The evolution of the English novel

Front matter

Google to make the world's books discoverable online.

It has survived long enough for the copyright to expire and the book to enter the public domain. A public domain book is one that was never subject

to copyright or whose legal copyright term has expired. Whether a book is in the public domain may vary country to country. Public domain books

Chapter I Pa6b

CHAPTER n The Growth op Pebsonalitt in Fiction . . 43

CHAPTER in The Historigaii:. Novel 84

CHAPTER IV The Romantic Novel 120

CHAPTER V The Novel of Purpose 153

CHAPTER VI The Modern Novel and its Mission . . . 195

INDEX 229

V

THE EVOLUTION OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL

CHAPTER I

In every discussion of tendencies the term evoliUian claims a place with aknost the insistence of a prescriptive right. No other term localizes the phenomena so definitely, and con« veys so promptly the notion of progress in a general line of tendency. Nevertheless, I think most of us would, if we could, rather avoid the term than insist upon it in literary discussion. For the use of the word evolution seems to involve a very elaborate theory. In the title of this chapter — The Evolution of the Novel — the idea suggested indicates that we can name the earlier forms out of which the true novel has been evolved ; can arrange i the novels in existence to illustrate the later development ; and can trace the steps of the progress. It is with some reluctance that I have used such a demanding title. Development in literature, easy to suggest as a probable law, easy to infer in respect to particular forms, is extremely difficult of demonstration when the great movements are under consideration. Literature as a whole does not exhibit ^e^ regular and sequential . jdevelop-: ment which a theory of literary evolution would imply. It is quite true that in minor matters, especially in tracing thfe. growth of literary- ideas^. one easily reaches suggestive results. For example, we may find in the " Divine Comedy " of Dante the completed form of a. literary method common, in the Middle Ages. In the " Inferno " we have a Vision ; we can look back and find the "Vision of St. Paul" and other visions to which this one of Dante may be said to be a legitimate sequel. Dante visits Hell under guidance, and views it from a bridge. In an earlier vision Ferseus visits Hell, led by an angel; and in the "St. Patrick's Purgatory"

THE EVOLUTION OP THE NOVEL &

Tundale visits Hell, has a guide, and views the lake and valley from a bridge. We have an example of thfi_A^ve1npTnfint oi . a methods So if we consider Milton's "Paradise Lost," we can go back and find legendary additions to the Scripture, then Avitus, then Ctedmon,

•

then Andreini, then Milton. Undoubtedly we have in Milton a.--deveT6ped presentation of some of the external scenic accessories found in these earlier works ; and perhaps we have a development of the main thought sufficiently connected to make an historical study of these preceding works, with a provisioiiattheory - of evolution in mind, valuable for the study of Milton's "Paradise Lost." So with Bunyan. We read the "Pilgrim's Progress," as a completed form]; we go back and find the allegorical journeys of Raoul de Houdan in the thirteenth century; we find the Pelerinage de Vdme of Guillaume de Deguilleville in the fourteenth century ; we find the English translation — "The Pylgremage of the Sowle" — in the next century; and illustrations of the development seem to be quite at hand. Yet the very enumeration of these suggestive cases brings to our minds rather the difficulty than the satisf actoriness of a theory of evolution in literature. For certainly there is something vastly greater, more complete, in the "Pilgrim's Progress'' than in the earlier " Pilgrimage of the Soul"; there is something greater in Milton's "Paradise Lost" than in Avitus, in CsBdmon, in Andreini combined; and there is something greater, perhaps we may say something entirely new, inexplicably more important, in Dante's "Inferno" than in the " St. Patrick's Purgatory," or the " Vision of Ferseus," or the "Vision of St. Paul." The theory of an evolution, even with such excellent examples as these to illustrate it, seems

less than satisfactory.

*

With much more emphasis we can say that any theory of evolution suggests difficulties if we apply it to larger matters than single works. In poetry one would perhaps expect that the early poems recorded in history would be weak, formless, vague, a chaos of ideas in a mist of expression, without form and void. Yet we go back to the earliest Hebraic work in poetry, and it is the Book of Job, as

THE XVOLUTION OF THB NOYSL 5

complete and universal in its application, as correct in its form, as if it had been written in this nineteenth century; we go back to very early Greek literature, and we have the poems of Homer. We should have some difl&culty in establishing a^-theorjrrrf-^the- development of peetryrif we undertook to trace it in an ascending series from the works of the great poets of Greece up to the works of the crowned, or even of the uncrowned, poet laureates of to-day. Even if we take a specific form of poetry, such as an epic, can we establish a proposition of the evolution of the epic from a vague, formless, chaotic Iliad, an Odyssey, or an jEneid, up to a complete nineteenth century epic ? If we extend our theory and say that the epic has developed out of its completed form into a new and larger form of poetic expression, what is that expression? Can we say that the epic was a stage in poetic evolution preparatory for and leading to a greater method ?

