THE STUDY OF NOVEL

The novel owes its existence to the interest which men and women everywhere and at all times have taken in men and women and in the great panorama of human passion and action. This interest has always been one of the most general and most powerful of the impulses behind literature, and it has thus given rise to various modes of expression, the novel being the largest and fullest of them.

Occasionally novel has been compared with drama. But it must be remembered that drama is not pure literature. It is a compound art in which the literary element is organically bound up with the elements of stage setting and histrionic interpretation. The novel is independent of these secondary arts. It is a 'pocket theatre', containing within itself not only plot and actors but also costume, scenery and all the other accessories of a dramatic representation.

The novel has a freedom of movement, a breadth, and a flexibility to which, even in its most romantic developments, the drama cannot possibly attain. What the novel loses in actuality and vividness by its substitution of narrative for representation it thus amply makes up for in other ways. This is, of course, one reason why the novel has largely displaced the drama, as it has displaced other vehicles for the expression of our common interest in human life and has established itself as the principal literary form of our complex and many sided modern age.

The drama is the most rigorous form of literary art while prose fiction is the loosest.

In the first place, the novel deals with events and actions, with things which are suffered and done ; and these constitute what we commonly call the plot. Secondly such things happen to people and are suffered or done by people ; and the men and women who thus carry on the action form its characters. The conversation of these characters introduces the third element i.e. dialogue. Fourthly, the action must take place, and the characters must do and suffer, somewhere and at some time ; and thus we have a locale and time of action. The element of style may be put as the fifth. Every novel must necessarily present a certain view of life and of some of the problems of life ; that is, it must so exhibit incidents, characters, passions, motives, as to reveal more or less distinctly the way in which the author looks out upon the world and his general attitude towards it. Thus plot, character, dialogue, time and place of action, and point of view (the stated or implied philosophy of life) are the chief elements of a novel.

In dealing with the element of plot our first business will always be with the nature of the raw material out of which it is made and with the quality of such material when judged by the standards furnished by life itself. Take, for example, the works of Dickens, Thackeray, George Eliot and Hawthorne. It is immediately evident that these four writers drew their subjects from widely different aspects of life and classes of incident ; and as we turn from David Copperfield to Vanity Fair, and from these again to Adam Bede and The Scarlet Letter, we feel that with each transition we are passing, not only from one kind of plot interest to another but also from one kind of world to another. Their themes possess in themselves a substantial value and a genuine human meaning because they are concerned with passions, conflicts, and problems which, however their forms may change, belong to the essential texture of life. It is the certain mark of all great novel, as well as of all great literature, that, wide as may be the range of its accessory topics, it is primarily engaged with the things which make life strenuous, intense, and morally significant.

Life may be as strenuous, intense, and morally significant in the simplest story of the humblest people as in the largest movements of history or the most thrilling situations of the heroic stage. Nor does it mean that it is to the tragic phases of experience only that a great novel must be confined, for the comedy of life is often as full of large and permanent human interest as its tragedy. A novel is really great only when it lays its foundations broad and deep in the things which most constantly and seriously appeal to us in the struggle and fortunes of our common humanity.

One function of fiction is to provide amusement for the leisure hour and a welcome relief from the strain of practical affairs. Any novel which serves its purpose in this way may be held to have fully justified itself. Moreover, the excellence of its technique, or its dramatic power, or its exceptional cleverness in characterisation, or its abundant humour, or some other outstanding quality of its workmanship, may suffice to lift an otherwise insignificant story to a high rank in fictitious literature. The true greatness of a novel is to be sought in its substantial value of its raw material.

However, the greatness of subject matter will not of itself ensure the greatness of a novel. Mastery of handling is now requisite in order that all the varied possibilities of a given theme may be brought out to the full. We approach the whole question of the making of a novel including the two contributory elements of individual power and technical skill. But there is a preliminary problem to be touched upon, since individual power would be wasted and technical skill exercised to little effect unless they are both supported by an ample knowledge of life.

We are thus brought back to the cardinal principle of fidelity to oneself and one's experiences as the condition of all good work in literature. Because fiction is fiction and not fact, it is sometimes falsely assumed that it has nothing to do with fact. Whatever facts of life the novelist may choose to write about, he should write of them with the grasp and thoroughness which can be secured only by familiarity with his material.

