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CHAPTER # 3
The
Growth of English Novel
Definition:
According to the Oxford
English Dictionary the novel is "a fictitious prose narrative or the tale of
considerable length (now usually one long enough to fill one or more volumes)
in which characters and actions representative of the real-life of past or
present times are portrayed in a plot of more or less complexity.") It is
certainly true that the novel, beginning much later than the other main
literary kinds never established a definite formal tradition based on its first
recognised models of excellence, as the epic, for example, did with Homer's
Iliad. But we obviously need a term to describe the mode of writing which has
been the most characteristic literary phenomenon since the mid-18th century.
Usage has established the term novel. A brief consideration of the problems raised
by the various items in the definition above may clarify our understanding of
the kind of narrative it denotes.
First the problem of
"fictitious". The novel is essentially a fictitious literary form:
and yet its subjects are often taken from actual events, and its narrative
methods typically attempt to create an air of literal truth. The novel arose in
a much later civilization, whose outlook paid great attention to the
distinction between fact and fiction.
Just as the content of
earlier narrative (epic) is largely his- topical or legendary, its mode is
usually poetic: similarly, the novel's pretence at literal authenticity seems
to demand prose, the medium of common speech. This requirement in turn leads
to another larger historical contrast: mankind's early modes of literary expression
were public, and public recitation required the impressiveness and memorability
of formally patterned and ornamented speech; prose literature came later, and
the novel is the only major literary form which was not shaped under conditions
of public and oral delivery.
The "considerable
length" of the novel raises difficult problems. The scale of novels varies
widely, from the 2,000,000 or so words to the 250-page norm common today. The
definition’s stipulation that the novel portrays "characters and actions representative
of the real-life of past or present times" brings us to the heart of the
problem. People have been quarrelling about reality' ever since the world
began. The characters and actions of Homer's Odysseus have just as much reality
as those of Fielding's Tom Jones. Novel's 'reality' is more mundane and literal
one than that of the epic. The actions of the characters in a novel are deeply
rooted in common life goods, appearances, daily life, ordinary conversations-is
typical of the novel's technique; but one must remember that novel's realism of
representation does not ensure realism of assessment; convincing accuracy of
surface description can mask an essential lack of understanding or judgement
about the actual conditions and values of life.
The word 'plot'
involves a considerably higher level of narrative organization of events
according to a sense of causality. This casual linkage of all the actions and
characters are obviously very difficult to achieve in a narrative of the novel
length; it requires, therefore, the unity in variety denoted by the word
complex; and his topically the novel developed as soon as the casual narrative
structures with sufficient scale and complexity were created.
Novel and Epic
Because of the priority
of the epic among the established forms of narrative and the enormous prestige
given it by the genius of Homer, theorists of the novel have been much
concerned about the relation of the new form to the epic. Fielding claimed
Joseph Andrews "a comic epic in prose.” Epic belongs to a more primitive
stage of civilization, and in the 18th-century critics became aware that epic
poetry belonged to a particular kind of civilization, and they eventually saw
that this had implications for the emerging form of the novel. The epic and the
novel reflect different societies and therefore present different kinds of
people. Actually, the items in our opening definition which the novel shares
with epic are those of size: both are narratives "of considerable
length" and both have "plots of more or less complexity;" common
usage indeed has made epic into a mere superlative of scale. As for the subject
matter, we can only say that the more a novel gives a vast panorama of a whole
society, especially engaged in war, the more it approaches epic. But when we
consider how the ultimate power in Conrad's Nostromo is capitalism, or how the
whole trend of Tolstoy's War and Peace is anti-heroic, we see how deeply and
essentially different the two forms are.
Novel and
Romance
The Greek romances or
novels arose long after an epic and are associated with the cosmopolitan and
commercial cities of the Hellenistic period. Some of the Greek romances related
fantastic adventures. The rebirth of literature in medieval Europe exhibited
the same sequence: heroic literature was succeeded by romantic. The settled and
sophisticated life of the later feudal period, with its development of courtly
love, produced the chivalric romance, first in poetry and later prose. Medieval
romance had two new cultural features which were both essentially Christian: the
moral idealism chivalry, and the erotic idealism of courtly or romantic love.