We may have a theory of an evolution of the drama. Possibly such a theory of develop-, ment would suggest that the drama should begin with simple domestic portrayals, such as "She Stoops to Conquer," "The Rivals," or "Rip Van Winkle"; should go on to more complex and more intense presentations; and finally should, in Titanic manner, present the great problems of life and death in the drama of this evolved and later age. But in fact JEschylus stands first, grander than our theory, nobler than our conception. Suppose, still further, that we accept jEschylus as a beginning of a drama and look thence down the ages for an evolution of the drama. What do we find ? Five hundred years later than -^schylus we have a weak imitation of the Titanic drama of Greece; a thousand years later than these we have the Miracle Plays of England and France, the very crude, formless, simple dramatic work that we should have expected to have stood fifteen hundred years before; and' a few hun- ./yvV* I jdreds of years later than these we have Shake- J o^^'^^'^^lspeare, with no dramatic past in England, no I ^ K" I dramatic evolution, no literary history, — sim- ^^ f P^y Shakespeare, outside, apparently, of any completed scheme of literary development.

Still again, consider the poet, the seer, the fareyed man. If literary evolution be easy to set

THE BVOLUTIOK OF THE NOVEL 7

forth, where shall we find this revealing poet ? At the end ? In the later years, shall we not ? But in fact he comes before the day of literary history. He is Isaiah, Ezekiel, Daniel. I do not present these things as in any sense an argument against the possibility of a setting forth of any theory of development, of evolution; least of all do I say these things as a denial that such a theory of evolution is probable, or that the discovery of its law is beyond our power. I say them to encourage a certain modesty in the consideration of this question, and to suggest to myself a certain lack of dogmatic utterance in the promulgation of any theory of evolution of the novel, and the exploitation of the steps of its development. The things of the mind are not easy to set down in scientific and logical order. We at best but search for the underlying law and get such hints as we can toward its statement.

In these chapters I do not undertake to show that the novel has grown out of any preceding form of literature with such preciseness that the traces of its growth can be shown. It is extremely doubtful if we can yet work out

I

8 EYOLUTIOK OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL

a perfect statement of the development of the novel out of any other form of literature ; it is doubtful if we can work out any chronological sequence even within the period — the one hundred and fifty years — of the novel's life in English literature to the present day. We cannot say that the novels of 1740 legitimately developed into the novels of 1780 ; that the novels of 1780 logically developed into the novels of 1820 ; that the novels of 1820 legitimately and regularly developed into the novels of 1850. As with poetry, with literature, with the drama, with the epic, we :^nd ouf^ selves confronted with the operation of the human mind expressing itself in forms ante-|' ' dating, or postdating the theoretical stages ; ! expressing itself often in forms greater, expressing itself sometimes in forms much less, in importance than any theory would demand. Nevertheless, we have to do in the English novel with a kind of literature separate in method and in extent from other sorts. It i

belongs to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It has a character of its own ; it is f limited in extent ; it is specific in its selection |

I

THB EVOLUTIOK OF TH£ NOVEL 9

\ 1^ of subject and in its method of treatment. In such a limited field the study of a development, if possible anywhere, may be carried on with reasonable prospects of succeiss. Granting the difficulty, it is yet more than probable that we can find, if we take up this limited division of literary expression, and if we study it with something of regularity and system, that certain indications of what may be properly, though not too technically, called a development may be shown ; and that the examination of these indications, of these apparent stages of growth, may be useful. In this work I undertake the study of five specific kinds of expression in fiction : the novel of personality, the novel of history, the novel of romance, the novel of purpose, and the novel of problem. I take these five divisions in the order in which I have named them, for the reason that it is somewhat the order in which these specific kinds of expression in novel form appeared. The novel of personal life, of individual, separate, domestic life, is the ^asarf orm. A no vel is^ a record of^ emotion ; the story of a himian life touched