This general principle has been rigorously interpreted to mean that the novelist should confine himself within the field, however small, of his own personal first hand intercourse with the world and never allow himself to go stray beyond it. Thus George Eliot attacked the work of the ordinary women novelists of her times who tried to write like men and from the man's point of view instead of taking their stand on the fundamental difference of sex. Alike in theory and practice Jane Austen adhered strictly to this principle of absolute fidelity. There is no scene in all her novels in which men only are described as talking together and their dialogue reported. Her women converse with other women, and with men ; but as she had ni immediate knowledge of the behaviour of men among themselves in wholly masculine company, she simply left the subject alone.

How little this principle of fidelity is commonly recognised is repeatedly shown in the writings of minor novelists who frequently build their plots out of materials lying far beyond their own observation. It is often said that every man might produce atleast one interesting novel if he would only write faithfully of what he has known and felt for himself ; but it is a curious fact that in the vast majority of cases this is the last thing that the would be novelist ever think of doing. On the contrary, inspired rather by the work of some favourite writer, whom he seeks to imitate, than by life itself, he commits the fatal blunder of drawing upon second hand information for the ground work of his plot.

It is not, however, necessary to push the doctrine of authenticity to the extreme represented by the precept and practice of Jane Austen and we should be warranted in doing so only on the supposition that a novel must be realistic in the narrowest acceptation of the word. Knowledge of life may be obtained in various ways besides direct personal experience ; it may be obtained through books and through conversation with other people who have touched the world at points where we have not touched it ourselves. A writer of real creative genius, with the power of absorbing and utilising all kinds of material derived from all kinds of sources, and that sheer power of realistic imagination which habitually goes with this, may thus attain substantial fidelity even when he is handling scenes and incidents which have never come within the range of his own experiences and observation. Little fault has been found with Robinson Crusoe on the score of inaccuracy even in details, while in the quality of carrying conviction it stands in the front rank of fictitious narratives ; yet it must not be forgotten that the man who wrote it had not only never lived on a desert island, but had never even seen the sea. The historical novelist is evidently compelled to rely upon indirect information for the specific characteristics of any period he undertakes to describe ; and what the historical novelist does in dealing with the past, the novelist of contemporary life may do with equal assurance when the exigencies of his plot carry him beyond his individual field. What is required in all cases is a large many sided experience of men and things and a resulting general knowledge of life both ample and thorough, the application of which to specific details may vitalise and humanise materials wheresoever gained.

A novel, whatever else it is or is not, is at any rate a story. Two questions, therefore, suggest themselves which, we must still state in definite form. Is the story, as story, fresh, interesting, and worth telling? And this being settled, is it well and artistically told? In other words, we demand, that the story shall in its own particular way be a good one and also that it shall be skillfully put together. By this we mean that on careful examination of all its details, it shall reveal no gaps or inconsistencies ; that its parts shall be arranged with a due sense of balance and proportion ; that its incidents shall appear to evolve spontaneously from its data and from one another ; that common place things shall be made significant by the writer's touch upon them ; that the march of events, however unusual, shall be so managed as to impress us as orderly and natural in the circumstances ; and that the catastrophe, whether foreseen or not, shall satisfy us as the logical product and summing up of all that has gone before.

Mere power of narrative is also in itself a feature. The gift of telling a story to the best possible advantage is much rarer than is commonly supposed. Among English poets Chaucer, Dryden, Scott, and William Morris had this gift in a marked degree. There are novelists whose books have little weight or permanent value, who can atleast tell a story naturally, easily, and in a way to bring out at each stage its maximum amount of interest ; there are others of immeasurably greater intellectual power in whom this faculty is poorly developed, or in whose work its exercise is impeded by the pressure of other things. Thus in reading Dumas, for example, who is one of the world's very best story tellers, we cannot fail to admire the free and vigorous movement of the narrative, which sweeps us on from point to point with no apparent effort or strain, while a certain sense of effort and strain is almost always with us when we are reading George Eliot or Balzac or Tolstoy. Nor is it only at the evolution of the action as a whole that we have to look. We must consider also the writer's power of managing his seperate parts -- of handling his situations and working up his effects. Much of the dramatic value of scenes of great potential interest is often allowed to escape under inadequate treatment ; but a novelist who knows his business will make every incident tell with its proper proportion of effect in relation to the whole. We may have, for instance, the marvellous brevity and restraint of Thackeray's account of George Osborne's death at Waterloo ; we may have, in a totally different manner, the elaborately wrought detail with which Dickens describes the death of old Krook, and Hawthorne the death of Judge Pyncheon. Hence it will always be a matter of interest not only to observe results, but also to examine the means by which the results are obtained by different writers or by the same writer in different circumstances or at different stages of his career.