Both of these values, of course, were passed on to the modern world, and they
provided an important element in its fiction. The medieval romances were so
called because they were narrated, not in Latin, but in the romance
vernaculars; and the term has persisted in the French, Italian, German and
Russian words for a novel: only English makes a linguistic distinction between
the fanciful 'romance' and the realistic novel.'
Realistic
Traditions of Fiction
Convincing reference to
the details of ordinary life occurs in early literature, but it is usually
casual and sporadic. But it was for the richer and more cultivated merchant
society of 14th century Florence that the first momentous step toward the
modern novel was taken. Giovanni Boccaccio's famous collection of the novella, the
Decameron, established the basis of the modern short story. The first major
resolution of this problem is found in Don Quixote (1605, 1615), where Cervantes
combined burlesque of the chivalric romances with certain picaresque elements.
The English
Novel to 1930
In the 16th century the
greatest achievements of English literature were poetry and drama, but there
was considerable activity in many kinds of prose fiction. John Lyly's Euphues
(1578) is a romantic intrigue told in elegant letters, which are interspersed
with general discussions on such topics as religion, love and epistolary style.
Lyly's main interest is not narrative or psychological but educational, as is
suggested by his hero's name (Euphues is Greek for well-cultivated), and the
very considerable influence of Euphues was therefore on literary style rather
than on the development of fiction. A similarly rhetorical emphasis marks the
most widely admired work of Elizabethan fiction, Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia
(1590). Sidney tells a very long and complicated story composed of separated
noble lovers, disguises, oracles, love philtres and hair-breadth escapes, which
are set in a conventionalized but beautifully described the pastoral landscape.
The same emphasis on
complicated adventure is found in many of less aristocratic prose narratives.
Chivalric romances both translated and original were widely read, and so were
the shorter and more stylish pastoral romances of such writers as Thomas Lodge,
whose Rosalynde (1590) gave Shakespeare the plot of As You Like It.
Under the Stuarts,
prose fiction continued mainly along with the established traditions of the
picaresque novel, the romance and the Novella. Apart from another masterpiece
in the William Congreve's graceful Incognita (1692),, there is little in 17th
century prose fiction of note, with the giant exception of John Bunyan. Grace
Abounding to the Chief of Sinners (1666) is in the established Puritan form of
the autobiographical confession, which relates the sinner's life until he finds
"the miracle of precious Grace:" the subject of Pilgrim's Progress
(1678) is similar, but it is cast in the allegorical form of a journey from the
City of Destruction to the Gates of Heaven; while The Life and Death of Mr.
Badman (1680) reveals the ampler opportunities for graphic realism afforded by
the exemplary negative case.
Bunyan's prose style
shows the force of popular puritan preaching combined with the eloquence of the
Authorised Version of the Bible; it can accommodate the homely and the
sublime, and range with equal conviction from domestic trivialities to the vision of burning faith, Bunyan presents his humble protagonists with utterly
serious realism; on the other hand, his allegorical method, the narrative the equivalent of the traditional Christian way of interpreting realities in other
worldly terms are obviously not typical of the novel, which presents secular
life for its own sake.
The 18th Century
In 1688, the year of
Bunyan's death, the Glorious Revolution finally destroyed the feudal
pretensions of the Stuarts and inaugurated the political and social dominance
of middle-class commercial interests, of which Daniel Defoe was the foremost
spokesman. Though born a puritan like Bunyan, Defoe reflects the strong
secularizing tendency of his time; his pretendedly genuine autobiographical
memoirs Robinson Crusoe (1719), Moll Flanders (1722), The History of Colonel
Jack (1772), and Roxana (1724) are vivid and comprehensive expressions of the
social and economic individualism of the Protestant ethic. In form they are
loosely episodic biographies of heroes or heroines for whom the quest for
middle-class security is the most compelling reality. Helped by his
journalistic training, Defoe, tried to make his fiction literally convincing;
and he also introduced into the tradition of the novel of its most enduring
themes-the struggle of the individual both with the external world and with his
own conscience.
