to commit himself to one kind or the other with as little mitigation as we are sometimes able to find for h i m . T h e interest is greatest—the interest of his genius, I m e a n , a n d of his general w e a l t h — w h e n he commits himself in b o t h directions; not quite at the same time or to the same effect, of course, b u t by the need of performing his whole possible revolution, by the law of some rich passion for extremes. O f the men of largest responding imagination before the h u m a n scene, of Scott, of Balzac, even of the coarse, comprehensive, prodigious Zola, we feel, I think, t h a t the deflexion toward either q u a r t e r has never taken place; t h a t neither the n a t u r e of the m a n ' s faculty nor the n a t u r e of his experience has ever quite determined it. His current remains therefore extraordinarily rich a n d mixed, washing us successively with the w a r m wave of the near a n d the familiar a n d the tonic shock, as m a y be, of the far a n d strange. (In making which opposition I suggest not that the strange a n d far are at all necessarily r o m a n t i c : they h a p p e n to be simply the u n k n o w n ,

55

T H E N A T U R E OF P R O S E

FICTION

w h i c h is quite a different matter. T h e real represents to m y perception the things w e c a n n o t possibly not know, sooner or later, in one w a y or another; it b e i n g b u t one of the accidents o f our h a m p e r e d state, and one o f the incidents of their quality a n d number, that particular instances h a v e not yet come our w a y . T h e r o m a n t i c stands, on the other h a n d , for the things that, w i t h all the facilities in the world, all the w e a l t h a n d all the courage a n d all the w i t a n d all the adventure, w e never can directly k n o w ; the things that c a n reach us only t h r o u g h the beautiful circuit and subterfuge o f our thought and desire). . . . T h e only general attribute of projected romance that I c a n see, the only one that fits all cases, is the fact of the kind o f experience w i t h w h i c h it d e a l s — e x p e r i e n c e liberated, so to speak, experience disengaged, disembroiled, disencumbered, exempt from the conditions that w e usually know to attach to it and, if w e so wish to put the matter, d r a g u p o n it, a n d operating in a m e d i u m w h i c h relieves it, in a particular interest, of the inconvenience of a related, a measurable state, a state subject to all o u r vulgar communities. T h e greatest intensity m a y so be arrived at e v i d e n t l y — w h e n the sacrifice of c o m m u n i t y , of the 'related' sides of situations, has not been too rash. It must to this end not flagrantly betray itself; w e must even be kept if possible, for our illusion, from suspecting a n y sacrifice at all. T h e balloon o f experience is in fact o f course tied to the earth, and under that necessity w e swing, thanks to a rope of remarkable length, in the more or less commodious car of the imagination; but it is by the rope w e k n o w w h e r e we are, and from the m o m e n t that cable is cut w e are at large a n d unrelated; w e only swing apart f r o m the g l o b e — t h o u g h r e m a i n i n g as exhilarated, naturally, as w e like, especially w h e n all goes well. T h e art of the necromancer is, 'for the fun of it,' insidiously to cut the cable, to cut it without o u r detecting him. W h a t I h a v e recognized then in The American, m u c h to m y surprise and after l o n g years, is that the experience here presented is the disconnected a n d uncontrolled experience—uncontrolled by our general sense o f ' t h e w a y things h a p p e n ' — w h i c h r o m a n c e alone more or less successfully palms o f f on us. Henry James. Preface to T h e A m e r i c a n (1877); first printed in the New York edition of the Novels and Stories (igoy-ij), Vol. II.

GHOST

STORIES

. . . since the question has ever been for me but of w o n d e r i n g a n d , with all achievable adroitness, o f causing to wonder, so the w h o l e

56

T H E N O V E L AND THE

MARVELLOUS

f a i r y - t a l e side o f life has used, for its t u g a t m y sensibility, a cord all its o w n . W h e n w e w a n t to w o n d e r there's n o s u c h g o o d g r o u n d for it as the w o n d e r f u l — p r e m i s i n g i n d e e d a l w a y s , b y a n i n d u c t i o n as p r o m p t , t h a t this e l e m e n t c a n b u t be a t best, to fit its d i f f e r e n t cases, a t h i n g o f a p p r e c i a t i o n . . . . T h e ideal, o b v i o u s l y , o n these lines, is t h e s t r a i g h t f a i r y - t a l e , the case t h a t has p u r g e d in t h e c r u c i b l e all its bêtises w h i l e k e e p i n g all its g r a c e . I t m a y seem o d d , in a search for t h e a m u s i n g , to try to steer w i d e o f t h e silly b y h u g g i n g close to the ' s u p e r n a t u r a l ' ; b u t one m a n ' s a m u s e m e n t is a t the best (we h a v e surely l o n g h a d t o recognize) a n o t h e r ' s d e s o l a t i o n ; a n d I a m p r e p a r e d w i t h the confession that t h e 'ghost-story', as w e for c o n v e n i e n c e call it, has ever b e e n for m e t h e most possible f o r m o f the f a i r y - t a l e . . . .

. . . T h e m o v i n g a c c i d e n t , the rare c o n j u n c t i o n , w h a t e v e r it b e , d o e s n ' t m a k e t h e s t o r y — i n the sense t h a t t h e story is o u r e x c i t e m e n t , o u r a m u s e m e n t , o u r thrill a n d o u r suspense; t h e h u m a n e m o t i o n a n d t h e h u m a n attestation, the c l u s t e r i n g h u m a n c o n d i t i o n s w e e x p e c t presented, o n l y m a k e it. T h e e x t r a o r d i n a r y is m o s t e x t r a o r d i n a r y in t h a t it h a p p e n s to y o u a n d m e , a n d it's o f v a l u e (of v a l u e for others) b u t so far as visibly b r o u g h t h o m e t o us. A t a n y r a t e , o d d t h o u g h it m a y sound t o p r e t e n d t h a t o n e feels o n safer g r o u n d in t r a c i n g s u c h a n a d v e n t u r e as t h a t o f t h e h e r o o f ' T h e J o l l y C o r n e r ' t h a n in p u r s u i n g a b r i g h t c a r e e r a m o n g pirates o r detectives, I a l l o w t h a t c o m p o s i t i o n to pass as t h e m e a s u r e o r limit, o n m y o w n p a r t , o f a n y a c h i e v a b l e c o m f o r t in t h e ' a d v e n t u r e - s t o r y ' ; a n d this not b e c a u s e I m a y ' r e n d e r ' — w e l l w h a t m y p o o r g e n t l e m a n a t t e m p t e d a n d s u f f e r e d in the N e w Y o r k h o u s e — b e t t e r t h a n I m a y r e n d e r detectives o r pirates or o t h e r s p l e n d i d d e s p e r a d o e s , t h o u g h e v e n here too there w o u l d b e s o m e t h i n g t o s a y ; b u t b e c a u s e t h e spirit e n g a g e d w i t h t h e forces o f v i o l e n c e interests m e m o s t w h e n I c a n t h i n k o f it as e n g a g e d most d e e p l y , most finely a n d most 'subtly* (precious t e r m ! ) . F o r then it is t h a t , as w i t h t h e longest a n d firmest p r o n g s o f consciousness, I g r a s p a n d h o l d t h e t h r o b b i n g s u b j e c t ; there it is a b o v e all t h a t I find the s t e a d y light o f t h e p i c t u r e . Henry James. Preface to T h e A l t a r o f t h e D e a d ; first printed in the New York edition of the N o v e l s a n d Stories [igoy-jf), Vol. XVII.

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FICTION

ADJUSTING T H E E X C E P T I O N A L AND NON-EXCEPTIONAL

THE

The real, if unavowed, purpose of fiction is to give pleasure by gratifying the love of the uncommon in human experience, mental or corporeal. This is done all the more perfectly in proportion as the reader is illuded to believe the personages true and real like himself. Solely to this latter end a work of fiction should be a prccise transcript of ordinary life: but, The uncommon would be absent and the interest lost, Hence, The writer's problem is, how to strike the balance between the uncommon and the ordinary so as on the one hand to give interest, on the other to give reality. In working out this problem, human nature must never be made abnormal, which is introducing incredibility. The uncommonness must be in the events, not in the characters; and the writer's art lies in shaping that uncommonness while disguising its unlikelihood, if it be unlikely. Thomas Hardy. Notebook entry (July 1881) from The Early Life of Thomas Hardy, 1840-1891 (igz8), Chapter xi. A story must be exceptional enough to justify its telling. We taletellers are all Ancient Mariners, and none of us is warranted in stopping Wedding Guests (in other words, the hurrying public) unless he has something more unusual to relate than the ordinary experience of every average man and woman. The whole secret of fiction and the drama—in the constructional part—lies in the adjustment of things unusual to things eternal and universal. The writer who knows exactly how exceptional, and how non-exceptional, his events should be made, possesses the key to the art. Thomas Hardy. Notebook entry (23 February ¡8gj)from The Later Years of Thomas Hardy, 1892-1928 (1930), Chapter ii.

58

II

The Novel as a Portrait of Life

A NEW

SPECIES OF

WRITING

As it is possible the mere English reader inay have a different idea of romance from the author of these little volumes, and may consequently expect a kind of entertainment not be found, nor which was even intended, in the following pages, it may not be improper to premise a few words concerning this kind of writing, which I do not remember to have seen hitherto attempted in our language. The E P I C , as well as the DRAMA, is divided into tragedy and comedy, H O M E R , who was the father of this species of poetry, gave us a pattern of both these, though that of the latter kind is entirely lost; which Aristotle tells us, bore the same relation to comedy which his Iliad bears to tragedy. And perhaps, that we have no more instances of it among the writers of antiquity, is owing to the loss of this great pattern, which, had it survived, would have found its imitators equally with the other poems of this great original. And farther, as this poetry may be tragic or comic, I will not scruple to say it may be likewise either in verse or prose: for though it wants one particular, which the critic enumerates in the constituent parts of an epic poem, namely metre; yet, when any kind of writing contains all its other parts, such as fable, action, characters, sentiments, and diction, and is deficient in metre only, it seems, I think, reasonable to refer it to the epic; at least, as no critic hath thought proper to range it under any other head, or to assign it a particular name to itself. Thus the Telemachus of the archbishop of Cambray appears to me of the epic kind, as well as the Odyssey of Homer; indeed, it is much fairer and more reasonable to give it a name common with that species from which it differs only in a single instance, than to confound it with those which it resembles in no other. Such are those voluminous works, commonly called Romances, namely, Clelia, Cleopatra, Astraea, Cassandra, the Grand Cyrus, and

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T H E N A T U R E OF PROSE

FICTION

i n n u m e r a b l e others, w h i c h c o n t a i n , as I a p p r e h e n d , v e r y little i n s t r u c t i o n or e n t e r t a i n m e n t . N o w , a c o m i c r o m a n c e is a c o m i c e p i c p o e m in prose; d i f f e r i n g f r o m c o m e d y , as t h e serious e p i c f r o m t r a g e d y : its a c t i o n b e i n g m o r e e x t e n d e d a n d c o m p r e h e n s i v e ; c o n t a i n i n g a m u c h larger circle o f incidents, a n d i n t r o d u c i n g a g r e a t e r v a r i e t y o f c h a r a c t e r s . It differs f r o m t h e serious r o m a n c e in its f a b l e a n d a c t i o n in this; t h a t as in t h e o n e these a r e g r a v e a n d s o l e m n , so in t h e o t h e r t h e y are l i g h t a n d r i d i c u l o u s : it differs in its c h a r a c t e r s b y i n t r o d u c i n g persons o f inferior r a n k , a n d c o n s e q u e n t l y , o f i n f e r i o r m a n n e r s , w h e r e a s t h e g r a v e r o m a n c e sets t h e highest b e f o r e us: lastly, in its sentiments a n d d i c t i o n ; b y p r e s e r v i n g the l u d i c r o u s i n s t e a d o f the s u b l i m e . In t h e d i c t i o n , I t h i n k , b u r l e s q u e itself m a y b e s o m e t i m e s a d m i t t e d ; o f w h i c h m a n y instances will o c c u r in this w o r k , as in the description o f t h e battles, a n d s o m e o t h e r places, n o t necessary to b e p o i n t e d o u t t o t h e classical r e a d e r , for w h o s e e n t e r t a i n m e n t those p a r o d i e s or burlesque imitations are chiefly calculated. Henry Fielding. Preface to T h e H i s t o r y o f t h e A d v e n t u r e s of J o s e p h A n d r e w s (1742).

T H E BOUNDS OF

PROBABILITY

. . . t h e actions s h o u l d b e s u c h as m a y n o t o n l y b e w i t h i n the compass of h u m a n agency, and w h i c h h u m a n agents may probably b e supposed t o d o ; b u t t h e y s h o u l d b e likely for t h e v e r y a c t o r s a n d c h a r a c t e r s t h e m s e l v e s t o h a v e p e r f o r m e d ; for w h a t m a y b e o n l y w o n d e r f u l a n d surprising in o n e m a n , m a y b e c o m e i m p r o b a b l e , or i n d e e d impossible, w h e n r e l a t e d o f a n o t h e r . T h i s last requisite is w h a t t h e d r a m a t i c critics call c o n v e r s a t i o n o f c h a r a c t e r ; a n d it r e q u i r e s a v e r y e x t r a o r d i n a r y degree o f j u d g m e n t , a n d a most e x a c t k n o w l e d g e o f h u m a n n a t u r e . I t is a d m i r a b l y r e m a r k e d b y a most e x c e l l e n t w r i t e r , t h a t z e a l c a n n o m o r e h u r r y a m a n to a c t in direct o p p o s i t i o n t o itself, t h a n a r a p i d s t r e a m c a n c a r r y a b o a t a g a i n s t its o w n c u r r e n t . I will v e n t u r e to say, t h a t for a m a n to a c t i n d i r e c t c o n t r a d i c t i o n t o the d i c t a t e s of his n a t u r e , is, i f not impossible, as i m p r o b a b l e a n d as m i r a c u l o u s as a n y t h i n g w h i c h c a n w e l l b e c o n c e i v e d . S h o u l d t h e best p a r t s of t h e story o f M . A n t o n i n u s b e a s c r i b e d t o N e r o , o r should t h e w o r s t i n c i d e n t s of N e r o ' s life b e i m p u t e d t o A n t o n i n u s , w h a t w o u l d b e m o r e s h o c k i n g t o b e l i e f t h a n either instance? w h e r e a s b o t h these b e i n g r e l a t e d o f their p r o p e r a g e n t , c o n s t i t u t e t h e truly m a r v e l l o u s . O u r modern authors of c o m e d y have fallen almost universally i n t o t h e error here h i n t e d a t ; their heroes g e n e r a l l y a r e n o t o r i o u s

60

T H E N O V E L AS A P O R T R A I T OF LIFE rogues, a n d their heroines a b a n d o n e d j a d e s , d u r i n g t h e first f o u r acts; b u t in the fifth, the f o r m e r b e c o m e v e r y w o r t h y g e n t l e m e n , a n d the latter w o m e n o f v i r t u e a n d discretion: nor is the w r i t e r often so k i n d as to g i v e h i m s e l f the least t r o u b l e to reconcile or a c c o u n t for this monstrous c h a n g e a n d i n c o n g r u i t y . . . . W i t h i n these f e w restrictions, I t h i n k , e v e r y w r i t e r m a y b e permitted to d e a l as m u c h in the w o n d e r f u l as h e pleases; n a y , i f h e thus keeps w i t h i n the rules o f credibility, the m o r e he c a n surprise the reader the m o r e he w i l l e n g a g e his a t t e n t i o n , a n d the m o r e h e will c h a r m h i m . A s a genius o f the highest r a n k observes in his fifth c h a p t e r o f the ' B a t h o s ' , ' T h e g r e a t art o f all p o e t r y is to m i x t r u t h w i t h fiction, in o r d e r to j o i n the c r e d i b l e w i t h the surprising.' F o r t h o u g h e v e r y g o o d a u t h o r will confine h i m s e l f w i t h i n the b o u n d s o f p r o b a b i l i t y , it is b y no m e a n s necessary t h a t his c h a r acters, or his incidents, s h o u l d b e trite, c o m m o n , or v u l g a r ; such as h a p p e n in e v e r y street, or in e v e r y house, or w h i c h m a y b e m e t w i t h in the h o m e articles o f a n e w s p a p e r . N o r must he b e i n h i b i t e d f r o m s h o w i n g m a n y persons a n d things, w h i c h m a y possibly h a v e never fallen w i t h i n the k n o w l e d g e o f g r e a t p a r t o f his readers. I f the writer strictly observes t h e rules a b o v e - m e n t i o n e d , he h a t h disc h a r g e d his p a r t ; a n d is t h e n entitled to s o m e f a i t h f r o m his reader, w h o is i n d e e d g u i l t y o f critical infidelity if h e disbelieves h i m . Henry Fielding. T h e H i s t o r y o f T o m Jones, a F o u n d l i n g {1749) Book VIII, Chapter i.

NO 'SUDDEN

CONVERSIONS'

But w h a t e v e r w e r e the fate o f his w o r k , the a u t h o r w a s resolved to take a different m e t h o d . H e a l w a y s t h o u g h t t h a t sudden conversions, such especially as w e r e left to the c a n d o u r o f the r e a d e r to suppose a n d make out, h a d neither art, nor nature, n o r e v e n probability, in t h e m ; a n d t h a t t h e y w e r e m o r e o v e r o f v e r y bad e x a m p l e . T o h a v e a L o v e l a c e , for a series o f years, glory in his wickedness, a n d think that he h a d n o t h i n g to d o , b u t as a n a c t o f g r a c e a n d f a v o u r to h o l d out his h a n d to receive t h a t o f the best o f w o m e n , w h e n e v e r h e pleased, a n d to h a v e it t h o u g h t t h a t m a r r i a g e w o u l d b e a sufficient amends for all his enormities to others as w e l l as to h e r — h e c o u l d not b e a r t h a t . Samuel Richardson. Postscript to Clarissa, o r T h e H i s t o r y o f a Y o u n g L a d y . . . {1747-8).

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T R U T H T O B E K E P T IN S I G H T I k n o w that the privileges of the novelist are more than c a n well be defined, and his range wider than that portion o f created nature w h i c h is k n o w n to us; yet I d o not meditate to stretch my flight so far, nor shall I put m y privileges to their full exertion: it is not my ambition to run truth out of sight, or put credulity out of b r e a t h by following m e ; I d o not propose to m a k e a n y demands upon m y hero that he cannot reasonably fulfil, or press h i m into streights from w h i c h virtue, by its native energy, cannot extricate herself w i t h ease; I shall require of him no sacrifices for the sake of public f a m e , no pedantic ostentatious apathy, for his lot is humble, a n d his feelings natural; I shall let him swim with the current, and not strive to tow h i m against the stream of probability. I know that I could play my puppets after m y o w n fancy, for the wires are in my h a n d ; that I could m a k e them declaim like heroes in a tragedy, or gabble like a g a n g of gypsies under a hedge; that I could w e a v e my fable as the T u r k s d o carpets, without counterfeiting the likeness of any one thing in earth, sea, or air; produce beings out of nature, that no sober author ever dreamt of, a n d force beings into nature, that no well-bred reader ever met with: b u t I h a v e lived long e n o u g h to see wonderful revolutions effected by a n intemperate abuse of power, and shall be cautious h o w I risk privileges so precious u p o n experiments so trivial. I a m not sure that I shall m a k e m y leading characters h a p p y e n o u g h to satisfy the sanguine, serious enough to suit the sentimental, or beautiful enough to w a r m the imagination of the a n i m a t e d reader. S o m e m a y think I have not been sufficiently liberal to them in point o f fortune, others m a y wish I had favoured them w i t h a f e w m o r e casualties and misadventures. Richard Cumberland. Henry {1795), Book First, Chapter i. T H E O F F S P R I N G OF N A T U R E L e t me . . . prepare for disappointment those w h o . . . entertain the gentle expectation of being transported to the fantastic regions o f R o m a n c e , w h e r e Fiction is coloured b y all the g a y tints o f luxurious Imagination, where Reason is an outcast, and w h e r e the sublimity of the marvellous, rejects all aid from sober Probability. T h e heroine o f these memoirs, young, artless, and inexperienced, is N o faultless Monster, that the world ne'er saw, but the offspring of Nature, and of N a t u r e in her simplest attire. Fanny Burney. Preface to Evelina

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{1778).

T H E N O V E L AS A P O R T R A I T OF L I F E T H E P A T H S OF COMMON L I F E : J A N E A U S T E N ' S

'EMMA'

. . . the author of novels was, in former times, expected to tread pretty much in the limits between the concentric circles of p r o b ability a n d possibility; and as he was not permitted to transgress the latter, his narrative, to make amends, almost always went beyond the bounds of the former. Now, although it m a y be urged that the vicissitudes of h u m a n life have occasionally led a n individual through as many scenes of singular fortune as are represented in the most extravagant of these fictions, still the causes and personages acting on these changes have varied with the progress of t h e adventurer's fortune, a n d d o not present that combined plot, (the object of every skilful novelist,) in which all the more interesting individuals of the dramatis personae have their appropriate share in the action and in bringing about the catastrophe. Here, even more t h a n in its various a n d violent changes of fortune, rests the improbability of the novel. T h e life of m a n rolls forth like a stream from the fountain, or it spreads out into tranquillity like a placid or stagnant lake. I n the latter case, the individual grows old among the characters with whom he was born, and is contemporary,—shares precisely the sort of weal a n d woe to which his birth destined him,—moves in the same circle,—and, allowing for the change of seasons, is influenced by, a n d influences the same class of persons by which he was originally surrounded. T h e m a n of mark and of adventure on the contrary, resembles, in the course of his life, the river whose mid-current a n d discharge into the ocean are widely removed from each other, as well as from the rocks and wild flowers which its fountains first reflected; violent changes of time, of place, and of circumstances, hurry him forward from one scene to another, and his adventures will usually be found only connected with each other because they have happened to the same individual. Such a history resembles a n ingenious, fictitious narrative, exactly in the degree in which an old dramatic chronicle of the life and death of some distinguished character, where all the various agents appear and disappear as in the page of history, approaches a regular d r a m a , in which every person introduced plays an appropriate part, and every point of the action tends to one common catastrophe. W e return to the second broad line of distinction between the novel, as formerly composed, and real life,—the difference, namely, of the sentiments. T h e novelist professed to give an imitation of nature, but it was, as the French say, la belle nature. H u m a n beings, indeed, were presented, but in the most sentimental mood, a n d with minds purified by a sensibility which often verged on extravagance.

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FICTION

In the serious class of novels, the hero was usually ' A knight of love, w h o never broke a v o w . ' A n d although, in those of a more humorous cast, he w a s permitted a license, borrowed either f r o m real life or from the libertinism of the d r a m a , still a distinction w a s d e m a n d e d even from Peregrine Pickle, or T o m Jones; and the hero, in every folly of w h i c h he might be guilty, was studiously v i n d i c a t e d from the charge of infidelity of the heart. T h e heroine was, o f course, still m o r e immaculate; and to h a v e conferred her affections u p o n a n y other than the lover to w h o m the reader had destined her from their first meeting, w o u l d h a v e been a crime against sentiment w h i c h no author, of moderate prudence, w o u l d h a v e hazarded, under the old régime. Here, therefore, w e have two essential and important circumstances, in w h i c h the earlier novels differed f r o m those now in fashion, a n d were more nearly assimilated to the old romances. A n d there can b e no d o u b t that, by the studied involution and extrication o f the story, b y the combination of incidents new, striking and wonderful b e y o n d the course o f ordinary life, the former authors opened that obvious a n d strong sense of interest w h i c h arises from curiosity; as b y the pure, elevated, a n d romantic cast of the sentim e n t , they conciliated those better propensities of our nature w h i c h loves to c o n t e m p l a t e the picture o f virtue, even w h e n confessedly u n a b l e to imitate its excellencies. But strong and powerful as these sources of emotion and interest m a y be, they are, like all others, c a p a b l e of being exhausted by habit. T h e imitators w h o rushed in crowds upon each path in w h i c h the great masters o f the art h a d successively led the w a y , produced u p o n the public mind the usual effect of satiety. T h e first writer of a n e w class is, as it were, placed on a pinnacle o f excellence, to w h i c h , at the earliest glance of a surprized admirer, his ascent seems little less t h a n miraculous. T i m e and imitation speedily diminish the wonder, and each successive attempt establishes a kind of progressive scale of ascent between the lately deified author, and the reader, w h o had deemed his excellence inaccessible. T h e stupidity, the mediocrity, the merit of his imitators, are alike fatal to the first inventor, b y shewing h o w possible it is to exaggerate his faults and to come within a certain point of his beauties. Materials also (and the m a n o f genius as well as his wretched imitator must work w i t h the same) b e c o m e stale a n d familiar. Social life, in our civilized days, affords few instances c a p a b l e of being painted in the strong dark colours w h i c h excite surprize and horror; a n d robbers, smugglers, bailiffs, caverns, dungeons, and m a d -

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houses, have been all introduced until they ceased to interest. And thus in the novel, as in every style of composition which appeals to the public taste, the more rich and easily worked mines being exhausted, the adventurous author must, if he is desirous of success, have recourse to those which were disdained by his predecessors as unproductive, or avoided as only capable of being turned to profit by great skill and labour. Accordingly a style of novel has arisen, within the last fifteen or twenty years, differing from the former in the points upon which the interest hinges; neither alarming our credulity nor amusing our imagination by wild variety of incident, or by those pictures of romantic affection and sensibility, which were formerly as certain attributes of fictitious characters as they are of rare occurrence among those who actually live and die. The substitute for these excitements, which had lost much of their poignancy by the repeated and injudicious use of them, was the art of copying from nature as she really exists in the common walks of life, and presenting to the reader, instead of the splendid scenes of an imaginary world, a correct and striking representation of that which is daily taking place around him. In adventuring upon this task, the author makes obvious sacrifices, and encounters peculiar difficulty. He who paints from le beau idéal, if his scenes and sentiments are striking and interesting, is in a great measure exempted from the difficult task of reconciling them with the ordinary probabilities of life: but he who paints a scene of common occurrence, places his composition within that extensive range of criticism which general experience offers to every reader. T h e resemblance of a statue of Hercules we must take on the artist's judgment; but every one can criticize that which is presented as the portrait of a friend, or neighbour. Something more than a mere signpost likeness is also demanded. The portrait must have spirit and character, as well as resemblance; and being deprived of all that, according to Bayes, goes 'to elevate and surprize,' it must make amends by displaying depth of knowledge and dexterity of execution. We, therefore, bestow no mean compliment upon the author of Emma, when we say that, keeping close to common incidents, and to such characters as occupy the ordinary walks of life, she has produced sketches of such spirit and originality, that we never miss the excitation which depends upon a narrative of uncommon events, arising from the consideration of minds, manners, and sentiments greatly above our own. In this class she stands almost alone; for the scenes of Miss Edgeworth are laid in higher life, varied by more romantic incident, and by her remarkable power of embodying

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FICTION

a n d illustrating n a t i o n a l c h a r a c t e r . B u t t h e a u t h o r of E m m a confines herself c h i e f l y to t h e m i d d l i n g classes o f society; h e r most distinguished c h a r a c t e r s d o not rise g r e a t l y a b o v e w e l l - b r e d c o u n t r y g e n t l e m e n a n d ladies: a n d those w h i c h a r e s k e t c h e d w i t h most o r i g i n a l i t y a n d precision, b e l o n g to a class r a t h e r b e l o w that s t a n d a r d . T h e n a r r a t i v e o f all h e r novels is c o m p o s e d o f such c o m m o n o c c u r r e n c e s as m a y h a v e f a l l e n u n d e r t h e o b s e r v a t i o n o f most folks; a n d h e r d r a m a t i s p e r s o n a e c o n d u c t themselves u p o n the m o t i v e s a n d principles w h i c h t h e r e a d e r s m a y r e c o g n i z e as ruling their o w n a n d t h a t of most o f their a c q u a i n t a n c e s . T h e kind o f m o r a l , also, w h i c h these n o v e l s i n c u l c a t e , applies e q u a l l y t o the p a t h s o f c o m m o n life . . . Sir Walter Scott. Review of Jane Austen's E m m a (¡81 5 ) , Q u a r t e r l y R e v i e w , Vol. XIV. ACCIDENTS

ADMISSIBLE?

. . . I a m n o t c l e a r , a n d I n e v e r h a v e b e e n clear, r e s p e c t i n g the c a n o n o f fiction w h i c h f o r b i d s t h e i n t e r p o s i t i o n o f a c c i d e n t in s u c h a case as M a d a m e D e f a r g e ' s d e a t h . W h e r e t h e a c c i d e n t is ins e p a r a b l e f r o m t h e passion a n d a c t i o n o f t h e c h a r a c t e r ; w h e r e it is strictly consistent w i t h t h e entire design, a n d arises o u t o f some culminating proceeding on the part o f the individual w h i c h the w h o l e story h a s l e d u p t o ; it seems t o m e t o b e c o m e , as it w e r e , a n act of divine justice. Charles Dickens. John Forster, T h e L i f e of C h a r l e s D i c k e n s {1874), Vol. III. DICKENS DEFENDS

FANTASY

I t does not s e e m to m e to b e e n o u g h t o say o f a n y d e s c r i p t i o n t h a t it is the e x a c t t r u t h . T h e e x a c t t r u t h m u s t b e t h e r e ; b u t t h e merit o r a r t in t h e n a r r a t o r , is t h e m a n n e r o f s t a t i n g the t r u t h . A s to w h i c h t h i n g in l i t e r a t u r e , it a l w a y s seems to m e t h a t there is a w o r l d t o b e d o n e . A n d in these times, w h e n the t e n d e n c y is to b e frightfully literal a n d c a t a l o g u e - l i k e — - t o m a k e t h e t h i n g , in short, a sort o f s u m in r e d u c t i o n t h a t a n y m i s e r a b l e c r e a t u r e c a n d o in t h a t w a y — I h a v e a n i d e a (really f o u n d e d o n t h e love o f w h a t I profess), t h a t the v e r y h o l d i n g o f p o p u l a r l i t e r a t u r e t h r o u g h a kind o f p o p u l a r dark age, m a y depend on such fanciful treatment. Charles Dickens. Letter to John Forster ( 1 8 5 9 ) . See John T h e L i f e o f C h a r l e s D i c k e n s (1874), Vol.'II.

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Forster,

T H E N O V E L AS A P O R T R A I T OF LIFE T H E A R T OF NOVELS IS TO R E P R E S E N T

NATURE

I think Mr. Dickens has in many things quite a divine genius so to speak, and certain notes in his song are so delightful and admirable, that I should never think of trying to imitate him, only hold my tongue and admire him. I quarrel with his Art in many respects: which I don't think represents Nature duly . . . the Art of Novels is to represent Nature: to convey as strongly as possible the sentiment of reality—in a tragedy or a poem or a lofty d r a m a you aim at producing different emotions; the figures moving, and their words sounding, heroically: but in a drawing-room d r a m a a coat is a coat, and a poker a poker; and must be nothing else according to my ethics, not an embroidered tunic, nor a great red-hot instrument like the Pantomime weapon. William Makepeace Thackeray. Letter to David Masson (6 May 1851), Letters (1945). REALISM COMPATIBLE W I T H

SENSATIONALISM

Among English novels of the present day, and among English novelists, a great division is made. There are sensational novels and anti-sensational, sensational novelists and anti-sensational; sensational readers and anti-sensational. T h e novelists who are considered to be anti-sensational are generally called realistic. I a m realistic. My friend Wilkie Collins is generally supposed to be sensational. The readers who prefer the one are supposed to take delight in the elucidation of character. They who hold by the other are charmed by the construction and gradual development of a plot. All this is, I think, a mistake,—which mistake arises from the inability of the imperfect artist to be at the same time realistic and sensational. A good novel should be both, and both in the highest degree. If a novel fail in either, there is a failure in Art. Let those readers who believe that they do not like sensational scenes in novels think of some of those passages from our great novelists which have charmed them most:—of Rebecca in the castle with Morton; of the m a d lady tearing the veil of the expected bride, in Jane Eyre-, of Lady Castlewood as, in her indignation, she explains to the Duke of Hamilton Henry Esmond's right to be present at the marriage of his Grace with Beatrix;—may I add of Lady Mason, as she makes her confession at the feet of Sir Peregrine Orme? Will any one say that the authors of these passages have sinned in being over-sensational? No doubt, a string of horrible incidents, bound together without truth in details, and told as affecting persons without character,—wooden 67

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FICTION

blocks, w h o cannot make themselves k n o w n to the reader as men and w o m e n , — d o e s not instruct or amuse, or even fill the mind with a w e . . . N o novel is anything, for purposes either of comedy or tragedy, unless the reader can sympathize with the characters whose names he finds upon the page. Let an author so tell his tale as to touch his reader's heart and draw his tears, a n d he has, so far, done his work well. T r u t h let there b e , — t r u t h of description, truth of character, h u m a n truth as to men and w o m e n . If there b e such truth, I do not know that a novel c a n be too sensational. Anthony Trollope. A u t o b i o g r a p h y (1883), Chapter xii. T R U T H L I E S IN T H E

'EXCEPTIONAL'

. . . I have my o w n idea about art, and it is this: W h a t most people regard as fantastic and lacking in universality, I hold to be the inmost essence of truth. A r i d observation of everyday trivialities I have long since ceased to regard as realism—it is quite the reverse. In any newspaper one takes up, one comes across reports of wholly authentic facts, which nevertheless strike one as extraordinary. O u r writers regard them as fantastic, and take no account of them; and yet they are the truth, for they are facts. But w h o troubles to observe, record, describe them? T h e y happen every day and every moment, therefore they are not 'exceptional' . . . Feodor Dostoevsky. Letter to Nikolay Strachov (26 February i86g), Letters {1914), transl. Ethel Colburn Mayne. SCIENTIFIC

REALISM

. . . w e can easily see that the novelist is equally an observer and an experimentalist. T h e observer in h i m gives the facts as he has observed them, suggests the point of departure, displays the solid earth on which his characters are to tread and the phenomena to develop. T h e n the experimentalist appears a n d introduces an experiment, that is to say, sets his characters going in a certain story so as to show that the succession of facts will b e such as the requirements o f the determinism of the phenomina under examination call for. Here it is nearly always an experiment 'pour voir', as C l a u d e Bernard calls it. T h e novelist starts out in search of a truth. I will take as an example the character of the B a r o n Hulot in Cousine Bette, by Balzac. T h e general fact observed b y Balzac is the ravages that the amorous temperament of a m a n brings about in his home, in his family, and in society. A s soon as he has chosen his subject he starts from known facts; then he makes his experiment, and

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exposes Hulot to a series of trials, placing him amid certain surroundings in order to exhibit how the complicated machinery of his passions works. It is then evident that there is not only observation there, but that there is also experiment: Balzac does not remain satisfied with photographing the facts collected by him, b u t interferes in a direct way to place his character in certain conditions, and of these he remains the master. T h e problem is to know what such a passion, acting in such a surrounding and under such circumstances, would produce from the point of view of an individual and of society; and an experimental novel, Cousine Bette, for example, is simply the report of the experiment that the novelist conducts before the eyes of the public. I n fact the whole operation consists in taking facts from nature, then in studying the mechanism of these facts, acting upon them, by the modification of circumstance and surroundings, without deviating from the laws of nature. Finally, you possess knowledge of the man, scientific knowledge of him, in both his individual and social relations. Emile Zola. 'Du Roman Experimental', Chapter i, Le R o m a n Experimental (1880), transí. Belle M. Sherman (New York, >893)REALITY ONLY A

SPRING-BOARD

I think exactly as you do about the Nabab. It's unequal. It isn't enough merely to observe; we must order and shape what we have seen. Reality, in my view, ought to be no more than a spring-board. O u r friends believe that to it alone belongs the Kingdom! This materialism makes my blood boil, and nearly every M o n d a y I feel a wave of anger as I read old Zola's literary articles. After the Realists, we have the Naturalists and the Impressionists. W h a t progress! A gang of humbugs trying to make themselves believe, and us with them, that they have discovered the Mediterranean. . . . Gustave Flaubert. Letter to Ivan Tourgenev (8 November 1877), Correspondance (igjo). Like you I've read a few bits of L'Assommoir. They annoyed me. Zola is becoming a 'Précieuse' in reverse . . . H e has Principles which are shrivelling his brain. If you read his articles on Mondays you will see how he thinks he has discovered 'Naturalism'. As for poetry and style, which are the two eternal principles, he never mentions them at all. Question our friend Goncourt likewise. If he is honest he will declare to you that French literature did not exist

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before Balzac. T h a t ' s where the misuse of intelligence a n d the fear of not being original gets us. Gustave Flaubert. Letter to Ivan Tourgenev (¡4 November 1876), Correspondance (/930). T H E N A T U R A L I S T MODIFIES

NATURE

. . . A contemptible reproach w h i c h they h e a p upon us naturalistic writers is the desire to be simply photographic. W e h a v e in vain declared that w e admit the necessity of a n artist's possessing an individual temperament a n d a personal expression; they continue to reply to us with these imbecile arguments, about the impossibility of being strictly true, about the necessity of arranging facts to produce a work of art of a n y kind. Well, w i t h the application of the experimental method to the novel that quarrel dies out. T h e idea of experiment carries w i t h it the idea o f modification. W e start, indeed, from the true facts, w h i c h are our indestructible basis; but to show the mechanism of these facts it is necessary for us to produce and direct the p h e n o m e n a ; this is our share of invention, here is the genius in the book. T h u s without h a v i n g recourse to questions of form and style, w h i c h I shall examine later, I maintain even at this point that w e must m o d i f y nature, without departing from nature, w h e n w e use the experimental method in o u r novels. I f w e bear in mind this definition, that 'observation indicates and experiment teaches', w e c a n even now claim for our books this great lesson of experiment. Emile Zola. 'Du Roman Expérimental', Chapter i, L e R o m a n Expérimental (1880), transi. Belle M. Sherman (New York, *893) REALISTS ARE

ILLUSIONISTS

T o sum up, whereas the novelist of yesterday selected for his narrative life's crises, the most intense experiences of soul and heart, the novelist of to-day writes of the heart, the soul and the intelligence in their normal state. T o produce the effect he wants, that is to say the feeling of simple reality, and to emphasize the artistic doctrine that he wants to draw from i t — t h a t is, the revelation of w h a t is truly the contemporary h u m a n b e i n g before his e y e s — h e must use only those actions whose truth is constant a n d unassailable. But in putting the point of view of these realistic artists it is necessary to examine and discuss their theory, w h i c h can be summed u p simply in these words: ' T h e whole truth and nothing but the truth.' 70

T H E N O V E L AS A P O R T R A I T OF LIFE Since their intention is to bring out the philosophy of certain unchanging everyday facts, they will often have to alter events for the benefit of verisimilitude but at the expense of truth, for 'truth m a y sometimes seem improbable'. T h e realist, if he is an artist, will seek to give us not a banal photographic representation of life, but a vision of it that is fuller, more vivid and more compellingly truthful than even reality itself. T o give an account of everything would be impossible, for we should need at least one volume for each day in order to record the multitude of insignificant incidents that fill our lives. Selection is therefore necessary,—and that is the first blow to the theory of 'the whole truth'. Life, moreover, is made up of elements that are utterly different from each other, of things utterly unexpected, contrary and incongruous; it is harsh, inconsequent, incoherent, and filled with disasters which, inexplicable, illogical and contradictory as they are, must be gathered together under the heading 'sundry happenings'. T h a t is w h y the artist, having made his choice of subject, should select from this life, crowded as it is with accidents and trivialities, only those characteristic details that are useful for his theme; all the rest, all the incidentals, he must reject. Here is one example from a thousand: T h e number of people in this world who die accidentally every d a y is considerable. But can we, in the middle of a narrative, allow a tile to fall on the head of a central character, or throw him under the wheels of a carriage, on the pretext that w e must do justice to the part played by accident? A g a i n , life treats everything on the same level, precipitating events or letting them drag on indefinitely. Art, on the other hand, consists in contriving precautions and preparations, managing cunning, concealed transitions, bringing essential events into a strong light by the skill of the writing alone, and affording all the others the degree of emphasis appropriate to their relative importance, and all this in order to produce that profound impression of the special truth one wants to reveal. T o make true, then, one must give a complete illusion of truth b y following the ordinary logic of events and not by slavishly transcribing them in the haphazard w a y they come. From all this I conclude that Realists of talent ought rather to be called Illusionists. Guy de Maupassant.

'Le Roman', Introduction to

Pierre et Jean (1888). 7*

T H E N A T U R E OF P R O S E REPRESENTATIVE ART BOTH AND IDEAL

FICTION REALISTIC

In literature (from w h i c h I must draw m y instances) the great change of the past century has been effected by the admission of detail. It was inaugurated by the romantic Scott; and at length, by the semi-romantic Balzac and his more or less wholly unromantic followers, bound like a duty on the novelist. For some time it signified and expressed a more ample contemplation of the conditions of man's life; but it has recently (at least in France) fallen into a merely technical and decorative stage, w h i c h it is, perhaps, still too harsh to call survival. W i t h a movement of alarm, the wiser or more timid begin to fall a little back from these extremities; they begin to aspire after a more naked, narrative articulation; after the succinct, the dignified and the poetic; a n d as a means to this, after a general lightening of this b a g g a g e of detail. A f t e r Scott w e beheld the starveling story—once, in the hands of Voltaire, as abstract as a p a r a b l e — b e g i n to be pampered upon facts. T h e introduction of these details developed a particular ability of hand; and that ability, childishly indulged, has led to the works that now a m a z e us on a railway journey. A man of the unquestionable force of M . Z o l a spends himself on technical successes. T o afford a popular flavour a n d attract the mob, he adds a steady current of w h a t I m a y be allowed to call the rancid. T h a t is exciting to the moralist; but w h a t more particularly interests the artist is this tendency of the extreme of detail, when followed as a principle, to degenerate into mere feux-de-joie of literary tricking. T h e other d a y even M . Daudet was to be heard babbling of audible colours and visible sounds. This odd suicide of one branch of the realists m a y serve to remind us of the fact which underlies a very dusty conflict of the critics. A l l representative art, which can be said to live, is both realistic and ideal; and the realism about which w e quarrel is a matter purely of externals. It is no especial cultus of nature a n d veracity, but a mere w h i m of veering fashion, that has m a d e us turn our back upon the larger, more various, and more romantic art o f yore. A photographic exactitude in dialogue is now the exclusive fashion; but even in the ablest hands it tells us no m o r e — I think it even tells us less—than Molière, wielding his artificial medium, has told to us and to all time of Alceste or O r g o n , Dorine or Chrysale. T h e historical novel is forgotten. Y e t truth to the conditions of man's nature and the conditions of man's life, the truth of literary art, is free of the ages. It m a y be told us in a carpet c o m e d y , in a novel of 72

T H E N O V E L AS A P O R T R A I T OF LIFE a d v e n t u r e , o r a f a i r y - t a l e . T h e s c e n e m a y be p i t c h e d i n L o n d o n , o n the sea-coast o f B o h e m i a , o r a w a y o n t h e m o u n t a i n s o f B e u l a h . A n d b y a n o d d a n d l u m i n o u s a c c i d e n t , if there is a n y p a g e o f literat u r e c a l c u l a t e d t o a w a k e n t h e e n v y o f M . Z o l a , it m u s t b e t h a t Troilus and Cressida w h i c h S h a k e s p e a r e , in a passion o f u n m a n l y a n g e r w i t h t h e w o r l d , g r a f t e d o n t h e h e r o i c story o f t h e siege o f Troy. T h i s q u e s t i o n o f r e a l i s m , let it t h e n b e c l e a r l y u n d e r s t o o d , r e g a r d s not in t h e least d e g r e e the f u n d a m e n t a l t r u t h , b u t o n l y t h e t e c h n i c a l m e t h o d , o f a w o r k o f a r t . Be as i d e a l o r as a b s t r a c t as y o u p l e a s e , y o u will be n o n e t h e less v e r a c i o u s ; b u t i f y o u b e w e a k , y o u r u n t h e risk o f b e i n g tedious a n d inexpressive; a n d if y o u b e v e r y s t r o n g a n d honest, y o u m a y c h a n c e u p o n a m a s t e r p i e c e . Robert Louis Stevenson. 'A Note on Realism' reprinted in T h e A r t o f W r i t i n g ( i g i g ) .

THE NOVEL ' A N A R T I F I C I A L I T Y DISTILLED

{1883);

FROM

T H E FRUITS OF O B S E R V A T I O N ' T h e most d e v o t e d a p o s t l e o f realism, the sheerest n a t u r a l i s t , c a n n o t escape, a n y m o r e t h a n the w i t h e r e d old gossip o v e r h e r fire, t h e exercise o f A r t in his l a b o u r or p l e a s u r e o f telling a tale. N o t u n t i l he b e c o m e s a n a u t o m a t i c r e p r o d u c e r o f all impressions w h a t s o e v e r c a n h e be c a l l e d p u r e l y scientific, o r e v e n a m a n u f a c t u r e r o n scientific principles. I f in t h e exercise o f his reason he select o r o m i t , w i t h a n eye to b e i n g m o r e t r u t h f u l t h a n t r u t h (the j u s t a i m o f A r t ) , h e transforms h i m s e l f i n t o a technicist a t a m o v e . A s this t h e o r y o f t h e n e e d f o r t h e exercise o f t h e D a e d a l i a n f a c u l t y for selection a n d c u n n i n g m a n i p u l a t i o n has b e e n d i s p u t e d , it m a y b e w o r t h w h i l e t o e x a m i n e t h e c o n t r a r y p r o p o s i t i o n . T h a t it s h o u l d ever h a v e b e e n m a i n t a i n e d b y s u c h a r o m a n c e r as M . Z o l a , in his w o r k o n the Roman Experimental, seems to r e v e a l a n obtuseness t o the disproof c o n v e y e d in his o w n novels w h i c h , in a F r e n c h w r i t e r , is singular i n d e e d . T o b e sure t h a t a u t h o r — w h o s e p o w e r s in story-telling, o w i n g to t h e f a c t t h a t h e is not a c r i t i c — d o e s i n a m e a s u r e c o n c e d e s o m e t h i n g in the q u a l i f i e d c o u n s e l t h a t t h e n o v e l s h o u l d k e e p as close t o r e a l i t y as it can; a r e m a r k w h i c h m a y b e i n t e r p r e t e d w i t h infinite l a t i t u d e , a n d w o u l d n o d o u b t h a v e b e e n c h e e r f u l l y a c c e p t e d b y D u m a s père o r M r s . R a d c l i f f e . I t i m p l i e s d i s c r i m i n a t i v e c h o i c e ; a n d i f w e g r a n t t h a t w e g r a n t all. B u t t o m a i n t a i n in t h e o r y w h a t he a b a n d o n s in p r a c t i c e , to s u b s c r i b e to rules a n d to w o r k b y instinct, is a p r o c e e d i n g n o t c o n f i n e d t o t h e a u t h o r o f Germinal a n d La Faute de V Abbé Moure t.

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T h e reasons that make against such conformation of story-writing to scientific processes have been set forth so m a n y times in examining the theories of the realist, that it is not necessary to recapitulate them here. Admitting the desirability, the impossibility of reproducing in its entirety the phantasmagoria of experience with infinite and atomic truth, without shadow, relevancy, or subordination, is not the least of them. T h e fallacy appears to owe its origin to the just perception that with our widened knowledge of the universe and its forces, and man's position therein, narrative, to be artistically convincing, must adjust itself to the new alignment, sis would also artistic works in form and colour, if further spectacles in their sphere could be presented. Nothing but the illusion of truth can permanently please, and when the old illusions begin to be penetrated, a more natural magic has to be supplied. Creativeness in its full and ancient sense—the making a thing or situation out of nothing that ever was before—is apparently ceasing to satisfy a world which no longer believes in the abnormal—ceasing at least to satisfy the van-couriers of taste; and creative fancy has accordingly to give more and more place to realism, that is, to an artificiality distilled from the fruits of closest observation. This is the meaning deducible from the work of the realists, however stringently they themselves m a y define realism in terms. Realism is an unfortunate, an ambiguous word, w h i c h has been taken up by literary society like a view-halloo, and has been assumed in some places to mean copyism, and in others pruriency, and has led to two classes of delineators being included in one condemnation. Thomas Hardy. ' The Science of Fiction' reprinted in Life and Art {1925).

(i8gi);

I M I T A T I O N C A N N O T S E R V E AS A S T A N D A R D [A] second method which gives a semblance o f art is what I called imitation. T h e essence of this method consists in rendering the details which accompany that which is described or represented. In the literary art this method consists in describing, d o w n to the minutest details, the appearance, faces, garments, gestures, sounds, apartments of the acting persons, with all those incidents which occur in life. Thus, in novels and stories, they describe, with every speech of the acting person, in what voice he said it, and w h a t he did then. A n d the speeches themselves are not told so as to make the best sense, but as incoherently as they are in life, w i t h interruptions and abrupt endings . . . Imitation cannot serve as a standard of the value o f art, because, 74

THE NOVEL A S A P O R T R A I T OF LIFE if the chief property of art is the infection of others with the sensation described by the artist, the infection with the sensation not only does not coincide with the description of the details of what is being conveyed, but for the most part is impaired by a superabundance of details. T h e attention of him w h o received artistic impressions is distracted b y all these well-observed details, and on account of them the author's feeling, if he has any, is not communicated. It is just as strange to value the production of art by the degree of its realism and truthfulness of details communicated, as it is to j u d g e of the nutritive value of food by its appearance. W h e n w e define the value of a production by its realism, we merely show by this that w e are not speaking of a production of art, but of an imitation of it. Leo Tolstoy. 'What is art?' (1897), Complete Works (1904), Vol. XXII, transl. Leo Werner.

A R T ' A L L DISCRIMINATION A N D S E L E C T I O N ' . . . Life being all inclusion and confusion, and art being all discrimination and selection, the latter, in search of the hard latent value with which alone it is concerned, sniffs round the mass as instinctively and unerringly as a dog suspicious of some buried bone. T h e difference here, however, is that, while the dog desires his bone but to destroy it, the artist finds his tiny nugget, washed free of a w k w a r d accretions and hammered into a sacred hardness, the very stuff for a clear affirmation, the happiest chance for the indestructible. It at the same time amuses him again and again to note how, beyond the first step of the actual case, the case that constitutes for h i m his germ, his vital particle, his grain of gold, life persistently blunders and deviates, loses herself in the sand. T h e reason is of course that life has no direct sense whatever for the subject and is capable, luckily for us, of nothing but splendid waste. Hence the opportunity for the sublime economy of art, which rescues, which saves, and hoards and 'banks', investing and reinvesting these fruits of toil in wondrous useful 'works' and thus making u p for us, desperate spendthrifts that we all naturally are, the most princely of incomes. It is the subtle secrets of that system, however, that are meanwhile the charming study, with an endless attraction above all, in the question—endlessly baffling i n d e e d — o f the method at the heart of the madness; the madness, I mean, of a zeal, a m o n g the reflective sort, so disinterested. I f life, presenting us the germ, a n d left merely to herself in such a business, gives the case a w a y , almost always, before w e can stop her, what are the signs for our

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guidance, w h a t the primary laws for a saving selection, h o w do w e k n o w w h e n and where to intervene, where d o w e place the beginnings of the w r o n g or the right deviation? S u c h would be the elements of an enquiry upon w h i c h , I hasten to say, it is quite forbidden m e here to embark: I but glance at them in evidence of the rich pasture that at every turn surrounds the ruminant critic. T h e answer m a y b e after all that mysteries here elude us, that general considerations fail or mislead, and that even the fondest of artists need ask for no wider range than the logic o f the particular case. T h e particular case, or in other words his relation to a given subject, once the relation is established, forms in itself a little world of exercise a n d agitation. Let h i m hold himself perhaps supremely fortunate if he c a n meet half the questions w i t h w h i c h the air alone m a y swarm. Henry James. Preface to T h e Spoils o f Poynton {i8gj); first printed in the New York edition of the Novels and Stories (igoy-iy), Vol. XV. IMAGINED LIFE C L E A R E R T H A N

REALITY

W h a t is it that Novalis says? 'It is certain m y conviction gains infinitely the moment another soul will believe in it.' A n d w h a t is a novel i f not a conviction of our fellow-men's existence strong e n o u g h to take upon itself a form o f imagined life clearer t h a n reality a n d whose a c c u m u l a t e d verisimilitude of selected episodes puts to shame the pride of documentary history? Joseph Conrad. A Personal R e c o r d (igi2),

IS L I F E L I K E

Chapter i

THIS?

A d m i t t i n g the vagueness w h i c h afflicts all criticism o f novels, let us h a z a r d the opinion that for us at this m o m e n t the form o f fiction most in v o g u e more often misses than secures the thing w e seek. W h e t h e r w e call it life or spirit, truth or reality, this, the essential thing, has moved off, or on, and refuses to b e confined a n y longer in such ill-fitting vestments as w e provide. Nevertheless, w e go on perseveringly, conscientiously, constructing our t w o a n d thirty chapters after a design w h i c h more a n d more ceases to resemble the vision in o u r minds. So m u c h of the enormous l a b o u r o f p r o v i n g the solidity, the likeness to life, of the story is not merely l a b o u r thrown a w a y but labour misplaced to the extent o f obscuring a n d blotting o u t the light of the conception. T h e writer seems constrained, not by his o w n free will but by some p o w e r f u l a n d un-

76

T H E N O V E L AS A P O R T R A I T OF LIFE s c r u p u l o u s t y r a n t w h o has h i m in thrall, t o p r o v i d e a p l o t , to p r o v i d e c o m e d y , t r a g e d y , love, interest, a n d a n air of p r o b a b i l i t y e m b a l m i n g t h e w h o l e so i m p e c c a b l e t h a t if all his figures w e r e t o c o m e t o life t h e y w o u l d find themselves dressed d o w n to the last b u t t o n o f their coats in the fashion o f the h o u r . T h e t y r a n t is o b e y e d ; the n o v e l is d o n e to a turn. B u t sometimes, m o r e a n d m o r e o f t e n as t i m e goes b y , w e suspect a m o m e n t a r y d o u b t , a s p a s m of rebellion, as the p a g e s fill themselves in the c u s t o m a r y w a y . Is life like this? M u s t novels b e like this? L o o k w i t h i n a n d life, it seems, is v e r y far f r o m b e i n g 'like this' E x a m i n e for a m o m e n t a n o r d i n a r y m i n d o n a n o r d i n a r y d a y . T h e m i n d receives a m y r i a d i m p r e s s i o n s — t r i v i a l , fantastic, e v a n e s c e n t , o r e n g r a v e d w i t h the sharpness o f steel. F r o m all sides t h e y c o m e , a n incessant s h o w of i n n u m e r a b l e a t o m s ; a n d as they fall, as t h e y s h a p e themselves into the life o f M o n d a y or T u e s d a y , t h e a c c e n t falls d i f f e r e n t l y f r o m o f o l d ; the m o m e n t o f i m p o r t a n c e c a m e not here b u t t h e r e ; so t h a t , if a w r i t e r w e r e a free m a n a n d n o t a slave, i f h e c o u l d w r i t e w h a t he chose, n o t w h a t he must, if he c o u l d base his w o r k u p o n his o w n feeling a n d not u p o n c o n v e n t i o n , t h e r e w o u l d b e n o plot, n o c o m e d y , n o t r a g e d y , n o love interest o r c a t a s t r o p h e in t h e a c c e p t e d style, a n d p e r h a p s not a single b u t t o n s e w n o n as the B o n d Street tailors w o u l d h a v e it. L i f e is not a series o f g i g l a m p s s y m m e t r i c a l l y a r r a n g e d ; life is a l u m i n o u s halo, a s e m i - t r a n s p a r e n t e n v e l o p e s u r r o u n d i n g us f r o m the b e g i n n i n g o f consciousness t o the e n d . Is it n o t t h e task o f t h e novelist t o c o n v e y this v a r y i n g , this u n k n o w n a n d u n c i r c u m s c r i b e d spirit, w h a t e v e r a b e r r a t i o n or c o m p l e x i t y it m a y display, w i t h as little m i x t u r e o f the alien a n d e x t e r n a l as possible? W e a r e not p l e a d i n g m e r e l y for c o u r a g e a n d sincerity; w e a r e suggesting that the p r o p e r s t u f f o f fiction is a little o t h e r t h a n c u s t o m w o u l d h a v e us believe it. Virginia Wool/. 'Modern Fiction'' (jgig); T h e C o m m o n Reader {ig2j)

reprinted in

REALISM IMPAIRS T H E SENSE OF T R A G E D Y . . . M o s t books t h a t live, live in spite o f the a u t h o r ' s l a y i n g it o n t h i c k . T h i n k of Wuthering Heights. I t is q u i t e as impossible t o a n I t a l i a n as even I Malavoglia is to us. B u t it is a great b o o k . T h e trouble w i t h r e a l i s m — a n d V e r g a w a s a r e a l i s t — i s t h a t t h e writer, w h e n he is a truly e x c e p t i o n a l m a n like F l a u b e r t or like V e r g a , tries to r e a d his o w n sense o f t r a g e d y i n t o p e o p l e m u c h s m a l l e r t h a n himself. I think it is a final criticism a g a i n s t Madame Bovaiy that p e o p l e such as E m m a B o v a r y a n d her h u s b a n d C h a r l e s

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simply are too insignificant to carry the full weight of Gustave Flaubert's sense of tragedy. E m m a and Charles Bovary are a couple of little people. Gustave Flaubert is not a little person. But, because h e is a realist a n d does not believe in 'heroes', Flaubert insists on pouring his own deep and bitter tragic consciousness into the little skins of the country doctor and his uneasy wife. T h e result is a discrepancy. Madame Bovary is a great book and a very wonderful picture of life. But we cannot help resenting the fact that the great tragic soul of Gustave Flaubert is, so to speak, given only the rather commonplace bodies of E m m a and Charles Bovary. There's a misfit. And to get over the misfit you have to let in all sorts of seams of pity. Seams of pity which won't be hidden. T h e great tragic soul of Shakespeare borrows the bodies of kings a n d princes—not out of snobbism, but out of natural affinity. You can't put a great soul into a commonplace person. Commonplace persons have commonplace souls. Not all the noble sympathy of Flaubert or Verga for Bovarys a n d Malavoglias can prevent the said Bovarys and Malavoglias from being commonplace persons. T h e y were chosen because they were commonplace a n d not heroic. T h e authors insisted on the treasure of the humble. But they had to lend the humble by far the best part of their own treasure, before the said humble could show any treasure at ail. D. H. Lawrence. 'Giovanni Verga', Phoenix (1922). REALISM AND

STYLIZATION

'Is it because the novel, of all literary genres, is the freest, the most lawless,' held forth Edouard, ' . . . is it for that very reason, for fear of that very liberty (the artists who are always sighing after liberty are often the most bewildered when they get it), that the novel has always clung to reality with such timidity? And I a m not speaking only of the French novel. It is the same with the English novel; and the Russian novel, for all its throwing off of constraints, is a slave to resemblance. T h e only progress it looks to is to get still nearer to nature. T h e novel has never known that "formidable erosion of contours," as Nietzsche calls it; that deliberate avoidance of life, which gave style to the works of the Greek dramatists, for instance, or to the tragedies of the French seventeenth century. Is there anything more perfectly and deeply h u m a n than these works? But that's just it—they are h u m a n only in their depths; they don't pride themselves on appearing so—or, at any rate, on appearing real. T h e y remain works of art . . . 'Well, I should like a novel which should be at the same time as

78

T H E N O V E L AS A P O R T R A I T OF L I F E true a n d as far from reality, as particular and at the same time as general, as human and as fictitious as Athalie, or Tartuffe or Cinna.' ' A n d . . . the subject of this novel?' 'It hasn't got one,' answered Edouard brusquely, 'and perhaps that's the most astonishing thing about it. M y novel hasn't got a subject. Yes, I know, it sounds stupid. Let's say, if you prefer it, it hasn't got one subject . . . " a slice of life," the naturalist school said. T h e great defect of that school is that it always cuts its slice in the same direction; in time, lengthwise. W h y not in breadth? O r in depth? As for me I should like not to cut at all. Please understand; I should like to put everything into my novel. I don't w a n t a n y cut of the scissors to limit its substance at one point rather than at another. For more than a year now that I have been working at it, nothing happens to me that I don't put into i t — e v e r y t h i n g I see, everything I know, everything that other people's lives and m y o w n teach me . . .' ' A n d the whole thing stylized into art?' said Sophroniska, feigning the most lively attention, but no doubt a little ironically. L a u r a could not suppress a smile. Edouard shrugged his shoulders slightly and went on: ' A n d even that isn't what I want to do. W h a t I w a n t is to represent reality on the one hand, and on the other that effort to stylize it into art of which I have just been speaking.' ' M y poor dear friend, you will make your readers die of bored o m , ' said Laura; as she could no longer hide her smile, she h a d made up her mind to laugh outright. ' N o t at all. In order to arrive at this e f f e c t — d o you follow me? — I invent the character of a novelist, w h o m I make m y central figure; and the subject of the book, if you must have one, is just that very struggle between what reality offers him and w h a t he himself desires to make of it.' André Gide. Les F a u x Monnayeurs {1925), Part II, Chapter iii, transl. Dorothy Bussy (¡§52).

TRUTH STRANGER THAN

FICTION

'But it can't b e too queer,' said Philip. ' H o w e v e r queer the picture is, it can never be half so odd as the original reality. W e take it all for granted; but the moment you start thinking, it becomes queer. A n d the more you think, the queerer it grows. T h a t ' s w h a t I w a n t to get in this b o o k — t h e astonishingness of the most obvious 79

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things. R e a l l y a n y plot or situation w o u l d do. Because everything's implicit in a n y t h i n g . T h e w h o l e book could be written about a walk from Piccadilly Circus to C h a r i n g Cross . . . Aldous Huxley. Point C o u n t e r Point (1928), Chapter xiv.

NOT AN OBSERVER, BUT A CREATOR ' T h e essential point . . . is not to k n o w whether a novelist m a y or m a y not portray a given aspect of evil. T h e essential point is to know at w h a t altitude he is w h e n he makes this portrayal and whether his art and his soul are pure enough and strong enough to m a k e it w i t h o u t conniving at it. T h e more the m o d e r n novel plunges into h u m a n misery, the m o r e are superhuman virtues d e m a n d e d from the novelist. For e x a m p l e , to write the work o f a Proust as it should be written w o u l d require the interior light o f a Saint A u g u s t i n e . U n f o r t u n a t e l y , it is just the opposite that has h a p p e n e d , and w e see the observer a n d the thing o b s e r v e d — t h e novelist and his s u b j e c t — r i v a l l i n g one another in degradation.' T h i s is w h a t J a c q u e s M a r i t a i n says, a n d everyone will agree that he puts the question very well: everyone, that is, except the novelist. H o w e v e r , he does not take into a c c o u n t the real point, since he neglects to consider the f u n d a m e n t a l laws of novel-creation. H e mentions the 'observer a n d the t h i n g observed'. I n fact he compares a novelist b e n d i n g over the h u m a n heart w i t h a physiologist over a frog or a guinea-pig. A c c o r d i n g to Maritain, the novelist is d e t a c h e d from his subject in the w a y the m a n in the laboratory is d e t a c h e d from the animal whose s t o m a c h he is deliberately dissecting. I, however, hold that the operation of the novelist is utterly different from that of the experimentalist. As far as the novel is concerned, J a c q u e s M a r i t a i n has stopped at the old naturalistic ideas. It is a condition of art that the novelist should connive at the subject of his creation, in spite o f Maritain's warning, for the real novelist is not a n observer, b u t a creator of fictitious life. It is not his function to observe life, but to create it. H e brings living people into the w o r l d ; he does not observe t h e m from some lofty v a n t a g e point. H e even confuses a n d , in a w a y , loses his o w n personality in the subject of his creation, and his identification w i t h it is pushed so far that he actually becomes his creation. François Mauriac. G o d and M a m m o n ( first published 1929; English translation 1936), Chapter v.

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T H E N O V E L AS A P O R T R A I T OF LIFE

A DISCUSSION A B O U T CATEGORIES OF FICTION

(i) Henry James dismisses them There is an old-fashioned distinction between the novel of character and the novel of incident, which must have cost many a smile to the intending romancer who was keen about his work. It appears to me as little to the point as the equally celebrated distinction between the novel and the romance—to answer as little to any reality. There are bad novels and good novels, as there are bad pictures and good pictures; but that is the only distinction in which I see any meaning, and I can as little imagine speaking of a picture of character. When one says picture, one says of character, when one says novel, one says of incident, and the terms may be transposed. What is character but the determination of incident? What is incident but the illustration of character? What is a picture or a novel that is not of character? What else do we seek in it and find in it? It is an incident for a woman to stand up with her hand resting on a table and look out at you in a certain way; or if it be not an incident, I think it will be hard to say what it is. At the same time it is an expression of character. If you say you don't see it (character in that—allons done!) this is exactly what the artist who has reasons of his own for thinking he does see it undertakes to show you. When a young man makes up his mind that he has not faith enough to enter the Church, as he intended, that is an incident, though you may not hurry to the end of the chapter to see whether perhaps he doesn't change once more. I do not say that these are extraordinary or startling incidents. I do not pretend to estimate the degree of interest proceeding from them, for this will depend upon the skill of the painter. It sounds almost puerile to say that some incidents are intrinsically much more important than others, and I need not take this precaution after having professed my sympathy for the major ones in remarking that the only classification of the novel that I can understand is into the interesting and the uninteresting. The novel and the romance, the novel of incident and that of character—these separations appear to me to have been made by critics and readers for their own convenience, and to help them out of some of their difficulties, but to have little reality or interest for the producer, from whose point of view it is, of course, that we are attempting to consider the art of fiction. . . The French, who have brought the theory of fiction to remarkable completeness, have but one word for the novel, and have not attempted smaller things in it, that I can see, for that. I can think of no obligation to which the 81

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FICTION

'romancer' would not be equally held with the novelist; the standard of execution is equally high for each. . . . . . . I have just been reading, at the same time, the delightful story of Treasure Island, by Mr. Robert Louis Stevenson, and the last tale from M . Edmond de Goncourt, which is entitled Chérie. O n e of these works treats of murders, mysteries, islands of dreadful renown, hairbreadth escapes, miraculous coincidences and buried doubloons. T h e other treats of a little French girl who lived in a fine house in Paris and died of wounded sensibility because no one would marry her. I call Treasure Island delightful, because it appears to me to have succeeded wonderfully in what it attempts; and I venture to bestow no epithet upon Chérie, which strikes me as having failed in what it attempts—that is, in tracing the development of the moral consciousness of a child. But one of these productions strikes me as exactly as much of a novel as the other, and having a 'story' quite as much. T h e moral consciousness of a child is as much a part of life as the islands of the Spanish Main. Henry James. 'The Art of Fiction' (1884); reprinted in Partial Portraits (1888).

(ii) S T E V E N S O N

REMONSTRATES

T h e life of man is not the subject of novels, but the inexhaustible magazine from which subjects are to be selected; the name of these is legion; and with each new subject—for here again I must differ by the whole width of heaven from Mr. James—the true artist will vary his method and change the point of attack. T h a t which was in one case excellence, will become a defect in another; what was the making of one book, will in the next be impertinent or dull. First each novel, and then each class of novels, exists by and for itself. I will take, for instance, three main classes, which are fairly distinct: first the novel of adventure, which appeals to certain almost sensual and quite illogical tendencies in man; second, the novel of character, which appeals to our intellectual appreciation of man's foibles and mangled and inconstant motives; and third, the dramatic novel, which deals with the same stuff as the serious theatre, and appeals to our emotional nature and moral judgment. A n d first for the novel of adventure. Mr. James refers, with singular generosity of praise, to a little book about a quest for hidden treasure . . . in this elementary novel of adventure, the characters need to be presented with but one class of qualities—the warlike and formidable. So as they appear insidious in deceit and 82

THE NOVEL AS A P O R T R A I T OF LIFE fatal in c o m b a t , they have served t h e i r e n d . D a n g e r is t h e m a t t e r with which this class of novel deals; fear, t h e passion with w h i c h it idly trifles; a n d the characters a r e p o r t r a y e d only so far as t h e y realize the sense of danger a n d provoke t h e s y m p a t h y of fear. T o a d d more traits, to be too clever, to start t h e h a r e of m o r a l or intellectual interest while we are r u n n i n g t h e fox of m a t e r i a l interest, is not to enrich b u t to stultify your tale. T h e stupid r e a d e r will only b e offended, a n d the clever r e a d e r lose t h e scent. T h e novel of c h a r a c t e r has this difference f r o m all t h e others: t h a t it requires n o coherency of plot, a n d for this reason, as in t h e case of Gil Bias, it is sometimes called t h e novel of a d v e n t u r e . I t turns on the h u m o u r s of the persons represented; these are, to be sure, embodied in incidents, b u t the incidents themselves, being t r i b u t a r y , need not m a r c h in a progression; a n d the characters m a y b e statically shown. As they enter, so m a y t h e y go o u t ; they m u s t b e consistent, b u t they need not grow. H e r e M r . J a m e s will recognize the note of his own work: h e treats, for t h e most p a r t , the statics of character, studying it at rest or only gently m o v e d ; a n d , w i t h his usual delicate a n d just artistic instinct, h e avoids those stronger passions which would deform t h e attitudes h e loves to study, a n d change his sitters f r o m the humorists of o r d i n a r y life to t h e b r u t e forces a n d b a r e types of more emotional m o m e n t s . I n his recent Author of Beltraffio, so just in conception, so n i m b l e a n d n e a t in workmanship, strong passion is indeed e m p l o y e d ; b u t observe t h a t it is not displayed. Even in t h e heroine t h e w o r k i n g of t h e passion is suppressed; a n d t h e great struggle, t h e t r u e tragedy, t h e scène à /aire, passes unseen behind the panels of a locked door. T h e delectable invention of the young visitor is i n t r o d u c e d , consciously or not, to this e n d : t h a t M r . J a m e s , t r u e to his m e t h o d , must avoid the scene of passion. I trust no r e a d e r will suppose m e guilty of u n d e r valuing this little masterpiece: I m e a n merely t h a t it belongs to one m a r k e d class of novel, and that it would h a v e been very differently conceived a n d treated h a d it belonged to t h a t o t h e r m a r k e d class, of which I n o w proceed to speak. I take pleasure in calling t h e d r a m a t i c novel b y t h a t n a m e , because it enables m e to point o u t a strange a n d peculiarly English misconception. It is sometimes supposed t h a t t h e d r a m a consists of incident. It consists of passion, which gives t h e a u t h o r his opportunity; a n d t h a t passion must progressively increase, or t h e actor, as the piece proceeded, would b e u n a b l e to carry t h e a u d i e n c e from a lower to a higher pitch of interest a n d emotion. A good serious play must therefore be founded on one of the passionate cruces of life, where d u t y a n d inclination come nobly to t h e g r a p p l e ; a n d the

83

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same is true of what I call, for that reason, the dramatic novel. I will instance a few worthy specimens, all of our own day and language: Meredith's Rhoda Fleming, that wonderful and painful book, long out of print and hunted for at bookstalls like an Aldine; Hardy's Pair of Blue Eyes; and two of Charles Reade's, Griffith Gaunt and The Double Marriage, originally called White Lies and founded (by an accident quaintly favourable to my nomenclature) on a play by Maquet, the partner of the great Dumas. I n this kind of novel the closed door of The Author of Beltraffio must be broken open; passion must appear upon the scene and utter its last word; passion is the be-all and end-all, the plot and the solution, the protagonist and the deus ex machind in one. T h e characters may come anyhow upon the stage: we do not care; the point is that, before they leave it, they shall become transfigured and raised out of themselves by passion. It may be part of the design to draw them with detail; to depict a full-length character, and then behold it melt and change in the furnace of emotion. But there is no obligation of the sort; nice portraiture is not required; and we are content to accept more abstract types, so they be strongly and sincerely moved. A novel of this class may even be great, and yet contain no individual figure; it may be great, because it displays the workings of the perturbed heart a n d the impersonal utterance of passion; and with an artist of the second class it is, indeed, even more likely to be great, when the issue has been thus narrowed and the whole force of the writer's mind directed to passion alone. Cleverness again, which has its fair field in the novel of character, is debarred all entry upon this more solemn theatre. A far-fetched motive, an ingenious evasion of the issue, a witty instead of a passionate turn, offend us like insincerity. All should be plain, all straightforward to the end. Hence it is that, in Rhoda Fleming, Mrs. Lovel raises such resentment in the reader; her motives are too flimsy, her ways are too equivocal, for the weight and strength of her surroundings. Hence the hot indignation of the reader when Balzac, after having begun the Duchesse de Langeais in terms of strong if somewhat swollen passion, cuts the knot by the derangement of the hero's clock. Such personages and incidents belong to the novel of character; they are out of place in the high society of the passions; when the passions are introduced into art at their full height, we look to see them, not baffled and impotently striving, as in life, b u t towering above circumstance and acting substitutes for fate. Robert Louis Stevenson. 'A Humble Remonstrance' (1884); reprinted in Memories and Portraits {1887). 84

Ill

The Ethics of the Novel

T H E NOVELIST AND T H E YOUNG

PERSON

(i) . . . I thought the story, if written in an easy and natural manner, suitable to the simplicity of it, might possibly introduce a new species of writing, that might possibly turn young people into a course of reading different from the pomp and parade of romancewriting, and dismissing the improbable and marvellous, with which novels generally abound, might tend to promote the cause of religion and virtue. Samuel Richardson. Preface to Clarissa, the History of a Young Lady . . . {1747-8). (ii) R . . . . A decent young girl doesn't read love stories. If any such girl reads this one, in spite of its title, she is not to grumble about the harm it will have done her: she will be deceiving herself. T h e harm was done already; she has nothing left to risk. N. Wonderful! Erotic writers all, welcome to the school-room. Here you are all completely vindicated. R. Yes, so they are, if it is by their own heart and by the purpose of their writings. N. Well, are you vindicated according to these conditions? R. I have too much pride to answer that; but Julie 1 made a rule of her own forjudging books. If you find it a good one, use it to judge this book by. People have wanted to make novel-reading useful to the young; I can't think of anything more senseless: it's like setting fire to the house so that the fire-brigade can be called out. According to this nonsensical notion, instead of aiming the lesson of this kind 1

The heroine of La Nouvelle Hiloise. 85

THE NATURE

OF P R O S E

FICTION

of work at its true object, people aim the lesson at young girls, 1 not realizing that young girls play no part in the irregularities which they deplore. In general, their behaviour is regular, even if their hearts are unsound. They obey their mothers, waiting meanwhile until they can imitate them. When grown women do their duty, be sure that young girls won't fail in theirs. Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Preface (1762) to L a Nouvelle Heloise (/760). (iii) Hortensius . . . If Rousseau intended by this work to give a check to this shameful intercourse of the sexes, so frequently practised on the Continent, under the specious name of gallantry, he is to be commended; and if it produced effects he did not forsee, he ought to be excused. Euphrasia. I am sure Rousseau is much obliged to your sensible and polite apology for his Eloise. But after all the objections remain. It is a dangerous book to put into the hands of youth, it awakens and nourishes those passions, which it is the exercise of Reason, and of Religion also, to regulate, and to keep within their true limits. On this account I have often wished that the two first Volumes of Eloise, could be abridged and altered, so as to render them consistent with the unexceptionable morals of the two last.— I thought it might be possible to give a different turn to the story, and to make the two Lovers, stop short of the act, that made it criminal in either party to marry another, for were they not actually wedded in the sight of heaven? and could Eloise with any pretension to virtue, or to delicacy, give herself to another man? If this insuperable objection was removed; then might the Lovers renew their friendship with honour and dignity on both sides, then might the husband in full confidence in his wife's principles, invite her friend, and even leave them together without appearing so justly-ridiculous in his conduct as he now does to impartial judges. Hortensius. I like your plan, and advise you to make this alteration yourself. Euphrasia. You must excuse me Sir,—I have not yet the presumption to attempt it, or to think myself able to do justice to Rousseau in such an alteration.—It must remain as it is, it has done all the mischief in its power to the youth of this generation; and the worst 1

This applies only to modern English novels [Rousseau's footnote].

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NOVEL

part of it is, that those w h o w r i t e only for d e p r a v e d a n d c o r r u p t e d minds, dare appeal to Rousseau as a precedent. Clara Reeve. T h e Progress o f R o m a n c e Vol. II, Evening ix.

{1785),

(iv) A b o v e all things let h i m 1 never t o u c h a r o m a n c e or a novel; these paint beauty in colours m o r e c h a r m i n g t h a n nature; a n d describe happiness that m a n never tastes. H o w delusive, h o w destructive are those pictures o f c o n s u m m a t e bliss. T h e y teach the y o u t h f u l m i n d to sigh after b e a u t y a n d happiness w h i c h never existed; to despise the little good w h i c h fortune has m i x e d in o u r c u p , b y e x p e c t i n g more than she ever g a v e ; a n d in general, take the w o r d o f a m a n w h o has studied nature m o r e by experience t h a n precept; take m y w o r d for it that books teach us very little o f the w o r l d . Oliver Goldsmith. Letter to the Reverend Henry Goldsmith (no date), Miscellaneous W o r k s (1801), Vol. I. (V) . . . I a m , I own, no great believer in the moral utility to be derived from fictitious compositions; yet, if in a n y case a w o r d spoken in season m a y be of a d v a n t a g e to a y o u n g person, it must surely be w h e n it calls upon h i m to attend to the voice of principle a n d selfdenial, instead o f that o f precipitate passion. Sir Walter Scott. Introduction (1831) to T h e Fortunes o f N i g e l (1822).

(vi) T h e r e are m a n y w h o w o u l d l a u g h at the idea o f a novelist t e a c h i n g either virtue or nobility,—-those, for instance, w h o regard the reading o f novels as a sin, a n d those also w h o think it to b e simply a n idle pastime. T h e y look u p o n the tellers of stories as a m o n g the tribe of those w h o p a n d e r to the w i c k e d pleasures o f a wicked w o r l d . I h a v e regarded m y art from so different a point o f v i e w that I h a v e ever thought of myself as a p r e a c h e r o f sermons, a n d m y pulpit as one w h i c h I could m a k e b o t h salutary a n d agreeable to m y audience. I do believe that no girl has risen from the r e a d i n g of m y pages less modest than she w a s before, a n d that some m a y h a v e learned from t h e m that modesty is a c h a r m w o r t h preserving. I 1

i.e. Goldsmith's young nephew. 87

T H E N A T U R E OF PROSE FICTION

think that no youth has been taught that in falseness and flashness is to be found the road to manliness; but some may perhaps have learned from me that it is to be found in truth and a high but gentle spirit. Such are the lessons I have striven to teach; and I have thought that it might best be done by representing to my readers characters like themselves,—or to which they might liken themselves. Anthony Trollope. An Autobiography (1883), Chapter viii.