In dealing with plot structure we may distinguish roughly between two kinds of novel -- the novel of loose plot and the novel of organic plot. In the former case the story is composed of a number of detached incidents, having little necessary or logical connection among themselves ; the unity of the narrative depending not on the machinery of the action, but upon the person of the hero who, as the central figure or nucleus, binds the otherwise scattered elements together. Such a novel is "rather a history of the miscellaneous adventures which befall an individual in the course of life than the plot of a regular and connected epopoeia, where every step brings us a point nearer to the final catastrophe." Thus while it may be filled to overflowing with interesting separate episodes, it has little in the nature of a comprehensive general design, in the evolution of which each detail plays a distinct and vital part.

Robinson Crusoe, Gil Blas, Joseph Andrews, Roderick Random, Vanity Fair, Pendennis, The Pickwick Papers and Nicholas Nickleby may be cited as familiar examples of of this 'incoherent and loose' type of novel. In them one scene leads to another, the characters cross and recross ; but the book as a whole have little structural or organic unity.

The case is entirely different with novels of the organic type with such novels as Tom Jones, Bleak House, Our Mutual Friend, and The Woman in White. Here the separate incidents are no longer treated episodically ; they are dove-tailed together as integral components of a definite plot pattern. In these cases something more than a general idea of the course of the story was necessary before the author began his work. The entire plan had to be considered in detail ; the characters and events arranged to occupy their proper places in it ; and the various lines laid down which were to converge in bringing about the catastrophe.

Even in novels of the organic kind there is often a great deal of purely episodical material. Thus in Tom Jones, Bleak House, and Our Mutual Friend there are many incidents and characters which lie outside the general design and are not really connected with it. Secondly, all degrees of plot organisation are, of course, possible between the elaborate compactness of these books and the extreme looseness of The Picwick Papers or Pendenis. Among Dickens's novels David Copperfield and Martin Chuzzlewit exhibit intermediate stages of plot unification. There are innumerable novels in which the matter of the plot is so simple that no regular development of a dramatic scheme is to be looked for.

A really great novel is likely to approximate rather to the loose than to the organic type. At the same time, compactness and symmetry undoubtedly give aesthetic pleasure and we rightly admire the technical skill to which they testify.

The two drawbacks to which a highly organised plot is specially liable may be noted here. It may be so mechanically put together that its very cleverness may impress us with an uneasy sense of laborious artifice. This is commonly the case with the novels of most deft manipulator of mere plot, Wilkie Collins. Or it may lack plausibility in details. Here a frequent error is the abuse of coincidence. Thus in Tom Jones all sorts of unexpected things are perpetually happening in the nick of time, while people turn up again and again at the right moment, and in the place where they are wanted only because they chance to be wanted then and there.

Two of any plot are thus suggested. It should seem to move naturally, and be free from any appearance of artifice ; and the means used in working it out should be such as we are willing to accept, in the circumstances, as at least credible.

A special aspect of the principle of unity in plot structure has next to be considered. The plot of a novel may be simple or compound ; that is, it may be composed of one story only, or of two or more stories in combination ; and the law of unity requires that in a compound plot the parts should be wrought together into a single whole. In Bleak House the three threads of Esther Summerson's story, the story of Lady Dedlock's sin, and the story of the great Chancery suit of Jarndyce v. Jarndyce, are very cleverly interwoven, and thus we have an admirable example on an immense scale of the unification of complex materials. It should also be noted that where several independent elements enter into a plot, it is often the practice of novelists to make them balance or illustrate one another.

There is one another point of in the study of plot. While the dramatist confined to a single way of telling his story, the novelist has his choice among three methods -- the direct, or epic ; the autobiographical ; and the documentary. In the first, and most usual way, the novelist is a historian narrating from the outside ; in the second, he writes in the first person, identifying himself with one of his characters and thus produces an imaginary autobiography ; as in Robinson Crusoe, The Vicar of Wakefield, David Copperfield, Esmond, Jane Eyre ; in the third method, the action is unfolded by means of letters, as in the epistolary novels of Richardson, Smollett's Humphrey Clinker, Fanny Burney's Evelina and Goethe's Sorrows of Werther ; or by diaries, contributed narratives and miscellaneous documents. Occasionally, the methods may be blended, as in Bleak House.