Another bourgeois
Puritan, Samuel Richardson, has often been credited with the novel's paternity
and probably deservedly if by this is meant that his works are the first which
fit completely into the main fictional patterns of the centuries to come. Defoe
had no significant successors but Richardson had many, both in England and
abroad. His Pamela: or, Virtue Rewarded (1740) tells in a series of letters how
a virtuous servant-girl finally constrains her amorous master to marry her.
Richardson's exhaustive treatment of his heroine's psychological states had led
him to construct a unified novel: and this great extension in psychological
depth continued in Clarissa: or the History of a Young Lady (1747-48).
Clarissa is the first, and one of the greatest, of tragic novels. Finally, in
the History of Sir Charles Grandison (1753-54), Richardson used the epistolary
method for a less intense kind of social and moral analysis.
Henry Fielding was
provoked by the sanctimonious moralism of Pamela into writing Joseph Andrews
(1742), a lively comic story about the travels, misadventures and final
marriage of Pamela's virtuous brother. Tom Jones (1749) is a panoramic novel in
which Fielding exhibited his ethical and social views in a large and complex
plot; while Amelia (1751) is a more sombre treatment of the consequences of marital
infidelity and weakness. Fielding s in many ways the antithesis of Richardson :
equally serious as a moral and social thinker, his method was essentially
humorous, expansive, eclectic and illustrative.
The chief immediate
successors of Richardson and Fielding were Tobias Smollett and Laurence Sterne.
Smollett in Roderick Random (1748), The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle (1751)
and other novels, of which the best is Humphry Clinker (1771), developed the a primarily comic and satiric novel along Picaresque lines: he is most
successful, perhaps, in the presentation of eccentrics and grotesques. Sterne,
perhaps the most gifted and certainly the most original of the 18th century
novelists wrote The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy (1759-67), a witty, indecent
and brilliantly prolonged demonstration of how to entertain the reader without
ever giving him the novelistic development he expects.
In the later part of
the 18th century, the reading public expanded and the number of novels
produced increased. Few of them however, were of much importance apart from
Oliver Goldsmith's popular and influential The Vicar of Wakefield (1766). The
sentimental novels of Henry Mackenzie and the Gothic tales of Horace Walpole,
William Beckford, Ann Radcliffe and Lewis revealed the growing taste of writers
and readers alike for strong appeals to the emotions.
The Romantic
Period
English romanticism
found its main expression in poetry, but Sir Walter Scott's romantic interest
in the past brought about the historical novel which soon became extremely
popular all over Europe. Some of his important novels are, Waverley (1814)
Old Morality (1814), Rob Roy (1818), and The Heart of Midlothian (1818). Jane
Austen described her own time and scenes. Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield
Park (1814), Emma (1815) and Persuasion (1818) are beautifully poised studies
of "three or four families in a country most characteristic traditions of
the English novel, that of familiar domestic comedy used to present larger
conflicts of moral and social values.
The Victorians
During the reign of
Queen Victoria the novel became unquestionably the dominant literary genre.
The Victorian novel was typically very long; many were published in three
volumes. Charles Dickens was a reformer in everything he wrote, attacking a
multitude of social, political, administrative and economic evils. There are
many things in his novels which modern criticism finds it difficult to defend:
the melodramatic oversimplification of goodness and badness in Nicholas
Nickleby, the sentimentalism of the Old Curiosity Shop, insular and the unhistorical bias of A Tale of Two Cities and the rambling and overcomplicated
plots. Yet the intensity and the variety of Dickens' imagination and his unique
rhetorical gifts make light of these defects: Martin Churzzlewit, David
Copperfield, Bleak House and Great Expectations give what only the greater
literature can give, a comprehensive, personal and enduring vision of the
world.
If Dickens is the
greatest novelist of the age, George Eliot's Middlemarch (1871-72) is probably
its greatest novel. Her great gifts of heart and head united with her supreme
insight into individual moral development and produced a vast panorama of a Midland
community. William Makepeace Thackeray was Dickens chief rival, although his
more polished but less intensely committed novels have not worn so well. His
Vanity Fair remains a great and permanent achievement. Of the four novels of Charlotte
Bronte, Jane Eyre (1847) maintains its peculiarly powerful spell despite its
melodramatic sentimentality; while her sister, Emily Bronte achieved in Wuthering
Heights an intensely tragic confrontation of the passions of love, jealousy and
hatred. At a somewhat lower literacy level are many other Victorian novelists
of real interests and importance.