10 BVOLtmON OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL

with emotion; the story of two human lives under stress of emotional arousement ; the story of domestic life with emotion pervading it ; the story of a ^reat historical character in his day of aroused emotional activity; or the story of the romantic adventures of some person in whom we are forced by the author to take an interest. So that the novel of personal life is really the basal form of the novel, and one may say that all novels becon^e_,novels only when each is the story of some life stirred by some emotion. The earliest and tneTatest novel will come under this main division, to the discussion of whose characteristics the second chapter is given. The historical and the romantic novel, which are the subjects of the third and fourth chapters, developed later as a special form; and the novel of purpose later than either. In treating these in successive chapters I am, then, following somewhat a law of chronological appearance ; but I by no means suggest that the novel of the domestic life, of the individual life, developed into the historical novel, and that again into the romantic novel, f i^ and tiiat again into the novel of purpose, and that again into the problem novel. One must look farther than to this rough and general classification if he seeks to frame a law of the development of fiction.

We have seen that it is not easy to set /forth in detail any order of succession of lit- , erary forms of expression. Yet I think he is but a superficial student of the literature of recorded time who does not note one tendency of later work, of later method, of later procedure, of later life, as compared with earlier work, earlier method, earlier procedure, and earlier life which seems to imply an underlying law. If there be such an underlying law, it is the purpose of this chapter to suggest it and to apply it with some exactness to the history of the novel form. This law of tendency is, in general, that the depiction of the external, objective, carnal, precedes, in every form of expression of which we can have records, the consideration of the internal, the subjective, the spiritual. We go from shapes, and forms, and bulk, and externals, to the presentation of the life within. To illustrate this law, I may call attention to a step in the development of art significant of the evolution of the idea of inner personality as opposed to outward symbol, which seemed to show itself in the last years of the Mediaeval Ages, and the first years of the Reformation era. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, in the day , •* of Cimabue, of Quintin Majssys, of Van Eyck, '

the typical presentation of the Madonna was that of a vague face, without expression, shone upon by a light from without, illumined and dignified by an external halo. The Madonna of the later time, of the greater time, was a human face, with human expression, illumined and glorified by a light from within. The halo, the external sign, had gone ; the inner life, the expression of the divinely aroused j

human emotion, had come in its place. This seems to be in accordance with a law that ; the progress of evolution is from external em- J

. bellishment to inner life. It is this law that ']

I propose in this work to apply to the novel. The theory of development that I set forth is that progress, in speech, in Uterature, in :'

1 1 methods religious, educational, and political, in theories of the relation of the individual to his life work and life duty, has always been from the expression of the external form, from the consideration of the external characteristics, from the suggestion of the external remedies for evils and rewards for endeavor, to the expression of the abstract thought beneath the external form, to the <^onsideration of the internal character which finds embodiment in the external characteristics, to study into the causes of evils, and to the satisfaction of the soul with duty done in place of external reward of endeavor. It is a progress that advances from the physical to the intellectual, from the carnal to the spiritual. I shall endeavor to apply this theory to the novel with intent to suggest that such development of expression as we find in form of novels advances from the depiction of far-off occurrences and adventures to the narration and representation of contemporaneous, immediate, domestic occurrences ; and, finally, to the presentation of conflicts of the mind and soul beneath the

14 SVOLUTION OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL

external manifestations. If the theory is true, we may expect to find at the beginning of novel-expression a wild romance, and at its end an introspective study into motive.

First, then, for the theory. The earliest speech of any people, the earliest speech of V.the Indian, of the savage, is a picture story. It is hardly probable that the Indian speeches familiar to our boyhood's days from the records of the "Boy's Own Speaker," are exact transcripts of the utterances of the chiefs around the war-party camp-fire two hundred years ago ; but they are veracious in one respect, — the voice of the utterance is external. An Indian's speech is a series of pictures, of illustrations, of external representations of his ideas. He sees a happy hunting-ground, a great spirit. He lays the implements of the dead warrior by him in the grave ; he makes visible images which he can touch, feel, handle, for the embodiment of his ideas. So the early primitive nation worships a visible God, — a sun, a totem, a joss, an idol. So primitive peoples personify phases of nature into nymphs, spirits,

