NOVEL CRITICISM IN
THE EIGHTEEN-EIGHTIES
by JOHN PECK
(Registered as a student at Bedford College)
A thesis submitted to the University of London in candidature fo r the degree of Doctor of Philosophy
October 1975
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-2 - ABSTRACT
Most theoretical discussions of the novel published in the eighties were crude and unimpressive, but the criticism of individ ual novels was more interesting. Discussing novelists such as payn and Oliphant c ritic s showed that they were not prepared to accept any novel just because i t was constructed along traditional lines.
Meredith was the most respected novelist. He defended accepted moral values but in a way that struck his contemporaries as ambitious and original. Other novelists were less acceptable because they chall^ enged the moral convictions of the c ritic s . Zola's novels provoked intense controversy, but the excitement was short-lived. However, his realism did inspire a whole new movement of reaction - the revival of romance. This fic tio n was escapist and therefore unpopular with critics, who preferred realistic fiction, but realistic fiction that endorsed traditional moral values. They particularly admired philan thropic themes and admired Gissing for his use of them. But Gissing dealt with the failure of philanthropy. This led onto wider doubts about the social system and a new emphasis on the individual. Such an emphasis was unacceptable to c ritic s who preferred a picture of social integration. James made a greater emphasis on the individual than any other novelist in the period and his work baffled c ritic s .
Hardy started with concepts of community and shared values but showed the ir disintegration. Critics refused to accept his vision and misinterpreted his works as pictures of a structured social order.
Wishing novelists would present a vision of social cohesion c ritic s referred back to George E lio t, although her vision was not as straight forwardly positive as most critics seemed to believe. Critics would have liked novelists in the 'eighties to emulate her thore>ugh social
- 3- picture. They wanted to see a picture of society functioning well, not a pessimistic picture of social chaos.
- 4- CONTENTS
PREFACE
CHAPTER ONE
THE NOVEL IN THE EIGHTEEN-EIGHTIES - THEORY AND CRITICISM.
1. REPRESENTATIVE THEORETICAL STATEMENTS FROM THE PERIOD,
2. WALTER BESANT ON 'THE ART OF FICTION'.
3. HENRY JAMES ON 'THE ART OF FICTION'.
4. CRITICAL REACTIONS TO THE NOVELS OF JAMES PAYN.
5. THE POPULARITY OF MRS OLIPHANT'S NOVELS.
6. THE REPUTATION OF MEREDITH.
CHAPTER TWO
REALISM - DEVELOPMENTS IN THE 'EIGHTIES.
1. THE DOMESTIC REALISM OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL.
2. THE ENGLISH REACTION TO ZOLA'S NOVELS.
3. DISCUSSIONS OF ZOLA'S THEORIES.
4. THE NOVELS OF GEORGE MOORE.
5. REASONS FOR THE CONTROVERSY OVER REALISM.
CHAPTER THREE
THE REVIVAL OF ROMANCE
1. STEVENSON'S THEORY OF FICTION.
2. RIDER HAGGARD AND HALL CAINE ON THE AIMS OF FICTION.
3. CRITICAL REACTIONS TO THE NOVELS OF RIDER HAGGARD,
4. CRITICAL REACTIONS TO THE NOVELS OF HALL CAINE.
5. CRITICAL ADVICE TO STEVENSON.
- 5“ CHAPTER FOUR
THE DIDACTIC NOVEL AND THE NOVEL OF IDEAS.
1. CRITICAL ATTITUDES TO DIDACTIC FICTION.
2. THE POPULARITY OF THE NOVELS OF SIR WALTERBESANT.
3. GISSING: RESPONSES TO HIS EARLY NOVELS.
4. GISSING: THE NATURE OF THE EARLY NOVELS.
5. GISSING: RESPONSES TO HIS MOST CHARACTERISTIC NOVELS.
6. THE "MARK RUTHERFORD" NOVELS.
7. THE RESPONSE TO OLIVE SCHREINER'S THE STORY OF AN AFRICAN FARM
8. THE RESPONSE TO ROBERT ELSMERE
CHAPTER FIVE
HENRY JAMES AND THE ANALYTIC NOVEL.
1. MODERN CRITICS ON THE CONTEMPORARY DISCUSSION OF JAMES'S NOVELS,
2. DISCUSSIONS OF JAMES AS A REALISTIC NOVELIST.
3. DISCUSSIONS OF JAMES AS AN ANPdVTIC NOVELIST.
4. AN EXPLANATION OF THE FAILURE TO UNDERSTAND JAMES'S NOVELS.
5. CONTEMPORARY APPRECIATION OF JAMES'S NOVELS.
CHAPTER SIX
THE RESPONSE TO HARDY'S NOVELS (FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD TO THE
WOODLANDERS).
1. REVIEWS OF FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD (1874).
2. REVIEWS OF THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE (1878).
3. REVIEWS OF HARDY'S MINOR NOVELS IN THE EARLY 'EIGHTIES.
4. GENERAL ASSESSMENTS OF HARDY'S WORK BEFORE 1886.
5. REVIEWS OF THE MAYOR OF CASTERBRIDGE (1886) AND THE WOODLANDERS
(1887),
6. LONGER ARTICLES ON HARDY'S ACHIEVEMENT.
- 6- CHAPTER SEVEN
HARDY'S REPUTATION IN THE 'NINETIES,
1. HARDY IN THE 'NINETIES.
2. ENTHUSIASTIC REVIEWS OF TESS OF THE D'URBERVJLLES (1891).
3. RESPONSES TO JUDE THE OBSCURE (1895).
CHAPTER EIGHT
GEORGE ELIOT IN THE 'EIGHTIES - SOME CONCLUSIONS ON THE PERIOD,
1. CRITICS AND THE TRADITION OF THE NOVEL.
2. GEORGE ELIOT'S REPUTATION IN THE 'EIGHTIES.
" 7“ PREFACE
The object of this thesis is to consider what was written
about the novel by c ritic s in the eighteen-eighties. I t might be
fe lt that in various Critical Heritage volumes^ and in such a work
as Kenneth Graham's English Criticism of the Novel 1865-1900^ the
views of c ritic s are given quite enough exposure and consideration.
However, i t is my contention that something is missing in these
works. Kenneth Graham's book - which I c ritic is e often in the course
of this thesis, but which has also proved an excellent introductory
guide - covers such a long period that he has to rush fa ir ly quickly
through the 'eighties. The tendency in his book is to concentrate
on longer essays and not to make much use of individual reviews.
This has the effect of shutting out from consideration much of the
best c ritic a l writing of the period. The C ritical Heritage volumes
do present individual reviews, and present a far more detailed
picture than is possible in Graham's volume. But, again. Critical
Heritage collections, although comprehensive in th e ir treatment of
one author, are deficient in that the approach followed prevents the
establishing of a wide context in which to assess the reviews pre
sented. This sometimes leads the editors of the C ritical Heritage
volumes to treat many critics rather dismissively simply because they
failed to respond positively to the works of the author under con
sideration. In this thesis I have attempted to be more specific
than Graham and at the same time more general than the C ritical
1. The C ritical Heritage volumes on E lio t, James, Hardy, Meredith and Gissing are referred to where relevant in the course of the text.
2. 1965.
-8 - Heritage volumes.
The main burden of my argument is that the failu re to apprec
iate a novel by James, Hardy, or Gissing was not a result of c r it
ical stupidity, nor did i t stem from a simple preference for
reassuring fic tio n . Indeed, one of the most admirable qualities
of criticism in the period is that the inability to appreciate the
values of some modern novelists did not send c ritic s o ff into an
unquestioning enthusiasm for any conventional and comforting novel.
But critics did look to fiction for a socially cohesive picture.
The result was that most novels published in the 'eighties failed
to please them. Critics disliked most of the significant new novel
is ts , but they were not much happier with the shallowness and un
re a lity of the majority of traditional novels. Precisely why they
disliked so much new fic tio n , and how they expressed this distaste,
is the subject-matter of this thesis. I have tried to treat the
critics as sophisticated men whose views are worthy of respect. Of
course, not a ll c ritic s deserve to be approached so positively, but
there is possibly a tendency in Graham's book and in the C ritical
Heritage series to treat the c ritic s too patronisingly because they
could not immediately accept radical new developments in the novel.
I have attempted to reconstruct a fa irly positive view of what they
did expect from fic tio n .
Although the c ritic s of the period need to be treated with
greater respect they are often irrita tin g . I t is possible to have
the greatest sympathy for the social and moral values reflected in
th e ir criticism yet to wish that they had been prepared to accept
a more rapid modification of their values and expectations. In some ways the theme discussed in this thesis is a frustrating one as the
“ 9“ c ritic a l values discussed were often sta tic. I t is for this reason
that I have interpreted the time-limit loosely. I have gone back
to the f ir s t responses to Middlemarch (1872) and Far From the
Madding Crowd (1874) as this provides something of a contrast to
the 'eighties. I have also gone as far forward as 1895 as in the
response to Jude the Obscure certain c ritic a l preconceptions at
last began to change.
Of course, c ritic a l standards did not remain completely and
uniformly static throughout the 'eighties. The major bias of c ritic s
- the preference for a novel with a constructive social message - was unshakeable, but on smaller issues values could and did change
rapidly. In the response to Zola, for example, c ritic s made many
rapid adjustments in the space of a few years. I t was James and
Hardy, the two major novelists of the period, who presented the
greatest problems. The social implications of the ir novels seemed to
be far more disturbing to critics than the implications of the work
of other w riters. But the response to these two novelists was complex
and I have considered the question at length.
Apart from James and Hardy a number of other novelists are
considered in some detail. The principal writers discussed are Payn,
Oliphant, Meredith, Zola, Moore, Stevenson, Haggard, Caine, Besamt,
Gissing, Schreiner, White, Ward, and, from a slightly different
angle, as she died in 1880, George E lio t. Of course, i t is not poss
ible to discuss so many novelists in one thesis. However, I feel
that criticism is best considered in terms of the responses to in
dividual writers. There are drawbacks involved in making the dis
cussion too abstract. But, including so many w riters, I have often
had to make do with passing references to individual works. I have only commented in greater detail where I believe this helps explain
-10- the c ritic a l response or where, as in the case of Gissing, I believe that the early criticism provides a new way of looking at the novels.
The novels that had to be considered more or less defined themselves - i t had to be the works of the great authors, novels by significant second - level authors, novels well-liked at the time, and novels which gave rise to controversy. The choice of periodicals was almost equally self-defining. I have limited the comments included to discussions in periodicals and books^as private comments, in notebooks etc, except by the novelists themselves, are too piecemeal to arrange into a pattern. Newspapers are also largely excluded. Most newspaper comment remains anonymous but the author ship of articles in periodicals can generally be established. In the past few years in particular i t has become possible to make many precise identifications. This is principally due to the inval uable Wellesley Index to Victorian Periodicals (Toronto, Volume One,
1965., Volume two, 1972), which I have used wherever possible. The great advantage of knowing a c ritic 's name is that his views on different authors can be compared and a composite picture of his likes and dislikes can be b u ilt up.
Within the range of periodicals I have made most use of the weeklies - The Athenaeum, The Saturday Review, The Academy and The
Spectator. The weeklies provide a very detailed commentary on fic tio n in the decade and this is why they remain so useful. In mentioning the weeklies I must thank the editors of The New Statesman and The
Spectator for allowing me to consult, in the f ir s t case, the marked f ile of The Athenaeum preserved by The New Statesman, and, in the second case, Hutton's editorial records of The Spectator. The names of c ritic s revealed by these records have naturally been of imm easurable help in attempting to establish a pattern of response in
- 11- the 'eighties. As the names of critics can be identified from such sources, as well as from the Wellesley Index, and from some of the C ritical Heritage volumes, I have not fe lt i t necessary to mention the source of any such identification in the text. Critics are either as named at the time of publication or identified from one of the sources listed here.
My thanks are also due to my supervisor. Dr.R.A.Cave, for his help and encouragement during the writing of this thesis.