Each of these three methods has its special advantages ; for while the direct method always gives the great scope and freedom of movement, a keener or more intimate interest may sometimes be attained by the use of either the first personal or the documentary plan. Yet it will be observed that both these last named methods involve difficulties of their own. In adopting the autobiographical form, a novelist may frequently fail to bring all his material naturally within the compass of the supposed narrator's knowledge and power ; and he may sometimes miss the true personal tone. And whatever may be urged in theory on behalf of the documentary method, in practice it is very apt to become, even in the hands of a skillful artist, both clumsy and unconvincing

In passing from plot to characterisation in fiction we are met at the outset by one of those elementary questions of which even the most uncritical reader is certain to feel the force. Does the novelist succeed in making his men and women real to our imagination? Do the "stand upright on the ground? They lay hold of us by virtue of their substantial quality of life ; we know and believe in them as thoroughly, we sympathise with them as deeply, we love and hate them as cordially, as though they belonged to the world of flesh and blood. And the first thing that we require of any novelist in his handling of character is that, whether he keeps close to common experience or boldly experiments with the fantastic and the abnormal, his men and women shall move through his pages like living beings and like living beings remain in our memory after his book is laid aside and its details perhaps forgotten.

The process of creation are confessedly as mysterious to those who possess such creative power as they are to other people. Thus Thackeray spoke of this power as 'occult' ---- as a power which seemed at times to take the pen from his fingers and move it in spite of himself. "I don't control my characters," he once protested, "I am in their hands, and they take me where they please." He had endowed them with independent volition, and by so doing had to a large extent placed them beyond the range of his calculations ; they spoke and acted on their own impulse.

Herein lies the ultimate distinction between creative genius and mere talent, however brilliant and well trained. The latter simply manufactures, and its effects are always within the field of conscious and deliberate effort. The former really creates and for this reason its outworkings are often as strange and inexplicable to the author himself at the time as to those who afterwards pick his characters to pieces in the hope of plucking the heart out of their mystery.

Confining ourselves to the question of method, we may note that a novelist's success in characterisation necessarily depends in part upon his faculty for graphic description. In the representation of a play those secondary arts of which we have already read are of immense service in the definition of personality, and the make up of the actor and his interpretation of his part give us the dress and bearing, the looks and gestures, of the character portrayed by him. In the reading of a novel all these things are of imagination only ; and thus it is an important part of the business of the novelist to help us by description to a vivid realisation of the appearance and behaviour of his people. Whatever is individual and characteristic in their physical aspect in general, whatever is of importance in their expression or demeanour at any critical moment, must be so indicated as to stand out clearly in the reader's mind.

It will be found that as a rule a set and formal description, given item by item, is one of the least successful ways of making a character live before us, and that a skilled artist is specially known by his power of selecting and accumulating significant detail and of stimulating the imagination of the reader by by slight occasional touches.

In regard to what is more specifically understood as characterisation --- that is, the psychological side of it --- the principal thing to remember is, that the conditions of the novel commonly permit the use of two opposed methods -- the direct or analytical, and the indirect or dramatic. In the one case the novelist portrays his characters from the outside, dissects their passions, motives, thoughts and feelings, explains, comments, and often pronounces authoritative judgement upon them. In the other case, he stands apart, allows his character to reveal themselves through speech and action, and reinforces their self-delineation by the comments and judgements of other characters in the story. The conditions of the novel commonly permit the use of these two methods in fiction in which the autobiographical or documentary plan is strictly adhered to, in fact as well as in theory, and the intrusion of the novelist in person is thus prevented, the presentation of character is confined within the limits of dramatic objectivity. Generally speaking, however, the very form of the novel as a compound of narrative and dialogue, practically involves a combination of the non dramatic and the dramatic in the handling of character. In the examination of a novelist's technique, therefore, his habitual way of using these two methods, and the proportions in which he combines them, will evidently prove an interesting question.

Thus Thackeray supports its results by an enormous amount of personal interpretation and criticism ; while direct analysis is seriously overdone by George Eliot and the so called psychological novelists in general. In Jane Austen's works the dramatic element predominates ; her men and women for the most part portray themselves through dialogue, while she herself continually throws cross lights upon them in the conversation of the different people by whom they are discussed.

Modern criticism rightly favours the fullest possible development of the dramatic method. The principle that it is always better that a character should be made to reveal itself than that it should be dissected from the outside, is thoroughly sound. It is one advantage which prose fiction possesses in comparison with the drama that the author himself may from time to time appear in the capacity of expositor and critic.

The immense scope of the novel, its freedom of movement, and its indifference to considerations of time and place, combine with the advantage just mentioned to give it a special power of dealing with character in the making. Even the earlier novelists were quick to seize the opportunity thus afforded, as we may see in the writings of Defoe and Richardson. So far as modern fiction is concerned, therefore, there is little exaggeration in the statement of Lotze that, "the slow shaping of character is the problem of the novel" ; for it would be difficult to name any really great modern novel in which that problem does not occupy a conspicuous place, even if it does not furnish the kernel or centre of interest. A common practice with the novelist who writes as a serious student of character is thus to present at the outset some leading figure with certain potentialities of good and evil, and then to follow his movement upward or downward under the influences of other people, surrounding conditions, personal experiences and his reaction to them, and whatever else enters as a f ormative factor into his life.

