Criticism and Fiction Read online

  The whole field of human experience as never so nearly covered byimaginative literature in any age as in this; and American lifeespecially is getting represented with unexampled fulness. It is truethat no one writer, no one book, represents it, for that is not possible;our social and political decentralization forbids this, and may foreverforbid it. But a great number of very good writers are instinctivelystriving to make each part of the country and each phase of ourcivilization known to all the other parts; and their work is not narrowin any feeble or vicious sense. The world was once very little, and itis now very large. Formerly, all science could be grasped by a singlemind; but now the man who hopes to become great or useful in science mustdevote himself to a single department. It is so in everything--all arts,all trades; and the novelist is not superior to the universal ruleagainst universality. He contributes his share to a thorough knowledgeof groups of the human race under conditions which are full of inspiringnovelty and interest. He works more fearlessly, frankly, and faithfullythan the novelist ever worked before; his work, or much of it, may bedestined never to be reprinted from the monthly magazines; but if heturns to his book-shelf and regards the array of the British or otherclassics, he knows that they, too, are for the most part dead; he knowsthat the planet itself is destined to freeze up and drop into the sun atlast, with all its surviving literature upon it. The question is merelyone of time. He consoles himself, therefore, if he is wise, and workson; and we may all take some comfort from the thought that most thingscannot be helped. Especially a movement in literature like that whichthe world is now witnessing cannot be helped; and we could no more turnback and be of the literary fashions of any age before this than we couldturn back and be of its social, economical, or political conditions.

  If I were authorized to address any word directly to our novelists Ishould say, Do not trouble yourselves about standards or ideals; but tryto be faithful and natural: remember that there is no greatness, nobeauty, which does not come from truth to your own knowledge of things;and keep on working, even if your work is not long remembered.

  At least three-fifths of the literature called classic, in all languages,no more lives than the poems and stories that perish monthly in ourmagazines. It is all printed and reprinted, generation after generation,century after century; but it is not alive; it is as dead as the peoplewho wrote it and read it, and to whom it meant something, perhaps; withwhom it was a fashion, a caprice, a passing taste. A superstitious pietypreserves it, and pretends that it has aesthetic qualities which candelight or edify; but nobody really enjoys it, except as a reflection ofthe past moods and humors of the race, or a revelation of the author'scharacter; otherwise it is trash, and often very filthy trash, which thepresent trash generally is not.

  XXIII.

  One of the great newspapers the other day invited the prominent Americanauthors to speak their minds upon a point in the theory and practice offiction which had already vexed some of them. It was the question of howmuch or how little the American novel ought to deal with certain facts oflife which are not usually talked of before young people, and especiallyyoung ladies. Of course the question was not decided, and I forget justhow far the balance inclined in favor of a larger freedom in the matter.But it certainly inclined that way; one or two writers of the sex whichis somehow supposed to have purity in its keeping (as if purity were athing that did not practically concern the other sex, preoccupied withserious affairs) gave it a rather vigorous tilt to that side. In view ofthis fact it would not be the part of prudence to make an effort to dressthe balance; and indeed I do not know that I was going to make any sucheffort. But there are some things to say, around and about the subject,which I should like to have some one else say, and which I may myselfpossibly be safe in suggesting.