-12- CHAPTER ONE: THE NOVEL IN THE EIGHTEEN-EIGHTIES - THEORY AND CRITICISM
1. REPRESENTATIVE THEORETICAL STATEMENTS FROM THE PERIOD
Shortly after publication of his essay 'The Art of Fiction'"'
Henry James wrote an unhappy le tte r to one of his oldest friends,
T.S.Perry. In a depressed and b itte r tone he complained about the
lack of response to the a rticle :
I thank you for all its appreciation and friendly feeling which makes me feel that. I didn't write my few remarks in Longman in vain. But i t is the only thing that does make me feel so, - for my poor a rticle has not attracted the smallest attention here and I hav^en't heard, or seen, an allusion to it. There is almost no care for literary discussion here, - questions of form, of principle, the "serious" idea of the novel appeals apparently to no _ one, and they don't understand you when you speak of them.
Extensive reading of the periodicals of the 'eighties confirms James's
dismal view of the interest taken in theoretical discussions of the
novel. Novelists such as Moore and Gissing shared James's interest ,
but only Stevenson produced a sustained theoretical argument which
can stand comparison with James's essay.^ The situation seemed to
have regressed from the preceding decades when c ritic s such as W.C.
Roscoe, Walter Bagehot, R.H.Hutton, and G.H.Lewes wrote incisively on ' 5 the nature of the novel.
These earlier c ritic s , however, were often writing about welcome
developments in the seriousness and scope of the craft. This is most
obvious in Hutton's lengthy and favourable reviews of George E lio t's
1. Longman's Magazine, IV (September 1884), pp.502-521. 2. Quoted in Virginia Harlow, Thomas Sergeant Perry, Durham, North Carolina, 1950, p.317. James's le tte r was written in September 1884, 3. Moore's interest in the principle of fic tio n can be seen in Con fessions of a Young Man, 1888 (see chapter two of this thesis), and Gissing's Charles Dickens, 1898, includes many general observations on fiction. 4. Stevenson's 'A Humble Remonstrance'is discussed in chapter three. 5. For example, Roscoe in 'Sir E.B.Lytton, Novelist, Philosopher, and Poet', The National Review, V III (1859), pp.279-313.; Bagehot in 'The Novels of George E lio t', The National Review, XI (1860), pp. 191-219.; Hutton in his Spectator reviews of Trollope; Lewes in =
-13- works.^ By the 'eighties there was widespread distrust of new move ments in fiction. The subject-matter of the French realists caused deep, and quite understandable, concern, and the approach to the novel developed by James seemed to rob fic tio n of many of its more attractive qualities. Both French and American novels were regarded as the product of over-ingenious theories, so to some extent the whole
idea of an abstract consideration of the form was treated with suspicion
This tendency reached its most exaggerated level in the views of Andrew
Lang, who consistently mocked the whole idea of the novel being a 2 serious and demanding form. On such a foundation he established his reputation as one of the most respected c ritic s in the period. In comparison, James's standing as a c ritic was negligible, and his views were ignored almost as much as he claimed in his le tte r to Perry. The
Athenaeum fe lt that his c ritic a l work Partial Portraits (1888) was as inadequate as his novels, and could only praise his 'amazing clever- 3 ness' - always the unkindest of c ritic a l compliments. Some reviewers were more generous: James Ashcroft Noble suggested that James was
'already recognised ... as a critic of singular fineness of discrimin ai ation and exquisiteness of expression' ; but such praise was exceptional.
'Realism in Art: Recent German F ictio n ', The Westminster Review, LXX (1858), pp.488-518. All these essays are discussed in Richard Stang, The Theory of the Novel in England, 1850-1870, New York, 1959, pp.51-60, pp.79-86, pp.75-79. Hutton's reviews are also discussed in David Ski 1 ton, Trollope and his Contemporaries, 1972, pp.100-125. 1. Most of these reviews are collected in David Carroll (Editor), George E liot: The C ritical Heritage, 1971. Reviews of Middlemarch and Daniel Deronda are discussed in chapter eight of this thesis. 2. There are excellent discussions of Lang's views in Malcolm Elwin, Old Gods Falling, 1939, pp.182-202., and in John Gross, The Rise and Fall of the Man of Letters, 1969, pp.132-139. Some of Lang's comments are discussed in chapter three of this thesis. 3. 'Partial P ortraits', The Athenaeum, No.3161 (May 26, 1888), p.659, 4. 'Partial P ortraits', The Academy, XXXIII (June 16, 1888), p,406,
- 14- The contrast between the views of James and Lang is noteworthy, but provides only a superficial picture of the period. I t represents the distance between the most conscious lite ra ry a rtis t of the decade and the representative of the views of the average reader. In between the tv/o were many admirable c ritic s who tried to compromise between such extremes. But these c ritic s are only seen at their best in reviews of individual novels. Theoretical discussions were uncommon and, when they did appear, were almost invariably poor in quality, and directed against new movements in fiction. In fact, they often took the form of rhetorical outbursts against everything that was unsatisfactory in contemporary w riting. Such views could flourish most freely when they were not restrained by the evidence of actual novels; so i t is in general discussions that the c ritic a l thought of the period often appears at its worst.
Not surprisingly the moral function of literature was often emphasised. Incorporated in the discussion of an individual novel a moral approach could be illum inating, but in isolation i t appeared dogmatic and crude. Morality in its most naive form was insisted upon in the Preface The Dublin Review printed when, somewhat belatedly in
1885, i t decided to introduce novel reviews. The passage asserted that the function of these reviews was to be narrow:
we wish to prevent one possible misconception. Whilst fu lly recognizing the important functions which may be discharged by chaste and healthy works of fic tio n , we wish emphatically to state that our "Notes" are NOT in tended to advocate novel-reading. Our purpose is NOT an invitation to read any novels. But, i t being assumed that many people do read them, and that many novels are un worthy of the time they demand, others u n fit for the perusal of youth, and not a few unsuited, perhaps dangerous to any Catholic reader - we propose to offer a judgement on the quality of certain novels that are in more general demand, raising the note of warning whenever we discover need for doing so.l
1. The Dublin Review, Third Series X III (1885), p.420.
! - 15- Such an attitude of almost total distrust of the , Formi had become
rare by this date, and was only to be found in religious periodicals;
but many critics emphasised dogmatically the moral responsibilities
of fic tio n . In reviews the moralistic viewpoint seemed less narrow.
For example, the novel reviews in The Dublin Review were seldom
impressive, but they were never as limited as their statement of intent
would suggest.
A number of c ritic s , however, prided themselves on their super
io rity to a morally-based view of fic tio n , A typical assertion was
that methods were not so important, but that a book must be entertain
ing. A w riter in The Saturday Review ridiculed attempts to come to
terms with James's novels and defended the pleasures to be found in
"railway-fiction"; he was grateful that 'in a world of disillusion, we
have s t ill the comfort and companionship of penny numbers.*^ He fe lt
the time had come for the anonymous authors to assert themselves
and change the general character of the three-volume novel:
The great riddle remains. Why do some novelists win fame and money by books in three volumes, while other w riters, just as clever, are content with obscurity and 3L. a volume?^
Macmillan's Magazine often printed articles in praise of an
aesthetic of relaxing enjoyment from fic tio n . Sometimes they were
written by the editor, Mowbray Morris^, but the following example was
produced by Augustine B irre ll:
1. For example, a view of the moral function of litera ture is at the heart of Walter Besant's essay on 'The Art of Fiction' which is discussed later in this chapter. 2. 'Penny Numbers', The Saturday Review, LVIII (August 16, 1884), p.200. . 3. Ib id ., p.200. 4. Articles by Morris include: 'General Readers: by one of them', Macmillan's Magazine, L III (1886), pp.450-457., 'Some Thoughts About Novels', Macmillan's Magazine, LV (1887), pp.358-365., 'Candour in English F ictio n ', Macmillan's Magazine, LXl (1890), pp.314-320.
- 16- Self-forgetfulness is of the essence of enjoyment, and the author v/ho would confer pleasure must possess the a rt, or know the tric k of destroying for the time the reader's own personality. Undoubtedly the easiest v;ay of doing this is by the creation of a host of rival personalities - hence the number and popularity of novels. Whenever a novelist fa ils his book is said to flag; that is , the reader (as in skating) comes bump down upon his own personality, and curses the unskilful author. No lack of characters and continual motion is the easiest recipe for a novel, which, like a beggar, should always be kept "moving on". Nobody knows this better than Fielding, whose novels like most good ones, are full of inns.l
The novelist of the period who most fu lly embodied such a relaxed
attitude to fiction was James Payn, The critical reception of his
novels w ill be considered later, but his views on the art of novel-
writing can be considered here as a further illu s tra tio n of the often
derisory nature of theoretical writing. His views could be taken as
representing the essence of James's despair at the ordinary level of
fictio n a l theory. An essay, 'The Compleat N ovelist', contained such
sage pieces of advice as the following: 'The plot of the story having
been decided upon, i t is advisable to make a skeleton plan of i t on 2 large cardboard . . . ' Too much emphasis on characterisation was
dismissed as being unlikely to meet with popular approval:
Whatever may be the merits of novels of character, i t is certain that they do not appeal to the great world of readers as those do which deal with dramatic situations and incidents. As the life of the body is blood, so the life of the novel is its "story".3
Another essential tenet of Payn's theory was to avoid a ll painful material:
1. 'The Office of Literature', Macmillan's Magazine, LI 11 (1886), p.361. ■ The tone here is as revealing as the content. Like much comment i t is hearty, masculine, and no-nonsense. Particularly noticeable are the absurd similes, which are found again in the views of Payn, Lang, Besant, Haggard, and others. They suggest that the novel is a practical form which can be discussed in down -to-earth terms, and that i t does not require sensitive aesthetic comment. 2. The Backwater of Life or Essays of a Literary Veteran, 1899, pp, 156-157. 3^. Ib id ., p. 152. -17- I f the conclusion of a story occurs to one as striking and dramatic, i t must not be put aside, of course, on the ground of its being melancholy; but as a general rule I would warn young novelists against "bad endings"; it is their weakness to indulge in them just as it is that of young poets to rhyme about premature death. ■
Well-satisfied with his exercise in theory, Payn assured any aspiring novelist: 'I cannot promise him success, but I believe I have shown o him the way in which he is most lik e ly to attain i t . ’ Payn's conception of the novel is , of course, mechanical, the only real value he recognises being the idea for the plot. A secondary aspect of his essay is that i t took the usual aggressive stand against a decline of plot in contemporary fic tio n .
Payn's essay is ludicrous, but the repeated failure of attempts to write in general terms about the novel was often due, even in better c ritic s , to a similar obsession with plot. There was concern over the qualities the novel had lost in its recent development, but no alternative could be suggested that did not seem tiëd to the idea of broadly-drawn characters and a vivid plot. Wider issues were ignored in this concentration on what what regarded as the weakness of modern fic tio n . This was the main issue in a Saturday Review a rtic le on
'The Modern Novel' where the critic regretted that, "It is indis putably and most lamentably true that the greater part of our modern 3 novels te ll either no story or te ll a very dull one . . . ' He insisted on more imagination, but this seemed to consist only of 'incident, romantic event and complication, the grand situations . . . '^ Arthur
T ille y , in The National Review, made the same point:
1. Ib id ., p.155. 2. TbTZr., p.173. 3. the Saturday Review, LIV (November 11 , 1882), p.633. 4. Ib id ., p.634.
- 18 - The curious thing is, that both Mr.Howells and Mr,James have openly expressed their preference for novels of the more imaginative type. Mr.Howells regrets the loss of the poetry of Mr.James's earliest work, and "he owns that he likes a finished story". Mr.James says that "his ideal story-teller possesses a rarer skill than the finest required for producing an artful réchauffé of the actual". Why then do both these gentlemen disregard their own preferences? Is i t out of pure regard for their readers? If so, let me assure them that their considerate unself ishness is being wasted. Human nature, in spite of modern improvements, remains much the same; i t s t ill enjoys a "rounded p lo t"; i t s t ill pursues, not for the sake of the pursuit, but for the sake of the end; i t s t ill loves to be amused; and, above a ll, i t s t ill hates to be bored.'