In our general estimate of any novelist's characterisation, the question of his range and limitations must not be left out of consideration. Catholicity of course counts greatly in our judgement of his work in the mass ; for while we admire those who are content to do a few things and do them well, we naturally assign a higher place to those whose accomplishment is broader and more varied. But every novelist who writes much and covers a considerable field is certain to have his points of special strength and special weakness, and the strength and the weakness alike will always throw much light upon the essential qualities of his genius and art.

The need of fidelity to personal observation and experience in the plot and manners of a novel is of course no less applicable to its characterisation. In his "essay to prove that an author will write the better for having some knowledge of the subject on which he writes," Fielding urged that "a true knowledge of the world is gained only by conversation ; and the manners of every rank must be seen in order to be known."

But a broad and intimate knowledge of human nature at large, a keen insight into the workings of common motives and passions, creative power and dramatic sympathy, will together often suffice to give substantial reality and the unmistakable touch of truth to characters for which scarcely a single suggestion can have been taken directly from the life.

We distinguish roughly between two classes of novels --- those in which the interest of the character is uppermost, while action is used simply or mainly with reference to this ; and those in which the interest of plot is upper most, and characters are used simply or mainly to carry the action. It suggests the question of the relative value of incident and character in fiction.

Of the two elements characterisation is the more important ; from which it follows that novels which have the principal stress on character rank higher as a class than those which depend mainly on incident. The interest aroused by a story merely as a story may be very keen at the time of reading ; but it is in itself a comparatively childish and transitory interest, while that aroused by characterisation is deep and lasting.

We now see why the novels which hold the highest places in literature are in nearly all cases novels of character and not novels of plot. Our greatest novelists have habitually shown a disregard of mere plot, sometimes amounting to positive carelessness.

While in every novel plot and characters must be combined, there is a right way and a wrong way of treating their relationship. The wrong way is to bring them together arbitrarily and without making each depend logically upon each ; the right way is to conceive them throughout as forces vitally interacting in the movement of the story. In a merely sensational novel, where the writer's main concern is with his plot, the machinery of the action will commonly be found to have little to do with the personal qualities of the actors.

But it is in the personal qualities thus subordinated that in all really good fiction the mainsprings of the action must ultimately be sought. Simple or complex, the plot evolves as a natural consequence of the fact that a number of given people, of such and such dispositions and impelled by such and such motives and passions, are brought together in circumstances which give rise to an interplay of influence or clash of interests among them.

Incident is thus rooted in character, and is to be explained in terms of it. One point to be kept in view, therefore, in the examination of a novel, is the degree of closeness with which plot and characters are interwoven.

By a natural transition we pass from the characters of fiction to their conversation. Dialogue is one of the most delightful elements of a novel ; it is that part of it in which we seem to get most intimately into touch with people. The expansion of this element in modern fiction is, therefore, a fact of great significance. Good dialogue greatly brightens a narrative, and its judicious and timely use is to be regarded as evidence of a writer's technical skill.

Investigation shows that while dialogue may frequently be employed in the evolution of the plot, its principal function is in direct connection with character. It has immense value in the exhibition of passions, motives, feelings ; of the reactions of the speakers to the events in which they are taking part ; and of their influence upon one another.

The dialogue should always constitute an organic element in the story ; it should really contribute, directly or indirectly, either to the movement of the plot or to the elucidation of the characters in their relations with it. Extraneous conversation is therefore to be condemned for precisely the same reason as we condemn any interjected discourse on miscellaneous topics by the author himself ; namely, that having no connection with the matter in hand, it breaks the fundamental law of unity. Conversation extended beyond the actual needs of the plot is to be justified only when it has a distinct significance in the exposition of characters. Dialogue should be natural, appropriate, and dramatic ; which means that it should be in keeping with the personality of the speakers ; suitable to the situation in which it occurs ; and easy, fresh, vivid, and interesting.