(vii) A certain institution in Mr. Podsnap's mind which he called 'the young person* may be considered to have been embodied in Miss Podsnap, his daughter. It was an inconvenient and exacting institution, as requiring everything in the universe to be filed down and fitted to it. T h e question about everything was, would it bring a blush into the cheek of the young person? And the inconvenience of the young person was, that, according to Mr. Podsnap, she seemed liable to burst into blushes when there was no need at all. There appeared to be no line of demarcation between the young person's excessive innocence, and another person's guiltiest knowledge. Take Mr. Podsnap's word for it, and the soberest tints of drab, white, lilac, and grey, were all flaming red to this troublesome Bull of a young person. Charles Dickens. O u r Mutual Friend (i860), Chapter xi.

(viii) By what it shall decide to do in respect to the 'young' the great prose fable will, from any serious point of view, practically see itself stand or fall. What is clear is that it has, among us, veritably never chosen—it has, mainly, always obeyed an unreasoning instinct of avoidance in which there has often been much that was felicitous. While society was frank, was free about the incidents and accidents of the h u m a n constitution, the novel took the same robust ease as society. T h e young then were so very young that they were not table-high. But they began to grow, and from the moment their little chins rested on the mahogany, Richardson and Fielding began to go under it. There came into being a mistrust of any but the most guarded treatment of the great relation between men and women, the constant world-renewal which was the conspicuous sign that whatever the prose picture of life was prepared to take upon itself, it was not prepared to take it on itself not to be superficial. Its position became very much: 'There are other things don't you

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know? For heaven's sake let that one pass!' And to this wonderful propriety of letting it pass the business has been for these so many years—with the consequences we see to-day—largely devoted. Henry James. 'The Future of the Novel', T h e International Library of Famous Literature, Vol. XIV; reprinted in T h e Future of the Novel (New York, 1956), ed. Leon Edel.

(ix) Of all the compliments that can be paid to a writer, there is one especially that will make him glow with pleasure, namely: 'You are admired so much among the younger generation.' Then his head positively swells, for though he may seem to be detached, what he wants above all things is to get the attention of the younger generation, and if he does not do this he considers he has failed in his mission. Nothing matters to him except that. He has got to reach others, and particularly he has got to reach those who are still capable of being influenced and dominated, the younger mentalities which are hesitating and unformed. He wants to leave his mark on this living wax and imprint all that is best in him on those who are going to survive him. It is not enough for the writer who writes so as not to be alone merely to reach other people; he wants to make them replicas of himself: he wants his own image and likeness to be resurrected in them when he himself is in the grave. . . . Unfortunately, readers who have attained the age of reason are often more dangerously disturbed by books than other readers. It is probably better to be read by little girls who have tea in the nursery and who do not know what evil is than by young people in full flush of youth. It would be difficult to imagine the sort of letters a writer can receive. After reading a book of mine called Genetrix, a boy once sent me a photograph with the words: ' T o the m a n who nearly made me kill my grandmother.' In an accompanying letter he explained that the old lady resembled the heroine of Genetrix to such an extent that he had been on the very verge of strangling her during her sleep. H o w can readers like that be protected? Father Bethléem himself cannot do anything. T h e reading of imaginative iiterature should be forbidden to adults rather than to children. François Mauriac. God and Mammon (first published, 192g; English translation, 1936), Chapter v. REFORMING T H E WICKED R E A D E R

Every wicked reader will here be encouraged to a change, and it will appear that the best and only good end of a wicked mispent

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life is repentance; that in this, there is comfort, peace, and oftentimes hope, and that the penitent shall be returned like the prodigal, and his latter end be better than his beginning. While these things, and such as these, are the ends and designs of the whole book, I think I need not say one word more as an apology for any part of the rest, no, nor for the whole; if discouraging everything that is evil, and encouraging everything that is virtuous and good; I say, if these appear to be the whole scope and design of the publishing this story, no objection can lie against it, neither is it of the least moment to inquire whether the colonel hath told his own story true or not; if he has made it a history or a parable, it will be equally useful, and capable of doing good; and in that it recommends itself without any other introduction. Daniel Defoe. Preface to T h e History and Remarkable Life of the T r u l y Honourable Colonel J a c q u e (172s).

GILDING THE

PILL

In this general depravity, when even the pulpit has lost great part of its weight, a n d the clergy are considered as a body of interested men, the author thought he should be able to answer it to his own heart, b e the success w h a t it would, if he threw in his mite towards introducing a reformation so much wanted: and he imagined, that if in an age given u p to diversion and entertainment, he could steal in, as m a y be said, and investigate the great doctrines of Christianity under the fashionable guise of an amusement, he should be most likely to serve his purpose; remembering that of the poet: A verse m a y find him w h o a sermon flies, A n d turn delight into a sacrifice . . . Samuel Richardson. Post-script to Clarissa, the History of a Y o u n g L a d y . . . {1747-8). . . . instruction without entertainment (were I capable of giving the best) would have but few readers. Instruction, M a d a m , is the pill; amusement is the gilding. Writings that do not touch the passions of the light and airy, will hardly ever reach the heart. Perhaps I have in mine been too copious on that subject; but it is a subject in which, at one time or another of their lives, all men and all w o m e n are interested, and more liable than in any other to make mistakes, not seldom fatal ones. Samuel Richardson. Letter to Lady Elchin (22 September 1755), Correspondence (1804). 90

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NOVEL

PROVIDED

. . . n o r do I , i n d e e d , c o n c e i v e the g o o d purposes s e r v e d b y inserting c h a r a c t e r s o f s u c h a n g e l i c perfection, o r s u c h d i a b o l i c a l d e p r a v i t y , in a n y w o r k o f i n v e n t i o n ; since, f r o m c o n t e m p l a t i n g e i t h e r , t h e m i n d o f m a n is m o r e likely to b e o v e r w h e l m e d w i t h s o r r o w a n d s h a m e t h a n t o d r a w a n y g o o d uses f r o m s u c h p a t t e r n s ; f o r in the f o r m e r i n s t a n c e h e m a y b e b o t h c o n c e r n e d a n d a s h a m e d t o see a p a t t e r n o f e x c e l l e n c e in his n a t u r e , w h i c h he m a y r e a s o n a b l y d e s p a i r o f e v e r a r r i v i n g a t ; a n d in c o n t e m p l a t i n g the l a t t e r h e m a y b e n o less a f f e c t e d w i t h those u n e a s y sensations, at seeing t h e n a t u r e o f w h i c h h e is a p a r t a k e r d e g r a d e d i n t o so o d i o u s a n d d e t e s t a b l e a creature. I n f a c t , i f there be e n o u g h o f goodness in a c h a r a c t e r to e n g a g e t h e a d m i r a t i o n a n d a f f e c t i o n o f a well-disposed m i n d , t h o u g h there s h o u l d a p p e a r s o m e o f those little blemishes quas humana parum cavit natura, t h e y will raise o u r c o m p a s s i o n r a t h e r t h a n o u r a b h o r r e n c e . I n d e e d , n o t h i n g c a n b e o f m o r e m o r a l use t h a n t h e i m p e r f e c t i o n s w h i c h a r e seen in e x a m p l e s o f this k i n d ; since s u c h f o r m a k i n d o f surprise, m o r e a p t to a f f e c t a n d d w e l l u p o n o u r m i n d s t h a n t h e faults o f v e r y vicious a n d w i c k e d persons. T h e foibles a n d vices o f m e n , in w h o m there is g r e a t m i x t u r e o f g o o d , b e c o m e m o r e g l a r i n g o b j e c t s f r o m the virtues w h i c h contrast t h e m a n d s h o w t h e i r d e f o r m i t y ; a n d w h e n w e find s u c h vices a t t e n d e d w i t h t h e i r evil c o n s e q u e n c e t o o u r f a v o u r i t e c h a r a c t e r s , w e a r e not o n l y t a u g h t t o s h u n t h e m f o r o u r o w n sake, b u t to h a t e t h e m for the mischiefs t h e y h a v e a l r e a d y b r o u g h t o n those w e love. Henry Fielding. T o m J o n e s (1749),

E X E M P L A R Y AMBITIONS

Book X, Chapter i.

ACHIEVED

I f I h a v e not s u c c e e d e d in m y e n d e a v o u r s to u n f o l d the mysteries o f f r a u d , t o instruct the i g n o r a n t , a n d e n t e r t a i n t h e v a c a n t ; i f I h a v e failed in m y a t t e m p t s to subject folly t o ridicule, a n d v i c e t o i n d i g n a t i o n ; to arouse the spirit o f m i r t h , w a k e t h e soul o f c o m passion, a n d t o u c h the secret springs t h a t m o v e t h e h e a r t ; I h a v e , a t least, a d o r n e d v i r t u e w i t h h o n o u r a n d a p p l a u s e , b r a n d e d i n i q u i t y with reproach and shame, and carefully avoided every hint or expression w h i c h c o u l d g i v e u m b r a g e to t h e m o s t d e l i c a t e reader. . . . Tobias Smollett. Preface to T h e A d v e n t u r e s o f F e r d i n a n d C o u n t F a t h o m {1753). 9'

T H E N A T U R E OF PROSE FICTION NO POLITICS?

(i) All that I a m bound to do as a story-maker is, to make a story; I a m not bound to reform the constitution of my country in the same breath, nor even (Heaven be thanked!) to overturn it, though that might be the easier task of the two, or, more properly speaking, one and the same thing in its consequences. Nature is my guide; man's nature, not his natural rights: the one ushers me by the straight avenue to the h u m a n heart, the other bewilders me in a maze of metaphysics. Richard Cumberland. Henry (1795), Book the Sixth, Chapter i.

(ii) Politics in a work of literature are like a pistol-shot in the middle of a concert, something loud and vulgar and yet a thing to which it is not possible to refuse one's attention. Stendhal. La Chartreuse de Parme (1839), Chapter xxiii, transl. C. K. Scott Moncrieff (1926). T H E R E A D E R U N I N T E R E S T E D IN T H E MORAL

T h e professed moral of a piece is usually what the reader is least interested in; it is like the mendicant, who cripples after some gay procession, and in vain solicits the attention of those who have been gazing upon it. Excluding from consideration those infamous works, which address themselves directly to awakening the grossest passions of our nature, we are inclined to think, the worst evil to be apprehended from the perusal of novels is, the habit is apt to generate an indisposition to real history, and useful literature; and that the best which can be hoped is, that they may sometimes instruct the youthful mind by real pictures of life, and sometimes awaken their better feelings and sympathies by strains of generous sentiment, and fictitious woe. Beyond this point they are a mere elegance, a luxury contrived for the amusement of polished life, and the gratification of that half love of literature which pervades all ranks in an advanced stage of society, and are read much more for amusement, than with the best hope of deriving instruction from them. Sir Walter Scott. 'Fielding', Lives of the Novelists (1827). 92

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M a n y writers lay very great stress upon some definite moral purpose, at w h i c h they profess to a i m their works. N o t to be deficient in this particular, the author has provided himself with a m o r a l , — the truth, namely, that the wrong-doing of one generation lives into the successive ones, and, divesting itself of every temporary a d v a n tage, becomes a pure and uncontrollable mischief; a n d he would feel it a singular gratification if this romance might effectually convince m a n k i n d — o r , indeed, any m a n — o f the folly of tumbling d o w n an avalanche of ill-gotten gold, or real estate, on the heads o f an unfortunate posterity, thereby to m a i m and crush them, until the accumulated mass shall be scattered abroad in its original atoms. In good faith, however, he is not sufficiently imaginative to flatter himself with the slightest hope of this kind. W h e n romances do really teach anything, or produce any effective operation, it is usually through a far more subtile process than the ostensible one. T h e author has considered it hardly worth his while, therefore, relentlessly to impale the story with its moral as w i t h an iron r o d , — o r , rather, as by sticking a pin through a b u t t e r f l y , — t h u s at once depriving it of life, and causing it to stiffen in an ungainly and unnatural attitude. A high truth, indeed, fairly, finely, a n d skilfully wrought out, brightening at every step, and c r o w n i n g the final development of a work o f fiction, m a y a d d an artistic glory, b u t is never any truer, a n d seldom any more evident, at the last p a g e than at the first. Nathaniel Hawthorne. Preface to T h e House o f the Seven Gables (1S51). T R U T H IS B E S T Even the gentlemen of our a g e — t h i s is an attempt to describe one of them, no better nor worse than most educated m e n — e v e n these w e cannot show as they are, with the notorious foibles and selfishness of their lives and their education. Since the author of T o m Jones was buried, no writer of fiction a m o n g us has been permitted to depict to his utmost power a man. W e must drape him, and give him a certain conventional simper. Society will not tolerate the Natural in our A r t . M a n y ladies have remonstrated and subscribers left me, because in the course of the story, I described a young m a n resisting and affected by temptation. M y object was to say, that he had the passions to feel, and the manliness and generosity to overcome them. Y o u will not h e a r — i t is best to know i t — w h a t moves

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the real world, what passes in society, in the clubs, colleges, messrooms,—what is the life and talk of your sons. A little more frankness than is customary has been attempted in this story; with n o bad desire on the writer's part, it is hoped, and with no ill consequence to any reader. If truth is not always pleasant; at any rate truth is best. . . . William Makepeace Thackeray. Preface to Pendennis (1850). THE WRITER'S

RESPONSIBILITY

But man or woman who publishes writings inevitably assumes the office of teacher or influencer of the public mind. Let him protest as he will that he only seeks to amuse, and has no pretension to do more than while away an hour of leisure or weariness—'the idle singer of an empty d a y ' — h e can no more escape influencing the moral taste, and with it the action of the intelligence, than a setter of fashions in furniture and dress can fill the shops with his designs and leave the garniture of persons and houses unaffected by his industry. For a man who has a certain gift of writing to say, 'I will make the most of it while the public likes my wares—as long as the market is open and I a m able to supply it at a money profit—such profit being the sign of liking'—he should have a belief that his wares have nothing akin to the arsenic green in them, and also that his continuous supply is secure from a degradation in quality which the habit of consumption encouraged in the buyers may hinder them from marking their sense of by rejection; so that they complain, but pay, and read while they complain. Unless he has that belief, he is on a level with the manufacturer who gets rich by fancy-wares coloured with arsenic green. He really cares for nothing but his income. He carries on authorship on the principle of the gin-palace. And bad literature of the sort called amusing is spiritual gin. George Eliot. 'Leaves from a Note-book: Authorship', T h e Impressions of Theophrastus Such {i8yg). AN ARGUMENT ABOUT ARTISTIC

DETACHMENT

. . . I do not recognize my right to accuse anyone. I don't even think that the novelist should express his own opinion of the things of this world. H e may communicate it, but I don't want him to state it. (This is part of my own particular aesthetic doctrine.) A n d so I limit myself to revealing things as they appear to me, and to explaining that which seems to me to be the truth. Never mind the con-

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T H E E T H I C S OF T H E N O V E L sequences! R i c h or poor, victors or vanquished, I admit none of all that. I want neither love, nor hate, nor pity, nor anger. As for sympathy, that's different: one can never have enough of i t . . . Isn't it time to bring Justice into Art? T h e impartiality of painting would then reach the majesty of the l a w , — a n d the precision of science! Gustave Flaubert. Letter to George Sand (10 August ¡868), Correspondance (1903). I know you disapprove of the intervention of personal doctrine in literature. A r e you right? Isn't this lack of conviction rather than aesthetic principle? O n e can't have any real philosophy without it coming to light. I haven't any literary advice to give you. I've no judgment to pass on your friends, the writers of whom you speak. I told Goncourt myself all I thought; as for the others I firmly believe that they have more learning and talent than I. O n l y I think there is wanting in them, and in you especially, a sufficiently decided and extensive vision of life. A r t isn't simply painting. T r u e painting, moreover, is full of the spirit that moves the brush. A r t isn't only criticism and satire: criticism and satire paint only one aspect of truth . . . George Sand. Letter to Gustave Flaubert (18-19 December, ¡875), Correspondance (189s). One must write for all those w h o long to read and w h o can profit by good reading. So one must go straight to the highest morality that one can find in oneself and make no mystery about the valuable moral sense in one's work. People have found Madame Bovary immoral. I f one part of the public set up an outraged clamour, the other better-balanced and more extensive part found in the book a harsh and striking lesson directed at the woman without conscience or loyalty, and at vanity, ambition, unreason. T h e y pitied her, compelled b y your art; but the lesson was still clear, and it would have been so even more, it would have been clear to everyone, if you had really wanted it to be, had you brought out more definitely the opinion you held, and which ought to be held, of the heroine, her husband, her lovers . . . T h e reader turns away from a book where all the characters are good without shades or weakness; he knows very well that this isn't human. I believe that art, this special art of story-telling, is valueless without conflict of character; but in that struggle I want to see good triumph; that events may crush the upright man I allow, but he

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must be neither dishonoured nor diminished, a n d go to the stake conscious that he is happier than his executioners. George Sand. Letter to Gustave Flaubert (i2 January 1876), Correspondance (1892), A s to making k n o w n m y own opinion about the characters I produce, no, no, a thousand times no! I cannot see that I have any right to d o it. I f the reader can't find in a book the moral that is to be found there, then either the reader is a fool or else the book is false in its exactness. For once anything is true, then it is good. Even obscene books are only immoral in that they are deficient in truth. T h i n g s don't h a p p e n 'like that' in real life. A n d note that I loathe w h a t it is fashionable to call 'realism' even though they set m e u p as one of its H i g h Priests. Gustave Flaubert. Letter to George Sand {6 February 1876), Correspondance (1900). H I G H M O R A L P U R P O S E OF T H E

NATURALISTS

T h e y accuse us of immorality, w e writers of the naturalist school; and they are right: we lack the morality of mere words. O u r morality is w h a t C l a u d e Bernard has so precisely defined: ' T h e modern morality searches out the causes, desires to explain and act u p o n them; in a word, to master the good a n d the evil; to bring forth the one and develop it; to battle against the other, extirpate and destroy it.' T h e high and stern philosophy of our naturalistic works is a d m i r a b l y summed u p in those few lines. W e are looking for the causes o f social evil; we study the anatomy of classes and individuals to explain the derangements w h i c h are produced in society and in man. T h i s often necessitates our working on tainted subjects, our descending into the midst of h u m a n follies a n d miseries. But w e obtain the necessary data so that b y knowing them one m a y be able to master the good and the evil. L o ! here is w h a t w e have seen, observed and explained in all sincerity. N o w it remains for the legislators to bring the good and develop it. N o work can be more moralizing than ours, then, because it is upon it that the law should be based. H o w far are w e from the tirades in favour of virtue which interest no one? O u r virtue does not consist of words, but of acts; w e are the active labourers w h o examine the building, point out the rotten girders, the interior crevices, the loosened stones, all the ravages w h i c h are not seen from the outside, and w h i c h can at any moment undermine the entire edifice. Is not this a work more truly useful, more serious and more worthy than that of placing oneself

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on a rock, a lyre in one's hand, and striving to encourage men by a hullabaloo of deep-sounding words? A h ! what a parallel I could draw between the works of the romantics and the works of the naturalists! T h e ideal is the root of all dangerous reveries. T h e moment that you leave the solid ground of truth you are thrown into all kinds of monstrosities. T a k e the novels and the dramas of the romantic school; study them from this point of view; you will find there the most shameful subtleties of the débauché, the most stupefying insanities of mind and body. Without doubt these bad places are magnificently draped; they are infamous alcoves before which is drawn a silken curtain; but I maintain that these veils, these hidden infamies offer a much greater peril, insomuch that the reader may dream over them at his ease, enlarge upon them, and abandon himself to them as a delicious and permissible recreation. W i t h the naturalistic writings this hypocrisy is impossible. These works may frighten, but they do not corrupt. T r u t h misleads no one. I f it is forbidden to children it is the prerogative of men, and whoever makes himself familiar with it desires a certain profit therefrom. A l l this is a simple and irrefutable matter upon which all the world should agree. T h e y call us corrupters; nothing can be more foolish. T h e corrupters are the idealists w h o lie. Emile £ola. 'Lettre à la Jeunesse', L e R o m a n Expérimental (1880), transi. Belle M. Sherman (New York, i8gj). F O U L TO T E L L W H A T IS FALSE*. UNSAFE T O SUPPRESS W H A T IS T R U E There are two duties incumbent upon any m a n w h o enters on the business of writing: truth to the fact and a good spirit in the treatment. In every department of literature, though so low as hardly to deserve the name, truth to the fact is of importance to the education and comfort of mankind, and so hard to preserve, that the faithful trying to do so will lend some dignity to the man w h o tries it. O u r judgments are based upon two things: first, upon the original preferences of our soul; but, second, upon the mass of testimony to the nature of God, man, and the universe which reaches us, in divers manners, from without. For the most part these divers manners are reducible to one, all that we learn of past times and much that we learn of our own reaching us through the medium of books or papers, and even he w h o cannot read learning from the same source at second-hand and by the report of him w h o can. Thus the sum of the contemporary knowledge or ignorance of good and evil is, in large measure, the handiwork of those w h o write. Those 97

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w h o write have to see that each man's knowledge is, as near as they can make it, answerable to the facts of life; that he shall not suppose himself an angel or a monster; nor take this world for a hell; nor be suffered to imagine that all rights are concentred in his o w n caste or country, or all veracities in his own parochial creed. E a c h m a n should learn what is within him, that he m a y strive to m e n d ; he must be taught w h a t is without him, that he m a y be kind to others. It can never be wrong to tell him the truth; for, in his disputable state, weaving as he goes his theory of life, steering himself, cheering or reproving others, all facts are of the first importance to his conduct; and even if a fact shall discourage or corrupt him, it is still best that he should know it; for it is in this world as it is, a n d not in a world m a d e easy by educational suppressions, that he must win his w a y to shame or glory. In one word, it must always be foul to tell what is false; and it can never be safe to suppress w h a t is true. Robert Louis Stevenson. ' The Morality of the Profession of Letters' (1881); reprinted in T h e A r t of Writing (igig).

N A T U R A L TRUTH BETTER THAN DIDACTICISM It m a y seem something of a paradox to assert that the novels w h i c h most conduce to moral profit are likely to be a m o n g those written without a moral purpose. But the truth of the statement m a y be realized if we consider that the didactic novel is so generally devoid of vraisemblance as to teach nothing but the impossibility of tampering with natural truth to advance dogmatic opinions. Those, on the other hand, which impress the reader with the inevitableness o f character and environment in working out destiny, whether that destiny be just or unjust, enviable or cruel, must h a v e a sound effect, if not what is called a good effect, upon a healthy mind. O f the effects of such sincere presentation on weak minds, w h e n the courses of the characters are not exemplary, and the rewards and punishments ill adjusted to deserts, it is not our duty to consider too closely. A novel which does moral injury to a dozen imbeciles, and has bracing results u p o n a thousand intellects of normal vigour, can justify its existence; and probably a novel was never written by the purest-minded author for which there could not be found some moral invalid or other w h o m it was capable of harming. Thomas Hardy. ' The Profitable Reading of Fiction' reprinted in Life and A r t {ig2$).

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{¡888);

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T H E A R T I S T MUST S E T T H E Q U E S T I O N , S O L V E IT

NOT

Specialists exist for special questions; it is their business to j u d g e of the c o m m u n e , the future of capitalism, the evil of drink, o f boots, of the diseases o f w o m e n . . . A n artist must j u d g e only o f w h a t he understands; his sphere is as limited as that o f any other s p e c i a l i s t — this I repeat a n d o n this I always insist. T h a t in his sphere there are no questions but merely answers can only be maintained b y the m a n w h o has never written and knows nothing about i m a g i n a t i v e work. A n artist observes, selects, guesses, combines—these in themselves presuppose questions; if from the very first he had not p u t a question to himself, there would be nothing to divine nor to select. T o be brief, I'll finish with psychiatry; to deny that artistic creation involves problems and purposes w o u l d be to admit that a n artist creates without premeditation, without design, under a spell. T h e r e fore if an artist boasted to m e o f h a v i n g written a story w i t h o u t a previously settled design, but b y inspiration, I should call h i m a lunatic. Y o u are right in d e m a n d i n g that a n artist should take a conscious attitude to his w o r k , but you confuse two conceptions: the solution of a question and the correct setting of a question. T h e latter alone is obligatory for the artist. In ' A n n a K a r e n i n ' and in ' O n y e g u i n ' not a single problem is solved, but they satisfy completely because all the problems are set correctly. It is for the j u d g e to put the questions correctly; and the j u r y m e n must decide, each one according to his taste. Anton Chekhov. Letter to A. S. Souvorin (27 October 1888), L i f e and Letters {1925), transl. and ed. S. S. Koteliansky and Philip Tomlinson. IS I T G E N U I N E , IS I T

SINCERE?

. . . R e c o g n i z i n g so promptly the one measure o f the w o r t h of a given subject, the question a b o u t it that, rightly answered, disposes of all others—is it valid, in a w o r d is it genuine, is it sincere, the result of some direct impression or perception of l i f e ? — I had found small edification, mostly, in a critical pretension that had neglected from the first all delimitation of ground and all definition o f terms. T h e air o f my earlier time shows, to memory, as darkened, all r o u n d , w i t h that vanity—unless the difference to-day b e j u s t in one's o w n final impatience, the lapse of one's attention. T h e r e is, I think, no more nutritive or suggestive truth in this connexion

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T H E N A T U R E OF PROSE F I C T I O N than that of the perfect dependence of the 'moral' sense of a work of art on the amount of felt life concerned in producing it. T h e question comes back thus, obviously, to the kind and degree of the artist's prime sensibility, which is the soil out of which his subject springs. T h e quality and capacity of that soil, its ability to 'grow' with due freshness and straightness any vision of life, represents, strongly or weakly, the projected morality. T h a t element is but another name for the more or less close connexion of the subject with some mark made on the intelligence, with some sincere experience. By which, at the same time, of course, one is far from contending that this enveloping air of the artist's humanity—which gives the last touch to the worth of the work—is not a widely and wondrously varying element; being on one occasion a rich and magnificent medium and on another a comparatively poor and ungenerous one. Here we get exactly the high price of the novel as a literary form—its power not only, while preserving that form with closeness, to range through all the differences of the individual relation to its general subject-matter, all the varieties of outlook on life, of disposition to reflect and project, created by conditions that are never the same from man to man (or, so far as that goes, from man to woman), but positively to appear more true to its character in proportion as it strains, or tends to burst, with a latent extravagance its mould. Henry James. Preface to T h e Portrait of a L a d y (1881); first printed in the New York edition of the Novels and Stories (/907-/7), Vol. IV.

CHERISHING UNDYING HOPE It must not be supposed that I claim for the artist in fiction the freedom of moral Nihilism. I would require from him many acts of faith of which the first would be the cherishing of an undying hope; and hope, it will not be contested, implies all the piety of effort and renunciation. It is the God-sent form of trust in the magic force and inspiration belonging to the life of this earth. W e are inclined to forget that the way of excellence is in intellectual, as distinguished from emotional, humility. W h a t one feels so hopelessly barren in declared pessimism is just its arrogance. It seems as if the discovery made by many men at various times that there is much evil in the world were a source of proud and unholy j o y unto some of the modern writers. T h a t frame of mind is not the proper one in which to approach seriously the art of fiction. It gives an author—goodness only knows w h y — a n elated sense of his own superiority. And IOO

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there is nothing more dangerous than such an elation to that absolute loyalty towards his feelings and sensations an author should keep hold of in his most exalted moments of creation. T o be hopeful in an artistic sense it is not necessary to think that the world is good. It is enough to believe that there is no impossibility of its being made so. Joseph Conrad. 'Books' (1905); reprinted in Notes on Life and Letters (1921). Action in its essence, the creative art of a writer of fiction may be compared to rescue work carried out in darkness against cross gusts of wind swaying the action of a great multitude. It is rescue work, this snatching of vanishing phrases of turbulence, disguised in fair words, out of the native obscurity into a light where the struggling forms may be seen, seized upon, endowed with the only possible form of permanence in this world of relative values—the permanence of memory. A n d the multitude feels it obscurely too; since the demand of the individual to the artist is, in effect, the cry ' T a k e me out of myself!' meaning really, out of my perishable activity into the light of imperishable consciousness. Joseph Conrad. 'Henry James, An Appreciation' (1905); reprinted in Notes on Life and Letters (1921). THUMBS OFF T H E S C A L E If we think about it, we find that our life consists in this achieving of a pure relationship between ourselves and the living universe about us. This is how I 'save my soul' by accomplishing a pure relationship between me and another person, me and other people, me and a nation, me and a race of men, me and the animals, me and the trees or flowers, me and the earth, me and the skies and sun and stars, me and the moon: an infinity of pure relations, big and little, like the stars of the sky: that makes our eternity, for each one of us, me and the timber I a m sawing, the lines of force I follow; me and the dough I knead for bread, me and the very motion with which I write, me and the bit of gold I have got. This, if we knew it, is our life and our eternity: the subtle perfected relation between me and my whole circumambient universe. And morality is that delicate, for ever trembling and changing balance between me and my circumambient universe, which precedes and accompanies a true relatedness. Now here we see the beauty and the great value of the novel. Philosophy, religion, science, they are all of them busy nailing things 101

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down, to get a stable equilibrium. Religion, with its nailed-down O n e G o d , w h o says Thou shalt, Thou shan't, and hammers h o m e every time; philosophy, w i t h its fixed ideas; science with its 'laws': they, all of them, all the time, w a n t to nail us on to some tree or other. But the novel, no. T h e novel is the highest example of subtle inter-relatedness that m a n has discovered. Everything is true in its o w n time, place, circumstance, a n d untrue outside of its own place, time, circumstance. I f you try to nail anything down, in the novel, cither it kills the novel, or the novel gets up and walks a w a y with the nail. Morality in the novel is the trembling instability of the balance. W h e n the novelist puts his t h u m b in the scale, to pull d o w n the balance to his own predilection, that is immorality. T h e modern novel tends to become more and more immoral, as the novelist tends to press his t h u m b heavier and heavier in the pan: either on the side of love, pure love: or on the side of licentious 'freedom'. T h e novel is not, as a rule, immoral because the novelist has any dominant idea, or purpose. T h e immorality lies in the novelist's helpless, unconscious predilection. L o v e is a great emotion. But if you set out to write a novel, and y o u yourself are in the throes of the great predilection for love, love as the supreme, the only emotion worth living for, then you will write an immoral novel. D. H. Lawrence. 'Morality and the Novel' reprinted in Phoenix (1936).

BEST T O BE W I T H O U T A N Y

{1925);

VIEWS

W i t h the novel you can d o a n y t h i n g : you can inquire into every department of life, you can explore every department of the world of thought. T h e one thing you cannot do is to propagandize, as an author, for any cause . . . It is obviously best if you c a n contrive to be without any views at all: your business with the world is rendering, not alteration. Y o u have to render life with such exactitude that more specialized beings than you, learning from you w h a t are the secret needs of humanity, m a y j u d g e how many white-tiled bathrooms are, or to what extent parliamentary representation is, necessary to the happiness o f men and women. If, however, your yearning to amend the h u m a n race is so great that you cannot possibly keep your fingers out of the watchsprings there is a device that you can adopt. Let us suppose that you feel tremendously strong views as to 102

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sexual immorality or temperance. Y o u feel that you must express these, yet you know that, like, say, M . Anatole France, w h o is also a propagandist, you are a supreme novelist. Y o u must then invent, justify, and set going in our novel a character w h o can convincingly express your views. If you are a gentleman y o u will also invent, justify and set going characters to express views opposite to those you hold . . . Ford Madox Ford. Joseph C o n r a d , A Personal R e m e m b r a n c e {1924), Part III, Chapter ii. I have always had the greatest contempt for novels written with a purpose. Fiction should render, not d r a w morals. But when I sat down to write that series of volumes [i.e. the Tietjens novels] I sinned against m y gods to the extent of saying that I was going — t o the level of the light vouchsafed m e — t o write a work that should have for its purpose the obviating of all future wars. Ford Madox Ford. It W a s the Nightingale {1934), Part II, Chapter ii. H O W T O P R E S E N T I D E A S IN A

NOVEL

(i) . . . T h e introduction of the dramatic element, of the image, the picture, of description, of dialogue, seems to m e indispensable in modern literature. Let us confess frankly that Gil Bias is wearisome as form: in the piling u p of events and ideas there is something sterile. T h e idea personified in a character, shows a finer intelligence. Plato cast his psychological ethics in the form o f dialogue. Honoré de Balzac. 'Etude sur H. Beyle' (1840); reprinted in T h e Charterhouse of P a r m a {1931), transí. C. K. Scott Moncrieff.

(ii) . . . A l l through my career as a writer, I have never taken ideas but always characters for my starting point. Ivan Turgenev. Letter to Leonid Polonsky (27 February 1869). See David Magarshack, T u r g e n e v {1954), Part III. . . . I must confess that I never attempted to 'create a character' if in the first place I had in mind an idea and not a living person. Ivan Turgenev. 'Concerning Fathers and Sons' (1868?). Ibid. 103

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(Hi) . . . Because a novel is a microcosm, a n d because m a n in viewing the universe must view it in the light o f a theory, therefore every novel must have the background or the structural skeleton of some theory of being, some metaphysic. But the metaphysic must always subserve the artistic purpose beyond the artist's conscious aim. Otherwise the novel becomes a treatise. D. H. Lawrence. 'Study of Thomas Hardy', Chapter ix, Phoenix (1936).

(iv) Never present ideas except in terms of temperaments and characters. André Gide. Logbook of T h e Coiners {1927), p. 2, transl. Justin O'Brien.

(v) Novel of ideas. T h e character of each personage must be implied, as far as possible, in the ideas of w h i c h he is the mouthpiece. I n so far as theories are rationalizations of sentiments, instincts, dispositions of soul, this is feasible. T h e chief defect o f the novel of ideas is that you must write about people w h o h a v e ideas to express — w h i c h excludes all but about -or per cent, o f the h u m a n race. Hence the real, the congenital novelists don't write such books. But then I never pretended to be a congenital novelist. T h e great defect of the novel of ideas is that it's a m a d e - u p affair. Necessarily; for people w h o can reel o f f neatly formulated notions aren't quite real; they're slightly monstrous. Living with monsters becomes rather tiresome in the long run. Aldous Huxley. Point C o u n t e r Point (1928), Chapter xxii. POETIC JUSTICE M . J . W h a t is odd, but of course it isn't serious criticism, is the recoil of some reviewers from w h a t they call 'the sorry spectacle of adult h u m a n nature' presented in your novels, as if they were a board examining the degrees of moral turpitude a m o n g a group of immigrants. Yours are not the only doubtful characters in fiction! A n d when characters are accepted, even the New Statesman 'violently hoped for a quite different, a more vindictive e n d i n g of Elders and 104

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Betters' Is it the old demand for w h a t was called 'poetic justice', the calling in the world o f fiction to redress the balance o f the real world? I. C . B. I should have said that there were a good m a n y good people in my books, and this m a y mean that I hardly see eye-to-eye with the reviewers. But I think that life makes great d e m a n d on people's characters, a n d gives them, a n d especially used to give them, great opportunity to serve their o w n ends b y the sacrifice of other people. Such ill-doing m a y meet with little retribution, m a y indeed be hardly recognized, a n d I cannot feel so surprised if people yield to it. I have been told that I treat evil-doing as if it were normal, a n d a m not normally repelled by it, and this m a y be putting m y o w n words in another form. A s you say, there are m a n y doubtful characters in other fiction. Something must happen in a novel, and wrong-doing makes a more definite picture or event. V i r t u e tends to be more even and less spectacular, and it does not c o m m a n d so much more sympathy, as is proved by the accepted tendency of the villain to usurp the hero's place. T h e New Statesman wanted wickedness to be punished, but my point is that it is not punished, and that is w h y it is natural to be guilty of it. W h e n it is likely to be punished, most of us avoid it. I do not think this desire is the old d e m a n d for poetic justice, any more than the normal d e m a n d for actual justice. In a book there hardly seems to be any difference. Ivy Compton-Bumett. 'A Conversation Between I. Compton-Burnett and M. Jourdain', O r i o n {1945). MORAL

TRAGEDY

T h e r e is a kind o f tragedy, it seems to me, w h i c h has hitherto almost entirely eluded literature. T h e novel has dealt with the contrariness of fate, good or evil fortune, social relationships, the conflicts of passions and of c h a r a c t e r s — b u t not w i t h the very essence of man's being. A n d yet, the whole effect of Christianity was to transfer the drama on to the moral plane. But properly speaking there are no Christian novels. T h e r e are novels whose purpose is edification; but that has nothing to do with w h a t I mean. M o r a l t r a g e d y — t h e tragedy, for instance, w h i c h gives such terrific meaning to the Gospel text: ' I f the salt have lost his flavour wherewith shall it be salted?'—that is the tragedy with w h i c h I a m concerned. Andre Gide. Les F a u x Monnayeurs, Part /, Chapter xiii {1925), transl. Dorothy Bussy (1953). 105

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FICTION

NOVELIST

If there is one dogma which has gained the support of the majority of writers in this century and the last, it is the dogma of the absolute independence of the artist. It seems to be agreed, once and for all, that a work of art has no object outside itself. It only counts in so far as it is gratuitous or useless: or anything written to prove a point or to be of use is disqualified from the realm of art. Gide says that 'the moral issue for the artist is not that he should present an idea that is useful but that he should present an idea well'. But we can be sure that this would not have to be said so persistently and so often by some writers if it were not vigorously contradicted by others. In fact, from the other end of the literary world comes a ceaseless protest against the pretensions to absolute independence on the part of the artist. For example, when Ernest Psichari proclaims that one must write with fear and trembling under the eye of the Trinity, he is being the mouthpiece of all those who believe in the immortality of each individual soul, and therefore believe in the extreme importance of their writings as affecting each immortal destiny. Then, between these two opposing camps, there is the huge crowd of novelists who fluctuate and hesitate. O n the one hand they admit that their work is valuable only inasmuch as it apprehends living men in their completeness, in their heights and in their depths—the human creature as he is. They feel that any intervention in the unfolding of their characters—even to prove the truth of what they believe—is an abuse. They feel a sincere revulsion against falsifying life. O n the other hand, they know that they are treading on dangerous ground, and that their intense desire to depict human emotions and passions may have an incalculable and permanent effect on the lives of many people. Every novelist worthy of the name and every playwright who is a born Christian suffers from the torment of this dilemma. . . . This question then emerges: Must one stop writing even if one feels deeply that writing is one's vocation and that literary creation is as natural as breathing? Perhaps some doctor holds the key to the enigma; perhaps somebody somewhere knows the way in which a scrupulous novelist can escape from these choices—these three choices of either changing the object of his observation or falsifying life or running the risk of spreading scandal and misery among his fellow-creatures. 106

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NOVEL

W e m a y as well admit that a writer w h o is torn by this problem is hardly ever taken seriously. O n his left there is only mockery a n d shrugging of shoulders—a refusal to a d m i t that such a problem really exists. People deny that a n artist has any other d u t y than to realize a n d achieve a beautiful piece o f work, or that he c a n h a v e any other care than to a p p r o a c h as near as possible to psychological truth. O n his right there is a n even greater misunderstanding. T h e r e is a total ignorance of the fact that he has scruples or high motives at all. It is difficult not to h a v e a choking feeling the first time pious reviewers treat y o u as a pornographer a n d accuse y o u of writing obscenity for the sake of m a k i n g money. W h e n I was y o u n g a n d naïve I felt an insuperable desire to pour out m y heart to some distinguished and holy people about all these difficulties, but as soon as I h a d begun I realized that they m a d e no essential distinction between me and, for instance, the author of the Revue des Folies Bergères. I a m not really shocked b y their attitude, for I can understand perfectly well that people w h o are specifically in charge of souls are faced with a n infinite number of problems w h i c h are far more urgent to them than the aesthetic problem, and it w o u l d b e ludicrous for m e to feel indignant w i t h them on the grounds that they do not consider aesthetics to be as important as I do. . . . Bossuet said that there was no greater difference than the difference between living according to nature and living according to grace. I f the novelist is religious he suffers from this divergence, w h i c h upsets all Christians, in an especially sharp and tragic w a y . H o w could he consent t o silence? A n d if he cannot c o m e to a solution on this point w e must remember to take into account the poor a n d sordid motives w h i c h attach a m a n to his j o b — e s p e c i a l l y w h e n his j o b , as with the j o b of literature, flatters his vanity a n d his liking for a halo and at the same time brings h i m various sorts of advantages. But the necessity w h i c h obliges a genuine m a n o f letters to write must not be forgotten. H e cannot not write. H e follows a deep and imperative need. W e cannot smother the restless and importunate germs inside us; they d e m a n d life a n d w e cannot know beforehand w h a t sort of souls they will have. O u r sincerest critics ought to ponder a n d try to understand Goncourt's affirmation: ' O n e does not write the book one wants to.' N o , w e do not write the book w e w a n t to write; alas, w e write the book w e deserve to write. O u r judges come d o w n on us as though our work were entirely dependent on our o w n free will, as if w e m a d e a deliberate decision to write a good or a b a d book, tell a n edifying story or a scandalous one. T h e y do not seem to have the remotest idea o f the 107

T H E N A T U R E OF P R O S E

FICTION

mysterious, unforeseeable and inevitable elements in all creative novel-writing. T h e urge to write in a man of letters ends up by becoming a monster-like necessity which cannot be frustrated. Some time ago there was an amusing drawing that a hat manufacturer used as an advertisement: it consisted of a machine with a live rabbit going into it at one end and hats coming out of it at the other. It is in this w a y that life, with all its hopes and sorrows, is engulfed by the novelist, and nothing can prevent a book emerging from this perpetual receiving of impressions. Even if he withdraws from the world and shuts his eyes and stops up his ears, his most distant past will begin to ferment. His childhood and youth alone is enough to provide a born novelist with an immense a m o u n t of literary nourishment. N o b o d y can stop the flow of the river which flows from us. T h e r e is no doubt that our books have a deep resemblance to ourselves, and w e can quite rightly be j u d g e d a n d condemned b y them. Novalis' axiom, 'Character is destiny', has often been repeated. A n d so, just as there is a close bond between a man's character and w h a t happens to him during his life, so there is a similar relationship between a novelist's character a n d the creatures and events brought into being b y his imagination. T h i s is not to say that he is any more the absolute master of these creatures and events than he is of the course of his own fate. People of m y calibre complicate the ' d r a m a of the Catholic novelist'. T h e humblest priest would tell me, like M a r i tain: 'Be pure, become pure, and your work too will h a v e a reflection in heaven. Begin b y purifying the source and those w h o drink of the water cannot be sick . . .' A n d I give the last w o r d to the priest. François Mauriac. G o d and M a m m o n ( first published, 1929; English translation, 1936), Chapter v. TAILPIECE T h e r e is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written. Oscar Wilde. Preface to T h e Picture of D o r i a n G r a y (1891).

108

Part Two THE GENESIS OF A NOVEL

INTRODUCTION

AS WE HAVE SEEN, the novelist's search for the objectivity which

he values is complicated by 'the struggle between what reality offers him and what he himself desires to make of it'. 1 It is further complicated by the fact that once he begins to create he has to contend with elements in his art which are outside the conscious control of the will. François Mauriac insists in God and Mammon that these elements limit the novelist's moral responsibility for what he writes: Our judges come down on us as though our work were entirely dependent on our own free will, as if we made a deliberate decision to write a good or a bad book, tell an edifying story or a scandalous one. They do not seem to have the remotest idea of the mysterious, unforeseeable and inevitable elements in all creative novel-writing.* M. Mauriac's discussion implies that the serious artist is bound to identify such incalculable impulses with his genuine creative self, and so do many of the comments which appear in this chapter under the following headings: I II III

The Novelist's Approach and Equipment Germination At Work: Effort and Inspiration

What is said in the last of these three sections briefly makes clear the conscious effort which the novelist's task requires, but it is left to the next (and lengthiest) chapter, 'The Craft of Fiction', to illustrate in detail the crucial importance of deliberate contrivance. The concern of the present commentary is with the novelist's more instinctive creative self and with his desire to preserve its integrity. 1

See above, pp. 30, 79.

* See above, p. 108.

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I

The Novelist's Approach and Equipment

O B V I O U S L Y the novelist starts from experience, from 'some direct impression or perception of life', but it is only a degree less obvious that for experience to be of any use to him he must find some way of distancing it. Thus he is obscurely tempted both to live actively and variously and to stand aside and become a mere spectator; the one alternative increasing the experience available to him as an artist, but only at the risk of swamping and clogging the filter through which the experience eventually has to pass: the other alternative reducing the amount of experience in the interests of composure and proportion, but at the risk of threatening the vitality of the work in which the experience is to be embodied. T h e apparent dilemma exists for every creative writer but it especially concerns the novelist, in whose art 'the problem of the correspondence between the literary work and the reality which it imitates' is felt more starkly. 1 O f course the dilemma is more apparent than real because a particular novelist will incline one way or the other in accordance with his temperament, and the extent to which he can consciously modify a temperamental attitude to experience is limited. This forking to left or right as directed by psychological disposition is noticed throughout the whole course of the novel's history, separating in their respective 'comprehensiveness' and 'exclusiveness' the novels of Fielding and Richardson, Scott and Jane Austen, Balzac and Flaubert, Tolstoy and Turgenev, H. G. Wells and Henry James. The sensitive discriminating art of such novelists as Jane Austen, Flaubert, Turgenev and Henry James—whether protected with unremitting vigilance in the respective fastnesses of Chawton, Croisset, Spasskoye or R y e — deliberately limits and excludes experience because its first concern is with order, harmony and pattern. O n the other hand, Fielding and Smollett, Dickens and Balzac, Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, novelists who readily commit themselves to what Johnson's Imlac calls 'the current of life', crowd their canvases with character and incident, description and comment, risking incoherence and loss of intensity because in the end they care 1

See above, pp. 22-3.

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EQUIPMENT

more for content and variety than for matters of style and 'form'. T h e largely inborn predilections of a novelist in this matter are easily recognized in his work, but many novelists are quite explicit about where they stand. Fielding adds to the qualities which he invokes 'to direct my pen' a wide and immediate knowledge of every kind of human being from the minister at his levee, to the bailiff in his sponging-house; from the duchess at her drum, to the landlady behind her bar. From thee only can the manners of mankind be known; to which the recluse pedant, however great his parts or extensive his learning may be, hath ever been a stranger. 1 But the 'exclusive' writer is afraid that this degree of involvement may jeopardize his artistic vision by turning him into a 'victim of life'. Flaubert uses the phrase in his argument with his mother about the novelist's contact with actuality. ' I f one gets mixed up with life,' he says, 'one cannot see it clearly: one suffers too much or enjoys it too much.' 2 T h e attitude expressed by George Sand when she writes about the artist's need 'to live according to his nature'— for the man who likes strife, warfare; for the man who likes women, love; for someone old who likes nature as I do, travel, flowers, rocks, vast landscapes, children . . . everything that stirs one, that combats moral decline. . . , 3 —is answered by Flaubert with the belief that you will depict wine, women, love, war, glory on condition . . . that you will not be a drunkard, a lover, a husband or a soldier of the line.4 Turgenev, whom Flaubert greatly admired—'For a long time I have regarded you as my master', he wrote in 1863 5 —is ultimately in sympathy with this view, all the more perhaps because of his many distracting emotional entanglements. It was in his years of isolation at Spasskoye that he produced three of his best books, A Nest of Gentlefolk (1858), On the Eve (1859) and Fathers and Sons (1861). When he came away to live in the 1 3

Sec below, p. 125. * See below, p. 126. 4 See below, pp. 126-7. See below, p. 126. 6 See David Magarshack, Turgenev (1954), p. 237.

"3

T H E G E N E S I S OF A

NOVEL

fashionable resort of Baden-Baden he wrote very little during his eight years there; what he did produce included Enough: A Fragment from the Diary of a Dead Artist (1864), which contained the passage, . . . Stop rushing about, stop striving - it is time you shrank into yourself: it is time you took your head into your hands and told your heart to be still. . . T h e Russian novelists usually insist on more direct contact with society than Flaubert needed. This is true even of Turgenev. In his 1852 review of The Niece, a novel by Countess Salias, he assures us that the greatest genius 'is always in touch with life in general' since a novel is 'a reflection of the elements of social life'. 1 His fellow-countryman, Dostoevsky, is 'driven to the conviction' that the artist must 'make himself acquainted, down to the smallest detail' with every aspect of 'that reality which he designs to show forth', and he believes that the only writer in Russia 'who is really remarkable in that respect' is Tolstoy. 3 Dostoevsky's French model 'in that respect' is Victor Hugo, a writer w h o m Flaubert once passionately admired and then bitterly rejected in a private statement to M a d a m e Roger de Genettes, written in July 1862. George Sand is right, of course, but she does not tell us much when she says that the artist should live 'according to his nature'. Fielding lives 'according to his nature' by mixing with all kinds of men: and Flaubert does so by remaining an observer, withdrawn, sceptical and more or less disengaged. T h e justification of both types of novelist is in their finished work, and different kinds of success are reached through the exuberance of the one and the fastidiousness of the other. Failures are equally characteristic. T h e inclusive writer forgets that his creative imagination is not equally stimulated b y everything that happens to him, while the exclusive writer is in danger of cutting out experience until his private emotions and personal conflicts are his only remaining source of inspiration. Such an inclusive writer as Dickens, for instance, damages the fabric of his fantasy-world by attempting to portray the behaviour of the aristocracy, the feelings of ordinary people in 1

Op. cit., p. 222. 3

See below, p. 127. 114

* Op cit., p. 143.

THE NOVELIST'S A P P R O A C H

AND

EQUIPMENT

love, or the real ills of a changing society, subjects which do not call out his best gifts—indeed they emphasize his emotional and intellectual weaknesses and distract attention from the brilliance of his comic invention and creation of atmosphere. Flaubert, the 'exclusive' novelist, paralysed by his obsession with the 'two distinct personalities' which he discovers in himself (the Romantic and the encyclopaedic scientist), produces the sad, flat-toned, nerveless biography of Frédéric Moreau, the man to whom, as to James's hero in ' T h e Beast in the Jungle', 'nothing on earth was to happen'. Y e t it must be said that when the exclusive writer 'spins his web from his own inwards' his artistic conscience provides some safeguard against the unbalancing dangers of autobiography. Such bitter little satires as Henry James's ' T h e Death of the Lion' or ' T h e Next Time', which mourn unrecognized talent and express their author's deep personal disappointment during the 1890's, are preserved by their artistic tact from the embarrassing subjectivity which distorts such wishful fantasies as Lawrence's Aaron's Rod (1922) and The Plumed Serpent (1926), or Rolfe's Hadrian VII (1904) and The Desire and Pursuit of the Whole (1934). So, too, U Education Sentimentale can rise above its own ennui to the poignancy and universality of its memorable conclusion. Stendhal recognizes the value of a similar artistic scrupulousness when he tells his sister that a writer w h o wishes to express things which he feels to be profoundly important must practise the art of understatement, so that he seems to be 'trying to get them by unnoticed'. 1 His own novels owe their extraordinary effect of vigour and clarity to their strenuously disciplined expression of personal themes. In spite of this it would be wrong to say that a novelist's impeccable technique is enough by itself to 'cut the umbilical cord binding the author to his work'. Madame Bovary is a superbly composed novel, but writers as diametrically opposed as James and Lawrence unite in recognizing that Flaubert has overburdened his heroine with significance. 2 Flaubert describes the book as 'pure invention' in a letter which also asserts that art should rise above personal feeling and emotional See below, p. 128. See above, pp. 77- 8, and also Henry James, 'Gustave Flaubert', Notes on Novelists (1914). 1

2

1

'5

T H E G E N E S I S OF A

NOVEL

susceptibility. 1 But he sets excessively narrow limits to his heroine's probable range of experience, stripping her of almost all ordinary h u m a n dignity and finally destroying her horribly, because he wants to emphasize the dangers inherent in a particular kind of romantic sensibility which he recognizes as a part of his o w n personality. 'Madame Bovary i'est moi' is almost literally true, even if, in another sense, it indicates the belief w h i c h Flaubert expresses to George Sand: W e must, by an effort of the mind, go over to our characters, as it were, not make them come over to us. 8 E v e n so, it is a measure of Flaubert's excellence as a n o v e l i s t — some of its qualities are noticed in Maupassant's tribute®—that although M a d a m e Bovary is portrayed as shallow and ignoble almost beyond belief, her story remains, in its controlled pity and pain, such a remarkable achievement. Flaubert's compassionate insight is one of the personal disciplines which the novelist consciously seeks for the purification of his creative self. Personal involvement of some kind is unavoidable, even essential; therefore the perils of autobiographical feeling must be held in check. N o t all novelists would agree w i t h everything said b y Tolstoy in the passage w h i c h I h a v e headed ' T h e V o i c e of T r u e Feeling', 4 but his belief that 'whatever the artist depicts . . . w e see and seek only the soul of the artist himself' is echoed b y writers remote from the missionary zeal w h i c h more and more informs his own theory and practice. F o r Stevenson 'the author's attitude' always comes first6 and H e n r y James's description of 'the house of fiction'—one of the finest w e h a v e — d r a w s our attention to the truth that neither subject nor literary form can have any significance without the presence of 'the watcher at the w i n d o w ' whose consciousness works on all it sees and presents to us its o w n version of reality. 4 I t is for this reason that Tolstoy recommends the novelist to cultivate ' a clear, fresh view of the universe' 7 and Stevenson urges h i m to keep his mind 'supple, charitable and bright'. 8 James's writings are instinct with a particularly sensitive appreSee below, Part III, p. 371. See below, Part III, p. 272. ® See below, p. 129. 7 See below, p. 131. 1

3

See below, See below, • See below, * See below, 8

1

Part III, p. 271. pp. 128-9. pp. 131-2. p. 129.

THE NOVELIST'S A P P R O A C H AND

EQUIPMENT

c i a t i o n o f the v a l u e s o f c o m p a s s i o n , c h a r i t y a n d s y m p a t h y . Sayings of H a r d y and C o n r a d emphasize the freely-playing s y m p a t h i e s o f a n i m a g i n a t i o n u n f e t t e r e d b y fixed p r e j u d i c e s , w h i l e A r n o l d B e n n e t t notes in his d i a r y t h a t t h e essential c h a r a c t e r i s t i c o f t h e really g r e a t novelist is ' a C h r i s t - l i k e alle m b r a c i n g c o m p a s s i o n ' . 1 I n A Treatise on the Novel M r . L i d d e l l sets o u t M r . T . S. E l i o t ' s ' E i g h t Points o f H u m a n i s m ' a n d a d d s a n i n t h p o i n t o f his o w n , w h i c h p l a c e s J u s t i c e a n d M e r c y a m o n g t h e essential virtues o f the novelist. 2 T h e c u l t i v a t i o n o f w h a t m a y b e c a l l e d the m o r e p r o f e s s i o n a l gifts o f the novelist also requires self-discipline. ' T a l e n t is a l o n g p a t i e n c e ' is the text f r o m B u f f o n w h i c h F l a u b e r t h o l d s u p b e f o r e his y o u n g disciple, M a u p a s s a n t . 3 M a u p a s s a n t h i m s e l f stresses h o w l o n g a n d a t t e n t i v e l y the artist should l o o k a t e v e r y thing around him. Everything contains some element of the unexplored because w e are accustomed to use our eyes only with the memory of w h a t other people before us have thought about the object we are looking at. T h e least thing has a bit of the unknown in it. L e t us find this. I n order to describe a fire burning or a tree in a field, let us stand in front o f that fire and that tree until they no longer look to us like any other fire or any other tree. 4 F l a u b e r t seems to think t h a t the p r a c t i c e o f self-discipline c a n c r e a t e talent. ' I f y o u h a v e o r i g i n a l i t y , ' he told M a u p a s s a n t , ' y o u m u s t b r i n g it o u t . I f y o u h a v e n ' t a n y , t h e n y o u m u s t a c q u i r e s o m e . ' 5 T h e r e are in f a c t novelists w h o b y sheer h a r d w o r k a n d c o n c e n t r a t e d a p p l i c a t i o n h a v e t u r n e d themselves i n t o c r a f t s m e n of more than ordinary competence. ' Y o u have wit, description a n d p h i l o s o p h y — t h e s e g o a g o o d w a y t o w a r d s t h e p r o d u c t i o n o f a n o v e l , ' G . H . L e w e s told G e o r g e E l i o t in 1856. ' I t is w o r t h w h i l e for y o u to try the e x p e r i m e n t . ' 6 A l l t h a t she t h e n l a c k e d , t h e y b o t h felt, w a s ' t h e highest q u a l i t y o f fiction— d r a m a t i c p r e s e n t a t i o n ' (this a n t i c i p a t e s the s e l f - e x h o r t a t i o n w h i c h a p p e a r s a g a i n a n d a g a i n in J a m e s ' s Notebooks: ' D r a m a t i z e ! D r a m a t i z e ! ' ' ) . A s it t u r n e d o u t , G e o r g e E l i o t possessed See below, p. 133. * See A Treatise on the Novel, pp. 53-61. 4 Ibid. 5 Ibid. See below, pp. 130-1. ' See below, p. 136. 7 See, for example, The Notebooks of Henry James, p. 197, where James explores the possibilities of 'dramatizing* by 'illustrative action' the 'déchéance of the aristocracy through its own want of imagination, of nobleness, of delicacy. . . .' 1

3

117

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NOVEL

this power too. She and Lewes w e r e right about its importance. Dramatic presentation is the one method by which the novelist can hope to objectify his experience successfully. I n so far as it is a skill it m a y be acquired, but only by those w h o begin with a certain sympathetic receptiveness, a quality which in 'dedicated' novelists is close to the lack o f individuality of Keats's 'chameleon poet'. I f there is any novelist likely to combine fullness of experience with artistic fastidiousness it is the man or w o m a n w h o comes to novel-writing in later years after leading an active life; like Conrad, for example, or, a m o n g our recent contemporaries, the late M r . Joyce Cary. W h e t h e r he is the form-worshipping artist in his lonely tower or the shoulder-rubbing producer of what James calls 'fluid puddings' with the 'strong rank quality' of experience, 1 the novelist, unlike the poet, has nothing to lose and everything to gain by starting late. A s A u d e n says, any novelist Must struggle out of his boyish gift and learn H o w to be plain and awkward, how to be One after whom none think it worth to turn. For to achieve his lightest wish, he must Become the whole of boredom, subject to Vulgar complaints like love, among the Just Be just, among the Filthy, filthy too, And in his own weak person if he can Must suffer dully all the wrongs of man. 2

II

Germination

THE PRACTICE of the art o f fiction offers the novelist two main sources of consolation and delight. T h e r e is the excitement of the process of 'germination' when the creative imagination is fertilized by the ' w i n d - b l o w n particle; 3 and there is the subseSee below, Part III, p. 235. * W. H. Auden, Collected Shorter Poems, 1930-44 (1950), p. 54. 3 A novelist of course may seek and find a congenial subject, or decide to work up a background with which he is already familiar, but such work Il8 1

GERMINATION

q u e n t elation of the inspirational s e l f — G e o r g e Eliot calls it the 'not-self', so different is it from n o r m a l e x p e r i e n c e 1 — d e s c e n d i n g on the artist to enable him to compose w h o l e scenes a n d episodes a p p a r e n t l y w i t h o u t taking thought. T h e s e m o m e n t s w h e n the novelist experiences the exhilaration o f u n c o v e n a n t e d p o w e r compensate for the long intervals o f dull, a r d u o u s toil, the m e n t a l a n d physical exhaustion of w r i t i n g thousands of w o r d s 'in the best order'. W h a t novelists tell us about the ' g e r m i n a t i o n ' o f a novel shows that most of them cannot e x p l a i n exactly w h a t has h a p p e n e d . Dickens's unenlightening 'I t h o u g h t o f M r . P i c k w i c k ' recalls R i c h a r d s o n ' s ' H e n c e sprung P a m e l a ' . 2 T h e m o m e n t c a m e for Dickens while he was devising narratives for a series of sporting sketches and for R i c h a r d s o n w h i l e he w a s c o m p i l i n g a v o l u m e of letters on etiquette; b u t neither o c c u p a t i o n explains w h y such picturesque abstractions as P i c k w i c k a n d P a m e l a should present themselves to their creators. T u r g e n e v ' s experience, as described b y H e n r y J a m e s , seems to h a v e b e e n o f a similar ultimately mysterious kind. Figures offered themselves spontaneously to his imagination as 'disponibles'. 3 A l r e a d y w e l l defined in, let us say, a p p e a r a n c e a n d gesture, they h a u n t e d h i m until he evolved on their b e h a l f situations a n d c i r c u m stances in w h i c h they could fully c o m e alive. J a m e s interprets h i m as saying, . . . A s for the origins of one's wind-blown germs themselves, w h o shall say, as you ask, where they come from? W e have to go too far back, too far behind to say. Isn't it all we can say that they come from every quarter of heaven, that they are there at almost every turn of the road? They accumulate, and we are always picking them over, selecting among them. They are the breath of life—by which I mean that life, in its own way, breathes them upon us. 4 J a m e s himself talks of the merest grain, the speck of truth, of beauty, of reality, scarce visible to the common eye, 5 only prepares for the real germination when the author is 'surprised' by his subject. 1 See below, p. 155. 2 See below, pp. 134-5. 3 See Part III below, pp. 286-7. * Ibid. * See below, pp. 138-9.

119

THE

GENESIS OF A

NOVEL

which provides the novelist with his 'germ'. Conrad tells us that 'the first hint for Nostromo' came to him 'in the shape of a vagrant anecdote, completely destitute of valuable details'. 1 T h e mysterious moment is full of delight. A t the touch of the starched napkin on his mouth Proust is transported to the Balbec of his youth and experiences a moment of pure joy, 'the instant to which my whole life has doubtless aspired'. 8 ' W h a t is it to be?' asks Virginia Woolf, an adventurer about to embark on The Waves: 'Anything may be out of the w i n d o w — a s h i p — a desert—London.' 3 W e are reminded here of the unpredictability of the course followed by the novelist's imagination once it has been stimulated. The Waves grew out of images of moths mingling with 'the ship, the night, etc., all flowing together' while ' A man and a woman are to be sitting at a table talking', but these images have altogether vanished from the finished work. 4 Another classic example is, of course, Henry James's The Spoils of Poynton, a novel which illustrates how the imagination can transform a piece of trivial gossip into a subtle statement about destructive pride released by great possessions.8 But it also shows how mercilessly the novelist's constructive and imaginative powers can be subjugated by a limiting type of experience. James's exodus from London and settlement at R y e was an admission that regular attendance at the dinner-tables of late-Victorian high society was no w a y of safeguarding the best in his creative self or of placing that self where it might receive the most valuable 'wind-blown particles'. His finest work was written in the seclusion of R y e , and it is significant that the real inspiration of such books as The Wings of the Dove, The Ambassadors and The Ivory Tower was rooted in his past life and in long memories of the distant American scene. See below, pp. 139-40. 3 See below, pp. 142-3. See below, pp. 141-2. 1 See Virginia Woolf, A Writer's Diary (1953), pp. 108, 143-3, 146, 148-9, ' 5 7 - 9 . '6a, 163-6, 169. 6 See below, pp. 138-9, and The Notebooks of Henry James, pp. 81, 136-8, 198-200, 207-12, 214-20, 247-56. 1 1

I20

AT WORK:

III

EFFORT AND

INSPIRATION

At Work: Effort and Inspiration

settles to the serious task of composition, his initial delight is likely to fade. Flaubert describes the artist as a 'monstrosity, something outside nature', 1 and as we listen to him describing the anguish of writing, an anguish often prolonged for weeks and months, we find it easy to agree. Flaubert's entire correspondence exhales the atmosphere of a 'harsh existence, devoid of all outward j o y ' , an existence in which he is sustained only by his 'rage' of composition and by some twenty-five satisfactory pages finally achieved after six weeks of unremitting toil. 2 W e find Dostoevsky describing himself as working 'nervously with pain and travail of soul' and Tolstoy telling us that he leaves 'a piece of flesh in the inkpot' every time he dips his pen. 3 Conrad takes 'twenty months, neglecting the common joys of life' to wrestle with Nostromo: ONCE THE NOVELIST

. . . it is difficult to characterize otherwise the intimacy and the strain of a creative effort in which mind and will and conscience are engaged to the full, hour after hour, day after day, away from the world, and to the exclusion of all that makes life really lovable and gentle. . . .* It is not only the meticulous stylists and fastidious craftsmen who suffer like this. Even Richard Cumberland thinks of himself in his 'darker intervals' as 'a carrier's horse, whose slow and heavy pace argues the load he draws, and the labour he endures'. 5 T h e business-like Trollope feels imprisoned by his desk as he produces his merciless '250 words every quarter of an hour'. 4 Dickens is driven nearly to breaking-point to meet the demands of serial publication. 7 T h e n unpredictably the god descends again to relieve the inhuman strain and the writer recaptures some of the j o y of his 2 See below, p. 126. 1 See below, pp. 149-50. 5 See below, p. 145. • 7 See, for example, J o h n Forster, The Life of V o l . II, C h a p t e r xiii. 1

3

121

See below, pp. 148-9. See below, p. 152. See below, pp. 147-8. Charles Dickens (1872-4),

T H E GENESIS OF A

NOVEL

o r i g i n a l c o n c e p t i o n . J a m e s expresses a t y p i c a l rush o f g r a t i t u d e a n d relief: . . . the prospect clears and blushes, and my poor blest old Genius pats m e so admirably and lovingly on the back that I turn, I screw round and bend my lips to passionately in my gratitude kiss its hand . . -1 G e o r g e Eliot writes the interview R o s a m u n d in Middlemarch w i t h o u t

between

Dorothea

and

alteration or erasure, in an intense state of excitement and exaltation, feeling herself entirely possessed by the feelings of the two women.2 B e c a u s e these visitations are so m u c h o u t s i d e the o r d i n a r y r a n g e o f e x p e r i e n c e F l a u b e r t is at pains to distinguish ' i n n e r vision' f r o m w h a t is o r d i n a r i l y t e r m e d ' h a l l u c i n a t i o n ' . 'I k n o w b o t h states v e r y w e l l ' , he tells the critic, T a i n e : I n a state of hallucination properly so called there is always terror . . . In the poetic vision, on the contrary there is j o y ; it is something that enters into you. . . . 3 Y e t possession b y the inspirational self m a y b e disquieting. C h a r l o t t e B r o n t e speaks o f the c r e a t i v e g i f t as s o m e t h i n g w h i c h t h e w r i t e r m a y b e u n a b l e to master, ' s o m e t h i n g that, a t times, s t r a n g e l y wills for itself'. W h e n it takes c o m m a n d it rejects u n c o n g e n i a l rules a n d restrictions; it w i l l no longer consent to 'harrow the valleys, or be bound with a band in the furrow'. 4 C h a r l o t t e B r o n t e is t h i n k i n g uneasily o f the p o w e r w h i c h i m p e l l e d h e r sister to c r e a t e HeathclifF, a figure to her so strange a n d so u n a c c o u n t a b l e . B u t E m i l y B r o n t e possessed a constructive p o w e r a n d a gift for o r g a n i z a t i o n w h i c h usually secured for h e r t h e direction o f h e r 'inner vision', a n d she k n e w that in the e n d the inspirational self h a d to b e trusted. ' W h a t interests m e ' , writes V i r g i n i a W o o l f as she looks b a c k o v e r the final stages o f c o m p o s i t i o n o f The Waves, is the freedom and boldness with which my imagination picked up, 1 3

Sec below, p. 157. See below, p. 155.

1 4

122

See below, p. 155. See below, p. 154.

AT WORK: EFFORT AND INSPIRATION used and tossed aside all the images, symbols which I had prepared. I am sure that this is the right way of using them—not in set pieces . . . Thus I hope to have kept the sound of the sea and the birds, dawn and garden subconsciously present, doing their work underground. . . . x This quotation may be read side by side with E . M . Forster's account o f ' r h y t h m ' and 'pattern', which appears in the next chapter as part of the novelist's discussion about his structural problems. 2 Both passages show a distrust of mechanical systems of organization and set the same kind of value o n the uncalculated, compulsive movements of the individual imagination. ' W h a t about the creative state?' asks M r . Forster on another occasion: In it a man is taken out of himself. He lets down as it were a bucket into his subconscious and draws up something which is normally beyond his reach. He mixes this thing with his normal experiences, and out of the mixture he makes a work of art. . . . And when the process is over, when the picture or symphony or lyric or novel (or whatever it is) is complete, the artist, looking back on it, will wonder how on earth he did it. And indeed he did not do it on earth. 3 This exaggerates b y slighting the work that must go into the studied shaping of w h a t luck gives the artist-creator—but the exaggeration may be pardoned if it brings out the importance for the novelist of 'possession' by his own imagination. 1

See below, pp. 1 5 7 - 8 .

1

See Part I I I below, pp. 2 3 7 - 4 0 .

* See below, p. 158.

123

TEXT I

The Novelist's Approach and Equipment

INVOKING

ASSISTANCE

. . . whose assistance shall I invoke to direct my pen? First, Genius; thou gift of H e a v e n ; without whose aid in vain w e struggle against the stream of nature . . . A n d thou, almost the constant attendant on true genius, H u m a n i t y , bring all thy tender sensations . . . F r o m these alone proceed the noble, disinterested friendship, the melting love, the generous sentiment, the ardent gratitude, the soft compassion, the candid opinion; a n d all those strong energies of a good mind, w h i c h fill the moistened eyes with tears, the glowing cheeks w i t h blood, and swell the heart w i t h tides of grief, j o y and benevolence. A n d thou, O Learning! (for without thy assistance nothing pure, nothing correct, can genius produce) do thou g u i d e m y pen . . . Lastly, come Experience, long conversant with the wise, the good, the learned, a n d the polite. N o r w i t h them only, b u t with every kind of character, from the minister at his levee, to the bailiff' in his sponging-house; from the duchess at her drum, to the landlady behind her bar. F r o m thee only can the manners o f mankind be known; to w h i c h the recluse pedant, however great his parts or extensive his learning m a y be, hath ever been a stranger. C o m e all these, and more, if possible; for arduous is the task I have undertaken; and, without all your assistance, will, I find, be too heavy for m e to support. Henry Fielding. T h e History of T o m Jones, A Foundling {1749), Book XIII, Chapter i. IN T H E D E S T R U C T I V E E L E M E N T

IMMERSE?

(i) Whenever a n y o n e — h o w e v e r unimportant or g r e a t — w a n t s to concern himself w i t h the works of G o d he must begin, if only for reasons

125

T H E GENESIS OF A

NOVEL

of health, by putting himself in a position where he cannot be their victim. Y o u will depict wine, love, women, glory, on condition, m y good fellow, that you will not be a drunkard, a lover, a husband, or a soldier of the line. I f one gets mixed u p with life, one cannot see it clearly; one suffers too m u c h , or enjoys it too much. T h e artist, in my opinion, is a monstrosity, something outside nature. A l l the misfortunes with w h i c h Providence overwhelms h i m derive from his stubborn attempt to deny this axiom. H e suffers from it, and makes others suffer too. Ask w o m e n w h o have loved poets about this, and men w h o have loved actresses. So (this is the conclusion) I a m resigned to living as I have done till now, alone, with a host of great men for society, with my bear's skin, being myself a bear, etc. I don't give a d a m n for the world, for the future, for w h a t people say, for any settled establishment whatever, even for literary f a m e — w h i c h once upon a time m a d e m e spend so m a n y sleepless nights imagining it. T h e r e , that's how I a m ; such is m y character. Gustave Flaubert. Letter to his mother (15 December 1850), Correspondance (igoo).

W In a week or so, I go to N e w Y o r k , to bury myself in a third-story room, and work a n d slave on m y 'whale' while it is driving through the press. That is the only w a y I can finish it n o w , — I a m so pulled hither and thither by circumstances. T h e calm, the coolness, the silent grass-growing mood in w h i c h a m a n ought always to compose, — t h a t , I fear, c a n seldom be mine. Dollars d a m n me; and the malicious Devil is forever grinning in upon me, holding the door ajar. M y dear Sir, a presentiment is upon m e , — I shall at last be worn out and perish, like an old nutmeg-grater, grated to pieces by the constant attrition of the wood, that is, the nutmeg. W h a t I feel most moved to write, that is b a n n e d , — i t will not pay. So the product is a final hash, and all m y books are botches. Herman Melville. Letter to Nathaniel Hawthorne (June 1851). See Julian Hawthorne, Nathaniel Hawthorne and his W i f e , A Biography (1885), Vol. I.

(iii) I believe that the artist must live as much as possible according to his nature. For the man w h o likes strife, warfare; for the m a n w h o 126

THE NOVELIST'S A P P R O A C H

AND

EQUIPMENT

likes women, love; for someone old w h o likes nature, as I do, travel, flowers, rocks, vast landscapes, children too, a family—everything that stirs one, that combats moral decline. I believe that art needs a palette always overflowing with colour, soft or violent according to the subject of the painting; that the artist is an instrument on which everything must play before he can play on others; but all this is perhaps not applicable to a mind like yours, which has acquired so much and has nothing further to do but sort it all out. I shall insist only on this: that physical well-being is essential to moral well-being, and I dread on your behalf a decline of health that will force you to hold up your work and let it grow cold. George Sand. Letter to Gustave Flaubert (3/ December 1867), Correspondance (i8g2).

(iv) . . . I have been driven to the conviction that an artist is bound to make himself acquainted, down to the smallest detail, not only with the technique of writing, but with everything—current no less than historical events—relating to that reality which he designs to show forth. W e have only one writer w h o is really remarkable in that respect: it is Count Leo Tolstoy. Victor H u g o w h o m I extraordinarily admire as a novelist (only think: Tchutchev, w h o is now dead, once got positively angry with me on account of this view of Hugo, and said that my 'Raskolnikov' was much greater than Hugo's 'Misérables')—is certainly prone to be too long-winded in his description of details, but he gives us most marvellous effects of observation, which would have been lost to the world but for him. As I a m now purposing to write a very big novel, I must devote myself most especially to the study of actuality: I don't mean, actuality in the literal sense, for I a m fairly well versed in that but certain peculiarities of the present moment . . . Feodor Dostoevsky. Letter to Madame Ch. D. Altschevsky (g April 1876), Letters (1914), transi. Ethel Colburn Mayne. T H E V O I C E OF T R U E

FEELING

(i) T h e more one delves into one's soul, the more one dares to express the most secret thought, then the more one shrinks when it is written down, it seems so strange, and it is this strangeness which is its 127

T H E GENESIS OF A

NOVEL

merit. It is for this reason that it is original, and if it is true as well, if your words really indicate what you feel, then it is sublime. Write me exactly what you feel. T h e r e is a risk in this habit which one has to take. O n e m a y not find it in oneself to write just what one feels, a n d following this principle, one behaves as if one did not believe it. T h i s is a mistake; w e must write it coolly at all times. For example, I was never less inclined to write than at this moment. I ' v e worked like a demon all morning copying out letters vilely garbled in thought and style; then for a quarter of an hour I read a horribly turgid book (that is, a book where the expression exaggerated the thoughts and feelings of the writer). 1 This fault is the worst of all in my view; it is the one that most blunts the sensibility. O n e should not write unless one has important or profoundly beautiful things to say, but then one must say them with the utmost simplicity, as though one were trying to get them by unnoticed. This is the opposite of w h a t all the fools of this century do, but it is what all great m e n accomplish. Stendhal. Letter to his sister, Pauline (20 August 1805), Correspondance (1908).

(ii) For m y work on art I diligently and with m u c h labour read this winter the famous novels and stories w h i c h are praised by all of Europe, those by Zola, Bourget, Huysmans, K i p l i n g . A t the same time I came across a story in a children's periodical, b y an entirely unknown writer, which told of the preparations w h i c h were being m a d e for Easter in a widow's poor family. T h e story tells with w h a t difficulty the mother obtained some white flour, w h i c h she spread on the table, in order to knead it, after w h i c h she went to fetch some yeast, having told the children not to leave the room a n d to watch the flour. T h e mother went a w a y , and the neighbouring children ran with a noise under the window, inviting them to c o m e out into the street to play. T h e children forgot their mother's comm a n d , ran out into the street, and engaged in a game. T h e mother returns with yeast; in the room a hen is on the table, scattering on the earth floor the last of the flour to her chicks, which pick it out of the dust. T h e mother in despair scolds the children, the children yell. A n d the mother pities her children; but there is no white flour left, and, to find help out of the calamity, the mother decides that she will bake Easter bread out of sifted black flour, smearing it w i t h the white of an egg, and surrounding it with eggs. 1

Madame de Stael,

De /'influence des Passions

128

sur le Bonheur

(1796).

THE NOVELIST'S A P P R O A C H AND

EQUIPMENT

'Black bread—the white loaf's grandfather,' the mother quotes the proverb to the children to console them for not having an Easter bread baked of white flour. A n d the children suddenly pass from despair to joyous raptures, and in different voices repeat the proverb and with greater merriment wait for the Easter bread. Well? T h e reading of the novels and stories by Zola, Bourget, Huysmans, Kipling, and others, with the most pretentious of subjects, did not move me for a moment; I was, however, all the time annoyed at the authors, as one is annoyed at a man who considers you so naive that he does not even conceal that method of deception with which he wishes to catch you. From the very first lines you see the intention with which the story is written, and all the details become useless, and you feel annoyed. Above all else, you know that the author has no other feeling than the desire to write a story or a novel, and that he never had any other feeling. And so you receive no artistic impression whatever; but I could not tear myself away from the story of the unknown author about the children and the chicks, because I was at once infected by the sensation which obviously the author had gone through, experienced, and conveyed. Leo Tolstoy. 'What is Art?' (1897), Complete Works {1904), Vol. XXII, transl. Leo Weiner.

O N L Y O N E T O O L IN T H E

WORKSHOP

In all works of art, widely speaking, it is first of all the author's attitude that is narrated, though in the attitude there be implied a whole experience and a theory of life. A n author who has begged the question and reposes in some narrow faith cannot, if he would, express the whole or even many of the sides of this various existence; for, his own life being maim, some of them are not admitted in his theory, and were only dimly and unwillingly recognized in his experience. Hence the smallness, the triteness, and the inhumanity in works of merely sectarian religion; and hence we find equal although unsimilar limitation in works inspired by the spirit of the flesh or the despicable taste for high society. So that the first duty of any man who is to write is intellectual. Designedly or not, he has so far set himself up for a leader of the minds of men; and he must see that his own mind is kept supple, charitable and bright. Everything but prejudice should find a voice through him; he should see the good in all things; where he has even a fear that he does not wholly understand, there he should be wholly silent; and he should 129

T H E GENESIS OF A N O V E L recognize from the first that he has only one tool in his workshop, and that tool is sympathy. Robert Louis Stevenson. ' The Morality of the Profession of Letters' (1881); reprinted in T h e A r t of W r i t i n g (igig).