  One of the first of these is the fact, generally lost sight of by thosewho censure the Anglo-Saxon novel for its prudishness, that it is reallynot such a prude after all; and that if it is sometimes apparentlyanxious to avoid those experiences of life not spoken of before youngpeople, this may be an appearance only. Sometimes a novel which has thisshuffling air, this effect of truckling to propriety, might defenditself, if it could speak for itself, by saying that such experienceshappened not to come within its scheme, and that, so far from maiming ormutilating itself in ignoring them, it was all the more faithfullyrepresentative of the tone of modern life in dealing with love that waschaste, and with passion so honest that it could be openly spoken ofbefore the tenderest society bud at dinner. It might say that the guiltyintrigue, the betrayal, the extreme flirtation even, was the exceptionalthing in life, and unless the scheme of the story necessarily involvedit, that it would be bad art to lug it in, and as bad taste as tointroduce such topics in a mixed company. It could say very justly thatthe novel in our civilization now always addresses a mixed company, andthat the vast majority of the company are ladies, and that very many, ifnot most, of these ladies are young girls. If the novel were written formen and for married women alone, as in continental Europe, it might bealtogether different. But the simple fact is that it is not written forthem alone among us, and it is a question of writing, under cover of ouruniversal acceptance, things for young girls to read which you would beput out-of-doors for saying to them, or of frankly giving notice of yourintention, and so cutting yourself off from the pleasure--and it is avery high and sweet one of appealing to these vivid, responsiveintelligences, which are none the less brilliant and admirable becausethey are innocent.

  One day a novelist who liked, after the manner of other men, to repine athis hard fate, complained to his friend, a critic, that he was tired ofthe restriction he had put upon himself in this regard; for it is amistake, as can be readily shown, to suppose that others impose it. "Seehow free those French fellows are!" he rebelled. "Shall we always beshut up to our tradition of decency?"

  "Do you think it's much worse than being shut up to their tradition ofindecency?" said his friend.

  Then that novelist began to reflect, and he remembered how sick theinvariable motive of the French novel made him. He perceived finallythat, convention for convention, ours was not only more tolerable, but onthe whole was truer to life, not only to its complexion, but also to itstexture. No one will pretend that there is not vicious love beneath thesurface of our society; if he did, the fetid explosions of the divorcetrials would refute him; but if he pretended that it was in any justsense characteristic of our society, he could be still more easilyrefuted. Yet it exists, and it is unquestionably the material oftragedy, the stuff from which intense effects are wrought. The question,after owning this fact, is whether these intense effects are not rathercheap effects. I incline to think they are, and I will try to say why Ithink so, if I may do so without offence. The material itself, the meremention of it, has an instant fascination; it arrests, it detains, tillthe last word is said, and while there is anything to be hinted. This iswhat makes a love intrigue of some sort all but essential to thepopularity of any fiction. Without such an intrigue the intellectualequipment of the author must be of the highest, and then he will succeedonly with the highest class of readers. But any author who will dealwith a guilty love intrigue holds all readers in his hand, the highestwith the lowest, as long as he hints the slightest hope of the smallestpotential naughtiness. He need not at all be a great author; he may be avery shabby wretch, if he has but the courage or the trick of that sortof thing. The critics will call him "virile" and "passionate"; decentpeople will be ashamed to have been limed by him; but the low averagewill only ask another chance of flocking into his net. If he happens tobe an able writer, his really fine and costly work will be unheeded, andthe lure to the appetite will be chiefly remembered. There may be otherqualities which make reputations for other men, but in his case they willcount for nothing. He pays this penalty for his success in that kind;and every one pays some such penalty who deals with some such material.

  But I do not mean to imply that his case covers the whole ground. So faras it goes, though, it ought to stop th
e mouths of those who complainthat fiction is enslaved to propriety among us. It appears that of acertain kind of impropriety it is free to give us all it will, and more.But this is not what serious men and women writing fiction mean when theyrebel against the limitations of their art in our civilization. Theyhave no desire to deal with nakedness, as painters and sculptors freelydo in the worship of beauty; or with certain facts of life, as the stagedoes, in the service of sensation. But they ask why, when theconventions of the plastic and histrionic arts liberate their followersto the portrayal of almost any phase of the physical or of the emotionalnature, an American novelist may not write a story on the lines of 'AnnaKarenina' or 'Madame Bovary.' They wish to touch one of the most seriousand sorrowful problems of life in the spirit of Tolstoy and Flaubert, andthey ask why they may not. At one time, they remind us, the Anglo-Saxonnovelist did deal with such problems--De Foe in his spirit, Richardson inhis, Goldsmith in his. At what moment did our fiction lose thisprivilege? In what fatal hour did the Young Girl arise and seal the lipsof Fiction, with a touch of her finger, to some of the most vitalinterests of life?

