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A Theory of Genre: Romance, Realism, and Moral Reality

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A Theory of Genre: Romance, Realism, and Moral Reality A THEORY OF GENRE: ROMANCE, REALISM, AND MORAL REALITY ROBERT C. POST Washington,D. C. IN HER OWN UNASSUMING BUT PENETRATING WAY, VIRGINIA WOOLF stronglyadvised authors "to live in the presence of reality." Since "philosophic words, if one has not been educated at a university,are apt to play one false," Woolf could not define precisely what she meant by "reality." It was, she said, "something very erratic, very un- dependable-now to be found in a dusty road, now in a scrap of news- paper in the street, now in a daffodilin the sun." She could describe realityonly by notingthat whateverit "touches, it fixes and makes per- manent"; realityis what appears when the worldis "bared of its covering and given an intenserlife." Realityis "invigorating."The writer'sbusi- ness, Woolfconcluded, was to findthis reality, to "collect it and communi- cate it to the rest of us." 1 Woolf's concept of "reality" is complex, and its implicationsare worth examination.It differsconsiderably from the idea of realitywhich is pre- valent among literaryhistorians, and whichis exemplifiedby Rene Wel- lek's definitionof realism as "the objective representationof contempor- ary social reality." For Wellek realityis not, as for Woolf, a normative concept. It is instead a collectionof factswhich exist independentlyin the world and await reproductionby the writer.This same concept of reality underliesJose Ortega y Gasset's distinctionbetween realistand modern- ist art: comparingthe workof artto a window pane, he said thatworks of realism look throughthe glass and make it invisible,whereas modernist works focus instead on the glass itselfand see only a confused blur of color and form.2 That sophisticatedliterary historians should hold this view of realityis somewhat startling,since philosophy long ago rejected the belief that 1Woolf, A Room of One's Own (New York: Harcourt, 1957), 14. 2 Wellek, Concepts of Criticism(New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1963), 240; Ortega y Gasset, The Dehumanization of Art (Princeton:Princeton Univ. Press, 1968), 10. 368 American Quarterly realityexists "out there" beyond the glass, waitingto be copied. We can say withsome assurance thatthe perceptionof realityis insteada creative process. In the words of JohnDewey: "We do not have externallygiven to us some fixed conception of realitywhich we can compare with our ideas, and therebysee how much agreementwith reality the latterhave. Reality,like everythingelse thathas meaning,is a functionof our ideas." Not onlyis realitycognitively constructed, it is, as our sociologiststell us, 'socially constructed." A society's realityis a cultural artifact;it is a "social achievement,directed by the communityof needs and interests and fosteredin the interestsof cooperation."3 The question of realityis importantfor the literaryhistorian because it is commonlyagreed that every novel presentsan image of the world in which its charactersexist and interact.4The naive philosophicalrealism thathas unfortunatelycharacterized literary history, however, has led to two alternativeinterpretations of thisfictive image of the world. Either,in the case of literaryrealism, this fictive image is understood to be an accurate reproductionof "objective" reality,or, in the case of other literaryforms, this fictive image is detached from"objective" realityand explained in terms of the conventions of literarycomposition.5 Naive philosophicalrealism thus virtuallycompels the literaryhistorian to inter- pret changes in the literaryrepresentation of realityin termsof the trans- formationof purely aesthetic priorities,and it leads himto underestimate the possibilitythat these changes may in fact be caused by a largercul- turalevolution in the apprehensionof realityitself. The particularmanner in which a novel representsreality is, however, as Virginia Woolf s remarks amply illustrate,difficult to specify. The novel's world is oftenfanciful or imaginary,and what realitythe novel does portrayis highlyselective. At firstblush, therefore, it would seem to followthat literary historians are correct,and thatthe realityrepresented by the novel is merelya literaryconstruct, more or less unrelatedto the actual world of the surroundingculture. But this conclusion is a non-sequitur.What has been demonstratedis onlythat the fictiveworld of the novel is, in some respects,different from 3Dewey, "Knowledge as Idealization," in his Philosophy,Psychology and Social Prac- tice, ed. Joseph Ratner(New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1965). 159; Peter L. Bergerand Thomas Luckmann, The Social Constructionof Reality (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1968), 1; C. I. Lewis, Mind and the WorldOrder (New York: Dover, 1956), 116. 