Next is the novelist's power of humour, pathos, and tragic effect. These special attributes are so conspicuous by their presence or absence, as the case may be, and they are so inevitably recognised or missed by even the most careless reader. In our estimate of any novelist's work as a whole, there are two points which in particular will here come up for examination. There is first the question of the extent and limitations of his powers. In the comparative study of fiction this question has some interest, since one writer is weak in humour who is strong in pathos ; with another the conditions are reversed ; a third is most at home among the fiercer passions ; while here and there we may find one who has something of Shakespeare's assured mastery of many moods, and can touch us with equal certainty to mirth, to pity, to terror. Secondly, there is the more important question of the quality of his accomplishment in any of these directions ; for humour may vary from broad farce to the subtlest innuendos of high comedy ; pathos from weak sentimentalism to the most delicate play of tender feeling ; tragedy from a crude revelling in merely material horrors to the most soul moving calamities of the moral and spiritual life. It may be taken for granted that in the study of any novel or author both these questions of range and quality of emotional effect will be considered as a matter of course.

Humour, one of the greatest endowments of genius and that one which beyond all others should help to keep a novelist's work sane and wholesome, may yet be misemployed in various ways, will readily be perceived. It is misemployed when it is enlisted in the service of indecency or used to turn to ridicule what should arouse sympathy or the sense of revulsion rather than mirth. To lay down an abstract rule is impossible, for many things which are intrinsically pitiable or disgusting, like drunkenness, have still their comic aspect, and may therefore rightly be handled in the comic way. Often too such comic handling is morally most effective, and for this reason humour has always been a potent instrument for the correction of manners and the castigation of vice. Much depends upon spirit and treatment. But we are at least safe in saying that when our laughter is stirred it shall be by no unworthy subjects, that it shall not partake of cruelty, and that it shall leave no bad taste in the mouth.

A similar problem confronts us in connection with the painful emotions. Why we enjoy them at all when we experience them in the mimic world of art? That we do enjoy them is at any rate a patent fact, while the place that they occupy in much of the world's greatest imaginative literature testifies eloquently to the depth and permanence of their appeal. Yet these painful emotions may easily be abused, and often have been abused. Sentiment may degenerate into sentimentalism and an unhealthy indulgence in the luxury of grief, and no one will deny the danger of this tendency who remembers how much fiction is written with the express purpose of satisfying a wide spread craving for this particular kind of morbid excitement in weak or over sensitive natures. In the same way, the proper bounds of tragic feeling may be overstepped or its power perverted, as in the numerous instances in which descriptions of suffering are drawn out to a point at which they become positively agonising, or the reader is compelled to linger over scenes the whole effect of which depends upon their profusion of pathological detail. Once more it is impossible to formulate general principles for the guidance of taste, for healthy sentiment passes by insensible degrees into sickly sentimentalism, while the border line between the tragic horror which is justifiable and that which is unjustifiable is equally shifting and vague.

Our next concern is the question of setting in a novel, or what we have called its time and place of action. In this term we include the entire milieu of a story --- the manners, customs, ways of life, which enter into its composition, as well as its natural background or environment. We may therefore distinguish two kinds of settings --- the social and the material.

One marked feature of modern fiction is its specialisation. Fielding probably intended to give in Tom Jones a fairly complete picture of the English life of his time. Balzac and Zola alike attempted to embrace the whole of French civilisation in all its phases and ramifications. The tendency of the modern novel to spread out in all directions until it has become practically coextensive with the complex modern world, has inevitably been accompanied by a parallel tendency towards the subdivision of its subject matter. A certain largeness of design is indeed often noticeable, as in the works of Dickens ; yet, for the most part, life is rather treated in sections, each novel concerning itself chiefly with one or two aspects of the great social comedy. Thus we have novels of the sea and of military life ; of the upper classes, the middle classes, the lower classes ; of industrial life, commercial life, artistic life, clerical life ; and so on. Subdivision also follows topographical lines, as in the innumerable novels of different localities and of local types of character : Scotch novels, Irish novels, "Wessex" novels etc.

Frequently the local type of character is presented amid its natural surroundings, but often its peculiarities are brought out by the device of transplanting it into another and contrasted environment. Whichever plan is adopted, it is evident that in all novels in which particular phases of life are kept to the fore, characterisation and social setting are vitally associated, and each element must therefore be considered in its connection with the other. But it must further be remembered that many novels owe much of their attractiveness and literary value to their skilful portrayal of the life and manners of special classes, social groups or places. At this point the work of the novelist has again to be judged by the accuracy and power of his descriptions.

These principles hold good for the historical novel, which aims to combine the dramatic interest of the plot and character with a more or less detailed picture of the varied features of the life of a particular age. Sometimes the historical setting has comparatively little to do with the essence of the narrative, the basis of which is provided rather by the permanent facts of experience than by the forms which these facts assume in special circumstances. Sometimes, on the other hand, the permanent is so bound up with the temporary and interpenetrated by it, that the setting becomes an essential element in the human drama itself. It will thus always be well to observe the connection between theme and setting and the extent to which the latter is essential to the former. In some cases we shall find that the plot and characters are used simply to focus the outstanding features of the period dealt with.