Such a call for more emphasis on plot was the most consistent theme of general critical essays in the 'eighties. Reviews of individual novels, on the other hand, usually revealed a preference for charac ter interest.
Although c ritic s defended the importance of plot there did appear to be some uncertainty about the value of such a principle. I t can be seen in the constant references to the taste of the ordinary reader. It is as if critics defended their own inability to come to terms with a changing novel by insisting that they acted only as spoke smen for the public. The Saturday Review provided a clear example of how a c r itic could praise the public taste when i t reinforced his own prejudices, although he might have reservations about some aspects of the popular novel:
What they like (and quite right) is a well-constructed plot and strong situations. They admire Mr.James Payn, Messrs. Besant and Rice, and, we regret to say, they are dupes of the pasteboard sentiment, and sham learning of Ouida. But Ouida has led away many captives, and i t appears that people prefer going to the circus with her rather than to the legitimate drama of Mr.Blackmore, Mr.Black, and Mrs.Oliphant.^
1. 'The New School of F ictio n ', The National Review, I (1883), pp.267-268. 2. 'Mr.Chambers and Popular Literature', The Saturday Review, LV (May 26, 1883), p.658.
“ 19“ other examples of deference to public opinion wepe mope straight
forward. In a review of Shaw's Cashel Byron's Ppofession (1886)
one c r itic mentioned how, 'readers undoubtedly confess to a prefer
ence for vigour, incident, character, and other featured which ape
not often found in current fic tio n .'^ Julia Wedgwood praised
Gissing's Demos (1886) on similar grounds: ' i t has much of a ll that
the ordinary novel-reader demands - plot, dialogue, and to a great 2 extent character ...' This identification with the public was
nottrue of all critics. James Ashcroft Noble, an excellent critic, who by the end of the 'eighties had taken over many of Hutton's
reviewing duties for The Spectator, suggested that a novel by Hawley
Smart might appeal to the mass of readers, but did not suit his taste
He described him as
a novelist of the old-fashioned school, who does not deal in analysis or "psychology", or anything of that kind; but simply invents a sto ry...^
Noble's point of view was rare, however, and most c ritic s would have agreed with Andrew Lang that the prime responsibility of a novelist must be to please a large number of readers:
A novelist writes to amuse the public, and for his own p ro fit and amusement. He should not consider too cur- iosuly. He should not worry about analysis, and about . competition with nature, and a dozen terms of criticism.
1. 'Some Novels', The Saturday Review, LXI (June 19, 1886), p,855, 2. 'Contemporary Records: F ictio n ', The Contemporary Review, L (1886), p.295. 3. 'New Novels', The Academy, XXXI (January 1, 1887), p.6. 4. 'At the Sign of the Ship', Longman's Magazine, X (1887), p,660. Lang's reference to writing for profit indicates the commercial attitude many writers could not avoid when discussing their craft. It necessarily leads to an emphasis on pleasing the public. Such values are also found in Besant's essay on 'The Art of Fiction' (discussed below).
-20- Such general defences of the "old-fashioned" novel would have been better i f c ritic s had been less concerned with attacking change.
Exceptions were rare. An essay by Harry Qui Ite r started from an assumption that a good story possessed unquestionable value.^
Dealing with Wilkie Collins, he maintained that 'this author has told stories better than they have ever been told in the world before, and probably better than they w ill ever be told again.' Then, quite exceptionally, he did not proceed to attack recent developments in the novel, but went back into Collins's work to demonstrate its many admirable qualities. These ranged through his impersonality, his use of a dramatic method, his integration of description with character and incident, his sympathetically created characters, his gentle humour, the unity of his stories in that nothing extraneous appeared, and his direct and uncomplicated emphasis on te llin g a story.
Consequently, Qui Ite r identified many of the formal qualities of the novel while assuming that enjoyment was the principal function of the form. As he was not distracted by bickering at the contemporary novel his essay could achieve this technical breadth.
Collins, though, was an established author, and critics had to face the problem that novelists who worked on traditional lines did not now seem to be producing works comparable to the masterpieces of mid-Victorian fic tio n . One answer to the problem was to accept the decline in quality, and search for some compensatory merits.
Saintsbury, for example, made much of the fact that the average novel was now quite strong. He argued that there existed
1. 'A Living S tory-T eller', The Contemporary Review, L III (1888), pp.572-593. 2. Ib id ., p.573.
21- a kind of mixed mode or half-incident, half-character novel, which at its best is sometimes admirable, and at its average is'often quite tolerable pastime.1
Possibly aware of the flimsiness of this concept of fiction he offered a more positive celebration of the average novel:
i f we have lost some graces, some charms of the finest and rarest kind, we have greatly bettered the average ... the average structure and arrangement of the average novel. How weak a point this has always been with our great novelists, at any rate since the beginning of this century, everybody who has studied literary history knows.2
R.Y.Tyrrell also defended the average graces of the English novel:
Though we have but few writers whose pages s c in tilla te like those of George Meredith and R.L.Stevenson, we have many whose style more or less approximates to that of Mr.Norris; that is, to the style of one who always writes like a gentleman, and often like a wit and a sch o la r. 3
To challenge the innovations of Zola and James with a defence of average competence was possibly the lowest point reached in criticism in the 'eighties.
Reassuringly, a greater number of c ritic s did look for greatness, but they could find very l i t t l e to praise unreservedly in modern fic tio n . In general, they wanted an in te llig e n t novel, but one written in a style with which they were familiar. With such criteria there were many expressions of regret at the poverty of the contemporary novel. Henry Reeve declared:
If we had to speak at large of the current literature of the age, we should be obliged to confess that there has not been for many years a period more absolutely devoid of orig in a lity and genius. The fire which burned with such intensity in the earlier half of the present century is in its ashes. 4
1. 'The Present State of the Novel', The Fortnightly Review, XLII (1887), pp.412-413. 2. Ib id ., p.413. 3. 'Mr.Norris's Novels', The Quarterly Review, CLXVIII (1889), pp. 420-421. 4. 'The Literature of the Age', The Edinburgh Review, CLXIX (1889), p .329.
-22- This was written in 1889, towards the end of the decade which had seen the publication of The Portrait of a Lady (1881), and The
Woodlanders (1887). The Westminster Review agreed with the view of
George Moore that the novel at the time was in a bad way, but dis puted his diagnosis;
That not many novels produced during the last ten years will live, we readily grant him; but it is not, in our opinion, because they are not su fficie ntly re a lis tic nor because they fa il to occupy themselves with the questions of the day, but simply because so very few among them bear the stamp of genius or even of marked a b ility .!
Again i t needs to be emphasised that this was written in the decade when Hardy, James, Moore, Gissing, Meredith, and Stevenson were all establishing or confirming their reputations. Nevertheless, critics blandly asserted that the novel was passing through a phase of unprecedented a rid ity. I t indicates a wider gulf between the practice of novelists and the preferences of reviewers than had ever existed previously. For the most part c ritic s were perplexed by the novelists we remember from the period, and argued a case for continuing with accepted methods.
2. WALTER BESANT ON 'THE ART OF FICTION'
The most thorough argument on these lines was Walter Besant's 2 essay 'The Art of Fiction'. Bringing together many strands of reasonably in te llig e n t, i f uninspired, thinking on the novel, i t is a document of some importance. I t does not begin to rival James's famous reply, but is far better than most contemporary discussions.
The most commendable feature of the essay is its assertive argument for recognition of the novel as one of the fine arts. The novel is
1. 'Belles Lettres', The Westminster Review, LXX (1886), p.560. 2. Besant's essay was originally delivered as a lecture, and then published as a pamphlet in 1884.
-23- felt to rival all other arts both for its ability to conyey truths about human experience, and for its s tric tly formal qualities, Its importance is reflected in its scope: 'As for the fie ld with which this Art of Fiction occupies its e lf, i t is , i f you please, nothing less than the whole of humanity.'”* The commitment to the cra ft, in such passages as this, is close to James's feeling for the novel, but the essay also makes other, less admirable, points. I t is daring of Besant to argue the superiority of the novel to poetry, but his reasons reveal the orientation and lim itation of his mind; i t is superior because i t has a wider readership. The Jamesian in s is t ence on the importance of the novel in its e lf is undercut by this appeal to the public. As one might expect, Besant's concept of form is also concerned with making the broadest possible appeal. This leads to some of the weakest passages in the essay, where the ideas are superficial, and where the language resembles the style of Lang at his most jovial and patronising. For example, when Besant deals with humour in the novel he argues that: 'in sto ry-te llin g , as in alms-giving, a cheerful countenance works wonders, and a hearty manner 2 greatly helps the te lle r and pleases the liste n e r.' Such passages as this appear all the more unsatisfactory when they are combined with some appreciation of how demanding novel writing should be; such as when Besant argues that writers should undertake the novel
'with the same serious and earnest appreciation of its importance and its d iffic u ltie s with which they undertake the study of music and
1. 'The Art of F ictio n ', 1884, p.9. 2. Ibid ., p.30. The point is reinforced by the absurd simile from everyday life , a device already seen in the comments of B irre ll and Payn.
:24- ,1 painting.
When he comes to discuss questions of method the essay is only
workmanlike. I t lis ts lessons learnt from his practical experience,
but offers nothing original, and nothing in the least stimulating.
lie insists on a degree of realism that can best be brought about by
the novelist contributing material from his personal experience:
'everything in Fiction which is invented and is not the result of ? personal experience and observation is worthless.' This presentation
of experience must, however, be regulated by selection, and the
quality of the selection w ill be determined only by the genius of
the author: 'In every Art, selection requires that kind of special 3 fitness for the Art which is included in the much-abused word Genius.'
Within these general guidelines two things are of central importance: one is character, and the other, which Besant saves as a climax for
his lis t of methods, is plot. A good writer, he maintains, 'firs t makes a bharacter in te llig ib le by a few words, and then allows him to
reveal himself in action and dialogue.'^ Plot is essential: 'Fiction without adventure - a drama without a plot - a novel without surprises 5 - the thing is as impossible as life without uncertainty.' Such
simple directives are regarded as adequate comment on the processes by which fic tio n is created, but he also concerns himself with the
function of the novel. Its role is not didactic ('the preaching novel 6 is the least desirable of any...' ), but it must concern itself with
1. Ibid., p.7., 2. TbTd"., p.15. 3. Ib id ., p.20. 4. TbTd., p.23. 5. TCT. , p.28. 6. Ib id .) p.25.
; 25^ «voiulity. In fact, in Besant's aesthetic the morality is allowed an overt presence in the novel;
the modern Bnglish novel, whatever form i t takes, almost always starts with a conscious moral purpose. When i t does not, so much are we accustomed to expect i t , that one feels as i f tliere f;ad been a debasement of the Art,
Besant's argument is uncomplicated - at least, he remains unaware of its complexities and level of blind assertion. Fiction may be constructed on the basis of generally recognised rules, and should 2 ideally be employed for some reforming purpose.
One of Besant's few modern c ritic s has praised this essay in the highest terms. Ernest Boll claims;
Besant's address is a classic; and, after the manner of a classic, it is remarkably filled with quotations. It is, to my knowledge, the f ir s t fu ll statement made during the nineteenth century of the great novelists of the English humanitarian tradition. I t preserves the essentials of that tradition; the need for faith in life as a whole, acceptance of a moral position, certainty in characterisation, and an unqualified faith in the value of each individual life .3
More accurately, Besant's essay, which starts in an inspiring style, deteriorates into a lis t of platitudes. It is dominated by the thought that this is how novels have been written for years, and that this is how they should continue to be written. Terms such as story are used confidently, sharing a sense of definition with the reader.