L E A R N I N G T H E LESSON OF T H E MASTER . . . Flaubert, w h o m I used to see sometimes, took a liking to me. I plucked u p courage to submit some essays to him. H e read them kindly and said: 'I don't know whether you will have any talent. W h a t you brought me shows a certain intelligence, but don't you forget this, y o u n g m a n : t a l e n t — a s BufFon says—is nothing other than a long patience. W o r k . ' I worked, a n d often I went back to see him, realising that I pleased h i m because he began to call me, humorously, his disciple. For seven years I wrote verse, I wrote short tales, I wrote nouvelles, I even wrote an execrable play. N o n e of these survive. T h e master read them all, and then at dinner on the following Sunday he would e x p a n d his critical comments, strengthening in me, bit b y bit, t w o or three principles w h i c h summarise his long and patient teaching. ' I f y o u h a v e a n y originality,' he w o u l d say, 'you must bring it out. I f y o u h a v e n ' t any, then y o u must acquire some.' — T a l e n t is a long p a t i e n c e . — I t involves looking at everything one wants to describe long enough, and attentively enough, to find in it some aspect that no one has yet seen or expressed. Everything contains some element of the unexplored because w e are accustomed to use our eyes only w i t h the memory of w h a t other people before us h a v e thought about the object w e are looking at. T h e least thing has a bit of the unknown in it. L e t us find this. I n order to describe a fire burning or a tree in a field, let us stand in front of that fire and that tree until they no longer look to us like any other fire or any other tree. T h a t is h o w one becomes original. H a v i n g stated this truth, that in the entire world there are no two grains of sand, no two flies, no two hands or noses, exactly a l i k e — he w o u l d then make me describe, in a few sentences, a being or an object in such a way as to particularise it distinctly and to distinguish it from all other beings, or all other objects, of the same race or kind. H e would say to me, ' W h e n you pass a grocer sitting at his door, or a concierge smoking his pipe, or a cab-stand, you must show me that grocer a n d that concierge, their attitude, their whole physical appearance, including as w e l l — i n d i c a t e d by the aptness of 130

THE NOVELIST'S A P P R O A C H AND

EQUIPMENT

your i m a g e — t h e i r entire moral nature, in such a w a y that I shan't confuse them with any other grocer or any other concierge; and you must make me see, w i t h a single word, in w h a t w a y one cab-horse is totally unlike fifty others that go before a n d after it.' I have dealt elsewhere with his ideas on style. T h e y are very closely connected with the theory of observation that I have just set down. . . . x Guy de Maupassant. 'Le Roman', Preface to Pierre et J e a n (1888). T H E S O U L OF T H E

ARTIST

People little sensitive to art often think that a work of art possesses unity when the same personages act in it from beginning to end, when all is built on one a n d the same fundamental plan of incidents, or w h e n the life of one a n d the same m a n is described. T h i s is mistaken; and the unity appears true only to the superficial observer. T h e cement which binds together every work of art into a whole and thereby produces the effect o f life-like illusion, is not the unity of persons and places, b u t that of the author's independent moral relation to the subject. I n reality, w h e n w e read or examine the artwork o f a new author, the fundamental questions which arise in our mind are always of this kind: 'Well, w h a t sort of a m a n are you? W h a t distinguishes you from all the people I know, and w h a t information can you give me, as to how w e must look upon our life.' Whatever the artist depicts, whether it be saints or robbers, kings or lackeys, w e seek a n d see only the soul o f the artist himself. A n d if he be a n established writer, w i t h w h o m w e are already acquainted, the question is no longer: ' W h o are you?' but 'Well, what more can you tell m e that is new? F r o m w h a t standpoint will you now illuminate life for me?' Therefore, a writer w h o has not a clear, definite and fresh view of the universe, and especially a writer w h o does not even consider this necessary, cannot produce a work of art. H e m a y write much and beautifully, but a work of art will not result. So it was with Maupassant a n d his novels. Leo Tolstoy. Preface to Nikirov's Russian translation of Maupassant; reprinted in the English translation as G u y de Maupassant (i8g6). THE WATCHER AT THE

WINDOW

T h e house of fiction has in short not one window, but a m i l l i o n — a number of possible windows not to be reckoned, rather; every one 1

See below, Part III, pp. 317-18. '31

T H E G E N E S I S OF A

NOVEL

of which has been pierced, or is still pierceable, in its vast front, by the need o f the individual vision and b y the pressure of the individual will. T h e s e apertures, o f dissimilar shape and size, h a n g so, all together, over the h u m a n scene that w e m i g h t have expected of them a greater sameness of report than w e find. T h e y are but windows at the best, mere holes in a dead wall, disconnected, perched aloft; they are not hinged doors opening straight u p o n life. But they have this m a r k of their o w n that a t e a c h o f t h e m stands a figure with a pair o f eyes, or at least w i t h a field-glass, w h i c h forms, again and again for observation, a unique instrument, insuring to the person m a k i n g use o f it a n impression distinct from every other. H e and his neighbours are w a t c h i n g the same show, but one seeing more where the other sees less, one seeing black where the other sees white, one seeing b i g w h e r e the other sees small, one seeing coarse where the other sees fine. A n d so on, a n d so on; there is fortunately no saying on w h a t , for the particular pair of eyes, the window m a y not o p e n ; 'fortunately' by reason, precisely, of this incalculability o f range. T h e spreading field, the h u m a n scene, is the 'choice of subject'; the pierced aperture, either broad or balconied or slit-like and low-browed, is the 'literary f o r m ' ; but they are, singly or together, as nothing without the posted presence of the w a t c h e r — w i t h o u t , in other words, the consciousness of the artist. T e l l me w h a t the artist is, a n d I will tell y o u o f w h a t he has been conscious. T h e r e b y I shall express to y o u at once his boundless freedom a n d his ' m o r a l ' reference. Henry James. Preface to T h e Portrait of a L a d y (1881); first printed in the New York edition of the Novels a n d Stories (7507-/7), Vol. III.

T H E BUSINESS OF T H E

NOVELIST

T h e business of the poet and novelist is to show the sorriness underlying the grandest things, a n d the g r a n d e u r underlying the sorriest things. Thomas Hardy. Notebook entry (ig April 1885) from T h e Early L i f e o f T h o m a s H a r d y , 1840-1891 (1928), Chapter xiii.

T H E N O V E L I S T ' S MOST P R E C I O U S

POSSESSION

Liberty of the imagination should be the most precious possession of a novelist. T o try voluntarily to discover the fettering dogmas of some romantic, realistic, or naturalistic creed in the free w o r k of its o w n inspiration, is a trick w o r t h y o f h u m a n perverseness w h i c h , 132

THE N O V E L I S T ' S A P P R O A C H A N D

EQUIPMENT

after inventing an absurdity, endeavours to find for it a pedigree of distinguished ancestors. It is a weakness of inferior minds when it is not the cunning device of those who, uncertain of their talent, would seek to a d d lustre to it by the authority of a school. Such, for instance, are those who have proclaimed Stendhal for a prophet of Naturalism. But Stendhal himself would h a v e accepted no limitation of his freedom. Stendhal's mind was of the first order. His spirit above must be r a g i n g with a peculiarly Stendhalesque scorn and indignation. For the truth is that more t h a n one kind of intellectual cowardice hides behind the literary formulas. A n d Stendhal was pre-eminently courageous. He wrote his two great novels, which so few people have read, in a spirit of fearless liberty. Joseph Conrad. 'Books'

(1905);

reprinted in

Notes on Life and Letters (1921).

THE N O V E L I S T ' S E S S E N T I A L

CHARACTERISTIC

Essential characteristic of the really great novelist: a Christ-like, all-embracing compassion. Arnold Bennett. Notebook entry (75 October ¡8g6),

T h e J o u r n a l s of Arnold Bennett

{1931).

THE N O V E L I S T ' S R A I S O N D ' Ê T R E

. . . I a m far from sharing Gide's opinion that good literature cannot be m a d e out of fine sentiments, a n d that the worse the characters are the better the book. Nevertheless, it certainly is not easy to make good literature with only good sentiments, a n d it is almost impossible to isolate the good from the b a d so as to m a k e a n edifying portrayal. T h e ambition of the modern novelist is to apprehend the whole of h u m a n nature, including its shifting contradictions. In the world of reality you do not find beautiful souls in the pure state—these are only to be found in novels a n d in b a d novels at that. W h a t we call a beautiful character has become beautiful at the cost of a struggle against itself, and this struggle should not stop until the bitter end. T h e evil which the beautiful character has to overcome in itself and from which it has to sever itself, is a reality which the novelist must account for. If there is a reason for the existence of the novelist on earth it is this: to show the element which holds out against God in the highest and noblest characters—the innermost evils and dissimulations; and also to light u p the secret source of sanctity in creatures who seem to us to h a v e failed. François Mauriac. G o d a n d M a m m o n (1929; English translation, 1936), Chapter v.

'33

II

'HENCE

Germination

SPRUNG

PAMELA'

T w o booksellers, my particular friends, entreated me to write for them a little volume of letters, in a common style, on such subjects as might be of use to those country readers who were unable to indite for themselves. Will it be any harm, said I, in a piece you want to be written so low, if we should instruct them how they should think & act in common cases, as well as indite? T h e y were the more urgent with me to begin the little volume, for this hint. I set about it, & in the progress of it, writing two or three letters to instruct handsome girls, who were obliged to go out to service, as we phrase it, how to avoid the snares that might be laid against their virtue; the above story recurred to my thought; and hence sprung Pamela. Samuel Richardson.

Letter to Johannes

Stinstra (2 June

1753),

Correspondance (1804).

'I T H O U G H T

OF M R .

PICKWICK'

. . . T h e idea propounded to me was that the monthly something should be a vehicle for certain plates to be executed by Mr. Seymour; and there was a notion, either on the part of that admirable humorous artist, or of my vistitor, that a NIMROD CLUB, the members of which were to go out shooting, fishing, and so forth, and getting themselves into difficulties through their want of dexterity, would be the best means of introducing these. I objected, on consideration, that although born and partly bred in the country I was no great sportsman, except in regard to all kinds of locomotion; that the idea was not novel, and had already been much used; that it would be infinitely better for the plates to arise naturally out of the text: and that I would like to take my own way, with a freer range of English scenes and people, and was afraid I should ultimately do so in any case, whatever course I might prescribe to myself at starting. M y views being deferred to, I thought of Mr. Pickwick, and wrote the

>34

GERMINATION

first n u m b e r ; from the proof sheets o f w h i c h M r . S e y m o u r m a d e his d r a w i n g of the c l u b a n d his h a p p y portrait of its founder. I connected M r . Pickwick w i t h a club, because of the original suggestion; and I put in M r . W i n k l e expressly for the use o f M r . S e y m o u r . Charles Dickens. John Forster, T h e L i f e o f C h a r l e s Dickens {1874), Vol. /, Chapter v. MARY

ANN

EVANS INTO

GEORGE

ELIOT

September 1856 m a d e a n e w era in m y life, for it was then that I b e g a n to write fiction. It had a l w a y s been a v a g u e d r e a m of mine that some time or other I m i g h t write a novel; a n d m y s h a d o w y conception o f w h a t the novel was to be, varied o f course, from one e p o c h of my life to another. But I never w e n t further towards the actual writing of the novel t h a n an introductory c h a p t e r describing a Staffordshire village a n d the life of the n e i g h b o u r i n g farm-houses; a n d as the years passed on I lost a n y hope that I should ever b e able to write a novel, j u s t as I desponded a b o u t e v e r y t h i n g else in m y future life. I always t h o u g h t I was deficient in d r a m a t i c power, both o f construction a n d dialogue, b u t I felt I should b e at ease in the descriptive parts of a novel. M y 'introductory c h a p t e r ' was p u r e description, t h o u g h there were good materials in it for d r a m a t i c presentation. It h a p p e n e d to b e a m o n g the papers I h a d w i t h m e in G e r m a n y , and one e v e n i n g at Berlin something led m e to r e a d it to G e o r g e . 1 H e was struck w i t h it as a bit o f concrete description, and it suggested to h i m the possibility of m y being a b l e to write a novel, though he distrusted—indeed disbelieved i n — m y possession of any dramatic power. Still, he b e g a n to think that I m i g h t as well try some time w h a t I could d o in fiction; a n d b y - a n d - b y , w h e n w e c a m e back to E n g l a n d , a n d I had greater success t h a n he ever expected in other kinds of writing, his impression that it was w o r t h while to see h o w far m y mental p o w e r w o u l d go, t o w a r d s the production of a novel, w a s strengthened. H e b e g a n to say v e r y positively, ' Y o u must try a n d write a story,' and w h e n w e were at T e n b y he urged m e to begin at once. I deferred it, h o w e v e r , after m y usual fashion, w i t h work that does not present itself as a n absolute duty. But one morning as I was thinking w h a t should b e the subject of my first story, m y thoughts merged themselves into a d r e a m y doze, and I imagined myself writing a story, of w h i c h the title was ' T h e Sad Fortunes of the R e v e r e n d A m o s B a r t o n . ' I was soon w i d e awake again and told G . H e said, ' O h , w h a t a capital title!' a n d from that time I h a d settled it in m y m i n d that this should be m y 1

i.e. George Henry Lewes. 135

T H E G E N E S I S OF A

NOVEL

first story. G e o r g e used to say, 'It m a y be a f a i l u r e — i t m a y be that y o u are unable to write fiction. O r perhaps it m a y be just good enough to w a r r a n t y o u trying a g a i n . ' A g a i n , ' Y o u m a y write a chef-d'oeuvre at o n c e — t h e r e ' s no telling.' But his prevalent impression was, that t h o u g h I c o u l d h a r d l y write a poor novel, m y effort w o u l d w a n t the highest quality of fiction—dramatic presentation. H e used to say, ' Y o u h a v e wit, description, a n d p h i l o s o p h y — t h o s e go a good w a y towards the p r o d u c t i o n of a novel. It is w o r t h while for you to try the experiment.' George Eliot. G e o r g e Eliot's L i f e as related in her Letters and Journals (1884), ed. J. W. Cross, Chapter vii. A SCARLET

LETTER

But the object that most drew m y attention, in the mysterious package, was a certain affair o f fine red c l o t h , m u c h worn and faded. T h e r e were traces a b o u t it o f gold e m b r o i d e r y , which, however, was greatly frayed and d e f a c e d ; so that none, or very little, of the glitter was left. It had been w r o u g h t , as w a s easy to perceive, with wonderful skill o f needlework; a n d the stitch (as I a m assured by ladies conversant w i t h such mysteries) gives evidence of a n o w forgotten art, not to be recovered even b y the process of picking out the threads. T h i s r a g of scarlet c l o t h , — f o r time and wear a n d a sacrilegious m o t h h a d reduced it to little other than a r a g , — o n careful examination, assumed the shape of a letter. It was the capital letter A . By an accurate measurement, each l i m b proved to be precisely three inches a n d a quarter in length. It h a d been intended, there could be no d o u b t , as an ornamental article o f dress; but h o w it was to b e w o r n , or w h a t rank, honour, and dignity, in by-past times, were signified b y it, was a riddle w h i c h (so evanescent are the fashions of the world in these particulars) I saw little hope of solving. A n d yet it strangely interested m e . M y eyes fastened themselves upon the old scarlet letter, a n d w o u l d not be turned aside. Certainly, there was some d e e p m e a n i n g in it, most w o r t h y of interpretation, and which, as it were, streamed forth from the mystic symbol, subtly c o m m u n i c a t i n g itself to m y sensibilities, but e v a d i n g the analysis of m y m i n d . Nathaniel Hawthorne. ' The Custom House', T h e Scarlet L e t t e r (1850). T H E B E G I N N I N G OF

BARCHESTER

In the course of this j o b 1 1 visited Salisbury, a n d whilst w a n d e r i n g 1

For the General Post Office. 136

GERMINATION

there on a midsummer evening round the purlieus of the cathedral I conceived the story of The Warden,—from whence came that series of novels of which Barchester, with its bishops, deans, and archdeacon, was the central site. I may as well declare at once that no one at their commencement could have had less reason than myself to presume himself to be able to write about clergymen. I have been often asked in what period of my early life I had lived so long in a cathedral city as to have become intimate with the ways of a Close. I never lived in any cathedral city,—except London, never knew anything of any Close, and at that time had enjoyed no particular intimacy with any clergyman. M y archdeacon, who has been said to be life-like, and for whom I confess that I have all a parent's fond affection, was, I think, the simple result of an effort of my moral consciousness. It was such as that, in my opinion, that an archdeacon should be,—or, at any rate, would be with such advantages as an archdeacon might have; and lo! an archdeacon was produced who has been declared by competent authorities to be a real archdeacon down to the very ground. A n d yet, as far as I can remember, I had not then ever spoken to an archdeacon. I have felt the compliment to be very great. T h e archdeacon came whole from my brain after this fashion;—but in writing about clergymen generally, I had to pick up as I went whatever I might know or pretend to know about them. But my first idea had no reference to clergy in general. I had been struck by two opposite evils,—or what seemed to me to be evils,—and with an absence of all art-judgement in such matters, I thought that I might be able to expose them, or rather to describe them, both in one and the same tale. T h e first evil was the possession by the Church of certain funds and endowments which had been intended for charitable purposes, but which had been allowed to become incomes for idle Church dignitaries. There had been more than one such case brought to public notice at the time, in which there seemed to have been an egregious malversation of charitable purposes. T h e second evil was its very opposite. Though I had been much struck by the injustice above described, I had also often been angered by the undeserved severity of the newspapers towards the recipients of such incomes, who could hardly be considered to be the chief sinners in the matter. When a man is appointed to a place it is natural that he should accept the income allotted to that place without much inquiry. It is seldom that he will be the first to find out that his services are overpaid. Though he be called upon only to look beautiful and to be dignified upon State occasions, he will think £2000 a year little enough for such beauty and dignity as he brings to the task. I felt that there had

137

THE

G E N E S I S OF A

NOVEL

been some tearing to pieces which might have been spared. But I was altogether wrong in supposing that the two things could be combined. . . . Nevertheless I thought much about it, and on the 29th J u l y 1852, —having been then two years without having made any literary effort,—I began The Warden, at Tenbury in Herefordshire. 1 It was then more than twelve months since I had stood for an hour on the little bridge in Salisbury, and had made out to my own satisfaction the spot on which Hiram's hospital should stand. Certainly no other work that I ever did took up so much of my thoughts. Anthony Trollope. A n Autobiography (1883), Chapter v. H E N R Y J A M E S IS

INOCULATED

It was years ago, I remember, one Christmas Eve when I was dining with friends: a lady beside me made in the course of talk one of those allusions that I have always found myself recognising on the spot as 'germs'. T h e germ, wherever gathered, has ever been for me the germ of a 'story', and most of the stories straining to shape under my hand have sprung from a single small seed, a seed as minute and wind-blown as that casual hint for ' T h e Spoils of Poynton' dropped unwittingly by my neighbour, a mere floating particle in the stream of talk. What above all comes back to me with this reminiscence is the sense of the inveterate minuteness, on such happy occasions, of the precious particle—reduced, that is, to its mere fruitful essence. Such is the interesting truth about the stray suggestion, the wandering word, the vague echo, at touch of which the novelist's imagination winces as at the prick of some sharp point: its virtue is all in its needle-like quality, the power to penetrate as finely as possible. This fineness it is that communicates the virus of suggestion, anything more than the minimum of which spoils the operation. I f one is given a hint at all designedly one is sure to be given too much; one's subject is in the merest grain, the speck of truth, of beauty, of reality, scarce visible to the common eye—since, I firmly hold, a good eye for a subject is anything but usual. Strange and attaching, certainly, the consistency with which the first thing to be done for the communicated and seized idea is to reduce almost to nought the form, the air as of a mere disjoined and lacerated lump of life, in which we may have happened to meet it. . . . So it was, at any rate, that when my amiable friend, on the 1 'Herefordshire' is the emended reading of The Oxford Trollope (1950). The 1883 edition has 'Worcestershire'.

138

GERMINATION Christmas Eve, before the table that glowed safe and fair t h r o u g h the b r o w n L o n d o n night, spoke of such a n o d d matter as that a g o o d lady in the north, always well looked on, was at daggers d r a w n w i t h her only son, ever hitherto exemplary, over the ownership o f the v a l u a b l e furniture o f a fine old house just a c c r u i n g to the y o u n g m a n b y his father's death, I instantly b e c a m e aware, w i t h m y 'sense for the subject', o f the prick o f inoculation; the whole of the virus, as I have called it, being infused by that single touch. T h e r e h a d been but ten words, yet I recognised in them, as in a flash, all the possibilities of the little d r a m a of m y 'Spoils,' w h i c h g l i m m e r e d then a n d there into life; so that w h e n in the next breath I b e g a n to h e a r o f action taken . . . I saw Life again at her stupid work. F o r the action taken, and on w h i c h m y friend, as I knew she w o u l d , h a d already begun all complacently and benightedly further to report, I h a d absolutely, and could have, no scrap of use; one h a d b e e n so perfectly qualified to say in a d v a n c e : 'It's the perfect little w o r k a b l e thing, but she'll strangle it in the cradle, even while she pretends, all so cheeringly, to rock it; wherefore I'll stay her h a n d w h i l e yet there's time.' I didn't, o f course, stay her h a n d — t h e r e never is in such cases 'time'; and I had once more the full demonstration o f the fatal futility of F a c t . . . It was not, however, that this in the least mattered, once the seed had been transplanted to richer soil. . . . Henry James. Preface to T h e Spoils of Poynton (i8gy); first printed in the New York edition of the Novels a n d Stories {igoy-iy), Vol. X. T H E I N C E P T I O N OF

'NOSTROMO'

. . . the first hint for Nostromo c a m e to m e in the shape o f a v a g r a n t anecdote completely destitute o f v a l u a b l e details. A s a matter o f fact in 1875 or '6, w h e n very young, in the W e s t Indies, or rather in the G u l f of M e x i c o , for m y contacts w i t h l a n d were short, few, and fleeting, I heard the story of some m a n w h o w a s supposed to h a v e stolen single-handed a whole lighter-full o f silver, somewhere on the T i e r r a Firme seaboard during the troubles o f a revolution. O n the face o f it this was something of a feat. But I h e a r d no details, and h a v i n g no particular interest in crime qua c r i m e I was not likely to keep that one in m y mind. A n d I forgot it till twentysix or seven years afterwards I c a m e u p o n the very thing in a s h a b b y volume picked u p outside a second-hand bookshop. It was the life story of an A m e r i c a n seaman written b y himself w i t h the assistance of a journalist. I n the course of his wanderings that A m e r i c a n sailor worked for some months on board o f a schooner, the master and J

39

T H E GENESIS OF A

NOVEL

owner of which was the thief of w h o m I had heard in my very young days. I have no doubt of that because there could hardly have been two exploits of that peculiar kind in the same part of the world and both connected with a South A m e r i c a n revolution. T h e fellow h a d actually m a n a g e d to steal a lighter with silver, and this, it seems, only because he was implicitly trusted by his employers, w h o must have been singularly poor judges of character. In the sailor's story he is represented as an unmitigated rascal, a small cheat, stupidly ferocious, morose, of mean appearance, and altogether unworthy of the greatness this opportunity had thrust upon him. W h a t was interesting was that he would boast of it openly. H e used to say: 'People think I make a lot of money in this schooner of mine. But that is nothing. I don't care for that. N o w and then I go a w a y quietly and lift a bar of silver. I must get rich s l o w l y — y o u understand.' T h e r e was also another curious point about the man. O n c e in the course of some quarrel the sailor threatened him: ' W h a t ' s to prevent me reporting ashore w h a t you have told me about that silver?' T h e cynical ruffian was not alarmed in the least. He actually laughed. ' Y o u fool, if you dare talk like that on shore about m e you will get a knife stuck in your b a c k . Every man, w o m a n , and child in that port is my friend. A n d who's to prove the lighter wasn't sunk? I didn't show you where the silver is hidden. D i d I? So you know nothing. A n d suppose I lied? Eh?' Ultimately the sailor, disgusted with the sordid meanness of that impenitent thief, deserted from the schooner. T h e whole episode takes about three pages of his autobiography. Nothing to speak of; but as I looked them over, the curious confirmation o f the few casual words heard in my early youth evoked the memories of that distant time w h e n everything was so fresh, so surprising, so venturesome, so interesting; bits of strange coasts under the stars, shadows of hills in the sunshine, men's passions in the dusk, gossip half forgotten, faces grown dim. . . . Perhaps, perhaps, there still was in the world something to write about. Y e t I did not see anything at first in the mere story. A rascal steals a large parcel of a valuable c o m m o d i t y — so people say. It's either true or untrue; and in any case it has no value in itself. T o invent a circumstantial account of the robbery did not appeal to me, because my talents not running that way I did not think that the g a m e was worth the candle. It was only w h e n it d a w n e d upon me that the purloiner of the treasure need not necessarily be a confirmed rogue, that he could be even a man of 140

GERMINATION c h a r a c t e r , an actor a n d possibly a victim in t h e c h a n g i n g scenes of a revolution, it was only t h e n t h a t I h a d t h e first vision of a twilight c o u n t r y which was to become t h e province of Sulaco, w i t h its high shadowy Sierra a n d its misty C a m p o for m u t e witnesses of events flowing f r o m the passions of m e n short-sighted in good a n d evil. S u c h a r e in very t r u t h t h e obscure origins of Nostromo—the book. F r o m t h a t m o m e n t , I suppose, it h a d to be. Yet even t h e n I hesit a t e d , as if w a r n e d b y t h e instinct of self-preservation f r o m v e n t u r i n g on a distant a n d toilsome j o u r n e y i n t o a l a n d full of intrigues a n d revolutions. But it h a d to b e done. Joseph Conrad. Preface to N o s t r o m o

(igoj).

PROUST RECAPTURES T H E PAST . . . O n e might have said t h a t the p o r t e n t s which t h a t d a y were to rescue m e from m y discouragement a n d give m e b a c k faith in literature, were d e t e r m i n e d to multiply themselves, for a servant, a long time in the service of t h e Prince d e G u e r m a n t e s , recognised m e a n d , to save m e going to t h e buffet, b r o u g h t m e some cakes a n d a glass of o r a n g e a d e into t h e library. I wiped m y m o u t h with t h e n a p k i n h e h a d given m e a n d immediately, like the personage in t h e Thousand and One Nights w h o unknowingly accomplished t h e rite which caused t h e a p p e a r a n c e before h i m of a docile genius, invisible to others, r e a d y t o transport h i m far away, a n e w a z u r e vision passed before m y eyes; b u t this time it was p u r e a n d saline a n d swelled i n t o shapes like bluish udders. T h e impression was so strong t h a t t h e m o m e n t I was living seemed to b e o n e w i t h t h e past a n d . . . I believed t h a t the servant h a d j u s t o p e n e d the w i n d o w u p o n t h e shore a n d t h a t everything invited m e to go downstairs a n d walk along the high sea-wall at h i g h tide; t h e n a p k i n u p o n w h i c h I was w i p i n g m y m o u t h h a d exactly t h e s a m e kind of starchiness as t h a t w i t h which I h a d a t t e m p t e d with so m u c h difficulty to d r y myself before t h e window the first d a y of m y arrival at Balbec a n d w i t h i n t h e folds of which, now, in t h a t library of the G u e r m a n t e s mansion, a green-blue ocean spread its p l u m a g e like t h e tail of a peacock. A n d I did not merely rejoice in those colours, b u t in t h a t whole instant which p r o d u c e d t h e m , a n instant t o w a r d s w h i c h m y whole life h a d doubtless aspired, w h i c h a feeling of fatigue or sadness h a d p r e v e n t e d m y ever experiencing at Balbec b u t which now, p u r e , disincarnated a n d freed f r o m t h e imperfections of exterior perceptions, filled m e w i t h j o y . . . . I noted t h a t t h e r e would b e g r e a t difficulties in creating the work of a r t I n o w felt r e a d y to u n d e r t a k e w i t h o u t its being consciously in m y m i n d , for I should h a v e to construct e a c h 141

T H E GENESIS OF A

NOVEL

of its successive parts out of a different sort of material. T h e material which would be suitable for memories at the side of the sea would be quite different from those o f afternoons at Venice w h i c h would demand a material of its o w n , a new one, of a special transparency and sonority, c o m p a c t , fresh and pink, different again if I wanted to describe evenings at Rivebelle where, in the dining-room open upon the garden, the heat was beginning to disintegrate, to descend and come to rest on the earth, while the rose-covered walls of the restaurant were lighted u p by the last ray of the setting sun, and the last watcr-colours of day-light lingered in the sky. I passed rapidly over all these things, being summoned more urgently to seek the cause of that happiness with its peculiar character of insistent certainty, the search for w h i c h I had formerly adjourned. A n d I began to discover the cause b y comparing those v a r y i n g happy impressions w h i c h h a d the c o m m o n quality of being felt simultaneously at the actual moment and at a distance in time, because of w h i c h common quality the noise of the spoon upon the plate, the unevenness of the paving-stone, the taste of the madeleine, imposed the past upon the present and m a d e me hesitate as to which time I was existing in. O f a truth, the being within me which sensed this impression, sensed w h a t it h a d in c o m m o n in former days and now, sensed its extra-temporal character, a being which only appeared when through the m e d i u m o f the identity of present a n d past, it found itself in the only setting in w h i c h it could exist a n d enjoy the essence of things, that is, outside T i m e . Marcel Proust. T i m e R e g a i n e d (1927), Chapter iii, transl. Stephen Hudson (1931). W H A T IS IT T O B E ? T u e s d a y , M a y 28th (1929). N o w about this book, The Moths.1 H o w a m I to begin it? A n d w h a t is it to be? I feel no great impulse; no fever; only a great pressure of difficulty. W h y write it then? W h y write at all? Every morning I write a little sketch, to amuse myself. I a m not saying, I might say, that these sketches have any relevance. I a m not trying to tell a story. Y e t perhaps it might be done in that w a y . A mind thinking. T h e y might be islands of light—islands in the stream that I a m trying to convey; life itself going on. T h e current o f the moths flying strongly this w a y . A l a m p and a flower pot in the centre. T h e flower can always be changing. B u t there must be more unity between each scene than I can find at present. Autobiography it ' T h i s became The Waves (1931). 142

GERMINATION might be called. How a m I to make one lap or act, between the coming of the moths, more intense than another; if there are only scenes? O n e must get the sense that this is the beginning; this is the middle; that the climax—when she opens the window and the moth comes in. I shall have the two different currents—the moths flying along; the flower upright in the centre; a perpetual crumbling and renewing of the plant. In its leaves she might see things happen. But w h o is she? I a m very anxious that she should have no name. I don't want a Lavinia or a Penelope: I want 'she'. But that becomes arty, Liberty greenery yallery somehow: symbolic in loose robes. O f course I can make her think backwards and forwards; I can tell stories. But that's not it. Also I shall do away with exact place and time. A n y t h i n g may be out of the w i n d o w — a s h i p — a desert— London. Virginia Woolf. A Writer's Diary (1953). NO N O T E B O O K S M . J . I don't think you have the note-book habit, I mean the collection of unrelated notes of things seen and heard. Katherine Mansfield filled note-books with memoranda and worked these up into what she called vignettes, or into her stories. She also made notes of phrases and sentences for as she said, 'one never knows when a little tag like that may come in useful to round off a paragraph.' I like to know how people work. I. C . B. I daresay you do, but the people themselves are not always quite sure. I have not the note-book habit; that is, I do not watch or listen to strangers with a view to using the results. T h e y do not do or say things that are of any good. T h e y are too indefinite and too much alike and are seldom living in anything but the surface of their lives. Think how rarely we should ourselves say or do anything that would throw light on our characters or experience. But as I have already said, some sort of starting-point is useful; and I get it almost anywhere; and I doubt if Katherine Mansfield really got more help than this from what she saw and heard. Y o u say she worked it up, and I am sure she must have done so. I cannot understand her noting phrases and sentences for future use, and find it hard to believe that they served any purpose. Rounding off a paragraph, occurring in the normal course of writing, by a tag overheard and stored up, seems to me too unnatural to be possible. She said that she never knew when such things would come in useful, and I suspect that she never found out. Ivy Compton-Burnett. 'A Conversation Between I. Compton-Burnett and M. Jourdain', Orion {¡945). !

43

Ill

The Novelist at Work: Effort and Inspiration

R I C H A R D S O N IN

DIFFICULTIES

I a m a very irregular writer: c a n form no p l a n ; nor write after w h a t I have preconceived. M a n y of m y friends wonder at this: but so it is. I have not therefore that encouragement to proceed, that those have, w h o , forming a n agreeable plan, write within its circle, and go on step by step with delight, k n o w i n g w h a t they drive at. Execution is all they have to concern themselves about, h a v i n g the approbation of their friends of their plan, and perhaps helped by those friends to incidents or enlargement. But I often c o m p a r e m y self to a poor old w o m a n , w h o h a v i n g no bellows, lays herself d o w n on her hearth, a n d w i t h her m o u t h endeavours to blow u p into a faint blaze a little h a n d f u l of sticks, half green, half dry, in order to w a r m a mess of pottage, that, after all her pains, hardly keeps life and soul together. T h i s stick lights, that goes out; a n d she is often obliged to h a v e recourse to her farthing candle, blinking in its shove-up socket; the lighter u p o f a week's fires. Excellent housewife, from poverty. Samuel Richardson. Letter to Lady Bradshaigh (probably between April and December 1751), Correspondence (1804). I a m at a part, that it is four chances to one I shall not b e able to get over. Y o u cannot imagine h o w m a n y difficult situations I have involved myself in. Entanglement, and extrication, and re-entanglement, have succeeded each other, as the d a y the night; a n d n o w the few friends w h o have seen w h a t I have written, doubt not but I a m stuck fast. A n d , indeed, I think so myself. Samuel Richardson. Letter to Lady Bradshaigh (23 February 1752), Correspondence (1804).

144

A T W O R K : E F F O R T AND INSPIRATION A C A R R I E R ' S HORSE I h o p e the c a n d i d r e a d e r n o w a n d then calls to m i n d h o w m u c h m o r e n i m b l y he travels o v e r these pages t h a n the writer of t h e m d i d . W h e n o u r dullness is c o m p l a i n e d of, it w o u l d be b u t charity in h i m to reflect h o w m u c h p a i n s t h a t s a m e dullness has cost us; m o r e , h e m a y b e assured, t h a n o u r b r i g h t e r intervals, w h e r e w e s p r u n g n i m b l y f o r w a r d w i t h a n easy w e i g h t , instead o f toiling like a carrier's horse, w h o s e slow a n d h e a v y p a c e argues the load he draws, a n d the l a b o u r h e endures. . . . ' T i s h a r d i n d e e d to toil, as w e sometimes d o , to our o w n loss a n d d i s a p p o i n t m e n t ; to s w e a t in the field o f f a m e , merely to r e a p a h a r v e s t o f c h a f f , a n d pile u p reams o f p a p e r for the w o r m to dine u p o n . It is a cruel t h i n g to rack o u r brains for nothing, r u n o u r j a d e d fancies to a stand-still, a n d then lie d o w n at the conclusion o f o u r r a c e , a carcase for the critics. Richard Cumberland. H e n r y {1795), Book the Seventh, Chapter i.

WHOM T H E D E V I L DRIVES Author. . . . I think there is a d e m o n w h o seats himself o n the f e a t h e r o f m y pen w h e n I b e g i n to write, a n d leads it astray f r o m the p u r p o s e . C h a r a c t e r s e x p a n d u n d e r m y h a n d ; incidents a r e m u l t i p l i e d ; the story lingers, w h i l e the materials increase; m y regular m a n s i o n turns o u t a G o t h i c a n o m a l y , a n d the w o r k is closed l o n g b e f o r e I h a v e a t t a i n e d the point I proposed. Captain. R e s o l u t i o n a n d d e t e r m i n e d f o r b e a r a n c e m i g h t r e m e d y t h a t evil. Author. A l a s ! m y d e a r sir, y o u d o not k n o w the force o f p a t e r n a l a f f e c t i o n . W h e n I l i g h t o n s u c h a c h a r a c t e r as Baillie J a r v i e , or D a l g e t t y , m y i m a g i n a t i o n brightens, a n d m y c o n c e p t i o n b e c o m e s clearer a t e v e r y step w h i c h I take in his c o m p a n y , a l t h o u g h it leads m e m a n y a w e a r y m i l e a w a y f r o m the r e g u l a r r o a d , a n d forces m e to l e a p h e d g e a n d d i t c h to g e t b a c k i n t o the route a g a i n . I f I resist the t e m p t a t i o n , as y o u advise m e , m y thoughts b e c o m e prosy, flat, a n d d u l l ; I w r i t e p a i n f u l l y to myself, a n d u n d e r a consciousness o f flagging w h i c h m a k e s m e flag still m o r e ; the sunshine w i t h w h i c h f a n c y h a d invested the incidents, departs f r o m t h e m , a n d leaves e v e r y t h i n g dull a n d g l o o m y . I a m n o m o r e the s a m e a u t h o r I w a s in m y b e t t e r m o o d , t h a n the d o g in a w h e e l , c o n d e m n e d to g o r o u n d a n d r o u n d f o r hours, is like the s a m e d o g merrily c h a s i n g his o w n tail, a n d g a m b o l l i n g i n all the frolic o f unrestrained f r e e d o m . I n short, sir, o n such occasions, I think I a m b e w i t c h e d .

145

T H E GENESIS OF A N O V E L Captain. Nay, sir, if you plead sorcery, there is no more to be s a i d — he must needs go w h o m the devil drives. Sir Walter Scott. Introductory Epistle to T h e Fortunes of Nigel (1822). NO P L A N N I N G There was a time when I used to draw up plans for novels—for Varina, for example; but drawing up plans freezes me stiff. I dictate twenty-five or thirty pages, then it is evening and I need violent distraction. It is necessary that by next morning I shall have forgotten everything. W h e n I read three or four final pages of yesterday's chapter, to-day's chapter comes to me. Stendhal. Letter to Balzac (30 October 1840), second draft, Selected Letters {1952), transl. Norman Cameron. WHAT, WHAT, W H A T ! HOW, HOW,

HOW!

Still there is something wanting to make an action for the story. W h e n Etherege appears, he should set some old business in motion, that had been suspended ever since he was here before. W h a t can that b e ? — h o w can it appear as if dead men's business, that had been buried with them, came to life again, and had to be finished now? T r u l y this is hard;—here's the rub; and yet without it, the story is meagre and barren. This old m a n — w h a t could he possibly be? T h e inheritor of some peculiarity that hits been known heretofore in the history of the family, and the possession of which betrays itself in some of his habits, or in his person. What? I can't make it out. Some physical peculiarity?—'twon't do. Some mental or moral peculiarity? How? T h e art of making gold? A peculiar kind of poison? A n acquaintance with wizard lore? Nothing of this. H e is an eater of human flesh— a v a m p i r e — a ghoul. He finds it necessary to eat a young child every year, in order to keep himself alive. He shall have some famous jewel, known for ages in the family annals—pah! He shall have undertaken some investigation, which many members of his family have been deluded into undertaking heretofore, and the nature of which is to change their natures disastrously—'twon't do. He shall have been to the C a v e of Trophonious. He shall have been to Hell — a n d I wish the Devil had kept him there. He shall have inherited the Great Carbuncle, and shall be forbidden to show it to any mortal. ' T w o n ' t do. O n account of some supposed hidden power of his, the owner of the estate shall seek his aid. What, what, what! 146

AT W O R K : E F F O R T A N D

INSPIRATION

How, how, how! When the heir was kidnapped to America, he carried this thing with him, which was the grand peculiarity of the family; and ever since there have [been] traditions about it, and a general secret inquest to find what has become of it. But what is it! Ah! Ah! He knows in what part of the castle something lies hidden; it shall be a rumour of a great treasure, [but] a treasure of gold— but on discovery, it shall prove to be only Evelyn's coffin, full of the golden hair into which she has been entirely changed. The story must not be founded at all on remorse or secret guilt—all that Poe wore out. Alas me! Some strange sort of a dreamer this old [man] might well be, who has brought down into this age some folly that belonged to that one—alchemy?—'twon't do. Some one of the Marquis of Worcester's century of inventions? Hardly, but I wish I knew what they were. The thing, though adorned with a deceitful splendour, shall be rather a curse than a blessing. A mystic of some kind. If I could but develop this rightly, it would be a good thing. A man aiming, the wrong way, [arrives] at some great good for his race. The first emigrant might have had the same tendency and suffered for it. A panacea for all ills. A friend of Swedenborg? A man with Medea's receipt? There is a latent something lying hereabouts, which, could I grip it, 'twould be the making of the story. A sort of apostle—a devoted, good man, but throwing himself away through some grand mistake! The example of the migrant was too much for him. So there shall be something strange and unworldly in the conduct of all who come to the knowledge of this man—they shall martyr themselves and their affections, give up the world, behave as if they were mad; though it shall really be the highest virtue and wisdom. I don't see any way yet, nor anything like it. But if I could get rid of any great crime on the part of the family, it would be better. Here, then, is a meek, patient, unpretending, wise old man, who develops peculiarities which draw the attention of profound observers upon him, though others see little that is remarkable in him. This is a better aspect than what I at first thought of. Follow out this clue stubbornly, stubbornly. Nathaniel Hawthorne. Hawthorne's Dr. Grimshawe's Secret, ed. Edward H. Davidson (1954), pp. 104-5. 2 5 O W O R D S E V E R Y Q U A R T E R OF A N H O U R

All those who have lived as literary men,—working daily as literary labourers,—will agree with me that three hours a day will produce as much as a man ought to write. But then, he should so have trained himself that he shall be able to work continuously 147

T H E GENESIS OF A N O V E L during those three hours,—so have tutored his mind that it shall not be necessary for h i m to sit nibbling his pen, and gazing at the wall before him, till he shall have found the words with which he wants to express his ideas. It h a d at this time become my c u s t o m , — a n d it still is my custom, though of late I have become a little lenient with m y s e l f , — t o write w i t h m y watch before me, and to require from myself 250 words every quarter of an hour. I have found that the 250 words have been forthcoming as regularly as my watch went. But m y three hours were not devoted entirely to writing. I always b e g a n my task b y reading the work of the day before, an operation w h i c h would take m e half a n hour, and which consisted chiefly in weighing with m y ear the sound of the words and phrases. I would strongly recommend this practice to all tyros in writing. T h a t their work should be read after it has been written is a matter of course,— that it should be read twice at least before it goes to the printers, I take to be a matter of course. But by reading what he has last written, just before he recommences his task, the writer will catch the tone a n d spirit of w h a t he is then saying, and will avoid the fault of seeming to be unlike himself. This division of time allowed m e to produce over ten pages of an ordinary novel volume a day, a n d if kept u p through ten months, would have given as its results three novels of three volumes each in the year. . . . I have never written three novels in a year, but by following the plan above described I have written more than as much as three volumes; and b y adhering to it over a course of years, I have been enabled to have always on h a n d , — f o r some time back n o w , — o n e or two or even three unpublished novels in my desk beside me. W e r e I to die now there are three such,—besides The Prime Minister, half of which only has as yet been issued. O n e of these has been six years finished, and has never seen the light since it was first tied u p in the w r a p p e r w h i c h n o w contains it. I look forward with some grim pleasantry to its publication after another period of six years, and to the declaration of the critics that it has been the work of a period of life at w h i c h the power of writing novels has passed from me. Anthony Trollope. A n Autobiography (1883), Chapter xv. MISERIES A N D S P L E N D O U R S OF C R E A T I O N I f I haven't answered your doleful, discouraged letter before now it's because I have been in the middle of a great fit of work. T h e day before yesterday, I went to bed at 5 o'clock, and yesterday at 3. Since last M o n d a y I ' v e put everything else on one side, and all 148

AT WORK: EFFORT AND

INSPIRATION

week I've been grinding a w a y exclusively at m y Bovary, exasperated at not getting ahead. I've got to my ball now, w h i c h I shall begin on M o n d a y . I hope it will g o better. Since y o u saw me I ' v e written 25 clear pages (25 pages in six weeks). T h e y ' v e been difficult to get moving. I shall read them to Bouilhet tomorrow. A s for me, I ' v e so m u c h worked them over, recopied them, altered them, handled them, that for the moment I can m a k e neither head nor tail of them. But I think they stand up. Y o u tell m e of your discouragements: if only you could see mine! Sometimes I can't m a k e out w h y m y arms don't fall off my body w i t h weariness, or w h y m y brain doesn't turn to porridge. I lead a harsh existence, devoid of all o u t w a r d j o y , w i t h nothing more to sustain me than a kind of everlasting rage that weeps sometimes for very powerlessness but is unceasing. I love m y work with a frenzied perverted passion, as an ascetic loves the hairshirt that scrapes his body. Sometimes, w h e n I find myself empty, w h e n expression won't come, when, after scribbling l o n g pages, I find I haven't written a sentence, then I fall onto the c o u c h and lie there, stupefied in an inward slough of despond. I hate myself, and b l a m e myself, for this frenzy o f pride w h i c h makes me pant after mere imaginings. A quarter of a n hour later, everything has altered; m y heart is p o u n d i n g for j o y . Last W e d n e s d a y I h a d to get up to find m y handkerchief: tears were running d o w n m y face. I had moved myself to tears in writing, revelling deliciously in the emotions of m y o w n conception, in the sentence w h i c h rendered it, and in the pleasure o f h a v i n g found it. A t least I think there were all these things in a state of feeling where nerves, after all, had more place than anything eke. O f these moments there are some which are of the highest k i n d — t h o s e that have least to do with any element of the sensuous. T h e y surpass virtue itself in their moral beauty, so detached are they from all personality a n d all h u m a n relationships. I have glimpsed sometimes (in m y great days o f sunlight) the glimmerings of a rapture which sends a shudder over m y flesh, from my nails to the roots o f m y hair, a spiritual state thus far above life in which fame would be nothing and even happiness without point. Gustave Flaubert. Letter to Louise Colet (24 April 1852), Correspondance (igoo).

P A I N A N D T R A V A I L OF SOUL

Y o u simply can't imagine h o w frightfully busy I a m , d a y and night; it is real hard labour! For I a m n o w finishing the ' K a r a m a z o v s ' , and consequently summing u p the entire work, w h i c h is personally H9

T H E G E N E S I S OF A

NOVEL

very dear to me, for I h a v e p u t a great deal of my inmost self into it. I work, in general, very nervously, with pain and travail o f soul. W h e n e v e r I a m writing, I a m physically ill. A n d n o w I h a v e to s u m u p all that I h a v e pondered, g a t h e r e d , set d o w n , in t h e last three years. I must m a k e this w o r k good at all costs, or at least as g o o d as I can. I simply d o n ' t k n o w h o w a n y o n e can write a t great speed, and only for the m o n e y ' s sake. N o w the time is c o m e w h e n I must w i n d u p this novel, a n d that w i t h o u t delay. Y o u will hardly believe m e : m a n y a chapter, for w h i c h I h a d been m a k i n g notes all those three years, I w a s obliged, after finally setting it d o w n , to reject, and write a n e w . O n l y separate passages, w h i c h were directly inspired b y enthusiasm, c a m e o f f at first writing; all the rest was h a r d work . . . Feodor Dostoevsky. Letter to I. S. Aksakov (28 August 1880), Letters (1914), transl. Ethel Colbum Mayne. F L E S H IN T H E

INK-POT

Tolstoi spoke on A u g u s t 28th [1904] w i t h exasperation about w r i t i n g as a profession. I h a v e rarely seen h i m so agitated. H e said: ' O n e ought only to w r i t e w h e n one leaves a piece o f one's flesh in the ink-pot each time one dips one's p e n . ' 1905, J u n e 16th ' I always write in the m o r n i n g . I was pleased to hear lately that R o u s s e a u too, after he got u p in the morning, w e n t for a short walk and sat d o w n to work. I n the morning one's head is particularly fresh. T h e best thoughts most often come in the morning after w a k i n g , while still in bed or d u r i n g the w a l k . M a n y writers work at night. Dostoevsky always w r o t e at night. I n a writer there must a l w a y s b e two p e o p l e — t h e writer a n d the critic. A n d , if one works at night, w i t h a cigarette in one's m o u t h , a l t h o u g h the work of creation goes on briskly, the critic is for the most part in abeyance, a n d this is very dangerous. . . .' Leo Tolstoy. T a l k s w i t h T o l s t o i , ed. A. B. Goldenveizer {1922), transl. S. S. Koteliansky and Virginia Woolf (1923). COPIOUS

PRELIMINARIES

. . . those wondrous a n d copious preliminary statements (of m y fictions that are to be) d o n ' t really exist in a n y form in w h i c h they c a n b e imparted. I think I k n o w to w h o m y o u allude as having seen their s e m b l a n c e — a n d indeed their very substance; but in two 150

A T W O R K : E F F O R T A N D INSPIRATION e x c e p t i o n a l (as it were) cases. I n these cases w h a t w a s seen w a s the s t a t e m e n t d r a w n u p o n the basis o f the serialization of the w o r k — d r a w n u p in o n e case w i t h e x t r e m e d e t a i l a n d at e x t r e m e l e n g t h (in 20,000 words!). P i n k e r s a w t h a t : it referred to a l o n g novel, a f t e r w a r d s (this m o r e t h a n a year) w r i t t e n a n d finished, b u t not yet, to m y great i n c o n v e n i e n c e , p u b l i s h e d ; b u t it w e n t m o r e t h a n t w o years a g o to A m e r i c a , to the H a r p e r s , a n d there r e m a i n e d a n d has p r o b a b l y been d e s t r o y e d . 1 W e r e it here I w o u l d w i t h pleasure transmit it to y o u ; for, t h o u g h I say it w h o should not, it was, the s t a t e m e n t , full a n d v i v i d , I think as a statement c o u l d be, o f a subject as w o r k e d o u t . T h e n C o n r a d s a w a shorter one o f the Wings of the D.—also well e n o u g h in its w a y , b u t o n l y half as l o n g a n d p r o p o r t i o n a t e l y less d e v e l o p e d . That h a d been prepared so t h a t the book m i g h t b e serialized in a n o t h e r A m e r i c a n periodical, b u t this w h o l l y failed ( w h a t secrets a n d shames I reveal to you!) a n d the t h i n g (the book) was then written, the s u b j e c t treated, o n a m o r e free a n d i n d e p e n d e n t scale. B u t that synopsis t o o has been destroyed; it w a s returned f r o m the U . S . , b u t I h a d t h e n no occasion to preserve it. A n d e v i d e n t l y n o fiction o f m i n e c a n or will n o w b e serialized; certainly I shall not a g a i n d r a w u p detailed a n d explicit p l a n s for u n c o n v i n c e d a n d u n g r a c i o u s editors; so that I fear I shall h a v e n o t h i n g o f that sort to show. A p l a n for myself, as copious a n d d e v e l o p e d as possible, I a l w a y s d o d r a w u p — t h a t is the two d o c u m e n t s I speak o f were b a s e d u p o n , a n d e x t r a c t e d f r o m , such a prel i m i n a r y private o u t p o u r i n g . B u t this latter v o l u m i n o u s effusion is, ever, so e x t r e m e l y f a m i l i a r , confidential a n d i n t i m a t e — i n the f o r m o f a n i n t e r m i n a b l e g a r r u l o u s letter addressed to m y o w n fond f a n c y — t h a t , t h o u g h I a l w a y s , f o r easy reference, h a v e it carefully t y p e d , it isn't a thing I w o u l d w i l l i n g l y expose to a n y eye b u t m y o w n . A n d e v e n then, sometimes, I shrink! Henry James. Letter to H. G. Wells (15 November T h e Letters o f H e n r y J a m e s (1920). WRESTLING WITH THE

igo2),

LORD

N o d i t c h or w a l l encompassed m y a b o d e . T h e w i n d o w w a s o p e n ; the d o o r too stood o p e n to that best friend o f m y work, the w a r m , still sunshine of the w i d e fields. T h e y l a y a r o u n d m e infinitely helpful, b u t t r u t h to say I h a d not k n o w n for weeks w h e t h e r the sun shone u p o n the earth a n d w h e t h e r the stars a b o v e still m o v e d o n 1 The project was for The Ambassadors-, it was not destroyed. See The Notebooks of Henry James (1947), ed. F. O . Matthiessen and Kenneth B. Murdoch, p. 370.

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their appointed courses. I w a s just then giving u p some days of m y allotted span to the last chapters o f the novel Nostromo, a tale o f a n i m a g i n a r y (but true) seaboard, w h i c h is still mentioned n o w a n d again, a n d indeed kindly, sometimes in connection w i t h the w o r d 'failure' and sometimes in connection w i t h the w o r d 'astonishing'. I h a v e no opinion on this discrepancy. It's the sort o f difference that c a n never be settled. A l l I k n o w , is that, for twenty months, neglecting the c o m m o n j o y s o f life that fall to the lot of the humblest on this earth, I h a d , like the p r o p h e t o f old, 'wrestled w i t h the L o r d ' for m y creation, for the headlands of the coast, for the darkness of the Placid G u l f , the light o n the snows, the clouds on the sky, a n d for the breath o f life that h a d to b e b l o w n into the shapes o f m e n and w o m e n , o f L a t i n a n d S a x o n , o f J e w a n d Gentile. T h e s e are, perhaps, strong words, b u t it is difficult to characterise otherwise the i n t i m a c y and the strain o f a creative effort in w h i c h m i n d and will a n d conscience are e n g a g e d to the full, h o u r after hour, d a y after d a y , a w a y from the world, a n d to the exclusion o f all t h a t makes life really lovable a n d g e n t l e — s o m e t h i n g for w h i c h a material parallel can only be f o u n d in the everlasting sombre stress of the westward winter passage r o u n d C a p e H o r n . F o r that too is the wrestling o f m e n w i t h the m i g h t of their C r e a t o r , in a great isolation from the world, w i t h o u t the amenities a n d consolations o f life, a lonely struggle u n d e r a sense o f o v e r - m a t c h e d littleness, for no r e w a r d that could b e a d e q u a t e , b u t for the mere w i n n i n g o f a longitude. Y e t a certain longitude, once w o n , c a n n o t b e disputed. T h e sun a n d the stars a n d the shape o f y o u r earth are the witnesses of your g a i n ; whereas a h a n d f u l o f pages, no m a t t e r h o w m u c h y o u h a v e m a d e t h e m y o u r o w n , are at best but an obscure a n d questionable spoil. H e r e they are. ' F a i l u r e ' — ' A s t o n i s h i n g ' : take y o u r choice; or perhaps b o t h , or n e i t h e r — a mere rustle a n d flutter o f pieces of p a p e r settling d o w n in the night, a n d indistinguishable, like the snowflakes of a great drift destined to melt a w a y in sunshine. Joseph Conrad. A Personal R e c o r d ( i g i s ) , Chapter v.

FEATHERING

ABOUT

F r i d a y , A p r i l 30th (1926) . . . Y e s t e r d a y I finished the first part of To the Lighthouse, a n d today b e g a n the second. I c a n n o t m a k e it o u t — h e r e is the most difficult abstract piece o f w r i t i n g — I h a v e to g i v e an e m p t y house, no people's characters, the passage o f time, all eyeless a n d featureless w i t h nothing to cling to; well, I rush at it, a n d at once scatter out t w o pages. Is it nonsense, is it brilliance? W h y a m I so flown w i t h J52

AT WORK:

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words and apparently free to do exactly what I like? When I read a bit it seems spirited too; needs compressing, but not much else. Compare this dashing fluency with Mrs. Dalloway (save the end). This is not made up; it is the literal fact. Friday, September 3rd (1926) . . . The novel is now easily in sight of the end, but this, mysteriously, comes no nearer. I am doing Lily on the lawn; but whether it's her last lap, I don't know. Nor am I sure of the quality; the only certainty seems to be that after tapping my antennae in the air vaguely for an hour every morning I generally write with heat and ease till 12.30; and thus do my two pages. So 5th September it will be done, written over that is, in 3 weeks, I forecast, from today. What emerges? At this moment I'm casting about for an end. The problem is how to bring Lily and Mr. R . together and make a combination of interest at the end. I am feathering about with various ideas. The last chapter which I begin tomorrow is In the Boat: I had meant to end with R . climbing on to the rock. If so, what becomes of Lily and her picture? Should there be a final page about her and Carmichael looking at the picture and summing up R.'s character? In that case I lose the intensity of the moment. If this intervenes between R . and the lighthouse, there's too much chop and change, I think. Could I do it in a parenthesis? So that one had the sense of reading two things at the same time? I shall solve it somehow, I suppose. Then I must go on to the question of quality. I think it may run too fast and free and so be rather thin. On the other hand, I think it is subtler and more human than Jacob's Room and Mrs. Dalloway. And I am encouraged by my own abundance as I write. It is proved, I think, that what I have to say is to be said in this manner. As usual, side stories are sprouting in great variety as I wind this up: a book of characters . . . but it is hopelessly undramatic. It is all in oratio obliqua. Not quite all; for I have a few direct sentences. T h e lyric portions of To the Lighthouse are collected in the 10-year lapse and don't interfere with the text so much as usual. I feel as if it fetched its circle pretty completely this time; and I don't feel sure what the stock criticism will be. Sentimental? Victorian? Virginia Woolf. A Writer's Diary {1953)•

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INSPIRED

(i) . . . Genius; thou gift of Heaven; without whose aid in vain we struggle against the stream of nature. Thou who dost sow the generous seeds which art nourishes, and brings to perfection. Do thou kindly take me by the hand, and lead me through all the mazes, the winding labyrinths of nature. Initiate me into all those mysteries which profane eyes never beheld. Teach me, which to thee is no difficult task, to know mankind better than they know themselves. Remove that mist which dims the intellect of mortals, and causes them to adore men for their art, or to detest them for their cunning, in deceiving others, when they are, in reality, the objects only of ridicule, for deceiving themselves. Strip off the thin disguise of wisdom from self-conceit, of plenty from avarice, and of glory from ambition. Come, thou that hast inspired thy Aristophanes, thy Lucian, thy Cervantes, thy Rabelais, thy Molière, thy Shakespeare, thy Swift, thy Marivaux, fill my pages with humour; till mankind learn the good-nature to laugh only at the follies of others, and the humility to grieve at their own. Henry Fielding. The History of Tom Jones, A Foundling {1749), Book XIII> Chapter i.

(ii) Whether it is right or advisable to create beings like Heathcliff, I do not know: I scarcely think it is. But this I know; the writer who possesses the creative gift owns something of which he is not always master—something that, at times, strangely wills and works for itself. He may lay down rules and devise principles, and to rules and principles it will perhaps for years lie in subjection; and then, haply without any warning of revolt, there comes a time when it will no longer consent to 'harrow the valleys, or be bound with a band in the furrow'—when it 'laughs at the multitude of the city, and regards not the crying of the driver'—when, refusing absolutely to make ropes out of sea-sand any longer, it sets to work on statuehewing, and you have a Pluto or a Jove, a Tisiphone or a Psyche, a Mermaid or a Madonna, as Fate or Inspiration direct. Be the work grim or glorious, dread or divine, you have little choice left but quiescent adoption. As for you—the nominal artist—your share in it has been to work passively under dictates you neither delivered nor could question—that would not be uttered at your prayer, nor

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suppressed nor changed at your caprice. If the result be attractive, the world will praise you, who little deserve praise; if it be repulsive, the same world will blame you, w h o almost as little deserve blame. Charlotte Bronte. Preface to the 1850 edition of Wuthering Heights (1847).

(iii) . . . She told me that, in all that she considered her best writing, there was a 'not herself' which took possession of her, and that she felt her own personality to be merely the instrument through which this spirit, as it were, was acting. Particularly she dwelt on this with regard to the scene in Middlemarch between Dorothea and Rosamond, saying that, although she always knew they had, sooner or later, to come together, she kept the idea resolutely out of her mind until Dorothea was in Rosamond's drawing-room. T h e n , abandoning herself to the inspiration of the moment, she wrote the whole scene exactly as it stands, without alteration or erasure, in an intense state of excitement and agitation, feeling herself entirely possessed by the feelings of the two women. O f all the characters she had attempted, she found Rosamond the most difficult to sustain. With this sense of 'possession', it is easy to imagine what the cost to the author must have been of writing books, each of which has its tragedy. J. W. Cross. George Eliot's Life as related in her Letters and Journals (1884), Chapter xix.

(iv) M y imaginary characters take on my shape, they pursue me, or rather it is I who a m in them. W h e n I wrote about E m m a Bovary's poisoning I had the taste of arsenic so strongly in my mouth, I was so thoroughly poisoned myself, that I gave myself two bouts of indigestion, one after another, two very real bouts since I vomited u p my entire dinner . . . Don't liken the artist's inner vision to that of the m a n who is genuinely suffering from hallucination. I know both states very well; there's a gulf between them. In a state of hallucination properly so called there is always terror; you feel your individuality slipping away from you; you feel you are going to die of it. In the poetic vision, on the contrary, there is j o y ; it is something that enters into you. It is no less true that you no longer know where you are . . . This vision often forms itself slowly, bit by bit, like the various parts of a dicor one is setting up; but often again it is as swift and fugitive !

55

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as hypnotic hallucinations. S o m e t h i n g passes in front of your eyes; it is then that y o u h a v e to fling yourself on to it, avidly . . . Gustave Flaubert. Letter to H. A. Taint C o r r e s p o n d a n c e {1903).

{¡868?),

(V) J a n u a r y 4th, 1910. I take this u p a g a i n after a n i n t e r r u p t i o n — I in fact throw myself u p o n it this a . m . under the secousse of its being b r o u g h t h o m e to m e even m o r e than I expected that my urgent material reasons for getting settled at productive work again are of the very most imperative. Je m'entends—I h a v e h a d a discomfiture (through a stupid misapprehension o f m y own, indeed) ; and I must n o w take u p projected tasks—this l o n g time entrevus and b r o o d e d o v e r — w i t h the firmest possible h a n d . I needn't expatiate on t h i s — o n the sharp consciousness o f this h o u r o f the d i m l y - d a w n i n g N e w Y e a r , I m e a n ; I simply invoke and a p p e a l to all the powers and forces a n d divinities to w h o m I ' v e ever been loyal a n d w h o h a v e n ' t failed m e y e t — a f t e r all: never, never yet! Infinitely i n t e r e s t i n g — a n d yet somehow w i t h a beautiful sharp poignancy in it that makes it strange a n d rather exquisitely f o r m i d a b l e , as w i t h an unspeakable d e e p agitation, the w h o l e artistic question that comes u p for m e in the train of this idea o f a n e w short serial for the Harpers, o f the donnée for a situation that I b e g a n here the other d a y to fumble out. I m e a n I c o m e b a c k , I c o m e back yet again and again, to m y only seeing it in the d r a m a t i c w a y — a s I c a n only see everything a n d a n y t h i n g n o w . . . M o m e n t a r y sidewinds—things of no real a u t h o r i t y — b r e a k in every n o w and then to put their inferior little questions to m e ; b u t I c o m e back, I come back, as I say, I all t h r o b b i n g l y and y e a r n i n g l y and passionately, oh, mon bon, c o m e b a c k to this w a y t h a t is clearly the only one in w h i c h I can do a n y t h i n g now, a n d that will open out to m e more and more and that has o v e r w h e l m i n g reasons pleading all beautifully in its breast. W h a t really happens is that the closer I get to the problem o f the a p p l i c a t i o n of it in a n y p a r t i c u l a r case, the more I get into that a p p l i c a t i o n , so the m o r e doubts a n d torments fall a w a y from me, the m o r e I know w h e r e I a m , the m o r e everything spreads and shines a n d d r a w s me on a n d I ' m justified o f m y logic and m y passion. . . . Causons, causons, mon bon—oh celestial, soothing, sanctifying process, w i t h all the high sane forces o f the sacred time fighting t h r o u g h it, o n m y side! L e t m e f u m b l e it gently a n d patiently o u t — w i t h fever a n d fidget laid to r e s t — a s in all the old enchanted months! It only looms, it only shines a n d shimmers, too beautiful a n d too interesting; 156

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it only hangs there too rich and too full and with too much to give and to pay; it only presents itself too admirably and too vividly, too straight and square and vivid, as a little organic and effective Action . . . Thus just these first little wavings of the oh so tremulously passionate little old wand (now!) make for me, I feel, a sort of promise of richness and beauty and variety; a sort of portent of the happy presence of the elements. T h e good days of last August and even my broken September and better October come back to me with their gage of divine possibilities, and I welcome these to my arms, I press them with unutterable tenderness. I seem to emerge from these recent bad days—the fruit of blind accident (Jan. 1910)—and the prospect clears and blushes, and my poor blest old Genius pats me so admirably and lovingly on the back that I turn, I screw round, and bend my lips to passionately, in my gratitude, kiss its hand . . . Henry James. T h e Notebooks of Henry James, ed. F. 0. Matthiessen and Kenneth B. Murdoch {1947) •

(vi)

Saturday, February 7th (1931). Here in the few minutes that remain, I must record, heaven be praised, the end of The Waves. I wrote the words O Death fifteen minutes ago, having reeled across the last ten pages with some moments of such intensity and intoxication that I seemed only to stumble after my own voice, or almost, after some sort of speaker (as when I was mad) I was almost afraid, remembering the voices that used to fly ahead. Anyhow it is done; and I have been sitting these 15 minutes in a state of glory, and calm, and some tears, thinking of Thoby and if I could write Julian Thoby Stephen 18811906 on the first page. I suppose not. How physical the sense of triumph and relief is! Whether good or bad it's done; and, as I certainly felt at the end, not merely finished, but rounded off, completed, the thing stated—how hastily, how fragmentarily I know; but I mean that I have netted that fin in the waste of water which appeared to me over the marshes out of my window at Rodmell when I was coming to an end of To the Lighthouse. What interests me in the last stage was the freedom and boldness with which my imagination picked up, used and tossed aside all the images, symbols which I had prepared. I am sure that this is the right way of using them—not in set pieces, as I had tried at first, coherently, but simply as images, never making them work out; only suggest. Thus I hope to have kept the sound of the sea and the

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birds, dawn and garden subconsciously present, doing their work underground. Virginia Woolf. A Writer's Diary {1953). (vii) What about the creative state? In it a man is taken out of himself. He lets down as it were a bucket into his subconscious, and draws up something which is normally beyond his reach. He mixes this thing with his normal experiences, and out of the mixture he makes a work of art. It may be a good work of art or a bad one—we are not here examining the question of quality—but whether it is good or bad it will have been compounded in this unusual way, and he will wonder afterwards how he did it. Such seems to be the creative process. It may employ much technical ingenuity and worldly knowledge, it may profit by critical standards, but mixed up with it is this stuff from the bucket, this subconscious stuff, which is not procurable on demand. And when the process is over, when the picture or symphony or lyric or novel (or whatever it is) is complete, the artist, looking back on it, will wonder how on earth he did it. And indeed he did not do it on earth. E. M. Forster. ' The Raison d'Etre of Criticism in the Arts' (1948); reprinted in Two Cheers for Democracy (1951).

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Part Three T H E C R A F T OF F I C T I O N

INTRODUCTION

is ON M A T T E R S of method and presentation that the artist is often found with the most illuminating things to say, and the novelist is no exception. Whether he considers characterization, narrative technique or the requirements of a good prose style, he is in fact making a statement about the nature of the novel, thus reminding us that form and substance are closely bound together. It may be added that the more successfully he performs his basic narrative function—'oh dear yes, the novel tells a story'—the more likely he is to drug our response to the 'finer growths' which make his work valuable and interesting. 1 How small a part 'story' plays in comparison with other elements in his craft appears in the subsequent discussion; the 'finer growths' are investigated under these general headings and sub-headings: IT

I

II III IV V VI 1

Structural Problems Unity and Coherence Plot and Story The Time-factor Narrative Technique Characterization Dialogue Background Style

See E. M . Forster, Aspects of the Novel, C h a p t e r ii.

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Structural Problems

UNITY

AND

COHERENCE

UNTIL THIS CENTURY, ' l a y ' criticism of the novel tended to con-

centrate on a limited number of elements, notably characterization, plot and, quite frequently, style. The principal criteria of success for the first two were respectively verisimilitude and unexceptionable moral reference, for the third, correctness and intelligibility. It is remarkable how obstinately and unenterprisingly these worthy but limited preoccupations persist throughout the general run of nineteenth-century English reviewing, no matter which of the major contemporary figures is in question. 1 Even the more informed interest of some French critics, notably of certain contributors to Le Revue des deux Mondes, is fixed on general questions released by Realist and Naturalist controversies rather than on genuine structural analysis. 2 It is too much, perhaps, to expect interest in the subtle interplay of the novel's various elements to appear so soon. The conception of artistic structure has taken more than a century to lay hold of the popular imagination, and in any case the novel, still barely respectable even after two hundred years, is the last form likely to command the appropriate kind of critical interest and often has to do without it even to-day. But one is a little surprised at the 'lay' failure to discuss some of the more obvious 'finer growths', such as the handling of the point of view from which the story is told or the management of the time-factor, problems which had been exercising the novelist's ingenuity for years and which have had such farreaching effects on his work. If early critics of Wuthering Heights 1 See, for example, G. H. Ford, Dickens and his Critics (1955). For further information I am also indebted to a doctoral thesis (Liverpool, 1958) by R . J . Owens on George Eliot's critical reputation in the nineteenth century. 2 See, among many others, Emile Montégut, 'Le Roman intime de la littérature réaliste. Fanny, de M. E. Feydeau', Revue des deux Mondes, 1 November 1858; Saint-René Taillandier, 'Le Réalisme épique dans le román. Salammbo de M . G. Flaubert', Revue des deux Mondes, 15 February 1863; F. Brunetiére, 'Le Roman réaliste contemporain': 'L'Esthétique Naturaliste—Charles Bigot': 'Le Roman expérimental': 'Gustave Flaubert': 'Les Origines du Roman naturaliste', Revue des deux Mondes, 1 April 1875: 15 September 1879: 15 February 1880: 15 June 1880: 15 September 1881.

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had considered Emily Bronte's treatment of these two factors alone, this great book might have been saved a good deal of incomprehension and neglect. It has been left to a comparatively new kind of littérateur to stimulate this type of critical attention. I a m speaking of the writer, faintly foreshadowed in the nineteenth century by people like G . H . Lewes and Théodore Bentzon, whose insight into the problems of prose fiction makes him a minor practitioner of some skill and imagination as well as a sensitive critical interpreter. A m o n g the earliest of these is Sir Percy Lubbock, whose The Craft of Fiction (1921) breaks new ground by demonstrating that the novelist's choice of narrative m e t h o d — t h e 'point of view' from which he tells his story—can vitally affect the unity, emphasis and coherence of his work. A later example is Mr. Robert Liddell, who has so far given us two studies of the novel, A Treatise on the Novel (1947) and Some Principles of Fiction (1953). M r . Liddell encourages our fairly recent habit of approaching the novel as an organized and unified whole by recommending u s — a m o n g other pieces of good a d v i c e — to combine the modern practice of isolating key passages for analysis with an extended variant of the older, so-called 'academic', examination of such elements as character and plot. Each method by itself is inadequate, but by combining them we may avoid the errors of distortion and so come to a better understanding of the artist's purpose and achievement. 1 Before these critical developments took place, the conscious craftsman had long cried in the wilderness for some acknowledgment that his works might be skilfully unified structures. Henry James's prefaces and letters betray a Flaubert-like melancholy in their sorrowing admission that meticulous artistry in this respect is unlikely to be generally appreciated—Sir Percy Lubbock's study is, indeed, partly an act of piety by a Jamesian devotee anxious to render a hitherto unfulfilled service to the Master. But it must be recognized, too, that the least pretentious pot-boiling entertainer deserves credit for contriving in the interests of his design, even if this is no more than a simple adventure story, some interdependence of story, plot, character, dialogue and setting. Dickens, not perhaps either unpretentious or unambitious but at least a magnificent pot-boiling 1

Robert Liddell, A Treatise on the Novel, pp. 21-9.

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T H E C R A F T OF FICTION entertainer, is in the process n o w a d a y s of being exonerated from b l a m e for failing to p l a n and organize his material; b u t the truth is that he w o u l d h a v e been i n c a p a b l e o f writing a single novel w i t h o u t some feeling for the relationship between character, setting a n d action, and without some elementary sense of structure a n d organization. ' F o r m is substance', as J a m e s says, 'to that degree that there is absolutely no substance w i t h o u t it.' 1 T w o factors are of importance in affecting the novelist's solution of his technical difficulties; his o w n t e m p e r a m e n t a n d the nature of his subject. ' E v e r y great artist necessarily creates his o w n form', says Tolstoy in a statement w h i c h reads like a corollary to J a m e s ' s pronouncement a b o u t form a n d substance. 2 Stevenson adds, 'with each new subject . . . the true artist will v a r y his m e t h o d and change the point of a t t a c k ' . 3 T h i s m a y superficially suggest that the novel is indeed as ' a m o r p h o u s ' as M r . Forster says it is,4 b u t it seems true to say that the novelist's 'subject', ' m e t h o d ' and 'point of attack' p r o d u c e a limited n u m b e r of recognizable 'kinds'. By the end o f the eighteenth century it w a s already a c o m m o n p l a c e that t w o essentially different kinds of fiction might be associated w i t h the novelist's m o d e of solving basic technical problems. Johnson, R i c h a r d C u m b e r l a n d , Mrs. B a r b a u l d a n d Scott are a m o n g those w h o felt that the intrusive 'omniscient' author, his attention fixed on the 'dial-plate', was likely to produce a different t y p e of novel from the m a n w h o tried to find o u t ' h o w a w a t c h w a s m a d e ' a n d d r a m a t i z e d inner movements of feeling a n d t h o u g h t w i t h the help of the epistolary method, the a u t o b i o g r a p h i c a l ' m e m o i r ' , 5 or even the narrative ' g o i n g b a c k w a r d s ' ( H o r a c e W a l p o l e ' s description of Tristram Shandy*). E a r l y novelists consciously separated themselves into opposite c a m p s a c c o r d i n g to their method o f approach. Fielding distinguished his kind f r o m Richardson's, S a r a h Fielding, allying herself w i t h R i c h a r d s o n , distinguished hers from her brother's. 7 W i t h the alterations in sensibility w h i c h took place in the nineteenth century, h o w e v e r , fresh forms o f fiction appeared. T h e differences are obviously greater than the similarities w h e n Pride and Prejudice is set beside 1 3 5

1 See below, p. 265. See below, p. 235. 4 See Aspects of the Novel, pp. 14-15. See Part I above, p. 82. See below, pp. 258-9. • See below, p. 257. ' See below, pp. 275-7.

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Wuthering Heights or Humphry Clinker beside Middlemarch, while Wuthering Heights and Middlemarch themselves represent contrasting kinds of achievement. By the time of James it is becoming apparent that, according to his 'subject', 'method' and 'point of attack', the novelist will tend to produce one or other of four types of structure: (i) As a commentator on the broad tendencies and attitudes of a society or an age, the novelist appears as the 'inclusive' panoramic author, whose portrait of life employs comedy, irony and satire as the instruments of its critical strategy. The fluency and inventiveness of this writer usually serve his story and his vivid presentation of surface attitudes at the expense of his sense of form and his insight into the hidden recesses of personality. Fielding and Dickens are examples and here, if anywhere, the reader may be able to abandon himself to the narrative, responding, without necessarily looking before and after, to the successions of crisis and resolution which make up the tale. (Even so, Fielding likes to remind us that memory and foreknowledge are needed to appreciate the workings of his plot and the full flavour of his comic irony.) 1 (ii) As the analyst of individual feelings and emotions, the novelist appears as the sensitive 'exclusive' artist whose interpretation of life—especially in its exploration of hidden human conflict—is disciplined by a profounder irony and sometimes illuminates the nature of tragic experience. A certain technical fastidiousness is indissociable from this kind of writing; even when the nice discrimination of a Jane Austen or a Henry James is replaced by the 'dreadful fluidity of self-revelation' (as in Jane Eyre or Clarissa's letters) the novelist is still concentrating every ounce of his technical skill on the task of successfully dramatizing his chosen centre of consciousness. This kind of art demands a more complex response from the reader since memory and foreknowledge are indispensable for the full appreciation of, let us say, the extent and significance of Strether's illusions in The Ambassadors or the heroine's self-deceptions in Emma—or indeed, in the same novel, the full richness of Miss Bates's streams of consciousness, with their unwitting revelations about the Jane Fairfax-Frank Churchill situation. 1

See, for example, Tom Jones, Book X V I I I , Chap, ii, 'If the reader will please to refresh his memory by turning to the scene at Upton. . . .'

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THE C R A F T OF FICTION (iii) As 'sage' or 'prophet' the novelist tends to combine the inclusive writer's uneconomical prodigality and the exclusive writer's feeling for pattern. In the ' s a g e ' — G e o r g e Eliot or Tolstoy, for e x a m p l e — i t is primarily an intellectual logic which shapes the pattern. Here again a certain strenuousness of critical response is demanded. I n order to understand w h a t George Eliot intends by her handling of the self-deceptions of L y d g a t e , Bulstrode or Dorothea herself—'our deeds determine us as much as w e determine our d e e d s ' — w e need to p a y as m u c h attention to the interdependence of the various moments of moral crisis as w e do w h e n w e read Emma or The Ambassadors. T h e same attention is needed if w e are to grasp in Tolstoy the significant relationship between 'war' and 'peace', and between great historical events and the individual's personal experience of the passage of time. (iv) For the novelist as 'prophet'—Dostoevsky, D . H . L a w r e n c e or the late J a m e s — t h e shaping principle is less a matter of intellectual logic than of the poetic imagination expressing itself through symbols and sustained metaphors (which often provide overtones of the supernatural). H e r e a full response seems to demand an examination of the relationship between theme, image and the texture of the writing, as well as alertness to the interdependent sequences of crisis a n d resolution which contribute to the ' r h y t h m ' of the whole work. I f the analogy between the novel and epic is insisted upon, it is possible to argue that of these various kinds the ' p a n o r a m i c ' approximates more closely than the others to the ' c o m i c epic in prose' as defined b y Fielding, while the writings of the 'sage' and 'prophet' more nearly approach the dimensions of the serious epic. But the usefulness of this analogy is doubtful. I t was indicated in Chapter I that the novelist's attempt to relate his work to earlier forms of narrative was of value in keeping his imagination awake to the stimulus of fantasy. O n the other hand, his conception of the classical epic as a f o r m whose structural 'rules' necessarily established a precedent for his o w n work was not so helpful and on occasion could be inhibiting. In fact the novelist's debut in a period interested in preserving the classical distinction of literary kinds placed him at a serious initial disadvantage and helped to prolong his period of experimental instability and self-consciousness. T h e novelist's natural 166

S T R U C T U R A L PROBLEMS independence and flexibility, his sense that it is his o w n personal vision which gives shape and meaning to his art, conflict with authoritarian efforts to tether him to 'rules' connected with 'the Unities' or to 'epic regularity'. Fielding's art, with its generous provision for tactical double-dealing, expresses an instinctive impatience with precedent, however strong his classical allegiances seem to be. A s I have already pointed out, he leaves us plenty of room to believe that he is burlesquing the whole notion of following classical examples when he fathers his 'comic epic' on Homer's lost Margites or adopts Aristotle's enumeration of the epic's essential elements. 1 Even Fielding, however, frequently acknowledges the tendencies of his age without, apparently, any ambiguity of tone. In his favourable review of Charlotte Lennox's The Female Quixote (1752), he reaffirms the value of classical precedent: here is a regular story, which, though possibly it is not pursued with that epic regularity which would give it the name of an Action, comes much nearer to that perfection than the loose unconnected Adventures in Don Quixote . . . 2 In fact the concept of 'epic regularity' as a structural principle continues to haunt English writers as different from each other and as far apart in time as Richardson, Scott, Dickens, T r o l lope, H a r d y and Conrad's disciple, Ford M a d o x Ford. A s late as 1888 H a r d y is still quoting Addison on the subject of the epic 'rules' which forbid digression and, in the same period, Fielding's ' M a n of the Hill' episode is still a critical K i n g Charles's H e a d . 3 R i c h a r d Cumberland, Mrs. Barbauld, Dickens and Trollope all refer to this interpolated story in Tom Jones with varying degrees of d i s a p p r o v a l — a n d , possibly, envious irritation. ' I t is thrust', grumbles Scott, 'unnecessarily and artificially' into the tale, 'in compliance with a custom introduced b y Cervantes'. 4 Trollope argues that digressions distract the attention of the reader, and always do so disagreeably. Who has not felt this to be the case even with 'The Curious Impertinent' and with the history o f ' T h e Man of the Hill?' 6 See Part I above, pp. 59 -60. See below, p. 227. * See below, p. 231. 1

1

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3 5

See below, pp. 244, 233. See below, p. 233.