In whatever way the setting may be treated, however, the interest of a historical novel will always inhere in part -- for this is one sense is the very justification of its existence -- in its vivid reproduction of the life of a bygone age. Here again the tests to be applied are those of descriptive power and substantial accuracy. It is the business of the historical novelist to bring creative imagination to bear upon the dry facts of the annalist and the antiquarian, and out of a mass of scattered material gleaned from the variety of sources, to evolve a picture having the fulness and unity of a work of art. It is this power of making real and picturesque some particular period of civilisation, and of doing this without any suggestion of the dry as dust and pedantic, that the ordinary reader values most in the writer of historical fiction.

On the other kind of setting in fiction --- the material --- every reader will perforce note for himself the difference between novelists who pay slight attention to the milieu of their scenes, and those who, specially delight in minute descriptions of streets, houses, and interiors ; while the question of skill, vividness, method, and general artistic value will just as inevitably come up for consideration. In our examination of a novelist's use of nature, our first concern will be with his power as a landscape painter. But it must be remembered that he may treat the natural background and accessories of his action in various ways. He may introduce them for picturesque purposes only and without relating them to his human drama ; or he may associate them directly with his drama either through contrast or through sympathy. Of these two methods, that of making external conditions harmonise with the action or the mood of the characters is the more common. The use of nature in sympathy with man is indeed one of the most familiar of all dramatic devices ; and the connection is often accentuated to the full and most elaborately worked out ; as in many storms which, as any novel reader will remember, synchronise with and intensify situations of tragic power.

Let us now consider the sixth element in novel, i.e, the writer's criticism, interpretation, or philosophy of life. Like the drama, the novel is concerned directly with life -- with men, and women, and their relationships, with the thoughts and feelings, the passions and motives by which they are governed and impelled with their joys and sorrows, their struggles, their successes, failures. Since, then, the novelist's theme is life, in one or several of its innumerable aspects. Little as he may dream of using his narrative as the vehicle of any special theories or ideas, certain theories or ideas will will none the less be found embodied in it, and even the slightest story will yield under analysis a more or less distinct underlying conception of the moral values of the characters and incidents of which it is composed. To this extent every novel may be said to rest upon a certain view of the world, to incorporate or connote various general principles, and thus to present a rough general philosophy of life.

What a novelist thinks about life will inevitably guide him in the arrangement of his plot and the treatment of his characters. But his primary concern is not with abstract question but with the concrete facts of life. Such moral system, or philosophy of life may be given in the novel in two ways. In the first place, like the dramatist, the novelist interprets life by his mere representation of it. He selects certain material out of the mass which life offers to him ; by his arrangement of these he brings certain facts and forces in to relief ; he exhibits character and motive under certain lights ; and in the conduct of his plot indicates his view of the moral balance among the things which make up our human experience.

Every novel is a microcosm, of which the author is the creator and the plot the providential scheme. Merely by selection and organisation of material, emphasis, presentation of character and development of story, the novelist shows us in a general way what he thinks about life.

Thus far the novelist's course is the same as the dramatist's : they both interpret life by representation. But while the dramatist is confined to the indirect method, the novelist is able to supplement it by direct personal commentary and explanation. He can step before the curtain, elucidate the action, discuss the characters and their motives, and generalise on the moral questions suggested by them. Where he avails himself of the privilege afforded by the free form of the novel to do this, he becomes himself the interpreter of the mimic world he has called into existence, and therefore of life at large.

In estimating the philosophy of life contained in any novel, we have to test it from two points of view --- that of its truth and and that of its morality. The truth we demand in fiction is not identical with the truth we demand from science. Plato made the mistake of confusing them, holding that all imaginative literature is 'false' because it does not reproduce the actual facts of existence ; what Homer's poetry, for instance is full of "lies." Even today we may meet with people who are more or less troubled by this difficulty, and who, failing to perceive any difference between fiction falsehood, look askance at all kinds of fictitious writing in consequence.

Aristotle pointed out the fallacy of Plato's view, rightly maintaining the existence in all great works of the imagination of a "poetic truth" which is really deeper and more comprehensive than the mere literal fidelity to fact which we expect in the work of the historian. For while the historian is bound down to things which have gone through the formality of taking place, the creative artist is limited only by what Aristotle called "ideal probability."