Story, as Besant makes clear, excludes the work of Howells and James:
'There is a school which pretends that there is no need for a story: a ll the stories, they say, have been told already; there is no room for invention . Besant's thoughts on fic tio n suggest principally his commercial understanding of the average novel, and his grasp of
1. Ib id . , p.24. 2. Besant's own most successful novel. All Sorts and Conditions of Men (1882), provides an illu s tra tio n of his ideas in practice. I t is discussed in chapter four, 3,5 'Walter Besant on the Art of the Novel', English Fiction in Transition, West Lafayette, Indiana, II (195$),p.35. : " 4. Besant, op.c i t . ,p.27. -26- its limited methods and intentions.
An essay of this nature naturally prompted responses and
criticism . Only James produced a memorable rejoinder, as he was
alone in recognising that Besant's essay raised complex questions,
of which the author was unaware. But other comments are of some
interest. A number of c ritic s fe lt uneasy about theorising over the
novel at all, preferring to regard success as a fortuitous accident.
Melville B. Anderson, in the American magazine D ial, disliked the
idea of so much conscious planning, but fe lt that the results might
ju s tify the rules:
I f they should be followed to the le tte r, what a clearing of the decks we should witness 1 Strenuously insisting, as they do, upon experience, systematic observation, wide and delicate sympathies, and the inborn story-telling faculty on the part of the novelist, they would, i f absolutely imposed upon w riters, enhance the quality of current fic tio n as they diminished its volume.*
The Saturday Review fe lt that such a scie n tific approach was dan
gerously close to Zola:
if we can imagine M.Zola without his delight in things unclean, and with a jo llie r mental habit (for Mr.Besant thinks the a rtis t should have a "hearty manner") then the Frenchman would almost be the c ritic 's ideal romancer. He probably agrees with Mr.Besant "that everything in fiction which is invented, and is not the result of^ personal experience and observation, is worthless."^
This c r itic was comforted by the fact that Besant's practice as a
novelist was looser than his precepts. But, leaving aside c ritic s who distrusted all theorising, Besant's ideas would have met very
l i t t l e disparagement. His emphasis fe ll on plot, together with a
related view of character, in a manner paralleled in most other theo
retical comments.
1. 'A Novelist's Theory of the Art of F ictio n ', The Dial, Chicago, V (1884), p.133. 2. 'The Art of F ictio n ', The Saturday Review, LVII (May 31, 1884), p .702.
-27- When Besant's standards were so widely shared i t is possibly
unfair to fault them. His essay, after all, is as sophisticated
as any other in the period, with the exception of those of Stevenson
and James, and James sets a very exacting standard by which to
judge lesser writers. What does lim it Besant's essay, however,
is that it sacrifices the opportunity to probe ideas fully, and
substitutes abuse of some contemporary fic tio n . Aggressive stabs
at recent fic tio n are far too obvious. Stevenson's essay, 'A Humble
Remonstrance' (to be considered in chapter three), w ill demonstrate
that James's position could be countered by a broad consideration of the whole function of narrative, and that a critical debate did not
need to be reduced to the level of abuse. The explanation is as simple as the fact that James and Stevenson were developing theories which supported original fic tio n , while Besant was unconcerned with o rig in a lity . As a challenge to the changes he saw in the sort of novels being published he tried to resurrect a static code.
3. HENRY JAMES ON 'THE ART OF FICTION'
James's famous reply is a ll the richer when one has read Besant.^
A comparative reading enlivens James's ironic handling of his opponent. Such a comparison also highlights a larger irony of the decade. This is that James was repeatedly attacked for the narrowness of his a rtis tic principles, whereas the two essays taken together show that James argued for freedom while Besant imposed restrictions on the novelist's cra ft. The emphasis on creative freedom is one of the most attractive features of James's essay, yet the essay also 2 includes an amusing defence of his own practice. The importance of
1. A fu ll and stimulating comparison of the two essays is made by John Goode in 'The art of fic tio n : Walter Besant and Henry James'. The essay appears in Howard, Lucas, and Goode (editors). Tradition and Tolerance in Nineteenth-Century Fiction, 1966, pp.243-281. 2v The response to attacks on novels in 'whfcïï "Bostonian nymphs'* -28- James's essay in the history of criticism of the novel must not
obscure the fact that its publication had almost no immediate in
fluence. It neither made critics aware of tlie rigidity of their
assumptions about fic tio n , nor did i t create a more sympathetic
atmosphere for the reception of James's novels. Press comment was
negligible compared to the response to Besant's essay, which had
fascinated reviewers by stating again what they already believed.
Besant wrote in terms that were generally understood as the
values he defended were widely shared. James's essay questioned
these values, introducing an element of doubt into the confident use
of such terms as story. He approached this theme by f ir s t expressing
his admiration for Besant's rules for the novel:
These are principles with most of which it is surely impossible not to sympathise ... At the same time, I should find it difficult positively to assent to them, with the exception, perhaps of the injunction as to entering one's notes in a common-place book. They scarcely seem to me to have the quality that Mr.Besant attributes to the rules of the novelist - the "precision and exactness" of "the laws of harmony, pers pective, and proportion". They are suggestive, they are even inspiring, but they are not exact, though they are doubtless as much so as the case admits of: which is a proof of that liberty of interpretation for which I ju st contended. For the value of these d if f erent injunctions - so beautiful and so vague - is wholly in the meaning one attaches to them.'
= appear to have "rejected English dukes for psychological reasons" ' is fam iliar, (p.517). But some references need a closer knowledge of the period. Howells provoked English c ritic s by his statement that, 'The art of fiction has, in fact, become a finer art in our day than i t was with Dickens and Thackeray ... ('Henry James, J r .', The Century Magazine, New York, I I I (1882), p.28). At the begi nning of his essay James writes: ' i t would take much more courage than I possess to intimate that the form of the novel as Dickens and Thackeray (for instance) saw i t had any ta in t of incomplete ness.' (p.502). A knowledge of the row provoked by Howell's essay, a subject discussed in chapter five, makes one aware of the ironic force of James's apparently casual 'for instance'. 1.Longman's Magazine, IV (1884), pp.508-509.
- 29- James's criticism is more than a lingu istic game. He throws into confusion the sense of shared meaning that Besant had with his readers. The most obvious example is story. James writes:
Ml'.Besant is not the only c ritic who may be observed to have spoken as i f there were certain things in lif e which constitute stories, and certain others which do not.l
He does not allow Besant to retreat into the position that would claim that a certain degree of adventure constitutes a story. James explains that he sees adventure everywhere:
for a Bostonian nymph to reject an English duke is an adventure only less s tirrin g , I should say, then for an English duke to be rejected by a Bostonian nymph. I see dramas within dramas in that, and innumerable points of view. A psychological reason is , to my imagination, an object adorably p icto ria l; to catch the tin t of its complexion - I feel as i f that idea might inspire one to Titianesque efforts.2
Besant's precise concept of story has been undermined, but the point did not meet with general acceptance. Nor is this surprising.
Although James's point is reasonable i t could be regarded as hair s p littin g . Most readers were blunt enough to know there was a q u a lit ative difference between novels with a vivid plot and those where there was only one apparently uncomplicated idea. Most readers, not only Besant, could not regard James as a sto ry-te lle r.
Even more important, however, was the fact that an argument about technique and the methods of fic tio n was really an argument about far more basic matters. The acceptance of certain formal approaches was the outward expression of a whole attitude of mind, a whole way of looking at life . Im plicit in the many statements that a novelist did not need to probe and analyse too far was a conviction that life could be taken in and understood in a broad sweep. Similar values
1. Ib id . , p.516. 2. Ib id . , p.517.
-30- were also involved in Besant's defence of the value of plot. He
had written: 'Fiction without adventure - a drama without a plot -
a novel without surprises - the thing is as impossible as life without uncertainty.'^ 'fiiis is a weak critical statement, as the
emphasis fa lls on attacking recent fic tio n , but i t represents a whole way of looking at life and art. The elimination of story,
so far as Besant could see, would lead fic tio n in the direction of
recording nothing but a deterministic movement towards disintegrat
ion and failure. The value he sets on "surprise" is that, in both
life and art, it can represent the redirection of events in a more positive direction. Implicit in his dissatisfaction with so-called plotless novels is a belief that they can present nothing but the grey chaos of life , whereas the novel with a vigorous plot persuades the reader that life is active, and moves purposefully towards some desirable conclusion. James's argument that he is merely internal ising the adventures is no substitute for the old approach to story, as the psychological approach deprives fic tio n of its broad social sweep, and thereby robs fic tio n of the sort of social moral purpose that Besant and others sought in the form. Besant's aesthetic was thus the formal expression of certain convictions about life , and
•the relation of art to life.
As with any aesthetic, however, it could only retain its validity so long as the social values i t covertly endorsed were generally accepted. James's theoretical essay was the f ir s t direct statement that these values were disintegrating. The crudity and naivety of many of Besant's comments is not so much a consequence of his ineptness as a critic, as of the fact that his ideas were out of date, and he
1. Walter Besant, 'The Art of F ictio n', 1884, p .28.
- 31- could not avoid the aggressive and superficial stance of a writer arguing a lost cause. The same is true of other c ritic s writing theoretical essays, But the fury of the c ritic a l debate in the
'eighties, and the unprecedented distaste for the trend of modern fic tio n , was a result of many c ritic s being as reluctant as Besant to surrender the values suggested in his essay. These centred on the convictions that a broad cross-section of life could be trans ported almost wholesale into the novel, and that the novelist could then organise his material to suggest some positive purpose that gave this social panorama significance and a sense of direction.
The use of a complicated plot in which a ll the strands were fin a lly brought together contributed to the idea that life could be ordered, that some shape and pattern could be discovered i f one would only look long enough. The author's moral purpose contributed equally to this ideal of order. The sort of fic tio n advocated by Besant would argue that as complex as society might be the goals, pursued by people were fa irly common and that, with the exception of a few selfish v illa in s , most people were concerned with mutual improvement,
I t was these sort of assumptions that James set out to undermine,
Besant had asserted an average view of character, being, presumably, irritated by James's lengthy analysis, but James points out that the characterisation of Cervantes or Dickens departs radically from any supposed normal standard:
The re a lity of Don Quixote or of Mr.Micawber is a very delicate shade; i t is a re a lity so coloured by the author's vision that vivid as it may be, one would hesitate to pro pose i t as a model: one would expose one's self to some very embarrassing questions on the part of a pu p il.1
1. Longman's Magazine, IV (1884), p.509.
- 32- This fits into a pattern of challenging Besant's belief that common assumptions can be made.
With James's introduction of flu id ity into Besant's rigid concepts i t is not immediately obvious where organisation and dis cipline w ill emerge from. James insists on intensity during the whole process of w riting, but s t ill has to offer some controlling principles. That is to say, just as much as Besant he has to propose some "end" for the novelist. In fact, the principles James advocates would not have been unfamiliar to Besant and his contemporaries - they are realism and imagination. The difference is that these prin ciples are now transformed fu lly into methods of control for the w riter. James whittles away the petty restrictions on method, but gives new weight to the broadest principles. The fir s t principle is that the novel must attempt to represent life ;
One can speak best from one's own taste, and I may therefore venture to say that the a ir of re a lity (so lid ity of specification) seems to me to be the supreme virtue of a novel - the merit on which all its other merits (including that conscious moral purpose of which Mr.Besant speaks) helplessly and submissively depend. I f i t be not there they are a ll as nothing, and i f these be there, they own their effect to the success with which the author has produced the illusion of lif e . l
Besant was just as insistent that nothing in the novel must be in vented and therefore, in his way, equally a defender of realism. The commitment to realism had, in fact, been central in novel theory and practice for years. It played a large part in the ideas of George
E liot, and was the cause of the widespread valuation of Thackeray as a more serious novelist than Dickens.