THB BVOLUTION OP THE NOVEL 15

and fairies. It is the later day which gives the power to see, to speak, to think directly without the visible image, without the symbol, without the external form. It is an indication of progress in intellectual as well as mathematical excellence, when the boy ceases visibly to touch his actual fingers as he counts. And as in spoken speech, so also in recorded speech. It is no accident that the epic stands at the beginning of poetic life and that in modern days the epic has passed away; for the epici is the most objec-^.4'' tive, the most external, the most physical of all forms of poetic expression. With the complexity of modern life, if this theory of progress from the outward to the inward, from the external to the internal, from the objective to the subjective, is true, we might expect the passing of the epic, as it has passed. Or, again, if we interrogate folklore, one may note one characteristic of the tales of folklore which are dearest to the hearts of all peoples, and this characteristic is that the stories most loved are stories [of the physically largest and most perfect, overthrown and defeated by the weaker, by the less physically great, by the more intellectually potent. The folklore /story is always of the one physically strong / overthrown by the one weak in body but \ strong in intellect and spirit. It is always the giant killed by the insignificant Jack ; it is always the fire-breathing dragon killed by the saintly knight ; it is always Grendel destroyed by Beowulf ; it is always Brer Fox outwitted by Brer Rabbit. The external, the forceful, the physically massive, is overcome, defeated, by the physically weak, but the more intellectual, the more spiritual. If this be a law, we may look to find, as we study the novel, that it begins with the presentation of the external phases of life ; finds the impulse of its action in compulsions from without, in accidents, incidents, catastrophes ; takes its motive from the external. And we may find, if the theory is a true one, that the study of the romantic novel, or the historical novel, or the novel of domestic life, becomes a study of progress toward the depiction of the relation of man to man, taking the impulse of its action and its motive from the aroused

THE BVOI^UnON OP THE NOVBL 17

desire in the mind or heart of its hero. Fiction begins with the objective novel; it progresses into the introspective and the subjective novel.

All this will follow if the theory is true. But it is worth while, in enunciating so farreaching and apparently so arbitrary a proposition, to illustrate it still farther. I may, no doubt, find suggestion of it in very trifling matters close at hand even better than in more serious ones. It was but a few years ago that

adornments; the bell, the water tank, the signal light, and the rails, shone like gold. There was a great outcry when the late Commodore Yanderbilt ordered all these engines to appear in plain black paint. It was argued that the love of the engineer for his engine, the pride in it, would pass with the passing of the glittering external. It did not. The excellence was inside,- and the removal of the halo did not diminish the admiration of the driver for his engine. Or I may name the passing of certain details of the external on the stage. In one of the Miracle Plays, Adam is represented crossing the stage, going to be created. The imagination needed its visible symbol. Similarly there are ghosts in the Elizabethan plays. In Shakespeare's time there was a visible physical ghost, possibly with the "invisible " coat of the Middle Ages, — a remarkable garment through the donning of which an actor could become, as it were, conspicuously invisible, — more likely a visible ghost, boldly expressed, with no disguise. But since Shakespeare's day we have progressed beyond the need of this physical symbol of the vanished spirit hovering for an instant on the confines betwixt life and death, and to us the externally manifested ghost has come to seem too close a personation. The later stage managers have tried various devices to spiritualize, to decarnalize, this ghost presentation; they have tried mirror reflections, illusions. But it was Henry Irving in the presentation of Macbeth who gave the modem thought. The ghost of Banquo is present in Shakespeare's play ; but on the stage, as Henry Irving presents Macbeth, there is no ghost of Banquo ; there is merely the empty chair and a light on the empty chair of Banquo.

THB BVC^UnON OF THE NOVEL 19

So we have come from the exhibition of an external form to the suggestion of the subtler thought beneath. For though no modern dramatist would ever introduce a ghost in writing a drama, and no modem novelist would ever make a ghost a real character in a serious novel, yet we think of these unthinkable things, we ponder on these spiritual problems in our plays and in our novels no less intently than did our anthropomorphic ancestors. We think and ponder only the more intently because unhampered by the external symbol. The visible ghost no longer walks the boards of our stage, nor stalks through the reveries of our imaginations ; but the mystery of death, of life, of life extending beyond the visible death, is none the less a problem in our plays, in our novels, and in our meditations. It is but the external manifestation which has passed.

It has passed, too, in things very much greater than the speech of Indian, or the method of poetic expression, or the decoration of engines, or the portrayal of Madonnas, or the exhibition of incorporeal visions on the stage. The thought of sin cannot be said to be a modem thought ; but it is only since the Reformation that repentance for sin has come to be a matter of spiritual exercise. We need go back only one thousand years to find that the religious exercise of repentance for sin committed demanded external observance as its essential. It was not alone the king who did penance for his people's sin in public, or led a Crusade as a religious rite ; it was a universal proposition of religious procedure that penitence was a public function which involved penitential observances, external fastings, mortifications of the external flesh, removal from the shows of external social life, departure from the occupations of the external world, pilgrimages to shrines, to Meccas, to that Canterbury Cathedral in which lay the bones of the martyred Thomas a Becket. Penitence was to be expressed by some external observance, visible to the eye, painful to the flesh. It is a modern thought that penitence is a private duty ; it is a modern thought that it demands contrition instead of external observance as its essential; that it concerns the sinner and is, perhaps, most sincere when least visibly mamfe^t^d. The progress is from the