  Whether I wished to oppose them in their aspiration for greater freedom,or whether I wished to encourage them, I should begin to answer them bysaying that the Young Girl has never done anything of the kind. Themanners of the novel have been improving with those of its readers; thatis all. Gentlemen no longer swear or fall drunk under the table, orabduct young ladies and shut them up in lonely country-houses, or sohabitually set about the ruin of their neighbors' wives, as they oncedid. Generally, people now call a spade an agricultural implement; theyhave not grown decent without having also grown a little squeamish, butthey have grown comparatively decent; there is no doubt about that. Theyrequire of a novelist whom they respect unquestionable proof of hisseriousness, if he proposes to deal with certain phases of life; theyrequire a sort of scientific decorum. He can no longer expect to bereceived on the ground of entertainment only; he assumes a higherfunction, something like that of a physician or a priest, and they expecthim to be bound by laws as sacred as those of such professions; they holdhim solemnly pledged not to betray them or abuse their confidence. If hewill accept the conditions, they give him their confidence, and he maythen treat to his greater honor, and not at all to his disadvantage, ofsuch experiences, such relations of men and women as George Eliot treatsin 'Adam Bede,' in 'Daniel Deronda,' in 'Romola,' in almost all herbooks; such as Hawthorne treats in 'The Scarlet Letter;' such as Dickenstreats in 'David Copperfield;' such as Thackeray treats in 'Pendennis,'and glances at in every one of his fictions; such as most of the mastersof English fiction have at same time treated more or less openly. It isquite false or quite mistaken to suppose that our novels have leftuntouched these most important realities of life. They have only notmade them their stock in trade; they have kept a true perspective inregard to them; they have relegated them in their pictures of life to thespace and place they occupy in life itself, as we know it in England andAmerica. They have kept a correct proportion, knowing perfectly wellthat unless the novel is to be a map, with everything scrupulously laiddown in it, a faithful record of life in far the greater extent could bemade to the exclusion of guilty love and all its circumstances andconsequences.

  I justify them in this view not only because I hate what is cheap andmeretricious, and hold in peculiar loathing the cant of the critics whorequire "passion" as something in itself admirable and desirable in anovel, but because I prize fidelity in the historian of feeling andcharacter. Most of these critics who demand "passion" would seem to haveno conception of any passion but one. Yet there are several otherpassions: the passion of grief, the passion of avarice, the passion ofpity, the passion of ambition, the passion of hate, the passion of envy,the passion of devotion, the passion of friendship; and all these have agreater part in the drama of life than the passion of love, andinfinitely greater than the passion of guilty love. Wittingly orunwittingly, English fiction and American fiction have recognized thistruth, not fully, not in the measure it merits, but in greater degreethan most other fiction.

  XXIV.

  Who can deny that fiction would be incomparably stronger, incomparablytruer, if once it could tear off the habit which enslaves it to thecelebration chiefly of a single passion, in one phase or another, andcould frankly dedicate itself to the service of all the passions, all theinterests, all the facts? Every novelist who has thought about his artknows that it would, and I think that upon reflection he must doubtwhether his sphere would be greatly enlarged if he were allowed to treatfreely the darker aspects of the favorite passion. But, as I have shown,the privilege, the right to do this, is already perfectly recognized.This is proved again by the fact that serious criticism recognizes asmaster-works (I will not push the question of supremacy) the two greatnovels which above all others have, moved the world by their study ofguilty love. If by any chance, if by some prodigious miracle, anyAmerican should now arise to treat it on the level of 'Anna Karenina' and'Madame Bovary,' he would be absolutely sure of success, and of fame andgratitude as great as those books have won for their authors.