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Dickens refers to digressions like these w h e n he admits his own failure to make 'the blood of the whole book' circulate through ' T h e History of a Self-Tormentor' in Little Dorrit.1 But though they m a y affirm the value of 'regularity' in principle, English novelists d o their best to circumvent its control. T h e i r easy prodigality sometimes shocks the French artist. Flaubert could hardly get over his first encounter with The Pickwick Papers-. Some bits are magnificent; b u t w h a t a defective structure! A l l the English writers are like that. W a l t e r Scott apart, they lack c o m position. T h i s is intolerable for us Latins. 2

Moreover, English novelists thoroughly enjoy their freedom even while they pretend to apologize for i t — i n d e e d their exuberance seems to be heightened b y the sense that their behaviour carries some flavour of the enfant terrible. Scott himself (Flaubert misjudges him) defends his 'scenes unlaboured and loosely put together' on the grounds of variety and entertainment, exclaiming with the Greek slave w h o b r o u g h t a false report of victory, ' A m I to blame, O Athenians, w h o have given you one happy day?' 3 I n Tom Jones, Fielding pretends to forestall pedantic strictures b y telling 'any little reptile of a critic' to wait until the end of the story before condemning any of its incidents 'as impertinent and foreign to our main design'. 4 But it is Sterne w h o demonstrates with more vivacity than any other early writer that a novel c a n owe its coherence to something other than rules for epic regularity. His ingenious digressiveness, which is a complex and delightful outcome of an interest in Locke's theories about the association of ideas, his admiration for Swift and his o w n supple fantasy, expresses consistently his individual sensibility. H e speaks no more than the truth about Tristram Shandy (1781) w h e n he explains that digressions incontestably, are the s u n s h i n e — t h e y are the life, the soul of readi n g ! — T a k e t h e m out of this book, for i n s t a n c e — y o u m i g h t as well take the book along with them. . . . s

1 3

See below, p. 231. ' See below, p. 23a. 4 See below, p. 227. See below, pp. 329-30. • See below, p. 228.

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T h e entire ordered disorder is given its focus b y his personal slant on the freaks and oddities of life—-'focus', as Tolstoy was to describe it more than a century later, is 'the most important thing in a work of art . . . the place in which all the rays meet or from which they issue', and it c a n be explained only 'by the work in its entirety'. 1 Sterne's qualities of sensibility h a v e persuaded some readers to think of him as an early precursor of V i r g i n i a W o o l f , 2 but the comparison can be very misleading. Sterne's art has not finally freed itself from its a g e ; its rebellion, after all, takes place within that age's system of values. Profounder modifications of sensibility have to occur before w e find the novel responding to the more subtle rhythms of the poetic imagination. In England, the groundswell of romanticism affects the subject-matter of the novel long before Scott, as early indeed as H o r a c e W a l pole, 3 but it is not until E m i l y Bronte's Wuthering Heights (1848) that its full influence is felt in shape and structure and texture. T h e most finished art before Wuthering Heights had been J a n e Austen's. O b e d i e n t to eighteenth-century notions of formal discipline, it is shaped by a rational, orderly temperament which dislikes waste and feels compelled to tidy u p life's customary messiness. It marshals people and events w i t h neatness and economy, firmly excludes unruly passions, and keeps comic freaks like M r . Collins well in order. T h e w h o l e design is in conformity with laws of reason and good sense w h i c h impose themselves, so to speak, f r o m outside. I n Wuthering Heights, on the other hand, an even more exacting sense of discipline has confronted p o w e r f u l and c o m p l e x emotions until the tension is felt everywhere in the book like a pulse. T h e movement of events, through cycles of crisis and calm, winter and summer, love a n d death, is governed b y an interior dialectic which finally resolves itself in a tentative equilibrium. Elements are held together b y an imaginative logic of the kind w h i c h a later 'poetic' novelist, E. M . Forster, attempts to analyse w h e n he edges towards those 'aspects' of the novel w h i c h he calls 'pattern', ' r h y t h m ' , ' p r o p h e c y ' and 'song'. 4 See below, p. 235. See, for example, E. M . Forster's comments in Aspects of the Novel, 3 See Part I above, pp. 4, 17, 45. pp. 30-3. 4 See below, pp. 237-40, and Aspects of the Novel, Chapter vii. 1 1

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The most vital art produced in the novel by this type of sensibility appears when the novelist is emancipated from the closed morality of conventional beliefs and does not in any way lose his strong sense of concrete actuality. Wuthering Heights explores two violently opposed modes of being: on the one hand, the intimate experience of feeling, and on the other, the more orderly social virtues of life 'in the valley'. With the help of figures like Heathcliff and the Lintons and settings like the exposed house on the bare moortops and the sheltered Linton home below, Emily Bronte invests her conflicting allegiances with a local habitation and an authentic 'name'. Her book is a statement of emotional conflict in which various elements of character, setting and incident possess the force of metaphor without losing their 'solidity of specification'. A comparable effect distinguishes the writings of the French novelist, Stendhal. (It is in abstractifying his statement of conflict until almost all hold on the concrete is lost that the German novelist has differed so profoundly from his English, French and American counterparts.) I n Stendhal, a romanticism reluctantly confessed is explored by a restless, incisive and obviously more worldlywise intellect than Emily Bronte's. 1 The disciplinary function of his vigorous reasoning receives support from his classical sense of form, with the result that in Le Rouge et le Noir he achieves a superbly uncluttered and at the same time ruthlessly logical narrative sequence. But the texture of the whole book is given its richness and subtlety by emotions which find more than one level of significance in such objects as the 'walls' which Julien Sorel is continually obliged to scale, or in the 'scarlet' and the 'black' which recur at intervals to emphasize the nature of the conflicts dividing him. Similar qualities are discovered in La Chartreuse de Parme, which is less obedient to a feeling for economy but compensates for this by the poetic overtones which accompany the treatment of Fabrice's wandering and imprisonment, and by the vivacity which enlivens the interplay of passion and expediency in the novel's world of political intrigue. At a later stage of its evolution in the history of the novel, this kind of sensibility more and more seeks the discipline of scrupulous aesthetic principles. A sign of this tendency is the 1

Sec also Part I above, pp. 18-19.

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novelist's increasing interest in matters of method and presentation. The effects of this interest are seen at their best in the finished art of 'pure' novelists like Henry James, Flaubert and Turgenev, writers who continue to record the conflicts of a particular kind of romanticism less as controversialists than as sensitive, compassionate suffering observers. Without the urgent disquiet of an Emily Bronte or a Stendhal, they employ a more patient, a more composed kind of analysis. Strictly speaking they are 'romantic' novelists only in the sense that their complexity has in it an irreducible surd element. Their art obeys instinctive and compulsive rhythms of feeling alien to a rational art like Jane Austen's, but they seek to control these rhythms by various devices, all of which increase aesthetic distance, especially the more or less deliberate arrangement of recurrent themes and objects in the manner of the leit-motif. Flaubert, for example, emphasizes the ebb and flow of feeling in Madame Bovary by introducing for the purposes of emotional contrast linked items such as the two wedding-bouquets, the luxurious carriage in Emma's honeymoon fantasy and the hansom-cab of her adulterous love-affair, and by emphasizing the divergent strains in the cornices agricoles.1 He also uses for the same ends the relentless march of the seasons and the blind beggar's song about summer and love—anticipating here Proust's use of the Vinteuil tune in A la Recherche du Temps Perdu. Later, Henry James makes the flawed objet d'art in The Golden Bowl the focus of his several themes and plays with images of innocence and cunning—especially the 'dove' and the 'serpent'—in The Wings of the Dove. Even if these craftsmen—who discuss various processes of composition in some detail—offer no hint of the symbols, sustained metaphors or 'patterns' of their work in progress and probably have to rely on 'a local impulse when the right interval is reached', 2 their devices obviously represent a more deliberately sustained search for aesthetic order than does the use of recurrences in Wuthering Heights. (Emily Bronte introduces, for example, a recurrent complex of elements 1 See below, p. 240. * There is no mention of the function of the Golden Bowl in any part of James's 'copious preliminaries'. See The Notebooks of Henry James (1947), ed. F. O. Mathiessen and Kenneth B. Murdoch, pp. 1 3 0 - 2 , 1 8 7 - 9 , '94> 228, 233. 234-

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composed of Catherine Earnshaw's bed, the window, the tree outside and the suggestions of violence and the supernatural which accompany these things. 1 ) T h e desire to be just by imposing this kind of aesthetic order on recalcitrant material is perhaps the most important single development in the evolution of the novel. T h e appearance of this new scrupulosity signalizes modes of feeling and thought altogether foreign to those which first brought the novel into being, and in many cases indicates a longing to transcend the impurities of a form which is rich in possibilities but somehow often apparently lacks congruity with the deeper needs of the artistic sense. T h e new approach lies behind Flaubert's desire to write a book 'about nothing' and his striving for symphonic effect in Madame Bovary,2 Forster's need to believe that 'in music fiction is likely to find its nearest parallel'—a need felt by many other novelists of the early twentieth century, notably Proust, Aldous Huxley and André G i d e s — a n d Virginia Woolf's combination of impressionism and poetic metaphor ('she is a poet who wants to write something as near to a novel as possible', says Forster 4 ). In reaching towards a method of reconciling the truths of individual observation with the part-abstractions of a wider realism these writers are served by their sense of form. T h e sensitive balance of their art is outside the range of both the 'sage' and such huge bardic novelists as Melville and Dostoevsky. T h e 'sage' sometimes gropes for similar devices in order to reinforce his argument. George Eliot seeks to underline the perils of moral indecision by placing her characters at hours of crisis near or on the drifting tides of rivers (Book Sixth, Chapter xiii in The Mill on the Floss; Book II, Chapter xvii in Daniel Deronda). But this kind of imagination is impelled towards metaphor by didactic zeal rather than aesthetic scruple (this is apparent in George Eliot's The Spanish Gypsy and helps to account for the work's total failure as a poem). Images and sustained metaphors in this case vivify the 'lesson' but do not indicate the feeling 1 See my article, ' Wuthering Heights: T h e rejection of Heathclifi?' Essays in Criticism (January 1958), pp. 27-47. 2 See below, pp. 242, 240. 3 See below, pp. 238-41. ' See E. M . Forster, Virginia Woolf (1942), p. 18.

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for organic unity which accompanies poetic imagination. The feeling is detected in the 'prophetic' novelists even when they have difficulty in managing their material. Like the 'pure' novelists these writers also seek to transcend the novel's limitations, charging things perceived with the force of symbols, and striving to lift them, at various points, on to the level of universal significance. Dostoevsky has to admit that he cannot easily organize his loosely-knit, unwieldy material—his irritation with Turgenev springs in part from his envy of so finished an artist —but he does manage to swing the whole vast structure of The Brothers Karamazov on the pivotal themes of the tremendous 'Pro and Contra' sequence, where he employs fictional devices which borrow their effects from legend and allegory (the debate between Alyosha and Ivan includes the impressive 'Legend of the Grand Inquisitor'), and he enormously enriches his texture with the multiple levels of significance which he attaches to the various members of the Karamazov clan. In Melville, too, powerful feelings of anxiety which accompany the habit of metaphysical speculation find release in compulsive symbols of extraordinary impressiveness and appeal. The archetypal 'quest' pattern imposes a certain unity on Moby Dick which otherwise displays to an extreme degree the diffuseness and irregularity of the loose, comprehensive novel. Although D. H. Lawrence's preoccupations are of a totally different kind, his achievement similarly shows that the novelist's complete possession by his subject can force from him a series of connected images which will given an effect of coherence to his work. In Women in Love images of darkness and light, sun and snow, underline the novel's themes, while 'whiteness' acquires Melville-like connotations of danger, violence, sterility and destruction. But these writers also show us the dangerous failures of perspective in 'bardic' fiction: Melville in Pierre, for example, and—to be honest—Dostoevsky and Lawrence almost everywhere. When such breakdowns occur the reader may sigh for a little 'epic regularity' of the old-fashioned eighteenth-century kind. P L O T AND STORY

The internal logic of the imagination and the emotions, however compulsive it may be, does not mean that the novelist can 173

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dispense with a narrative or a plot. These constitute the skeleton of his work, deplore it as he may. It is true that a lyrical talent like Virginia Woolf's in The Waves seems to make do with a skeleton of unprecedented fragility, but even here the narrative stands up sturdily on examination as one important means by which the work remains recognizably a novel. The Waves traces the development from childhood and early youth to troubled middle-age of six characters, Bernard, Louis, Neville, Rhoda, Susan and Jinny. These grow up together in the same nursery, school-room and garden. They go away to school, carrying with them the emotions, the fears and ambitions, which have already shaped their infancy. When their schooling is over, Neville and Bernard go on to a University, but Louis, the lonely Australian, finds employment as a clerk. Of the girls Jinny plunges into a life of pleasure, Susan sinks into placidity as the wife of a farmer and the mother of his children, and Rhoda, tormented by uncertainties and afraid of life, suffers from an unhappy love-affair with Louis, finally escaping from her anguish by suicide. Meanwhile, a young man named Percy, admired by the group and once in love with Susan, dies far away from them in India, heightening their sense of time, death and separation. If this is not a narrative—and I have simplified it considerably—it is hard to say what is. It is also, if we examine it, a 'plot'. Novelists have not generally bothered a great deal to explain what difference is implied by the existence of the two terms, 'story' and 'plot'—indeed they often use them interchangeably. As an eighteenth-century critic said of the terms 'fable' and 'action', the terms 'seem not to be sufficiently distinguished'. 1 The blame for this lack of clarity must rest partly with the eighteenth-century neo-classicists, whose interpretations of classical 'rules' were often confused and contradictory, and partly with Aristotle himself, whose account of the relationship between /ivdo$ and npay/iara (i.e. 'plot' and 'the incidents, or things done' which combine to make up a narrative) leaves a good deal unanswered. 2 Few novelists have managed to be as helpful on the subject as Mr. Forster. 'Story', he 'Joseph Trapp, Preface to Aeneis (1718), Works of Virgil (1731). 2 See, for example, H. Swedenberg, The Theory of the Epic in England (>944). P- 35» 8, pp. 166-8.

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tells us, 'is a sequence of events unfolded in time.' As for 'plot', this is a narrative of events, the emphasis falling on causality. 'The king died and then the queen died' is a story. 'The king died and then the queen died of grief' is a plot.1 Obviously it is partly this causal connection which gives some of their significance to the 'sequences of events' in The Waves, since in the six characters thought, feeling and action are conditioned by the past and by the interplay of their contrasted personalities. If we give Mr. Forster's rudimentary situation another turn of the screw, we arrive moreover at an interesting complication of 'plot': 'The queen died, no one knew why, until it was discovered that it was through grief at the death of the king.' This is a plot with a mystery in it, a form capable of high development.2 The nature of this development becomes apparent, I think, if we turn from The Moonstone to The Ambassadors. 'Mystery' in the sense intended here is not, however, a device to be found in a novel like The Waves. If we accept Mr. Forster's working definitions we find that many novelists who speak of 'story' are in fact referring to the basic type of 'plot', i.e. 'a narrative of events, the emphasis falling on causality'. So, Hardy insists that a 'story' should be an 'organism', and he quotes in support of his contention Addison's Aristotelian view of each of its events: nothing should go before it, or follow after it, that is not related to it 3 —in other words, 'no digressions'. But then, by this definition, we should not be able to describe some of the tales in The Arabian Nights as 'stories' at all. Mr. Forster clears up a good deal of confusion when he attributes Scheherazade's success in keeping her head on her shoulders to her skill in unfolding 'a sequence of events' which takes little account of causality but is alert to the needs of the primitive instinct which asks 'what happens next'. 4 'The sense of inevitability' which Ford Madox Ford—a writer who is at times something more than a conscientious technician—associates with 'story' is really a characteristic of 'plot'. 'What matters', maintains Ford, is 'your story, 1 3

See below, p. 248. See below, p. 244.

1

4

Ibid. See Aspects of the Novel, Chapter ii.

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and then your story—and then your story', but he also refers to this essential element as the 'subject' and stresses that it must communicate a sense of inevitability, adding a character may cry, 'If I had then acted differently, how different everything would now be.' The problem of the author is to make his then action the only action that character could have taken.1 By hinting at the novel's interdependence of 'character', 'action' and 'time', this passage leaves 'story'—the 'naked worm of time'—far behind and in fact makes a statement about a sequence of events where the emphasis falls on causality. T h e natural conclusion is, of course, that in the real novel there is always 'plot' and never simply 'story' in Mr. Forster's sense of these terms. (It is, after all, on the novelist's conception of cause and effect that the quality of his achievement ultimately depends.) More often than not, the novelist's use of 'plot' as a term signifies exclusively 'a causal sequence complicated by a mystery'—with most of the emphasis on the 'mystery'—and as such it may become an aspect of his craft which he views understandably with some irritation ('conspiracy' or 'intrigue' as connotations of 'plot' may have an unconscious influence here). It is certainly 'plot' in this sense which George Eliot considers 'a vulgar coercion', and its connection in her mind with the merely sensational is indicated by her subsequent comment that readers prefer 'a murder in the middle distance', with a little light comedy to relieve it. 2 A similar identification of plot and sensationalism makes Trollope reject plot as an inferior thing, seen in its best light as a vehicle for 'real characters', 3 and M a r y Mitford wish that novels might be written without any plot at all. 4 M r . Forster, however, reserves his contempt for the 'story', a 'low atavistic form' appealing to no response more complex than a primitive curiosity. Plot, on the other hand, he reckons among the novel's 'finer growths', since it requires for its appreciation the exercise of intelligence and memory and can possess in its own right important aesthetic values. 5 Henry James's slightly acid reference to 'story' as 'the spoiled child 1 s

See below, pp. 235, 245. * See below, pp. 247-8. 4 See below, p. 247. Ibid. 6 See below, pp. 248-9.

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of art' seems to derive from a similar sense of its essential naïveté.1 T h e novelist's impatience, whether it is aroused b y the simplicities of story-telling or the latent sensationalism of plot in a n y but the most elevated sense of the word, is an effect of the recalcitrant nature of his material: 'art' being, as J a m e s puts it, 'all discrimination and selection', while 'life' is 'all inclusion and confusion'. 2 A t a later stage of his development his impatience, as we h a v e seen, is acute. But the novelist knows very well that he can never finally turn his back on the entertainer. I f he rejects the fanciful invention of a Scheherazade in the interests of a more serious and 'significant' art, he must still retain his audience's interest and curiosity. I t is here that comment is needed on the d a m a g i n g effect of 'plot' conceived exclusively as a causal sequence requiring the complication of ' a mystery'. A l l depends, of course, on the interpretation given to the last phrase. I t m a y signify no more than an understanding requiring to be completed, which is quite inoffensive. O n the other hand it m a y mean the most tawdry sensationalism. I n order to meet the d e m a n d for suspense and excitement the novelist frequently complicates with arbitrary and unnecessary 'mystifications' a sequence of events already shaped b y the nature of his chosen themes. In Middlemarch, for example, the various degrees o f self-deception, the clash of egotisms in the t w o principal marriages, the constant interplay of temperament and environment, are themes w h i c h illuminate and are in turn illuminated b y the central conception of the moral life w h i c h sets in motion the real progression of events. Here is 'plot' enough, its sequence ordered by a particularly mature conception of the relationship between cause and effect: one w h i c h provides, moreover, plenty of entertainment for the reader w h o wants to know ' w h a t happens next' (will Dorothea Casaubon discover her mistake? Will L y d g a t e marry R o s a m o n d V i n c y ? W i l l Fred V i n c y m a k e good? etc.). Y e t George Eliot yields to the 'vulgar coercion' and introduces the hocus-pocus about inheritance (the corresponding element is even worse in Felix Holt), which depends on coincidence and incongruous pseudoDickensian stock figures like R i g g and Raffles to prop it up. T h e irrelevant plotting m a y be justified to some extent in this 1 See below, p. 245. * See Part I above, p. 75. 177

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instance b e c a u s e it provides G e o r g e Eliot w i t h the o p p o r t u n i t y for her superb analysis of Bulstrode's s t u b b o r n self-delusion (he is morally g u i l t y of R i g g ' s m u r d e r b u t is s h o w n as still c a p a b l e o f keeping u p his n o r m a l habits of p r a y e r a n d d e v o t i o n ) , 1 but there is plentiful analysis o f this q u a l i t y in the ' n a t u r a l ' progression o f G e o r g e Eliot's story: she does not need to plot elaborately in order to say w h a t she has to say a b o u t various m o r a l and psychological issues. H e r o w n remarks a b o u t storytelling leave us w i t h the feeling that she w a s not altogether satisfied w i t h c o n v e n t i o n a l techniques a n d m i g h t , with a little m o r e i m a g i n a t i v e i n d e p e n d e n c e , h a v e m a d e some interesting experiments o f her o w n . 2 B u t even J a n e A u s t e n a d m i t s ' m y s t e r y ' into her plotting. A s w e expect, this is adroitly c o n t r i v e d to reinforce her ironic structure. ' P r e j u d i c e ' delays E l i z a b e t h ' s u n r a v e l l i n g o f the D a r c y W i c k h a m situation, w h i l e ' p r i d e ' a t first prevents D a r c y f r o m discussing W i c k h a m ' s b e h a v i o u r in detail as it finally c o m p e l s h i m to speak o u t in his o w n defence. I n Emma, the J a n e F a i r f a x mystery provides a p o i n t e d c o m m e n t o n t h e g u l f separating things as they a p p e a r to the d e l u d e d eyes o f the egotist a n d things as they really are. Miss Bates's g a r r u l i t y a n d E m m a ' s s e l f - d e c e p t i o n — t h e one distracting attention f r o m the relevant information w h i c h it offers, the other b l u n t i n g p e r c e p t i o n act a d m i r a b l y to preserve the surface mystery. But the exigences of 'a plot w i t h a mystery in it' c a n b e t r a y e v e n a J a n e A u s t e n occasionally into c l u m s y u n r a v e l l i n g devices: the l o n g e x p l a n a tory letters f r o m D a r c y a n d M r s . G a r d i n e r in Pride and Prejudice, for e x a m p l e , or M r s . S m i t h ' s 'confession' in Persuasion (this is J a n e A u s t e n ' s ' M a n o f the Hill' episode). 3 S u c h clumsiness a p a r t , J a n e A u s t e n does show that 'a plot w i t h a mystery in it' is a f o r m ' c a p a b l e of h i g h d e v e l o p m e n t ' . M a n y of the great social satirists a n d c o m i c entertainers tell in the opposite direction. H e r e mystery a n d c o n c e a l m e n t are v a l u e d merely as an easy w a y of k e e p i n g the story g o i n g ; and p r o b a b i l i t y in the treatment of cause a n d effect h a r d l y comes into the question at all. W h e n F i e l d i n g d r a w s o u r attention to the ingenuity w h i c h d e l a y s his dénouement in Tom Jones, he is 1 See Middlemarch, Book V I I , Chapter lxx. * See below, pp. 262-4. 3 See Pride and Prejudice, Chapters xxi, lii, and Persuasion, Chapter xxi.

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acknowledging with his usual humorous irony the artificiality of his own plot conventions. Accident and coincidence, blithely masquerading as a plausible sequence of causally connected events, keep Mrs. Waters and her revelations out of the w a y until he is ready to put an end to his tale. 1 Fielding is obviously drawing on the conventions of farce (as he had already done in his plays) but we cannot say that this is equally true of Dickens, especially in the 'serious' later novels. 'Intelligence and memory' are wasted in trying to follow his wildly improbable complications of accident, disguise, concealment and coincidence, because the relationships between these elements fail to illuminate what these books are really 'about'. H o w Little Dorrit, for example, comes to lose, regain and then re-lose a fortune matters less than the various effects of this process, which is primarily what Dickens is interested in; and the same can be said of the Chancery ramifications affecting almost all the characters in Bleak House. On the other hand, the 'mystification' in Great Expectations is entirely relevant to the causal sequence of events and has its own integral connection with the book's main theme. This is a more sophisticated use of 'a plot with a mystery in it' than is usual with Dickens. T h e extraordinary concealments and falsifications of identity in Our Mutual Friend are similarly ambitious, but here the conception is confused and melodramatic, and if anything the themes are obscured rather than clarified by the devices. Nevertheless, Dickens is attempting here to subtilize plot, and to make it play a meaningful part in a total design. A brilliant 'sensational' plot-maker like Wilkie Collins—whose mastery o f ' t h e detective element' and whose firm, elementary structural sense certainly stung Dickens into a greater care for composition—does not try for similar significance. He starts with the avowed purpose of contriving a 'mystery' more or less for its own sake, using various legal anomalies for his material and working out his schemes with the skill of a good chess-player. His novels inaugurate the flourishing tradition of English (and American) dctective fiction; and in his best books his firm, exciting 'plots' 1 See Tom Jones, Books I X , X ; Book X V I I I , Chapters ii-xii. R. S. Crane in Critics and Criticism (1952) seems to suggest that Fortune and Chance are an integral part of Fielding's 'meaning': see 'The Concept of Plot and the plo: of Tom Jones', Critics and Criticism, pp. 616-47.

179

T H E C R A F T OF F I C T I O N p r o v i d e a d m i r a b l e models, s u p p o r t e d as they are b y c o m p e t e n t c h a r a c t e r i z a t i o n , a c c u r a t e special i n f o r m a t i o n a n d c o n v i n c i n g evocation of background and atmosphere. P l o t , finally, c a n b e c o m e aesthetically v a l u a b l e as w e l l as e n t e r t a i n i n g w h e n it is m a d e to serve, a l o n g w i t h e v e r y o t h e r n a r r a t i v e d e v i c e , the novelist's central c o n c e p t i o n o f ' t h e w a y things h a p p e n ' . T o o often in the E n g l i s h novel it is m a n i p u l a t e d b y t h e p r e a c h e r in o r d e r to d e m o n s t r a t e h o w things o u g h t t o h a p p e n . E v e n G e o r g e Eliot's ' n a t u r a l ' sequences r e v e a l this t e n d e n c y — f o r e x a m p l e , in Silas Mamer a n d Daniel Deronda. B u t a m o d e r n novelist, Miss I v y C o m p t o n - B u r n e t t , p e r h a p s t h e most ruthless moralist o f t h e m all, d e m o n s t r a t e s that t h e entire a p p a r a t u s o f m e l o d r a m a c a n b e used in the interests o f the plot's aesthetic v a l u e , p r o v i d e d t h a t this a p p a r a t u s g e n u i n e l y subserves the artist's vision o f life. A f i r m b e l i e v e r in t h e struct u r a l i m p o r t a n c e o f p l o t , Miss C o m p t o n - B u r n e t t a l l o w s her c h a r a c t e r s to c o n c e a l , a n d then s o m e t i m e s to u n c o v e r , e v e r y c r i m e in the c a l e n d a r f r o m b l a c k m a i l to incest a n d m a t r i c i d e , b e c a u s e she believes there are signs that strange things happen, though they do not emerge. I believe it would go ill with many of us, if we were faced with a strong temptation, and I suspect that with some of us it does go ill. 1 H e r sense o f h i d d e n forms o f v i o l e n c e a n d t r e a c h e r y b e n e a t h the s u p e r f i c i a l amenities o f social intercourse gives h e r w o r k its shapeliness a n d e n e r g y . F o r her, p l o t is a l t o g e t h e r e m a n c i p a t e d f r o m t h e s i m p l e ' d e t e c t i v e ' f o r m u l a a n d derives its i m p o r t a n c e f r o m a n artistic intention w h i c h is m o r e serious a n d m o r e i m a g i n a t i v e t h a n a n y e l e m e n t a r y m a n i p u l a t i o n o f curiosity a n d suspense. T h e c o m p l e x i t y a n d subtlety o f p l o t are g r e a t e r still i n s u c h 'sequences o f events, t h e emphasis f a l l i n g o n c a u s a l i t y ' as t h e process b y w h i c h Strether's p e r p l e x i t y g r a d u a l l y y i e l d s to e n l i g h t e n m e n t , s u f f e r i n g a n d c o m p a s s i o n a t e u n d e r s t a n d i n g in The Ambassadors; the c o m p l i c a t i o n a n d resolution o f spiritual c o n f l i c t i n Crime and Punishment o r The Brothers Karamazov; the m e a n s b y w h i c h , in Wuthering Heights, passions o f l o v e , h a t r e d a n d r e v e n g e w o r k themselves t o w a r d s a m o o d o f e q u i l i b r i u m a n d r e c o n c i l i a t i o n ; or the turns o f hostile destiny g r a d u a l l y 1

See below, p. 249.

180

STRUCTURAL

PROBLEMS

w e a r i n g d o w n h u m a n endurance in The Mayor of Casterbridge or Jude the Obscure. T h e function of plot in such novels helps to distinguish the art o f the 'poetic' novelist from, On the one h a n d , the limited if poised and sophisticated art of the rational 'exclusive' novelist like J a n e Austen, a n d , on the other, the a n e c d o t a l a n d digressive expertise of the broad comic satirists like F i e l d i n g a n d T h a c k e r a y .

THE

TIME-FACTOR

A l l novelists are b o u n d alike b y their allegiance to time. W h e n H e n r y J a m e s warns his fellow-novelists that 'this eternal timequestion is . . . a l w a y s there and a l w a y s formidable; a l w a y s insisting on the effect of the great lapse and passage, of the " d a r k b a c k w a r d a n d a b y s m " ' 1 he is attaching himself to the distinction w h i c h most decidedly separates novelists from their predecessors in other literary forms. W e sometimes speak of eighteenthcentury literature as o c c u p y i n g itself primarily w i t h generalities, b u t in fact the intellectual climate fostering the novel's g r o w t h is r e m a r k a b l e for its emphasis on the particular and the individual. T h e c o n c e p t of individuality, w h i c h owes m u c h to L o c k e i a n a n d Cartesian influences, depends on particularity of place a n d time, a n d it is this precise spatial a n d temporal location of i n d i v i d u a l experience w h i c h is really the 'novel' aspect o f fiction. T h e classical 'Unities', after all, sacrifice e v e r y t h i n g to singleness a n d force of impression, while the m a n a g e m e n t of time in E l i z a b e t h a n , and particularly Shakespearian, d r a m a is endlessly a n d w a n t o n l y arbitrary. T h r e e h u n d r e d years after the new attitude to the 'time-question' finally separated D e f o e ' s narratives even f r o m such 'realistic' fiction as B u n y a n ' s or Nashe's, w e find a modern novelist, E . M . Forster, r e m i n d i n g us that the novel faces one of its most exacting problems in its double allegiance to 'life b y the clock' and 'life b y values'. ('I only saw her for five minutes, b u t it w a s w o r t h it', is his illustration of this difference. 2 ) It is an allegiance from w h i c h there is no escape since in order to remain intelligible the novelist must always cling, ' h o w e v e r lightly', to 'the interminable t a p e - w o r m ' o f chronometrical time; a n d in order to m a k e his selection o f 1

See below, p. 253.

1

l8l

Ibid.

T H E C R A F T OF

FICTION

events significant he must also c o n c e r n himself unremittingly w i t h 'life by values'. I t is easy to overlook the skill a n d patience d e m a n d e d b y the novelist's h u m b l e b u t necessary task of clinging to time ' b y the clock' (we should certainly be disconcerted w e r e he ever to let g o ) . A g o o d d e a l of his initial effort is spent in contriving an a c c u r a t e chronological sequence for his events, selecting particular dates for the m a j o r occurrences in his characters' lives, and d e c i d i n g the periods of time required for every sort o f event f r o m emotional recovery f r o m a b e r e a v e m e n t to a r a i l w a y j o u r n e y from, say, L a n c a s t e r to C l a c t o n - o n - S e a . Fielding, with the zeal of the pioneer, used an a l m a n a c for Tom Jones, so that it is even possible (should a n y o n e b e interested) to determine the phases o f the m o o n d u r i n g a p a r t i c u l a r period of the hero's w a n d e r i n g s . 1 R i c h a r d s o n ' s time-sequence is an e x a m p l e of p h e n o m e n a l l y intricate a n d a c c u r a t e c o n t r i v a n c e and so, too, is Sterne's in Tristram Shandy. E m i l y Bronte, as different as possible f r o m her predecessors in other w a y s , nevertheless shares their vigilant care for c h r o n o l o g i c a l a c c u r a c y , flawlessly interw e a v i n g the present of L o c k w o o d ' s c o m m e n t a r y with the past of Nellie D e a n ' s narrative a n d firmly if unobtrusively establishi n g the relative ages of her characters—essential information in a story c o n c e r n e d w i t h successive generations in two f a m i l i e s — a n d in some cases even telling us the days a n d hours o f their birth, m a r r i a g e a n d burial. T h i s is not to say that a g o o d novelist will not m a k e mistakes or that such mistakes are serious blemishes, b u t signs of this same care will be found in every kind o f novelist, f r o m the h u g e l y comprehensive writers like T o l s t o y a n d B a l z a c to the master craftsmen like J a m e s . C e r t a i n l y the mysteriously shrouded events in The Wings of the Dove and The Golden Bowl are firmly tied to precise d a y s and seasons (for e x a m p l e , it is in A p r i l , just four years a n d eight months after Prince A m e r i g o ' s m a r r i a g e to M a g g i e V e r v e r , that he and C h a r l o t t e finally g o o f f to Gloucester together). S o far I h a v e been speaking of c h r o n o l o g y , of 'time b y the clock'. G r e a t differences e m e r g e w h e n w e e x a m i n e the novelist's 1

See H o m e s D u d d e n , Henry Fielding,

His Life,

Works

and Times

(1952),

V o l . I I , pp. 603-4. See also Robert Louis Stevenson's remarks, '. . . how troublesome the moon is! I have come to grief over the moon in Prince . . .', below, p. 303.

182

Otto

STRUCTURAL

PROBLEMS

handling of the relationship between 'time by the clock' and 'time by values'. Fielding certainly suggests that the distinction is important to him by declaring that some of his chapters will suggest 'only the time of a single day,' while others will 'comprise years': if whole years should pass without producing anything worthy . . . notice, we shall not be afraid of a chasm in our history, but shall hasten on to matters of consequence . . -1 But this is perhaps a dig at Richardson's minuteness of detail and his own tempo is regulated far more by complications of accident and adventure than by intensity of experience. O n c e he sets these adventures in motion he maintains a rapid pace which justifies references to his narrative skill. His Victorian admirer, Thackeray, deserves—and has lately received 2 —equal praise for a similar raciness when the narrative has to be impelled at speed. But no one would say that Fielding, Thackeray and Sterne (probably the first novelist to abandon chronological sequence for the sake of the individual's subjective commentary on experience) manage to dramatize the intense moment of personal experience in which it seems that ordinary 'time' is transcended, nor do these writers seek to convey any intimate sense of the relentless advance o f ' t i m e by the clock'. O f course this is partly a matter of the emotional climate of their age, and partly a matter of personal temperament. In Vanity Fair, the effects on a particular sensibility of an age more complex in its stresses and strains than Fielding's are felt in the faint aroma of melancholy emanating from Dobbin's middle-aged disenchantment and clinging so unmistakably to the novel's conclusion. But it is the more robust, less subtly constituted eighteenthcentury affinities in Thackeray which render his Becky Sharp apparently as unaffected by the passage of time as she is by the workings of conscience. Richardson, of course, who so often has to stand as a remarkable exception, possesses a power astonishing in his period to capture movements of intense feeling at the very moment of experience: but in the end this quality brings him little nearer than Thackeray or Fielding to that sense of time wearing on remorselessly which gives moral and 1 1

See below, p. 252. See G e o f f r e y Tillotson, Thackeray the Novelist (1954), C h a p t e r s iii, iv.

183

T H E C R A F T OF

FICTION

emotional significance to a novel like Wuthering Heights. Here the progress of the seasons, the cycle of the year, the alternations of summer warmth and winter violence, emphasize inevitable change to which even Catherine's emotional turbulence and Heathcliff's obdurate, destructive passions must submit. T h e very 'conclusion' is felt as a comment on this ceaseless process: at the moment when the ghosts begin to walk the moors, fresh forces, this time youthfully innocent and constructive, are inaugurating a further cycle of existence. Less complex, perhaps, but equally pervasive, a similar feeling for the passage of time conditions the whole texture of Tolstoy's War and Peace, where the bright promise of youth is gradually dulled into the commonplace attitudes of middle age; and this feeling also gives to Flaubert's L'Education Sentimentale the poignancy of its wonderful conclusion, where Frédéric Moreau and his friend Deslauriers, looking back from a disenchanted present to a moment of awkward adolescent embarrassment far away in the past, see it now as their one experience of genuine happiness. Even in Persuasion, Jane Austen's last novel (published the year after she died), the feeling creeps i n — h o w e v e r distrustfully viewed by the a u t h o r — a n d Anne Elliot's regret for 'youth, hope and spring, all gone together' causes us to think again about the limits of this novelist's anti-romanticism. 1 It is only when his imagination is more than usually stimulated by time steadily and relentlessly moving on that the novelist is able to illuminate vividly for us the 'eternal moment' of intense experience: 'life by values' transcending 'life by the clock' and extending the boundaries of emotional experience as it does so. W e enter into an experience of this order with Prince Andrew as he lies wounded on the battle-field of Austerlitz; 2 with Milly Theale as, at the height of her happiness, she gazes at the ominous Bronzino portrait—the beautiful girl of another age who is 'dead, dead, d e a d ' — a n d sees its resemblance to herself; 3 with Lord J i m as he begins to understand the momentous effects of his leap over the ship's side into the little boat; 4 with Proust as he recaptures a whole life-time See Persuasion, Chapter x. Tolstoy, War and Peace (1868-9), Book III, Chapter xvi. 3 Henry James, The Wings of the Dove (1902), Book Fifth, Chapter xi. 'Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim (1900), Chapters ix-x. 1 1

184

STRUCTURAL

PROBLEMS

of experience during those moments spent in the Duchesse de Guermantes' anteroom; 1 with Mrs. Ramsay as she presides at her dinner-table and creates out of discordant elements a moment of composure and harmony. 2 For novelists of this century, the sense of time is heightened by the pressures of a discordant age as well as by new psychological and scientific discoveries. Already in the later nineteenth century the discordances are felt in 'the sick hurry and divided aims', while the break-up of accepted psychological concepts is signalled by the pre-Freudian theories of William James, who saw time as a constituting factor of personality and coined the phrase 'stream of consciousness' to explain a part of his meaning. Proust's A la Recherche du Temps Perdu (1913-1927), one of the masterpieces of this century, is directly inspired by that sense o f ' t h e inseparableness of us from the past' which informs the Bergsonian theory of duree. As 'the eternal moment' of intense experience is taken more and more to be the factor shaping the present and future self, novelists resort to a whole new range of innovatory devices—including the abandonment of ordinary chronological sequence, as in Aldous Huxley's Eyeless in Gaza (1936) or William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury (1929), as well as the stream-of-consciousness method, as in Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway (1925) or Joyce's Ulysses (1922)—in order to throw into relief these moments of heightened consciousness, these 'epiphanies', which seem to take place in a dimension outside the time registered by the clock on the wall. But these modern methods only give further emphasis to the fact that the sense of individuality depends on memory and that memory in turn depends on time. T h e y remind us that moments of heightened awareness derive from all the moments of the past, that what we are depends on w h a t we have been, and that in the art of the novel the sense of infinity is communicated most poignantly when we are aware of the steady ticking-away of time 'by the clock'. 1 2

M a r c e l Proust, Time Regained (1927), C h a p t e r iii. V i r g i n i a W o o l f , To the Lighthouse (1927), C h a p t e r s i, xvii.

185

THE

II

CRAFT

OF

FICTION

Narrative Technique

THE DIFFERENCES in m o o d a n d t e m p o brought out b y the novelist's h a n d l i n g of 'story', 'plot' and 'time' are emphasized further b y his choice of narrative method. A f t e r The Craft of Fiction w e c a n never a g a i n altogether ignore this aspect of the novelist's technique. ' T h e w h o l e intricate question of method, in the craft of fiction,' says Sir P e r c y L u b b o c k , 'I take to be g o v e r n e d b y the question of the point of v i e w — t h e question of the relation in w h i c h the narrator stands to the story', 1 and he demonstrates w i t h impressive authority and intelligence w a y s in w h i c h various types of writer have attempted to answer the question. A n d , a l t h o u g h w e m a y sympathize w i t h M r . Forster's d e m u r r i n g c o m m e n t s in Aspects of the Novel,2 it seems true to say that the novelist, if not the reader, has a l w a y s been very m u c h alive to the i m p o r t a n c e of selecting the angle of vision f r o m w h i c h he will best be able to illuminate and interpret his m a t e r i a l a n d , most i m p o r t a n t of all, m a k e it seem authentic. I n the novel's earlier d e v e l o p m e n t , the choice, a c c o r d i n g to practice a n d theory alike, l a y b e t w e e n the 'narrative or epic' m a n n e r , deriving f r o m C e r v a n t e s a n d popularized b y L e Sage in F r a n c e a n d Fielding in E n g l a n d : the personal 'memoir', used b y M a r i v a u x a n d Smollett, a n d 'epistolary correspondence', w h i c h , c o m b i n i n g features o f the t w o other methods, w a s widely followed in F r a n c e a n d w a s h a n d l e d with astonishing resourcefulness a n d variety of effect b y writers as different f r o m each other in i m a g i n a t i v e a n d m o r a l vision as Choderlos de Laclos a n d S a m u e l R i c h a r d s o n . M o s t early narrative techniques derive ultimately f r o m these methods, as Mrs. B a r b a u l d indicates in h e r sensible c o m m e n t a r y of 1804. ' T h e narrative o r epic' m e t h o d , she tells us, is 'the most c o m m o n w a y ' a n d has the a d v a n t a g e of flexibility because o f the author's assumed omniscience. H o w e v e r , it must b e diversified: the omniscient a u t h o r ' s narrative will not be lively, except he frequently drops himself and runs into 1 See Percy L u b b o c k , The Craft of Fiction, Section xviii, and p. 268. 2 See below, pp. 268-9.

186

below,

NARRATIVE

TECHNIQUE

dialogue: all good writers therefore h a v e thrown as m u c h as possible of the dramatic into their narrative. 1 S h e r e m i n d s h e r r e a d e r s t h a t t h e m e t h o d o f ' m e m o i r s ' h a s also b e e n a d o p t e d — ' S m o l l e t t in his Roderick Random a n d G o l d s m i t h , in his Vicar of Wakefield, h a v e a d o p t e d this m o d e ' — a n d t h a t s u c h first-person n a r r a t i v e h a s t h e a d v a n t a g e o f ' t h e w a r m t h a n d interest a p e r s o n m a y b e s u p p o s e d to feel in his o w n a f f a i r s ' (she cites M a r i v a u x ' s Marianne, p u b l i s h e d 1 7 3 1 - 4 1 ) . I t s l i m i t a tions a r e s u c h , h o w e v e r , t h a t in t h e e n d she b e l i e v e s it to b e ' t h e least p e r f e c t m o d e o f a n y ' . I t is ' e p i s t o l a r y c o r r e s p o n d e n c e ' w h i c h seems to h e r to u n i t e 'in g o o d m e a s u r e t h e a d v a n t a g e s o f the o t h e r t w o ' . O n e h a s to r e m e m b e r t h a t M r s . B a r b a u l d ' s essay is w r i t t e n as a n i n t r o d u c t i o n t o v o l u m e s c o m m e m o r a t i n g S a m u e l R i c h a r d s o n , a m a s t e r o f e p i s t o l a r y a r t , b u t t h e reasons w h i c h she gives for this p r e f e r e n c e a r e p e r f e c t l y s o u n d . P l a y i n g d o w n to some e x t e n t t h e a w k w a r d c o n v e n t i o n s o f the e p i s t o l a r y n o v e l , she e m p h a s i z e s t h e d r a m a t i c v i v i d n e s s a n d i m m e d i a c y o f its impressions, its i n t e r e s t i n g varieties o f p e r s o n a l style, a n d ' t h e p e c u l i a r w a y o f t h i n k i n g ' d i s p l a y e d b y its i n d i v i d u a l c h a r a c ters. R i c h a r d s o n ' s o w n a c c o u n t o f his m e t h o d also d r a w s a t t e n tion to its d r a m a t i c v a l u e . 2 I t says m u c h for M r s . B a r b a u l d ' s p e r s p i c a c i t y t h a t s u b s e q u e n t novelists' v i e w s o n n a r r a t i v e t e c h n i q u e c o i n c i d e at so m a n y p o i n t s w i t h hers. F o r i n s t a n c e , t h e y g e n e r a l l y e c h o h e r misg i v i n g s a b o u t first-person n a r r a t i v e s , in spite o f t h e f a c t t h a t it is a m e t h o d w h i c h h a s h e l p e d to p r o d u c e a g o o d m a n y m a s t e r pieces in its t i m e (Robinson Crusoe, The Vicar of Wakefield, Adolphe, Jane Eyre, Great Expectations, The Horse's Mouth, La Chute, a r e all first-person n a r r a t i v e s ) . I t is u s u a l l y c r i t i c i z e d o n a e s t h e t i c g r o u n d s a n d writers as d i f f e r e n t f r o m e a c h o t h e r as T r o l l o p e a n d H e n r y J a m e s r e j e c t it. T r o l l o p e prefers t h e o m n i s c i e n t m a n ner o f t h i r d - p e r s o n n a r r a t i o n b e c a u s e in his use o f the t h i r d person, the a u t h o r m a y m a k e t h e ' I ' o f his n a r r a t i v e p r o n e c i t h e r to self-glorification or p r e t e n t i o u s h u m i l i t y (was h e t h i n k i n g , o n e w o n d e r s , o f Bleak House's E s t h e r S u m m e r s o n ? 3 ) W h a t a p p a l s J a m e s , h o w e v e r , is t h e ' t e r r i b l e fluidity o f selfrevelation'. 4 ( I n G e r m a n y , w h e r e t h e w h o l e p u r p o s e o f t h e 1 3

See below, p. 258. See below, p. 260.

2 4

187

See below, pp. 256-7. See below, p. 261.

THE

CRAFT

OF

FICTION

bildungsroman is to a c c o m m o d a t e such self-revelation, w e find that G o e t h e nevertheless attempts to check 'fluidity' in The Sorrows ofWerther, 1774, b y confining his first-person narrative to the epistolary convention and then breaking into t h i s — a s the m u c h less economical R i c h a r d s o n also d o e s — w i t h editorial c o m m e n t in the f o r m of third-person narrative. 1 ) N o w a d a y s there are first-person narratives in English w h i c h are as taut a n d economical as J a m e s could h a v e w i s h e d — b u t this m a y still be a sign, perhaps, of weakness rather than strength. A p a r t f r o m such rare exceptions as J o y c e C a r y ' s G u l l y J i m s o n or S a r a M o n d a y , the ' I ' becomes a de-personalized expression o f the suffering modern sensibility. I n order, perhaps, to control the 'fluidity' of their more exuberant egotism, earlier writers tend to use the story-within-a-story device, allowing the ' I ' selfexpression b u t confining it within the f r a m e w o r k of an outer third-person narrative. T h u s , in the 'narrative or epic' m a n n e r of the eighteenth century, first-person narrative is limited to digressions, either in the form of moral p a r a b l e s — F i e l d i n g allows Mrs. Wilson and the M a n of the H i l l their o w n w o r d s — or as author's c o m m e n t a r y (although in the next century, if w e take T h a c k e r a y as an instance, this can offer an irresistible temptation to m o r a l h o m i l y ) . T h e story-within-a-story, w h e t h e r couched in the first person or the third, has p r o v e d to be an enduring device, favoured b y sophisticated craftsmen as well as the less self-conscious story-tellers. Fromentin uses a 'frame' for Dominique (1863), a n d it is interesting to find that w h e n H e n r y J a m e s does e m p l o y first-person narrative, as in The Turn of the Screw, it is this method that he adopts. I t is used to give perspective a n d variety as well as authenticity to their narratives b y writers as different as Smollett, Scott, Dickens, Balzac and C o n r a d . T h e epistolary method, as such, is virtually extinct. Its adoption as a narrative technique was one manifestation o f the changing habit of mind w h i c h had helped to foster the n o v e l itself: 'the transition from the objective, social a n d public orientation of the classical world to the subjective, individualist a n d private orientation of the life a n d literature of the last t w o h u n d r e d years'. 2 H o w e v e r , once the novelist had learnt f r o m it every1 See, for e x a m p l e the interpolated c o m m e n t a r y on W e r t h e r ' s last d a y s 2 See Ian W a t t , The Rise of the Novel, p. 176. following Letter lxxxiv.

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thing it had to teach about the interpretation of private feeling and the power of individual self-expression, he began to evolve other narrative modes which took advantage of its valuable lessons while avoiding its diffuseness and clumsiness. Chekov was already calling it an 'antiquated affair' in 1886, although he thought it 'all right when the gist of the matters is in the letters themselves . . 1 It was handled best by French novelists — m o s t devastatingly, perhaps, by Choderlos de Laclos in Les Liaisons Dangereuses (1782), where it served with splendid success his Gallic gift for the unflinching analysis of devious motive and perverse emotion. But in spite of the importance of French influences in English fiction, exercised in particular through the writings of Marivaux, Prévost and Rousseau, the French expertise in epistolary method was never really matched in England. After the appearance of Pamela—but, it must be stressed, before the publication of Clarissa which he praised with generous warmth 2 —Fielding had dismissed the method as unsuitable for a novel and in any case 'not used by the best writers of this kind'. 3 After experimenting both with this method and with omniscient narrative, Richard Cumberland in 1795 decided that the epistolary style was fun for the writer but 'the more usual way' was the one which the reader preferred. 4 Fanny Burney used it to good effect, but Jane Austen, in spite of admiring both her work and Richardson's, abandoned it altogether once the days of school-room squibs like Love and Freindship were over. She would probably have handled the form very successfully if we may judge by her masterly depiction of different shades of epistolary vulgarity in the letters of Isabella Thorpe, Lydia Bennet and Mr. Collins, and the nicely discriminated tone of injured and genuinely suffering dignity in Darcy's. 5 We might add that the oratio obliqua of her heroines' crucial moments of undeception if transposed into the firstperson are creditable performances in the Richardsonian tradition of dramatized emotion. T h a t the method can be made See below, p. 260. See E. L . M c A d a m , Jr., ' A N e w Letter from Fielding', Tale Review (1948), V o l . X X X V I I I , and also The Jacobite's Journal (2 J a n u a r y 1748). 3 See below, p. 256. 4 See below, pp. 257-8. 5 See Northanger Abbey, C h a p t e r xxvii, and Pride and Prejudice, Chapters xiii, Ivii, xlvii, x x x v . 1

2

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to serve an instinct as fastidious as hers for economy in handling the comic interplay of incongruous characters is suggested by Henry James's success in the nouvelle, 'The Pension Beaurepas', 1 where people write home to their respective countries from a holiday pension in France and display in their letters some of those conflicting points of view which assist James with his 'international' theme. This nouvelle does not altogether satisfy Chekhov's requirement that 'the gist of the matter should be in the letters themselves', but as a sophisticated variation on the method used entertainingly in books like Humphry Clinker, Love and Freindship, Camilla and Evelina it does help to establish that in England—apart from Richardson—the method best serves light sentimental or social comedy rather than a more serious kind of analysis. A certain indirection in the epistolary method suits the novelist's feeling for irony and 'pattern' better than the freer omniscient manner, but James draws attention to the advantages for his kind of vision of a method even more oblique and certainly more susceptible to disciplined economy and intensity of effect. To-day the choice seems to lie between this obliquity and the hard-wearing, panoramic, omniscient style of narration. The latter in its picaresque form will probably always suit the social satirist: it has certainly done so from the days of the Spanish picaro to the days of Lucky J i m . Becky Sharp is a Victorian variant of the journeying hero/heroine, just as Moll Flanders is an eighteenth-century one. Becky Sharp, however, is the product of a more sophisticated social criticism, her journeys emphasizing a movement up and down the social ladder rather than to and fro along a country's high-roads. Stendhal's Julien Sorel is a not-so-distant relative and concurrently a forbear of various modern Angry Young Men in scarch of social success. But the conventions of omniscient panoramic narrative can serve with equal usefulness the altogether different vision of an artist who may be a 'seer' like Dostoevsky or a 'sage' like George Eliot. The method accommodates searching analysis of conscience and spiritual conflict as well as the depiction of large historical and social events. T o the 'pure' novelist like James, however, the method seems dangerous. The 'strong, 1 See 'The Pension Beaurepas* (1883); reprinted in Lady Barbarina, Macmillan ed. (1921-3), Vo!. X I X .

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rank quality of genius' can give it strength and substance, but its 'lack of composition, its defiance of economy and architecture' make it, in his view, a vicious model for general imitation. 1 In its place, he works out his own 'indirect and oblique view'. It is a method w h i c h — a s he disarmingly admits—he elucidates in his prefaces and elsewhere 'even to extravagance'. 2 W h a t is the 'view'? It is a method of story-telling which tries to retain the vividness and immediacy, the 'warmth' as Mrs. Barbauld says, of self-revelation while insisting on a vigilant editorship to control its 'terrible fluidity'. It aims at concentration, subtlety, economy and intensity. It differs from epistolary and first-person methods by giving a third-person account of strictly selective impressions; from omniscient narrative by concentrating on the inner reactions to a given situation of a restricted number of characters (sometimes, indeed, confining itself almost exclusively to a single view-point) ; and from the 'stream of consciousness' by being less interested in the processes of ordinary undisciplined human consciousness than in illustrating the workings of this consciousness when it is directed to a particular end. It has, of course, its sometimes limiting conventions. Thus, if the novelist wishes to comment indirectly on aspects of his situation which seem to him important or significant, he often has to give special prominence to the meditations of characters endowed with a high degree of perceptiveness and self-expression. 'Having a consciousness highly susceptible of registration', says Henry James of his Prince in The Golden Bowl, 'he thus makes us see the things that most interest us. . . .' 3 However, in order to promote dramatic intensity, the recording character needs to be personally involved and, quite legitimately, may be perplexed as well as intelligent; the Prince, for all his perspicacity, is 'never a whit' the less 'a foredoomed, entangled, embarrassed agent in the general imbroglio'. 4 T h e 'pure' novelist and the aesthetic writer value the method a See below, p. 265. See below, p. 235. See below, p. 266. 4 Ibid. These characteristics also distinguish certain kinds of modern first-person narratives. Thus the young boy who tells the story in J . D . Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye (1945) is unusually sensitive, perceptive and articulate (it is emphasized that English is the one subject in which he has satisfied his examiners); he is also a 'foredoomed, entangled, embarrassed agent*. This combination of qualities provides the raison d'être of the story. 1

3

I91

THE

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because it helps them to safeguard artistic detachment while depicting highly subjective personal impressions. It also tends to cut out the distracting side-winds of imaginative inspiration. A b o v e all, it makes simpler the suspension of disbelief b y appearing to get rid of all commentary by the author. J a n e Austen dexterously conveys E m m a Woodhouse's conceited, self-centred personality without a single direct c o m m e n t from herself as narrator: Harriet's attachment to herself was very amiable; and her inclination for good company, and power of appreciating what was elegant and clever, shewed that there was no want of taste, though strength of understanding must not be expected. Altogether she was quite convinced of Harriet Smith's being exactly the young friend she wanted—exactly the something which her home required. . . W i t h equal skill, she manages at the same time to convey to her readers rather more of the general situation than E m m a herself is able to see. J a n e Austen's treatment of her heroine's subjective commentary is an early instance of the method which James employs in The Ambassadors, w h e r e w e view the situation from Strether's angle of vision but are also m a d e a w a r e of contingencies for w h i c h he does not allow. She anticipates, also, James's tendency to concentrate third-person narrative on a single view-point. H o w different all this is from Fielding! O f Partridge in Tom Jones Fielding says blandly, Though I called him poor Partridge in the last paragraph, I would have the reader rather impute that epithet to the compassion in my temper than conceive it to be any declaration of his innocence. Whether he was innocent or not will perhaps appear hereafter; but if the historic Muse hath entrusted me with any secrets, I will by no means be guilty of discovering them till she shall give me leave. . . It is an obtrusive authorship of this k i n d — n o t i c e a b l e again in the puppet-master of Vanity Fair and in the novels of A n t h o n y T r o l l o p e — w h i c h the 'oblique view' tries to do a w a y with. I n theory, novelists of many different kinds argue that the writer should remain as much as possible off-stage. Maupassant thinks it wrong for the novelist to say ' I ' , ' m e ' , 3 but so do 1 3

Emma, Chapter iv. See below, p. 272.

2

192

Tom Jones, Book 11, Chapter iv.

NARRATIVE

TECHNIQUE

writers like Scott and Dickens who care less for aesthetic principle but do mind about the convincingness of their stories. 'When I have made the people to play out the play, it is, as it were, their business to do it, and not mine', says Dickens. 1 I n practice, however, these omniscient narrators often take their readers into their confidence about their characters, usually, says Mr. Forster, with unfortunate results. It is dangerous, it generally leads to a drop in the temperature, to intellectual and emotional laxity, and worse still to facetiousness . . . with all due respect to Fielding and Thackeray it is devastating, it is bar-parlour chattiness, and nothing has been more harmful to novels of the past. 2 However, Mr. Forster does not think it so dangerous for the novelist to take the reader into his confidence 'about the universe' and 'to generalize about the conditions under which he thinks life is carried on'. By altogether cutting out his own interpolations and directing attention to the inner feelings of his chosen characters—feelings which a Jamesian fastidiousness will confine to the central situation—the author seeks to withdraw from the field of action in order to heighten the actuality of the conflicts which he presents. 'Anything seemed to me better—better for the process and effect of representation,' declares Henry James, 'than the mere muffled majesty of irresponsible "authorship".' He goes on, I catch myself. . . shaking it off and withdrawing the pretence of it while I get down into the arena and do my best to live and breathe and rub shoulders and converse with the persons engaged in the struggle.3 There is no question that the method can bring about a tremendous heightening of dramatic effect. In The Portrait of a Lady (1881), the sense that an impenetrable darkness has descended on Isobel Archer after her marriage to Gilbert Osmund — a darkness temporarily muffling her perceptions while it dims her vivacity and ruthlessly corrects her youthful imprudence— is heightened by the sudden cessation of her own hitherto more or less continuous subjective commentary. Her 'point of view' is replaced by that of the good little Edward Rosier, with 1

See below, p. 270.

2

See below, p. 273.

!93

3

See below, p. 266.

THE

CRAFT

OF

FICTION

w h o m w e b e g i n to m o v e slowly towards the n o w remote figure of M a d a m e O s m u n d , sharing his timid speculations a n d the thoughts w h i c h circle m o r e a n d more closely around her, until at last she is o n c e m o r e m e t face to face b y us, a dignified figure in b l a c k , n o w t w o years m a r r i e d a n d p l a y i n g hostess to her husband's guests. 1 T h e sense o f ' a d v e n t u r e ' w h i c h J a m e s talks a b o u t in his Preface is increased b y this d e l a y e d r e - e n t r y — f o u r chapters h a v e e l a p s e d — i n t o h e r n o w greatly altered 'point of v i e w ' ; m u c h of the effect o f Isobel's momentous vigil late into the night depends on the skilful m a n a g e m e n t of this technique. 2 E v e n m o r e telling in its e m o t i o n a l i m p a c t is Flaubert's d r a m a tization of C h a r l e s B o v a r y ' s consciousness as prelude a n d c o d a for his rendering of E m m a B o v a r y ' s subjective c o m m e n t a r y on her ennui, her delusive happiness and her final despair. A n d yet it is in this kind of writing, paradoxically enough, that the author's t e m p e r a m e n t a n d sensibility m a y be felt with even m o r e vividness than in the freer style of the omniscient narrator. ' P u r e ' novelists like J a m e s or C o n r a d or F l a u b e r t are often c o m p u l s i v e artists w h o recognize that the subjective nature of their themes needs a special d i s c i p l i n e — t h e y seem to consider t h a t the 'indirect a n d oblique v i e w ' will help t h e m to ' c u t the u m b i l i c a l cord b i n d i n g them, as authors, to their w o r k ' . T h a t the strong, strange flavour of individual idiosyncrasy still clings to their w r i t i n g is certainly not in itself anything that w e need regret. I t is filtered through m a n y elements, t h r o u g h the style, t h r o u g h the situation, t h r o u g h the balance a n d force o f contrasts, b u t most of all through the specially e n d o w e d 'centre of consciousness'. I n James's shorter works, the observer is quite simply 'the impersonal author's concrete d e p u t y or delegate' a n d the subjective c o m m e n t a r y on the situation is the result of s o m e ' c h a r m e d painter's or poet's . . .close and sensitive contact w i t h i t ' . 3 L a t e r , the observer becomes some other 'entangled, embarrassed agent', like the Prince, or M e r t o n Densher, or Strether. T h e s e m a y not be artists, but they share the artist's perceptive awareness, a n d w h a t gives their analysis its distinction is its identity with James's o w n sensiSee The Portrait of a Lady, Chapter xxxvi. Op. cit., Chapter xl. See also James's Preface, Macmillan edn., Vol. VI. 3 See Henry James, Preface to The Golden Bowl, Macmillan edn., Vol. X X X I V , and below, p. 266. 1

2

»94

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bility. Conrad attempts to resolve his artistic difficulties by creating a permanently involved spectator, M a r l o w , w h o broods over a wide landscape of treachery and violence where creatures endowed with qualities remote from his own imaginative insight and artistic detachment are made to act and feel. But such as these are, it is Marlow w h o sees them, and as M a r l o w sees them so does Conrad. Marlow, more exclusively even than the Jamesian narrator, is 'the impersonal author's deputy or delegate'. W h a t in the end saves both these novelists from the dangers of over-powering idiosyncrasy is their talent f o r — t o use Keats's phrase—'filling some other Body'. Strether and K a t e Croy, for example, could not be identified with any novelist other than James, but to identify them with each other would be absurd. Strether remains a prim, elderly, unselfish, conscience-stricken and perplexed N e w Englander, while K a t e Croy is a handsome, bold, clever, ruthlessly self-regarding 'displaced person'. Each is instinct with the vitality which has its source in the genuine novelist's gift for 'going over to his characters' as Flaubert puts it. 1 (Flaubert, indeed, seems to have developed this power of projection to the point of experiencing on behalf of his heroine some of the physical symptoms of arsenical poisoning. 2 ) In this century the oblique method, with its 'dramatized consciousness', has been modified by the experimental writers of the 1920's and 1930's into what is known, after William James, as the 'stream of consciousness' method. N o w that the stimulus provided by the revolutionary break-up of the old concept of personality has faded, and the first excitement is over of translating the discoveries of depth psychology into terms of art, this variant of the oblique method seems to have become almost as extinct as the epistolary narrative. Sartre's use of it in his Les Chemins de la Liberté (begun in 1945) gives that novelcycle a curiously—and unintentionally—-dated air, and certainly adds to its diffuseness. M o r e recently there has been a tendency to return to the closely-knit, densely allusive methods of Conrad and James (a newer taste still is for serio-comic satire in the picaresque manner). If the stream of consciousness method is to survive at all, it may do so vestigially in, perhaps, the disciplined interior monologue of the surefooted technician. 1

See below, p. 271.

2

195

See Part II above, p. 15").

T H E C R A F T OF F I C T I O N

(Mr. Graham Greene, for example, uses it as one among many other devices to portray the character of the priest in The Power and the Glory and to underline predominant themes like the betrayals of It's a Battlefield or the spiritual dilemmas of The Heart of the Matter. Greene becomes more Jamesian, however, in The End of the Affair.) The method deserves credit for the additional flexibility and deeper insight into hidden movements of the mind and the emotions which it has brought to the novel, rather than for any intrinsic structural value. It must be remembered that Virginia Woolf, the most sensitive and influential exponent of the method, wrote her manifestoes about the 'enormous elaborations of the realistic novel' 1 less in reaction against the generation of James and Conrad than against the younger and more popular English realists, Arnold Bennett, John Galsworthy and H. G. Wells, who were generally more interested in stirring the social conscience of their readers than in portraying movements of the individual sensibility. The English novel would have been poorer, unquestionably, without the meditations of To the Lighthouse or Mrs. Dalloway, whose heroines reach towards infinity while the clothes are mended and the dinner is cooked, or the rich flood of associations which compose our experience of Joyce's Leopold and Molly Bloom, or the elegiac cadences—and the wit—of Anna Livia's ebbing consciousness at the close of Finnegans Wake. But the method exceeds every other in its risk of 'terrible fluidity' and its natural threat to balance, proportion and composure. Dorothy Richardson's Pilgrimage (1914-38) is perhaps too often quoted scathingly in a context like this, but its undoubted merits are vitiated by an alarming diffuseness and an uncritical subjectivity. Virginia Woolf tries to save herself from these dangers by tethering her material more or less arbitrarily to some element which will help to create an illusion of order— beams flashing intermittently from a lighthouse, a village pageant, waves beating on the shore—and by directing her sensibility to the creation of a handful of realizable characters. That these are almost always drawn from autobiographical experience—the Ramsays are her parents, Jacob is her brother, figures 1

See 'Modern Fiction', The Common Reader, First Series (1925), and 'Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown* (1924); reprinted in The Captain's Death Bed

('95°)-

196

CHARACTERIZATION

in The Waves embody various aspects of her own personality— is a characteristic of writers w h o tend to choose this form. Their art is obedient to the rhythms of personal emotion rather than disciplined by their grasp of external experience. Joyce is an exception. His technique is at the service of a wider vision. In The Dubliners, in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, in much of Ulysses, and indeed in the range of human sympathy communicated throughout Finnegans Wake, he displays the genuine novelist's gift of realizing diverse experience outside his o w n immediate modes of thinking and feeling and of adding to its authenticity by solidity of detail—he has in particular an infallible ear for the tones of voice and rhythms of speech which distinguish individuals as well as social classes. A n d of course his working-class Irishry takes him a long way from the parlours of Bloomsbury.

Ill

Characterization

NO ONE can miss the emphasis on character in the novelist's debate about narrative technique. Is character, then, the most important element in the novel? T h e figures w h o inhabit the world of fiction are such anomalous abstractions that one approaches the whole question of characterization with considerable misgiving. ' H o m o Fictus', as M r . Forster rightly reminds us, is a totally different species from ' H o m o Sapiens'. 1 H e is deprived of a great many ordinary human characteristics because these are not relevant to the novelist's design. His function is to act in unision with other narrative elements as a vehicle for the expression of the author's personal vision of life. Thus he is capable of wide individual variations, such as the difference between 'characters of manners' and 'characters of nature', terms which Johnson used when he tried to distinguish the art of Fielding and Richardson. 2 'I believe that all novels . . . deal with character', says Virginia Woolf, and adds it is to express character—not to preach doctrines, sing songs, or celebrate the glories of the British Empire, that the form of the See Aspects of the Novel, Chapter iii. Sec Boswell's Life of Johnson, Oxford ed. (1924), Vol. I, p. 367, and below, pp. 275-7. 1

2

197

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n o v e l , so c l u m s y , v e r b o s e a n d u n d r a m a t i c , so rich, elastic a n d a l i v e , has b e e n e v o l v e d . 1

But she immediately goes on to show that the expression of character can mean almost anything: Y o u see o n e t h i n g i n c h a r a c t e r , a n d I a n o t h e r . Y o u s a y it m e a n s this, a n d I t h a t . A n d w h e n it c o m e s t o w r i t i n g , e a c h m a k e s a f u r t h e r selection o n p r i n c i p l e s o f his o w n . 2

A modern English critic of the French novel has said, a c h a r a c t e r is a v e r b a l c o n s t r u c t i o n w h i c h h a s n o e x i s t e n c e o u t s i d e t h e b o o k . I t is a v e h i c l e f o r t h e novelist's sensibility a n d its s i g n i f i c a n c e lies in its r e l a t i o n s w i t h t h e a u t h o r ' s o t h e r c o n s t r u c t i o n s . A n o v e l is essentially a v e r b a l p a t t e r n in w h i c h t h e d i f f e r e n t ' c h a r a c t e r s ' a r e strands, a n d t h e r e a d e r ' s e x p e r i e n c e is t h e i m p a c t o f t h e c o m p l e t e p a t t e r n o n his s e n s i b i l i t y . 3

This carries some flavour of critical dogmas which have spent a good deal of their force in the last two decades, but it usefully draws attention to the inter-dependence of the various elements in a novel. It is almost certainly their impatience with the ordinary reader's failure to understand the nature of ' H o m o Fictus' which makes novelists react with such violence to the suggestion that their characters are portraits from the life. 'Let us have as little as possible about its " b e i n g " Mr. This or Mrs. T h a t ' , requests James. I f it a d j u s t s itself w i t h t h e least t r u t h t o its n e w life it c a n ' t p o s s i b l y b e e i t h e r . . . if it persists as t h e i m p r e s s i o n n o t a r t i s t i c a l l y d e a l t w i t h , it s h a m e s t h e h o n o u r o f f e r e d it a n d c a n o n l y b e s p o k e n o f as h a v i n g c e a s e d t o b e a t h i n g o f f a c t , a n d yet n o t b e c o m e a t h i n g o f truth.4

' W e only suffer reality to suggest, never to dictatesays Charlotte Bronte, angrily repudiating the charge that the characters in Shirley are direct representations of real people, . . the heroines are abstractions, and the heroes also'. 6 ' There is not a single portrait in Adam Bede, as I have said before . . writes George Eliot, 1 3 4

2 Ibid. See below, p. 290. See Martin Turnell, The Novel in France (1950), p. 6. 5 See below, p. 280. See below, p. 284.

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CHARACTERIZATION

exasperation underscoring her statement. 'No one who is not an artist knows how experience is wrought up in writing in any form of poetry.' 1 'Nor do I paint portraits', that isn't my way', explains George Sand, exasperated in this case by the suggestion that she has put a living Empress into one of her novels. 'I invent. The public, who don't know what invention consists of, try to find originals everywhere. They deceive themselves and debase the a r t . ' 2 Flaubert has an entertaining letter about people whom he had never met claiming to be the originals of Emma and Charles Bovary. 3 As long ago as Joseph Andrews, we find Fielding warning his readers that his Parson Adams is not to be taken for a portrait of any person in actual life.4 These assertions are supported by the accounts which novelists give us of the way in which their experience is 'wrought up'. How typical, we feel, that Stendhal should turn his gaze on some average human being who devotes his talents to the 'pursuit of pleasure' and then ask, 'What would he do if he had more intelligence?' 5 Dickens, we learn, scribbled over his manuscript in order to make Harold Skimpole as '««like' Leigh Hunt as possible—in vain, it appears, so far as Leigh Hunt himself was concerned.* Wilkie Collins assembled Count Fosco from 'a man who loved canaries', 'boys who loved white mice', and the sudden inspiration that a fat villain would be less commonplace than a thin one. 7 Stevenson performed 'psychical surgery' on a 'valued friend'—'a common way of "making character" ', he says—and out sprang Long J o h n Silver. 8 The 'beautiful genius', Turgenev, was haunted, as we have seen, by 'disponibles', figures who appeared to him out of the blue and haunted him until he invented situations and relationships favourable to 'the complications they would be most likely to produce and feel'. 9 Obviously, then, the novelist 'takes the infection' through his contact with actual people. Bazarov of Fathers and Sons is a long way from the expert on anthrax encountered by chance on a railway platform, 1 0 but it was this direct experience of a figure 1

4

See below, p. 280.

2

Ibid.

6

3

6

See below, p. 282.

See below, p. 279. Ibid. See below, p. 281. 8 ' See below, pp. 282-3. See below, p. 283. • See Part I I above, p. 1 1 9 , and below, pp. 286-7. 10 See Avrahm Yarmolinsky, Turgenev, The Man, His Art, and His Age (1926), pp. 1 9 0 - 1 .

199

T H E C R A F T OF F I C T I O N strikingly r e p r e s e n t a t i v e o f n e w t e n d e n c i e s in the c o n t e m p o r a r y R u s s i a n scene w h i c h p r o v i d e d T u r g e n e v w i t h the first inspiration for his Nihilist h e r o . A n o v e r - s i m p l e response to b i o g r a p h i c a l i n f o r m a t i o n o f this k i n d v i r t u a l l y r e d u c e s all novels to romans a def—a k i n d p a r t i c u l a r l y r a r e in E n g l a n d , w h e r e P e a c o c k is s o m e t h i n g o f a s p o r t — b u t the c o n f u s i o n a b o u t ' p o r t r a i t s ' in fiction c a n c o m e a b o u t , o f c o u r s e , t h r o u g h t h e novelist's o w n f a i l u r e to a d j u s t his o r i g i n a l e x p e r i e n c e o f a m a n or w o m a n to its n e w i m a g i n a t i v e c o n t e x t in a w o r k o f art. T h e f a i l u r e seems to associate itself m o s t f r e q u e n t l y w i t h t h e inclusive, c o m p r e h e n s i v e w r i t e r w h o is m o r e likely t h a n the c a r e f u l , e x c l u s i v e c r a f t s m a n to c r o w d his n o v e l w i t h a g o o d d e a l o f u n d i g e s t e d m a t e r i a l . I t is p a r t i c u l a r l y n o t i c e a b l e w h e n this c o m p r e h e n s i v e novelist is t h e ' b a r d i c ' k i n d w h o s e p e r s o n a l e x p e r i e n c e seems a p o c a l y p t i c : as in D . H . L a w r e n c e , f o r e x a m p l e , w h o s e o r i g i n a l e x p e r i e n c e s a r e felt w i t h e x c e p t i o n a l intensity a n d c o n s e q u e n t l y stick o u t like sore t h u m b s all o v e r his w o r k . M o s t o f t h e c h a r a c ters in L a w r e n c e ' s novels a r e i n d e e d 'portraits' o f p e o p l e w h o affected him strongly—so strongly that they sometimes acquire t h e d i s t e n d e d p r o p o r t i o n s o f c a r i c a t u r e . T h e s e figures—his wife, J o h n M i d d l e t o n M u r r y , P h i l i p H e s e l t i n e a n d o f course himself — a p p e a r a g a i n a n d a g a i n w i t h v a r i a t i o n s o f emphasis b r o u g h t a b o u t b y shifts in his o w n e m o t i o n a l a t t i t u d e . T h e y are still p r e s e n t in o n e o f his m o r e ' o r g a n i c ' novels, Women in Love, w h e r e they a r e c a l l e d U r s u l a B r a n g w e n , G e r a l d C r i c h , Philip H a l l i d a y a n d B i r k i n . T o p l a c e D o s t o e v s k y w i t h L a w r e n c e on a s i m i l a r c h a r g e is n o t a n a r b i t r a r y j u x t a p o s i t i o n . A l t h o u g h it is r e c o g n i z e d a t o n c e t h a t D o s t o e v s k y has far g r e a t e r resources to d r a w u p o n , it r e m a i n s o b v i o u s t h a t D o s t o e v s k y ' s a r t is as s u b j e c t i v e as L a w r e n c e ' s . H i s spiteful p o r t r a i t o f T u r g e n e v as K a r m a z i n o v in The Possessed, f o r i n s t a n c e , r e m i n d s us o f L a w r e n c e ' s r e s e n t f u l p o r t r a y a l s o f p e o p l e w h o a n g e r e d a n d irrit a t e d h i m — H e s e l t i n e as H a l l i d a y in Women in Love, for e x a m p l e , or L a d y O t t e l i n e M o r r e l l as H e r m i o n e R o d d i c e in t h e s a m e n o v e l , or t h e p e o p l e w h o o f f e r e d h i m hospitality in I t a l y a n d w e r e satirized f o r t h e i r p a i n s in Aaron's Rod as Sir W i l l i a m a n d L a d y F r a n k s . A n a t t e m p t h a s b e e n m a d e in p o r t r a y a l s o f this n a t u r e to e x t e r n a l i z e e x p e r i e n c e — b u t p r i m a r i l y for t h e r a p e u t i c r a t h e r t h a n aesthetic reasons, w i t h t h e result that t h e figures r e m a i n in t h a t i n t e r m e d i a t e state w h e r e , still b l u r r e d by the 200

CHARACTERIZATION

writer's emotions, they have ceased to be things 'of fact' and yet not become things 'of truth'. Novelists of all kinds may suffer a similar failure of adjustment, especially when the experience 'wrought up' is still very close and has perhaps influenced the whole course of a life. In depicting Maggie Tulliver's childhood George Eliot successfully—some flaws aside—translates her own youthful behaviour into the terms of her art, but when she attempts the same thing for the emotional and moral conflicts of adolescence and young womanhood the imperfect 'distancing' betrays itself in sentimentality. The tendency is one of her 'spots of commonness' and it is perhaps an almost inevitable accompaniment of romantic introspection. Such introspection may display an emotionalism bordering at times on hysteria—it can be detected, for example, in the unsteady tones ofJ a n e Eyre and Lucy Snowe, or of George Sand's romantic heroines, as well as in the wishful fantasy of Corvo's Hadrian V I I or Lawrence's Lily and Ramon. And yet slight—very slight—signs of this lack of detachment occur even in J a n e Austen, whose finely-modulated accents take on a momentary shrillness when Elizabeth Bennet, with somewhat voulu gaiety, resigns the pathway at Netherfield to Mrs. Hurst, Miss Bingley and Darcy, retiring to the superior enjoyments of a solitary 'ramble', 1 or when Fanny Price relaxes her self-control (now that it is safe at last to do so) and zestfully assists Edmund to carry out a lugubrious post-mortem on Mary Crawford's character. 2 But it is the total effect of a work which counts, and only when a whole novel is thrown off balance is one really justified in asserting that an extremely personal and subjective experience has chosen the wrong medium for its expression. In the final impression left by a novel the part played by the novelist's technique of character-creation is certainly very important. His views on the methods which serve him best are of a piece with the kind of response which his work usually creates; so we find that the man with a lively talent for recreating the surface-textures of life recommends an approach very different from any of those preferred by the analyst of thought and feeling. The difference makes itself felt at the 1

a

S e e Pride and Prejudice, C h a p t e r x.