THB BVOLTTTION OF THE NOVBSL 21

requirement of objective external forms of atonement, of repentance, to the exercises of the individual soul. So far as this indicates a law, it would indicate that in the earlier method of the romantic novel, of the historical novel, of the novel of life, we should have the ertemal phases of the historical day, of the romantic adventure, of the life procedure ; and that in later stages we should have the relations of man to the historical day, w6 should have the subtler, the less physical, aspects of the romantic life, of the domestic life, portrayed.

But not alone is such a tendency as I have indicated evidenced in religious observances. It is even more easily recognized in educational and in political methods. Students of the educational tendencies of the last one hundred years have no doubt noted that the motive force upon the student has shifted in the last seventy years from an external to an internal compulsion. The college of seventy years ago was an absolute monarchy; the student was intellectually handled, mastered, disciplined, prepared, by an educational force, in the seleotion of which, toward the influencing of which, in the modelling of which, he had absolutely no choice. A faculty set for him certain required studies, to be pursued at certain stated times, to be evidenced by recitations, to be guaranteed by examinations at certain fixed periods under unchangeable rules and regulations. There was no election, no option, no opportunity of individual choice given the student. It was a compulsion from an external. Such was the system in our colleges — even in Harvard College — seventy years ago. Under such a system as this most excellent men were trained, and trained most excellently. There may be some who will maintain that we have not wholly gone toward perfection in education, as we have in modem times given, more and more, the voice of the determination of his college career to the student. I do not argue this point; I merely point out that the college of to-day has gone from a method of education by which the student was dominated from beginning to close by a force external to himself, to a system in which the student's own desire, the student's

THE KYOLUTION OF THE NOVEL 23

own choice, the student's own private notion, is in his case the keynote of procedure. And I am sure that this change from the external power modelling the boy, to the boy's own desire controlling his development, is a change in accordance with the theory I have been presenting — that evolution proceeds from the dominance of the external toward the preeminence and the potency of the immanent idea. And in like manner, our days have seen a similar progress of the notion of political headship from the external, objective symbol to the dominance of the invisible idea. The earliest kings were kings by virtue of force. The largest man, the man with the strongest arm, with the muscle of iron, with the nerves of steel — was the first king. He was an objective manifestation of physical power. That is the first stage in the king-notion. The second stage is of to-day, in England let us say, where the king or queen is but the symbol of a power — without force, almost without influence — the inactive physical symbol of the power of the state. In more modem community systems men will not admit that they have a king at all. If a Democratic leader or a Republican leader rules the politics of a State, he rules it, not by displaying, but by concealing, the fact that he is a king — a political king — a "boss." In our government of the United States can it least of all be said that he who stands as President stands as king. The real ruler of these seventy millions of people is an intangible, immaterial, invisible force called "public opinion." Before the breath of that unembodied idea the physical force of a political boss, of a Congress, of a President, bows. The external yields to the internal, the physical to the mental and the spiritual.

If such examples as I have given are not sufficient, I can easily add to their number. I can, for example, suggest how the notion of individual personal liberty, i^ reUgious matters, in political matters — of liberty untrammelled by any external force, of liberty dominated only by the mind, the heart, the conscience — is a modern, an evolved, a developed idea. Or I can point out that a hint of all the suggestions that I have been

THE EVOLUTION OP THE NOVEL 26

making has been given in revelation, in the fire, the thunder, the lightnings, the tablets of stone when the first Commandments came ; in the voice saying that " a little child shall lead them," that "except ye become as little children," and that "ye must be born again," uttered when came the New Commandments. The fire, the thunder, the lightnings passed, but God was in the still, small voice. And I may finally claim that a further suggestion can be found in the prophecy that in the world to come the body shall cease, and the spirit be alone the living force. I do not give these examples as proofs. I desire only to use such illustrations as are near at hand in making clear this suggestion of a general habit of progress in evolution. If true as respects the novel, we may expect to find a tendency away from external manifestations and toward the presentation of the motive beneath such manifestations, — away from the manifestation of the objective, the physical, from the picturing of a thoughtless hero dashing about through forests and over streams to rescue or to kill other individuals t