Ideas about realism varied, however. . The uncompromising realism of Zola, professing to suppress the imagination, was the most extreme
1. Ib id . , p .510.
-33- form, but had l i t t l e direct influence in England. Both James and
Besant were aware that the pursuit of total objectivity was not the quality that led to great art, and both introduced a limiting factor which is found throughout Victorian criticism . In both cases i t was the imaginative vision of the author. The difference is that Besant, and most of his contemporaries, conceived of realism and imagination as separate features of a novel. The raw material was transformed by the imagination. Besant refers to the genius of the author in the act of selection, but James finds i t necessary to dispute this idea:
\ I t IS nob UncoiYlrtVon Ke.«tV an exJ-rao«-«A «n aCLSSuro-nce o F ' remark in regard to this matter of rearranging, which is often spoken of as i f i t were the last word of art. Mr. Besant seems to me in danger of fa llin g into the great error with his rather unguarded talk about "selection".'
Selection, in James's view, is not the process by which reality is organised in order to become art. I t is the process by which the artist tries to achieve the air of reality: 'Art is essentially sel ection, but it is a selection whose main care is to be typical, to 2 be inclusive.' The imagination, for James, is not an extra ingredient which strengthens and enriches the re a listic picture, but is fu lly involved in the act of trying to create something which possesses the semblance of re a lity:
There is one point at which the moral sense and the a rtis tic sense lie very near together; that is in the lig h t of the very obvious truth that the deepest quality of a work of art w ill always be the quality of the mind of the producer. In proportion as that mind is rich and noble w ill the novel, the picture, the statue partake of the substance of beauty and truth. To be constituted of such elements is , to my vision, to have purpose enough. No good novel w ill ever proceed from a superficial mind; that seems to me an axiom which, for the a rtis t in fic tio n , will coverall needful moral ground...3
1. Ibid ., p.515. 2. Ib id ., p.515. 3. Ib id ., p.520. James does not argue that a fine mind w ill necessarily produce a fine novel 5 as the mind must be directed towards producing an object which will generally strike its readers as true: 'Catching the very note and tric k , the strange irregular rhythm of lif e , that is the attempt whose strenuous force keeps Fiction upon her feet.'^
The whole of the author's mind, all of his imagination, must be directed towards this end. James has adopted the twin poles of novel theory - realism and imagination - but produces a synthetic argument for their interdependence:
A novel is a livin g thing, all one and continuous, like any other organism, and in proportion as it lives will i t be found, that in each ofthe parts there is something of each of the other parts.2
The growth of romance in the 'eighties is an illu s tra tio n of how most 3 c ritic s conceived of realism and imagination as separate entities.
Those who wrote romance, and those who appreciated i t , believed that the imagination could flourish in isolation, rather.than, as James proposes, i t being a part of the whole process of trying to create an air of reality.
The gap between James and his contemporaries is also seen in their respective attitudes to the question of morality in fic tio n . In
Besant's aesthetic the novelist determined his moral purpose before he began to write the novel. In effect, heisolated his moral imagination and used i t as and when he wanted.Most critic s were as insistent as James that fic tio n must be dramatic and non-didactic, but, like
Besant, they often presupposed a moral purpose. Consequently, they
1. Ib id . , p.515. 2. Tbi"d"., p.511 3. The growth of romance is discussed in chapter three
-35- could only praise the manner in which the novelist assimilated his purpose into apparently self-sufficient art. The lim it of most criticism was a recognition that the artistic process could lead to insights that were more complex than the original premise. James's position is that the imaginative e ffo rt of trying to render the whole picture, so that i t strikes the reader as comprehensive and convincing, is an effort which carries all necessary moral implic ations. The morality that emerges is a reflection of the total quality of the author's mind and art. Unfortunately, this concluding section of James's essay is its one somewhat weak part. He becomes aggressive, and it can appear that he is only interested in attacking the moral tim idity of the English novel; a tim idity connected with not presenting the whole truth. The attack on the English tradition almost obscures his constructive point that 'The essence of moral energy is to survey the whole field...James's essay is an argument for using the imagination to achieve the fu lle s t possible vision.
The essay achieves three ends. F irs tly , i t removes much of the dead wood from novel-theory by challenging that obsession with petty restrictions that had developed in the wake of certain changes in the style and content of many novels. Secondly, i t reasserts the most important qualities of the form, realism and imagination, and, th ird ly , i t redefines the relationship between them. Besant assured that reality was neutral, and that creating the illusion of reality was a basic matter; this is clear in his assertion that the 'characters 2 must be real, and such as might be met in actual lif e . ' James argues.
1. Ibid., p.519. 2. Besant, op.c i t . , p.15.
-36- almost in contradiction, that 'to "render" the simplest surface, to produce the most momentary illu sio n , is a very complicated business.'^ The point is that reality is not a matter for easy assu mptions, but complicated, and inseparable from the author's vision of it . At the heart of Besant's aesthetic v/as the idea that there was a sense of the real world, and what was important in i t , on which most men would agree, and that this permitted a moral commen tary which would also meet with general agreement. James's essay reduces the art of the novelist to the one principle of trying to create the a ir of re a lity but elevates this as the most complex and demanding principle. I t calls on all the resources of the author's visual, intellectual, aesthetic, and moral imagination.
The essay makes the task of writing novels d iffic u lt, as the author w ill be aware of the incompleteness of his own vision, yet w ill be aiming for something which should strike his readers as the total truth. James confronts the problem in his own novels. The most obvious consequence is that he narrows the area of life presented, aiming for depth, rather than breadth, of vision. The second conseq uence also follows from his awareness of the f a llib ilit y of the in dividual in trying to present anything which could be fe lt to approx imate the re a lity. James promotes the fa llib le vision into a principle of organisation in his novels by developing the use of a central con sciousness. The novels are thus constructed from points-of-view that are admitted to be incomplete, but the inadequacy of a protagonist does not matter, whereas an inadequate authorial voice would be a weakness.
1. James, op.c i t . , p.511.
-37- This is to outline James's method in its extreme form - his novels are, of course, more varied and more of a compromise than this. In particular, we never lose sight of James's own moral sense, even his moral purpose, but it is implicit rather than explicit in his works. They clearly represent a break with the certainties of an earlier tradition, and the change is in part due to his insight into the complexities of apparently simple questions of presentation in fictio n .
James's essay is the most b rillia n t and far-reaching theoret ical statement of the decade, but i t is this o rig in a lity that makes i t wrong to use his conclusions as a standard by which to judge other criticism in the 'eighties. James's essay is the fir s t expression of a modern awareness of an absence of shared values. Other c ritic s in the 'eighties were by no means naive in believing that the capturing of the real world in a novel was an elementary matter. They were only expressing a Victorian confidence in the existence of certain indis putable facts. Most c ritic s favoured ambitious social novels, and such works could not be written unless assumptions could be made about a mutually agreed re a lity. The question of the author's moral purpose was always nearer the surface in such works, and, in addition, there were moral values that the author could assume his readers would share. Like Besant, most c ritic s were quite happy to accept story, realism, and morality as stable terms with a fixed meaning.
But fic tio n its e lf had already begun to change. The dissatis faction in theoretical comments was provoked by the fact that an increasing number of novelists no longer presented a picture of the world with which the c ritic s were fam iliar, and, moreover, no longer seemed to be endorsing mutually-agreed moral values. Taking James's
- 38 - novels as an example - to the critics of the day i t seemed an
impoverishment of the novel i f i t was going to become confined to
the exhaustive exploration of a few personal relationships. The
tensions of criticism in the 'eighties were produced by critics
having to meet the challenge of novels which did not reproduce a
world which they could recognise as their "real" world.
Theoretical statements by James's contemporaries, however,
give no impression of c ritic s meeting this challenge, because the
theoretical essay permitted a retreat into conformity, prejudice, and
opinion. There is some substance in Besant's essay, but the most obvious feature of the piece is its crudity as a piece of thinking.
This was a general characteristic of such essays. Dissatisfaction with innovations led to an exaggerated, and at times absurd, emphasis on plot. The "old-fashioned" novel was lauded, but emerged from such essays as a ludicrously simple achievement, while everything new was dismissed as worthless. Ordinary novel-reviewing, on the other hand, often led to a more positive encounter with new ideas. In weekly reviewing c ritic s had to admit the weaknesses of novels written along traditional lines, whereas in a theoretical statement they could praise the established methods without examples contradicting such certainty.
Ordinary reviewing also obliged c ritic s to acknowledge undeniable qualities in works which, in theory, they might g lib ly dismiss as un satisfactory. Reading a specific novel also committed a c r itic to the e ffo rt of trying to understand the author's intention, whereas a broad theoretical statement enabled him to lump a ll modern authors together as misguided innovators. Turning to discussions of three of the most popular novelists of the decade - James Payn, Mrs.Oliphant, and
George Meredith - one immediately encounters a whole range of attitudes, and a whole level of discrimination, of which the material examined so far would give no clue. -39- 4. CRITICAL REACTIONS TO THE NOVELS OF JAMES PAYN
James Payn published ever a hundred works during his lifetim e of which more than sixty were novels. From 1883 to 1896 he was also editor of The C ornhill. Everything that need be said about his work had been expressed by Leslie Stephen as early as 1899:
To Payn, i t may be said, novel-writing meant simply straightforward story-telling; he had no wish to propound religious or social or psychological theories, or to embody a philosophical conception of human life . He never, like his master Dickens, wrote attacks upon p o litica l abuses or aimed at emphasising a particular moral. Ho was, as he had been in his early boyhood, a Scheherazade, and took, I may perhaps say, the same view of his art as the author of Trois Mousquetaires. 1
His method was to ta lly mechanical, leading Stephen to comment:
A writer who was liable to fits of lofty inspiration might perhaps be trammelled by so methodical a pro cedure. For Payn's purpose - the clearest possible development of an ingenious situation - i t answered, I think very w e ll... a thoroughly clear, bright narrative written with unflagging s p i r i t . 2
A fa irly indulgent verdict was given on Payn who, by the end of the century, was realised to have l i t t l e connection with the serious history of the novel:
Perhaps to enjoy Payn thoroughly one should be thor oughly "unsophisticated", dislike vice and villains, be indifferent to pessimistic philosophising and aesthetic refinement, and have a certain regard for morality and decency. But, given these conditions, none of his hundred volumes w ill fa il to be good reading.3
His vast body of work is now deservedly unread, and he has never been the subject of any critical or biographical study. Unlike some
1. Introduction to Payn's The Backwater of L ife , 1899, pp. xxxii-xxxiii. 2. Ibid., p.xxxiV. 3. Ib id . , p.XXXV.
-40- mediocre novelists, there is not even one novel of recognisable value which might give him some small claim to fame. Yet, in 1884,
Walter Besant could include him in his lis t of the outstanding
English novelists then w riting:
Ought we not to be fu ll of hope for the future, when such women as Mrs.Oliphant and Mrs.Thackeray Ritchie write for us - when such men as Meredith, Black.more, Black, Payn, Wilkie Collins, and Hardy are s t ill at their best, and such men as Louis Stevenson, Christie Murray, Clark Russell, and Herman Merivale iiave ju st begun?*
The judgement of individuals can, of course, be mistaken, as the eclipse of most of the names in Besant's lis t suggests, but Payn found fa irly widespread praise for his novels.
In 1880 C.A. Cook referred to him as 'one of the few novelists who improve. It is only recently that he has come into the front 2 rank, and success has not made him careless.' The Saturday Review was consistently enthusiastic, commenting on Kit (1883) that, 'The 3 interest is unflagging, the manner brilliant...' A Spectator reviewer in 1886 wrote in more measured terms:
Mr.Payn contrives to keep up the quality of the great amount of lite ra ry work which he produces with a quite surprising success... it is as readable as any of its predecessors. 4
In 1890 The Athenaeum was s t ill fa irly generous: 'Mr. Payn's story 5 flows with ease, and w ill not detract from his veteran reputation.'