See Mansfield Park, Chapter xlvii.

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outset of the novel's history. 'Words and actions' are 'the only ways by which we come to any knowledge of what passes in the minds of others', writes Henry Fielding, 1 but his sister, Sarah, an admirer of Richardson and herself a novelist, believes that 'the motives to actions, and the inward turns of the mind' are 'more necessary to be known that the actions themselves'. 2 Richardson himself, delighted no doubt to add the sister of his great rival to his list of disciples, distinguishes the writings of the two Fieldings in a commendatory letter to her: His was but as the knowledge of the outside of a clock-work machine, while yours was that of all the finer springs and movements of the inside . . . 3 Did he filch the metaphor from Johnson? Boswell tells us that when Johnson compared the achievement of Richardson and Fielding, he used this expression 'that there was as great difference between them, as between a man who knew how a watch was made, and a man who could tell the hour by looking on the dial-plate.' This was a short and figurative state of his distinction between drawing characters of nature and characters only of manners.4 Johnson's comments on these writers have an important place in the critical debate about their relative merits which continues intermittently even to-day. If we lay aside his personal bias, his characteristic acumen isolates for notice precisely two of the four categories into w h i c h — i n the last analysis—it has seemed to me that all novelists are divided. 5 Boswell's comments on Johnson's statement altogether miss the point, 6 and it is perhaps Scott who first goes into the question with some thoroughness and intelligence, his discussion adding usefully to the considerable merits of his 'Biographical Memoirs'. 7 For example, in recognizing that the reader will 'laugh with Fielding' and 'weep with Richardson' Scott is acknowledging a real difference between the effects of two types of characterization. 8 A 'dial-plate' novelist like Fielding creates out of the collections of mannerisms 1

See below, p. 275.

4

Boswell's Life of Johnson,

2

Ibid.

3

Ibid.

loc. cit., and see below, p. 276.

' See above, pp. 165-6.

6

Boswell, loc. cit.

See below, pp. 2 7 5 - 6 .

8

Ibid.

7

202

CHARACTERIZATION

and idiosyncrasies which he calls his 'characters' an illusion of vivid and vigorous comic life, an illusion strengthened in Fielding's case by the adroit variations of ironic tone in the author's personal commentary. Dickens also finds a substitute for the detailed analysis of personality in the comic hyperbole and startling visual imagery with which he induces a galvanic life in his figures. For all 'the wonderful feeling of human depth' which the method releases, it is, as M r . Forster says, 'a conjuring trick', 1 and that is why, when Dickens creates figures which he intends to be taken seriously—Quilp, let us say, or Bradley Headstone—we respond to the vibrations of the author's own tremendous vitality but miss the deeper springs of creative life from which Dostoevsky's Smerdyakov or Balzac's Pere Goriot derive their tragic fullness of stature. 'We must admit', writes M r . Forster, 'that flat people are not in themselves as big achievements as round ones, and also that they are best when they are comic.' Walter Bagehot, in an essay which is still one of the best assessments of Dickens, recognizes this too. H e admits the charm and appeal of Dickens's 'exaggerations pretending to comport themselves as human beings, caricatures acting as if they were characters', but adds, it is essential to remember, that however great may be and is the charm of such exaggerated personifications, the best specimens of them are immensely less excellent, belong to an altogether lower range of intellectual achievements, than the real depiction of actual living men . . . Who could compare the genius, marvellous as must be its fertility, which was needful to create a Falstaff with that shown in the higher productions of the same mind in Hamlet, Ophelia and Lear? We feel instantaneously the difference between the aggregating incident which makes up from the externalities of life other accidents analogous to itself, and the central idea of a real character which cannot show itself wholly in any accidents, but . . . which unfolds itself gradually in wide spheres of action, and yet, as with those we know best in life, leaves something hardly to be understood . . . 2 Mrs. Slipslop, Parson Trulliber, Mrs. G a m p , M r . Pickwick: these are unbeatable on their own ground. But with Quilp or 1 See Aspects of the Novel, Chapter iv. ' Walter Bagehot, 'Charles Dickens' (1858); reprinted in Literary Studies ('878).

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FICTION

M r . Dombey or Eugene W r a y b u r n or Bradley Headstone or Miss Havisham we are moving towards subterranean areas of experience where the 'inner-workings' novelist is more at home. T h e 'flat' character belongs by nature to the surfaces of experience, where life can still remain laughable; a serious 'flat' character is, in fact, very nearly a contradiction in terms. Novelists who belong to the tradition inaugurated by Richardson and culminating in Conrad and Henry James show that to explore beneath the surface appearance of things is to draw near to the central areas of tragic experience. It is obvious that both methods provide amply for the expression of personal idiosyncrasy, but on balance the 'dial-plate' novelist seems to run fewer risks of disequilibrium and monotony. Comedy, with its insulating and distancing properties, encourages the sort of ruthless prodigality we find in Dickens when he decides to 'throw another handful of characters on the fire' in order to keep his narrative blazing. This may explain the tendency, which still persists to-day, to look beyond careful historians of the complicated hidden self to these 'dial-plate' writers for the true creators of 'characters'. But in fact it is the 'inner-workings' novelist w h o is the more interested in what makes 'character': his real concern, in short, is with what we call personality. It is worth remembering that he will make use of a good many theatrical 'dial-plate' figures himself—to set off his own characters, perhaps, or to establish a milieu, provide the necessary Jicelles for his narrative, or suggest a kind of choric commentary on the action. These figures are recognized by the shorthand—the gestures, mannerisms, peculiarities of clothing or feature—which makes them easily manoeuvrable whenever they are needed. A host of examples comes to mind: the figures surrounding Pamela or Clarissa—Mrs. Jewkes, the Swiss G u a r d , the fashionable ladies quizzing the virtuous servant-girl, the Hogarthian brothel-dwellers; George Eliot's 'Middlemarchers', assembled at street-corner and tavern, their muddled judgments far removed from the inner realities of conflict at the heart of the novel; the ardent figures gesticulating with revolutionary or amatory passion round Stendhal's Julien Sorel or his Sanseverina; James's Colonel Assingham (in The Golden Bowl) jerking his neatly-shod foot, one of the few actions available to this patient listener. These are all 'extras', their two204

CHARACTERIZATION

dimensional nature disguised by their creators' talent for selecting the necessary animating detail; and when they appear they provide some useful easing of tension which lessens the dangerous effects of too unremitting an analysis of inner motive and feeling. I t is very rarely, on the other hand, that we find the 'dialplate' writer of fiction varying his approach by emulating the analysis of the 'inner-workings' novelist. T h e nearest he comes to it is suggested by E . M . Forster when he talks of the 'flat' character who sometimes seems to be 'ready for extended life'. 1 T h e impression is not, however, the result of any attempt to explain actions in terms of psychological cause and effect but is again a measure of the novelist's resourcefulness in the selection of the most telling external detail. For these reasons, then, the description of the 'dial-plate' novel as 'the novel of character' is understandable but misleading. Robert Louis Stevenson accepts the description in his essay, ' A Humble Remonstrance', 2 but his own analysis is enough to show its inadequacy. He sees that the relationship between incident and character can be sufficiently anomalous in this kind of fiction for it to be thought of as simply 'the novel of adventure'. Its characters, he says, are 'statically shown': As they enter, so may they go out; they must be consistent, but they need not grow. 3 At this point his argument is directed usefully to the fundamental differences in structure which further separate the 'dialplate' writer from the novelist concerned to show 'all the finer springs and movements of the inside'. M r . E d w i n M u i r adopts Stevenson's definitions and uses them as the basis of his own study, The Structure of the Novel (1946). Thus he takes as an example o f ' t h e novel of character' Thackeray's Vanity Fair and contrasts it with Pride and Prejudice as an example of what Stevenson calls 'the dramatic novel'. He draws attention to the selfcontained episodes in Thackeray and shows that in J a n e Austen, on the other hand, incidents are governed by the conflict of personality and move forward as part of a reasonable progression. So the account of Becky Sharp's first meeting with Pitt 1 2

Aspects of the Novel, C h a p t e r iv, and below, pp. 2 8 8 - 9 . 3 See Part I above, p. 8 3 . Ibid.

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Crawley is seen to be deft and amusing primarily as a sketch in its own right; whereas the first encounter between Darcy and Elizabeth gains in effect by belonging to a dynamic of events depending on the interplay and development of character. 1 However, we are once more up against the problem of terms. 'Dramatic' as a description begs as many questions as 'the novel of character': we already have the phrase 'dramatized consciousness', which we associate with the 'oblique and indirect view' of Jamesian narrative, and now we find that 'the dramatic novel' can include, by this definition, both Pride and Prejudice, which is social comedy, and Wuthering Heights, which has certain affinities with poetic tragedy. Seen in this light the term 'dramatic' is a description of creative method rather than an indication of literary 'kind'. It tells us to expect a particularly close and interdependent relationship between 'character' and 'plot', but it does not hint that different conceptions of cause and effect can separate an Emily Bronte from a Jane Austen as finally as concentration on 'Words and Actions' instead of on 'the finer springs and workings of the inside' separates Fielding from Richardson or Dickens from Henry James. It is here that we feel the need of terms like Mr. Forster's 'prophecy' or 'song', 2 or Stevenson's 'impersonal utterance of passion', 3 and so feel justified in including the category which I described at the beginning of this chapter: the novel of the 'prophet' who may seem to be as prodigal with his material as the comprehensive, episodic, 'dial-plate' novelist but in fact imposes order and coherence upon it by the force of poetic imagination. Perhaps it is in this kind of art that the paradoxes of character-creation in the novel become most apparent. W e know that the novelist's figures are abstractions whose principal function it is to complete a structural or verbal pattern: character 'must somehow form part of the pattern, or lay the design of the book', notes Arnold Bennett after a conversation with T . S. Eliot 'about character in fiction'.4 W e feel the truth of this most acutely in the great symbolic figures of fiction— Captain A h a b , perhaps, or the K a r a m a z o v brothers, or Heathcliff, who are obviously no more detachable from their context 1

O p . cit., C h a p t e r ii.

2

3

See Part I above, p. 84.

* See below, p. 290.

See Aspects of the Novel,

206

Chapter vii.

CHARACTERIZATION

than Lear or Ophelia. They have a stature transcending our normal experience and at certain moments voice 'the impersonal utterance of passion'. Mr. Forster cites Mitya's telling of his 'good dream', 1 and we can add Catherine Linton's threnody for the birds whose feathers fill the pillows of her sick-bed or Ahab's improvisations as he hurries in the whale's 'infallible wake', conscious that the bright day provides 'food for thought, had Ahab time to think, but Ahab never thinks; he only feels, feels, feels, that's tingling enough for mortal man'.* In these moments, 'Homo Fictus' is seen for what he really is: a single if important element in the imaginative statement made by the whole novel. Yet his 'song' would not capture us if it were to drown the illusion of his human individuality. We have seen, in the discussion of narrative technique, that one of the novelist's essential gifts is his power to inhabit 'some other body'. 3 His characters may be unmistakably a part of his 'design' : we can never transfer them to the world of another writer, nor can we mistake their family resemblance. But equally they are rarely to be mistaken for each other and they always inhabit a world of realized particulars. Catherine's wasted fingers pluck nervously at the feathers and feel their texture; the wind lifts Ahab's hair; beneath Mitya as he sleeps is the large chest with its rug covering and when he wakes he feels beneath his head the pillow which someone has placed there on an impulse of rough human kindness. In the end we recognize the true novelist by the strength with which his realization of the actual world and of human individuality triumphs over his abstract speculations, his oddities and opinions, his puritan concern with the utile. 'Never present ideas except as a function of temperament and character', writes André Gide, 4 and the greatest didactic novelists, the finest preachers and teachers, from Fielding and Richardson to Forster, Camus and Mauriac, are those who find their originating impulse in their capacity literally to 'embody' or 'incorporate' ideas. We can always distinguish a novelist's 'moral fable' from the abstract thinker's. Jonathan Wild (1742) and Hard Times (1854) are novelists' fables; Rasselas (1759) is not. 1

See Aspects of the Novel, Chapter vii. ' See Wuthering Heights, Chapter xii, and Moby Dick, Chapter cxxxiv. 4 * See above, p. 195. See Part I above, p. 104.

207

THE

C R A F T OF

FICTION

All are genuine expressions of what James calls 'felt life', but the first two are vivid with a sense of place and character, while the third does not really evoke this sense at all although it remains deeply moving. T h e most brilliant modern philosophical novel, La Peste (1947) by Albert Camus, again illustrates the novelist's traditional belief that in his own literary medium a set of ideas must be demonstrated through the experience and suffering of ordinary human beings. O n e writer, George Eliot, in whom as a 'sage' the creative artist is often at war with the moralist and teacher (and sometimes defeated by them), perhaps communicates her recognition of the dangers incurred by the novelist-philosopher when she describes her reluctance to adopt any formula which does not get itself clothed for me in some human figure and individual experience; and perhaps that is a sign that if I help others to see at all it must be through that medium of art. 1 Her characters are certainly made to fit into the pattern of her own moral universe: but she elicits belief in this universe in direct proportion to the humanity with which these characters are invested.

IV

Dialogue

as one of the novelist's aids to characterization, certainly deserves a section to itself as one of the most exacting techniques of fiction. In order to convey the sense of individual identity, the 'dial-plate' novelist, as we have said, relies heavily on descriptions of appearance, on idiosyncratic gestures, clothes, actions, habits, mannerisms; while the 'inner-workings' novelist likes to record and analyse hidden movements of feeling and thought. Both, however, get many of their best effects through dialogue, an element which imports into the novel something of the dramatist's discipline and objectivity. It requires enormous patience and skill to 'get right' because its authenticity depends, as it does in the theatre, on a nice adjustment of the DIALOGUE,

1 See her letter to Dr. Joseph Frank Payne (25 J a n u a r y 1876), The George Eliot Letters (1956), V o l . V I .

208

DIALOGUE ' r e a l ' a n d the s t y l i z e d . T r o l l o p e describes h o w it m u s t steer between absolute accuracy of l a n g u a g e — w h i c h would give to . . . conversation an air of pedantry, and the slovenly inaccuracy of ordinary talkers,—which if closely followed would offend by an appearance of grimace . . . 1 F l a u b e r t ' s m o n t h - b y - m o n t h a c c o u n t o f h i s difficulties w i t h E m m a ' s c o m m o n p l a c e e x c h a n g e s is h e a r t - r e n d i n g . lBovary is d r i v i n g m e m a d ! ' he says at o n e s t a g e : I have to make up a conversation between my young w o m a n and a priest, a vulgar, stupid conversation, and because the matter is commonplace the language must be appropriate. 2 F o u r m o n t h s later, in the m i d d l e o f c o m p o s i n g his f a m o u s scene a t t h e cornices agricoles h e writes, T o use dialogue as a means of portrayal, and yet not allow it to become less vivid or precise, to give it distinction while it continues to deal with commonplaces, all this is a colossal task, and I know of no one who has managed to bring it off in a book. 3 H a l f a c e n t u r y after this w e find J a m e s c o m p l a i n i n g t h a t e v e n y e t n o o n e h a s m a n a g e d to ' b r i n g it o f f ' in E n g l a n d : . . . really constructive dialogue, dialogue organic and dramatic, speaking for itself, representing and embodying substance and form, is a m o n g us an uncanny and abhorrent thing, not to be dealt w i t h on any terms . . . a n d h e h a s a m o r e or less j u s t i f i a b l e s m a c k a t t h e E n g l i s h t h e a t r e for f a i l i n g to r e m e d y this state o f affairs. 4 A n d y e t w i t h o u t b e c o m i n g as r h y t h m i c a l l y s u b t l e a n d suggestive as J a m e s ' s , the b r e a d a n d b u t t e r d i a l o g u e o f a s o u n d c r a f t s m a n like T r o l l o p e m a n a g e s to b e b o t h n a t u r a l a n d s i n e w y — u n u s u a l l y so, for a V i c t o r i a n — a n d at times e x t r e m e l y f u n n y . M r . C h e e s a c r e , w e l l p r i m e d w i t h c h e r r y - b r a n d y , proposes to A r a b e l l a G r e e n o w in Can You Forgive Her? ( 1 8 6 4 - 5 ) : ' M r . Cheesacre, don't make a fool of yourself. Get up,' said she. 'Never, till you have told me that you will be mine!' ' T h e n you'll remain there for ever, which will be inconvenient. I won't have you take hold of my hand, M r . Cheesacre. I tell you 1 3

See below, p. 295. See below, p. 294.

1 4

209

See below, p. 293. See below, pp. 295-7.

T H E C R A F T OF F I C T I O N

to have done.' Whereupon his grasp upon her hand was released; but he made no attempt to rise. 'I never saw a man look so much like a fool in my life,' said she. 'If you don't get up, I'll push you over. There; don't you hear? There's somebody coming.' But Cheesacre, whose senses were less acute than the lady's, did not hear. 'I'll never get up,' said he, 'till you have bid me hope.' 'Bid you play the fiddle. Get away from my knees, at a n y rate. There;—he'll be in the room now before ' Checsacrc now did hear a sound of steps, and the door was opened while he made his first futile attempt to get back to a standing position. The door was opened, and Captain Bellfield entered. 'I beg ten thousand pardons,' said he; 'but as I did not see Jeannette, I ventured to come in. May I venture to congratulate my friend Cheesacre on his success?' In the meantime Cheesacre had risen; but he had done so slowly, and with evident difficulty. 'I'll trouble you to leave the room, Captain Bellfield,' said he. ' I ' m particularly engaged with Mrs. Greenow, as any gentleman might have seen.' 'There wasn't the slightest difficulty in seeing it, old fellow,' said the Captain. 'Shall I wish you j o y ? ' 1 This lies, in its comedy and economy of effect, half-way between two stylizations: the imaginative verbal caricature of'dial-plate' novelists and the carefully allusive dialogue of the analytical writer. It is more natural than, say, Dickens's handling of Guppy's comic proposal to Esther Summerson in Bleak House,2 but less sensitively handled than the even funnier interchanges in What Maisie Knew (some of these are the most hilarious things in fiction, and not less so because of the fine line separating the comedy from tears). What neither James nor Trollope possesses, however, is Dickens's brilliant conversational fantasy. This depends on the verbal inventiveness which is the gift finally separating his genius from that of almost all other novelists (Joyce, perhaps, apart). O n examination, Dickens's characters are found to exist very largely through their speech. Jingle, Chadband, Pecksniff, Micawber, above all Mrs. Gamp, live through the words which are put into their mouths. They do not converse so much as utter long monologues, fanciful, baroque, but surprisingly in1 2

See Can You Forgive Her?, Chapter xlviii. See Bleak House, Chapter ix.

210

DIALOGUE

dividual. Mrs. Gamp would no more invent a Fiery Serpent on a Steeple 1 (though Mrs. Prig is a 'serpiant' at the end 2 ) than Pecksniff would invent a Mrs. Harris and talk about this alter ego in a series of inspired malapropisms. Mrs. Gamp is a formidable continuer of the tradition which comes down through Sheridan from Fielding's Mrs. Slipslop, and this is how she explains with a lip-smacking relish for her own startling prose her present widowed and childless state; '. . . As a good friend of mine has frequent made remark to me, which her name, my love, is Harris, Mrs. Harris through the square and up the steps a turnin' round by the tobacker shop, " O h Sairey, Sairey, little do we know wot lays afore us!" "Mrs. Harris, ma'am," I says, "not much, it's true, but more than you suppoge. Our calcilations, ma'am," I says, "respectin wot the number of a family will be, comes most times within one, and oftener than you would suppoge, exact." "Sairey," says Mrs. Harris, in a awful way, "Tell me wot is my individgle number." "No, Mrs. Harris," I says to her, "ex-cuge me, if you please. My own," I says, "has fallen out of three-pair backs, and had damp doorsteps settled on their lungs, and one was turned up smilin' in a bedstead, unbeknown. Therefore, ma'am," I says, "seek not to proticipate, but take 'em as they come and as they go." "Mine," said Mrs. Gamp, "mine is all gone, my dear young chick. And as to husbands, there's a wooden leg gone like-ways home to its account, which in its constancy of walkin' into wine vaults, and never comin' out again 'till fetched by force, was quite as weak as flesh, if not weaker." ' 3 This 'dialogue' is rich in throw-away detail, like the contents of Mrs. Harris's pocket described on another occasion as containing two cramp-bones, a bit o' ginger, and a grater like a blessed infant's shoe, in tin, with a little heel to put the nut-meg in: as many times I've seen and said and used for caudle when required, within the month. 4 It is a splendid method for satire, as Dickens demonstrates with the Transcendental Literary Ladies and the Mother of the Gracchi in the same novel. 5 This verbal ingenuity secures *

1

See Lord David Cecil, 'Charles Dickens', Early Victorian Novelists (1934). 3 See Martin Chuzzlewit, Chapter xlix. 3 4 Op. cit., Chapter xl. Op. cit., Chapter xlvi. * Chapter xxxiv. 211

T H E C R A F T OF

FICTION

Dickens our forgiveness for the quite terrible things he can perpetrate in sentimental or moral dialogue: Bella Harmon explaining to her husband that they are to have a child, for example, or the conversations—if they can be called s u c h — between David and Dora Copperfield, or the death-bed utterances of the virtuous characters, especially when, as often happens, it is a child who is to expire. In the case of James or Flaubert, dialogue serves the altogether different intention of the 'pure' artist. It displays as much as possible 'the motives to actions, and the inward turns of the mind' and at the same time seeks to bring out the novel's important underlying themes. There is no place in this economy for the Mother of the Gracchi or for a nut-meg grater with a peculiar shape, nor is there even room for the delighted elaboration of a particular dialect which we find in Hardy, George Eliot and even Emily Bronte. A prodigal, creative zest is behind the Yorkshire idioms of old Joseph's death-and-hellfire monologues in Wuthering Heights, the rustic deliberations of the members of the Mellstock choir in Hardy's The Woodlanders, and Mrs. Poyser's vigorous Midland repartee in George Eliot's The Mill on the Floss (George Eliot also gets in some neat satirical touches by means of dialogue—as with M r . Brooke's dismissal of science, in Middlemarch, because 'it leads to everything' 1 ). But the self-conscious deliberation of the 'pure' artist has its compensations. James's dialogue is a variety of verbal fencing, allusive and beautifully wrought even if it is, especially in the late novels, sometimes over-mannered. He shares with Miss Compton-Burnett the gift of sharply differentiating his characters' conversation without much varying their vocabulary and syntax. It is impossible to mistake the identity of his speakers because none of them think alike or feel alike. His dialogue is, like hers, 'organic and dramatic' in that it expresses the disturbing impact the characters have on each other once they emerge from their private self-communings and seek some form of mutual comprehension. But to a greater degree even than hers, it suggests that the various tensions and misunderstandings set up in conversation will profoundly affect their subsequent behaviour. Miss Compton-Burnett's novels are written exclusively in dialogue 2 —a few 'stage-directions' are inter1

Book I, Chapter ii.

* See below, pp. 297-8. 212

DIALOGUE

spersed here and there—and so dispense altogether with the element which is essential to the full effect of James's dialogue. His novels proceed from 'preparation' to 'scene'. In the 'preparation', on which James lavishes all the skill of his peculiar analytical insight, we are taken into the subterranean world of his characters' inner life and are made to assist in the various processes which guide their feelings and thoughts. Consequently, when we arrive at the 'scene' itself—which corresponds more or less to the dramatist's scene a jaire—we are in a position to savour the full irony of conversational hesitations, suppressions, wilful distortions and unwitting misapprehensions, and to appreciate the nature of the fresh developments which these will precipitate. The gnomic effect of this densely allusive dialogue appears in the exchange between Maggie Verver and Fanny Assingham concerning the adultery of Maggie's husband with Maggie's young step-mother, Charlotte: ' I can bear anything.' 'Oh "bear"!' Mrs. Assingham fluted. 'For love,' said the Princess. Fanny hesitated. 'Of your father.' 'For love,' Maggie repeated. It kept her friend watching. 'Of your husband?' 'For love,' Maggie said again. 1 T h e cadences are emotionally expressive, as they are again in the taut, nervous dialogue between Maggie and her husband near the close of the story, when Maggie's 'mildness'—a devastating weapon—is seen to have made her victory over Charlotte complete. 2 Or there is the final conversation between K a t e Croy and Martin Densher—Milly Theale's money and Milly Theale's memory lying between them—which closes the book with the words, 'I'll marry you, mind you, in an hour.' 'As we were?' 'As we were.' But she turned to the door, and her headshake was now the end. 'We shall never be again as we were.' 3 1 The Golden Bowl, Book Fourth, Chapter vi. * Op. cit., Book Sixth, Chapter iii. 3 The Wings of the Dove, Book X , Chapter xxxviii.

213

T H E C R A F T OF F I C T I O N A l t h o u g h this e v o c a t i v e q u a l i t y h a s b e e n r a r e in m o r e r e c e n t w r i t i n g , the m a s t e r y o f g o o d , lively, a u t h e n t i c d i a l o g u e is o n e o f the real a c h i e v e m e n t s o f m o d e r n fiction. M r . E . M . F o r s t e r is o n e o f t h e earliest novelists to e m p l o y a d i a l o g u e w h i c h is s i m p l e r a n d m o r e n a t u r a l t h a n J a m e s ' s a l t h o u g h r e m a i n i n g at the s a m e t i m e allusive a n d schooled b y the artist's c e n t r a l themes. M r . Forster's e a r for certain kinds o f i d i o m is u n e r r i n g : h e gets the slightly d a t e d slang used b y A z i z in A Passage to India e x a c t l y right, a n d h e is e q u a l l y h a p p y in h a n d l i n g the d e l i g h t f u l i n t e r c h a n g e s b e t w e e n G i n o a n d his I t a l i a n friends in Where Angels Fear to Tread, M r s . H o n e y c h u r c h ' s c o m f o r t a b l e E n g l i s h middle-class fluency in A Room with a View, a n d the clichés o f the insensitive P e m b r o k e s in The Longest Journey. A n y failures o c c u r w h e n there is some u n c e r t a i n t y in the c h a r a c t e r i z a t i o n itself ( M r . E m e r s o n in A Room with a View, S t e p h e n W o n h a m in The Longest Journey, L e o n a r d B a s t a n d J a c k y in Howards End). A later novelist, M r . G r a h a m G r e e n e , w i t h a n infallible ear for a n e v e n w i d e r r a n g e o f i d i o m (it serves h i m w e l l in the t h e a t r e ) , represents at its best t h e p r e s e n t - d a y skill in c o n t r i v i n g d i a l o g u e w h i c h is at o n c e n a t u r a l , lively, s u p p l e a n d f u n c t i o n a l . M r . G r e e n e is a b l e to c a t c h t h e s p e e c h r h y t h m s , t h e i n d i v i d u a l turns o f p h r a s e , used b y a l l sorts o f p e o p l e , f r o m t h e C o m m i s s i o n e r o f P o l i c e to the g a n g s t e r , t h e n e u r o t i c s u b u r b a n housewife to the s h a d y e x - p u b l i c - s c h o o l b o y , l a w y e r o r confidence-trickster, the b u s - d r i v e r to t h e w h i s k e y - p r i e s t o n t h e r u n , the d o w n - a t - h e e l waitress f r o m the s l u m to t h e successful secretary a n d w o m a n o f the w o r l d . E v e n at a m o r e p o p u l a r level the t e c h n i c a l a c h i e v e m e n t in d i f f e r e n t i a t i n g the i d i o m s o f a c o m p l i c a t e d society w h i l e f u r t h e r i n g t h e m e a n d a c t i o n b y r a p i d c o n v e r s a t i o n a l i n t e r c h a n g e is q u i t e r e m a r k a b l e . T h e gift m a y not serve a p r o f o u n d or 'significant' vision, b u t it h a s its o w n v a l u e as testimony in novels like B a l c h i n ' s The Small Back Room (1943) or C h a n d l e r ' s The Big Sleep ( 1 9 3 9 ) .

V IT

Background.

is OBVIOUS in a discussion of the n o v e l that, w i t h d u e re-

g a r d t o M r . Forster's w a r n i n g s , 1 o n e c a n n o t a v o i d talking o f 1

S e e Aspects of the Novel, C h a p t e r i.

214

BACKGROUND

its 'development'. It is a form which has sought continually the coherence and integration o f a 'pure' art, often coming very near to achieving these even though its survival depends on the credibility and solidity of the world which it portrays. T h e artistic self-consciousness w h i c h compels the novelist to make 'things of truth' from 'things of fact' b y adjusting them to their new context has gradually seen to it that the background and setting of his 'scene' shall be as integral to his design as his plot, his characters, his dialogue and his narrative technique. As he reduces w h a t M r . Liddell calls 'the vicious distinction between " s t y l e " and " s u b j e c t - m a t t e r " V the novelist no longer regards setting and background primarily as opportunities for the display of his descriptive powers in fine writing. Fielding seems to be uttering a playful w a r n i n g about the ludicrous aspects of this kind of self-indulgence w h e n he describes M r . Allworthy's 'noble' house in Tom Jones.2 T h e passage reveals an interestingly early taste for the Gothic, which seems to be quite genuine in spite of the fun. T h e place has an 'air of grandeur in it that struck you with awe, and rivalled the beauties of the best Grecian architecture', a view of 'an old ruined abbey, g r o w n over with i v y ' and grounds o w i n g their pleasing effect 'less to art than N a t u r e ' . 3 But M r . A l l w o r t h y is contemplating the whole scene from the top of w h a t J a n e Austen would call ' a considerable eminence' (from such a point of vantage Elizabeth Bennet first sees Pemberley 4 ) and Fielding heads his account, ' T h e Reader's Neck Brought into D a n g e r b y a Description.' Fielding's setting here, however, has no genuine imaginative relevance to his novel. S u c h relevance is encouraged in England only when certain effects of the cult of sensibility begin to make themselves felt in the novel. For Henry Mackenzie's unfortunate hero in The Man of Feeling particular settings evoke particular emotions: that Harley should be reminded, as he broods over a scene near his old home, of a painting by Salvator Rosa is the author's w a y of emphasizing this fact and simultaneously of suggesting the nature of Harley's present mood. 6 By the time of Mrs. Radcliffe's novels and, a little later, of Scott's, the 1

S e e A Treatise on the Novel, C h a p t e r vi.

2

See Tom Jones, Book I, Chapter iv. See Pride and Prejudice, Chapter xliii. * See The Man of Feeling, Chapter xxxiv.

4

215

3

Loc cit.

THE

CRAFT

OF

FICTION

'reader's n e c k ' is indeed in constant peril f r o m the vertiginous slopes a n d c r u m b l i n g towers n o w b r o u g h t to the foreground of the novelist's composition. T h e y are in this position because they h a v e a special f u n c t i o n to p e r f o r m b y d r a w i n g out h u m a n feeling for the mysterious a n d the strange, the ' a w e ' w h i c h Fielding a n d J a n e A u s t e n w o u l d rather p l a c e at a c o m i c distance. T h i s feeling persists a n d w h e n it is experienced b y the questioning t e m p e r a m e n t of the i m a g i n a t i v e V i c t o r i a n a new m e a n i n g is a d d e d to such settings: T h e moors in Wuthering Heights and Egdon Heath in The Return of the Native are . . . immensities which make numinous the human dramas that occur beside them. In such contexts Romanticism first intensifies human feeling and then sets the passionate avowals against a background which reduces them. 1 In a still later art, w h e r e all the w e i g h t shifts to the operations of the i n d i v i d u a l consciousness, the scene acquires significance through the personal e m o t i o n o f the chosen observer. A d a m V e r v e r , b r o o d i n g alone in the m o o n l i g h t at Fawns, suddenly makes u p his m i n d to propose to C h a r l o t t e Stant: Just then the autumn night seemed to clear to a view in which the whole place, everything round him, the wide terrace where he stood, the others, with their steps, below, the gardens, the park, the lake, the circling woods, lay there as under some strange midnight sun. It all met him during these instants as a vast expanse of discovery, a world that looked, so lighted, extraordinarily new. . . 2 A s far as ' b a c k g r o u n d ' is c o n c e r n e d , then, the novelist more a n d more, i n Miss C o m p t o n - B u r n e t t ' s words, 'carries the thing into the h u m a n w o r l d ' . 3 T o some extent, the novelist's social conscience has helped this t e n d e n c y . Zola 4 a n d Balzac seek to show h o w e n v i r o n m e n t shapes a m a n ' s life a n d helps to make him w h a t he is, a n d they d r a m a t i z e the interplay of character and setting w i t h a w e a l t h o f observation a n d detail in order to emphasize the social implications o f their portraits of life. But there is little d o u b t that in practice the novelist's attention to his setting expresses m o r e often t h a n not the delight w h i c h he feels 1 See Kenneth Allot, Introduction to Victorian Prose, 1830-1880 (1956), ed. Kenneth and M i r i a m Allott, pp. xxxviii-ix. * Henry James, The Golden Bowl, Book Second, Chapter v. 4 See below, pp. 302-3. • See below, p. 307.

2l6

BACKGROUND in the imaginative reconstruction of w h a t the real world offers him. W e sense this in Scott's account of transposing Melrose into something fresh and n e w , 1 in T r o l l o p e ' s description of his g r a d u a l mastery of 'the horizons and landscapes of a partly real, partly d r e a m - c o u n t r y ' , a in Stevenson's boyish m a p - m a k ing, 3 in H a r d y ' s creation of Wessex. 4 G e o r g e Eliot, whose novels so conscientiously analyse the clash of character and circumstance in small country towns, grants that she lavishes too m u c h time and space on visualizing the m e d i u m in w h i c h her characters move 5 (in Romola the effect in the end is, alas, to destroy all sense of vitality). A loving pleasure in evoking the atmosphere of place breathes through Flaubert's wonderfully subtle description of Y o n v i l l e l ' A b b a y e and is sensed again in T u r g e n e v ' s delicate, lyrical touch with the vast, sad landscapes of Russia. M r . Liddell claims that there are only two ways of looking at the background in a novel. If it is looked at objectively, it must be seen only in so far as it explains the action, like the scenery in a play. T h e piling up of details for their own sake is tedious and irrelevant. The subjective view of the background is only legitimate when it is the view of one of the characters; there is no excuse for the author's subjective view, except perhaps when he enters into the story as Chorus, in the capacity of Time and Fate. Dickens is present in such a capacity when he evokes the rain in Lincolnshire, the fog of the Law Courts, or other of his symbolic atmospheres. 6 T h e r e is little to a d d to \ l r . Liddell's excellent general discussion of the whole subject of b a c k g r o u n d in the novel, except perhaps to say that good novelists can get a w a y w i t h conveying a good many of their o w n feelings for a place b y skilfully handling their characters' subjective c o m m e n t a r y . T h i s is one of the advantages of the 'oblique and indirect view', and French novelists have been particularly good at making use of it. A n y one w h o has read Flaubert or Proust or François M a u r i a c is left with an extraordinarily vivid sense of w h a t it means to these writers to breathe and smell and feel the atmosphere of such places as Y o n v i l l e , Balbec or the small towns of the Landes. See below, pp. 299-300. See below, pp. 303-4. • See below, p. 301. 1

s

See below, p. 301. See below, pp. 301-2. • See Robert Liddell, Ioc. cit., p. 127. 217 2

4

T H E C R A F T OF F I C T I O N L a w r e n c e d i s p l a y s this p o w e r i n a n o v e l like Kangaroo, w h e r e , f o r o n c e , his k e e n f e e l i n g f o r p l a c e is m a d e t o serve the h u m a n situations w h i c h h e is a t t e m p t i n g t o e x p l o r e . ( O f course, his m a g n i f i c e n t t r a v e l sketches a r e a n o t h e r m a t t e r . ) O n e m i g h t a d d f u r t h e r to M r . L i d d e l l ' s c o m m e n t s b y s a y i n g t h a t ' b a c k g r o u n d ' is n a t u r a l l y closer t o ' c h a r a c t e r ' t h a n o n e m i g h t t h i n k . M r . L i d d e l l believes t h a t Fiction is the delineation of character in action, and the landscape in the background is merely incidental. 1 O b v i o u s l y this is n o t q u i t e all t h e t r u t h w h e n a p p l i e d to H a r d y or E m i l y B r o n t e , a l t h o u g h it is c e r t a i n l y true o f J a n e A u s t e n ( w h o m M r . L i d d e l l a d m i r a b l y discusses i n this c o n t e x t ) . W h a t is true is t h a t ' b a c k g r o u n d ' i n the n o v e l is, like ' c h a r a c t e r ' , p a r t o f a v e r b a l p a t t e r n . L i k e ' c h a r a c t e r ' , it r e q u i r e s o f t h e novelist a firm, c l e a r sense o f t h e a c t u a l w o r l d a n d at the s a m e t i m e the p o w e r to select a n d c o n v e n t i o n a l i z e those p a r t s o f it w h i c h m o s t s t r o n g l y a p p e a l to his i m a g i n a t i o n f o r the p u r p o s e o f s e r v i n g a n d s t r e n g t h e n i n g t h e e f f e c t o f his design. B a c k g r o u n d is a n a b s t r a c tion like e v e r y o t h e r e l e m e n t in t h e n o v e l , b u t a g a i n like all t h e o t h e r e l e m e n t s it is o n l y r e a l l y successful w h e n it is ' c a r r i e d i n t o the h u m a n world'.

VI Style N O V E L I S T ' S difficulties w i t h d i a l o g u e r e m i n d us m o r e s h a r p l y t h a n his o t h e r p r o b l e m s t h a t style p l a y s a p e c u l i a r l y i m p o r t a n t p a r t i n his success or f a i l u r e , b u t it is o b v i o u s t h a t o f t h e o t h e r activities e x p l o r e d in this c h a p t e r t h e r e is n o t o n e t h a t c o u l d e v e n b e g i n to b e c a r r i e d o u t w i t h o u t s o m e f e e l i n g for t h e possibilities o f l a n g u a g e . E v e r y t h i n g in a n o v e l is p a r t o f a d i v e r sified v e r b a l p a t t e r n : o n l y b y m a s t e r i n g t h e r a n g e a n d flexib i l i t y o f style w h i c h this p a t t e r n d e m a n d s c a n t h e novelist finally c o n v i n c e us t h a t his c o n c e r n lies w i t h s o m e t h i n g o t h e r t h a n the a b s t r a c t a n d t h e i d e a l . I t m u s t b e said a t o n c e t h a t this does n o t m e a n t h a t in o r d e r to b e a g o o d novelist it is necessary t o b e a n a c c u r a t e stylist. M o s t m o d e r n critics o f t h e n o v e l h a v e c o m e to r e a l i z e this. ' T h e g e n r e itself w o r k s b y e x h a u s t i v e p r e s e n t a t i o n r a t h e r t h a n e l e g a n t c o n c e n t r a t i o n ' , says M r . I a n W a t t , finding

THE

1

Loc. cit., p. 11. 218

STYLE

that 'incorrect' writers like Richardson or Defoe achieve a greater immediacy than Fielding, whose 'stylistic virtues tend to interfere with his technique as a novelist, because a patent selectiveness of vision destroys our belief in the reality of report, or at least diverts our attention from the content of the report to the skill of the reporter'. 1 Hardy's books, Mr. Robert Liddell recognizes, may 'contain great writing' but this does not make them great novels: 'The admirers of his novels admit freely— they cannot avoid it—his failure over plot and character as we generally understand these things when we speak of fiction.' Lord David Cecil was able to remind us in The Early Victorian Novelists of the specific novelist's gifts displayed by Dickens, Charlotte Bronte and George Eliot without finding that these writers were in any way masters of meticulous prose. Then there is the obvious question of translation: If 'the way in which words are used' is the only and final criterion, then English readers who do not know Russian have no right to praise the novels of Tolstoy or Dostoevsky, but only to praise the minds of Louise and Aylmer Maude, or of Constance Garnett. Yet there is a sufficiently respectable consensus of English opinion that Tolstoy and Dostoevsky are indeed great novelists to have evidential value.

This is how Mr. Liddell deals with the limitations of 'Practical Criticism'—the analysis of significant passages to test the qualities of a writer's mind and sensibility—as a principal method of evaluating a novel. 2 And yet it is still true that if the novelist is to work by 'exhaustive presentation' and at the same time keep within the limits of his design, he needs an especially wide command of language and some sense of the power of words. The web, then, or the pattern; a web at once sensuous and logical, an elegant and pregnant texture: that is style, that is the foundation of the art of literature. 3

The words are Stevenson's, who is a novelist, it is true, with something of the dandy in his style of writing. A web 'at once sensuous and logical', a texture 'elegant and pregnant', these 1 2

The Rise of the Novel, pp. 29-30. A Treatise on the Novel, pp. 24-5.

219

3

See below, p. 319.

T H E C R A F T OF F I C T I O N m a y s e e m t o b e m o r e in his line a n d J a m e s ' s t h a n in D i c k e n s ' s o r G e o r g e E l i o t ' s . G e o r g e S a n d expresses t h e i m p a t i e n c e o f s o m e c o m p r e h e n s i v e , discursive novelists b y t e l l i n g F l a u b e r t t h a t ' t h e w e l l - m a d e s e n t e n c e ' is ' s o m e t h i n g ' b u t n o t b y a n y m e a n s t h e w h o l e o f art-— it's a quarter at most, and w h e n the other three quarters a r e beautiful, people will overlook the one that isn't. 1 H e r a r g u m e n t s , e v e n in the o r i g i n a l F r e n c h , a r e a little m u d d l e d b u t o n e sees w h a t she is t r y i n g to s a y . A s o u n d e n t e r t a i n e r like T r o l l o p e e x p l a i n s t h e m i n i m u m d e m a n d s o f style in his c l e a r e r , m o r e s t r a i g h t f o r w a r d m a n n e r b y e x p l a i n i n g t h a t if a n o v e l i s t be confused, tedious, harsh, or unharmonious readers will certainly reject him . . . H e m a y indeed be pleasant without being correct, — a s I think can be proved by the works of more than one distinguished novelist. But he must be intelligible,—intelligible without trouble; and he must be harmonious. 2 H i s a d v i c e to t h e w o u l d - b e n o v e l i s t e m p h a s i z e s s t r o n g l y t h e d i s c i p l i n e a n d self-criticism w h i c h a s a t i s f a c t o r y style e x a c t s , w h e t h e r it is to b e ' a n e l e g a n t a n d p r e g n a n t t e x t u r e ' , o r s i m p l y w o r k m a n l i k e , intelligible, a n d free f r o m clichés and g r a m m a tical mistakes. A n i m p e t u o u s t a l e n t like t h a t o f G e o r g e S a n d m a y r e b e l a g a i n s t t h e a n g u i s h e d s e a r c h i n g f o r the right w o r d w h i c h k e e p s F l a u b e r t a w a k e n i g h t a f t e r n i g h t , b u t too o f t e n , p a r t i c u l a r l y in t h e e a r l y R o m a n t i c n o v e l s , h e r o w n ' w e l t e r o f helpless v e r b i a g e ' ( J a m e s uses the p h r a s e in d e s c r i b i n g t h e ' f l u i d p u d d i n g s ' o f c e r t a i n novelists 3 ) illustrates t h e d a n g e r o f a b a n d o n i n g t h e p u r s u i t o f c l a r i t y a n d exactness. G e o r g e S a n d ' s a t t i t u d e , so u n t y p i c a l o f t h e F r e n c h novelist g e n e r a l l y , is a c h a r a c t e r i s t i c a l l y rebellious response to the s o m e times c r i p p l i n g p r e o c c u p a t i o n w i t h stylistic correctness w h i c h distinguishes the F r e n c h n o v e l f r o m La Princesse de Cléves o n w a r d s . B u t this l o n g t r a d i t i o n o f d i s c i p l i n e h a s its c o m p e n s a t i n g virtues. T h e y a r e , i n d e e d , d i s c o v e r a b l e in G e o r g e S a n d herself w h e n she is at h e r best: she is one of the few French writers w h o keep us closely and truly intimate w i t h rural nature. She gives us the wild-flowers by their actual 1

See below, p. 314.

8 3

See below, p. 235. 220

See below, p. 315.

STYLE

names,—snowdrop, primrose, columbine, iris, scabious. Nowhere has she touched her native Berry and its little-known landscape, its campagnes ignorées, with a lovelier charm than in Valentine. . . . This is part of Matthew Arnold's tribute to her on her death, and he goes on to give what is virtually an English rendering of the passage which he finds so moving. 1 A feeling of responsibility for truth in handling words characterizes almost every pronouncement on stylo made by French novelists. 'I know of only one rule,' says Stendhal, 'style cannot be too clear, too simple.' 2 If Flaubert dreams of 'a beautiful style . . . as rhythmical as verse', he also dreams that it will be 'as precise as science'.3 The 'grand style' is achieved through 'logic and clarity', adds Zola, and he may be thinking of George Sand, as well as of the exuberance which produced Salammbô and made his own descriptions so lavish, when he complains 'we are rotten with lyricism'.4 Whatever it is that one wishes to say, writes Maupassant in his commemorative essay on Flaubert, 'there is only one word to express it, one verb to set in in motion and only one adjective to describe it': makeshifts will not do.6 It is not perhaps a less exacting sense of form which gives the corresponding remarks of English novelists a different emphasis so much as the different qualities of their own language. English is less 'exact' than French and its ambiguities are often put to the service of irony, metaphor and symbol with resulting emotional overtones and densities of connotation which are beyond the range of many French writers. The translator, in particular, notices these differences and M. D'Albert-Durade, for one, seems to have been nonplussed by difficulties in translating into French those many 'intermédiaires entre le style commun et le style élégant' which diversify the writing of even a comparatively unsubtle stylist like George Eliot. 4 But it is a sense of the potential vigour and the variety of English which makes Wilkie Collins, for example, reject Addison—how refreshingly!—as 'neat but trivial, not in the least vigorous or dramatic; but the very reverse'.7 He chooses to read Byron's letters instead: 'the best English I 1

See Matthew Arnold, 'George Sand' (1877); reprinted in Mixed Essays

(I879)1

4 4

3

See below, pp. 3 1 2 - 1 3 . See below, p. 317. ' See below, p. 315.

See below, p. 312. See below, pp. 3 1 6 - 1 7 . See below, p. 314.

5

221

T H E C R A F T OF

FICTION

know o f — p e r f e c t l y simple and clear, bright and strong'. 1 A similar feeling lies behind H a r d y ' s assertion that it is better not to have 'too m u c h style': the secret of vitality lies in b e i n g ' a little careless, or rather seeming to be, here and there', otherwise one's style is like worn half-pence—all the fresh images rounded off by rubbing, and no crispness or movement at all. 2 But this ease and freshness needs endless patiencc to achicvc. C o n r a d writes of the art w h i c h conceals art, it is only through an unremitting never-discouraged care for the shape and ring of sentences that an approach can be made to plasticity, to colour, and that the light of magic suggestiveness may be brought to play for an evanescent instant over the commonplace surface of words. 3 His letter to Sir H u g h Clifford summarizes the whole subject: . . . words, gioups of words, words standing alone, are symbols of life, have the power in their sound or their aspect to present the very thing you wish to hold up before the mental vision of your readers. T h e things 'as they are' exist in words; therefore words should be handled with care lest the picture, the image of truth abiding in facts should become distorted—or blurred. 4 But the novel's range of tone and emotional temperature makes the task enormously exacting. I n the eighteenth century w e recognize the high degree of skill w h i c h Fielding needs to master those variations of ironic tone w h i c h he artfully substitutes for the analytical interpretation of character. H e assures us that 'forming an accurate j u d g m e n t of style' requires more learning and good sense than any other branch of criticism, 5 and then challenges us by manipulating m a n y different kinds of style to suit his themes. W h e n M r . Wilson tells his life-story in Joseph Andrews, there is a change from the novelist's habitual lightness and wit to the sober, straightforward idiom of the penitent's autobiography (the same form as we find in Defoe's novels, but more 'educated').' See See 6 See ' See (1956), 1

3

2 See below, p. 318. below, p. 315. 4 See below, p. 319. below, p. 320. below, p. 308. Douglas Jefferson, Introduction to Eighteenth Century Prose, 1700-IJ80 p. xx.

222

STYLE

Furthermore, Fielding likes to leave the reader guessing and his poised style 'provides beautifully for tactical evasions'. 1 The whole question of Fielding's irony and the nature of its concealments and withdrawals needs more attention than it usually receives. Both his method and J a n e Austen's leave us wondering whether the peculiar force of their irony does not after all depend much less on the firmness of their moral beliefs than on the vividness with which they recognize the existence of ambiguity, contradiction and anomaly. The wit and politeness which colour with refinement even the crudest scenes of Fielding and thereby add to their comic effect, are quite alien to the style of his great contemporary, Richardson. 'We do not find in his writings', says Richardson's biographer, Mrs. Barbauld, 'the ease and elegance of good company, or the polished period of a finished author'. 8 But she admits that we find in their place an attractive immediacy and realism. The scope and vigour of his prose have lately received some deserved recognition from Mr. Allen, who quotes part of the famous brothel scene, 3 Mr. Jefferson, who illustrates the peculiar excellences of his epistolary manner, 4 and Dr. Kettle, who reminds us of the splendid impressionism in the scene where Clarissa is subjected to 'a refined and subtle torture' by her sister Arabella: What! silent still? But, Clary, won't you have a velvet suit? It would cut a great figure in a country church, you know: and the weather may bear it for a month yet to come. Crimson velvet, suppose! Such a fine complexion as yours, how it would be set off by it! . . . and do you sigh, love? Well then, as it will be a solemn wedding, what think you of black velvet, child? Silent still, Clary! Black velvet, so fair as you are, with those charming eyes, gleaming through a wintry cloud, like an April sun! Does not Lovelace tell you they are charming eyes! How lovely will you appear to every one! What! silent still, love! But about your laces, Clary! 6 The whole scene suggests what Mrs. Barbauld means when she says that Richardson has 'the accuracy and finish of a Dutch 1

2 Ibid. See below, p. 308. See Walter Allen, The English Novel (1954), pp. 4 5 - 6 . 4 See Douglas Jefferson, op. cit., pp. xxii-iii, 1 7 1 , 220. 6 Clarissa (Everyman ed.), Vol. I, letter xliv; see also Arnold Kettle, An Introduction to the English Novel ( 1 9 5 1 ) , Vol. I, Chapter iv. 3

223

T H E C R A F T OF F I C T I O N

painter with the fine ideas of an Italian one'. 1 But besides following the 'throb, throb, throb' of emotions—the phrase occurs in one of Anna Howe's letters*—Richardson has the 'awful directness' which Mr. Jefferson further illustrates with Clarissa's descriptions of Mr. Solmes 'sitting asquat' or 'hemming up for a speech and beginning to set his splay feet . . .', and with the Hogarthian scene at Mrs. Sinclair's death-bed. 3 In fact, the divergences of style between Fielding and Richardson correspond with those which separate Dickens and Thackeray a century later. For the Victorians, Thackeray is the 'correct' writer, capable of composing 'the polished period of the finished author', while Dickens is one of the 'incorrect' writers whom Trollope has in mind when discussing his contemporaries.4 Mrs. Barbauld's comment on Richardson's style as 'blemished with little flippancies of expression, new coined words, and sentences involved and ill-constructed', 6 anticipates Trollope's comments on Dickens's prose.® But by the time we reach the Victorians we find that the educated 'correctness' which serves the clear-cut social attitudes of Fielding, Goldsmith and Jane Austen is no longer usual, and that individual differences are almost too varied and numerous to disentangle. It is true that the 'awful directness' which characterizes the earnest, moralizing art of the bourgeois novelist—who has no real interest in 'distancing' refinements—is a quality which helps to place as Victorians novelists as different from each other as Dickens and Thackeray, Trollope and George Eliot. It appears in their close fidelity to the world of appearances and in their sermonizing interpolations (the modern reader flinches as the ominous phrases appear: 'But let the gentle-hearted reader . . .', 'Look back, good friend, at your own youth . . .', 'Do we not all at some time . . . ? ' ) . But a whole new range of tone accompanies the novel's widening themes and the strong feelings which they arouse. 'The modification of style by emotion' is demonstrated by Emily Bronte whose final sentence in Wuther1 See below, p. 309. * See Clarissa (Everyman ed.), Vol. I, letter x. 3 Douglas Jefferson, op. cit., pp. xxii-xxiii. * See Anthony Trollope, An Autobiography (1883), Chapter xiii. ' See below, p. 308. ' See Anthony Trollope, An Autobiography, loc. cit.

224

STYLE

ing Heights, as it is pointed out elsewhere, 'brings one into the presence of an imaginative effect seemingly beyond the powers of any English novelist of the eighteenth century': I lingered among them, under that benign fluttering among the heath, and hare-bells; breathing through the grass, and wondered imagine unquiet slumbers, for the sleepers

sky; watched the moths listened to the soft wind how any one could ever in that quiet earth.1

At the same time, the new insights of the analytical writer demand the 'sensitive control of tone and inflection' which distinguishes George Eliot's writing at its best and also prepares us for the subtle 'web', at once 'logical' and 'sensuous', spun by Henry James's introspective art. The emotions released by this insight often find expression in metaphor and image. In George Eliot, the background of scientific knowledge (G. H. Lewes's work was constantly at hand) sometimes gives peculiar force and directness to her imagery. She describes the red decorations hung out in the streets of Rome as breaking out 'like a disease of the retina', and talks of'the roar on the other side of silence' which would kill us if our perceptions were acute enough 'to hear the grass grow' or the squirrel's heart beating. 2 In James, of course, the whole quality, 'the magic suggestiveness', of his later work derives to a great extent from the use which he makes of extended metaphor. As with everything else in his art, these have their place in a closely-worked design. When the Prince in The Golden Bowl sees Charlotte Stant as a long, delicate but strongly-wrought purse filled with gold pieces,3 the image is playing a part in the rich pattern made by James's interrelated themes of money, art and love. To-day, the considered use of image and metaphor is still one of the noticeable techniques of English fiction. But James's disciplined use of compulsive images is rare, and so are the 'written' effects of Conrad's style, the extreme sensitivity to the musically rhythmical movements of prose which we find in Virginia Woolf, and the inventive energy of Joyce, whose use of language was one of the really invigorating contributions to 'Kenneth Allott, Introduction to Victorian Prose, 1830-1880 Kenneth and Miriam Allott, pp. xix-xx. 1 See Middlemarch, Book II, Chapter xx. 3 See The Golden Bowl, Book First, Chapter iii.

225

(1956), ed.

THE C R A F T OF FICTION the twentieth-century English novel. A s M r . Forster explains in his lecture, The Development of English Prose Between igi8 and J 939 (1945), the break-up of accepted social patterns in the period between the two wars brought 'freshness and informality and new usages and democratic good manners into literature', but it also brought 'vulgarity and flatness'. M r . Forster himself, together with certain other writers of more or less his o w n generation—his list omits his o w n n a m e but includes L y t t o n Strachcy, Virginia W o o l f , J a m e s J o y c e , D . H . L a w r e n c e and T . E. L a w r e n c e — w a n t e d 'to create something better than the bloodshed and dullness w h i c h have been creeping together over the w o r l d ' . 1 But their peculiarly sensitive and individual expressiveness is an esoteric tendency. M r . Forster's o w n easy, unbuttoned style is deceptive. Its civilized simplicity should help it to w e a r well, but it is the expression of a highly sophisticated personality, complex and subtly ironical, and as such m a n y of its qualities m a y be lost sight of to-day. Almost alone a m o n g contemporary novelists, M r . Evelyn W a u g h deliberately cultivates w i t h similar meticulousness b u t intentionally different effect a correct style penetrated b y robust satirical irony. It is his gesture of rebellion against the vulgarity and flatness of w h i c h M r . Forster speaks. A p a r t from M r . W a u g h a n d , perhaps, the mannered experiments of M r . H e n r y Green in such novels as Loving (1945), Back (1946) and Concluding (1948), the contemporary novelist gives us the impression that he would rather confine himself to the minimal qualities of a good style. His writing is not often distinguished b y a n unusually subtle feeling for words, it is hardly ever worked into ' a n elegant and pregnant texture', it is never robustly inventive in the J o y c e a n manner, and its sentence-structure is often loose, pedestrian and c o m m o n p l a c e . But it has learned to m o v e with a democratic freedom and pace, to cut out a great deal of helpless verbiage, a n d , a b o v e all, to make the most of the ordinary idioms of e v e r y d a y talk. T h e opening chapter of M r . L . P. Hartley's The Shrimp and the Anemone (1944) illustrates a d m i r a b l y both the strengths and some of the limitations of the modern English novelist's use of prose. 1

P. 15. See also below, p. 322.

226

TEXT I

Structural

Problems

UNITY AND COHERENCE EPIC REGULARITY . . . here is a regular story, which, though possibly it is not pursued with that epic regularity which would give it the name of an action, comes nearer to that perfection than the loose unconnected adventures in Don Quixote; of which you may transverse the order as you please, without any injury to the whole. Henry Fielding. Review of Charlotte Lennox's T h e Female Quixote (1752), T h e Covent Garden J o u r n a l (March '75s) • NOTHING FOREIGN TO THE DESIGN First, then, we warn thee not too hastily to condemn any of the incidents in this our history as impertinent and foreign to our main design, because thou dost not immediately conceive in what manner such incident may conduce to that design. This work may, indeed, be considered as a great creation of our own; and for a little reptile of a critic to presume to find fault with any of its parts, without knowing the manner in which the whole is connected, and before he comes to the final catastrophe, is a most presumptuous absurdity. Henry Fielding. The History of T o m Jones, A Foundling (1749), Book X, Chapter i. PLOT UNIFORM AND NARRATIVE UNBROKEN A novel may be considered as a dilated comedy; its plot therefore should be uniform, and its narrative unbroken: episode and 227

T H E C R A F T OF F I C T I O N digression are sparingly, if at all, to be admitted; the adventures of the Man of the Hill, in the Foundling, is an excrescence that offends against the grace and symmetry of the plot: whatever makes a pause in the main business, and keeps the chief characters too long out of sight, must be a defect. Richard Cumberland. Henry {1795), Book the Sixth, Chapter i. D I G R E S S I O N S A R E T H E SUNSHINE O F

READING

. . . in this long digression which I was accidentally led into, as in all my digressions (one only excepted) there is a master-stroke of digressive skill, the merit of which has all along, I fear, been overlooked by my r e a d e r , — n o t for want of penetration in h i m , — b u t because it is an excellence seldom looked for, or expected indeed, in a digression; and it is t h i s : — T h a t tho' m y digressions are all fair, as you o b s e r v e , — a n d that I fly off from w h a t I a m about, as far, a n d as often too, as any writer in Great Britain; yet I constantly take care to order affairs so that my main business does not stand still in m y absence. I was just going, for example, to have given you the great outlines of m y uncle Toby's most whimsical c h a r a c t e r ; — w h e n my aunt Dinah and the coachman came across us, and led us a vagary some millions of miles into the very heart of the planetary system: Notwithstanding all this, you perceive that the drawing of my uncle Toby's character went on gently all the t i m e ; — n o t the great contours of i t , — t h a t was impossible,—but some familiar strokes and faint designations of it, were here and there touch'd on, as w e went along, so that y o u are much better acquainted w i t h my uncle Toby n o w than y o u was before. B y this contrivance the machinery of my work is of a species by itself; two contrary motions are introduced into it, and reconciled, w h i c h were thought to be at variance with each other. In a word, m y work is digressive, and it is progressive t o o , — a n d at the same time . . . Digressions, incontestably, are the sunshine;—they are the life, the soul of r e a d i n g ! — t a k e them out of this book, for instance,—you m i g h t as well take the book along with t h e m ; — o n e cold eternal winter would reign in every page of it; restore them to the writer;—• he steps forth like a bridegroom,—bids All-hail; brings in variety, a n d forbids the appetite to fail. A l l the dexterity is in the good cookery a n d management of t h e m , so as not to be only for the advantage of the reader, but also o f the author, whose distress in this matter, is truly pitiable: For, if 228

STRUCTURAL

PROBLEMS

he begins a digression,—from that m o m e n t , I observe, his w h o l e w o r k stands stock s t i l l ; — a n d if he goes on with his m a i n w o r k , — then there is an end of his digression. — T h i s is vile w o r k . — F o r w h i c h reason, from the b e g i n n i n g o f this, y o u see, I have constructed the m a i n w o r k a n d the adventitious parts o f it with such intersections, a n d h a v e so c o m p l i c a t e d a n d involved the digressive and progressive movements, o n e w h e e l within another, that the whole machine, in general, has b e e n kept a - g o i n g ; — a n d w h a t ' s more, it shall be kept a-going these forty years, if it pleases the fountain of health to bless m e so l o n g w i t h life a n d good spirits. Laurence Sterne. T h e L i f e a n d Opinions of T r i s t r a m S h a n d y , G e n t l e m a n {1759), Book /, Chapter xxii.

NO D E T A C H E D

EPISODES

T h e r e is not in any of Richardson's works, one o f those d e t a c h e d episodes, thrown in like make-weights, to increase the b u l k o f the v o l u m e , w h i c h are so c o m m o n in other works: such is the story o f The Man of the Hill in T o m Jones. I f his works are l a b o u r e d into length, at least his prolixity is all bestowed u p o n the subject, a n d increases the effect of the story. Flashes o f h u m o u r , a n d transient touches of sensibility, shew, indeed, genius; b u t patient a n d persevering labour alone c a n finish a plan, a n d m a k e every part b e a r properly on the main subject. Anna Laetitia Barbauld. 'A biographical account of Samuel Richardson', T h e Correspondence o f S a m u e l R i c h a r d son (1804), Vol. I. DEFENDING QUIRKS AND

QUIDDITIES

Captain. A n d the story is, I hope, natural and p r o b a b l e ; c o m m e n c ing strikingly, proceeding naturally, ending h a p p i l y — l i k e the course o f a famed river, w h i c h gushes from the m o u t h o f some obscure river a n d romantic g r o t t o — t h e n gliding on, never pausing, never precipitating its course, visiting, as it were, by natural instinct, w h a t e v e r worthy subjects o f interest are presented by the country t h r o u g h w h i c h it passes—widening and deepening in interest as it flows o n ; a n d at length arriving at the final catastrophe as at some m i g h t y h a v e n , w h e r e ships of all kinds strike sail and yard? Author. H e y ! hey! w h a t the deuce is all this? W h y , 'tis Ercles' vein, and it w o u l d require some one m u c h more like Hercules t h a n I, to produce a story w h i c h should gush, and glide, a n d never pause, 229

T H E C R A F T OF

FICTION

a n d visit, a n d w i d e n , a n d d e e p e n , a n d all t h e rest o n ' t . I s h o u l d be c h i n - d e e p in t h e g r a v e , m a n , b e f o r e I h a d d o n e w i t h m y task; a n d , in t h e m e a n w h i l e , all t h e q u i r k s a n d q u i d d i t i e s w h i c h I m i g h t h a v e d e v i s e d for m y r e a d e r ' s a m u s e m e n t , w o u l d lie r o t t i n g in m y g i z z a r d , like S a n c h o ' s suppressed witticisms, w h e n h e w a s u n d e r his m a s t e r ' s d i s p l e a s u r e . — T h e r e n e v e r w a s a n o v e l w r i t t e n o n this p l a n w h i l e the w o r l d s t o o d . Captain. P a r d o n m e — T o m J o n e s . Author. T r u e , a n d p e r h a p s A m e l i a also. F i e l d i n g h a d h i g h notions o f the d i g n i t y o f a n a r t w h i c h h e m a y b e c o n s i d e r e d as h a v i n g f o u n d e d . H e c h a l l e n g e s a c o m p a r i s o n b e t w e e n t h e N o v e l a n d the E p i c . S m o l l e t t , L e S a g e , a n d others, e m a n c i p a t i n g themselves f r o m the strictness o f the rules h e has l a i d d o w n , h a v e w r i t t e n r a t h e r a history o f the m i s c e l l a n e o u s a d v e n t u r e s w h i c h b e f a l l a n i n d i v i d u a l in t h e c o u r s e o f life, t h a n the p l o t o f a r e g u l a r a n d c o n n e c t e d e p o p e i a , w h e r e e v e r y step b r i n g s us a p o i n t n e a r e r to t h e f i n a l c a t a s t r o p h e . T h e s e g r e a t masters h a v e b e e n satisfied i f t h e y a m u s e d the r e a d e r u p o n t h e r o a d ; t h o u g h the c o n c l u s i o n o n l y a r r i v e d b e c a u s e the tale m u s t h a v e a n e n d — j u s t as t h e t r a v e l l e r alights a t t h e inn, b e c a u s e it is e v e n i n g . Captain. A v e r y c o m m o d i o u s m o d e o f t r a v e l l i n g , for the a u t h o r at least. I n short, sir, y o u a r e o f o p i n i o n w i t h B a y e s — ' W h a t t h e d e v i l does t h e p l o t s i g n i f y , e x c e p t t o b r i n g i n fine t h i n g s ? ' Author. G r a n t t h a t I w e r e so, a n d t h a t I s h o u l d w r i t e w i t h sense a n d spirit a f e w scenes u n l a b o u r e d a n d loosely p u t together, b u t w h i c h h a d sufficient interest i n t h e m to a m u s e in o n e corner t h e p a i n o f b o d y ; in a n o t h e r to relieve a n x i e t y o f m i n d ; in a third p l a c e , t o u n w r i n k l e a b r o w b e n t w i t h t h e f u r r o w s o f d a i l y toil; in a n o t h e r , to fill t h e p l a c e o f b a d t h o u g h t s , or to suggest b e t t e r ; in y e t a n o t h e r t o i n d u c e a n idler t o s t u d y t h e history o f his c o u n t r y ; in all, s a v e w h e r e t h e p e r u s a l i n t e r r u p t e d t h e d i s c h a r g e o f serious duties, to f u r n i s h harmless a m u s e m e n t , — m i g h t n o t the a u t h o r o f s u c h a w o r k , h o w e v e r i n a r t i f i c i a l l y e x e c u t e d , p l e a d for his errors a n d negligences t h e e x c u s e o f the slave, w h o , a b o u t to b e p u n i s h e d for h a v i n g spread t h e false r e p o r t o f a v i c t o r y , s a v e d h i m s e l f b y e x c l a i m i n g — ' A m I to blame, O Athenians, w h o have given y o u one h a p p y day?' Sir Walter Scott. Introductory Epistle to T h e F o r t u n e s o f N i g e l (1822).

T H E ' M A N OF T H E H I L L ' IN T R O U B L E

AGAIN

T h e a t t e n t i o n o f the r e a d e r is n e v e r d i v e r t e d o r p u z z l e d b y unnecessary digressions, or r e c a l l e d to t h e m a i n story b y a b r u p t a n d start-

230

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PROBLEMS

ling r e c u r r e n c e s ; h e glides d o w n t h e n a r r a t i v e like a b o a t o n t h e surface o f some b r o a d n a v i g a b l e s t r e a m , w h i c h o n l y w i n d s e n o u g h t o g r a t i f y t h e v o y a g e r w i t h the v a r i e d b e a u t y o f its b a n k s . O n e e x c e p tion to this praise, o t h e r w i s e so w e l l m e r i t e d , o c c u r s in the story o f the O l d M a n o f t h e H i l l ; a n episode, w h i c h , in c o m p l i a n c e w i t h a custom introduced by Cervantes, and followed b y L e Sage, Fielding has thrust i n t o t h e m i d d l e o f his n a r r a t i v e , as h e h a d f o r m e r l y i n t r o d u c e d the H i s t o r y o f L e o n o r a , e q u a l l y unnecessarily a n d artificially, into t h a t o f Joseph Andrews. Sir Walter Scott. 'Henry Fielding',

L i v e s o f the Novelists

C I R C U L A T I N G T H E B L O O D OF T H E THROUGH THE INSERTED

(1827).

BOOK

STORY

I d o n ' t see t h e p r a c t i c a b i l i t y o f m a k i n g t h e H i s t o r y o f a SelfT o r m e n t e r , w i t h w h i c h I took g r e a t p a i n s , a w r i t t e n n a r r a t i v e . B u t I d o see t h e possibility o f m a k i n g it a c h a p t e r b y itself, w h i c h m i g h t e n a b l e m e t o dispense w i t h t h e necessity o f t h e t u r n e d c o m m a s . D o y o u think t h a t w o u l d b e better? I h a v e n o d o u b t t h a t a g r e a t p a r t o f F i e l d i n g ' s r e a s o n for t h e i n t r o d u c e d story, a n d S m o l l e t t ' s also, was, t h a t it is s o m e t i m e s r e a l l y impossible t o p r e s e n t , in a full b o o k , the i d e a it c o n t a i n s ( w h i c h y e t it m a y b e o n all c o u n t s d e s i r a b l e t o present), w i t h o u t s u p p o s i n g t h e r e a d e r t o b e possessed o f a l m o s t as m u c h r o m a n t i c a l l o w a n c e as w o u l d p u t h i m o n a level w i t h the writer. I n M i s s W a d e I h a d a n i d e a , w h i c h I t h o u g h t a n e w o n e , o f m a k i n g t h e i n t r o d u c e d story so fit i n t o s u r r o u n d i n g s i m p o s s i b l e o f separation f r o m the m a i n story, as t o m a k e t h e b l o o d o f t h e b o o k c i r c u l a t e t h r o u g h b o t h . B u t I c a n o n l y suppose, f r o m w h a t y o u s a y , t h a t 1 h a v e n o t e x a c t l y s u c c e e d e d in this. Charles Dickens. Letter to John Forster {1856). See John Forster, T h e L i f e o f C h a r l e s D i c k e n s {1874), Vol. Ill, Chapter vi. S T R I V I N G FOR

UNITY

. . . M y g o d , this n o v e l m a k e s m e b r e a k o u t in a c o l d s w e a t ! D o y o u k n o w h o w m u c h I ' v e w r i t t e n in five m o n t h s , since t h e e n d o f A u g u s t ? S i x t y - f i v e p a g e s ! E a c h p a r a g r a p h is g o o d in itself a n d t h e r e a r e some p a g e s t h a t a r e p e r f e c t , I feel c e r t a i n . B u t j u s t b e c a u s e o f this, it isn't getting on. It's a series o f w e l l - t u r n e d , o r d e r e d p a r a g r a p h s w h i c h d o n o t flow o n f r o m e a c h o t h e r . I shall h a v e to u n s c r e w t h e m , loosen t h e j o i n t s , as o n e does w i t h t h e masts o f a ship w h e n o n e w a n t s t h e sails to t a k e m o r e w i n d . . . Gustave Flaubert. Letter to Louise Colet {29-30 January C o r r e s p o n d a n c e (igoo). 231

1853),

T H E C R A F T OF F I C T I O N . . . I should like to write books where one has nothing to d o but write sentences (if one can say such a thing) just as in order to live one need only breathe air. W h a t irks m e is the trickiness o f planning, the combining o f effects, all the inner contrivances w h i c h yet belong to A r t , since the effect o f the style depends on them exclusively. Gustave Flaubert. Letter to Louise Colet (25-6 June Correspondance (1900)

1853),

. . . A good subject for a novel is the kind that comes all of a piece, in a single j e t . It is the mother-idea from w h i c h all the others flow. O n e isn't in the least free to write just anything. O n e doesn't choose one's subject. T h i s is something that neither the public nor the critic understands. Here lies the secret of a masterpiece, in the compatibility o f the subject and the author's temperament. Gustave Flaubert. Letter to Madame Roger des Genettes (1861?), Correspondance (1903). I ' v e just read Pickwick by Dickens. D o y o u know it? S o m e bits are magnificent; but w h a t a defective structure! A l l English writers are like that. W a l t e r Scott apart, they lack composition. T h i s is intolerable for us Latins. Gustave Flaubert. Letter to George Sand (12 July Correspondance (1903).

T W O MAJOR

1872),

FAULTS

Yes, that was and ever is m y greatest t o r m e n t — I never c a n control m y material. W h e n e v e r I write a novel, I crowd it u p w i t h a lot of separate stories and episodes; therefore the whole lacks proportion and harmony. Y o u have seen this astonishingly well; h o w frightfully I have always suffered from it, for I have always been a w a r e that it was so. A n d I have m a d e another great mistake besides: without calculating m y powers, I have allowed myself to be transported by poetic enthusiasm, and have undertaken an idea to which m y strength was not equal. (N.B. T h e force o f poetic enthusiasm is, to be sure, as for example w i t h V i c t o r H u g o , always stronger than the artistic force. Even in Pushkin one detects this disproportion.) But / destroy myself thereby. Feodor Dostoevsky. Letter to Nikolay Nikolayevitch Strachov (23 April 1871), Letters {1914), transl. Ethel Colburn Mayne. 232

STRUCTURAL

PROBLEMS

EPISODES D I S T R A C T

ATTENTION

T h e r e should be no episodes in a novel. Every sentence, every word, through all those pages, should tend to the telling of the story. Such episodes distract the attention of the reader, and always do so disagreeably. W h o has not felt this to be the case even with ' T h e Curious Impertinent' and with the history o f ' T h e M a n of the Hill'? A n d if it be so w i t h Cervantes and Fielding, who can hope to succeed? T h o u g h the novel which you have to write must be long, let it be all one. A n d this exclusion of episodes should be carried down to the smallest details. Every sentence and every word used should tend to the telling o f the story. 'But,' the young novelist will say, 'with so many pages before me to be filled, how shall I succeed if I thus confine m y s e l f ; — h o w a m I to know beforehand what space this story of mine will require? T h e r e must be the three volumes, or the certain number o f magazine pages which I have contracted to supply. I f I m a y not be discursive should occasion require, how shall I complete m y task? T h e painter suits the size of his canvas to his subject, and must I in m y art stretch my subject to my canvas?' This undoubtedly must be done by the novelist; and if he will learn his business, m a y be done without injury to his effect. H e m a y not paint different pictures on the same canvas, which he will do if he allow himself to wander a w a y to matters outside his own story; but b y studying proportion in his work, he m a y teach himself so to tell his story that it shall naturally fall into the required length. T h o u g h his story should be all one, yet it m a y have many parts. T h o u g h the plot itself m a y require but few characters, it m a y be so enlarged as to find its full development in many. There m a y be subsidiary plots, w h i c h shall all tend to the elucidation of the main story, and which will take their place as part of one and the same w o r k , — a s there m a y be m a n y figures on a canvas which shall not to the spectator seem to form themselves into separate pictures. Anthony Trollope. A n Autobiography {1883), Chapter xii. T H E A R T I S T MUST S U P P R E S S M U C H A N D OMIT MORE . . . the artist has one main and necessary resource which he must, in every case and upon any theory, employ. H e must, that is, suppress much and omit more. He must omit w h a t is tedious or irrelevant, a n d suppress what is tedious and necessary. But such facts as, in regard to the main design, subserve a variety of purposes, he will perforce and eagerly retain. A n d it is the mark of the very highest order of creative art to be woven exclusively of such. There, 233

T H E C R A F T OF F I C T I O N

any fact that is registered is contrived a double or a treble debt to pay, and is at once an ornament in its place, and a pillar in the main design. Nothing would find room in such a picture that did not serve, at once, to complete the composition, to accentuate the scheme of colour, to distinguish the planes of distance, and to strike the note of the selected sentiment; nothing would be allowed in such a story that did not, at the same time, expedite the progress of the fable, build up the characters, and strike home the moral or the philosophical design. But this is unattainable. As a rule, so far from building the fabric of our works exclusively with these, we are thrown into a rapture if we think we can muster a dozen or a score of them, to be the plums of our confection. And hence, in order that the canvas may be filled or the story proceed from point to point, other details must be admitted. They must be admitted, alas! upon a doubtful title; many without marriage robes. Thus any work of art, as it proceeds towards completion, too often—I had almost written always—loses in force and poignancy of main design. Our little air is swamped and dwarfed among hardly relevant orchestration; our little passionate story drowns in a deep sea of descriptive eloquence or slipshod talk. Robert Louis Stevenson. 'A Mote on Realism1, (¡883); reprinted in The Art of Writing (igig).

T H E N O V E L A L L ONE AND

CONTINUOUS

I cannot imagine composition existing in a series of blocks, nor conceive, in any novel worth discussing at all, of a passage of description that is not in its intention narrative, a passage of dialogue that is not in its intention descriptive, a touch of truth of any sort that does not partake of the nature of incident, and an incident that derives its interest from any other source than the general and only source of the success of a work of art—that of being illustrative. A novel is a living thing, all one and continuous, like every other organism, and in proportion as it lives will it be found, I think, that in each of the parts there is something of each of the other parts. The critic who over the close texture of a finished work will pretend to trace a geography of items will mark some frontiers as artificial, I fear, as any that have been known to history. Henry James. ' The Art of Fiction' (1884); reprinted in Partial Portraits (1888).