  But what editor of what American magazine would print such a story?

  Certainly I do not think any one would; and here our novelist must againsubmit to conditions. If he wishes to publish such a story (supposinghim to have once written it), he must publish it as a book. A book issomething by itself, responsible for its character, which becomes quicklyknown, and it does not necessarily penetrate to every member of thehousehold. The father or the mother may say to the child, "I wouldrather you wouldn't read that book"; if the child cannot be trusted, thebook may be locked up. But with the magazine and its serial the affairis different. Between the editor of a reputable English or Americanmagazine and the families which receive it there is a tacit agreementthat he will print nothing which a father may not read to his daughter,or safely leave her to read herself.

  After all, it is a matter of business; and the insurgent novelist shouldconsider the situation with coolness and common-sense. The editor didnot create the situation; but it exists, and he could not even attempt tochange it without many sorts of disaster. He respects it, therefore,with the good faith of an honest man. Even when he is himself anovelist, with ardor for his art and impatience of the limitations putupon it, he interposes his veto, as Thackeray did in the case of Trollopewhen a contributor approaches forbidden ground.

  It does not avail to say that the daily papers teem with facts far foulerand deadlier than any which fiction could imagine. That is true, but itis true also that the sex which reads the most novels reads the fewestnewspapers; and, besides, the reporter does not command the novelist'sskill to fix impressions in a young girl's mind or to suggest conjecture.The magazine is a little despotic, a little arbitrary; but unquestionablyits favor is essential to success, and its conditions are not such narrowones. You cannot deal with Tolstoy's and Flaubert's subjects in theabsolute artistic freedom of Tolstoy and Flaubert; since De Foe, that isunknown among us; but if you deal with them in the manner of GeorgeEliot, of Thackeray, of Dickens, of society, you may deal with them evenin the magazines. There is no other restriction upon you. All thehorrors and miseries and tortures are open to you; your pages may dropblood; sometimes it may happen that the editor will even exact suchstrong material from you. But probably he will require nothing but theobservance of the convention in question; and if you do not yourselfprefer bloodshed he will leave you free to use all sweet and peaceablemeans of interesting his readers.

  It is no narrow field he throws open to you, with that little sign tokeep off the grass up at one point only. Its vastness is still almostunexplored, and whole regions in it are unknown to the fictionist. Diganywhere, and do but dig deep enough, and you strike riches; or, if youare of the mind to range, the gentler climes, the softer temperatures,the serener skies, are all free to you, and are so little visited thatthe chance of novelty is greater among them.

  XXV.

  While the Americans have great
ly excelled in the short story generally,they have almost created a species of it in the Thanksgiving story.We have transplanted the Christmas story from England, while theThanksgiving story is native to our air; but both are of Anglo-Saxongrowth. Their difference is from a difference of environment; and theChristmas story when naturalized among us becomes almost identical inmotive, incident, and treatment with the Thanksgiving story. If I wereto generalize a distinction between them, I should say that the one dealtmore with marvels and the other more with morals; and yet the criticshould beware of speaking too confidently on this point. It is certain,however, that the Christmas season is meteorologically more favorable tothe effective return of persons long supposed lost at sea, or from aprodigal life, or from a darkened mind. The longer, darker, and coldernights are better adapted to the apparition of ghosts, and to all mannerof signs and portents; while they seem to present a wider field for theintervention of angels in behalf of orphans and outcasts. The dreams ofelderly sleepers at this time are apt to be such as will effect a lastingchange in them when they awake, turning them from the hard, cruel, andgrasping habits of a lifetime, and reconciling them to their sons,daughters, and nephews, who have thwarted them in marriage; or softeningthem to their meek, uncomplaining wives, whose hearts they have trampledupon in their reckless pursuit of wealth; and generally disposing them toa distribution of hampers among the sick and poor, and to a friendlyreception of gentlemen with charity subscription papers.