Later in the century,
George Meredith's great reputation was based on wit, intelligence and a marked
poetic gift; but although The Ordeal of Richard Feveral, The Egoist and Daina
of the Crossways reveal considerable psychological acuteness and a brilliantly
ironic Command of the social scene, they now seem to have almost disabling
affection of manner.
The other great
novelist of the later part of the century is Thomas Hardy, also a poet and a
master of landscape. His tragic novels The Return of the Native, Teas of the
d'Urbervilles, Jude the Obscure and The Mayor of Casterbridge, give a harrowingly
veracious picture of the consequences of sexual frustration and social
deprivation.
The Edwardian
Period
The influence of the
French and later on of the Russian novelists began to be felt in England toward
the end of the 19th century. Few of the English novelists were much concerned
with the problem of technique, however, and their originality came mainly from
their content, This description is on the whole truth of the most successful
novelists of the Edwardian period-H. G. Wells, Arnold Bennett and John
Galsworthy-although Bennett was at first a conscious adherent of the tradition
of French Realism. In The Old Wives' Tale (1908) and Clayhanger (1910), he
showed his great capacities as a wrote novels of many kinds; but his principal
aim, in Tono-Bungay for example, was to use fiction as a sounding board for his
own radical views of social, political and sexual reform. John Gals- worthy
began his classic exposure of the Victorian upper-middle class in The Man of Property
which developed into The Forsyte Saga. Joseph Conrad, their contemporary,
combined the old and the new n his personal art. His plots employed the
resources of the adventure story and of
melodrama and his essential moral themes were fairly traditional: but in Lord Jim, he follows
the Impressionistic technique. E. M. Forster, another transitional figure,
wrote all his novels except A Passage to India before 1914. He used the comedy
of domestic manners as his form. Forster's novels explored the possibilities of
harmony between countries, classes and persons through intelligence,
sensitivity and love.
After World War -
I
The two revolutionary
voices among the novelists of this period were those of James Joyce and D. H. Lawrence.
They had little in common except the absolute individualism of their lives and
art, which led them both to frank explorations of private experience, including
the animal functions. D. H. Lawrence began with realistic and fairly
traditional novels about the mining towns and countryside such as Sons and
Lovers (1913) which recorded the conscious and unconscious results of the
hero's emotional attachment to his mother. Later on, he became bold to express
in his novels, the instinctive, inarticulate elements in character and
personal relationships; Women in Love, The Rainbow and Lady Chatterley's Lover are
works of great power, insight and truth.
James Joyce began in
the aesthetic tradition, with its cult of the lonely, Godlike creator. A
Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man is a brilliantly composed picture of its
hero's emergence from the restrictions of family, religion and country into the
freedom of the artist. What gives Ulysses its greatest power is the use of
interior monologue to reveal the inmost minds and feelings of the characters
they live, hour by hour, through a Dublin day. Joyce's last work Finnegans Wake
attempts through a new language and a new mythic mode narrative to cover the
whole of the-recurring cycles of world history in the form of a dream by Dublin
public-house keeper.
Virginia Woolf was
almost as famous an innovator as Lawrence and Joyce. She developed the
consistent stream-of-consciousness method in Mrs. Dalloway, To The Lighthouse
and The Waves, which revealed a genius for poetic description Among the other
English writers of the 1920s, Aldous Huxley was perhaps the most famous for his
intellectual, witty and cynical novels of discussion. mood and atmosphere.
Time perhaps will
decide that Ford Madox Ford and Wyndham Lewis were underrated in their days.
Wyndham Lewis in Tar (1918), The Apes of God (1930) and other fictions remained
an uncompromising and powerful critic of the life and literature of his
times. After 1920 have emerged many young novelists who have yet to establish
their reputations.