234

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PROBLEMS

FOCUS (5 J u l y 1900) . . . T h e most important thing in a work of art is that it should have a kind o f focus, i.e. there should be some place where all the rays meet or from w h i c h they issue. A n d this focus must not be able to be completely explained in words. T h i s indeed is one of the significant facts about a true work o f a r t — t h a t its content in its entirety can be expressed only by itself. Leo Tolstoy. T a l k s w i t h Tolstoy (1922), ed. A. B. Goldenveizer, transl. S. S. Koteliansky and Virginia Woolf (1923). F O R M IS S U B S T A N C E D o n ' t let anyone persuade y o u — t h e r e are plenty o f ignorant a n d fatuous duffers to try to do i t — t h a t strenuous selection a n d comparison are not the very essence of art, and that F o r m is [not] substance to that degree that there is absolutely no substance without it. F o r m alone takes, and holds and preserves, substance—saves it from the welter of helpless verbiage that w e swim in as in a sea of tasteless tepid pudding, and that makes one ashamed of an art capable of such degradations. Tolstoi and Dostoevsky are fluid puddings, though not tasteless, because the a m o u n t of their o w n minds and souls in solution in the broth gives it savour a n d flavour, thanks to the strong, rank quality of their genius a n d their experience. But there are all sorts of things to be said o f them, a n d in particular that w e see how great a vice is their lack o f composition, their defiance of economy and architecture, directly they are emulated and imitated; then, as subjects of emulation, models, they quite give themselves a w a y . T h e r e is nothing so deplorable as a work of art with a leak in its interest; and there is no such leak of interest as through commonness of form. Its opposite, the found (because the sought-for) form is the absolute citadel and tabernacle of interest. Henry James. Letter to Hugh Walpole (ig May Selected Letters (ig^6). ON A P P E A R I N G T O

rgi2),

DIGRESS

T h e first thing that you h a v e to consider w h e n writing a novel is your story, and then your s t o r y — a n d then y o u r story! I f you wish to feel more dignified you m a y call it your 'subject.' A n y digression will make a longueur, a p a t c h over w h i c h the m i n d will progress heavily. Y o u m a y have the most wonderful scene from real life that you might introduce into y o u r book. B u t if it does not m a k e your 235

T H E C R A F T OF

FICTION

subject progress it will divert the attention o f the reader. A g o o d novel needs all the attention the reader c a n give it. A n d then some more. O f course, y o u must a p p e a r to digress. T h a t is the a r t w h i c h conceals y o u r A r t . T h e reader, y o u should premise, will a l w a y s dislike y o u a n d y o u r book. H e thinks it a n insult that y o u should d a r e to c l a i m his attention, a n d if lunch is a n n o u n c e d or there is a ring at the bell he will w e l c o m e the digression. S o you will provide h i m w i t h w h a t he thinks are d i g r e s s i o n s — w i t h occasions on w h i c h he thinks he m a y let his attention relax. . . . But really not one single thread must ever escape y o u r purpose. Ford Madox Ford. It W a s the Nightingale Part II, Chapter ii.

M A S T E R Y OF

{1934),

PERSPECTIVE

. . . if there is one gift m o r e essential to a novelist than another it is the p o w e r o f c o m b i n a t i o n — t h e single vision. T h e success of the masterpieces seem to lie not so m u c h in their freedom from f a u l t s — i n d e e d w e tolerate the grossest errors in t h e m a l l — b u t in the i m m e n s e persuasiveness o f a m i n d w h i c h has completely mastered its perspective. Virginia Wool/. 'The Novels of E. M. T h e D e a t h of the M o t h {1342).

NO

Forster',

SUPERFLUITIES

I should like to strip the novel o f every element that does not specifically b e l o n g to t h e novel. Just as p h o t o g r a p h y in the past freed p a i n t i n g f r o m its concern for a certain sort of accuracy, so the p h o n o g r a p h will eventually no d o u b t rid the novel of the kind o f d i a l o g u e w h i c h is d r a w n from the life a n d w h i c h realists take so m u c h pride in. O u t w a r d events, accidents, traumatisms, belong to the c i n e m a . T h e novel should leave t h e m to it. E v e n the description o f the characters does not seem to m e properly to belong to the genre. N o ; this does not seem to m e the business of the pure novel (and in art, as in e v e r y t h i n g else, purity is the only thing I care a b o u t ) . N o m o r e t h a n it is the business of the d r a m a . A n d don't let it b e a r g u e d that the dramatist does not describe his characters because the spectator is intended to see them transposed alive on the stage; for h o w often on the stage a n actor irritates and baffles us because he is so unlike the person o u r o w n imagination had figured

236

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PROBLEMS

better without h i m . T h e novelist does not as a rule rely sufficiently on the reader's imagination. André Gide. Les F a u x Monnayeurs, Part I, Chapter viii (1925), transl. Dorothy Bussy {1952). H e [i.e. Paul Claudel] speaks w i t h the greatest respect of T h o m a s Hardy a n d Joseph C o n r a d , and with the greatest scorn of English writers in general ' w h o have never learned that the rule of "nothing unessential" is the first condition of art'. André Gide. T h e Journals of A n d r é Gide, V o l . I : 1889-1913» transl. Justin O'Brien (1948). T h e novel requires a certain slowness of progress that allows the reader to live with the characters and become accustomed to them. If they do things and make remarks that, knowing them, w e might just as well have been able to invent for them, this does not matter; and w e are even amused to recognize them in such things and not to be surprised. W h e n I wanted to tell of them only w h a t is disconcerting, and leave to the reader the duty of filling out their characters with everything that did not particularly distinguish them, I was probably not well advised. It m a y seem that I did not know how to make t h e m come alive because I so readily gave them u p as soon as their outline was sufficiently sketched, and w h e n portraying them more fully and following them at greater length told nothing more about them. This is because I have always been bothered in the work of others b y all that is not essential and that the alert reader's imagination can supply for itself. A concern for the lightest possible baggage has always tormented me, and I do not like to let time make that abstract of the essentials which I can just as well achieve at once. A l l o w only the indispensable to subsist was the rule I imposed on myself—nowhere more difficult and dangerous to apply than for the novel. This amounts to counting too m u c h on that collaboration w h i c h the reader will supply only when the writer has already been able to secure it. André Gide. T h e Journals of A n d r é Gide, V o l . I l l : 1928-1939, transl. Justin O'Brien (194.9)

P A T T E R N AND RHYTHM T h a t then is the disadvantage of a rigid pattern. It m a y externalize the atmosphere, spring naturally from the plot, but it shuts the doors on life and leaves the novelist doing exercises, generally in the 237

T H E C R A F T OF

FICTION

d r a w i n g - r o o m . Beauty has arrived, but in too tyrannous a guise. I n p l a y s — t h e plays of R a c i n e , for instance—she m a y b e justified, because b e a u t y c a n be a great empress on the stage, and reconcile us to the loss of the men w e knew. But in the novel, her t y r a n n y as it grows powerful grows petty, and generates regrets w h i c h sometimes take the form of books like Boon. T o put it in other words, the novel is not c a p a b l e o f as m u c h artistic development as t h e d r a m a : its h u m a n i t y or the grossness of its material (use w h i c h e v e r phrase y o u like) hinder it. T o most readers of fiction the sensation from a pattern is not intense enough to justify the sacrifices that m a d e it, a n d their verdict is 'Beautifully done, but not worth d o i n g . ' Still this is not the end of our quest. W e will not give u p the hope o f beauty yet. C a n n o t it be introduced into fiction b y some other m e t h o d than pattern? L e t us edge rather nervously t o w a r d s the idea of'rhythm'. R h y t h m is sometimes quite easy. Beethoven's Fifth S y m p h o n y , for instance, starts with the r h y t h m 'diddy d u m , ' w h i c h w e c a n all hear and t a p to. But the symphony as a whole has also a r h y t h m — d u e mainly to the relation between its m o v e m e n t s — w h i c h some people can hear but no one can tap to. This second sort o f r h y t h m is difficult, a n d whether it is substantially the same as the first sort only a musician could tell us. W h a t a literary m a n w a n t s to say t h o u g h is that the first kind of r h y t h m , the d i d d y d u m , can b e f o u n d in certain novels and m a y give them b e a u t y . A n d the other r h y t h m , the difficult o n e — t h e r h y t h m of the F i f t h S y m p h o n y as a w h o l e — I cannot quote y o u any parallels for that in fiction, yet it m a y be present. R h y t h m in the easy sense is illustrated b y the w o r k o f M a r c e l Proust . . . W e are not obliged to agree with Proust's musical descriptions (they are too pictorial for m y o w n taste), but w h a t w e must admire is his use o f r h y t h m in literature, and his use of something w h i c h is akin b y nature to the effect it has to p r o d u c e — n a m e l y a musical phrase. H e a r d b y various people—first b y S w a n n , then b y the hero — t h e phrase of V i n t e u i l is not tethered: it is not a b a n n e r such as w e find G e o r g e M e r e d i t h u s i n g — a double blossomed cherry tree to a c c o m p a n y C l a r a Middleton, a yacht in smooth waters for C e c i l i a H a l k e t t . A banner can only reappear, r h y t h m c a n develop, a n d the little phrase has a life of its own, unconnected w i t h the lives of its auditors, as with the life of the m a n w h o composed it. It is almost a n actor, but not quite, and that 'not quite' means that its p o w e r has gone towards stitching Proust's book together from the inside, and towards the establishment of beauty and t h e ravishing 238

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PROBLEMS

of the reader's memory. There are times when the little phrase— from its gloomy inception, through the sonata, into the sextet— means everything to the reader. There are times when it means nothing and is forgotten, and this seem to me the function of rhythm in fiction; not to be there all the time like a pattern, but by its lovely waxing and waning to fill us with surprise and freshness and hope. Done badly, rhythm is most boring, it hardens into a symbol and instead of carrying us on it trips us up. With exasperation we find that Galsworthy's spaniel John, or whatever it is, lies under the feet again; and even Meredith's cherry trees and yachts, graceful as they are, only open the windows into poetry. I doubt that it can be achieved by the writers who plan their books beforehand, it has to depend on a local impulse when the right interval is reached. But the effect can be exquisite, it can be obtained without mutilating the characters, and it lessens our need of an external form. T h a t must suffice on the subject of easy rhythm in fiction: which may be defined as repetition plus variation, and which can be illustrated by examples. Now for the more difficult question. Is there any effect in novels comparable to the effect of the Fifth Symphony as a whole, where, when the orchestra stops, we hear something that has never actually been played? The opening movement, the andante, and the trio-scherzo-trio-finale-trio-finale that composes the third block, all enter the mind at once, and extend one another into a common entity. This common entity, this new thing, is the symphony as a whole, and it has been achieved mainly (though not entirely) by the relation between the three big blocks of sound which the orchestra has been playing. I am calling this relation 'rhythmic'. If the correct musical term is something else, that does not matter; what we have now to ask ourselves is whether there is any analogy to it in fiction. I cannot find any analogy. Yet there may be one; in music fiction is likely to find its nearest parallel. The position of the drama is different. The drama may look towards the pictorial arts, it may allow Aristotle to discipline it, for it is not so deeply committed to the claims of human beings. H u m a n beings have their great chance in the novel. They say to the novelist: 'Recreate us if you like, but we must come in,' and the novelist's problem, as we have seen all along, is to give them a good run and to achieve something else at the same time. Whither shall he turn? not indeed for help, but for analogy. Music, though it does not employ human beings, though it is governed by intricate laws, nevertheless does offer in its final expression a type of beauty which fiction might achieve in its own way. Expansion. That is the idea the 239

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novelist m u s t c l i n g to. N o t c o m p l e t i o n . N o t r o u n d i n g o f f b u t o p e n i n g o u t . W h e n t h e s y m p h o n y is o v e r w e feel t h a t the notes a n d tunes c o m p o s i n g it h a v e b e e n l i b e r a t e d , t h e y h a v e f o u n d in t h e r h y t h m of t h e w h o l e their i n d i v i d u a l f r e e d o m . C a n n o t t h e novel b e like that? Is n o t t h e r e s o m e t h i n g o f it i n War and Peace? . . . S u c h a n u n t i d y b o o k . Y e t , as w e r e a d it, d o n o t g r e a t c h o r d s b e g i n t o s o u n d b e h i n d us, a n d w h e n w e h a v e finished d o e s n o t e v e r y i t e m — e v e n t h e c a t a l o g u e o f s t r a t e g i e s — l e a d a l a r g e r e x i s t e n c e t h a n w a s possible at the time? E. M. Forster. A s p e c t s o f the N o v e l (1927), SYMPHONIC

Chapter viii.

EFFECT

. . . I f e v e r the e f f e c t o f a s y m p h o n y w e r e a c h i e v e d in a n o v e l it will b e in t h a t scene [i.e. t h e cornices agricoles~\. I t m u s t s o u n d o u t t h r o u g h t h e w h o l e c o n c o u r s e , o n e m u s t h e a r , all a t t h e s a m e t i m e , the b e l l o w i n g o f bulls, t h e sighs o f l o v e a n d t h e w o r d s o f t h e officials. T h e sun shines o n all this, a n d gusts o f w i n d flutter t h e g r e a t hats. B u t t h e most d i f f i c u l t passages o f Saint Antoine w e r e c h i l d ' s p l a y in comparison. I can only reach m y dramatic effect by the interplay of dialogue a n d contrast of character. Gustave Flaubert. Letter to Louise Colet (12 October Correspondance (igoo).

1853),

T H E A R T OF F U G U E ' W h a t I s h o u l d like to d o is s o m e t h i n g like the a r t o f f u g u e w r i t i n g . A n d I c a n ' t see w h y w h a t w a s possible in m u s i c should b e impossible in l i t e r a t u r e . . .' André Gide. L e s F a u x M o n n a y e u r s (7325), Part II, Chapter iii, transl. Dorothy Bussy {1952).

T H E M U S I C A L I Z A T I O N OF

FICTION

T h e m u s i c a l i z a t i o n o f fiction. N o t in the symbolist w a y , b y subo r d i n a t i n g sense to s o u n d . (Pleuvent les bleus baisers des astres tactiturnes. M e r e glossolalia.) B u t o n a l a r g e scale, in t h e c o n s t r u c t i o n . M e d i t a t e o n B e e t h o v e n . T h e c h a n g e s o f m o o d s , t h e a b r u p t transitions. ( M a j e s t y a l t e r n a t i n g w i t h a j o k e , for e x a m p l e , in the first m o v e m e n t o f t h e B flat m a j o r q u a r t e t . C o m e d y s u d d e n l y h i n t i n g at prodigious a n d t r a g i c solemnities in t h e s c h e r z o o f the C s h a r p m i n o r quartet.) M o r e interesting still t h e m o d u l a t i o n s , n o t m e r e l y f r o m one k e y t o a n o t h e r , b u t f r o m m o o d to m o o d . A t h e m e is stated, t h e n d e v e l o p e d ,

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pushed out of shape, imperceptibly deformed, until, though still recognizably the same, it has become quite different. In sets of variations the process is carried a step further. Those incredible Diabelli variations, for example. The whole range of thought and feeling, yet all in organic relation to a ridiculous little waltz tune. Get this into a novel. How? T h e abrupt transitions are easy enough. All you need is a sufficiency of characters and parallel, contrapuntal plots. While Jones is murdering a wife, Smith is wheeling the perambulator in the park. You alternate the themes. More interesting, the modulations and variations are also more difficult. A novelist modulates by reduplicating situations and characters. He shows several people falling in love, or dying, or praying in different ways — d'ssimilars solving the same problem. Or, vice versa, similar people confronted with dissimilar problems. In this way you can modulate through all the aspects of your theme, you can write variations in any number of different moods. Aldous Huxley. Point Counter Point (igsS), Chapter xxii.

PLOT AND STORY T H E NOVELIST MUST H A V E A STORY TO T E L L

I have from the first felt sure that the writer, when he sits down to commence his novel, should do so, not because he has to tell a story, but because he has a story to tell. The novelist's first novel will generally have sprung from the right cause. Some series of events, or some development of character, will have presented itself to his imagination,—and this he feels so strongly that he thinks he can present his picture in strong and agreeable language to others. He sits down and tells his story because he has a story to tell; as you, my friend, when you have heard something which has at once tickled your fancy or moved your pathos, will hurry to tell it to the first person you meet. But when that first novel has been received graciously by the public and has made for itself a success, then the writer, naturally feeling that the writing of novels is within his grasp, looks about for something to tell in another. He cudgels his brains, not always successfully, and sits down to write, not because he has something which he burns to tell, but because he feels it to be incumbent on him to be telling something. As you, my friend, if you are very successful in the telling of that first story, will become ambitious of further story-telling, and will look out for anecdotes,—in 241

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t h e n a r r a t i o n o f w h i c h y o u will n o t i m p r o b a b l y sometimes distress your audience. Anthony Trollope. A u t o b i o g r a p h y {1883), Chapter xii. NO S T O R Y A T A L L IS BEST . . . w h a t I s h o u l d like to d o is to w r i t e a b o o k a b o u t n o t h i n g , a b o o k w i t h n o reference to a n y t h i n g outside itself, w h i c h w o u l d stand o n its o w n b y t h e i n n e r s t r e n g t h o f its style, j u s t as t h e e a r t h holds itself w i t h o u t s u p p o r t in s p a c e , a b o o k w h i c h w o u l d h a v e h a r d l y a n y s u b j e c t , or at a n y r a t e o n e t h a t is b a r e l y p e r c e p t i b l e , if t h a t w e r e possible. T h e best w o r k s a r e those w i t h least m a t t e r ; the n e a r e r the expression a p p r o a c h e s t h o u g h t , the m o r e t h e w o r d is silenced b y it a n d disappears, t h e n t h e m o r e b e a u t i f u l the w o r k b e c o m e s . I think t h e f u t u r e o f A r t lies this w a y . I see it g r o w i n g m o r e a n d m o r e s p i r i t u a l i z e d as it d e v e l o p s , f r o m E g y p t i a n p y l o n s to G o t h i c spires, f r o m t h e t w e n t y t h o u s a n d verses o f t h e I n d i a n poets to B y r o n ' s single j e t s . F o r m as it g r o w s skilful b e c o m e s a t t e n u a t e d ; it a b a n d o n s all l i t u r g y , rule, m e t r i c ; it a b a n d o n s the epic for the novel, verse for p r o s e ; it n o l o n g e r r e c o g n i z e s o r t h o d o x y a n d is as free as t h e imagination that produces it. T h i s emancipation from materialism is f o u n d e v e r y w h e r e a n d all g o v e r n m e n t s f o l l o w it, f r o m eastern d e s p o t i s m to t h e s o c i a l i s m o f the f u t u r e . T h a t is w h y t h e r e a r e n e i t h e r g o o d n o r b a d subjects, a n d o n e c o u l d a l m o s t l a y it d o w n as a n a x i o m t h a t , f r o m the p o i n t o f v i e w o f p u r e A r t , there a r e n o n e at all, style b e i n g itself a l o n e a n absolute w a y o f l o o k i n g at things. Gustave Flaubert. Letter to Louise Colet (16 January Correspondance (igoo).

1832),

W R I T I N G A S T O R Y FOR P U B L I C A T I O N IN WEEKLY

PARTS

H a v i n g g o n e t h r o u g h y o u r M . S . . . . I w r i t e these few f o l l o w i n g w o r d s a b o u t it. Firstly, w i t h a l i m i t e d r e f e r e n c e t o its unsuitability to these pages. S e c o n d l y , w i t h a m o r e e n l a r g e d r e f e r e n c e to the merits o f the story itself. I f y o u w i l l take a n y p a r t o f it a n d c u t it u p (in f a n c y ) into the small portions i n t o w h i c h it w o u l d h a v e t o b e d i v i d e d here for only a m o n t h ' s s u p p l y , y o u w i l l (I t h i n k ) at o n c e d i s c o v e r the impossibility o f p u b l i s h i n g it in w e e k l y parts. T h e s c h e m e o f the chapters, the m a n n e r o f i n t r o d u c i n g t h e p e o p l e , t h e progress o f the interest, the p l a c e s in w h i c h the p r i n c i p a l places fall, a r e all hopelessly against it. 242

S T R U C T U R A L PROBLEMS It would seem as though the story were never coming, and hardly ever moving. There must be a special design to overcome that specially trying mode of publication, and I cannot better express the difficulty and labour of it than by asking you to turn over any two weekly numbers of A Tale of Two Cities, or Great Expectations, or Bulwer's story, or Wilkie Collins', or Reade's, or At the Bar, and notice how patiently and expressly the thing has to be planned for presentation in these fragments, and yet for afterwards fusing together as an uninterrupted whole . . . . . . As a mere piece of mechanical workmanship, I think all your chapters should be shorter; that is to say, that they should be subdivided. Also, when you change from narrative to dialogue, or vice versd, you should make the transition more carefully. Also, taking the pains to sit down and recall the principal landmarks in your story, you should make them far more elaborate and conspicuous than the rest. Even with these changes I do not believe that the story would attract the attention due to it, if it were published even in such monthly portions as the space of 'Fraser' would admit of. Even so brightened, it would not, to the best of my judgement, express itself piecemeal. It seems to me to be so constituted as to require to be read 'off the reel.' As a book in two volumes I think it would have good claims to success. But I suppose the polishing I have hinted at (not a meretricious adornment, but positively necessary to good work and good art) to have been first thoroughly administered. Charles Dickens. Letter to Mrs. Brookfield {so February 1866), Letters (1880).

A STORY SHOULD BE A N ORGANISM Probably few of the general body denominated the reading public consider, in their hurried perusal of novel after novel, that, to a masterpiece in story there appertains a beauty of shape, no less than to a masterpiece in pictorial or plastic art, capable of giving to the trained mind an equal pleasure. T o recognize this quality clearly when present, the construction of the plot, or fable, as it used to be called, is to be more particularly observed . . . in a reading for sentiments and opinions, than in a reading merely to discover the fates of the chief characters. For however real the persons, however profound, witty, or humorous the observations, as soon as the book comes to be regarded as an exemplification of the art of story-telling, 243

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the story naturally takes the first place, a n d the e x a m p l e is not noteworthy as such unless the telling b e artistically carried on. T h e distinguishing feature o f a well rounded tale has been defined in various ways, b u t the general reader need not be burdened w i t h m a n y definitions. Briefly, a story should be a n organism. T o use the words applied to the epic b y A d d i s o n , whose artistic feeling in this kind w a s o f the subtlest, 'nothing should g o before it, be intermixed w i t h it, or follow after it, that is n o t related to it.' T e s t e d b y such considerations as these there are obviously m a n y volumes o f fiction remarkable, and even great, in their c h a r a c t e r - d r a w i n g , their feeling, their philosophy, w h i c h are quite second-rate in their structural quality as narratives. Instances will o c c u r to everyone's m i n d ; b u t instead of dwelling u p o n these it is m o r e interesting to n a m e some w h i c h most nearly fulfill the conditions. T h e i r fewness is remarkable a n d bears out the opinion expressed earlier in this essay, that the art o f novel-writing is as yet in its tentative stage only. A m o n g them Tom Jones is usually pointed out as a near a p p r o a c h to perfection in this as in some other characteristics; t h o u g h , speaking for myself, I do not perceive its great superiority in artistic form over some other novels o f lower reputation. T h e Bride of Lammermoor is a n almost perfect specimen of form, w h i c h is the m o r e r e m a r k a b l e in that Scott, as a rule, depends m o r e u p o n episode, dialogue a n d description, for exciting interest, than u p o n the well-knit interdependence o f parts. A n d the first thirty pages o f Vanity Fair m a y b e instanced as well-nigh complete in artistic presentation, along w i t h their other magnificent qualities. Herein lies Richardson's real if only c l a i m to be p l a c e d on a level w i t h Fielding: the artist spirit that he e v e r y w h e r e displays in the structural parts of his w o r k . . . . I h a v e dwelt the m o r e particularly upon this species o f excellence, not because I consider it to rank in quality beside truth of feeling a n d action, but because it is one w h i c h so few non-professional readers enjoy and appreciate w i t h o u t some kind of preliminary direction. It is usually the latest to be discerned b y the novel consumer, a n d it is often never discerned b y h i m or her at all. E v e r y intelligent reader w i t h a little experience of life can perceive truth to nature in some degree; but a great reduction must b e m a d e for those w h o can trace in narrative the quality w h i c h makes the A p o l l o a n d the A p h r o d i t e a c h a r m in marble. Thomas Hardy. 1 The profitable reading of fiction' (1888); reprinted in L i f e a n d A r t (ig25).

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S T O R Y T H E S P O I L E D C H I L D OF

ART

There is always, of course, for the story-teller, the irresistible determinant and the incalculable advantage of his interest in the story as such; it is ever, obviously, overwhelmingly, the prime and precious thing (as other than this I have never been able to see it); as to which what makes for it, with whatever headlong energy, m a y be said to pale before the energy with which it simply makes for itself. It rejoices, none the less, at its best, to seem to offer itself in a light, to seem to know, and with the very last knowledge, what it's about —liable as it yet is at moments to be caught by us with its tongue in its cheek and absolutely no warrant but its splendid impudence. Let us grant then that the impudence is always there—there, so to speak, for grace and effect and allure-, there, above all, because the Story is just the spoiled child of art, and because, as we are always disappointed when the pampered don't 'play up', we like it, to that extent, to look all its character. It probably does so, in truth, even when we most flatter ourselves that we negotiate with it by treaty. Henry James. Preface to T h e Ambassadors (1903), first printed in the New York edition of the Novels and Stories (/907-/7), Vol. XXI. A S T O R Y MUST C O N V E Y

A SENSE OF

INEVITABILITY

Before everything a story must convey a sense of inevitability: that which happens in it must seem to be the only thing that could have happened. O f course a character may cry: ' I f I had then acted differently how different everything would now be.' T h e problem of the author is to make his then action the only action that character could have taken. Ford Madox Ford. Joseph Conrad, A Personal Remembrance {1924), Part III, Section ii. OH D E A R Y E S — T H E

NOVEL

TELLS A

STORY

. . . Y e s — o h dear yes—the novel tells a story. T h a t is the fundamental aspect without which it could not exist. T h a t is the highest factor common to all novels, and I wish that it was not so, that it could be something different—melody, or the perception of the truth, not this low atavistic form. For the more we look at the story (the story that is a story, mind), the more we disentangle it from the finer growths that it supports, the less we shall find to admire. It runs like a backbone—or may I say a tape-worm, for its beginning and end are arbitrary. It is

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immensely old—goes back to neolithic times, perhaps to palaeolithic. Neanderthal man listened to stories, if one may j u d g e by the shape of his skull. T h e primitive audience was an audience of shockheads, gaping round the camp-fire, fatigued with contending against the mammoth or the woolly rhinoceros, and only kept awake by suspense. W h a t would happen next? T h e novelist droned on, and as soon as the audience guessed what happened next, they either fell asleep or killed him. W e can estimate the dangers incurred when we think of the career of Scheherazade in somewhat later time. Schcherazadc avoided her fate because she knew how to wield the weapon of suspense—the only literary tool that has any effect upon tyrants and savages. Great novelist though she was,—exquisite in her descriptions, tolerant in her judgments, ingenious in her incidents, advanced in her morality, vivid in her delineation of character, expert in her knowledge of three Oriental capitals—it was yet on none of these gifts that she relied when trying to save her life from her intolerable husband. T h e y were but incidental. She only survived because she managed to keep the king wondering what would happen next. Each time she saw the sun rising she stopped in the middle of a sentence, and left him gaping. ' A t this moment Scheherazade saw the morning appearing, and, discreet, was silent.' This uninteresting little phrase is the backbone of the One Thousand and One Mights, the tape-worm by which they are tied together and the life of a most accomplished princess was preserved. W e are all like Scheherazade's husband, in that we want to know what happens next. T h a t is universal and that is why the backbone of a novel has to be a story. Some of us want to know nothing else — t h e r e is nothing in us but primeval curiosity, and consequently our other literary judgments are ludicrous. A n d now the story can be defined. It is a narrative of events arranged in their time sequence —dinner coming after breakfast, Tuesday after M o n d a y , decay after death, and so on. Q u a story, it can have only one merit: that of making the audience want to know what happens next. A n d conversely it can only have one fault: that of making the audience not want to know what happens next. These are the only two criticisms that can be made on the story that is a story. It is the lowest and simplest of literary organisms. Y e t it is the highest factor common to all the very complicated organisms known as novels. W h e n we isolate the story like this from the nobler aspects through which it moves, and hold it out on the forceps—wriggling and interminable, the naked worm of time—it presents an appearance that is both unlovely and dull. But we have much to learn from it. . . . E. M. Forster. Aspects of the Novel {1927), Chapter it. 246

S T R U C T U R A L PROBLEMS DOING A W A Y W I T H P L O T

With regard to novels, I should like to see one undertaken without any plot at all. I do not mean that it should have no story; but I should like some writer of luxuriant fancy to begin with a certain set of characters—one family for instance—without any preconceived design further than one or two incidents and dialogues, which would naturally suggest fresh matter, and so proceed in this way, throwing in incident and characters profusely, but avoiding all stage tricks and strong situations, till some death or marriage should afford a natural conclusion to the book. Mary Russell Mitford. Letter to Sir William Elford (13 May ¡815), Letters {1925) • P L O T T H E MOST INSIGNIFICANT P A R T OF A T A L E

Doctor Thome has, I believe, been the most popular book that I have written . . . The plot of Dr. Thome is good, and I am led therefore to suppose that a good plot,—which, to my own feeling, is the most insignificant part of a tale,—is that which will most raise it or most condemn it in the popular judgment. The plots of Tom Jones and of Ivanhoe are almost perfect, and they are probably the most popular novels of the schools of the last and of this century; but to me the delicacy of Amelia, and the rugged strength of Burley and Meg Merrilies, say more for the power of those great novelists than the gift of construction shown in the two works I have named. A novel should give a picture of common life enlivened by humour and sweetened by pathos. To make that picture worthy of attention, the canvas should be crowded with real portraits, not of individuals known to the world or to the author, but of created personages impregnated with traits of character which are known. To my thinking, the plot is but the vehicle for all this; and when you have the vehicle without the passengers, a story of mystery in which the agents never spring to life, you have but a wooden show. There must, however be a story. You must provide a vehicle of some sort. Anthony Trollope. An Autobiography (1883), Chapter vii. CONVENTIONAL PLOT A VULGAR

COERCION

. . . the vulgar coercion of conventional plot, which is become hardly of higher influence on imaginative representation than a detailed 'order' for a picture sent by a rich grocer to an eminent painter— allotting a certain portion of the canvas to a rural scene, another to 247

THE CRAFT OF FICTION a fashionable g r o u p , w i t h a request for a m u r d e r in the middle distance, a n d a little c o m e d y to relieve it. George Eliot. 'Leaves from a Notebook: Historic imagination', T h e Impressions of T h e o p h r a s t u s Such (i8yg).

SURPRISING PROPERTIES OF PLOT Let us define a plot. W e have defined a story as a n a r r a t i v e of events a r r a n g e d in their time sequence. A plot is also a n a r r a t i v e of events, t h e emphasis falling on causality. ' T h e king died a n d then the q u e e n died,' is a story. ' T h e king died, a n d then the q u e e n died of g r i e f ' is a plot. T h e time-sequence is preserved, b u t t h e sense of causality overshadows it. O r a g a i n : ' T h e q u e e n died, no one knew why, until it was discovered t h a t it was t h r o u g h grief at t h e d e a t h of t h e king.' T h i s is a plot w i t h a mystery in it, a f o r m c a p a b l e of high d e v e l o p m e n t . It suspends the time-sequence, it moves as far a w a y f r o m t h e story as its limitations will allow. Consider t h e d e a t h of t h e q u e e n . If it is in a story we say ' a n d then?' If it is in a plot we ask 'why?' T h a t is t h e f u n d a m e n t a l difference between these two aspects of the novel. A plot c a n n o t be told t o a g a p i n g audience of cave m e n or to a t y r a n n i c a l sultan or to their m o d e r n descendant t h e movie-public. T h e y can only be kept a w a k e by ' a n d t h e n — a n d t h e n ' — t h e y can only supply curiosity. But a plot d e m a n d s intelligence a n d m e m o r y also. . . . M e m o r y a n d intelligence are closely connected, for unless we r e m e m b e r we c a n n o t u n d e r s t a n d . If by the time the q u e e n dies we h a v e forgotten t h e existence of t h e king we shall never m a k e out w h a t killed her. T h e p l o t - m a k e r expects us to r e m e m b e r , we expect h i m to leave no loose ends. Every action or w o r d in a plot o u g h t to c o u n t ; it o u g h t to b e economical a n d spare; even w h e n complicated it should be organic a n d free f r o m d e a d m a t t e r , it m a y b e difficult o r easy, it m a y a n d should contain mysteries, b u t it o u g h t not to mislead. A n d over it, as it unfolds, will hover the m e m o r y of the r e a d e r (that dull glow of the m i n d of which intelligence is t h e bright a d v a n c i n g edge) a n d will constantly r e a r r a n g e a n d reconsider, seei n g new clues, new chains of cause a n d effect, a n d t h e final sense (if t h e plot has been a fine one) will not be of clues or chains, b u t of s o m e t h i n g aesthetically c o m p a c t , something w h i c h m i g h t have been shown b y t h e novelist straight away, only if he h a d shown it straight a w a y it would never have b e c o m e beautiful. W e c o m e u p against b e a u t y h e r e — f o r t h e first time in o u r e n q u i r y : b e a u t y at which a novelist should never a i m , t h o u g h h e fails if he does not achieve it. I will c o n d u c t b e a u t y to h e r proper place later o n . M e a n w h i l e 248

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please a c c e p t h e r as p a r t o f a c o m p l e t e d p l o t . S h e looks a little surprised a t b e i n g there, b u t b e a u t y o u g h t t o look a little surprised: it is t h e e m o t i o n t h a t best suits h e r f a c e , as Botticelli k n e w w h e n h e p a i n t e d h e r risen f r o m the w a v e s , b e t w e e n t h e w i n d s a n d t h e flowers . . . E. M. Forster. A s p e c t s o f the N o v e l (1927),

P L O T T H E S U P P O R T OF A

Chapter v.

NOVEL

I n e v e r see w h y m u r d e r a n d perversion o f j u s t i c e a r e not n o r m a l subjects for a p l o t , o r w h y t h e y a r e p a r t i c u l a r l y E l i z a b e t h a n o r V i c t o r i a n , as s o m e r e v i e w e r s s e e m to t h i n k . B u t I t h i n k it is b e t t e r for a novel to h a v e a p l o t . O t h e r w i s e it h a s n o s h a p e , a n d i n c i d e n t s t h a t h a v e n o p a r t in a f o r m a l w h o l e s e e m t o h a v e less s i g n i f i c a n c e . I a l w a y s wish t h a t K a t h e r i n e M a n s f i e l d ' s ' A t t h e B a y ' w a s cast in a f o r m a l m o u l d . A n d a plot gives rise to s e c o n d a r y scenes, t h a t b r i n g o u t personality, a n d g i v e s c o p e for r e v e a l i n g c h a r a c t e r . I f t h e p l o t were taken out of a book, a good deal of w h a t m a y seem unconnected w i t h it, w o u l d h a v e t o g o . A p l o t is like t h e b o n e s o f a person, n o t interesting like expression o r signs o f e x p e r i e n c e , b u t the s u p p o r t of the whole . . . . . . A s r e g a r d s plots I find real life n o h e l p a t all. R e a l life seems to h a v e n o plots. A n d as I t h i n k a plot d e s i r a b l e a n d a l m o s t necessary, I h a v e this e x t r a g r u d g e a g a i n s t life. B u t I t h i n k t h e r e a r e signs t h a t strange things h a p p e n , t h o u g h t h e y d o n o t e m e r g e . I b e l i e v e it w o u l d g o ill w i t h m a n y o f us, i f w e w e r e f a c e d w i t h a s t r o n g t e m p t a tion, a n d I suspect t h a t w i t h s o m e o f us it does g o ill. Ivy Compton-Burnett. 'A Conversation Between I. and M. Jourdain', O r i o n {1945).

BEGINNINGS AND

Compton-Bumett

ENDINGS

(i) . . . I k n o w n o t o f a n y essential d i f f e r e n c e b e t w e e n this [i.e. t h e epistolary m e t h o d ] , a n d a n y o t h e r w a y o f w r i t i n g novels, save o n l y , t h a t b y m a k i n g use o f letters, t h e w r i t e r is freed f r o m the r e g u l a r b e g i n n i n g s a n d conclusions o f stories, w i t h s o m e o t h e r formalities, in w h i c h the r e a d e r o f taste finds n o less ease a n d a d v a n t a g e , t h a n the a u t h o r himself. Henry Fielding. Preface to Sarah F a m i l i a r L e t t e r s . . . (1747).

249

Fielding's

T H E C R A F T OF

FICTION

. . . Beginning with the breaking up of a large party of guests at a country house: house left lcnely with the shrunken family in it: guests spoken of, and introduced to the reader that way.—OR, beginning with a house abandoned by a family fallen into reduced circumstances. Their old furniture there, and numberless tokens of their old comforts. Inscriptions under the bells downstairs—'Mr. John's Room,' 'Miss Caroline's Room.' Great gardens trimly kept to attract a tenant: but no one in them. A landscape without figures. Billiard room: table covered up, like a body. Great stables without horses, and great coach-houses without carriages. Grass growing in the chinks of the stone-paving, this bright cold winter day. Downhilb. . . . Open a story by bringing two strongly contrasted places and strongly contrasted sets of people, into the connexion necessary for the story, by means of an electric message. Describe the message— be the message—flashing along through space, over the earth, and under the sea. Charles Dickens. John Forster, The Life of Charles Dickens (.1874), Vol. Ill, Chapter xii.

(iii) Beginnings are always troublesome 'rj/j.iav navrog' 1 as Bulwer would say (I like to follow great models). Even Macaulay's few pages of introduction to his 'Introduction1 in the English History are the worst bit of writing in the book. George Eliot. Letter to Sarah Hennell, August 15, 1859, The George Eliot Letters {1954) Conclusions are the weak point of most authors, but some of the fault lies in the very nature of a conclusion, which is at best a negation. George Eliot. Letter to John Blackwood, May 1, 1857, The George Eliot Letters {1954).

(iv) (9 April 1888) . . . M y instinct tells me that at the end of a novel or a story I must artfully concentrate for the reader an impression 1

Hesiod, Work and Days, 40: nXeov ijfiuni jtavrd;. 250

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PROBLEMS

of the entire work, a n d therefore must casually mention something about those w h o m I h a v e already presented. Perhaps I a m in error. Anton Chekhov. Letters o n Literature (1924), ed. Louis S. Friedland.

(v) T h e disadvantage of the dramatic opening is that after the dramatic passage is done you have to go b a c k to getting y o u r characters in, a proceeding that the reader is apt to dislike. T h e danger with the reflective opening is that the reader is apt to miss being gripped at once b y the story. Openings are therefore of necessity always affairs of compromise. Ford Madox Ford. Joseph C o n r a d , A Personal R e m e m b r a n c e (1924), Part III, Section i.

(vi) X . maintains that a good novelist, before he begins to write his book, o u g h t to know how it is g o i n g to finish. A s for me, w h o let mine flow where it will, I consider that life never presents us with anything w h i c h m a y not be looked upon as a fresh starting point, no less than as a termination. ' M i g h t be c o n t i n u e d ' — t h e s e are the words w i t h w h i c h I should like to finish m y Coiners. André Gide. Les F a u x M o n n a y e u r s (1925), Part III, Chapter xiii, transí. Dorothy Bussy (1952).

THE TIME-FACTOR F I E L D I N G SETS T H E

PACE

T h o u g h w e have properly enough entitled this our work, a history, and not a lile, nor a n apology for a life, as is more in fashion; yet w e intend in it rather to pursue the method o f those writers w h o profess to disclose the revolutions of countries, than to imitate the painful and voluminous historian, w h o , to preserve the regularity of his series, thinks himself obliged to fill u p as m u c h paper with the detail o f months a n d years in w h i c h nothing remarkable happened, as he employs u p o n those noble eras w h e n the greatest scenes h a v e been transacted o n the h u m a n stage. Such histories as these do, in reality, very m u c h resemble a newspaper, w h i c h consists of just the same n u m b e r of words, whether there be any news in it or not. T h e y m a y likewise be compared to 251

T H E C R A F T OF FICTION a s t a g e - c o a c h , w h i c h p e r f o r m s constantly the s a m e course, e m p t y as well as full. T h e w r i t e r , i n d e e d , seems to think himself o b l i g e d to keep even p a c e w i t h time, w h o s e a m a n u e n s i s he is; a n d , like his master, travels as s l o w l y t h r o u g h centuries o f monkish dullness, w h e n the w o r l d seems to h a v e b e e n asleep . . . N o w it is o u r purpose, in the ensuing pages, to pursue a c o n t r a r y m e t h o d . W h e n a n y e x t r a o r d i n a r y scene presents itself (as w e trust will o f t e n b e the case), w e shall spare no pains n o r p a p e r t o o p e n it a t l a r g e to o u r readers; b u t i f w h o l e years should pass w i t h o u t p r o d u c i n g a n y t h i n g w o r t h y h i s notice, w e s h a l l not b e a f r a i d o f a c h a s m in o u r history, b u t shall hasten on to matters o f c o n s e q u e n c e , a n d l e a v e such periods o f t i m e t o t a l l y u n o b s e r v e d . . . . M y r e a d e r then is not to b e surprised, if, in the course o f this w o r k , he shall find some c h a p t e r s v e r y short, a n d others a l t o g e t h e r as l o n g ; some t h a t c o n t a i n o n l y the t i m e o f a single d a y , a n d others that comprise years; in a w o r d , if m y history sometimes seems to stand still, a n d sometimes to fly. F o r all w h i c h I shall n o t look o n myself as a c c o u n t a b l e to a n y c o u r t o f critical j u r i s d i c t i o n w h a t e v e r ; f o r as I a m , in reality, t h e f o u n d e r o f a n e w p r o v i n c e o f w r i t i n g , so I a m a t liberty to m a k e w h a t l a w s I please therein. A n d these laws, m y readers, w h o m I consider as m y subjects, are b o u n d to b e l i e v e in a n d to o b e y ; w i t h w h i c h t h a t t h e y m a y r e a d i l y a n d cheerfully c o m p l y , I d o h e r e b y assure t h e m t h a t I shall p r i n c i p a l l y r e g a r d their ease a n d a d v a n t a g e in all s u c h institutions. . . . Henry Fielding. T o m J o n e s {1749), Book II, Chapter i.

FORESHORTENING: THE PROBLEM A L W A Y S THERE AND A L W A Y S F O R M I D A B L E T o re-read Roderick Hudson w a s to find o n e r e m a r k so p r o m p t l y a n d so u r g e n t l y prescribed t h a t I c o u l d a t o n c e o n l y t a k e it as p o i n t i n g almost too stern a m o r a l . It stared m e in the f a c e t h a t the t i m e - s c h e m e o f the story is q u i t e i n a d e q u a t e , a n d ' p o s i t i v e l y to t h a t d e g r e e t h a t the fault b u t j u s t fails to w r e c k it . . . I felt too, all the while, how m a n y more adventures and complications m y young m a n w o u l d h a v e h a d to k n o w , h o w m u c h m o r e e x p e r i e n c e it w o u l d h a v e t a k e n , in short, either to m a k e h i m g o u n d e r or to m a k e h i m t r i u m p h . T h e g r e a t e r c o m p l e x i t y , the superior t r u t h , w a s all m o r e or less present to m e ; o n l y the question was, t o o d r e a d f u l l y , h o w to m a k e it present to the reader? H o w boil d o w n so m a n y facts in the a l e m b i c , so t h a t the distilled result, the r e p r o d u c e d a p p e a r a n c e , s h o u l d h a v e intensity, l u c i d i t y , b r e v i t y , b e a u t y , all t h e merits r e q u i r e d for m y effect? H o w , w h e n it w a s a l r e a d y so difficult, as I 252

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PROBLEMS

f o u n d , t o p r o c e e d e v e n as I was p r o c e e d i n g ? It d i d n ' t h e l p , alas, it only m a d d e n e d , to r e m e m b e r that Balzac would h a v e k n o w n h o w , a n d w o u l d h a v e y e t a s k e d n o a d d i t i o n a l credit for it. A l l t h e diffic u l t y I c o u l d d o d g e still struck m e , at a n y r a t e , as l e a v i n g m o r e t h a n e n o u g h ; a n d yet I w a s a l r e a d y consciously in presence h e r e , o f t h e most interesting q u e s t i o n t h e artist h a s t o c o n s i d e r . T o g i v e t h e i m a g e a n d sense o f c e r t a i n t h i n g s w h i l e k e e p i n g t h e m s u b o r d i n a t e to his p l a n , k e e p i n g t h e m in r e l a t i o n t o m a t t e r s m o r e i m m e d i a t e a n d a p p a r e n t , to g i v e all t h e sense, in a w o r d , w i t h o u t all t h e substance, or all t h e s u r f a c e , a n d so t o s u m m a r i s e a n d f o r e s h o r t e n , so to m a k e v a l u e s b o t h rich a n d s h a r p , t h a t the m e r e procession o f items a n d profiles is n o t o n l y , f o r t h e o c c a s i o n , s u p e r s e d e d , b u t is, for essential q u a l i t y , a l m o s t ' c o m p r o m i s e d ' — s u c h a case o f d e l i c a c y proposes itself at e v e r y t u r n to t h e p a i n t e r o f life w h o wishes b o t h to treat his chosen s u b j e c t a n d t o c o n f i n e his necessary p i c t u r e . I t is only b y d o i n g s u c h things t h a t a r t b e c o m e s exquisite, a n d it is o n l y b y b e c o m i n g e x q u i s i t e t h a t it keeps c l e a r o f b e c o m i n g v u l g a r , repudiates t h e coarse industries t h a t m a s q u e r a d e in its n a m e . T h i s eternal time-question is a c c o r d i n g l y , f o r t h e novelist, a l w a y s t h e r e a n d a l w a y s f o r m i d a b l e ; a l w a y s insisting o n t h e effect o f t h e g r e a t lapse a n d passage, o f t h e ' d a r k b a c k w a r d a n d a b y s m ' , b y t h e t e r m s o f truth, a n d o n the e f f e c t o f c o m p r e s s i o n , o f c o m p o s i t i o n a n d f o r m , b y the terms o f literary a r r a n g e m e n t . It is r e a l l y a business to t e r r i f y all b u t the stoutest h e a r t s i n t o a b j e c t omission a n d m u t i l a t i o n , t h o u g h the terror w o u l d i n d e e d b e m o r e g e n e r a l w e r e t h e g e n e r a l consciousness of the d i f f i c u l t y g r e a t e r . I t is not b y consciousness o f difficulty, in truth, t h a t t h e story-teller is m o s t l y ridden; so p r o digious a n u m b e r o f stories w o u l d o t h e r w i s e s c a r c e get t h e m s e l v e s (shall it b e called?) ' t o l d ' . N o n e w a s e v e r v e r y w e l l t o l d , I t h i n k , under the l a w o f m e r e e l i m i n a t i o n — i n o r d i n a t e l y as t h a t d e v i c e a p p e a r s in m a n y q u a r t e r s t o b e d e p e n d e d o n . Henry James. Preface to R o d e r i c k H u d s o n (1876), first printed in the New York edition of the N o v e l s a n d Stories (7907-/7), Vol. I.

A L L E G I A N C E T O ' T I M E BY T H E

CLOCK'

. . . daily life, w h a t e v e r it m a y b e r e a l l y , is p r a c t i c a l l y c o m p o s e d o f two l i v e s — t h e life in t i m e a n d the life b y v a l u e s — a n d o u r c o n d u c t reveals a d o u b l e a l l e g i a n c e . ' I o n l y s a w h e r for five m i n u t e s , b u t it w a s w o r t h i t . ' T h e r e y o u h a v e b o t h a l l e g i a n c e s in a single s e n t e n c e . A n d w h a t t h e story does is t o n a r r a t e t h e life in t i m e . A n d w h a t t h e entire novel d o e s — i f it is a g o o d n o v e l — i s t o i n c l u d e t h e life b y

253

T H E C R A F T OF F I C T I O N values as well; using devices hereafter to be examined. It, also, pays a double allegiance. But in it, in the novel, the allegiance to time is imperative: no novel could b e written without it. Whereas in daily life the allegiance m a y not be necessary: w e d o not know, and the experience of certain mystics suggests, indeed, that it is not necessary, a n d that w e are quite mistaken in supposing that M o n d a y is followed b y T u e s d a y , or death b y decay. It is always possible for y o u or m e in daily life to deny that time exists a n d act accordingly even if w e become unintelligible and are sent b y our fellow citizens to w h a t they choosc to call a lunatic asylum. B u t it is never possible for a novelist to deny time inside the fabric o f his novel: he must cling however lightly to the thread of his story, he must touch the interminable tapeworm, otherwise he becomes unintelligible, which, in his case, is a blunder. I a m trying not to be philosophic about time, for it is (experts assure us) a most dangerous h o b b y for an outsider, far more fatal than place; and quite eminent metaphysicians have been dethroned through referring to it improperly. I a m only trying to explain that as I lecture now I hear that clock ticking or do not hear it ticking, I retain or lose the time sense; whereas in a novel there is always a clock. T h e author m a y dislike his clock. Emily Bronte in Wuthering Heights tried to hide hers. Sterne, in Tristram Shandy, turned his upside down. M a r c e l Proust, still more ingenious, kept altering the hands, so that his hero was at the same period entertaining a mistress to supper and playing ball with his nurse in the park. A l l these devices are legitimate, but none of them contravene our thesis: the basis of a novel is a story, and a story is a narrative of events arranged in a time sequence. E. M. Forster. Aspects of the N o v e l (1927), Chapter ii.

T H E P R E S E N T N E S S OF T H E

PAST

. . . It was all settled at the moment when, unable to await the morning to press m y lips upon m y mother's face, I had taken my resolution, I had j u m p e d out of bed and had stood in my nightshirt b y the window through w h i c h the moonlight shone, until I heard M . Swann go a w a y . M y parents had accompanied him, I had heard the door open, the sound of bell a n d closing door. A t that very moment, in the Prince de Guermantes' mansion, I heard the sound of my parents' footsteps and the metallic, shrill, fresh echo of the little bell which announced M . Swann's departure and the coming o f my mother u p the stairs; I heard it now, its very self, though its peal rang out in the far distant past. T h e n thinking of all the events

254

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PROBLEMS

w h i c h intervened b e t w e e n the instant w h e n I h a d heard it a n d the G u e r m a n t e s ' reception I was terrified to think that it w a s i n d e e d that bell w h i c h r a n g within m e still, w i t h o u t m y b e i n g able to a b a t e its shrill sound, since, no longer r e m e m b e r i n g h o w the c l a n g i n g used to stop, in order to learn, I h a d to listen to it a n d I w a s c o m pelled to close m y ears to the conversations o f the masks a r o u n d m e . T o get to h e a r it close I h a d a g a i n to p l u n g e into myself. S o that ringing must a l w a y s be there, a n d w i t h it, b e t w e e n it a n d t h e present, all that indefinable past unrolled itself w h i c h I did n o t k n o w I h a d within me. W h e n it r a n g I a l r e a d y existed a n d since, in order that I should hear it still, there could be no discontinuity, I could h a v e h a d n o instant o f repose or o f non-existence, o f nonthinking, o f non-consciousness, since that f o r m e r instant c l u n g to me, for I c o u l d recover it, return to it, merely b y p l u n g i n g m o r e deeply into myself. It was that notion o f the e m b o d i m e n t o f T i m e , the inseparableness of us f r o m the past that I h a d n o w the intention of bringing strongly into relief in m y w o r k . A n d it is because they thus contain the past that h u m a n bodies c a n so m u c h h u r t those w h o love t h e m , because they c o n t a i n so m a n y memories, so m a n y j o y s and desires effaced within t h e m b u t so cruel for h i m w h o contemplates a n d prolongs in the order of t i m e the beloved b o d y o f w h i c h he is jealous, jealous to the point o f wishing its destruction. For after d e a t h T i m e leaves the b o d y a n d m e m o r i e s — i n d i f f e r e n t a n d p a l e — a r e obliterated in her w h o exists no longer a n d soon will b e in h i m they still torture, memories w h i c h perish w i t h the desire o f the living b o d y . . . T h e d a y o n w h i c h I heard the distant, f a r - a w a y sound o f the bell in the C o m b r a y g a r d e n w a s a l a n d - m a r k in that enormous dimension whicli I d i d not k n o w I possessed. I was g i d d y a t seeing so m a n y years below a n d in m e as t h o u g h I w e r e leagues h i g h . . . . I f at least, time e n o u g h were allotted to m e to accomplish m y w o r k , I w o u l d not fail to mark it w i t h the seal o f T i m e , the i d e a o f w h i c h imposed itself u p o n m e w i t h so m u c h force to-day, a n d I w o u l d therein describe men, if need be, as monsters o c c u p y i n g a p l a c e in T i m e infinitely more i m p o r t a n t than the restricted one reserved for them in space, a place, o n the contrary, p r o l o n g e d i m m e a s u r a b l y since, simultaneously t o u c h i n g w i d e l y separated years a n d the distant periods they h a v e lived t h r o u g h — b e t w e e n w h i c h so m a n y days h a v e ranged t h e m s e l v e s — t h e y stand like giants immersed in Time. Marcel Proust. T i m e R e g a i n e d {ig2j), transl. Stephen Hudson (rgji). 2

55

Chapter iii,

II

Narrative Technique

EPISTOLARY METHOD IMPROPER . . . sure no one will c o n t e n d , t h a t t h e epistolary style is in general t h e most p r o p e r to a novelist, or t h a t it h a t h been used by the best writers of this kind . . . Henry Fielding. Preface to Sarah Fielding's F a m i l i a r Letters . . . (1747).

LETTERS MUCH MORE LIVELY A N D AFFECTING . . . Much more lively a n d affecting . . . must b e t h e style of those w h o write in the height of a present distress, the m i n d t o r t u r e d by the p a n g s of u n c e r t a i n t y (the events t h e n h i d d e n in the w o m b of fate); t h a n the dry, n a r r a t i v e u n a n i m a t e d style of a person relating difficulties a n d d a n g e r s u r m o u n t e d , can be . . . t h e relater perfectly at ease; a n d if himself u n m o v e d by his o w n story, not likely greatly to affect the r e a d e r . Samuel Richardson. Preface to Clarissa, T h e History of a Y o u n g L a d y . . . (1747-8). Some have wished t h a t t h e story h a d b e e n told in t h e usual n a r r a t i v e way of telling stories designed to a m u s e a n d divert, a n d not in letters written by t h e respective persons whose history is given in t h e m . T h e a u t h o r thinks h e o u g h t not to prescribe the taste of others; b u t imagined himself at liberty to follow his own. H e perhaps mistrusted his talents for t h e n a r r a t i v e kind of writing. H e h a d the good f o r t u n e to succeed in t h e epistolary way once before. A story in which so m a n y persons were concerned, either principally or collaterally, a n d of characters a n d dispositions so various, carried o n with tolerable connection a n d perspicuity, in a series of letters f r o m different persons w i t h o u t t h e aid of digressions a n d episodes foreign to the principal end a n d design, he t h o u g h t h a d novelty to 256

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be pleaded for it: and that, in the present age, he supposed would not be a slight recommendation. Samuel Richardson. Post-script to Clarissa, The History of a Young Lady . . . (1747-8).

ANOTHER

VAGARY

At present, nothing is talked of, nothing admired, but what I cannot help calling a very insipid and tedious performance: it is a kind of novel, called The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, the great humour of which consists in the whole narration always going backwards. I can conceive a man saying that it would be droll to write a book in that manner, but have no notion of his persevering in executing it. Horace Walpole. Letter to Sir David Dalrymple (4 April 1760), Correspondence with Sir David Dalrymple (1952) •

LETTERS FOR T H E A U T H O R , OMNISCIENT NARRATIVE FOR THE READER

A novel may be carried on in a series of letters or in regular detail; both methods have their partisans, and in numbers they seem pretty equally divided; which of the two is the more popular, I cannot take upon myself to say; but I should guess that letters give the writer most amusement and relief, not only from their greater diversity of style, but from the respite which their intermissions afford him. These advantages however have a counterpoise, for his course becomes more circuitous and subject to embarrassment than when he takes the narrative wholly into his own hands; without great management and address in keeping his dates progressive, and distinctly methodized, his reader is exposed to be called back and puzzled; and as the characters who conduct the correspondence must be kept asunder, the scene is oftentimes distracted, where we wish it to be entire, or else the intercourse of letters is made glaringly unnatural and pedantic by compressing the distances from which they are dated, and putting two people to the ridiculous necessity of writing long narrations to each other, when conversation was within their reach. For myself, having now made experiment of both methods, I should prefer the vehicle of letters: this however must be acknowledged, that all conversations, where the speakers are brought upon 257

T H E C R A F T OF F I C T I O N t h e scene, a r e f a r m o r e n a t u r a l w h e n d e l i v e r e d a t first h a n d , t h a n w h e n r e t a i l e d b y a c o r r e s p o n d e n t ; f o r w e k n o w t h a t s u c h sort o f n a r r a t i v e s d o n o t c o m m o n l y pass b y t h e post, a n d t h e letter, b o t h in style a n d s u b s t a n c e , a p p e a r s e x t r e m e l y stiff, tedious, a n d p e d a n t i c . U p o n t h e w h o l e , I s h o u l d c o n j e c t u r e t h a t t h e w r i t e r is best a c c o m m o d a t e d b y t h e o n e , a n d t h e r e a d e r m o s t gratified b y the o t h e r : I h o p e I a m right in m y c o n j e c t u r e as t o t h e r e a d e r ' s p r e f e r e n c e o f the m e t h o d I a m n o w p u r s u i n g , else I h a v e chosen it for m y s e l f , a n d g a i n e d n o c r e d i t b y t h e sacrifice. Richard Cumberland. H e n r y (7795), Book Third, Chapter j.

T H R E E W A Y S OF T E L L I N G A S T O R Y T h e r e a r e three m o d e s o f c a r r y i n g o n a s t o r y : t h e n a r r a t i v e or e p i c as it m a y b e c a l l e d ; in this t h e a u t h o r relates h i m s e l f the w h o l e a d v e n t u r e ; this is t h e m a n n e r o f C e r v a n t e s i n his D o n Q u i x o t e , a n d o f F i e l d i n g in his T o m J o n e s . I t is t h e m o s t c o m m o n w a y . T h e a u t h o r , like the m u s e , is s u p p o s e d to k n o w e v e r y t h i n g ; he c a n r e v e a l t h e secret springs o f a c t i o n s , a n d let us i n t o events in his o w n t i m e a n d m a n n e r . H e c a n b e concise, o r d i f f u s e , a c c o r d i n g as the d i f f e r e n t p a r t s o f his story r e q u i r e it. H e c a n i n d u l g e , as F i e l d i n g has d o n e , in digressions, a n d t h u s d e l i v e r s e n t i m e n t s a n d d i s p l a y k n o w l e d g e w h i c h w o u l d not p r o p e r l y b e l o n g to a n y o f the c h a r a c t e r s . B u t his n a r r a t i o n w i l l n o t be lively, e x c e p t he f r e q u e n t l y d r o p s himself, a n d runs i n t o d i a l o g u e : all g o o d writers t h e r e f o r e h a v e t h r o w n as m u c h as possible o f the d r a m a t i c i n t o their n a r r a t i v e . M a d . d ' A r b l a y has d o n e this so successfully, t h a t w e h a v e as c l e a r a n i d e a , n o t only o f t h e sentiments, b u t t h e m a n n e r o f expression o f h e r d i f f e r e n t personages, as i f w e took it f r o m the scenes in a p l a y . A n o t h e r m o d e is t h a t o f m e m o i r s ; w h e r e t h e s u b j e c t of the a d v e n t u r e s relates his o w n story. S m o l l e t , in his Roderic Random, a n d G o l d s m i t h , in his Vicar of Wakefield, h a v e a d o p t e d this m o d e ; it confines t h e a u t h o r ' s stile, w h i c h s h o u l d b e suited, t h o u g h it is n o t a l w a y s , t o t h e s u p p o s e d talents a n d c a p a c i t y o f the i m a g i n a r y n a r r a t o r . It has t h e a d v a n t a g e o f the w a r m t h a n d interest a person m a y b e s u p p o s e d t o feel i n his o w n a f f a i r s ; a n d h e c a n m o r e g r a c e fully dwell upon minute circumstances which have affected him. I t h a s a g r e a t e r air o f t r u t h , as it seems t o a c c o u n t for t h e c o m m u n i c a t i o n to the p u b l i c . T h e a u t h o r , it is true, k n o w s e v e r y thing, b u t w h e n the secret recesses o f t h e h e a r t a r e t o b e l a i d o p e n , w e c a n h e a r n o o n e w i t h so m u c h p l e a s u r e as t h e p e r s o n himself. M a r i v a u x , whose productions partly followed, and partly were contemporary w i t h those o f R i c h a r d s o n , h a s p u t t h e history o f M a r i a n n e i n t o 258

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her own mouth, and we are amused to hear her dwell on little touches which are almost too trivial to be noticed by any body b u t herself. But what the hero cannot say, the author cannot tell, nor can it be rendered probable, that a very circumstantial narrative should be given by a person, perhaps at the close of a long life, of conversations that have happened at the beginning of it. T h e author has all along two characters to support, for he has to consider how his hero felt at the time of the events to be related, and how it is natural he should feel them at the time he is relating them; at a period, perhaps, when curiosity is extinguished, passion cooled, and when, at any rate, the suspense which rendered them interesting is over. This seems, therefore, the least perfect mode of any. A third way remains, that of epistolaiy correspondence, carried on between the characters of the novel. This is the form made use of by Richardson and many others after, none, I believe, before him. He seems to have been led to it by circumstances in his early youth, which will be hereafter related. This method unites, in a good measure, the advantages of the other two; it gives the feelings of the moment as the writers felt them at the moment. It allows a pleasing variety of stile, if the author has sufficient command of pen to assume it. It makes the whole work dramatic, since all the characters speak in their own persons. It accounts for breaks in the story, by the omission or loss of letters. It is incompatible with a rapid stile, but gives room for the graceful introduction of remark and sentiment, or any kind, almost, of digressive matter. But, on the other hand, it is highly fictitious; it is the most natural and the least probable way of telling a story. T h a t letters should be written at all times, and upon every occasion in life, that those letters should be preserved, and altogether form a connected story, it requires much art to render specious. It introduces the inconvenience so much felt in dramatic writing, for want of a narrator; the necessity of having an insipid confidant to tell the circumstances that a n author cannot relate in any other way. It obliges a m a n to tell of himself, what perhaps no man would tell; and sometimes to repeat compliments which modesty would lead him to suppress: and when a long conversation is repeated, supposes a memory more exact than is generally found. Artificial as it therefore is, still as it enables an author to assume, in a lively manner, the hopes and fears, and passions, and to imitate the peculiar way of thinking of his characters, it became fashionable, and has been adopted by many both at home and abroad, especially by the French writers; their language, perhaps, being particularly suited to the epistolary stile, 2

59

T H E C R A F T OF F I C T I O N a n d R o u s s e a u himself, in his Nouvelle Hiloise, h a s followed the steps of our countryman. Anna Laetitia Barbauld. 'A Biographical Account of Samuel Richardson', T h e C o r r e s p o n d e n c e o f S a m u e l R i c h a r d son (1804), Vol. I. E P I S T O L A R Y FORM AN A N T I Q U A T E D

AFFAIR

I a m o f the o p i n i o n t h a t t h e e p i s t o l a r y f o r m is a n a n t i q u a t e d a f f a i r . I t is all right w h e n t h e gist o f t h e m a t t e r is Ln the letters themselves (e.g., in the case o f a district p o l i c e m a n w h o loves letterw r i t i n g ) , b u t as a l i t e r a r y f o r m it is n o g o o d i n m a n y respects: it puts the a u t h o r i n t o a f r a m e , — t h a t is its m a i n weakness. Anton Chekhov. Letter to N. A. Leikin (4 March ¡886), Letters on Literature ed. Louis S. Friedland. A D V A N T A G E S OF T H E

LETTER-SYSTEM

T h e a d v a n t a g e s o f t h e letter-system o f telling a story (passing o v e r the d i s a d v a n t a g e s ) a r e t h a t , h e a r i n g w h a t o n e side has to say, y o u a r e l e d c o n s t a n t l y t o t h e i m a g i n a t i o n o f w h a t the other side m u s t b e feeling, a n d a t last a r e a n x i o u s t o k n o w i f t h e other side does r e a l l y feel w h a t y o u i m a g i n e . Thomas Hardy. Notebook entry (April 1878) from T h e E a r l y L i f e o f T h o m a s H a r d y , 1 8 4 0 - 9 1 (ig28), Chapter ix.

PERILS OF F I R S T - P E R S O N

NARRATIVE

. . . it is a l w a y s d a n g e r o u s to w r i t e f r o m t h e p o i n t of 'I*. T h e reader is unconsciously t a u g h t to feel t h a t t h e w r i t e r is g l o r i f y i n g himself, a n d rebels against the self-praise. O r o t h e r w i s e the ' I ' is pretentiously h u m b l e , a n d o f f e n d s f r o m e x a c t l y t h e o t h e r p o i n t of view. I n telling a tale it is, I t h i n k , a l w a y s w e l l to sink the personal p r o n o u n . T h e old w a y , ' O n c e u p o n a t i m e , ' w i t h slight m o d i f i c a t i o n s is the best w a y o f telling a story. Anthony Trollope. Letter to Kate Field (24 May 1868), L e t t e r s {1951) T H E T E R R I B L E F L U I D I T Y OF S E L F - R E V E L A T I O N H a d I m e a n w h i l e , m a d e h i m (Strether) a t o n c e h e r o a n d historian, e n d o w e d h i m w i t h the r o m a n t i c p r i v i l e g e o f the 'first p e r s o n * — t h e darkest abyss o f r o m a n c e this, i n v e t e r a t e l y , w h e n 260

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enjoyed on the grand scale—variety, and m a n y other queer matters as well, might have been smuggled in b y a back door. Suffice it, t o be brief, that the first person, in the long piece, is a form foredoomed to looseness, a n d that looseness, never m u c h m y affair, h a d never been so little so as on this particular occasion. A l l of w h i c h reflexions flocked to the standard from the m o m e n t — a very early o n e — t h e question o f how to keep my form amusing while sticking close to m y central figure and constantly taking its pattern from h i m h a d to be faced . . . I couldn't, save by implication, make other persons tell each other about him—blest resource, blest necessity, of the d r a m a , w h i c h reaches its effects of unity, all remarkably, b y paths absolutely opposite to the paths of the novel: with other persons, save as they were primarily his persons (not he primarily but one of theirs), I h a d simply nothing to do. I h a d relations for h i m none the less, by the mercy of Providence, quite as m u c h as if m y exhibition was to be a muddle; if I could only by implication a n d a show o f consequence make other persons tell each other about him, I could at least make him tell them whatever in the world he must; a n d could so, by the same t o k e n — w h i c h was a further luxury thrown i n — s e e straight into the deep differences between w h a t that could d o for me, or at all events for him, and the large ease o f ' a u t o b i o g r a p h y . ' It m a y be asked w h y , if one so keeps to one's hero, one shouldn't m a k e a single mouthful of 'method,' shouldn't throw the reins on his neck and, letting them flap there as free as in Gil Bias or in David Copperfield, equip him with the double privilege o f subject a n d o b j e c t — a course that has at least the merit of brushing a w a y questions at a sweep. T h e answer to w h i c h is, I think, that one makes that surrender only if one is prepared not to m a k e certain precious discriminations. T h e 'first person' then, so employed, is addressed by the author directly to ourselves, his possible readers, w h o m he has to reckon with, at the best, by our English tradition, so loosely and v a g u e l y after all, so little respectfully, on so scant a presumption o f exposure to criticism. Strether, on the other hand, encaged and provided for as The Ambassadors encages and provides, has to keep in view proprieties much stiffer and more salutary than a n y our straight a n d credulous gape are likely to bring h o m e to him, has exhibitional conditions to meet, in a word, that forbid the terrible fluidity of selfrevelation. Henry James. Preface to T h e Ambassadors (1903), first printed in the New York edition of the Novels and Stories (1907-17), Vol. XXI.

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T H E C R A F T OF F I C T I O N T H E N A R R A T O R ' S I N T E R P O L A T I O N S IN T H E HISTORICAL

NOVEL

I w a n t to spare y o u the criticisms t h a t c r u s h e d Salammbo, a p o w e r f u l a n d b e a u t i f u l w o r k b u t w i t h o u t a n y real interest for a n y o n e e x c e p t artists a n d scholars . . . b e f o r e y o u u n d e r t a k e a n e w Golden Ass I s h o u l d like y o u t o m a k e the Coq d'or a w o r k o f the s a m e c o l o u r i n g . It was decided that a n a p o c r y p h a l Apuleius or Lucian, one of their friends p e r h a p s , s h o u l d h a v e t r a v e l l e d in I n d i a o r Persia, a n d h a v e h e a r d f r o m t h e lips o f a B o u s i k o f o f those d a y s t h e t r a d i t i o n a l story o f A t l a n t i s , a n d t h a t h e s h o u l d e x p l a i n in a f e w w o r d s t h e figures a n d the legends in his o w n w a y a n d f r o m his o w n p o i n t o f v i e w . E x a m p l e : ' Y o u ask m e , m y d e a r L u c i a n , w h a t I think a b o u t t h e G a u l s , a n d w h e t h e r I b e l i e v e in their existence. I n f a c t , to some e x t e n t I d o believe i n it, for s u c h a n d s u c h a r e a s o n . ' T h e s e i n t e r p o l a t i o n s b y t h e n a r r a t o r will d o v e r y w e l l . T h e y w i l l b r i n g the r e a d e r b a c k f r o m t h e d e p t h s o f a f a n t a s t i c a n t i q u i t y t o t h e sense o f a real a n t i q u i t y t h a t h e k n o w s . T h e y will i n d i c a t e h a b i t s o f m i n d in the n a r r a t o r ' s o w n times . . . A l l this will set t h e r e a d e r o n his feet. H e w i l l say t o himself: ' H e r e is w h e r e I start f r o m , a n d t h e r e is w h e r e t h e y a r e t a k i n g m e . I a m q u i t e a g r e e a b l e , p r o v i d e d they remind m e from time to time where I was before.' O t h e r w i s e , he w i l l say t h a t t h e y a r e t a k i n g h i m too f a r a w a y , t h a t h e is lost in a fog, a n d either t h a t t h e p e o p l e o f so l o n g a g o a r e n ' t sufficiently d i f f e r e n t f r o m those o f the present, or else t h a t t h e y a r e t o o m u c h so a n d t h a t h e c a n n o t r e a l l y j u d g e t h e m ; a n d w h e n the r e a d e r feels too g r e a t l y d i s o r i e n t a t e d h e w i l l a b a n d o n y o u . S o , h e w a n t s t o b e a b l e t o say t o h i m s e l f all t h e t i m e : ' W e l l , w h a t q u a i n t customs a n d i n c r e d i b l e h a b i t s these a r e ! B u t it m u s t all h a v e b e e n like t h a t , t h e y p r o v e it. T h e m a n t e l l i n g m e all this I k n o w q u i t e w e l l since he's a f r i e n d o f m y o l d f r i e n d A p u l e i u s , a n d he e x p l a i n s t h a t things m u s t h a v e b e e n like t h a t . S o I believe h i m , a n d , f r o m t h e m o m e n t t h a t I b e l i e v e a little, I a m b e g u i l e d . ' T h e r e a r e m y reasons, m a t t e r o f f a c t a n d p r o s a i c ; b u t o n e has t o k e e p all this i n m i n d w h e n a d d r e s s i n g t h e p u b l i c t h a t r e a d s novels. Otherwise, one must write works of pure scholarship; another public altogether. George Sand. Letter to Maurice Sand (20 June C o r r e s p o n d a n c e (1892).

1865),

MANY GOOD W A Y S OF T E L L I N G A S T O R Y W h a t is the best w a y o f t e l l i n g a story? S i n c e t h e s t a n d a r d must b e t h e interest o f t h e a u d i e n c e , t h e r e m u s t b e s e v e r a l or m a n y g o o d

262

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w a y s r a t h e r t h a n o n e best. F o r w e g e t interested i n t h e stories life presents t o us t h r o u g h divers orders a n d m o d e s o f p r e s e n t a t i o n . V e r y c o m m o n l y o u r first a w a k e n i n g t o a desire o f k n o w i n g a m a n ' s p a s t or f u t u r e c o m e s f r o m o u r seeing h i m as a s t r a n g e r i n s o m e u n u s u a l or p a t h e t i c o r h u m o r o u s situation, o r m a n i f e s t i n g s o m e r e m a r k a b l e characteristics. W e m a k e inquiries i n c o n s e q u e n c e , o r w e b e c o m e observant and attentive whenever opportunities o f knowing more m a y present t h e m s e l v e s w i t h o u t o u r s e a r c h . Y o u h a v e seen a refined f a c e a m o n g t h e prisoners p i c k i n g t o w in g a o l ; y o u a f t e r w a r d s see t h e s a m e u n f o r g e t t a b l e f a c e i n a p u l p i t : h e m u s t b e o f d u l l fibre w h o w o u l d n o t c a r e to k n o w m o r e a b o u t a life w h i c h s h o w e d s u c h c o n trasts, t h o u g h h e m i g h t g a t h e r his k n o w l e d g e in a f r a g m e n t a r y a n d unchronological w a y . A g a i n , w e h a v e h e a r d m u c h , or a t least s o m e t h i n g n o t q u i t e c o m m o n , a b o u t a m a n w h o m w e h a v e n e v e r seen, a n d h e n c e w e look r o u n d w i t h curiosity w h e n w e a r e t o l d t h a t h e is present; w h a t ever he says o r does b e f o r e us is c h a r g e d w i t h a m e a n i n g d u e to o u r p r e v i o u s h e a r s a y k n o w l e d g e a b o u t h i m , g a t h e r e d either f r o m d i a l o g u e o f w h i c h h e w a s expressly a n d e m p h a t i c a l l y the s u b j e c t , or f r o m i n c i d e n t a l r e m a r k , o r f r o m g e n e r a l r e p o r t either in or o u t o f print. T h e s e i n d i r e c t w a y s o f a r r i v i n g at k n o w l e d g e a r e a l w a y s the most stirring e v e n in r e l a t i o n t o i m p e r s o n a l subjects. T o see a c h e m i c a l e x p e r i m e n t gives a n a t t r a c t i v e n e s s t o a d e f i n i t i o n o f c h e m i s t r y , a n d fills it w i t h a s i g n i f i c a n c e it w o u l d n e v e r h a v e h a d w i t h o u t t h e p l e a s a n t s h o c k o f a n u n u s u a l s e q u e n c e s u c h as t h e t r a n s f o r m a t i o n o f a solid into gas, a n d vice versa: T o see a w o r d for the first t i m e e i t h e r as s u b s t a n t i v e o r a d j e c t i v e i n a c o n n e c t i o n w h e r e w e c a r e a b o u t k n o w i n g its c o m p l e t e m e a n i n g , is t h e w a y t o v i v i f y its m e a n i n g in o u r recollection. C u r i o s i t y b e c o m e s t h e m o r e e a g e r f r o m t h e incompleteness o f the first i n f o r m a t i o n . M o r e o v e r , it is in this w a y t h a t m e m o r y w o r k s in its i n c i d e n t a l r e v i v a l o f e v e n t s : s o m e salient experience a p p e a r s i n i n w a r d vision, a n d in c o n s e q u e n c e t h e a n t e c e d e n t facts a r e r e t r a c e d f r o m w h a t is r e g a r d e d as the b e g i n n i n g o f the episode in w h i c h t h a t e x p e r i e n c e m a d e a m o r e or less striki n g l y m e m o r a b l e p a r t . ' A h ! I r e m e m b e r a d d r e s s i n g the m o b f r o m the hustings at W e s t m i n s t e r — y o u w o u l d n ' t h a v e t h o u g h t t h a t I c o u l d ever h a v e b e e n in s u c h a position. W e l l , h o w I c a m e there w a s i n this w a y . — ' ; a n d t h e n follows a r e t r o s p e c t i v e n a r r a t i o n . T h e m o d e s o f telling a story f o u n d e d in these processes o f o u t w a r d a n d i n w a r d life d e r i v e their effectiveness f r o m t h e s u p e r i o r m a s t e r y o f i m a g e s a n d pictures in g r a s p i n g t h e a t t e n t i o n — o r , o n e m i g h t say w i t h m o r e f u n d a m e n t a l a c c u r a c y , f r o m t h e f a c t t h a t o u r earliest,

263

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FICTION

strongest impressions, our most intimate convictions, are simply images added to more or less of sensation. These are the primitive instruments of thought. Hence it is not surprising that early poetry took this way—telling a daring deed, a glorious achievement, without caring for what went before. T h e desire for orderly narration is a later, more reflective birth. T h e presence of the Jack in the box affects every child: it is the more reflective lad, the miniature philosopher, who wants to know how he got there. T h e only stories life presents to us in an orderly way are those of our autobiography, or the career of our companions from our childhood upwards, or perhaps of our own children. But it is a great art to make a connected strictly relevant narrative of such careers as we can count from the beginning. In these cases the sequence of associations is almost sure to overmaster the sense of proportion. Such narratives ab ovo are summer's-day stories for happy loungers; not the cup of self-forgetting excitement to the busy who can snatch an hour of entertainment. But the simple opening of a story with a date and necessary account of places and people, passing on quietly towards the more rousing elements of narrative and dramatic presentation, without need of retrospect, has its advantages which have to be measured by the nature of the story. Spirited narrative, without more than a touch of dialogue here and there, may be made eminently interesting, and is suited to the novelette. Examples of its charm are seen in the short tales in which the French have a mastery never reached by the English, who usually demand coarser flavours than are given by that delightful gaiety which is well described by L a Fontaine as not anything that provokes fits of laughter, but a certain charm, an agreeable mode of handling which lends attractiveness to all subjects even the most serious. And it is this sort of gaiety which plays around the best French novelettes. But the opening chapters of The Vicar of Wakefield are as fine as anything that can be done in this way. W h y should a story not be told in the most irregular fashion that an author's idiosyncrasy may prompt, provided that he gives us what we enjoy? T h e objection to Sterne's wild way of telling Tristram Shandy lies more solidly in the quality of the interrupting matter than in the fact of interruption. T h e dear public would do well to reflect that they are often bored from the want of flexibility in their own minds. T h e y are like the topers of 'one liquor.' George Eliot. 'Leaves from a Note-book: storytelling', T h e Impressions of Theophrastus Such (¡8j8).

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F O R M AS V A R I E D AS

CONTENT

(28 J u l y 1900) . . . I think that every great artist necessarily creates his o w n form also. I f the content of works of art can be infinitely varied, so also can their form. O n c e T u r g e n e v and I came back from the theatre in Paris and discussed this. H e completely agreed with me. W e recalled all that is best in Russian literature and it seemed that in these works the form was perfectly original. O m i t t i n g Pushkin, let us take Gogol's Dead Souls. W h a t is it? Neither a novel nor a story. It is something perfectly original. T h e n there is the Memoirs of a Sportsman, the best book T u r g e n e v ever wrote; then Dostoevsky's House of the Dead, a n d then, sinner that I a m , my Childhood-, Herzen's Past and Thoughts; Lermontov's Hero of OUT Time . . . Leo Tolstoi. Talks with Tolstoi (rg22), ed. A. B. Goldenveizer, transl. S. S. Koteliansky and Virginia Woolf {1923).