1. 'The Art of F ictio n ', 1884, p.34. 2. 'Novels of the Week', The Athenaeum, No.2772 (December 11,1880), p.775. 3. 'Kit' , The Saturday Review, LV (January 20, 1883), p.87. 4. 'Current Literature', The~Spectator, LIX (July 24, 1886), p.999. 5. 'Novels of the Week', The Athenaeum, No.2772 (December 11, 1880), p.775.
-41 - This indulgence to Payn was undercut, however, by a sharp awareness in the details of the reviews of just how limited his methods were.
In C.A.Cook's comments, in particular, there was a sense that the novels were only ju st adequate to the task of maintaining interest.
A comment in his 1880 review of A Confidential Agent revealed that he was applying only the standards associated with criticism of detective novels: 'A Confidential Agent is a well-contrived story, 1 full of incident, and sufficiently intricate to mystify the reader,'
He applied a standard of evaluation that he would have been unlikely to apply when dealing with more substantial novels:
One reads A Confidential Agent with something of the same sort of pleasure as one feels in meeting an agreeable person in society. Mr.Payn does not put his book into circulation to instruct or to attack, but to amuse and be pleasing to his readers; and he certainly possesses the art, which is as necessary in novel-writing as Lord Beaconsfield has just said i t is in conversation, of clothing grave matters in a motley garb. 2
Cook's reviews of Payn's novels always had two contrasting aspects. On the one hand, he was consistently attracted by the traditional virtue of a good story. The other side of his response was that, as the decade progressed, he became increasingly irrita te d by the repetitive gestures of the novels, and more aware of their inadequacy as fic tio n . Payn's limited characterisation ceased to be merely a feature of the novels that had to be recorded, and became a positive disadvantage. In 1881 he stated the position as i f re cording an objective fact: 'Mr.Payn does not in general rely much upon the delineation of individual character, but his people have at 3 least the aspect of reality, and are sufficiently contrasted.'
1. 'Novels of the Week', The Athenaeum, No.2772 (December 11, 1880),p.775 2. Ib id . , p.775. 3.. 'Novels of the Week', The Athenaeum, No.2793 (May 7, 1881), p.622.
-42- By 1883 he fe lt that Payn must probe deeper into human character, i f he was to carry more weight as a novelist;
The character of Kit, an "affectionate scoundrel", is thoroughly worked out, but the other persons of the story are of no great interest, and only suggest to the reader the hope that Mr.Payn in his next book w ill have dived deeper into his great store of knowledge of human nature.*
By 1886 Cook was sceptical of the whole emphasis of Payn's optimism, as i f admitting that such lig h t entertainment was too limited an object for the novel. Implying disapproval, he said of The Heir of
Ages (1886):
Mr.Payn has always taken a cheerful view of life , but in The Heir of Ages he surpasses himself. Even in the most enthusiastic novels by the youngest writers the 2 romance of litera ture has never appeared more alluring.
Thus, when repeatedly confronted by novels which offered nothing more than a story, and claimed to be nothing more than entertainment, at least one c r itic insisted that more was expected from fictio n .
The reviews in The Spectator also show that plot alone was not considered a sufficie n t basis for the novel. In 1880 one of their critics wrote that ingenuity was 'not the loftiest aim of a novelist...'
A review the following year maintained that well-developed charac terisation was of more importance:
With his mind fu ll of his plot, he does not always take the trouble to study human nature very closely, and depict that development of character in the constantly-changing circumstances of life which is essential to the production of a thoroughly satisfactory novel, and without which there is likely to be more or less sense of jerkiness and incoherence.4
1. 'Novels of the Week', The Athenaeum, No.2883 (Jan.27, 1883), p.119. 2. 'Novels of the Week', The Athenaeum, No.3059 (June 12, 1886), p.775. 3. 'Mr.Payn's New Novel', The Spectator, L III (November 13, 1880), p.1450, 4. 'Miss Dillwyn, 'From E x ile ', The Spectator, LIV (June 4, 1881), p.736.
-43- It is noticeable in reviews such as this that life and reality
become the standard expectation, and that plot shrinks into
relative insignificance. Even in the trivial task of reviewing
Payn's novels a more exacting c ritic a l code is displayed than in
most theoretical statements from the period. Another review
complained that Payn was superficial;
we find in Mr.Payn's novels very l i t t l e analysis of character, and not much description of a minute and detailed kind. Without tiresome sameness, he makes his people in sim ilar spheres and sets pretty much alike, as in real life they would be, on a superficial -, view, and he produces his effects by means of incident.
Kenneth Graham, in his work on Victorian c ritic a l attitudes, writes that the interest of the 'sixties and 'seventies in character was abruptly reversed in the 'eighties:
As part of the reaction against analysis in the eighties, came a resurgence of interest in "plot" and "incident"... Reviewers everywhere seized on any evidence of plot- contrivance or "strong situations" in a novel to hold i t up as an example of heroic resistance to the foreign invasion.2
This was true of general accounts of the novel, but when one departs from such statements for actual reviews i t becomes obvious that novelists such as Payn revealed the inadequacies of this method when i t was pursued to the virtual exclusion of a ll else. His work was far too light-weight to defend as a viable alternative to the trend of recent fic tio n . Mrs.Oliphant, on the other hand, displayed many of the qualities that all critics, not only the most undemanding, sought in literature.
1. Mrs.J.Cashel Hoey, 'Mr.Payn's Latest Novel', The Spectator, LVI (Jan.27, 1883), p.119. 2. Kenneth Graham, English Criticism of the Novel, 1865-1900, 1965, pp. 107-109. Hereafter cited as Graham.
-44- 5. THE POPULARITY OF MRS. OLIPHANT'S NOVELS
Mrs. Oliphant's reputation had been established in the 1860s
with her sequence of novels The Chronicles of Carlingford (1863-1866).
In the 'eighties she was s t ill a formidable lite ra ry figure pub
lishing over twenty-five works of fictio n during the decade, as well
as critical, biographical, and historical works. In addition, her
views on current litera ture appeared in Blackwood's Edinburgh
Magazine. The reviews of imaginative literature in its feature 'The
Old Saloon' were exclusively in her hands and, although the articles
were anonymous, the secret of their authorship was apparently common
knowledge. Being such a p ro lific writer i t was naturally often
suggested in criticism that i f she would only take her time over her
novels they might achieve the greatness of which they held so much
promise. An a rtic le in Blackwood's Magazine made this point:
Had Mrs.Oliphant concentrated her powers, what might she not have done? We might have had another Charlotte Bronte or another George E liot, with something added which neither of them has quite attained, - the,soft gracious and winning charm of mature and happy womanhood.2
However, Mrs. Oliphant did not concentrate her powers, and never
reproduced the success of the minor classic Miss Marjoribanks (1866).
But, as Mrs. Leavis writes, the qualities found in Miss Marjoribanks did not entirely disappear from her work:
That this novel is, in its consistent ironic comedy, probably unique in Mrs.Oliphant's oeuvre ... does not mean that she hasn't a continuous ""Miss Marjoribanks" vein running through most of her work... fMiss Marjoribanks] brings to bear on Victorial provincial-town and county society the same acute and unsentimental c ritic a l mind that had produced Emma in the Regency period...3
1. 'Much against my w ill these Old Saloon articles have got associated with my name in the public mind. I was anxious i t should not be so, but i t is.' Written June 1887, and quoted in V. and R.A.Colby, The Equivocal Virtue, New York, 1966, p.165. 2. John Skelton, 'A L ittle Chat about Mrs.Oliphant', Blackwood's Magazine, CXXXII (1883), p.80. 3. Introduction by Q.D.Leavis to Miss Marjoribanks (1866), 1969, pp.1-2. -45- I t is perfectly true that her novels are sharper, and more acute
in observation, than much of the popular fic tio n of the 'eighties.
Speed of production did affect the quality of her work, leading
to factual inconsistencies and unrevised inelegancies of expression,
but she was always commended, and often received lavish praise. Her
name was always included in any lis t of the better novelists of the
day, although most c ritic s took a balanced view of her achievement.
Col Iyer commented on one of her novels:
I t is not a work of genius, such as the public would buy at any price; it is an excellent representative of the better class of current fiction, such as most intelligent people ask for at the circulating library...'
Miss Dillwyn in The Spectator made the same point:
Having once stated i t is from her pen, cela va sans dire that there will be something in it, and that it . w ill be pleasant, well written, and immeasurably superior to ninety-nine out of a hundred of the novels whose names make a brief appearance on the lists of the circulating libraries, and then vanish for ever, without the world being one pin the wiser or the worse. Her name on the title-page is a guarantee that the book will be free from faults of style, plot, and composition to which in fe rio r authors are lia b le ...2
I t often seemed impossible to talk about Mrs. Oliphant without at the same time mentioning the circulating libra ries. Yet not all c ritic s made the inference that her work only appeared valuable in i comparison to the mass of lib ra ry -fic tio n . Meredith Townsend found her novels a source of permanent enjoyment:
we belong to those few who place Mrs.Oliphant's stories on a separate shelf, who read them again and again with ever increasing pleasure, and who believe most sincerely that i f she did not economise her power so deliberately, i f she would ever consent to "waste the mercies" and throw her whole force into a single fable, a ll England -would recognise the presence among us of another novelist on the f ir s t class. Mrs.Oliphant has not done this y e t.3
1. 'Novels of the Week', The Athenaeum, No.2833 (Feb. 11, 1882), p.186. 2. 'Harry Joscelyn', The Spectator, LIV (May 28, 1881), pp.703-704. 3. 'Mrs,01iphant!s Last Novel', The Spectator, LV (Jan. 28, 1882),p.124.
- 46- He was most generous in his praise of The Wizard's Son (1884);
'Considered simply as a novel, i t is one of the very best that
Mrs.Oliphant has produced - or, in other words, one of the best novels in the language,'^ Although her work was generally admired , judgements from other c ritic s were seldom so enthusiastic. A representative comment came from William Wallace: 'Mrs.Oliphant has, especially by her extraordinary work of the last year or two, o taught her c ritic s to judge her by a very high standard.' I t is interesting to investigate this "high standard".
Her over-riding merit was fe lt to be her a b ility in handling character. I t would be possible to quote a favourable judgement on her characterisation from virtu a lly every review of her work in the
'eighties. Many reviewers highlighted this quality in their assessment of novels which, in other respects, they found fa irly ordinary. An
Athenaeum reviewer, Col Iyer, commented on I t Was a Lover and His Lass
(1883):
As a story i t does not amount to much; but the accuracy of the portraits and sketches - not only of-the leading characters, but of Katie and her rustic love r... is in the author's most finished s ty le . 3
In The Academy, William Wallace wrote of The Ladies Lindores (1883) that, while it
is one not of her best, but of her second-best novels, it by no means follows that it is not a fascinating story, or that i t does not contain character-sketches ^ as good in their way as anything she has published. 4
Theoretical statements from the period give no impression of this
1. 'The Wizard's Son', The Spectator, LVII (May 31, 1884), p.713. 2. 'New Novels', The Academy, XXIII (May 19, 1883), p.344. 3. 'Novels of the Week', The Athenaeum, No.2884 (February 3, 1883), p.143. 4. ‘ New Novels', The Academy, XXIII (May 19, 1883), p.344.
-47- appreciation of convincing characterisation, or of the extent to
which c ritic s became involved with the characters.