4This insightis commonto such otherwisedisparate critics as Georg Lukacs, The Theory of the Novel, trans. Anna Bostock (Cambridge:MIT Press, 1971), 60; and Frank Kermode, The Sense of an Ending (London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1967), 140. 5Even the pathbreakingwork of Erich Auerbach,Mimesis: The Representationof Reality in WesternLiterature (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1958), 107, conceived the differing portrayalsof reality in Western literatureto be primarilya matter of various literary techniques in the representationof "the objective world of reality." A Theoryof Genre 369 the world we experience in everyday life. A deeper analysis, however, reveals that the artisticsuccess of a novel depends precisely upon the similarityof its fictiveworld, in certain other respects, to the ordinary realitywe inhabit.The realitycreated by a novel is a very special kindof reality,whose nature is determinedby the culturalfunctions which the novel performs.These culturalfunctions are manifestedin the aesthetic criteriaby which the novel is judged. A criterionof major and unvarying importanceis thatthe quality of a novel depends upon the richnessand depth with which it illuminatesthe possibilitiesof human value and sig- nificance.But these possibilitiesonly have meaningif theyare perceived by the audience to be real, not merelyliterary constructs. The aesthetic criterionwill thus be satisfiedonly if the novel's audience believes that, given the natureof the actual world theyexperience, the potentialfor the realizationof these possibilitiestruly exists. The novel, as a contempor- ary authorstates, is "an affirmationof what oughtto be and what, in the artist'sdevout opinion,is, whetheror not it can be reached fromwhere we are."6 The novel, in other words, presents the reality of human meaning, which I shall call "moral reality." This is the complex formof reality which VirginiaWoolf urged writersto find,collect, and communicate. Moral realityis a culturalartifact which, like all such artifacts,evolves in time. Moreover, as Woolf s example illustrates,moral realitydoes not exist in some abstractethical realm. It is insteadpredicated upon specific and demonstrableassumptions about the natureof the world, about the way in which individuals,society, or the naturaluniverse must exist in orderfor human meaning to be possible. For a novel to succeed aestheti- cally, these assumptionsmust be recognizedby its readers as descriptive of the realitythey inhabit, and thus no matterhow fancifullya novel may otherwiseportray the world, it cannot violate these assumptionswithout simultaneouslybreaching the aesthetic criterionthat requires the novel seriouslyto explore the possibilitiesof human value. Once thisaesthetic understanding of the novel is accepted, and once an ingenuousphilosophical realism is safelylaid to rest,the concept of moral realitybecomes a legitimateand importantanalytic tool for the literary historian.In thisarticle I will explore its usefulnessin providinga founda- tion for a theory of genre in the novel. The concept of moral reality provides such a foundationbecause the novel is, as R. P. Blackmurhas stated, "a theoreticform for our experience of life,"7 and moral reality establishes the predicates for thatform. It not only thematicallydefines 6John Gardner,On Moral Fiction (New York: Basic Books, 1977), 162. 7 Blackmur,"Between theNumen and the Moha," The Lion and The Honeycomb:Essays in Solicitude and Critique (New York: Harcourt, 1955), 303. 370 American Quarterly relevantaspirations, and, by implication,pertinent temptations, but it also entailsspecific assumptions about the nature of the human, social, or naturalmaterials out of which that form will emerge. In thissense moral realityenables the novelistto create coherenceout of the "buzzing, bloomingconfusion" of his experience. Most literary historians view the novel,as doesLionel Trilling, as "a perpetualquest for reality, the field of its researchbeing always the social world, the material of itsanalysis being alwaysmanners as the indicationof the directionof man's soul."8 The conceptof moralreality, however, points in theopposite direction: it is onlybecause a novelpresupposes a reality,a conceptionof manners, soul,and society,that it can existat all. The moralreality assumed by the novelistwill thus deeply affect the literary presentation of his experience; itwill influence such various aesthetic concerns as methodsof characteri- zation,rendition of dialogueand action,treatment of naturaland social settings,and organizationof narrativepresentation.9 Novels whichshare a commonmoral reality will therefore also share commonaesthetic attributes. We classifythese family resemblances as genres.In nineteenth-centuryAmerican fiction, for example, it is com- monlyrecognized that the romanceand the realistnovel represent two such genres.In thisarticle I will analyzean exampleof each of
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