A CERTAIN INDIRECT AND OBLIQUE

VIEW

(i) A m o n g m a n y matters thrown into relief by a refreshed acquaintance with The Golden Bowl w h a t perhaps most stands out for m e is the still marked inveteracy of a certain indirect a n d oblique view o f m y presented action; unless indeed I make u p m y mind to call this mode of treatment, on the contrary, any superficial appearance notwithstanding, the very straightest and closest possible. I have already betrayed, as an accepted habit, a n d even to extravagance commented on, m y preference for dealing with m y subject-matter, for 'seeing my story,' through the opportunity a n d the sensibility of some more or less detached, some not strictly involved, though thoroughly interested and intelligent witness or reporter, some person w h o contributes to the case mainly a certain amount of criticism and interpretation of it. A g a i n and again, on review, the shorter things in especial that I have gathered into this Series have ranged themselves not as my o w n impersonal account of the affair in hand, but as my account of somebody's impression of i t — t h e terms of this person's access to it and estimate of it contributing thus by some fine little law to intensification of interest. T h e somebody is often, a m o n g my shorter tales I recognize, but an unnamed, unintroduced a n d (save by right of intrinsic wit) unwarranted participant, the impersonal author's concrete deputy or delegate, a convenient substitute or apologist for the creative power otherwise so veiled and 265

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disembodied. My instinct appears repeatedly to have been that to arrive at the facts retailed and the figures introduced by the given help of some other conscious and confessed agent is essentially to find the whole business—that is, as I say, its effective interest— enriched by the way. I have in other words constantly inclined to the idea of the particular attaching case plus some near individual view of it; that nearness quite having thus to become an imagined observer's, a projected, charmed painter's or poet's—however avowed the 'minor' quality in the latter—close and sensitive contact with it. Anything, in short, I now reflect, must have seemed to me better—better for the process and the effect of representation, my irrepressible ideal—than the mere muffled majesty of irresponsible 'authorship' . . . I am aware of having glanced a good deal already in the direction of this embarrassed truth—which I give for what it is worth; but I feel it come home to me afresh on recognizing that the manner in which it betrays itself may be one of the liveliest sources of amusement in The Golden Bowl. It's not that the muffled majesty of authorship doesn't here ostensibly reign; but I catch myself again shaking it off and disavowing the pretence of it while I get down into the arena and do my best to live and breathe and rub shoulders and converse with the persons engaged in the struggle that provides for the others in the circling tiers the entertainment of the great game. There is no other participant, of course, than each of the real, the deeply involved and immersed and more or less bleeding participants; but . . . the whole thing remains subject to the register, ever so closely kept, of the consciousness of but two of the characters. The Prince, in the first half of the book, virtually sees and knows and makes out, virtually represents to himself everything that concerns us—very nearly (though he doesn't speak in the first person) after the fashion of other reporters and critics of other situations. Having a consciousness highly susceptible of registration, he thus makes us see the things that may most interest us reflected in it as in the clean glass held up to so many of the 'short stories' of our long list; and yet after all never a whit to the prejudice of his being just as consistently a foredoomed, entangled, embarrassed agent in the general imbroglio, actor in the offered play. T h e function of the Princess, in the remainder, matches exactly with his; the register of her consciousness is as closely kept—as closely, say, not only as his own, but as that (to cite examples) either of the intelligent but quite unindividualized witness of the destruction of The Aspern Papers, or of the all-noting heroine of The Spoils of Poynton, highly individualized though highly intelligent; the Princess, in fine, in addition to feeling

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everything she has to, and to playing her part just in that proportion, duplicates, as it were, her value and becomes a compositional resource, and of the finest order, as well as a value intrinsic. So it is that the admirably-endowed pair, between them, as I retrace their fortune and my own method, point again for me the moral of the endless interest, endless worth for 'delight', of the compositional contribution. Their chronicle strikes me as quite of the stuff to keep us from forgetting that absolutely no refinement of ingenuity or of precaution need be dreamed of as wasted in that most exquisite of all good cause the appeal to variety, the appeal to a high refinement and a handsome wholeness of effect. Henry James. Preface to The Golden Bowl (1904); first printed in the New York edition of the Novels and Stories (igoy-iy), Vol. XXIII.

(») Saturday, December 21th [1913],—I am now reading The Way of All Flesh. It stands it. There is very little wrong with this book, even technically. But the trick of reading a piece of the narrative to the hero himself and then writing down what the hero's comment on it was, is a mistake—especially when it is repeated. (24 January 1914) . . . I finished Conrad's Chance in the middle of the night. It is very fine. The best chapters are 'The Governess' and the last one. The Tea Party chapter, and 'On the Pavement' chapter are too long. The indirect narrative is successfully managed on the whole, even to fourth hand narrative, but here and there recounted dialogue and gesture is so minute as to be unconvincing. Arnold Bennett. The Journals (1931).

(iii) My own impression is that what he 1 really meant was that my manner of telling, perfectly devoid of familiarity as between author and reader, aimed essentially at the intimacy of a personal communication, without any thought for other effects. As a matter of fact, the thought for effects is there all the same (often at the cost of mere directness of narrative), and can be detected in 1

i.e. a critic 'in a long article in the Seccolo'.

267

THE C R A F T OF FICTION m y unconventional g r o u p i n g and perspective, w h i c h a r e t e m p e r a m e n t a l a n d w h e r e i n all m y 'art' consists. Joseph Conrad. Letter to Richard Curie (14 July L i f e a n d Letters (1927), ed. G. Jean-Aubry.

' B O U N C I N G ' MORE I M P O R T A N T T H A N

purely 1923),

THE

' P O I N T OF V I E W ' . . . ' T h e w h o l e intricate question o f m e t h o d , in the c r a f t o f fiction,' says M r . Percy L u b b o c k , ' I take to b e g o v e r n e d b y the question o f the point of view—the question o f the relation in w h i c h the n a r r a t o r stands to the story'. A n d his book The Craft of Fiction e x a m i n e s various points of v i e w w i t h genius a n d insight. T h e novelist, h e says, c a n either describe the characters f r o m outside, as a n i m p a r t i a l or partial onlooker; or he c a n assume omniscience a n d describe t h e m f r o m w i t h i n ; or he c a n p l a c e himself in the position o f o n e o f t h e m a n d affect to b e in the dark as to the motives o f the rest; or there are certain intermediate attitudes. T h o s e w h o follow h i m will l a y a sure f o u n d a t i o n for the aesthetics o f fiction—a f o u n d a t i o n w h i c h I c a n n o t for a m o m e n t p r o m i s e . T h i s is a r a m s h a c k l y survey a n d for m e the w h o l e intricate question o f m e t h o d resolves itself not into f o r m u l a e b u t into the p o w e r o f the writer to b o u n c e the reader into a c c e p t i n g w h a t he s a y s — a p o w e r w h i c h M r . L u b b o c k a d m i t s a n d admires, b u t locates a t the e d g e of the p r o b l e m instead of at the centre. I should p u t it p l u m b in the centre. L o o k h o w Dickens bounces us in Bleak House. C h a p t e r I of Bleak House is omniscient. Dickens takes us into t h e C o u r t o f C h a n c e r y a n d rapidly explains all the people there. I n C h a p t e r I I he is partially omniscient. W e still use his eyes, b u t f o r some u n explained reason they b e g i n to g r o w w e a k : he c a n e x p l a i n Sir Leicester D e d l o c k to us, p a r t o f L a d y D e d l o c k b u t n o t all, a n d nothing o f M r . T u l k i n g h o r n . I n C h a p t e r I I I he is e v e n m o r e reprehensible: he goes straight across into the d r a m a t i c m e t h o d a n d inhabits a y o u n g l a d y , Esther S u m m e r s o n . ' I h a v e a g r e a t d e a l o f difficulty in b e g i n n i n g to write m y portion o f these p a g e s , for I k n o w I a m not clever', pipes u p Esther, a n d continues in this strain w i t h consistency a n d c o m p e t e n c e , so long as she is a l l o w e d to hold the pen. A t a n y m o m e n t the a u t h o r o f her b e i n g m a y s n a t c h it f r o m her, a n d run a b o u t t a k i n g notes himself, l e a v i n g her s e a t e d goodness knows w h e r e , a n d e m p l o y e d w e d o not care h o w . L o g i c a l l y , Bleak House is all to pieces, b u t Dickens bounces us, so that w e d o not m i n d the shiftings o f the v i e w point. Critics are m o r e a p t to object t h a n readers. Z e a l o u s f o r t h e novel's

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eminence, they are a little too apt to look out for problems that shall b e peculiar to it, a n d differentiate it from the d r a m a ; they feel it o u g h t to h a v e its o w n technical troubles before it c a n b e accepted as a n independent art; and since the problem of a point of view certainly is peculiar to the novel they h a v e rather over-stressed it. I d o not myself think it is so important as a proper mixture of chara c t e r s — a problem w h i c h the dramatist is u p against also. A n d the novelist must bounce us; that is imperative. . . . A novelist can shift his view point if it comes off, and it came off w i t h Dickens and Tolstoy. Indeed this power to expand and contract perception (of w h i c h the shifting view point is a symptom), this right to intermittent k n o w l e d g e : — I find it one o f the great advantages of the novel-form, a n d it has a parallel in our perception of life. W e are stupider at some times than others; w e c a n enter into people's minds occasionally but not always, because our o w n minds get tired; a n d this intermittence lends in the long run variety and colour to the experiences w e receive. A quantity o f novelists, English novelists especially, have b e h a v e d like this to the people in their books: played fast and loose w i t h them, and I cannot see w h y they should be censured. E. M. Forster. Aspects of the Novel {¡927), Chapter iv.

EXIT

AUTHOR?

(i) In all histories, whether true or fictitious, the author cannot too carefully refrain from speaking in his o w n person . . . and this is yet another reason to be added to those already given, w h y political discussions should never be admitted in a novel, as they are sure to b e set d o w n to the author's account, let him assign them as he will. Richard Cumberland. H e n r y (1795), Book the Sixth, Chapter i. («) . . . Fielding pauses to explain the principles of his art, and to congratulate himself and his readers on the felicity with w h i c h he conducts his narrative, or makes his characters evolve themselves in its progress. T h e s e appeals to the reader's j u d g m e n t , admirable as they are, have sometimes the fault of being diffuse, and always to the great disadvantage, that they remind us w e are perusing a work of fiction; a n d that the beings with w h o m w e have been 269

T H E C R A F T OF F I C T I O N conversant during the perusal, are but a sort o f evanescent phantoms, conjured up by a magician for our o w n amusement. Smollett seldom holds communication with his readers in his own person. H e manages his delightful puppet-show without thrusting his head beyond the curtain, like Gines de Passamonte, to explain w h a t he is doing; and hence, besides that our attention to the story remains unbroken, we are sure that the author, fully confident in the abundance of his materials, has no occasion to eke them out with extrinsic matter. Sir Walter Scott. ' Tobias Smollett', Lives of the Novelists {1827). (iii) But let the gentle-hearted reader be under no apprehension whatsoever. It is not destined that Eleanor shall marry M r . Slope or Bertie Stanhope. A n d here, perhaps, it m a y be allowed to the novelist to explain his views on a very important point in the art of telling tales. H e ventures to reprobate that system which goes so far to violate all proper confidence between the author a n d his readers, b y maintaining nearly to the end of the third volume a mystery as to the fate of their favourite personage. N a y , more, and worse than this is too frequently done. H a v e not often the profoundest efforts of genius been used to baffle the aspirations of the reader, to raise false hopes and false fears, and to give rise to expectations w h i c h are never to be realized? A r e not promises all but m a d e of delightful h o n o r s , in lieu of w h i c h the writer produces nothing but most commonplace realities in his final chapter? A n d is there not a species o f deceit in this to w h i c h the honesty of the present age should lend no countenance? . . . O u r doctrine is, that the author and the reader should move along together in full confidence with each other . . . Anthony Trollope. Barchester Towers {1857) Chapter xv. (iv) . . . It strikes me that you constantly hurry your narrative (and yet without getting on) by telling it, in a sort of impetuous breathless way, in your own person, when the people should tell it and act it for themselves. M y notion always is, that w h e n I have made the people to play out the play, it is, as it were, their own business to d o it, and not mine. T h e n , unless you really have led u p to a great situation, like Basil's death, you are bound in art to make more of it. Such a scene 270

N A R R A T I V E TECHNIQUE should form a chapter of itself. Impressed upon the reader's memory, it would go far to make the fortune of the book. Suppose yourself telling that affecting incident in a letter to a friend. W o u l d n ' t you describe h o w y o u went through the life and stir o f the streets and roads to the sick-room? W o u l d n ' t y o u say what kind of room it was, what time o f d a y it was, whether it was sunlight, starlight, or moonlight? W o u l d n ' t you have a strong impression on your mind of how you were received, w h e n y o u first met the look o f the dying man, what strange contrasts were about y o u a n d struck you? I don't want you, in a novel, to present yourself to tell such things, but I want the things to b e there. Y o u make no more of the situation than the index might, or a descriptive playbill might in giving a summary of the tragedy under representation. Charles Dickens. Letter to Mrs. Brookfield (20 February 1866), Letters (1880).

(v) I expressed myself badly in telling you that 'one must not write with one's heart.' W h a t I meant was: O n e mustn't bring one's own personality on to the scene. I believe that great A r t is scientific and impersonal. W e must, b y a n effort of the mind, go over to our characters, as it were, not make t h e m come over to us. Gustave Flaubert. Letter to George Sand (15-16December Correspondance (igsg).

1866),

. . . there is nothing 'true' in Madame Bovary. It is a story of pure invention; I have put none o f m y own feelings into it, nor anything of m y o w n life. T h e illusion [of truth], on the contrary (if there is any), comes from the very objectivity of the work. It is one of m y principles that one must not write oneself into one's work. T h e artist must be in his work as G o d is in creation, invisible yet all-powerful; w e must sense him everywhere b u t never see h i m . T h e n again, A r t should rise above personal feeling and emotional susceptibilities! I t is time w e gave it, through rigid systematization, the exactness o f the physical sciences! T h e chief difficulty for me, however, still remains style, form, that indefinable Beauty arising from the very conception which, as Plato says, is the very splendour of T r u t h . Gustave Flaubert. Letter to Mademoiselle Leroyer de Chantepie, (ig February 1857), Correspondance (1903). 271

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j

(vi)

!

M . Flaubert is, then, first and foremost an artist; that is, an objective writer. I defy anyone, after having read all his works, to make out what he is in private life, what he thinks or what he says in his everyday conversation. One knows what Dickens must have thought, what Balzac must have thought. They appear all the time in their books; but what do you imagine La Bruyère to have been, or the great Cervantes to have said? Flaubert never wrote the words I, me. He never talks to the audience in the middle of a book, or greets it at the end, like an actor on the stage, and he never writes prefaces. He is the showman of human puppets who must speak through his mouth while he refrains from the right to think through theirs; and there is to be no detecting the strings or recognizing the voice. Guy de Maupassant. 'Gustave Flaubert' {1876); reprinted in Chroniques, Etudes, Correspondance {1938), ed. René Dumesnil.

(vii) Certain accomplished novelists have a habit of giving themselves away which must often bring tears to the eyes of people who take their fiction seriously. I was lately struck, in reading over the pages of Anthony Trollope, with his want of discretion in this particular. In a digression, a parenthesis or an aside, he concedes to the reader that he and his trusting friend are only 'making believe'. He admits that the events he narrates have not really happened, and that he can give his narrative any turn the reader may like best. Such a betrayal of a sacred office seems to me, I confess, a terrible crime; it is what I mean by the attitude of apology, and it shocks me every whit as much in Trollope as it would have shocked me in Gibbon or Macaulay. It implies that the novelist is less occupied in looking for the truth than the historian, and in doing so it deprives him at a stroke of all his standing-room. T o represent and illustrate the past, the actions of men, is the task of either writer, and the only difference that I can see is, in proportion as he succeeds, to the honour of the novelist, consisting as it does in his having more difficulty in collecting his evidence, which is so far from being purely literary. Henry James. 'The Art of Fiction' (1884); reprinted in Partial Portraits (1888). 272

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(viii) . . . the object of the novelist is to keep the reader entirely oblivious of the fact that the author exists—even of the fact that he is reading a book. This is of course not possible to the bitter end, but a reader can be rendered very engrossed, and the nearer you can come to making him entirely insensitive to his surroundings, the more you will have succeeded. Ford Madox Ford. Joseph Conrad: A Personal Remembrance (1924), Part III, Section ii.

(ix) . . . may the writer take the reader into his confidence about his characters? . . . better not. It is dangerous, it generally leads to a drop in the temperature, to intellectual and emotional laxity, and worse still to facetiousness, and to a friendly invitation to see how the figures hook up behind. 'Doesn't A look nice—she always was my favourite', 'Let's think of why B does that—perhaps there's more in him than meets the eye—yes, see—he has a heart of gold—having given you this peep at it I'll pop it back—I don't think he's noticed'. 'And C—he always was the mystery man.' Intimacy is gained but at the expense of illusion and nobility. It is like standing a man a drink so that he may not criticize your opinions. With all respect to Fielding and Thackeray it is devastating, it is bar-parlour chattiness, and nothing has been more harmful to the novels of the past. To take your reader into your confidence about the universe is a different thing. It is not dangerous for a novelist to draw back from his characters, as Hardy and Conrad do, and to generalize about the conditions under which he thinks life is carried on. It is confidences about the individual people that do harm, and beckon the reader away from the people to an examination of the novelist's mind. Not much is ever found in it at such a moment, for it is never in the creative state: the mere process of saying 'come along, let's have a chat' has cooled it down. E. M. Forster. Aspects of the Novel {1927), Chapter iv.

w

It is appropriate, in opposition to the manner of Meredith and James, to let the reader get the advantage over me—to go about it in such a way as to allow him to think he is more intelligent, more 2 73

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FICTION

moral, more perspicacious than the author, and that he is discovering many things in the characters, and many truths in the course of the narrative, in spite of the author and, so to speak, behind the author's back. André Gide. Logbook of T h e Coiners {1927), p. 85, trami. Justin O'Brien.

(xi) T h e novelist can assume the god-like creative privilege and simply elect to consider the events of the story in their various aspects— emotional, scientific, economic, religious, metaphysical, etc. H e will modulate from one to the other—as from the aesthetic to the psychico-chemical aspect of things, from the religious to the physiological or financial. But perhaps this is a too tyrannical imposition of the author's will. Some people would think so. But need the author be so retiring? I think we're a bit too squeamish about these personal appearances nowadays. Put a novelist into the novel. He justifies aesthetic generalizations, which may be interesting—at least to me. He also justifies experiment. Specimens of his work may illustrate other possible or impossible ways of telling a story. And if you have him telling parts of the same story as you are, you can make a variation on the theme. But why draw the line at one novelist inside your novel? W h y not a second inside his? A n d a third inside the novel of the second? A n d so on to infinity, like those advertisements of Quaker Oats where there's a quaker holding a box of oats, on which is a picture of another quaker holding another box of oats, on which etc., etc. A t about the tenth remove you might have a novelist telling your story in algebraic symbols or in terms of variations in blood-pressure, pulse, secretion of ductless glands and reaction times. Aldous Huxley. Point Counter Point (1928), Chapter xxii.

274

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Characterization

T H E D I A L - P L A T E OR T H E I N N E R W O R K I N G S ? (i) T h e only ways by which we can come at any knowledge of what passes in the minds of others, are their words and actions, the latter of which hath by the wiser part of mankind been chiefly depended on, as the surer and more infallible guide. Henry Fielding. T h e Champion (n December 1739)(ii) T h e motives to actions, and the inward turns of the mind, seem in our opinion more necessary to be known than the actions themselves; and much rather would we choose that our readers should clearly understand what our principal actors think, than what they do. Sarah Fielding. Preface to T h e Cry (1754).

(iii) I have just gone through your two vols, of Letters. Have re-perused them with great pleasure, and found many new beauties in them. What a knowledge of the human heart! Well might a critical j u d g e of writing say, as he did to me, that your late brother's knowledge of it was not (fine writer as he was) comparable to yours. His was but as the knowledge of the outside of a clock-work machine, while yours was that of all the finer springs and movements of the inside. Samuel Richardson. Letter to Sarah Fielding (7 December 1756), Correspondence (1804).

(iv) Richardson was well qualified to be the discoverer of a new style of writing, for he was a cautious, deep, and minute examinator of 2 75

T H E C R A F T OF F I C T I O N the human heart, and, like Cooke or Parry, left neither head, bay nor inlet behind him, until he had traced its soundings, and laid it down in his chart, with all its minute sinuosities, its depths, and its shallows. Hence the high, and comparatively considered, perhaps the undue superiority assigned by Johnson to Richardson over Fielding, against w h o m the Doctor seems to have entertained some prejudice. I n one passage he asserts, that 'there is more knowledge o f the h u m a n heart in one letter of Richardson's than in all Tom Jones'. A n d in another, he thus explains the proposition: ' T h e r e is all the difference in the world between characters of nature and characters o f manners, and there is this difference between the characters o f Fielding and those of Richardson. Characters of manners are very entertaining; but they are to be understood by a more superficial observer than characters of nature, where a m a n must dive into the recesses of the human heart'. A g a i n , in comparing these two distinguished authors, the critic uses this illustration,— 'that there was as great a difference between them, as between a m a n w h o knew how a watch was made, and a man w h o could tell the hour b y looking at the dial-plate'. Dissenting as w e do from the conclusions to be deduced from Dr. Johnson's simile, we would rather so modify it as to describe both authors as excellent mechanics; the time-pieces of Richardson showing a great deal of the internal work by which the index is regulated; while those of Fielding merely point to the hour of the day, being all that most men desire to know. O r , to take a more manageable comparison, the analogy betwixt the writings of Fielding and Richardson resembles that w h i c h free, bold and true sketches bear to paintings that have been very minutely laboured, and which, amid their excellence, still exhibit some of the heaviness that almost always attends the highest degree of finishing. This, indeed, is admitted b y Johnson himself, in his reply to the observation of the Honourable T h o m a s Erskine, that Richardson was t e d i o u s . — ' W h y , sir, if you were to read Richardson for the story, your impatience would be so much fretted, that you would hang yourself. But you must read him for the sentiment'. Were we to translate the controversy into plain language, it might be summed up in pronouncing the works of Richardson the more instructive, and the more deeply affecting, those of Fielding the more amusing; and that a reader might select the one or the other for his studies, according to T o n y Lumpkin's phrase, as he felt himself 'in a concatenation a c c o r d i n g l y ' ; — w i t h this difference, however, that he who would laugh with Fielding, m a y open Tom Jones at a venture; but he w h o would weep with Richardson must be content to read through many pages, until his mind is in the 276

CHARACTERIZATION mood fittest to appreciate the pathetic scenes introduced b y a succession of minute and highly laboured details. This no doubt frequently occasions a suspension of the narrative, in order to afford time for the minute delineation of character. 'Richardson himself has explained his principle', as is well observed by M r . D'Israeli. ' I f ' , he tells us, ' I give speeches and conversations, I ought to give them justly, for the humours and persons of characters cannot be known, unless I repeat what they say, and their manner of saying it'. T h i s process of miniature painting, has, however, its bounds; and m a n y readers will be disposed to acquiesce in the remark of D ' A l e m b e r t , — ' L a Nature est bonne à imiter, mais non pas j u s q u ' à l'ennui.' Sir Walter Scott. 'Samuel Richardson', Lives of the Novelists (1827). N O P I C T U R E S OF

PERFECTION

(i) . . . w e must admonish thee, m y worthy friend (for, perhaps, thy heart m a y b e better than thy head), not to condemn a character as a b a d one because it is not perfectly a good one. I f thou dost delight in these models of perfection, there are books enow written to gratify thy taste; but, as w e have not, in the course of our conversation, ever happened to meet with any such person, w e h a v e not chosen to introduce any such here. T o say the truth, I a little question whether mere man ever arrived at this consummate degree of excellence, as well as whether there hath ever existed a monster bad enough to verify that . . . nulla virtute redemptum A vitiis. . . - 1 Henry Fielding. T h e History of T o m Jones, a Foundling {1749), Book X, Chapter i.

(») I do not aim to draw a perfect character, for after a pretty long acquaintance with mankind I have never met with any one example of the sort: H o w then shall I describe w h a t I have not seen? O n the contrary, if I wish to form a character, like this of Henry, in w h i c h virtue predominates, or like that of Blackford, where the opposite 1

His vices are not allayed with a single virtue. 277

T H E C R A F T OF F I C T I O N qualities prevail, I have nature before me in both cases: b u t if in the former instance I will not suffer a single shade to fall on my canvas, and in the latter do not let one hint of light appear, w h a t do I present to the spectator, b u t a confused a n d shapeless mass, here too glaring, a n d there too opaque, to preserve any outline that can give to v i e w the form and fashion of a m a n ? — T h e brightest side o f h u m a n nature is not without a spot, the darkest side is not without a spark. Richard Cumberland. Henry {1795), Book the Fourth, Chapter i.

(iii) . . . pictures of perfection as you know make me sick and wicked . . . Y o u m a y perhaps like the Heroine, 1 sis she is almost too good for me . . . Jane Austen. Letter to Cassandra Austen (23 March Letters (1932)

1817),

(iv) I w a n t to see m a n as he really is. H e is neither good nor b a d . But he is something else besides . . . being both good and b a d , he possesses an inner force which drives him to be very bad a n d a bit good, or else very good and a bit b a d . George Sand. Letter to Gustave Flaubert (18-19 December i8j$), Correspondance (1892).

(v) . . . w e are for the most part an abominably foolish and selfish people 'desperately wicked' and all eager after vanities. Everybody is y o u see in that book [i.e. Vanity Fair],—for instance if I h a d m a d e A m e l i a a higher order of w o m a n there would have been no vanity in Dobbin's falling in love with her, whereas the impression at present is that he is a fool for his pains, that he has married a sweet little thing and in fact has found out his error, rather a sweet and tender one however, quia multum amavit. I want to leave everybody dissatisfied and unhappy at the end of the s t o r y — w e ought all to be w i t h our own and all other stories. G o o d G o d , don't I see (in that may-be cracked and warped looking glass in which I a m always looking) m y o w n weaknesses, wickednesses, lusts, follies, short1

Anne Elliot in Persuasion (1818). 278

CHARACTERIZATION

comings? in company let us hope with better qualities about which we will pretermit discourse. We must lift up our voices about these and howl to a congregation of fools: so much at least has been my endeavour. You have all of you taken my misanthropy to task—I wish I could myself: but take the world by a certain standard (you know what I mean) and who dares talk of having any virtue at all? William Makepeace Thackeray. Letter to Robert Bell (3 September 1848), Letters {1945). NO P O R T R A I T S

(i) And here I solemnly protest I have no intention to vilify or asperse anyone; for though everything is copied from the book of nature, and scarce a character or action produced which I have not taken from my own observations and experience; yet I have used the utmost care to obscure the persons by such different circumstances, degrees, and colours, that it will be impossible to guess at them with any degree of certainty; and if it ever happens otherwise, it is only where the failure characterized is so minute, that it is a foible only which the party himself may laugh at as well as any other. As to the character of Adams, as it is the most glaring in the whole, so I conceive it is not to be found in any book now extant. It is designed a character of perfect simplicity; and as the goodness of his heart will recommend him to the good-natured, so I hope it will excuse me to the gentlemen of his cloth; for whom, while they are worthy of their sacred order, no man can possibly have a greater respect. They will therefore excuse me, notwithstanding the low adventures in which he is engaged, that I have made him a clergyman: since no other office could have given him so many opportunities of displaying his worthy inclinations. Henry Fielding. 'Author's Preface1, The History of the Adventures of Joseph Andrews . . . (1J42).

(") I take a being whom I have known, and say to myself: with the same habits, contracted in the art of going every morning 'in pursuit of pleasure', what would he do if he had more intelligence? Stendhal. Letter to Balzac (50 October 1840), first draft, Selected Letters {1952), transl. Norman Cameron. 279

T H E C R A F T OF F I C T I O N

(iii) Y o u are not to suppose any of the characters in Shirley intended as literal portraits. It would not suit the rules of art, nor of m y own feelings, to write in that style. W e only suffer reality to suggest, never to dictate. T h e heroines are abstractions, and the heroes also. Qualities I have seen, loved and admired, are here and there put in as decorative gems, to be preserved in that setting. Charlotte Bronte. Letter to Ellen Kussey (16 November 1849) from Mrs. Gaskell's Life {1857).

(iv) There is not a single portrait in Adam Bede, as I have said before . . . I could never have written A d a m Bede if I had not learned something of my father's early experience: but no one w h o knew m y father could call A d a m a portrait of h i m — a n d the course of A d a m ' s life is entirely different from my father's. A g a i n , D i n a h and Seth are not m y aunt and uncle. I knew my aunt and uncle a n d they were Methodists—my aunt a preacher, and I loved them: so far only they resembled Seth and Dinah. T h e whole course o f the story in A d a m B e d e — t h e descriptions of scenery and houses—the characters — t h e dialogue—everything is a combination from widely sundered elements of experience . . . But no one w h o is not a n artist knows h o w experience is wrought u p in writing any form of poetry. George Eliot. Letter to Charles Bray (ig September i8$g), T h e George Eliot Letters (1954).

(v) I don't write satire; I don't even know w h a t it is. N o r do I paint portraits: that isn't my w a y . I invent. T h e public, w h o don't know w h a t invention consists of, try to find originals everywhere. T h e y deceive themselves and debase the art. George Sand. Letter to Gustave Flaubert (ig March i8yo). Correspondance (1892).

(vi)

( T o ' M r . Haines', 1837) . . . In my next number of Oliver Twist I must have a magistrate; and casting about for a magistrate whose harshness and insolence would render him a fit subject to be shown 280

CHARACTERIZATION up, I have as a necessary consequence stumbled upon M r . L a i n g of Hatton-garden celebrity. I know the man's character perfectly well; but as it would be necessary to describe his personal appearance also, I ought to have seen him, which (fortunately or unfortunately as the case m a y be) I have never done. In this dilemma it occurred to me that perhaps I might under your auspices be smuggled into the Hatton-garden office for a few moments some morning. I f you can further my object I shall really be very greatly obliged to you. Charles Dickens. John Forster, T h e Life of Charles Dickens (1874), Vol. Ill, Chapter i.

( T o Leigh Hunt, concerning Harold Skimpole in Bleak House) . . . A s it has given you so much pain, I take it at its worst and say I a m deeply sorry, and that I feel I did wrong in doing it. I should otherwise have taken it at its best, and ridden off upon w h a t I strongly feel to be the truth, that there is nothing in it that should have given you pain. Every one in writing must speak from points of his experience, and so I of mine with you: but when I h a v e felt it was going too close I stopped myself, and the most blotted parts of my M . S . are those in which I have been striving hard to make the impression I was writing from, unlike you. T h e diary-writing I took from Haydon, not from you. I now first learn from yourself that you ever set anything to music, and I could not have copied that from you. T h e character is not you, for there are traits in it common to fifty thousand people besides, and I did not fancy you would ever recognize it. U n d e r similar disguises my own mother and father are in my books, and you might as well see y o u r likeness in Micawber. Charles Dickens. John Forster, T h e Life of Charles Dickens (.1874), Vol. Ill, Chapter i.

(Vii) . . . there is nothing 'true' in Madame Bovary. It is a story of pure invention; I have put none of m y own feelings into it, nor anything of my own life. T h e illusion [of truth], on the contrary (if there is any), comes from the very objectivity of the work. 1 Gustave Flaubert. Letter to Mademoiselle Leroyer de Chantepie, (ig February 1857), Correspondance (1903). 1

See also above, p. 271.

281

T H E C R A F T OF F I C T I O N T h e public, I repeat, see allusions where none exist. W h e n I ' d finished Madame Bovary, I w a s asked several times, ' W a s it M a d a m e X X X w h o m y o u intended to portray?' A n d I received several letters from perfect strangers, one o f them f r o m a gentleman in R e i m s w h o congratulated m e o n h a v i n g avenged him\ (for a faithless w o m a n ) . A l l the chemists in the Seine-Inférieure recognized themselves in H o m a i s a n d w a n t e d to c o m e a n d slap me in the face; but best of all (I discovered this five years later) at that time in A f r i c a there w a s a n a r m y doctor's wife called M a d a m e Bovaries w h o resembled M a d a m e Bovary, a n a m e w h i c h I ' d invented b y altering Bouvaret. T h e first words o f o u r friend M a u r y in discussing L'Education Sentimentale were: ' D i d y o u k n o w X . . ., an Italian mathematics master? Y o u r Sénécal is his portrait, physically a n d morally! Everything is there, d o w n to the cut o f his hair!' O t h e r s claim that in A r n o u x I wanted to portray Bernard-Latte (the former editor) w h o m I'd never seen, etc. A l l this is to tell y o u , chère M a d a m e , that the public is mistaken in attributing intentions to us that w e don't possess. Gustave Flaubert. Letter to Madame Hortense Cornu (20 March 1870), Correspondance (1903).

(viii) . . . I thought the crime too ingenious for an English villain, so I pitched u p o n a foreigner. Y o u k n o w that I h a v e lived a great deal a b r o a d , and have h a d m a n y opportunities o f observing foreign people. It seems that I did so to some purpose, for after The Woman in White appeared, I received a large n u m b e r o f l e t t e r s f r o m a b r o a d accusing me of gross personal caricature or rather too accurate portraiture. T h e writers were in a great rage at h a v i n g their personal weaknesses applied to a scoundrel a n d held u p to derision. I need not tell y o u that Fosco is not modelled on any one or a n y half dozen persons. His character grew on m e , — a great d a n g e r to a novelist b y the w a y . I know a m a n w h o loved canaries, and I h a d known boys w h o loved w h i t e mice, a n d I thought the mice r u n n i n g about Fosco while he meditated on his schemes w o u l d have a fine effect. Y o u ask m e w h y I m a d e h i m fat; his greatest b e a u t y in the opinion o f the majority of competent j u d g e s . Y o u give m e good reasons for m a k i n g h i m fat: that fat m e n are malevolent a n d ruthless, and that the first N a p o l e o n w a s a fat m a n , together w i t h t h e chemical demonstration that fatty substances w h e n heated a b o v e a certain temperature develop a n acid k n o w n as butyric acid. I k n e w all this, b u t none of these considerations influenced me. I h a d begun to

282

CHARACTERIZATION write m y story, when it struck m e that m y villain w o u l d be commonplace, a n d I made him fat in opposition to the recognized type of villain. His theories concerning the v u l g a r clap-trap that murder will out, are m y own. Wilkie Collins. Interview in T h e W o r l d (26 December 1877).

(ix) A n d then I had an idea for J o h n Silver from w h i c h I promised myself funds of entertainment; to take a n admired friend of mine (whom the reader very likely knows and admires as m u c h as I do), to deprive h i m of all his finer qualities a n d higher graces o f temperament, to leave him with nothing but his strength, his courage, his quickness, and his magnificent geniality, and to try to express these in terms of the culture of a r a w tarpaulin. Such psychical surgery is, I think, a common w a y o f 'making character'; perhaps it is, indeed, the only w a y . W e c a n p u t in the quaint figure that spoke a hundred words w i t h us yesterday by the wayside; but do w e know him? O u r friend, with his infinite variety and flexibility, w e know — b u t can w e put him in? U p o n the first, w e must engraft secondary and imaginary qualities, possibly all w r o n g ; from the second, knife in hand, we must cut a w a y a n d deduct the needless arborescence of his nature, but the trunk and the few branches that remain w e m a y at least be fairly sure of. Robert Louis Stevenson. 'My first book' ( ) ; T h e A r t o f W r i t i n g (1919)

reprinted in

(X) W h a t I should, for that matter, like most to g o into here, space serving, is the so interesting q u e s t i o n — f o r the most part, it strikes me, too confusedly t r e a t e d — o f the story-teller's 'real person' or actual contemporary transplanted and exhibited. But this pursuit would take us far, such radical revision d o the c o m m o n laxities of the case, as generally handled, seem to call for . . . W e can surely account for nothing in the novelist's work that hasn't passed through the crucible of his imagination, hasn't, in that perpetually simmering cauldron, his intellectual pot-au-feu, been reduced to savoury fusion. W e here figure the morsel, o f course, not as boiled to nothing, but as exposed, in return for the taste it gives out, to a new and richer saturation. In this state it is in due course picked out and served . . . Its final savour has been constituted, but its prime identity d e s t r o y e d — w h i c h is w h a t was to be demonstrated. 283

T H E C R A F T OF F I C T I O N T h u s it becomes different and, thanks to a rare alchemy, a better thing. Therefore let us have here as little as possible a b o u t its 'being' M r . T h i s or Mrs. T h a t . I f it adjusts itself w i t h the least truth to its n e w life it can't possibly b e either. I f it gracelessly refers itself to either, if it persists as the impression not artistically dealt w i t h , it shames the honour offered it a n d c a n only b e spoken of as h a v i n g ceased to be a thing of fact, a n d yet not b e c o m e a thing o f truth. Henry James. Preface to T h e Lesson of the M a s t e r , first printed in the New York edition of the Novels a n d Stories (/907-/7), Vol. XV. (xi) I m a y make the note that I never in m y life, as far as I c a n remember, used a character from actual life for the purposes of fiction—or never without concealing their attributes very carefully. T h i s is not so m u c h because I wish to avoid hurting people's feelings as because it is, artistically, a very dangerous practice. It is even fatal. Ford Madox Ford. It was the N i g h t i n g a l e Part Two, Chapter ii.

{1934),

(xii) I think that actual life supplies a writer with characters m u c h less than is thought. O f course there must be a beginning to every conception, but so m u c h change seems to take p l a c e in it at once, that almost anything comes to serve the p u r p o s e — a face o f a stranger, a face seen in a portrait, almost a face in the fire. A n d people in life hardly seem definite enough to a p p e a r in print. T h e y are not good or bad enough, or clever or stupid e n o u g h , or comic or pitiful enough. T h e y w o u l d have to be presented by means of detailed description, a n d w o u l d not come t h r o u g h in talk. I think that the reason w h y a person is often angered b y a supposed portrait of himself, is that the author leaves in some recognizable attributes, while the conception has altered so m u c h that the subject is justified in thinking there is n o resemblance. A n d I believe that w e know m u c h less of each other than w e think, that it w o u l d b e a great shock to find oneself suddenly behind another person's eyes. T h e things w e think w e know about each other, w e m a y often imagine and read in. I think this is another reason w h y a supposed portrait gives offence. It is really far from the truth. I n cases where a supposed portrait of some living person has

284

CHARACTERIZATION caused trouble, I h a v e thought that the explanation lies in these things, and that the author's disclaimer of any intention o f portraiture is in the main sincere and just. Ivy Compton-Burnett. 'A Conversation Between I. Compton-Burnett and M. Jourdain', O r i o n (1943). T H E N O V E L I S T ' S C H A R A C T E R S MUST B E

REAL

T O HIM But the novelist has other aims than the elucidation of his plot. H e desires to m a k e his readers so intimately acquainted w i t h his characters that the creations of his brain should be to them speaking, moving, living, h u m a n creatures. T h i s he c a n never d o unless he knows those fictitious personages himself, and he can never k n o w them well unless he can live w i t h them in the full reality of established intimacy. T h e y must b e w i t h h i m as he lies d o w n to sleep, and as he wakes from his dreams. H e must learn to hate them a n d to love them. H e must know o f them whether they be cold-blooded or passionate, whether true or false, and h o w far true, a n d h o w far false. T h e depth and the breadth, a n d the narrowness a n d the shallowness o f each should b e clear to h i m . A n d as, here in our outer world, w e know that m e n a n d w o m e n c h a n g e , — b e c o m e worse or better as temptation or conscience m a y guide t h e m , — s o should these creations o f his change, and every change should b e noted b y him. O n the last d a y o f each month recorded, every person in his novel should be a month older than on the first. I f the w o u l d - b e novelist h a v e aptitudes that w a y , all this will come to h i m without m u c h s t r u g g l i n g ; — b u t if it d o not come, I think he can only m a k e novels of w o o d . It is so that I h a v e lived w i t h m y characters, and thence has c o m e whatever success I have attained. T h e r e is a gallery o f them, and o f all in that gallery I m a y say that I know the tone of voice, and the colour o f the hair, every flame o f the eye, and the very clothes they wear. O f each m a n I could assert whether he w o u l d h a v e said these or the other words; of every w o m a n , w h e t h e r she w o u l d then have smiled or so have frowned. W h e n I shall feel that this i n t i m a c y ceases, then I shall know that the old horse should be turned out to grass. T h a t I shall feel it w h e n I ought to feel it, I will b y no means say. I do not know that I a m at all wiser than G i l Bias' canon; b u t I do know that the power indicated is one without w h i c h the teller of tales cannot tell them to a n y good effect. Anthony Trollope. A u t o b i o g r a p h y (I88J), Chapter xii.

285

T H E C R A F T OF F I C T I O N T H E N O V E L I S T H A U N T E D B Y HIS C H A R A C T E R S

. . . I admit that outwardly I resembled sufficiently a man w h o could make a second officer for a steamer chartered by a French company. I showed no sign of being haunted by the fate of Nina and by the murmurs of tropical forests; and even my intimate intercourse with Almayer (a person of weak character) had not put a visible mark upon my features. For many years he and the world of his story had been the companions of my imagination without, I hope, impairing my ability to deal with the realities of sea life. I had had the man and his surroundings with me ever since my return from the eastern waters, some four years before the day of which I speak. It was in the front sitting-room of furnished apartments in a Pimlico square that they first began to live again with a vividness and poignancy quite foreign to our former real intercourse. I had been treating myself to a long stay on shore, and in the necessity of occupying my mornings, Almayer (that old acquaintance) came nobly to the rescue. Before long, as was only proper, his wife and daughter joined him round my table, and then the rest of that Pantai band came full of words and gestures. Unknown to my respectable landlady, it was my practice directly after my breakfast to hold animated receptions of Malays, Arabs and half-castes. T h e y did not clamour aloud for my attention. T h e y came with silent and irresistible appeal—and the appeal, I affirm here, was not to my self-love or my vanity. It seems now to have had a moral character, for w h y should the memory of these beings, seen in their obscure sun-bathed existence, demand to express itself in the shape of a novel, except on the ground of that mysterious fellowship which unites in a community of hopes and fears all the dwellers on this earth. Joseph Conrad. A Personal Record (1912), Chapter i. L ' l M A G E EN

DISPONIBILITE

I have always fondly remembered a remark that I heard fall years ago from the lips of Ivan T u r g e n i e f f i n regard to his own experience of the usual origin of the Active picture. It began for him almost always with the vision of some person or persons, who hovered before him, soliciting him, as the active or passive figure, interesting him and appealing to him just as they were and by what they were. He saw them, in that fashion, as disponibles, saw them subject to the chances, the complications of existence, and saw them vividly, but 286

CHARACTERIZATION then h a d to find for them the right relations, those that w o u l d most b r i n g t h e m out; to imagine, to invent a n d select a n d piece t o g e t h e r the situations most useful a n d f a v o u r a b l e to the sense o f the creatures themselves, the complications they w o u l d b e most likely to p r o d u c e a n d feel. ' T o arrive at these things is to arrive a t m y " s t o r y " ' , he said, ' a n d that's the w a y I look for it. T h e result is t h a t I ' m often accused o f not h a v i n g " s t o r y " enough. I seem to myself to h a v e as m u c h as I n e e d — t o show m y people, to exhibit their relations w i t h e a c h other; for that is all my measure. I f I w a t c h t h e m l o n g e n o u g h I see them c o m e together, I see t h e m placed, I see t h e m e n g a g e d in this or that act a n d in this or that difficulty. H o w they look a n d m o v e a n d speak a n d behave, a l w a y s in the setting I h a v e f o u n d for them, is m y a c c o u n t o f t h e m — o f w h i c h I d a r e say, alas, que cela manque souvent d'architecture. But I w o u l d rather, I think, h a v e too little architecture than too m u c h — w h e n there's a d a n g e r o f its interfering w i t h m y measure o f the truth. T h e F r e n c h of course like m o r e of it than I g i v e — h a v i n g b y their o w n genius such a h a n d for it; and indeed one must give all one c a n . A s for t h e origin o f one's w i n d - b l o w n germs themselves, w h o shall say, as y o u ask, w h e r e they c o m e from? W e h a v e to go too far b a c k , too far behind, to say . . .' So this beautiful genius, a n d I recall w i t h c o m f o r t the gratitude I drew f r o m his reference to the intensity o f suggestion that m a y reside in the stray figure, the u n a t t a c h e d c h a r a c t e r , the image en disponibilité. It g a v e m e higher w a r r a n t t h a n I seemed then to h a v e met for j u s t that blest habit o f one's o w n i m a g i n a t i o n , the trick o f investing some conceived or encountered individual, some b r a c e or group of individuals, with the germinal property a n d a u t h o r i t y . I was myself so m u c h more a n t e c e d e n t l y conscious o f m y figures than of their s e t t i n g — a too preliminary, a preferential interest in w h i c h struck m e as in general s u c h a p u t t i n g o f the cart before the horse. I might envy, t h o u g h I c o u l d n ' t e m u l a t e , the i m a g i n a t i v e writer so constituted as to see his fable first a n d to m a k e out its agents afterwards: I could think so little o f a n y fable that d i d n ' t need its agents positively to l a u n c h it; I could think so little of a n y situation that didn't depend for its interest o n t h e nature o f the persons situated, and thereby o n their w a y o f taking it. Henry James. Preface to T h e Portrait o f a L a d y (1881); first printed in the New York edition of the N o v e l s a n d Stories (1goj-17), Vol. III.

287

T H E C R A F T OF F I C T I O N ' F L A T ' AND 'ROUND'

CHARACTERS

W e may divide characters into flat and round. Flat characters were called 'humours' in the seventeenth century, and are sometimes called types, and sometimes caricatures. I n their purest form, they are constructed round a single idea or quality: when there is more than one factor in them, we get the beginning of the curve towards the round. T h e really flat character can be expressed in one sentence such as 'I never will desert M r . Micawber.' T h e r e is Mrs. Micawber—she says she won't desert Mr. Micawber, she doesn't, and there she is . . . O n e great advantage of flat characters is that they are easily recognized whenever they come in—recognized by the reader's emotional eye, not by the visual eye which merely notes the recurrence of a proper name. I n Russian novels, where they so seldom occur, they would be a decided help. It is a convenience for an author when he can strike with his full force at once, and flat characters are very useful to him, since they never need reintroducing, never run away, have not to be watched for development, and provide their own atmosphere—little luminous disks of a prearranged size, pushed hither a n d thither like counters across the void or between the stars; most satisfactory. A second advantage is that they are easily remembered by the reader afterwards. They remain in his mind as unalterable for the reason that they are not changed by circumstances; they moved through circumstances, which gives them in retrospect a comforting quality, and preserves them when the book that produced them may decay. T h e Countess in Evan Harrington furnishes a good little example here. Let us compare our memories of her with our memories of Becky Sharp. W e do not remember what the Countess did or what she passed through. W h a t is clear is her figure and the formula that surrounds it, namely, 'Proud as we are of dear Papa, we must conceal his memory'. All her rich humour proceeds from this. She is a flat character. Becky Sharp is round. She, too, is on the make, but she cannot be summed u p in a single phrase, and we remember her in connection with the great scenes through which she passed and as modified by those scenes—that is to say, we do not remember her so easily because she waxes and wanes and has facets like a h u m a n being. . . . As for the round characters proper, they have already been defined by implication and no more need be said. All I need do is to give some examples of people in books who seem to me round so that the definition can be tested afterwards: 288

CHARACTERIZATION

All the principal characters in War and Peace, all the Dostoevsky characters, and some of the Proust—for example, the old family servant, the Duchess of Guermantes, M . de Charlus, and SaintLoup; Madame Bovary—who, like Moll Flanders, has her book for herself, and can expand and secrete unchecked; some people in Thackeray—for instance, Becky and Beatrix; some in Fielding— Parson Adams, Tom Jones; and some in Charlotte Bronte, most particularly Lucy Snowe. (And many more, this is not a catalogue.) The test of a round character is whether it is capable of surprising in a convincing way. If it never surprises, it is flat. If it does not convince, it is flat pretending to be round. It has the incalculability of life about it—life within the pages of a book. And by using it sometimes alone more often in combination with the other kind, the novelist achieves his task of acclimatization, and harmonizes the human race with the other aspects of his work. E. M. Forster. Aspects of the Novel {1927), Chapter iv. A B A N D O N I N G T H E 'OLD S T A B L E EGO'

. . . Somehow—that which is physic—non-human in humanity, is more interesting to me than the old-fashioned human element— which causes one to conceive a character in a certain moral scheme and make him consistent. The certain moral scheme is what I object to. In Turgenev, and in Tolstoy, and in Dostoevsky, the moral scheme into which all the characters fit—and it is nearly the same scheme—is, whatever the extraordinariness of the characters themselves, dull, old, dead. When Marinetti writes: 'it is the solidity of a blade of steel that is interesting by itself, that is, the incomprehending and inhuman alliance of its molecules in resistance to, let us say, a bullet. The heat of a piece of wood or iron is in fact more passionate, for us, than the laughter or tears of a woman'—then I know what he means. He is stupid, as an artist, for contrasting the heat of the iron and the laugh of the woman. Because what is interesting in the laugh of the woman is the same as the binding of the molecules of steel or their action in heat: it is the inhuman will, call it physiology, or like Marinetti, physiology of matter, that fascinates me. I don't so much care what the woman feels—in the ordinary usage of the word. That presumes an ego to feel with. I only care for what the woman is—what she is—inhumanly, physiologically, materially—according to the use of the word . . . You mustn't look in my novel for the old stable ego of the character. There is another ego, according to whose action the individual is unrecognizable, and passes through, as it were, allotropic states which it needs a deeper 289

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sense than any we've been used to exercise, to discover are states of the same single radically unchanged element. (Like as diamond and coal are the same pure single element of carbon. The ordinary novel would trace the history of the diamond—but I say, 'Diamond, what! This is carbon'. And my diamond might be coal or soot, and my theme is carbon.) D. H. Lawrence. Letter to Edward Garnett {5 June 1914), Letters (1932). A L L NOVELS DEAL WITH

CHARACTER

I believe that all novels . . . deal with character, and that it is to express character—not to preach doctrines, sing songs, or celebrate the glories of the British Empire, that the form of the novel, so clumsy, verbose, and undramatic, so rich, elastic, and alive, has been evolved. T o express character, I have said; but you will at once reflect that the very widest interpretation can be put upon those words . . . besides age and country there is the writer's temperament to be considered. You see one thing in character, and I another. You say it means this, and I that. And when it comes to writing, each makes a further selection on principles of his own. Virginia Woolf. 'Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown' (1924), first printed in The Captain's Death Bed (1950). A C H A R A C T E R HAS TO BE

CONVENTIONALIZED

( 1 1 September 1931) . . . I was thinking about what T . S. Eliot and I had said about character in fiction. A character has to be conventionalized. It must somehow form part of the pattern, or lay the design of the book. Hence it must be conventionalized. Y o u can't put the whole of a character into a book, unless the book were of inordinate length and the reader of inordinate patience. You must select traits. Y o u must take many traits for granted, and refer to them, in a way to show that they are conventionalized. If you wanted to get at a total truth you'd only get a confused picture. Question: Does a novelist want his characters to remain in the mind of the reader? Some novelists don't. But I do, for one. Dickens's characters remain in the mind. They may perhaps be too conventionalized, too simplified. Same for Thackeray—Dobbin and Amelia. But they remain in the mind. No novelist can always be creating absolutely new, or fresh, characters. Balzac used the same frame of conventionalization over and over again. His titled amorous dames many of them of the same pattern. So did Shakespeare. So did Scott.

290

CHARACTERIZATION T h i s implies a form of conventionalization. T h e n half-critics say, when they observe the necessary conventionalization, that there is no character-drawing at all. T h e thing is to produce a n impression on the r e a d e r — t h e best you can, the truest you c a n : but some impression. T h e newest despisers o f form a n d conventionalization produce no impression at all. Arnold Bennett. T h e Journals of A r n o l d Bennett ( i g j i ) . AUTHENTICITY I f I spoiled the portrait of old L a Perouse it was because I clung too closely to reality; I neither knew nor was able to lose sight o f m y model. T h e narrative of that first visit will have to be done over. L a Perouse will not come to life nor shall I really visualize him until he completely displaces his original. N o t h i n g so far has given me so m u c h trouble. T h e difficult thing is inventing w h e n you are encumbered b y memory . . . T h e poor novelist constructs his characters, he controls them and makes them speak. T h e true novelist listens to them a n d watches them function; he eavesdrops on them even before he knows them. It is only according to w h a t he hears them say that he begins to understand who they are. I have put 'watches them function' second—because for me, speech tells me more than action. I think I should lose less if I w e n t blind than if I became deaf. Nevertheless I d o see m y c h a r a c t e r s — not so m u c h in their details as in their general effect, and even more in their actions, their gait, the r h y t h m of their movements. I d o not worry if the lenses of m y glasses fail to show them completely 'in focus'; whereas I perceive the least inflections of their voices with the greatest sharpness. I wrote the first dialogue between Olivier a n d Bernard and the scenes between Passavant and V i n c e n t without having the slightest idea what I was going to do w i t h those characters, or even w h o they were. T h e y thrust themselves upon me, despite m e . . . Andre Gide. L o g b o o k o f T h e Coiners (1927), pp. 38, 44, transl. Justin O'Brien. Inconsistency. Characters in a novel or a play w h o act all the w a y through exactly as one expects them to . . . T h i s consistency of theirs, which is held u p to our admiration, is on the contrary the very thing w h i c h makes us recognize that they are artificially composed. Andre Gide. Les F a u x M o n n a y e u r s {¡925), Part III, Chapter xiii, transl. Dorothy Bussy (1952) • 291

IV

STRONG

Dialogue

LANGUAGE

T h a t the delicate reader m a y not be offended at the unmeaning oaths w h i c h proceed from the mouths of some persons in these memoirs, I beg leave to premise, that I imagined nothing could more effectually expose the absurdity of such miserable expletives, than a natural and verbal representation of the discourse in which they occur. Tobias Smollett. Preface to T h e Adventures of Roderick R a n d o m {1748). F L A U B E R T D E S C R I B E S HIS D I F F I C U L T I E S T O LOUISE C O L E T Y e t how can one produce well-written dialogue about trivialities? But it has to be done . . . (13 September 1852.) H o w exasperated I a m by my Bovary . . . I've never in my life written anything more difficult than these conversations full of trivialities. This scene at the inn m a y take me three months for all I know. I could weep sometimes, I feel so helpless . . . (19 September 1852.) Things have been going well for two or three days now. I ' m writing a conversation between a young man and a y o u n g w o m a n on literature, the sea, mountains, music—all the poetic subjects. It could be taken seriously but it is meant to have a clearly ludicrous effect. This will be the first time, I think, that anyone will see a book making fun of its heroine and leading man. T h e irony doesn't lessen the pathos; on the contrary it adds to it. In Part 3, which will be full of farce, I want the reader to cry. (9 O c t o b e r 1852.) 292

DIALOGUE Bovaty is driving m e m a d ! I ' m coming to the conclusion that it can't be written. I have to make up a conversation between m y y o u n g w o m a n and a priest, a vulgar, stupid conversation, a n d because the matter is so commonplace the language must b e appropriate. I understand the feeling, but the ideas and words escape m e . (10 A p r i l 1853.) A t last I ' m beginning to see m y w a y a bit more clearly in this blessed dialogue w i t h the priest. But honestly there are times w h e n I could be almost physically sick, the stuff's so low. T h i s is the situation I w a n t to present: m y young w o m a n , in a n access o f religious feeling, goes to church; she finds the priest at the door and in a conversation (the subject not decided) he shows himself to be so stupid, empty, inept, crass, that she comes a w a y disgusted, her religious mood dispersed. A n d m y priest is a very good fellow, excellent even. But he only thinks about bodily ills (the sufferings o f the poor, lack of food and warmth) and doesn't sense moral backslidings or vague mystical longings; he is very chaste a n d practises his religious duties. This should take six or seven pages at the most, without intruded comment or analysis (all straight dialogue). M o r e over, since I think it low to write dialogue with dashes instead of 'he said, he answered', you can see that the repetition of the same phrases isn't easy to avoid. ( 1 3 - 1 4 A p r i l 1853.) T h i s evening I've j u s t sketched out the whole of m y great scene at the agricultural show. It will be very l o n g — t h i r t y pages at least. I n the course of describing this 'rustic-municipal' festival w i t h all its side-issues (and all the minor characters of the book appear, talking and acting) I must keep up, in the foreground, the interminable conversation of a gentleman making up to a lady. I n the middle of all this I also have a councillor's pompous speech and, at the end (when everything's over), a newspaper article by m y chemist, w h o writes up the show in a fine philosophical, poetical a n d progressive style. Y o u can see that all this is no light task. I ' m sure o f m y colouring and of m a n y of the effects; but it's the very devil to stop it being too long! (15 J u l y 1853.) I had a real triumph to-day. Y o u know that yesterday w e h a d the pleasure of seeing M . Saint-Arnaud here. Well, this m o r n i n g in the Journal de Rouen I found a sentence in the mayor's address to him 293

T H E C R A F T OF F I C T I O N w h i c h was the very sentence I had written word for word the d a y before in Bovary (in the prefect's speech at the agricultural show). N o t only were the words and the idea the same, but the very assonances were identical. I don't deny that this sort of thing gives m e real pleasure. (22 J u l y 1853.) H e r e I a m , almost in the middle o f m y agricultural show (I've written fifteen pages this month, though they aren't finished). Is it any good? I just don't know. H o w difficult it is to write dialogue, especially w h e n one wants it to possess its o w n character. T o use dialogue as a means of portrayal and yet not allow it to become less vivid or precise, to give it distinction while it continues to deal with commonplaces, all this is a colossal task, and I know of no one w h o has managed to bring it o f f in a book. Dialogue should be written in the style of comedy, narrative in that of the epic . . . Y o u say that y o u are sometimes astonished at m y letters, and find them well-written. There's a nice bit o f malice! I write as I think in them, but w h a t a difference there is w h e n it comes to thinking in the w a y that other people m a y think and then making t h e m talk! For example, I've just n o w been displaying, in the course of a conversation that is carried on through rain a n d sunshine, a certain character w h o has to be a good fellow and at the same time a bit vulgar and pretentious! A n d yet through all this the reader must nevertheless recognize that he drives home his argument. (30 September 1853.) Gustave Flaubert. Correspondance (1903). R E L E V A N T , N A T U R A L , SHORT T h e r e is no portion of a novelist's work in which this fault of episodes is so common as in the dialogue. It is so easy to make any two persons talk on any casual subject with w h i c h the writer presumes himself to be conversant! Literature, philosophy, politics, or sport, m a y thus be handled in a loosely discursive style; and the writer, while indulging himself and filling his pages, is apt to think that he is pleasing his reader. I think he can make no greater mistake. T h e dialogue is generally the most agreeable part of a novel; but it is so only so long as it tends in some w a y to the telling of the main story. It need not seem to be confined to that, but it should always have a tendency in that direction. T h e unconscious critical acumen of a reader is both just and severe. W h e n a long

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dialogue on extraneous matter reaches his mind, he at once feels that he is being cheated into taking something which he did not bargain to accept when he took u p that novel. H e does not at that moment require politics or philosophy, but he wants his story. H e will not perhaps be able to say in so many words that at some certain point the dialogue has deviated from the story; but when it does so he will feel it, and the feeling will be unpleasant. Let the intending novel-writer, if he doubt this, read one of Bulwer's novels, —in which there is very much to charm,—and then ask himself whether he has not been offended by devious conversations. And this dialogue, on which the modern novelist in consulting the taste of his probable readers must depend much, has to be constrained also by other rules. T h e writer may tell much of his story in conversations, but he may do so by putting such words into the mouths of his personages as personages so situated would probably use. He is not allowed, for the sake of his tale, to make his characters give utterance to long speeches, such as are not customarily heard from men and women. T h e ordinary talk of ordinary people is carried on in short sharp expressive sentences, which very frequently are never completed,—the language of which even among educated people is often incorrect. T h e novel-writer in constructing his dialogue must so steer between absolute accuracy of language—which would give to his conversation an air of pedantry, and the slovenly inaccuracy of ordinary talkers,—which if closely followed would offend by an appearance of grimace,— as to produce upon the ear of his readers a sense of reality. If he be quite real he will seem to attempt to be funny. If he be quite correct he will seem to be unreal. And above all, let the speeches be short. No character should utter m u c h above a dozen words at a breath,—unless the writer can justify to himself a longer flood of speech by the speciality of the occasion. Anthony Trollope. An Autobiography {1883), Chapter xii. ORGANIC A N D D R A M A T I C

. . . My idea was to be treated with light irony—it would be light and ironical or it would be nothing; so that I asked myself, naturally, what might be the least solemn form to give it, a m o n g recognized and familiar forms. T h e question thus at once arose: W h a t form so familiar, so recognized among alert readers, as that in which the ingenious and inexhaustible, the charming philosophic 'Gyp' casts most of her social studies? Gyp had long struck m e as mistress, in her levity, of one of the happiest of forms—the only objection to my 295

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use of which was a certain extraordinary benightedness on the part of the Anglo-Saxon reader. One had noted this reader as perverse and inconsequent in respect to the absorption of 'dialogue'— observed the 'public for fiction' consume it, in certain connexions, on the scale and with the smack of lips that mark the consumption of bread-and-jam by a children's school-feast, consume it even at the theatre, so far as our theatre ever vouchsafes it, and yet as flagrantly reject it when served, so to speak, au naturel. One had seen good solid slices of fiction, well endued, one might have surely thought, with this easiest of lubrications, deplored by editor and publisher as positively not, for the general gullet as known to them, made adequately 'slick'. ' "Dialogue," always "dialogue"!' I had seemed from far back to hear them mostly cry: 'We can't have too much of it, we can't have enough of it, and no excess of it, in the form of no matter what savourless dilution, or what boneless dispersion, ever began to injure a book so much as even the very scantest claim put in for form and substance'. This wisdom had always been in one's ears; but it had at the same time been equally in one's eyes that really constructive dialogue, dialogue organic and dramatic, speaking for itself, representing and embodying substance and form, is among us an uncanny and abhorrent thing, not to be dealt with on any terms. A comedy or a tragedy may run for a thousand nights without prompting twenty persons in London or in New York to desire that view of its text which is so desired in Paris, as soon as a play begins to loom at all large, that the number of copies of the printed piece on circulation far exceeds at last the number of performances. But as with the printed piece our own public, infatuated as it may be with the theatre, refuses all commerce—though indeed this can't but be, without cynicism, very much through the infirmity the piece, if printed, would reveal—so the same horror seems to attach to any typographic hint of the proscribed playbook or any insidious plea for it. The immense oddity resides in the almost exclusively typographic order of the offence. An English, an American Gyp would typographically offend, and that would be the end of her. There gloomed at me my warning, as well as shone at me my provocation, in respect to the example of this delightful writer. I might emulate her since I presumptuously would, but dishonour would await me if, proposing to treat the different faces of my subject in the most completely instituted colloquial form, I should evoke the figure and affirm the presence of participants by the repeated and prefixed name rather than by the recurrent and affixed 'said he' and 'said she'. All I have space to go into here—much as the funny fact I refer to might seem to invite 296

DIALOGUE us to dance hand in hand round i t — i s that I was at any rate duly admonished, that I took m y measures accordingly, and that the manner in which I took them has lived again for me ever so arrestingly, so amusingly, on re-examination of the book. Henry James. Preface to T h e A w k w a r d A g e (iSgg); first printed in the New York edition of the Novels a n d Stories (/507-/7), Vol. IX. FURTHER

PROBLEMS

T h e rendering in fact of speeches gave Conrad and the writer more trouble than any other department of the novel whatever. It introduced at once the whole immense subject o f under w h a t convention the novel is to be written. For whether you tell it direct a n d as an a u t h o r — w h i c h is the more difficult w a y — o r whether you p u t it into the mouth of a c h a r a c t e r — w h i c h is easier by far but m u c h more cumbersome—the question of reporting or rendering speeches has to be faced. T o pretend that any character or any author writing directly can remember whole speeches with all their words for a matter of twenty-four hours, let alone twenty-four years, is absurd. T h e most that the normal person carries a w a y of a conversation after even a couple of hours is just a salient or characteristic phrase or two, and a mannerism of the speaker . . . O n e unalterable rule that w e had for the rendering of conversations—for genuine conversations that are an exchange of thought, not interrogatories or statements of f a c t — w a s that no speech of one character could ever answer the speech that goes before it. T h i s is almost invariably the case in real life where few people listen, because they are always preparing their own next speeches . . . . . . on the whole, the indirect, interrupted method of handling interviews is invaluable for giving a sense of the complexity, the tantalization, the shimmering, the haze, that life is . . . Ford Madox Ford. Joseph Conrad, A Personal Remembrance (1924), Part III, Section ii. STYLIZATION I. C . B. I do not see why exposition and description are a necessary part o f a novel. T h e y are not of a play, and both deal with imaginary human beings and their lives. I have been told that I ought to write plays, but cannot see myself making the transition. I read plays with especial pleasure, and in reading novels I a m disappointed if a scene is carried through in the voice of the author 297

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FICTION

rather than the voices of the characters. I think that I simply follow m y natural b e n t . . . M . J . I have heard your dialogue criticized as 'highly artificial* or stylized. O n e reviewer, I remember, said that it was impossible to 'conceive of any h u m a n being giving tongue to every emotion, foible, and reason with the precision, clarity and wit possessed by all Miss Compton-Burnett's characters, be they parlourmaids, children, parents or spinster aunts'. It seems odd to object to precision, clarity and wit, a n d the same objection would lie against the dialogue of C o n g r e v e and Sheridan. I. C . B. I think that my writing does not seem to m e as 'stylized* as it apparently is, though I do not attempt to make m y characters use the words of actual life. I cannot tell you w h y I write as I do, as I d o not know. I have even tried not to d o it, but find myself falling back into m y o w n w a y . It seems to me that the servants in m y books talk quite differently from the educated people, and the children from the adults, but the difference m a y remain in my own mind and not be conveyed to the reader. I think people's style, like the w a y they speak and move, comes from themselves and cannot be explained. . . . I cannot tell w h y my people talk sometimes according to conventional style, a n d sometimes in the manner of real speech, if this is the case. It is simply the result of an effort to give the impression I w a n t to g've. Ivy Compton-Burnett. 'A Conversation Between I. Compton-Burnett and M. Jourdairi1, O r i o n (1945).

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V

Background

SCOTT TRANSFORMS MELROSE

Indeed, the country around Melrose, if possessing less of romantic beauty than some other scenes in Scotland, is connected with so many associations of a fanciful nature, in which the imagination takes delight, as might well induce one even less attached to the spot than the author, to accommodate, after a general manner, the imaginary scenes he was framing to the localities to which he was partial. But it would be a misapprehension to suppose, that, because Melrose may in general pass for Kennaquhair, or because it agrees with scenes of the Monastery in the circumstances of the drawbridge, the mill-dam, and other points of resemblance, that therefore an accurate or perfect local similitude is to be found in all the particulars of the picture. It was not the purpose of the author to present a landscape copied from nature, but a piece of composition, in which a real scene, with which he is familiar, had afforded him some leading outlines. Thus the resemblance of the imaginary Glendearg with the resemblance of the real vale of the Allen, is far from being minute, nor did the author aim at indentifying them. This must appear plain to all who know the actual character of the Glen of Allen, and have taken the trouble to read the account of the imaginary Glendearg. The stream in the latter case is described as wandering down a romantic little valley, shifting itself, after the fashion of such a brook, from one side to the other, as it can most easily find its passage, and touching nothing in its progress that gives token of cultivation. It rises near a solitary tower, the abode of a supposed church vassal, and the scene of several incidents in the Romance. The real Allen, on the contrary, after traversing the romantic ravine called the Nameless Dean, thrown off from side to side alternately, like a billiard ball repelled by the sides of the table on which it has been played, and in that part of its course resembling the stream which pours down Glendearg, may be traced upwards 299

THE CRAFT OF FICTION into a more open country, where the banks retreat further from each other, and the vale exhibits a good deal of dry ground, which has not been neglected b y the active cultivators of the district. It arrives, too, at a sort of termination, striking in itself, but totally irreconcilable w i t h the nature of the R o m a n c e . Instead of a single peel-house, or border tower of defence, such as D a m e Glendinning is supposed to have inhabited, the head of the Allen, about five miles above its junction w i t h the T w e e d , shows three ruins of Border houses, belonging to different proprietors, and each from the desire o f mutual support so natural to troublesome times, situated at the extremity of the property of w h i c h it is the principal messuage . . . A l l these ruins, so strangely huddled together in a very solitary spot, h a v e recollections and traditions of their own, b u t none of them bear the most distant resemblance to the descriptions in the R o m a n c e of the Monastery; and as the author could hardly have erred so grossly regarding a spot within a morning's ride of his own house, the inference is, that no resemblance was intended. Sir Walter Scott. Introduction to T h e Monastery (1820). THE SETTING OF ' WUTHERING HEIGHTS' . . . I t is rustic all through. It is moorish, and wild, and knotty as a root o f heath. N o r was it natural that it should b e otherwise; the author being herself a native a n d nursling o f the moors. Doubtless, had her lot been cast in a town, her writings, if she h a d written at all, would h a v e possessed another character. Even h a d chance or taste led her to choose a similar subject, she would have treated it otherwise. H a d Ellis Bell been a lady or gentleman accustomed to w h a t is called 'the world', her view of a remote and unclaimed region, as well as of the dwellers therein, would have differed greatly from that actually taken b y the home-bred country girl. Doubtless it would have been w i d e r — m o r e comprehensive: whether it would have been more original or more truthful is not so certain. A s far as the scenery and locality are concerned, it could scarcely have been so sympathetic: Ellis Bell did not describe as one whose eye and taste alone found pleasure in the prospect; her native hills were far more to her than a spectacle; they were w h a t she lived in, a n d by, as m u c h as the wild birds, their tenants, or as the heather, their produce. H e r descriptions, then, of natural scenery, are w h a t they should be, and all they should be. Charlotte Bronte. Preface to the 1850 edition of W u t h e r i n g Heights {1847). 300

BACKGROUND TOO MUCH

BACKGROUND

. . . It is the habit o f my imagination to strive after as full a vision of the medium in w h i c h a character moves as of the character itself. T h e psychological causes w h i c h prompted m e to give such details o f Florentine life a n d history as I have given, are precisely the same as those which determined m e in giving the details of English V i l l a g e life in Silas Mamer, or the 'Dodson' life, out of w h i c h were developed the destinies of poor T o m and M a g g i e . But y o u have correctly pointed out the reason w h y m y tendency to excess in this effort after artistic vision makes the impression of a fault in Romola m u c h more perceptibly than in m y previous books. George Eliot. Letter to R. H. Hutton (8 August 1863), from George Eliot's Life as related in her Letters a n d Journals (1884), ed. J. W. Cross. A NEW ENGLISH

COUNTY

O f Framley Parsonage I need only further say, that as I wrote it I became more closely acquainted than ever w i t h the new shire which I had added to the English counties. I h a d it all in m y mind, — i t s roads and railways, its towns a n d parishes, its members o f Parliament, and the different hunts w h i c h rode over it. I knew all the great lords a n d their castles, the squires a n d their parks, the rectors and their churches. T h i s was the fourth novel o f which I h a d placed the scene in Barsetshire, a n d as I wrote it I m a d e a m a p of the dear county. T h r o u g h o u t these stories there has been no name given to a fictitious site w h i c h docs not represent to me a spot o f which I know all the accessories, as t h o u g h I h a d lived and wandered there. Anthony Trollope. A n A u t o b i o g r a p h y (1883), Chapter viii. WESSEX . . . it was in the chapters of Far from the Madding Crowd, as they appeared month b y m o n t h in a popular magazine, that I first ventured to adopt the word ' Wessex' from the pages of early English history, and give it a fictitious significance as the existing name of the district once included in that extinct kingdom. T h e series o f novels I projected being mainly of the kind called local, they seemed to require a territorial definition o f some sort to lend unity to their scene. Finding that the area o f a single county did not afford a canvas large enough for this purpose, a n d that there were objections 301

T H E C R A F T OF F I C T I O N to an invented name, I disinterred the old one. T h e region designated was known b u t vaguely, a n d I was often asked even by educated people where it lay. However, the press and the public were kind enough to welcome the fanciful plan, and willingly joined me in the anchronism o f imagining a Wessex population living under Q u e e n V i c t o r i a ; — a modern Wessex o f railways, the penny post, mowing and reaping machines, union workhouses, lucifer matches, labourers w h o could read a n d write, a n d National school children. But I believe I a m correct in stating that, until the existence of this contemporaneous Wessex in place of the usual counties was announced in the present story, in 1874, it had never been heard of in fiction and current speech, if at all, and that the expression, 'a Wessex peasant', or 'a Wessex custom', would therefore have been taken to refer to nothing later in date than the Norman C o n q u e s t . . . Since then the appellation which I h a d thought to reserve to the horizons and landscapes of a partly real, partly dream-country, has become more a n d more popular as a practical provincial definition; and the dream-country has, b y degrees, solidified into a utilitarian region which people can go to, take a house in, a n d write to the papers from. But I ask all good and idealistic readers to forget this, and to refuse steadfastly to believe that there are any inhabitants of a Victorian Wessex outside these volumes in which their lives and conversations are detailed. Thomas Hardy. Preface to F a r from the M a d d i n g C r o w d {1874). T H E S C I E N T I F I C I M P O R T A N C E OF

BACKGROUND

I also attach considerable importance to environment. Here w e should touch on D a r w i n i a n theory; b u t this is intended only as a general study of the experimental method as applied to the novel and I should lose m y w a y if I were to go into detail. I shall only say a few words about settings. W e ' v e just seen the great importance that Claude Bernard attaches to the study of'intra-organic' environment, an element which has to be taken into account if one wishes to discover the determinism of events in living beings. Well now, in the study of a family, or group of living beings, I believe that the social environment has a similar capital importance. Some day in the future physiology will doubtless be able to explain the mechanism of thought and emotion. W e shall know how the individual 'machinery' works, how a man thinks, loves, and swings from rationality through passion to madness; but these phenomena . . . do not appear in isolation from what is going on around them, that is to say in a 302

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vacuum. M a n is not alone but exists in society, in a social environment, and so far as we novelists are concerned, this environment is constantly modifying events. T h a t is just where our real task lies, in studying the interaction of society on the individual and of the individual on society. For the physiologist, environment—whether external or internal—is purely chemical and physical, which makes it easy for him to determine its laws. O n the other hand, we are in no position to prove that the social environment is only chemical and physical. It is that, certainly, or at any rate it is made with all its variations by a group of living beings who are themselves entirely subject to the physical and chemical laws that govern dead and living matter. Once we grasp this, we see that social environment will be affected by our manipulation of all those human phenomena we learn to control. And in this direction lies all that constitutes the experimental novel: mastery of the mechanism of human events: demonstration of the way in which intellectual and sensory processes, as explained to us by physiology, are conditioned by heredity and environment; and finally portrayal of the human being in the environment which he himself has made and alters daily, and in the midst of which he in his turn undergoes continual transformation. And thus it is that we look to physiology for guidance, taking the isolated individual from the physiologist's hands in order to carry research further by solving scientifically the problem of how men behave once they become members of a society. Emile gola. 'Le Roman Experimentar, Chapter ii, Le Roman Expérimental (1880). MAP A N D ALMANACK

It is, perhaps, not often that a m a p figures so largely in a tale, yet it is always important. The author must know his countryside, whether real or imaginary, like his hand; the distances, the points of the compass, the place of the sun's rising, the behaviour of the moon, should all be beyond cavil. And how troublesome the moon is! I have come to grief over the moon in Prince Otto, and so soon as that was pointed out to me, adopted a precaution which I recommend to other men—I never write now without an almanack. With an almanack, and the m a p of the country, and the plan of every house, either actually plotted on paper or already and immediately apprehended in the mind, a man may hope to avoid some of the grossest possible blunders. With the map before him, he will scarce allow the sun to set in the east, as it does in The Antiquary. With the almanack at hand, he will scarce allow two horsemen, journeying 303

T H E C R A F T OF F I C T I O N on the most urgent affair, to employ six days, from three of the M o n d a y morning till late in the Saturday night, u p o n a j o u r n e y of, say, ninety or a hundred miles, and before the week is out, a n d still on the same nags, to cover fifty in one day, as m a y be read at length in the inimitable novel of Rob Roy. A n d it is certainly well, though far from necessary, to avoid such 'croppers'. B u t it is my contention — m y superstition, if you l i k e — t h a t w h o is faithful to his m a p , and consults it, and draws from it his inspiration, daily and hourly, gains positive support, a n d not mere negative immunity from accident. T h e tale has a root there; it grows in that soil; it has a spine of its own behind the words. Better if the country be real, and he has walked every foot o f it a n d knows every milestone. But even with imaginary places, he will d o well in the beginning to provide a m a p ; as he studies it, relations will appear that he had not thought upon; he will discover obvious, though unsuspected, shortcuts and footprints for his messengers; and even w h e n a m a p is not all the plot, as it was in Treasure Island, it will b e found to be a mine of suggestion. Robert Louis Stevenson. 'My First Book' (1894); reprinted in T h e A r t of W r i t i n g {1919). T H E S E L E C T I O N OF T E L L I N G

DETAIL

In m y opinion descriptions of nature should be very brief and have a n incidental character. Commonplaces like: ' T h e setting sun, bathing in the waves of the darkening sea, flooded with purple and gold', etc . . . ' T h e swallows, flying over the surface of the water, chirped m e r r i l y ' — s u c h commonplaces should be finished with. In descriptions of Nature one has to snatch at small details, grouping t h e m in such a manner that after reading them one can obtain the picture on closing one's eyes. For instance, you will get a moonlight night if you write that on the d a m of the mill a fragment of broken bottle flashed like a small bright star, and there rolled by, like a ball, the black shadow of a dog, or a w o l f — a n d so on. N a t u r e appears animated if you do not disdain to use comparisons of its phenomena w i t h those of human actions, etc. T h e same, too, in the sphere of psychology. Anton Chekhov. Letter to his brother (10 May 1886), Life a n d Letters {1925), transl. and ed. S. S. Koteliansky and Philip Tomlinson.