E.Purcell, for example, was deeply moved by Mrs,Oliphant's
insight and sympathy: 'How tenderly she deals with these poor, proud,
ignorant Scotch gentlewomen, with their strange delusions as to the world-wide fame of the Murrays of Murkley.'^ This was a basic c ritic a l
response: the feeling that real life had been transformed into art
by the sympathetic temperament of the author. With an author such
as Mrs.Oliphant direct intrusions and displays of tenderness were
often welcomed, but the emphasis could fa ll on the indirect revelation
of the author's personality through dramatic treatment. This is
evident in the response of William Wallace. His c ritic a l approach
is admirable, even i f he is far too generous to the novel under dis
cussion:
Nor has Mrs.Oliphant ever sounded more successfully the depths of feminine tragedy in common lif e than in her representation of Lady Caroline Torrance, with her sen sitive, poetical, unsatisfied and unsatisfactory character. We know of no more powerful passages in recent fic tio n than those in which this poor lady, released by a te rrib le accident from a man whose jealousy and brutal insolence have rendered her life a perpetual agony, reveals her "inward happiness" to her mother, and her horror lest her father should succeed a second time in spoiling her l i f e . 2
Wallace's emphasis fa lls on self-revelation by the character. It is not the method of assessing the novel which is at fa u lt but, when the praise is this extravagant, the insight into the personal and emotional values presented. The standard seems sentimental as Mrs.
Oliphant's presentation of the events has little of George Eliot's poise and reticence in dealing with "feminine tragedy in common life " .
Wallace seems far too ready to give a touching situation a tragic
1. 'New Novels', The Academy, XXIII (January 27, 1883), p.57. 2. 'New Novels', The Academy, XXIII (May 19, 1883), p.344.
-48- status, which the tone of the writing does not justify.
Yet, although Wallace over-rated the achievement, he was responding correctly to Mrs.Oliphant's intention, as her novels followed George Eliot's example in attempting to extend the reader's sympathies. When James Ashcroft Noi>l^ reviewed one of Mrs.
Oliphant's novels he was so conscious of the influence of George
Eliot that he even echoed her words in describing Mrs.Oliphant's achievement. He said that her work was:
characterised in a high degree by that higher and fine r effectiveness which is always present when imagination employs its e lf in the task of quickening -j our sympathy by enlarging the area of our apprehension. ’) ■ But the comparison with George Eliot was never taken too far. Despite his enthusiasm for the handling of one of the characters Wallace was well aware that The Ladies Lindores was far from being a great novel. Other critics were equally aware that Mrs.Oliphant's sense of values was never more than domestic.
They were aware of the fa m ilia rity of her themes, and the deliberate limitation of subject-matter (a limitation enforced by the limits of her understanding.) There was a general recognition that great art must, in some way, be more challenging and probing. However, quite rig h tly , this did not hinder the satisfaction to be derived from her novels. Her novels always give the impression of fam iliar situations and fam iliar characters treated with the sort of competence, even insight, which deserved some success. I t v/as William Wallace who perhaps best summed-up the feeling of many reviewers: 'In The Fugitives we have Mrs. Oliphant at her best, and than this there is nothing better in the "a ll round" comprehensively human sense in present day
1. 'Recent Novels', The Spectator, LXIII (July 27, 1889), p.115.
>-49“ • fic tio n .'^
There was some fault-finding in criticism but it was usually
of the gentlest nature. One obvious criticism was that her work
showed signs of being written at speed. Cook noted that, 'The signs
of hard work, which in a perfect novel should, of course, not be
noticeable, are the pages of incidental matter, which must have
been written to f i l l out the required space.' William Wallace
mentioned, 'pages which one feels ju stifie d in skipping because they 3 consist simply of so much sentence spinning.' There was some
criticism that her a b ility to handle a story was not on the same level
as her handling of character. Wallace complained when, 'The fatal
accident on which the plot turns is hurriedly and awkwardly introduced, 4 and no adequate explanation of its occurrence is given.'
As a whole, Mrs. Oliphant was accepted as a s k ilfu l popular
novelist whose themes were always enjoyable, and never offensive. Her
technical ability and her personality were fe lt to blend together
to make her novels a success. More often than not, 'Home life , with 5 all its constituent parts and relations...' was her subject, 'a
subject which Mrs. Oliphant well knows how to handle...'^ Her lim it
ations were accepted as her claims were never pretentious. The
Spectator, in 1880, fe lt that she was going over old ground, but
appreciated a balanced maturity in her work:
1. 'New Novels', The Academy, XXXVII (May 17, 1890), p.333. 2. 'Novels of the Week', The Athenaeum, No.2762 (October 2, 1880), p.432 3. 'New Novels', The Academy, XXIII (May 19, 1883), p.344. 4. Ibid., p. 5. 'Miss Dillwyn, 'Harry Joscelyn', The Spectator, LIV (May 28, 1881), p.704. 6. Ib id ., p.704.
-50“ Mrs. Oliphant has written so much, that she is almost too completely mistress of her a rt; we find in her none of the struggles and flashes, the whims and the fire , of tumultuous genius labouring to achieve expression. Her book is a calm and harmonious reflection, not a picture sque and impassioned creation. She writes from the fullness of experience, with the mastery of methods. She has no cause to plead, no wrongs to rig h t, no spite to g ra tify, but only a story to tell.'
There were few who dissented from such appreciative but well-
balanced assessments. One of the few disparaging comments appeared
in The Saturday Review. The a rticle dealt with George Meredith but
used William Black and Mrs. Oliphant as a context for the discussion
of his novels. The author claimed that, on the evidence of withdrawals
from Mudie's, 'Mr. William Black, we suppose, is easily f ir s t among
living novelists, Mrs. Oliphant is a good second, and Mr. George 2 Meredith is, we fear, nowhere.' He then made an assessment of the basis of Mrs. Oliphant's popularity which corresponds closely to a modern view of her later novels:
Mr. Black and Mrs. Oliphant give the booksellers and the public what they want; and the booksellers and the public give Mr.Black and Mrs. Oliphant what they want - solid pudding and sounding praise. Neither of them transcends the mental attitudes of the general reader. The ideas and feelings and the perception of the reading masses are the ir ideas and feelings and perceptions - neither worse nor better, neither higher nor lower. But they can give perfect a rtis tic expression to commonplace and ordinary conceptions... Popular literature is the interpretation ^ to the average intelligence of what the average in te ll igence sees and tries to think.3
Meredith was naturally contrasted as a novelist of o rig in a lity and true intellectual ability. In fact, Meredith makes an excellent
1. 'Mrs. Oliphant's New Novel', The Spectator, L III (October 16, 1880), p.1317. 2. 'Mr.George Meredith's Novels', The Saturday Review, LXII (July 24, 1886), p.116. 3. Ib id ., p.116.
-51 - starting-point to see what c ritic s expected from more ambitious fiction. Surprisingly, criticism of his noveU, was the fullest, the most admirable, and the most appreciative of any produced in the 'eighties. The distance between theoretical essays and actual criticism is made even more apparent in discussions of his works.
6. THE REPUTATION OF MEREDITH.
The year 1859 saw the publication of George E lio t's Adam Bede and George Meredith's The Ordeal of Richard Feverel. Although both novelists had made such an impressive start i t was Eliot who went on to be accepted as the great novelist of the day. For nearly twenty years Meredith suffered as a w riter while 'he tried to reconcile his a rtis tic purpose with the demands of the reading p u b lic...'^ However, with the approach of the 'eighties he began to win c ritic a l, i f not public, favour. As loan Williams points out: 'From 1875 to 1885
TO there was a dramatic improvement in his po sitio n .’ This trend in criticism had an enviable culmination:
From 1885 to the end of the century his position was established as the leading English w rite r... When he died the once-neglected novelist was generally con sidered to have been the last of the giants, a great teacher, a writer or heroic merits and heroic defeats, whose death marked the end of an epoch.^
A sceptical view can be taken of this enthronement. After E lio t's death c ritic s had to play the game of choosing a successor, and
Meredith offered himself as the most suitable candidate by virtue of his seniority and his great display of being an intellectual novelist.
There is some evidence to support this theory:
1. loan Williams, Meredith: The Critical Heritage, 1971, p.l. 2. Ibid., p.l. 3. Ib id ., p.2. ,
“ 52“ a story was current that five young men met and resolved that Meredith should be boomed: "These were Grant Allen, and Saintsbury, and Minto, and Henley, and another unnamed. The result of the gathering was that Meredith was boomedJ
The real reasons for his belated fame are, of course, less super
fic ia l. , One factor is so elementary that i t is often overlooked.
It was not until 1879 that he published his best novel. The Egoist,
and c ritic s rarely ignored a work of indisputable genius.
But Meredith is not an easy novelist, not even an easy one
to read. His works are rich in metaphor, epigram, mythological
allusions, and e llip tic a l sentences which, enjoyable as they are when
studied at leisure, hamper easy access to the novels. Meredith not only departs from the usual functional prose of many novels, but his whole method seems organised around delaying the story. He is
intrusive on a scale unparalleled by any other Victorian novelist.
His characterisation is also unusual: his people are often represen tative types, and especially in the case of Sir Willoughby Patterne there is an a rtificia lity which is consistent with his symbolic name. The basic elements of Meredith's novels thus seem to be far removed from the directness and c la rity that c ritic s appreciated in Mrs. Oliphant's novels. He appears to satisfy neither Victorian demands of the novel, nor post-Jamesian demands. Yet Meredith had an indisputable attraction and importance for many of his firs t reviewers.
Even in the 'eighties, however, appreciation of his achievement was far from universal. His novels were not popular with the public, and were disliked by some c ritic s . Mrs. Oliphant was among those who were irrita te d by his art. She acknowledgedthe ambitious scope of
The Egoist: ' I t is a book which sets out with very high pretensions.
1. Ibid. , p.8. loan Williams is quoting from W.Robertson N icoll, A Bookman's Letters, 1913, p.6 -53- and claims to represent to us the leading qualities of the human race in an exceptionally clear and animated way.'^ However, the novel failed to impress her, as she made clear early in her review:
'The f ir s t volume is fine, the second tedious, the third beyond all 2 expression wearisome.' The story was judged inadequate to f i l l three volumes and the conversations by which i t is prolonged were fe lt to be excessive and false:
to te ll us of an art which "condenses whole sections into a sentence", and volumes in a character, and afterwards to serve up this slender story in about a thousand pages of long-winded talk, is the most curious and barefaced contradiction. We do not think we ever found ourselves astray in such a tangle of conversation in a ll our experience: true, the action of a comedy is /, conducted by conversation, but not, ye gods! in
As well as this failure to develop the narrative directly and econ omically there was fe lt to be a weakness in the presentation of character. Sir Willoughby Patterne made something of an impression on Mrs. Oliphant, but the force was fe lt to be destroyed by its long-winded development:
We cannot but allow that the entire self-absorption of Sir Willoughby Patterne has a certain sublimity in it . If there was but half of it, and still better if there was but a third part, i t would be powerful. A man who is his own law, and who never deviates from one mag nificent principle of self-reference, can scarcely be < without a certain force.4
The point that emerges is that Mrs. Oliphant has grasped Meredith's intention but is alienated by the methods by which the idea is
1. 'New Novels', Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, CXXVIII (1880),p.401. 2. Ib id ., p.402. 3. Ibid., p.402. 4. Ib id ., pp.402-403.
- 54- developed. In a magnificent conclusion to her review she condemned him for being so eternally present, and for not trusting to dram atisation alone:
i t is hard to have to repeat to a w riter of such rep utation as Mr.Meredith, and one who is the favourite of the clever, the pet of the superior classes, goute above a ll by those who confer fame - what i t is so common to say to all the poor little novelists (chiefly ■female) who are rated in the newspapers about the devices to which they are driven to furnish forth their third volume - but unpleasant as the duty is , we must f u lf il i t . Had the author of The Egoist been superior, as he ought to be, to that tra d itio n , his book would have been in fin ite ly better. Had he confined i t to one volume, i t might have been a remarkable work. As i t is , i t w ill do no more than hang in that limbo to which the praise of a coterie, unsupported by the world, consigns the ablest w riter when he chooses to put forth such a windy and pretentious ass ertion of superiority to nature and exclusive knowledge of art. Weakness may be pardonable, but weakness combined with pretension is beyond all pity. Mr.Meredith's fault, however, is perhaps less weakness than perversity and self-opinion. , He likes, i t is evident, to hear his own voice - as indeed, for that matter, most of us do. I f "the water were roasted out of him", according to the formula of the great humorist whom he quotes in his prelude, there might be found to exist a certain solid germ of life and genius; but so long as he chooses to deluge this in a weak, washy, everlasting flood of ta lk, which i t is evident he supposes to be b r illia n t, and quaint, and fu ll of expression, but which, in re a lity , is only cranky, obscure, and hieroglyphical, he w ill do that genius nothing but injustice.!