De Quincey devised the phrase and made distinction between what he called the literature of knowledge and the literature of power. The literature of knowledge must be judged by its accuracy in matters of fact ; and with every step forward taken by science, it necessarily becomes antiquated. Thus it is that the text books of biology and physics have perpetually to be re written and that even histories have continually to be revised. But the truth of the literature of power is fidelity to the great essential motives and impulses, passions and principles, which shape the lives of men and women ; and because these change so little amid all the vast upheavals of the ages, the books which have in them this supreme element of essential truth remain, however old in years, as fresh and vital in their human interest as in the days when they were written.

There is a famous saying : "In fiction everything is true except names and dates ; in history nothing is true except names and dates." There is no need to feel great offence or defense at this statement at this statement. This paradoxical statement has been quoted here just to show the kind of truth upon which all greatness in fiction ultimately depends. The novelist may take innumerable liberties with his subject ; he may re arrange his materials in fresh and startling combination ; he may invent outright ; but we insist that he shall still be true to ideal probability and the great elemental facts and forces of life. If at this point his work proves to be faulty, without hesitation we adjudge it unsound.

In recent years more than enough has been said about realism in novels and the advocates of this realism have told us with wearisome iteration that the one and only business of the novelist who takes his art seriously is to go direct to actual life and reproduce what he finds there with photographic fidelity. Now, in common practice this doctrine of realism is often shamefully abused. Sometimes it is made to justify detailed pictures of the sordid, base, and ugly --- pictures which, while they may be painfully accurate in their presentation of selected particulars, are so completely out of perspective that they are anything but true to life at large. Sometimes it is employed to dignify the much ado about nothing of a certain class of writers whose chief concern seems to be the elabotration of the trivial and the commonplace. But even when not so not so abused in one or other of these two ways, the theory of realism as generally understood --- that the novelist should never venture beyond actual fact --- is to be rejected because it involves in another form the old confusion between scientific and poetic truth. Art cannot without self destruction adopts the aims and borrow the methods of science. "The artist's work," as Goethe admirably says , "is real in so far as it is always true ; ideal, in that it is never actual.

Bearing this principle in mind, we shall cease to be greatly disturbed by the loud quarrel of the rival schools of novelists and critics over realism and romance. We shall see that, properly understood, both are justified, since both spring from fundamental instincts : the source of the one being our delight in seeing the near and familiar artistically rendered ; of the other, our pleasure in the remote and unfamiliar. We shall see too that while each has its justification, each has likewise its conditions. Realism must be kept within the sphere of art by the presence of the ideal element. Romance must be saved from extravagance by the presence of the poetic truth.

A novelist's chief concern must always be with the concrete facts of life, and in doing this, We may assume that he may deal with concrete facts without troubling himself in the least about their moral bearings. It has now to be added that while theorists may say what they like about the moral indifference of fiction, it remains none the less true that nearly all the really great novelists of the world have been declared moralists, and have troubled themselves a great deal about the moral bearings of the concrete facts presented by them.

But the conditions of success in carrying out of such moral purpose under the forms of fiction and with due regard to the demands of art, must be clearly recognised. The ethics must be wrought into the texture of the story ; the philosophy must be held in solution ; the novelist must never for a moment be lost in the propagandist or preacher.

All art to be truly great, must be moralised -- must be in harmony with those principles of conduct, that tone of feeling, which it is the self preservative instinct of civilised humanity to strengthen. This does not mean that the artist should be consciously didactic or obtrusively ethical. The objects of ethics and art are distinct. The one analyses and instructs ; the other embodies and delights. But since all the arts give form to thought and feeling, it follows that the greatest art is that which includes in its synthesis the fullest complex of thoughts and feelings. The more complete the poet's grasp of human nature as a whole, the more complete his presentation of life in organised complexity, the greater he will be. Now, the whole struggle of the human race from barbarism to civilisation is one continuous effort to maintain and extent its moral dignity. It is by the conservation and alimentation of moral qualities that we advance. The organisation of all our faculties into a perfect whole is moral harmony. Therefore artists who aspire to greatness can neither be adverse nor indifferent to ethics.

The application of those admirable remarks to the special question of prose fiction will be evident. In respect of the novel it is often said that art as art has nothing to do with morality. The reply is, that in the sense in which morality is understood, in the sense in which the word has been employed throughout the present discussion, art is vitally connected with morality. Art grows out of life ; it is fed by life ; it reacts upon life. This being so, it cannot disregard its responsibilities to life.

With extensive inputs from :

An Introduction to the Study of Literature by Hudson