304

BACKGROUND H E N R Y JAMES FOLLOWS T H E W R O N G MASTER

Pathetic . . . the manner in which the evocation, so far as attempted, of the small New England town of my first two chapters [of Roderick Hudson] fails of intensity . . . To name a place, in fiction, is to pretend in some degree to represent it—and I speak here of course but of the use of existing names, the only ones that carry weight—so at least I supposed; but obviously I was wrong, since my effort lay, so superficially, and could only lie, in the local type, as to which I had my handful of impressions. The particular local case was another matter, and I was to see again, after long years, the case into which, all recklessly, the opening passages of Roderick Hudson put their foot . . . But one nestled, technically, in those days, and with yearning, in the great shadow of Balzac; his august example, little as the secret might ever be guessed, towered for me over the scene; so that what was clearer than anything else was how, if it was a question of Saumur, of Limoges, of Guerande, he 'did' Saumur, did Limoges, did Guerande. I remember how, in my feebler fashion, I yearned over the preliminary presentation of my small square patch of the American scene, and yet was not sufficiently on my guard to see how easily his high practice might be delusive for my case. Balzac talked of Nemours and Provins: therefore why shouldn't one, with fond fatuity, talk of almost the only small American ville de province of which one had happened to lay up, long before, a pleased vision? The reason was plain; one was not in the least, in one's prudence, emulating his systematic closeness. It didn't confuse the question either that he would verily, after all, addressed as he was to a due density in his material, have found little enough in Northampton, Mass. to tackle. He tackled no group of appearances, no presented face of the so-called organism (conspicuity thus attending it), but to make something of it. To name it simply and not in some degree tackle it would have seemed to him an act reflecting on his general course the deepest dishonour. Therefore it was that, as the moral of these many remarks, I 'named', under his contagion, when I was really most conscious of not being held to it; and therefore it was, above all, that for all the effect of representation I was to achieve, I might have let the occasion pass. A 'fancy' indication would have served my turn—except that I should so have failed perhaps of a pretext for my present insistence. Henry James. Preface to Roderick Hudson {I8J6),firstprinted in the New York edition of the Novels and Stories (1907-17), Vol. I. 305

T H E C R A F T OF F I C T I O N PURSUING THE GUERMANTES'

WAY

. . . A n d with M m e . de Guermantes, was transformed simultaneously her dwelling, itself also the offspring of that name, fertilised from year to year by some word or other that came to my ears and modulated the tone of m y musings; that dwelling of hers reflected them in its very stones, w h i c h had turned to mirrors, like the surface o f a cloud or of a lake. A dungeon keep without mass, no more indeed than a b a n d of orange light from the summit of w h i c h the lord and his lady dealt out life and death to their vassals, had given p l a c e — r i g h t at the end of the 'Guermantes w a y ' along w h i c h on so m a n y summer afternoons, I retraced with m y parents the course of the V i v o n n e — t o that land of bubbling streams where the Duchess taught me to fish for trout and to know the names o f the flowers whose red and purple clusters adorned the walls of the neighbouring gardens; then it had been the ancient heritage, famous in song and story, from which the proud race of Guermantes, like a carved and m e l l o w tower that traverses the ages, had risen already over France when the sky was still empty at those points where, later, were to rise Notre D a m e of Paris and Notre D a m e of Chartres, when on the summit of the hill of L a o n the nave of its cathedral had not yet been poised, like the A r k of the Deluge on the summit of M o u n t A r a r a t , crowded with Patriarchs and Judges anxiously leaning from its windows to see whether the w r a t h of G o d were yet appeased, carrying with it the types of the vegetation that was to multiply on the earth, brimming over with animals w h i c h have escaped even b y the towers, where oxen grazing calmly upon the roof look down over the plains of C h a m p a g n e ; w h e n the traveller w h o left Beauvais at the close of the day did not yet see, following h i m a n d turning with his road, outspread against the gilded screen o f the western sky, the black, ribbed wings of the cathedral. It was, this 'Guermantes', like the scene of a novel, an imaginary landscape which I could with difficulty picture to myself and longed all the more to discover, set in the midst of real lands and roads w h i c h all of a sudden would become alive with heraldic details, within a few miles of a railway station; I recalled the names of the places round it as if they had been situated at the foot of Parnassus or of Helicon, and they seemed precious to me, as the physical conditions—in the realm of topographical science—required for the production of a n unaccountable phenomenon. I saw again the escutcheons blazoned beneath the windows of C a m b r a y church; their quarters filled, century after century, with all the lordships which, b y marriage or conquest, this illustrious house had brought flying to it from 306

BACKGROUND all the corners of G e r m a n y , I t a l y a n d F r a n c e ; vast territories in t h e N o r t h , strong cities in t h e S o u t h , assembled there to g r o u p t h e m selves in G u e r m a n t e s , a n d , losing their m a t e r i a l quality, to inscribe allegorically their d u n g e o n vert, or castle triple-towered argent u p o n its a z u r e field. Marcel Proust. T h e G u e r m a n t e s W a y ( i g s o ) , Chapter / , transI. C. K. Scott Moncrieff (ig2j). BACKGROUND REDUCED TO A MINIMUM M . J . T h e r e is little a t t e n t i o n to external things a n d almost no descriptive writing in your novels, a n d t h a t is a b r e a c h with tradition. E v e n J a n e Austen has a n aside a b o u t t h e ' w o r t h ' of Lyme, C h a r m o u t h a n d Pinhay, 'with its green chasms between r o m a n t i c rocks'. A n d there is m u c h m o r e description in later novels, such as T h o m a s H a r d y ' s . I n The Return of the Native, the great E g d o n H e a t h has to b e reckoned w i t h as a protagonist. N o w you cut o u t all this. T h e Gavestons' house in A Family and a Fortune is spoken of as old a n d beautiful, b u t its d a t e a n d style a r e not m e n t i o n e d . I . C . B. I should h a v e t h o u g h t t h a t m y a c t u a l characters were described enough to h e l p people to i m a g i n e t h e m . However detailed such description is, I a m sure t h a t everyone forms his own conceptions, t h a t are different f r o m everyone else's, including the a u t h o r ' s . As regards such things as landscape a n d scenery, I never feel inclined to describe t h e m ; i n d e e d I t e n d to miss such writing out, w h e n I a m reading, which m a y be a sign t h a t I a m not fitted for it. I m a k e a n exception of T h o m a s H a r d y , b u t surely his presentation of n a t u r a l features almost as characters p u t s h i m on a plane of his own, a n d almost carries the t h i n g into t h e h u m a n world. I n t h e case of J a n e Austen, I h u r r y t h r o u g h her words a b o u t L y m e a n d its s u r r o u n d ings, in order to r e t u r n to h e r people. I t might b e b e t t e r t o give m o r e a c c o u n t of people's homes a n d i n t i m a t e b a c k g r o u n d , b u t I h a r d l y see w h y the d a t e a n d style of the Gavestons' house should b e given, as I did not think of t h e m as giving their attention to it, a n d as a house of a different d a t e a n d style would have d o n e for t h e m equally well. It would b e something to t h e m t h a t it was old a n d beautiful, b u t it would b e e n o u g h . Ivy Compton-Burnett. 'A Conversation Between I. Compton-Burnett and M. Jourdc.in', O r i o n {1345).

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VI

Style

T H E J U D G M E N T OF S T Y L E

. . . there is no branch of criticism in which learning as well as good sense, is more required than to the forming an accurate judgment of style, though there is none, I believe, in which every trifling reader is more ready to give his decision. Henry Fielding. Preface to Sarah Fielding's F a m i l i a r Letters . . . (1747). RICHARDSON'S

STYLE

T h e style of Richardson, which it remains to take notice of, was not in proportion to his other excellencies of composition. H e wrote with facility; expressions, as well as thoughts, flowing readily to his pen; but w e do not find in his writings, either the ease and elegance of good company, or the polished period of a finished author. T h e y are not only overloaded with a redundance of complimentary expression, w h i c h gives a stiffness to the dialogue, particularly in his Grandison, where he has most attempted to give a picture of genteel life, but they are blemished with little flippancies of expression, new coined words, and sentences involved and illconstructed. O n e of his correspondents, a M r . R e a d , after giving h i m high and just praise, thus expresses himself: 'But is there not here and there a nursery phrase, a n ill-invented uncouth compound; a parenthesis, w h i c h interrupts, not assists, the sense? I f I a m wTong, impute it to the rudeness of a college-man, w h o has had too little commerce w i t h the world, to be a j u d g e of its language'. I f this was considered to be the case when Richardson wrote, it is a still greater impediment to his fame at present, when w e are become more fastidious with regard to style, in proportion as good writing is become more c o m m o n ; that degree, I mean, of good writing, which a habit of the pen will always give. T h e style of Richardson, however, has the propertv of setting before the 308

STYLE

reader, in the most lively manner, every circumstance of what he means to describe. He has the accuracy and finish of a D u t c h painter, with the fine ideas of a n Italian one. H e is content to produce effects by the patient labour of minuteness. H a d he turned his thoughts to an observation of rural nature, instead of h u m a n manners, he would have been as accurate a describer as Cowper: how circumstantial is the following description of a bird new caught! 'Hast thou not observed how, at first, refusing all sustenance, it beats and bruises itself against its wires, till it makes its gay plumage fly about, and overspread its well-secured cage. Now it gets out its head, sticking only at its beautiful shoulders; then, with difficulty, drawing back its head, it gasps for breath, and erectly perched, with meditating eyes, first surveys, and then attempts, its wired canopy. As it gets breath, with renewed rage, it beats and bruises again its pretty head and sides, bites the wires, and pecks at the fingers of its delighted tamer; till, at last, finding its efforts ineffectual, quite tired and breathless, it lays itself down, and pants at the bottom of the cage, seeming to bemoan its cruel fate, and forfeited liberty. And, after a few days, its struggles to escape still diminishing, as it finds it to no purpose to attempt it, its new habitation becomes familiar, and it hops about from perch to perch, and every day sings a song to amuse itself, and reward its keeper.' Anna Laetitia Barbauld. 'A biographical account of Samuel Richardson', T h e Correspondence of Samuel Richardson (1804), Vol. J. THE VOICE OF T R U E F E E L I N G IN E P I S T O L A R Y NARRATIVE

N. W h a t an epistolary style! how strained! what exclamations! what affectation! what emphasis to express nothing but commonplaces! what big words for little ideas! hardly any sense or precision; no subtlety, power or depth. T h e language perpetually high-flown, the ideas perpetually uninspired. If your characters really do belong to the natural world, you have to admit that their style is anything but natural. R. I agree that from where you stand it may seem so. N. Do you think that the public is likely to see it differently? and isn't it my opinion that you want? R. It is to know it more fully that I ' m answering you. I see that you would prefer letters written with an eye to publication. N. The desire seems reasonable enough for letters that one intends to print. 309

T H E CRAFT OF FICTION

R. So we are never to see human beings in books other than as they wish to appear? N. The author as he wishes to appear; the people whom he portrays as they are. But even that merit is wanting here. Not a single vigorously defined portrait, not one sufficiently distinctive character, no concrete observation, no knowledge of the world. What are we to learn from a tiny circle of two or three lovers or friends who are always exclusively preoccupied with themselves? R . We learn to love human beings. In great societies we only learn to hate people.

Your judgment is severe; that of the public, then, will be even more so. Without taxing it with injustice, I want in my turn to tell you how I look on these letters—less to excuse the faults which you blame them for than to discover their cause. In retirement people acquire ways of seeing and feeling different from those in their dealings with the world; emotions, altered likewise, are likewise differently expressed: the imagination is constantly engaged by the same unchanging objects and so is more vividly affected by them. These few impressions recur again and again, mingling themselves with every idea and giving it that eccentric, rather monotonous style that we notice in the conversation of the recluse. Does it follow from this that his language is forcefully energetic? Not at all; it is merely out of the ordinary. It is only in society that one learns to talk energetically. First, because one must always talk differently from all the others and also better than them; and second, since people are obliged to keep on saying things they don't mean and expressing feelings they don't possess, they try to give what they say an expressive persuasiveness which will make up for lack of inner conviction. Do you believe that people who are genuinely moved speak in the vital, powerful, colourful way that you admire in your plays and novels? No; genuine emotion is completely self-absorbed and expresses itself copiously rather than forcefully: it doesn't even intend to be persuasive—it has no suspicion that anyone would doubt its truth. When it says what it feels it is less to communicate this feeling than to relieve it. People portray love more vividly in the big cities: do they feel it more intensely there than in villages? N. This implies that poverty of language signifies strength of feeling. R. Sometimes, at any rate, it shows its genuineness. Read a loveletter composed in his study by some author, some fine wit, who wants to scintillate: however little real fire he has in his head, his pen, as they say, scorches the paper; the warmth goes no further: you will be charmed, possibly even moved—but by an 310

STYLE

ephemeral, sterile emotion which leaves you only words to remember. O n the other hand, a letter genuinely inspired by love, a letter written by a truly passionate lover, will be slip-shod, diffuse, long-winded, disorganized and full of repetitions. His heart, filled and overflowing with emotion, says the same thing over and over again and never finishes saying it, like a living spring which flows ceaselessly without exhausting itself. Nothing outstanding, nothing remarkable; there are no resounding words or turns of phrase or sentences. And yet our heart softens, we are touched without knowing why. If we are not impressed by the strength of the feeling we are moved by its sincerity . . . T o come back to our letters. If you read them as the work of an author who is anxious to please or who prides himself on his writing they are execrable. Take them, however, for what they are and judge them according to their kind. T w o or three simple, but sensitive, young people keep u p among themselves a correspondence about their heart's deepest interests; they have no intention of dazzling each other; they know and like each other so much that there is no place for self-conceit among them. As youngsters are they likely to think things out like grown men and women? As foreigners, are they likely to write correctly? As solitaries, are they likely to know the ways of the world and of society? Full of the one feeling that absorbs them, they are filled with ecstasy and imagine that they are philosophizing. Do you expect them to observe, to judge, to reflect? They don't know how to do any of these things: they know how to love; they relate everything to their passion. Is the importance which they attach to their extravagant notions any less entertaining than all the wit that they might display? . . . Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Preface (1762) to La Nouvelle H61oise (¡760). J A N E A U S T E N BECOMES SELF-CONSCIOUS

. . . I wish the knowledge of my being exposed to her discerning Criticism, 1 may not hurt my stile, by inducing too great a solicitude. I begin already to weigh my words and sentences more than I did, and a m looking about for a sentiment, an illustration or a metaphor in every corner of the room. Could my ideas flow as fast as the rain in the Store Closet it would be charming. Jane Austen. Letter to Cassandra Austen, January 24, 1809, Letters (1932). 1

The reference is to Fanny Knight.

3"

T H E G R A F T OF F I C T I O N C L E A R AND SIMPLE . . . I agree w i t h all y o u say, e x c e p t a b o u t style. P r a y d o not t h i n k t h a t this is o v e r w e e n i n g conceit. I k n o w o f o n l y o n e rule: style c a n n o t be too clear, too simple . . . E v e r since 1802 I h a v e t h o u g h t M . d e C h a t e a u b r i a n d ' s 'fine style' ridiculous. I t seems to m e t o g i v e expression to a n u m b e r o f falsehoods . . . I r e a d v e r y little. W h e n I r e a d for pleasure, I p i c k u p the Mémoires o f M a r s h a l G o u v i o n S a i n t - C y r . H e is m y H o m e r . I o f t e n r e a d A r i o s t o . T h e r e a r c o n l y t w o books t h a t g i v e m e a sense o f ' g o o d w r i t i n g ' : Fénelon's Dialogues des Morts, a n d M o n t e s q u i e u . I detest the style o f M . V i l l e m a i n , for e x a m p l e , w h i c h seems to m e a d a p t e d only to the polite u t t e r a n c e o f insults. T h e essence o f m y t r o u b l e is t h a t t h e style o f J e a n - J a c q u e s R o u s s e a u , M . V i l l e m a i n or M m e S a n d seems t o m e t o say m a n y things t h a t should not be said, a n d o f t e n tells m a n y a c t u a l falsehoods. T h e r e , the b i g w o r d has slipped o u t . O f t e n I ponder a quarter of an hour whether to place an adjective b e f o r e or after its n o u n . I seek (1) to b e t r u t h f u l , (2) c l e a r in m y a c c o u n t s o f w h a t h a p p e n s in a h u m a n h e a r t . I t h i n k t h a t since a y e a r a g o I h a v e realized t h a t o n e m u s t s o m e times g i v e t h e reader a rest b y describing l a n d s c a p e , clothes, etc. Stendhal. Letter to Balzac (50 October 1840), first draft, Selected Letters, transi. Norman Cameron (1952). W h i l s t w r i t i n g the C h a r t r e u s e , in o r d e r t o a c q u i r e t h e correct t o n e I occasionally r e a d a f e w pages o f the Code Civil... I f I a m not c l e a r , all ' m y w o r l d ' is a n n i h i l a t e d . I w a n t to describe w h a t h a p p e n s i n t h e d e p t h of the souls of M o s c a , t h e D u c h e s s a n d C l é l i a . ' T i s a r e g i o n scarcely penetrable b y the g a z e o f t h e n e w l y rich, o f p e o p l e like t h e Latinist D i r e c t o r of t h e M i n t , M . le c o m t e R o y , M . L a f i t t e , e t c . , e t c . , — t h e g a z e o f grocers, g o o d p a t e r f a m i l i a s , e t c . , etc., . . . I f to the obscurity o f the subject, I a d d t h e stylish obscurities o f M . V i l l e m a i n , M m e S a n d , etc. (supposing t h a t I h a d the rare p r i v i l e g e o f w r i t i n g like these c o r y p h é e s o f t h e g r a n d s t y l e ) — i f to t h e f u n d a m e n t a l difficulty I a d d the obscurities o f this m u c h v a u n t e d s t y l e — a b s o l u t e l y n o b o d y will u n d e r s t a n d t h e D u c h e s s ' s struggle a g a i n s t Ernest I V . Stendhal. Second draft of the same Utter, ibid. F L A U B E R T ON T H E A R T OF W R I T I N G . . . I ' v e i m a g i n e d a style for m y s e l f — a b e a u t i f u l style t h a t s o m e o n e w i l l w r i t e some day, in ten years' t i m e m a y b e , o r in ten centuries. 312

STYLE It will be as rhythmical as verse and as precise as science, with the booming rise and fall of a cello and plumes of fire; it will be a style which penetrates the idea for you like a dagger-thrust and from which at last thought is sent sailing over smooth surfaces as a boat glides rapidly before a good wind. Prose was born yesterday—this is what w e must tell ourselves. Poetry is pre-eminently the medium of past literatures. All the metrical combinations have been tried but nothing like this can be said of prose. Gustave Flaubert. Letter to Louis Colet {24 April 1852), Correspondance {1900). . . . I'm re-reading some Boileau now, or rather all of Boileau, and making numerous pencil marks in the margin. It seems to m e genuinely strong. O n e never tires of anything that is well written. Style is life! Indeed it is the life-blood of thought! Boileau was a little river, narrow and not very deep, but beautifully clear and well embanked. That's why his waters never run dry. Nothing of what he wants to say is lost. But how much Art he needed for this, with such scant material too. For the next two or three years, I a m going to re-read carefully, in this way, all the French classics and annotate them, a task which will come in useful for my Prefaces (my work of literary criticism) . . . I shall try to show why aesthetic criticism has remained so far behind historical and scientific criticism: it had no foundation. T h e knowledge everyone lacked was analysis of style, the understanding of how a phrase is constructed and articulated. People study lifeless models or translations, following teachers who are dolts incapable of wielding the scientific instrument they teach—I mean the pen—and life is missing, and love—love, the divine secret which does not give itself away—and soul, without which nothing can be understood. Gustave Flaubert. Letter to Louise Colet (7 September 1853), Correspondance (1900). . . . You say that I pay too much attention to form. Alas! it is like body and soul: form and content to me are one; I don't know what either is without the other. T h e finer the idea, be sure, the finersounding the sentence. T h e exactness of the thought makes for (and is itself) that of the word. If I can't make anything out just now, if everything I write is empty and flat, this is because I am not shaken with the emotions of my chief characters . . . 'If you have faith you will move mountains' is also the principle of the Beautiful. It can be translated more 313

THE CRAFT OF FICTION prosaically: 'If you know exactly what you want to say, you will say it well'. Gustave Flaubert. Letter to Mademoiselle Leroyer de Chantepie, (12 December 1857), Correspondance (igoj). . . . This care for external beauty which you reproach me with is a method with me. When I find that my sentences contain ugly assonance or repetition then I ' m sure I a m floundering in falsities. By dint of looking, I discover the right expression, which is by the same token the only one that is at the same time possible and also harmonious. Gustave Flaubert. Letter to George Sand (between 10 and i8j6), Correspondance (¡8gg).

March

A PROTEST . . . you seek for nothing more than the well-made sentence, it is something—but only something—it isn't the whole of art, it isn't even the half of it, it's a quarter at most, and, when the other three quarters are beautiful, people will overlook the one that isn't. George Sand. Letter to Gustave Flaubert (g March 1876), Correspondance (i8g2). THE FAMILIAR STYLE I can well imagine that you find The Mill more difficult to render than Adam. But would it be inadmissible to represent in French, at least in some degree, those 'intermédiaires entre le style commun et le style elegant' to which you refer? It seems to me that I have discerned such shades very strikingly rendered in Balzac, and occasionally in George Sand. Balzac, I think, dares to be thoroughly colloquial, in spite of French strait-lacing. Even in English this daring is far from being general. T h e writers who dare to be thoroughly familiar are Shakespeare, Fielding, Scott (where he is expressing the popular life with which he is familiar), and indeed every other writer of fiction of the first class. Even in his loftiest tragedies—in Hamlet, for example—Shakespeare is intensely colloquial. One hears the very accent of living men. George Eliot. Letter to François D'Albert Durade {¿g January 1861), Letters {1954) •

314

STYLE BYRON A

MODEL

. . . I d o n ' t attempt the style o f Addison because I hardly think it worth while. Addison was a neat but trivial writer, not in the least vigorous or dramatic; but the very reverse—analytical and painfully minute. His style bears about as m u c h resemblance to good strong nervous English as silver filigree does to a bronze statue. L o r d Byron's letters are the best English I k n o w o f — p e r f e c t l y simple a n d clear, bright a n d strong . . . I think so m u c h o f sound that, w h e n I do not like the look of a sentence, I read it aloud, and alter it till I can read it easier. Wilkie Collins. Interview in T h e W o r l d {26 December 1877). H O W T O BE I N T E L L I G I B L E A N D

HARMONIOUS

T h e language in w h i c h the novelist is to put forth his story, the colours with w h i c h he is to paint his picture, must of course be to him a matter of m u c h consideration. L e t him h a v e all other possible gifts,—imagination, observation, erudition, and i n d u s t r y , — t h e y will avail him nothing for his purpose, unless he can put forth his work in pleasant words. I f he be confused, tedious, harsh, or unharmonious, readers will certainly reject him. T h e reading of a volume o f history or on science m a y represent itself as a duty; and though the duty m a y by a b a d style be m a d e very disagreeable, the conscientious reader will perhaps perform it. But the novelist will be assisted by no such feeling. A n y reader m a y reject his work without the burden of a sin. It is the first necessity of his position that he make himself pleasant. T o d o this, m u c h more is necessary than to write correctly. H e m a y indeed be pleasant without being c o r r e c t , — a s I think c a n be proved b y the works o f more than one distinguished novelist. But he must b e intelligible,—intelligible without trouble; a n d he must be harmonious. A n y writer w h o has read even a little will know w h a t is meant b y the word intelligible. It is not sufficient that there be a meaning which m a y be hammered out of the sentence, b u t that the language should be so pellucid that the meaning should b e rendered without an effort to the r e a d e r ; — a n d not only some proportion of the meaning, but the very sense, no more and no less, w h i c h the writer has intended to put into his words. W h a t M a c a u l a y says should be remembered by all writers: ' H o w little the all-important art o f making meaning pellucid is studied now! H a r d l y any popular author except myself thinks o f it'. T h e language used should be as ready and as efficient a conductor of the mind of the writer to the

315

T H E C R A F T OF F I C T I O N mind of the reader as is the electric spark which passes from one battery to another battery. In all written matter the spark should carry everything; but in matters recondite the recipient will search to see that he misses nothing, and that he takes nothing away too much. T h e novelist cannot expect that any such search will be made. A young writer, w h o will acknowledge the truth of what I am saying, will often feel himself tempted by the difficulties of language to tell himself that some one little doubtful passage, some single collocation of words, which is not quite what it ought to be, will not matter. I know well what a stumbling-block such a passage may be. But he should leave none such behind him as he goes on. T h e habit of writing clearly soon comes to the writer who is a severe critic to himself. As to that harmonious expression which I think is required, I shall find it more difficult to express my meaning. It will be granted, I think, by readers that a style may be rough, and yet both forcible and intelligible; but it will seldom come to pass that a novel written in a rough style will be popular,—and less often that a novelist w h o habitually uses such a style will become so. T h e harmony which is required must come from the practice of the ear. There are few ears naturally so dull that they cannot, if time be allowed them, decide whether a sentence, when read, be or be not harmonious. And the sense of such harmony grows on the ear, when the intelligence has once informed itself as to what is, and what is not harmonious . . . But, in order that familiarity may serve him in his business, [the writer] must so train his ear that he shall be able to weigh the rhythm of every word as it falls from his pen. This, when it has been done for a time, even for a short time, will become so habitual to him that he will have appreciated the metrical duration of every syllable before it shall have dared to show itself upon paper. T h e art of the orator is the same. He knows beforehand how each sound which he is about to utter will affect the force of his climax. I f a writer will do so he will charm his readers, though his readers will probably not know how they have been charmed. Anthony Trollope. Autobiography (1883), Chapter xii. NATURALISM AND THE GRAND STYLE . . . For the writer, genius is not to be found only in the feeling, in the a priori idea, it is also in the form and style. But the question of method and the question of rhetoric are separate. A n d naturalism, I say it again, consists solely in the experimental method, in observation and experience as applied to literature. Rhetoric, for the

316

STYLE

moment, has no place here. Let us first establish the method—which must become universal—then accept in literature all those kinds of rhetoric that emerge; let us regard them as an expression of the writer's literary temperament. If you want my plain opinion, it is that an exaggerated importance is attached to form now-a-days. It would take a long time to discuss this subject. Fundamentally, I consider that method itself achieves form, that a language is nothing other than a logic, a natural and scientific construction. H e who writes best is not the m a n who wanders wildly among theories, but the m a n who goes straight to the heart of truths. We are in fact rotten with lyricism; we believe, quite wrongly, that the grand style is the product of some sublime terror always on the verge of pitching over into frenzy; the grand style is achieved through logic and clarity. Emile Zpla. 'Le Roman Expérimental', Chapter v, Le R o m a n Expérimental (1880). EXACTNESS

Whatever you want to say, there is only one word to express it, one verb to set it in motion and only one adjective to describe it. And so you must hunt for this word, this verb and this adjective until you find them and never be content with any approximations, never fall back on verbal trickery and clownishness, however apt, in order to evade the difficulty. It is possible to convey and demonstrate the most subtle notions by following this quotation from Boileau: A word in its place is a symbol of strength In order to catch the various shades of thought there is no need of the eccentric vocabulary, complicated, elaborate and exotic, which they impose on us now-a-days under the guise of artistic style; but it is necessary to distinguish with extreme clarity all the shifts in value which a word undergoes according to the place it occupies. Let us have fewer nouns, verbs and adjectives whose sense it is almost impossible to grasp, but more varied phrases, diversified in construction, ingeniously broken up, full of resonance and cunning rhythms. Let us try to make ourselves excellent stylists rather than collectors of uncommon terms. It is, indeed, more difficult to handle a sentence to one's liking, to make it say everything, even what it doesn't put into words, to invest it with implications, with intentions concealed and not formulated, than to invent new expressions or to re-discover, in the depths 317

T H E C R A F T OF F I C T I O N of old volumes, all those whose usage and meaning w e have forgotten and which are virtually dead words for us. Guy de Maupassant. lLe Roman,' introduction to Pierre et J e a n (1888). ON N O T H A V I N G T O O M U C H S T Y L E R e a d again Addison, M a c a u l a y , N e w m a n , Sterne, Defoe, L a m b , Gibbon, Burke, Times leaders, etc., in a study o f style. A m more and more confirmed in an idea I have long held, as a matter of common sense, long before I thought of any old aphorism bearing on the subject: 'Ars est cclare artem'. T h e whole secret of a living style and the difference between it and a dead style, lies in not having too much style—being in fact a little careless, or rather seeming to be, here and there. It brings wonderful life into the writing: A sweet disorder in the dress . . . A careless shoe-string, in whose tie I see a wild civility, D o more bewitch m e than w h e n art Is too precise in every part. Otherwise your style is like worn half-pence—all the fresh images rounded off by rubbing, and no crispness at all. It is, of course, simply a carrying into prose the knowledge I have acquired in p o e t r y — t h a t inexact rhymes and rhythms now and then are far more pleasing than correct ones. Thomas Hardy. Notebook entry (March 1875) from T h e Early Life of T h o m a s H a r d y , 1840-1891 {1928), Chapter vii. AN E L E G A N T AND P R E G N A N T

TEXTURE

Style is synthetic; a n d the artist, seeking, so to speak, a peg to plait about, takes u p at once two or more elements or two or more views of the subject in hand; combines, implicates, and contrasts them; and while, in one sense, he was merely seeking an occasion for the necessary knot, he will be found, in the other, to have greatly enriched the meaning, or to have transacted the work of two sentences in the space of one. In the change from the successive shallow statements of the old chronicler to the dense and luminous flow of highly synthetic narrative, there is implied a vast amount of both philosophy and wit. T h e philosophy w e clearly see, recognizing in the synthetic writer a far more deep and stimulating view of 318

STYLE life, a n d a far keener sense o f the generation a n d affinity o f events. T h e wit w e might i m a g i n e to b e lost; but it is not so, for it is j u s t that wit, these perpetual nice contrivances, these difficulties overcome, this double purpose attained, these t w o oranges kept simultaneously dancing in the air, that, consciously or not, afford the reader his delight. N a y , a n d this w i t , so little recognized, is the necessary organ of that philosophy w h i c h w e so m u c h a d m i r e . T h a t style is therefore the most perfect, not, as fools say, w h i c h is the most natural, for the most n a t u r a l is the disjointed b a b b l e o f the chronicler; but w h i c h attains the highest degree o f elegant a n d p r e g n a n t implication unobtrusively; or i f obtrusively, then w i t h the greatest gain to sense a n d vigour. E v e n the d e r a n g e m e n t of the phrases from their (so-called) natural order is luminous for the m i n d ; a n d it is b y the means of such designed reversal that the elements of a j u d g m e n t m a y b e most pertinently marshalled, or the stages o f a complicated action most perspicuously b o u n d into one. T h e w e b , then, or the p a t t e r n ; a w e b at once sensuous a n d logical, an elegant and p r e g n a n t texture: that is style, that is the foundation of the art of literature. Robert Louis Stevenson. 'On some technical Elements of Style in Literature' (1885); reprinted in T h e A r t of W r i t i n g ( i g i g ) .

THE C R A F T OF WRITING Y o u d o not leave e n o u g h to the imagination. I d o not m e a n as to f a c t s — t h e facts cannot b e too explicitly stated; I a m a l l u d i n g simply to the phrasing. T r u e , a m a n w h o knows so m u c h (without taking into account the m a n n e r in w h i c h his k n o w l e d g e w a s acquired) m a y well spare himself the trouble o f m e d i t a t i n g over the words, only that words, groups o f words, words standing alone, are symbols o f life, h a v e the p o w e r in their sound or their aspect to present the very thing y o u wish to hold u p before the m e n t a l vision o f y o u r readers. T h e things 'as they are' exist in w o r d s ; therefore words should be handled w i t h care lest the picture, the i m a g e of truth abiding in facts, should b e c o m e d i s t o r t e d — o r b l u r r e d . T h e s e are the considerations for a mere c r a f t s m a n — y o u m a y say; and y o u m a y also c o n c e i v a b l y say that I h a v e n o t h i n g else to trouble m y head about. H o w e v e r the whole o f the truth lies in the presentation; therefore the expression should be studied in the interest of veracity. T h i s is the only morality o f art apart f r o m subject. I h a v e travelled a good w a y from m y original r e m a r k — n o t enough left to the i m a g i n a t i o n in the phrasing. I b e g leave to illustrate my m e a n i n g from extracts. . . . ' W h e n the whole horror

319

T H E C R A F T OF F I C T I O N of his position forced itself with an agony of apprehension u p o n his frightened mind, P a ' T u a for a space lost his reason.' . . . I n this sentence the reader is borne down by the full expression. T h e words: ivith an agony of apprehension completely destroy the effect—therefore interfere w i t h the truth of the statement. T h e word frightened is fatal. It seems as if it h a d been written without any thought a t all. It takes a w a y all sense o f reality—for if you read the sentence in its place on the page y o u will see that the word 'frightened' (or indeed any word of that sort) is inadequate to express the true state of that man's mind. N o w o r d is adequate. T h e imagination of the reader should b e left free to arouse his feeling. ' . . . W h e n the whole horror of his position forced itself upon his mind, P a ' T u a for a space lost his reason . . . " T h i s is truth; this it is w h i c h , thus stated, carries conviction because it is a picture o f a mental state. A n d look h o w finely it goes on with a perfectly legitimate effect . . . ' H e screamed aloud, and the hollow of the rocks took u p his cries' . . . It is magnificent! It is suggestive. I t is truth effectively stated. But ' a n d hurled them back to him mockingly* is nothing at all. It is a phrase anybody can write to fit any sort of situation; it is the sort o f thing I write twenty times a d a y and (with the fear o f overtaking fate behind me) spend half m y nights in taking out o f my w o r k — u p o n w h i c h depends the daily bread of the house (literally—from d a y to d a y ) ; not to mention (I dare hardly think of it) the future of m y child, of those nearest a n d dearest to me, between w h o m and the bleakest want there is only my p e n — a s long as life lasts. A n d I can sell all I w r i t e — a s much as I can. This is said to make it manifest that I practise the faith w h i c h I take the liberty to preach . . . Joseph Conrad. Letter to Sir Hugh Clifford {9 October i8gg), Life and Letters {1927), ed. G. Jean-Aubry. . . . it is only through a n unremitting never-discouraged care for the shape a n d ring of sentences that an approach can be m a d e to plasticity, to colour, and that the light of magic suggestiveness m a y be brought to play for an evanescent instant over the commonplace surface of words: of the old, old words, worn thin, defaced b y ages of careless usage. T h e sincere endeavour to accomplish that creative task, to go as far on that road as his strength will carry him, to go undeterred b y faltering, weariness, or reproach, is the only valid justification for the worker in prose. A n d if his conscience is clear, his answer to those who, in the fullness of a wisdom w h i c h looks for immediate profit, demand specifically to be edified, consoled, amused; w h o 320

STYLE d e m a n d to be p r o m p t l y i m p r o v e d , or e n c o u r a g e d , or frightened, or shocked, or c h a r m e d , must r u n thus: M y task w h i c h I a m t r y i n g to a c h i e v e is, b y the p o w e r o f the written w o r d to m a k e y o u hear, to m a k e y o u f e e l — i t is, before all, to m a k e y o u see. T h a t — a n d no more, a n d it is everything. I f I succeed, y o u shall find there a c c o r d ing to y o u r deserts: e n c o u r a g e m e n t , consolation, fear, c h a r m — a l l you d e m a n d — a n d , perhaps, also that glimpse o f truth for w h i c h you h a v e forgotten to ask. Joseph Conrad. Preface to T h e N i g g e r o f the Narcissus FRESH, USUAL

(¡8gy).

WORDS

A style interests w h e n it carries the r e a d e r a l o n g : it is then a good style. A style ceases to interest w h e n b y reason o f disjointed sentences, over-used words, m o n o t o n o u s or j o g - t r o t cadences, it fatigues the reader's m i n d . T o o startling words, h o w e v e r a p t , too j u s t images, too g r e a t displays o f cleverness are a p t in the l o n g run to b e as f a t i g u i n g as the most over-used words or the most j o g - t r o t cadences. T h a t a face resembles a D u t c h clock has been too often said; to say that it resembles a h a m is i n e x a c t a n d conveys n o t h i n g ; to say that it has the mournfulness o f a n old squashed-in m e a t tin, cast a w a y on a waste b u i l d i n g lot, w o u l d b e s m a r t — b u t too m u c h of that sort o f thing w o u l d b e c o m e a nuisance. T o say that a face w a s cramoisy is undesirable: f e w people n o w a d a y s k n o w w h a t the w o r d means. Its e m p l o y m e n t will m a k e t h e r e a d e r m a r v e l a t the writer's erudition: in this m a r v e l l i n g h e ceases to consider the story a n d a n impression o f vagueness or length is p r o d u c e d on his m i n d . A succession o f impressions o f vagueness a n d length render a book in the end u n b e a r a b l e . T h e r e are, of course, pieces of w r i t i n g intended to c o n v e y the sense o f the author's cleverness, k n o w l e d g e o f obsolete words or p o w e r o f inventing similes: w i t h such exercises C o n r a d and the writer never concerned themselves . . . W e used to say that a passage of good style b e g a n w i t h a fresh, usual w o r d , and continued w i t h fresh usual words to the end: there w a s nothing more to it. W h e n w e felt that w e h a d really got hold o f the reader, w i t h a great deal of c a u t i o n w e w o u l d introduce a w o r d not c o m m o n to a v e r y limited v e r n a c u l a r , but that only very occasionally. V e r y occasionally i n d e e d : p r a c t i c a l l y never. Y e t it is in that w a y that a l a n g u a g e grows a n d keeps alive. People get tired of hearing the same words o v e r a n d over a g a i n . . . It is a g a i n a matter for compromise. 321

T H E C R A F T OF F I C T I O N O u r c h i e f masters i n style w e r e F l a u b e r t a n d M a u p a s s a n t : F l a u b e r t in the g r e a t e r d e g r e e , M a u p a s s a n t in the less . . . W e stood as it w e r e o n those hills a n d t h e n c e r e g a r d e d the w o r l d . Ford Madox Ford, J o s e p h C o n r a d , A Personal R e m e m b r a n c e (.¡924), Part III, Chapter ii. THOUGHT CHARGED WITH

EMOTION

T h e g r e a t secret o f S t e n d h a l , his g r e a t shrewdness, consisted in w r i t i n g at once. H i s t h o u g h t c h a r g e d w i t h e m o t i o n r e m a i n s as lively, as fresh in c o l o u r as t h e n e w l y d e v e l o p e d b u t t e r f l y t h a t the collector h a s surprised as it w a s c o m i n g o u t o f t h e c o c o o n . W h e n c e t h a t e l e m e n t o f alertness a n d s p o n t a n e i t y , o f i n c o n g r u i t y , o f suddenness a n d nakedness, t h a t a l w a y s d e l i g h t s us a n e w in his style. I t w o u l d s e e m t h a t his t h o u g h t does n o t t a k e t i m e t o p u t o n its shoes before b e g i n n i n g to r u n . T h i s o u g h t t o serve as a g o o d e x a m p l e ; or r a t h e r : I o u g h t to f o l l o w his g o o d e x a m p l e m o r e o f t e n . O n e is lost w h e n o n e hesitates. T h e w o r k o f t r a n s l a t i n g , for this, does a disservice. D e a l i n g w i t h s o m e o n e else's t h o u g h t , it is i m p o r t a n t to w a r m it, to c l o t h e it, a n d o n e goes seeking t h e best w o r d s , t h e best t u r n o f expression; o n e becomes convinced that there are twenty ways of saying anything w h a t e v e r a n d t h a t o n e o f t h e m is p r e f e r a b l e t o all the others. O n e gets i n t o t h a t b a d h a b i t o f dissociating f o r m f r o m c o n t e n t , t h e e m o t i o n a n d the expression o f t h e e m o t i o n f r o m t h e t h o u g h t , w h i c h o u g h t to r e m a i n i n s e p a r a b l e . André Gide. T h e J o u r n a l s o f A n d r é G i d e , V o l . I l l : 1 9 2 8 - 1 9 3 9 , transl. Justin O'Brien {1949). E F F E C T S OF T H E L O N G W E E K - E N D

( I g I 8— I 9 3 9 )

T o sum up m y remarks. O u r period: a long week-end between t w o wars. E c o n o m i c a n d p s y c h o l o g i c a l c h a n g e s a l r e a d y in existence intensifying. W r i t e r s a r e i n t i m i d a t e d b y the e c o n o m i c c h a n g e s b u t s t i m u l a t e d b y the p s y c h o l o g i c a l . Prose, b e c a u s e it is a m e d i u m for d a i l y life as well as for l i t e r a t u r e , is p a r t i c u l a r l y sensitive t o w h a t is going on, and two tendencies can be noted: the popular, which a b s o r b s w h a t is passing, a n d s e c o n d l y , t h e esoteric, w h i c h rejects it, a n d tries t o c r e a t e s o m e t h i n g m o r e v a l u a b l e t h a n m o n o t o n y a n d b l o o d s h e d . T h e best w o r k o f t h e p e r i o d h a s this esoteric t e n d e n c y . . . E. M. Forster. T h e D e v e l o p m e n t of E n g l i s h Prose b e t w e e n 2918 a n d 1939 (1945).

322

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS THE compiler and the publishers are grateful to the following publishers and literary executors for permission to include copyright material: Edward Arnold (Publishers) Ltd. for extracts from Aspects of the Novel and Two Cheers for Democracy by E. M . Forster; Mrs. Janice Biala for extracts from Joseph Conrad: A Personal Remembrance by Ford Madox Ford; W. A. Aspenwall Bradley (Paris) for extracts from It was the Nightingale by Ford Madox Ford; Cassell & Company Ltd. for extracts from The Coiners and The Logbook of the Coiners by André Gide; Chatto & Windus Ltd. for extracts from Letters by Feodor Dostoevsky, translated by Ethel Colburn Mayne, and for extracts from Guermantes Way and Time Regained by Marcel Proust, translated by C. K . Scott-Moncrieff and Stephen Hudson; Chilton Company (New York) for extracts from Life and Art by Thomas Hardy; Editions Louis Conard (Paris) for extracts from Correspondance by Gustave Flaubert; J . M . Dent & Sons Ltd. for extracts from A Personal Record, Notes on Life and Letters and Prefaces by Joseph Conrad, and for extracts from Life and Letters by Joseph Conrad, edited by G. Jean-Aubry; J o h n Farquharson Ltd. for extracts from Letters, The Ambassadors, Portrait of a Lady, The Spoils of Poynton, Roderick Hudson, The American, The Awkward Age, The Lesson of the Master, The Golden Bowl, The Altar of the Dead and Partial Portraits by Henry J a m e s ; Librairie Gallimard (Paris) for extracts from To the Happy Few by Stendhal, translated by Norman Cameron, Librairie Gallimard, all rights reserved; Harcourt Brace & Company Inc. (New York) for extracts from Aspects of the Novel by E. M . Forster, copyright, 1927, by Harcourt, Brace and Company, Inc. (renewed, 1954, by E. M . Forster, and used by permission of the publishers), and for extracts from Two Cheers for Democracy by E. M . Forster, copyright, 1947, by E. M . Forster (also used by permission of the publishers) ; the trustees of the Hardy Estate for extracts from Life and Art by Thomas Hardy; Harvard University Press (Cambridge, U.S.A.) for extracts from Dr. Grimshawe's Secret by 323

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Nathaniel Hawthorne; William Heinemann Ltd. for extracts from Life and Letters by Joseph Conrad, edited by G . JeanA u b r y ; David Higham Associates Ltd. for extracts from Joseph Conrad: A Personal Remembrance by Ford M a d o x Ford; Alfred A . K n o p f Inc. (New York) for extracts from Journals of André Gide, by André Gide, translated by Justin O'Brien (Volume I, copyright 1947 by Alfred A . K n o p f Inc., V o l u m e I I I , copyright 1949 by Alfred A . K n o p f Inc.), and for extracts from The Counterfeiters by André Gide, translated by Dorothy Bussy, copyright 1927, 1951, by Alfred A . K n o p f Inc.; T h e Estate of the late Mrs. Frieda Lawrence for extracts from The Letters of D. H. Lawrence and Phoenix by D . H. Lawrence; Macdonald & Co. (Publishers) Ltd. for extracts from To the Happy Few by Stendhal, translated by Norman Cameron; Macmillan & Co. Ltd. for extracts from Far from the Madding Crowd, Early Life and Later Years by Thomas Hardy; Oxford University Press Inc. (New York) for extracts from The Notebooks of Henry James by Henry James, edited by F. O . Matthiessen and Kenneth B. Murdock, reprinted by permission of Oxford University Press Inc.; Laurence Pollinger Ltd. for extracts from The Letters of D. H. Lawrence and Phoenix by D . H . Lawrence; R a n d o m House Inc. (New York) for extracts from Guermantes' Way and Time Regained by Marcel Proust, copyright R a n d o m House Inc.; M r . Denys K i l h a m Roberts for extracts from ' A Conversation Between I. Compton-Burnett and M . J o u r d a i n ' , Orion (1945); Martin Seeker & W a r b u r g Ltd. for extracts from Journals by André Gide; Sheed & W a r d Inc. (New York) for extracts from God and Mammon by François Mauriac, published by Sheed & W a r d Inc., New York; Sheed & Ward Ltd. also for extracts from God and Mammon by François Mauriac; T h e Viking Press Inc. (New York) for extracts from Phoenix and Letters by D . H . Lawrence and for extracts from Journals by Arnold Bennett; T h e O w n e r of the Copyright for extracts from Journals by Arnold Bennett; M r . Leonard Woolf for extracts from A Writer's Diary by Virginia Woolf.

324

INDEX OF AUTHORS AND T I T L E S IN T H E INTRODUCTIONS

A la Recherche du Temps Perdu, 171, 185 Aaron's Rod, 1 1 5 , 200 Adam Bede, 2511., 34, 198 Addison, Joseph, 16, 167, 175, 221 Adolphe, 187 Aeneid, 10 Allen, Walter, 12, 223 AUott, Kenneth, 2i6n., 225n. Alton Locke, 26 Alwyn: the Gentleman Comedian, 1 in., 12, 17 Ambassadors, The, 120, 165, 166, 175, 180, 192 Amelia, 11 Amélie Mansfield, 16 Anna Karénina, 36 Arabian Nights, The, 175 Ariosto, 16 Aristotle, 3, 8, 167, 174, 175 Armante, 36 Arnold, Matthew, 221 Arrow of Gold, The, 5 'Art and Morality', 2gn. Artamène ou le Grand Cyrus, 9 Aspects of the Novel, 28n., i64n., i6gn., 175, 186, 19711., 205n., 2o6n., 207n., 2i4n. Astrée, V, 9 Auden, W. H., 1 1 8 Austen, J a n e , 18, 3 2 - 3 , 1 1 2 , 165, 169, 1 7 1 , 178, 1 8 1 , 184, 189, 192, 201, 205, 206, 2 1 5 , 216, 218, 223, 224 Autobiography, An, 224

Back, 226 Bagehot, Walter, 203 Balchin, Nigel, 2 1 4 Balzac, Honoré de, 19, 26, 27, 1 1 2 , 182, 188, 203, 2 1 6 Barbauld, Anna, 24, 164, 167, 186187, 1 9 1 , 223, 224 Beattie, J a m e s , 14 'Beast in the Jungle, The', 1 1 5 Bennett, Arnold, 29, 1 1 7 , 196, 206 Bentzon, Théodore, 163 Dig Sleep, The, 214 Bigot, Charles, I02n. Blackwell, Thomas, 7, 16 Bleak House, 26, 34, 179, 187, 2 1 0 Boswell, James, I97n., 202 Brereton, Geoffrey, 27n. Bridal of Triermain, The, 17 Brontë, Charlotte, 18, 33, 122, 198, 2"9. 224-5 Bronte, Emily, 28, 33, 122, 169-70, 1 7 1 , 182, 206, 2 1 8 Brooke, Henry, 18 Brothers Karamazov, The, 39, 173, 180 Brunetière, F., i62n. Buffon, G . L . Leclerc dc, 11 7 Bunyan, John, 181 Burney, Fanny, 18, 189 Caleb Williams, 18 Camilla, 190 Camus, Albert, 39, 207, 208 Can You Forgive Her?, 2 0 9 - 1 0 Captain's Deathbed, The, 2gn., ig6n. Cary, Joyce, 1 1 8 , 188

325

I N D E X OF A U T H O R S A N D T I T L E S Cassandre, 9 Castle of Otranto, The, 4 Catcher in the Rye, The, igin. Cecil, David, 21 in., 219 Cervantes, Miguel de, 10, 11 -12, 22, 167, 186 Chartreuse de Parme, La, 26n., 34, 3637. ' 7 ° Chaucer, Geoffrey, 23 Chekhov, Anton, 36, 189, 190 Chemins de la Liberté, Les, 195 Chute, La, 187 Clarissa, 28, 189, 224n. Clayhanger, 24 Clélie, 9 Cléopatre, 9 Clifford, Hugh, 222 Coleridge, S. T., 17 Collins, Wilkie, 21, 179, 199, 221 Comédie Humaine, 26 Common Reader {First Series), The, 196 Compton-Burnett, Ivy, 36, 180, 2 1 2 - 1 3 , 216 Concluding, 226 Conrad, Joseph, 5, 19, 28, 29, 30, 31, 38-9, 40, 117, 118, 120, 121, 167, 188, 194-5, «96, 204, 222, 225 'Corvo, Baron' (F. Rolfe), 115, 201 Cottin, Marie R., 16 Cousine Bette, La, 26 Craft of Fiction, The, 163, 186 Crane, R . S., 179 Crime and Punishment, 34, 180 Critics and Criticism, 179 Cumberland, Richard, 4, 17, 20, 121, 164, 167, 189 D'Albert-Durade, 221 Daniel Deronda, 172, 180 Dead Souls, 26 'Death of the Lion, The', 1 1 5 Defoe, Daniel, 7, 10, 17, 23, 181, 219, 222 Descartes, René, 21, 181 Desire and Pursuit of the Whole, The, "5

Development of English Prose between 1918 and 193g, The, 226 Dickens, Charles, 12, 21, 26, 28, 32, 33. 34. 36. i ' 2 . " 4 . " 9 . 1 2 ' . 163, 165, 167, 168, 179, 188, '93. '99. 203, 206, 2 1 0 - 1 2 , 217, 219, 224 Dickens and his Critics, 162 Dombey and Son, 26 Dominique, 188 Don Quixote, 22 Dostoevsky, Feodor, 5, 21, 26, 27, 34, 37, 112, 114, 121, 166, 172, '73. ' 9 ° . 200, 203, 219 Dubliners, The, 197 Dudden, Homes, 182 Dumesnil, René, 2gn. Dunlop, John, 9, 10 D'Urfé, Honoré, 9, 15 Early Victorian Novelists, 21 in., 219 East Lynne, 37 Edgeworth, Maria, 18 Education Sentimentale, L', 1 1 5 , 184 Eighteenth Century Prose, 1700-1780, 22 Eliot, George, 25, 33, 34-5, 38, 39, 39n-> " 7 - ' 8 . " 9 . '22, i62n., 166, 172, 176, 177-8, 180, 190, 198, 201, 204, 208, 212, 217, 219, 220, 221, 224, 225 Eliot, T. S., 1 1 7 , 206 Emma, 165, 166, 178 End of the Affair, The, 196 English Novel, The, 12, 223n. Enough: A Fragment from the Diary of a Dead Artist, 114 Enquiry into the Life and Writings of Homer, An, 7 Essai sur la Poésie Epique, 7 Essays on some of the Modem Guides of English Thought in Matters of Faith, 3gn. Esther Waters, 29 Eugene Onyegin, 36 Evelina, 190 Eyeless in Gaza, 185

INDEX

OF A U T H O R S A N D

Fathers and Sons, 37, 113, 199 Faulkner, William, 185 Faux Monnayeurs, Les, 30 Felix Holt, 177 Felonious Treaty, The, 711. Female Quixote, The, 167, 227 Fénelon, 8, 12 Ferdinand, Count Fathom, 13 Feydeau, M . E., 16211. Fielding, Henry, 3, 4, 8 - 1 1 , 12, 13, 17, 20, 22, 23, 32, 33, 112, 113, 114, 164, 165, 166, 167, 178-9, 181, 182, i82n., 183, 186, 188, 189, 192, 197, 202-3, 206, 207, 211, 215, 216, 222-3, 224 Fielding, Sarah, 164, 202 Finnegans Wake, 196, 197 Flaubert, Gustave, 19, 29, 30, 34, 35. 36, 37. 39. " 2 . 113» " 4 . 115-16, 117, 121, 122, i6an., 163, 168, 171, 172, 184, 194-5, >99. a0 9> 212, 217. 220, 221 Fool of Quality, The, 18 Ford, G. H., iÖ2n. Ford, Ford Madox, 167-76 Forster, E. M . , 5, 28, 123, i 6 i n . , 164, 169, 172, ¡74-5. !76. 181, 186, 193, 197, 203, 205, 206-7, 214, 226 Fortunes of Nigel, The, 4 Fromentin, Eugène, 188 Galsworthy, John, 196 Gargantua and Pantagruel, 22 Gaskell, Elizabeth, 26, 34 Genetrix, 32 Gencttes, M m e Roger de, 114 George Eliot Letters, The, 2o8n. Gerusalemme Liberata, 16 Gide, André, 30, 172, 207 Gil Blas de Santillane, 12, 13 God and Mammon, 111 Godwin, William, 13, 18 Goethe, J. W. von, 13, 188 Gogol, Nikolai, 26, 34 Golden Bowl, The, 171, 182, 191, >94n-> 2 I 3 n - . 2i6n., 225

TITLES

Goldsmith, Oliver, 31, 224 Grand Cyrus, Le, 13 Great Expectations, 179, 187 Greatcoat, The, 26 Green, Henry, 226 Greene, Graham, 196, 214 Hadrian VII, 115 Hard Times, 26, 208 Hardy, Thomas, 1, 3, 28, 29, 30, 38, 39. 1 ' 7 . ' 6 7 , 175, 212, 217, 218, 219, 222 Hartley, L. P., 226 Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 4, 21 'Heart of Darkness, The', 5 Heart of the Matter, The, 196 Hénnique, Léon, 29 Henry, 17 Hermann und Dorothea, 13 Hero in Eclipse in Victorian Fiction, The, 24 Heseltine, Philip, 200 Hilda Lessways, 2gn. History of Fiction, 9 History of Poetry, 1 in. History of Sir Charles Grandison, The,

6

Holcroft, Thomas, n n . , 12-14, 17 Homer, 10, 14, 167 House of the Seven Gables, The, 4 Howards End, 214 Hugo, Victor, 114 Humphry Clinker, 165, 190 Hunt, Leigh, 199 Hurd, Richard, 3, 14, 16 Hutton, R . H., 3gn. Huxley, Aldous, 172, 185 Introduction to the English Novel, An, 21-2, 223n. It's a Battlefield, 196 Ivory Tower, The, 120 Jacobite's Journal, The, i8gn. James, Henry, 5, 6, 19, 27, 28, 29, 3 ' . 37, 38, 39. 40, " 2 , " 5 . 116-17, 118, 119-20, 122, 163,

327

I N D E X OF A U T H O R S A N D 164, 165, 171, 176, 177, 181, 187, 188, 190, 191-4, 196, 198, 204, 206, 208, 209, 210, 212-13, 220, 225 James, William, 195 Jane Eyre, 18, 165, 187 Jefferson, Douglas, 222, 223, 224n. Johnson, Samuel, 23, 112, 164, 197, 202 Jonathan Wild, 10, 207 Joseph Andrews, 8, io, 199, aaa Joyce, James, 39-40, 185, 196, 197, 210, 225, 226 Jude the Obscure, 181

TITLES

McAdam, E. L., i8gn. Mackenzie, Henry, 17, 215 Madame Bovary, 34, 115, 116, 171, 172, 209 Magarshack, David, 113 Mallet, David, 14 Man of Feeling, The, 18, 215 Mansfield Park, 33, 20in. Margites, 10, 167 Maritain, Jacques, 35 Marivaux, Pierre de, 186, 189 Martin Chuzzleuiit, 211 n. Mary Barton, 26 Maupassant, Guy de, 19, 21, 27, 29, 35. 38, 116, 177, 192, 221 Mauriac, François, 30, 32, 35-6, 38, Kangaroo, 218 39, m , 207, 217 Keats, John, 118, 195 Mayor of Casterbridge, The, 181 Ker, W. P., 16 Melville, Herman, 28, 172, 173 Kettle, Arnold, 21-2, 223 Memoirs of a Madman, The, 34 Kingsley, Charles, 26 Middlemarch, 34, 39, 122, 165, 177, 212, 225 La Calpren^de, G. de, 9 Mill, John Stuart, 35 Laclos, Choderlos de, 186, 18g Mill on the Floss, The, 172, 212 Lady Barbarina, 190 Milton, John, 23 Lafayette, Mme. de, 18 'Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown', 29, ig6n. Lawrence, D. H., 29, 30, 33, 115, 166, 173, 200, 219, 226 Mrs. Dalloway, 185, 196 Mitford, Mary Russell, 176 Lawrence, T. E., 226 Mixed Essays, 221 Lennox, Charlotte, 167 Moby Dick, 173, 207 Le Sage, A . R., 12, 186 Leiters on Chivalry and Romance, 3, 16 Molière, 19 Lewes, G. H., 117-18, 163, 225 Montégut, Emile, i62n. Liaisons Dangereuses, Les, 189 Moonstone, The, 174 Moore, George, 29 Liddell, Robert, 117, 163, 215, 216, Muir, Edwin, 205 217-18, 219 Murry, John Middleton, 200 Life of Charles Dickens, The, 12m. Mysteries of Udolpho, The, 17 Life of Johnson, i97n. Literary Studies, 203 Nashe, Thomas, 181 Little Dorritt, 168 Nest of Gentlefolk, A, 34, 37, 113 Locke, John, 21, 24, 168, 181 Nevsky Prospect, 34 Longest Journey, The, 214 'Next Time, The', 115 Lord Jim, 184n. Nicholas Nickleby, 34 Love and Freindship, 189, 190 Niece, The, 114 Loving, 226 North and South, 26 Lubbock, Sir Percy, 163, 186 Northanger Abbey, 18, i8gn. Lucian, 16

INDEX

OF A U T H O R S A N D

Nostromo, 5, 40, 120, 121 Notebooks of Henry James, The, 37, 117, 11711., 12011., 17 m . Nouvelle Hiloise, La, 31 Novel in France, The, 19811. Odyssey, The, 8, 15 Old English Baron, The, 4, 15, 17 Oliver Twist, 34 On the Eve, 34, 113 Our Mutual Friend, 34, 179 Owens, R . J . , 16211. Pamela, 28, 189 Passage to India, A, 214 Peacock, T h o m a s L., 200 Pendennis, 33, 34 'Pension Beaurepas, T h e ' , 190 Pepys, Samuel, 9 Percy, Thomas, 14, 16 Peregrine Pickle, 12 Persuasion, 178, 184 Peste, La, 208 Pharsalia, 16 Phoenix, 29 Pickwick Papers, 34, 168 Picture of Dorian Gray, The, 35 Pierre, 173 Pierre et Jean, 29 Pilgrimage, 196 Plumed Serpent, The, 115 Portrait of a Lady, The, 193-4 Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, A, 197 Possessed, The, 200 Power and the Glory, The, 196 Praz, Mario, 24-5, 28 Prévost, Marcel, 189 Pride and Prejudice, 165, 178, l8gn., 20in., 205, 206, 215 Prince Otto, i82n. Princesse de Clives, La, 220 Progress of Romance, The, 7, 10, 1 4 15. 16, 31 Proust, Marcel, 18, 120, 171, 172, 185, 217

TITLES

Rabelais, François, 22 Radcliffe, Ann, 10, 17, 18, 215 Ramsay, A n d r e w Michael, I2n. Rasselas, 208 Réalisme et le Naturalisme, Le, 2gn. Reeve, Clara, 4, 7-8, 9, 11, 14-15, 16, 17, 18, 20 Return of the Native, The, 216 Revue des Deux Mondes, La, 162 Richardson, Dorothy, 196 Richardson, Samuel, 6 - 7 , 10, 14, 20, 23, 24, 28, 31, 32, 112, 119, 167, 182, 183, 186, 188, 189, 190, 197, 202-3, 204, 206, 207, 219, 223-4 Ritson, Joseph, 16 Robinson Crusoe, 187 Roderick Random, 13 Rolfe, F., see C o r v o Roman Expérimental, Le, 27 Romola, 217 Room with a View, A, 214 Rouge et le Noir, Le, 19, 34, 170 Rougon-Macquart, 26 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 3 1 - 2 , 189 Ruth, 34 Salammbô, 221 Salinger, J . D . , 1 9 m . Sand, George, 18, 113, 114, 116, 199, 201, 220, 221 Sartre, Jean-Paul, 39, 195 Scott, Sir Walter, 4, 1 5 - 1 7 , 19, 24, 32, 112, 164, 167, 168, 169, 188, 193, 202, 215 Scott-Moncrieff, C . K . , 26n. Scudcry, Madeleine de, g, 15 'Secret Sharer, T h e ' , 5 Sense of the Past, The, 5 Shaftesbury, 3rd Earl of, 23, 24 Shakespeare, William, 23 Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 20 Sherburn, George, 11 Sheridan, Richard Brinsley, 211 Shirley, 198 Short History of French Literature, A, ayn.

329

I N D E X OF A U T H O R S A N D T I T L E S Shrimp and the Anemone, The, 226 Silas Marner, 180 Small Back Room, The, 214 Smollett, Tobias, 1 1 - 1 2 , 13, 15, 1 1 2 , 186, 188 Some Principles of Fiction, 163 Sorrows of Wtrther, The, 188 Sound and the Fury, The, 185 Spanish Gypsy, The, 172 Spoils of Poynton, The, 120 Spenser, Edmund, 23 Stendhal, 1 8 - 1 9 , 25» 26, 34, 36-7, 1 1 5 , 170, 1 7 1 , 190, 199, 221 Sterne, Laurcnce, 17, 168, 169, 182, 183 Stevenson, Robert Louis, 26n., 38, 116, 164, i82n., 199, 205, 206, 217, 219-20 Strachey, Lytton, 226 Structure of the Novel, The, 205 Swedenberg, H., 174 Swift, Jonathan, 168

Trollope, Anthony, 21, 32, 1 2 1 , 167, 176, 187, 192, 209, 210, 217, 220, 224 Turgenev, Ivan, 29, 30, 34, 35, 37, 39, 1 1 2 , 113-14» " 9 . ' 7 ' . >73» 199, 200 Turgenev, The Man, His Art, and His Age, iggn. Turn of the Screw, The, 188 Turnell, Martin, ig8n.

'79 n -> '82, 192, 2 1 5 Trapp, Joseph, 174 Treatise on the Novel, A, 1 1 7 , 1 6 3 , 2 1 5 , 2ign. Tristram Shandy, 164, 168, 182

Yarmolinsky, Avrahm, u g n . Yeast, 26

Ulysses, 185, 197 Valentine, 221 Vanity Fair, 34, 183, 192, 205 Vicar of Wakefield, The, 187 Victorian Prose, 1830-1880, 225n. Victory, 5 Villette, 18 Virgil, 14, i74n. Voltaire, 7, 16

Walpole, Horace, 4, 20, 164, 169 War and Peace, 34, 184, i84n. Warton, Thomas (the younger), Taillandier, Saint-Rene, i62n. 1 in. Taine, Hippolyte, 122 Watt, Ian, The Rise of the Novel, 7, Tale of Two Cities, A, 21 2 i , 22-3, 24, 188, i88n., 218 Tartuffe, 19 Waugh, Evelyn, 226 Tasso, Torquato, 16 Waves, The, 120, 122, 174, 175, 197 Ttiemaque, 8, 12, 3 Thackeray, William Makepeace, Wells, H. G., 29, 1 1 2 , 196 What Maisie Knew, 210 33, 34, 181, 183, 188, 224 Wilde, Oscar, 35 Thackeray the Novelist, 103 Wings of the Dove, The, 120, 171, 182, Theagenes and Chariclea, to i84n., 2 i 3 n . Theory of the Epic in England, The, 174 Women in Love, 173, 200 These Twain, 2gn. Woodlanders, The, 2 1 2 Tillotson, Geoffrey, i83n. Woolf, Virginia, 29, 120, 122-3, To the Lighthouse, 185, 196 172, 174, 185, 196, 197-8, 225, Tocqueville, Alexis de, 35 226 Tolstoy, Leo, 27, 34, 35, 37, 1 1 2 , Writer's Diary, A, I20n. 114, Il6, 1 2 1 , 164, 166, 169, 182, 184, 219 Wuthering Heights, 162, 169-170, Tom Jones, 10, 165, 167, 168, 179, 1 7 1 , 180, 184, 206, 207n., 216

Zola, Emile, 19, 20, 26-7, 28, 35, 36, 216, 221

330

INDEX TO THE T E X T

AUSTEN, Jane. Characterization, 278; style, 311. Scott on J a n e Austen, 63-6. BALZAC, H . de. Presenting ideas in fiction, 103. Balzac on Le Sage, 103; on Plato, 103; on Stendhal, 103. Arnold Bennett on Balzac, 290; George Eliot on B., 314; Henry James on B., 55, 253, 305; Zola on B., 68-9. BARBAULD, A n n a . Epic in prose, 48; artistic unity, 229; narrative technique, 258-60; Richardson's style, 308-9. Mrs. Barbauld on Fanny Burney, 258; on Cervantes, 258; on Fielding, 258; on Goldsmith, 258; on Marivaux, 258; on Richardson, 229, 259, 308-9; on Rousseau, 260; on Smollett, 258. BENNETT, Arnold. Compassion, 133; narrative technique, 267; characterization, 290-1. Bennett on Balzac, 290; on Samuel Butler, 267; on Conrad, 267; on Dickens, 290; on Scott, 290; on Shakespeare, 290; on Thackeray, 290. BRONTE, Charlotte. Inspiration, 154-5; characterization, 280; background, 300. Charlotte Bronte on Emily Bronte, 154» 300. E. M . Forster on Charlotte

Bronte, 289; Trollope on C . B., 67. BURNEY, Fanny. Realism, 62. Mrs. Barbauld on Fanny Burney, 258. CHEKHOV, Anton. Objectivity, 99; beginnings and endings, 250-1; epistolary method, 260; background, 304. COLLINS, Wilkie. Characterization, 282-3; style, 315. Wilkie Collins on Addison, 315; on Byron, 315. Dickens on Collins, 243; Trollope on C . , 243. COMPTON-BURNETT, Ivy. Poetic justice, 104-5; germination, 143; plot, 249; characterization, 284-5; dialogue, 297-8. CONRAD, Joseph. Romantic realism, 54-5; imagined life clearer than reality, 76; the artist's responsibility, IOO-IOI; 'liberty of the imagination', 132-3; germination: Nostromo, 139-40; at work, 1 5 1 - 2 ; narrative technique, 267-8; characterization, 286; style, 319-21. C o n r a d on Novalis, 76; on Stendhal, 133. Arnold Bennett on Conrad, 267; F. M . Ford on C . , 3 2 1 - 2 ; E. M . Forster on C . , 273; André G i d e on C., 237. CUMBERLAND, Richard. T h e bounds of probability, 4 7 - 8 ; realism,

33 1

INDEX

TO

T H E

62; artistic unity, 227-8; narrative technique, 257-8, 269; characterization, 277-8. Cumberland on Fielding, 228. DEFOE, Daniel. Moral purpose, 8 g 90. E. M . Forster on Defoe, 289. DICKENS, Charles. Accident, 66; fantasy, 66; the writer and the young person, 88; germination, 134-5; the inserted story, 231; serialization, 242; beginnings and endings, 250; 'exit author', 270-1; characterization, 280-1. Dickens on YVilkie Collins, 243; on Leigh Hunt, 281; on Bulwer Lytton, 243 ; on Charles Reade, 243Arnold Bennett on Dickens, 290; Flaubert on D., 232; E. M . Forster on D., 268, 288; Thackeray on D., 67. DOSTOEVSKY, Feodor. Realism, 68; the novelist's equipment, 127; at work, 149-50; striving for unity, 232. Dostoevsky on Victor Hugo, 127, 232; on Pushkin, 232; on Tolstoy, 127. E. M . Forster on Dostoevsky, 289; Henry James on D., 235; Tolstoy on D., 265. ELIOT, George. T h e writer's responsibility, 94; germination, 135-6; inspiration, 155; plot, 247-8; beginnings and endings, 250; narrative technique, 262264; characterization, 280; background, 301; style, 314. George Eliot on Balzac, 314; on Fielding, 314; on Goldsmith, 264; on La Fontaine, 264; on Macaulay, 250; on George Sand; on Scott, 314; on Shakespeare, 314; on Sterne, 264. FIELDING, Henry. T h e marvellous, 42-3; realism, 59-60, 60-61;

T E X T

moral example, 91; the novelist's equipment, 125; inspiration, 154; epic regularity, 227; structural unity, 227; beginnings and endings, 249; the time-factor, 251-2; epistolary method, 256; characterization, 275. 277» 279; style, 308. Fielding on Cervantes, 44, 227; on Homer, 59; on Charlotte Lennox, 227; on Le Sage, 44. Mrs. Barbauld on Fielding, 229, 258; Richard Cumberland on F., 228; Dickens on F., 231; George Eliot on F., 314; E. M . Forster on F., 273, 289; Hardy on F., 244; Henry James on F., 88; Scott on F., 230, 231, 269270; Trollope on F., 233. FIELDING, Sarah. Romance, 44; characterization, 275. Sarah Fielding on Cervantes, 44; on Henry Fielding, 44; on Richardson, 44; on Sidney, 44. Richardson on Sarah Fielding, 275FLAUBERT, Gustave. Conflicting impulses, 5 1 - 2 ; realism and naturalism, 69-70; detachment, 94-6. >25-6; at work, 148-9; inspiration, 155-6; artistic unity, 231-2; symphonic effect, 240; story, 242; 'exit author', 271; characterization, 281-2; dialogue, 292-4; style, 3 1 2 - 1 4 . Flaubert on Balzac, 70; on Boileau, 313; on Dickens, 232; on Goncourt, 69-70; on Zola, 69-70. Ford on Flaubert, 322; E. M . Forster on F., 289; D . H . Lawrence on F., 77-8; M a u passant on F., 130-1, 272; George Sand on F., 95, 262. FORD, F. M . Objectivity, 102-3; digressiveness, 235-6; story, 245; beginnings and endings,

332

I N D E X

T O

251; narrative technique, 273; characterization, 284; dialogue, 297; style, 321-2. Ford on Conrad, 297, 322; on Anatole France, 103; on Flaubert, 322; on Maupassant, 322. FORSTER, E .

M.

Inspiration,

158;

pattern and rhythm, 237-40; story, 245-6; plot, 248-9; the time-factor, 253-4; narrative technique, 268-9, 273; characterization, 288-9; style, 322. E. M . Forster on Beethoven, 238, 239; on Charlotte Bronte, 289; on Emily Bronte, 259; on Conrad, 273; on Defoe, 289; on Dickens, 268; on Dostoevsky, 289; on Fielding, 289; on Flaubert, 289; on Galsworthy, 239; on H a r d y , 273; on Percy Lubbock, 268; on Meredith, 238, 239, 288; on Proust, 238, 254, 289; on Racine, 238; on Sterne, 254; on Tolstoy, 240, 269, 289; on H . G . Wells, 238. GIDE, André. Realism and stylization, 78-9; presenting ideas in a novel, 104; moral tragedy, 105; the 'pure' novel, 236-7; 'art of fugue', 240; beginnings and endings, 251; narrative technique, 273-4; characterization, 291; style, 322. G i d e on Henry James, 273; on Meredith, 273; on Nietzsche, 78; on Stendhal, 322. Mauriac on Gide, 133. GOLDSMITH, Oliver. T h e novel and the young person, 87. Mrs. Barbauld on Goldsmith, 258; George Eliot on G., 264. GREEN, Sarah. Romantic extravagance, 48. HARDY, Thomas. Adjusting the exceptional and the non-exceptional, 1, 58; realism, 73-4; moral responsibility, 98; the

T H E

T E X T

novelist's business, 132; story, 243-4; epistolary method, 260; background, 301-2; style, 318. H a r d y on Dumas, 73; on Fielding, 244; on Mrs. Radcliffe, 73; on Richardson, 244; on Scott, 244; on T h a c k e r a y , 244; on Zola, 73. Miss Compton-Burnett on Hardy, 307; E. M . Forster on H., 275; André Gide on H . , 237. HAWTHORNE, Nathaniel. Historical romance, 5 0 - 1 ; moral purpose in a romance, 93; germination, 136; at work, 146-7. HOLCROFT, Thomas. Unity of design, 46-7. HUXLEY, Aldous. T r u t h and fiction, 79-80; presenting ideas in a novel, 104; musicalization of fiction, 240-1 ; narrative technique, 274. JAMES, Henry. R o m a n c e , 55-6; the supernatural, 5 6 - 7 ; art and life, 75-6; categories of fiction, 8 1 - 2 ; moral responsibility, 8889, 99-100; the novelist's approach and equipment, 131 — 132; germination, 138-9; preliminary planning, 150-1; inspiration, 156-7; artistic unity, 234; form and substance, 235; story, 245; the time-factor, 252253 ; narrative technique, 260-1, 265-7; 'exit author', 272; characterization, 283-4, 286-7; dialogue, 295-7; background, 305. Henry James on Balzac, 253, 305; on Dostoevsky, 235; on Fielding, 88; on Richardson, 88; on Scott, 55; on Stevenson, 82; on Trollope, 272; on Tolstoy, 235; on Turgenev, 286-7. André Gide on James, 274-5; Stevenson on J., 82-3. LAWRENCE,

333

78;

D.

moral

H.

Realism,

attitude,

77-

101-2;

I N D E X

T O

T H E

presenting ideas in a novel, 104; characterization, 289-90. Lawrence on Emily Bronte, 77; on Dostoevsky, 28-9; on Flaubert, 77-8; on Marinetti, 289; on Shakespeare, 78; on Tolstoy, 28g; on Turgenev, 289; on Verga, 77-8. M A U P A S S A N T , Guy de. Conflicting impulses, 52-3; realism, 70-1; the novelist's training, 130-1; 'exit author': Flaubert, 272; style, 317-18. Maupassant on Flaubert, 130-1, 272; on Zola, 52-3. F. M. Ford on Maupassant, 322; Tolstoy on M., 131. MAURIAC, François. The laws of novel-creation, 80; the writer and the young person, 89; the Christian novelist, 106-8; the novelist's raison d'être, 133. Mauriac on Gide, 133; on Maritain, 80, 108; on Novalis, 108; on Proust, 80. M E L V I L L E , Herman. Writing Moby Dick, 126. M I T F O R D , Mary Russell. Plot, 247. P R O U S T , Marcel. Germination, 141 — 142; the sense of the past, 254255; background, 306-7. E. M. Forster on Proust, 289; Mauriac on Proust, 80. R E E V E , Clara. Combining the marvellous and the probable, 45; the novel and the romance, 47; the writer and the young person, 86-7. Clara Reeve on Rousseau, 86-7; on Horace Walpole, 45. RICHARDSON, Samuel. Romantic extravagance, 41-2; probability, 61; moral purpose, 85, 90; germination, 134; at work, 144; epistolary method, 256-7; characterization, 275. Richardson on Fielding, 275.

T E X T

Mrs. Barbauld on Richardson, 259-60, 308-9; Hardy on R., 244; Henry James on R., 88; Scott on R.", 275-7. R O U S S E A U , Jean-Jacques. Idealism, 44-5; moral purpose, 85-6; the voice of true feeling, 309-11. Mrs. Barbauld on Rousseau, 260; Clara Reeve on R., 86-7; Stendhal on R., 312. S A N D , George. Objectivity, 95; the novelist's equipment, 126-7; narrative technique in the historical novel, 262; characterization, 278, 280; style, 314. George Sand on Apuleius, 262; on Balzac, 68-9; on Flaubert, 95, 262, 314; on Goncourt, 95; on Lucian, 262. George Eliot on George Sand, 314S C O T T , Sir Walter. Novel, romance and epic, 49-50; historical romance, 50; realism: Jane Austen's 'Emma', 63-6; moral purpose, 87,92; at work, 145-6; unity and coherence, 229-30, 230-1; narrative technique, 269-70; characterization, 275277; background, 299-30. Scott on Jane Austen, 63-6; on D'Alembert, 277; on Isaac D'Israeli, 277; on Maria Edgeworth, 65; on Fielding, 64; on Johnson, 49, 276; on Le Sage, 186; on Lady Mary Wortley Montague, 50; on Richardson, 275-7; on Smollett, 64. Arnold Bennett on Scott, 290; George Eliot on S., 314; Hardy on S., 264; Henry James on S.,

55-

Tobias. Romance, 43-4; moral purpose, 91; dialogue, 292. Smollett on Cervantes, 44; on Le Sage, 44.

SMOLLETT,

334

INDEX TO T H E Mrs. Barbauld on Smollett, 258; Dickens on S., 2 3 1 ; Scott on S., 64. STENDHAL. NO politics in a novel, 92; the voice of true feeling, 1 2 7 - 8 ; at work, 146; characterization, 279; style, 3 1 2 . Stendhal on Chateaubriand, 3 1 2 ; on Fénelon, 3 1 2 ; on Montesquieu, 3 1 2 ; on Rousseau, 3 1 2 ; on George Sand, 3 1 2 ; on St. Cyr, 3 1 2 ; on Villemain, 3 1 2 . Conrad on Stendhal, 1 3 3 ; André Gide on S., 322. S T E R N E , Laurence. Digressions, 2 2 8 229. George Eliot on Sterne, 264; Horace Walpole on S., 257. STEVENSON, Robert Louis. Romance, 5 3 - 4 ; realism and idealism, 7 2 73; categories of fiction, 82-4; moral responsibility, 97-8; the novelist's equipment, 129-30; economy, 2 3 3 - 4 ; characterization, 283; background, 303-4; style, 3 1 8 - 1 9 . Stevenson on Balzac, 53, 72, 84; on Daudet, 72; on Hardy, 84; on Henry James, 82, 83; on Le Sage, 83; on Meredith, 84; on Molière, 72; on Charles Reade, 84; on Shakespeare, 73; on Thackeray, 53; on Voltaire, 72; on Zola, 72, 73. Henry J a m e s on Stevenson, 82. T H A C K E R A Y , William Makepeace. Realism, 67; moral reference, 93-4; characterization, 278-9. Thackeray on Dickens, 67; on Fielding, 93. Arnold Bennett on Thackeray, 290; E. M . Forster on T., 273, 288, 289; Hardy on T., 244; Trollope on T., 67. TOLSTOY, Leo. Realism, 74-5; qualities necessary to the novelist, 128-9, 1 3 1 ; at work, 150;

TEXT

artistic unity, 235; narrative technique, 265. Tolstoy on Paul Bourget, 128-9; on Dostoevsky, 265; on Gogol, 265; on Herzen, 265; on Huysmans, 265; on Kipling, 128-9; on Lermontov, 965; on Maupassant, 1 3 1 ; on Pushkin, 265; on Turgenev, 265; on Zola, 128-9. Chekhov on Tolstoy, 99; Dostoevsky on T . , 127; E. M . Forster on T . , 240, 269, 289; Henry J a m e s on T . , 235; D. H. Lawrence on T . , 289. T R O L L O P E , Anthony. Realism and sensationalism, 67-8; moral purpose, 87-8; germination, 1 3 6 - 8 ; at work, 147-8; episodes, 233; story, 2 4 1 - 2 ; plot, 247; narrative technique, 260, 270; characterization, 285; dialogue, 2 9 4 - 5 ; background, 3 0 1 ; style, 3