Only Henry James was as harsh in his judgement of Meredith.
Moreover, there is a direct link between Mrs. Oliphant's idea of naturalness in the novel and James's thinking on the same idea.
Although she was more indulgent to the conscious intention of the author, both expected se lf-su fficie n t dramatisation. Both were opposed to the novel being, merely a display of the author's personality in which the events were not to ta lly dramatised. Consequently, the grounds on which they disliked Meredith's novels were almost identical.
James's view of Meredith was so hostile that i t is hardly surprising that he did not comment on his fellow author in published criticism .
1. Ibid., p.404. -55- The principal source of information is Edith Wharton's memoirs.
She describes a furious outbreak from James that occurred during
a discussion of Meredith:
Words - words - poetic imagery, metaphors, epigrams, descriptive passages: How much did any of them weigh in the baggage of the authentic novelist? (By this time he was on his feet, swaying agitatedly to and fro before the fir e .) Meredith, he continued, was a sentimental rhetorician, whose natural indolence or congenital insufficiency, or both, made him, in life as in his art, shirk every climax, dodge around i t , and veil its absence in a fog of eloquence.'
In his letters he was moved to 'a 'c ritic a l rage, an a rtis tic fu r y ...'^
when confronted by the difficulties of Meredith's style, and by what
he fe lt to be the banality of his theme:
not a d iffic u lty met, not a figure presented, not a scene constitufed- not a dim shadow condensing once either into audible or into visible reality - making you hear for an instant the tap of its feet on the earth. Of course there are pretty things, but for what they are come so much too dear, and so many of the profundities and tortuosities prove when threshed out to be only pretentious statements of the very simplest propositions.3
The ascent of Meredith appears to satisfy nobody's expectations
of the novel. There is neither straightforward characterisation
and narrative developing a preconceived intention, nor is the material
used to discover an idea as Meredith is always present, organising
the significance in the most blatant manner.
Yet Meredith's failings as a novelist were clearly recognised
even by those who celebrated his achievement. His characterisation
in The Egoist is unusual, and most c ritic s recognised that i t was
inconsistent with normal expectations from fic tio n . For Richard Holt
Hutton i t was a major fa ilin g that Meredith had not created living characters:
1. Edith Wharton, A Backward Glance, New York, 1934, p.232. 2. Percy Lubbock (Editor), The Letters of Henry James, I, 1920, p.224. 3. Ibid. . p.225. James was commenting on Lord Ormont and his Aminta -56- The tra its are a ll there, but not the distin ct persons; to make adaptation of one of Mr,Meredith's own sayings, he describes his characters admirably, piecemeal; when it comes to the putting of them together, he does it coldly. After closing the book, we feel,in the retrospect, that the style is the most memorable thing about it.*
The Saturday Review referred to the characters as puppets, commenting
that, 'The Author's handling of his puppets ismost dexterous...'^
James Thomson saw Patterne as a type, even though he became 'one of
the most thoroughly studied and exhibited types in the whole range of 3 lite ra tu re .' Henley, consistently the best reviewer of Meredith's
novels (and the most p ro lific , reviewing The Egoist for The Athenaeum,
The Pall Mall Gazette, and The Academy), suggested that Patterne's
a r tific ia lity was consistent with the demand of comedy, but admitted
that this made him deficient as the central figure of a novel:
Sir Willoughby Patterne is a "document on humanity" of • the highest value; and to him who would know of egoism and the egoist the study of Sir Willoughby is indispen- able. There is something in him of us a ll. He is a compendium of the Personal in man; and i f in him the abstract Egoist have not taken on his final shape and become classic and typical, i t is not that Mr.Meredith has forgotten anything in his composition, but rather that there are certain defects of form, certain structural faults and weaknesses, which prevent one from accepting as conclusive the aspect of the mass of him.4
Meredith's development of the story was judged with equal severity.
Henley said of Meredith in general that, 'His stories are not often good stories and are seldom well to ld ...'^ The Saturday Review decided that The Egoist was 'purely a study of character; incident
= (1894), but i t seems legitimate to take his remarks as having a wider reference. 1. 'Mr.George Meredith's New Novel', The Spectator, LII (Nov.l, 1879), p .l384. 2. ' the Egoist' , The Saturday Review, XLVIII (Nov.15, 1879), p.607. 3. 'George Meredith's New Work', Cope's Tobacco Plant, II (Jan. 1880), p.431. 4. ' The Egoist' , The Athenaeum, No.2714 (November 1, 1879), p.555. 5. Ib id ., p.555.
-57- counts for very little in it.
There were also many reservations about Meredith's s ty le . Hutton commented th a t:
His thought moves in images, sometimes fe lic ito u s , but as often grotesque or obscure. An inability to fall into conventional modes of expression is characteristic of humourists, but then the unconventionality should throw fresh light upon the subject-matter, should explain it, not disorganise it merely ... Mr.Meredith is frequently captivating, but he does not know when to stop. We are compelled to question whether he is humorously affected, or only a ffe cte d ly humorous.%
The New Q uarterly Magazine was blunt: 'The objections to such a method of composition are obvious. It is perhaps enough to say that 3 it is apt to be unintelligible.' Henley wrote that, 'You cannot see what he would do fo r the sparks he beats out in the doing. He so riots in dazzling quip and quiddities as to be sometimes almost unintelligible and often antipathetic.'^ Only James Thomson accepted and appreciated every word of Meredith's style, making the common comparison w ith Browning:
the whole book is a precious extract,^distilled thought in d istille d words"; the studious reader has in Meredith, as in Browning, the delight - so rare in this age of in fin ite empty scribbling and interminable chronicling of the smallest of small beer - to find every sentence fu ll- charged, "every r ift loaded with ore", and with ore rich in m etal.5
^ The most damning indictment o f Meredith as a n o ve list came from Henley, who nevertheless remained one of the most ardent defen ders o f him as a w rite r. Henley was affronted by the fa ilin g which annoyed Mrs. Oliphant and James - the failure to suppress his intrusive personality:
1. 'The E g o is t', The Saturday Review XLVIII (November 15, 1879), p .607. 2. 'Mr.George Meredith's New Novel', The Spectator, LII (November I, 1879), p.1383. 3. ' The Egoist', The New Quarterly Magazine, N .S .Ill (1880), p .230. 4. 'Mr.Meredith's New Book', Pall Mall Gazette, XXX (November 3, 1879), p .10. 5. 'George Meredith's New Work', Cope's Tobacco P lant, I I (Jan. 1880), p .431. -58- Mr. Meredith's personality, in fine, has proved too irrepressible to allow him to consummate his effort by giving to it the fine finish he has taught us to expect in a work of perfect comic a rt; and though his matter is unexceptionable, he has not been able so to fuse and shape i t as to produce the e ffe c t he foresaw and intended. There is infinitely too much of state ment and reflection, of aphorism and analysis, of epigram and fantasy, o f humours germane and yet not called fo r; so th a t in the end the impression produced is not the impersonal impression that was to be desired, and the literary egoism of the author of S ir Willoughby Patterne appears to overshadow the amorous egoism of Sir Willoughby himself, and to become the predominating fact of the book.
There are two basic assumptions in th is passage. The f i r s t is th a t
it is quite acceptable for the novelist to have thoroughly planned
the intention of his work. The second is that the intention must
be assimilated into effective, and apparently self-contained, art.
Such a formula in the hands of a good c ritic , such as Henley, could
produce criticism of this incisive quality.
loan Williams suggests that the reason for the modern distaste
for Meredith is the preference for a certain mode of realization in
the novel :
his work c o n flic ts with what has been the dominant mode o f c ritic is m since the 1920s... comparison w ith George E liot... suggests that an important factor in his con tinued unpopularity in his refusal to provide a certain type of "felt" life or realized context of life . A « period which gives as much attentio n to Middlemarch and Anna Karenina as that recently past is likely to admire Meredith only after an effort of adjustment greater than most readers would wish to make.2
Yet the contemporary response shows that these q u a litie s o f f e lt
life and naturalness were demanded just as much in the 'eighties as
at any subsequent time. Mrs. Oliphant spoke fo r many readers when
she demanded a sort of verisimilitude that Meredith failed to supply.
1. ' The Egoist', The Athenaeum, No.2714 (November 1, 1879), p .556 2. Meredith, The C ritic a l Heritage, 1971, p .23.
-59- Even those critics who raised him to a pre-eminent position, and
made comparisons with Shakespeare, found extensive fa u lts w ith his
novels. The fa ilu re to tre a t the novel as something other than a
virtuoso performance continually annoyed his most enthusiastic
readers. Despite variations in critical standards the broadest
expectations from the novel have remained remarkably consistent. The
refusal to 'provide a certain type of "felt" life or realized
context o f l i f e , . . ' has always been regarded as a weakness. The
problem with Meredith is not why his reputation should have declined,
but v/hy he should ever have had any reputation at a ll.
His w it, his humour, his crowding ideas, and his qualities of
poetry and imagination must a ll be acknowledged. Yet such q u a litie s
w ill remain subsidiary to the main impact of any novel. The main
reason for the over-valuation of Meredith can only be found in his
intellectual and philosophical achievement, and his call for more
"brainstuff" in fiction. The familiar passages from the firs t chapter
o f Diana o f the Crossways must have appealed to many c r itic s :
The forecast may be hazarded, that if we do not speedily embrace philosophy in fiction, the Art is doomed to extinction, under the shining multitude of its professors. They are fast tapping the candle. Instead, therefore of objurgating the timid intrusions of philosophy, invoke < her presence, I pray you. History without her is the skeleton map of events: Fiction a picture of figures modelled on no skeleton anatomy. But each, w ith p h il osophy in a id , blooms, and is humanly shapely. To demand of us truth to nature, excluding philosophy, is really to bid a pumpkin caper.'
Meredith's argument offered a fa c ile way out o f the impassecr itic s
found themselves in w ith novels such as those o f Mrs. Oliphant. Her methods were fine^ but her conclusions and insights were too fam iliar to be the stuff of great fiction. Meredith's answer was the advocacy of a novel offering a deliberately philosophical view of life . Many
1. Diana o f the Crossways, 1885, I , p .27. -60- critics were so convinced of the importance of what Meredith had to say th a t they accepted his unprecedented assaults on the form o f the novel. There were even those who f e lt tha t what he had to say was of such moment that it could not be contained within the traditions of the form.
Yet, to a modern reader, the main characteristic of Meredith's thought seems to be its conventionality. The Victorian novel had a long tradition of exposing the limitations of egotism. The defeat of selfish desires, and the move towards a more responsible social sense, was a standard pattern in many Victorian novels. In minor novelists it became a repetitive formula. In one of Mrs. Oliphant's novels, for example, the situation is very familiar. He That Will
Not When He May (1880) te lls the story o f a young man, Paul Markham, who' rejects his family to follow a socialist leader. His behaviour is painful for his parents. Lord and Lady Markham, but in the course of time he realises that his actions have been self-indulgent and that his main responsibility is to the family, and to the up holding of the family name. The formula is elaborated by the intro duction of complications which prevent him from immediately acquiring his inheritance, and Mrs. Oliphant has shown her usual shrewdness by makfng the villain a socialist, but the standard pattern is un mistakable. In the great Victorian novels, however, one never feels that the pattern is overbearing. In Middlemarch, for example, we are always aware that Dorothea's education is not organised from a perspective of total confidence in the values of society, and that
George Eliot recognises the fact that a loss would be involved in
Dorothea conforming to the values of an imperfect society. The Egoist is an elaborate version of the simpler formula. It maintains the
Victorian view of the importance of suppressing individuality, and does not even attempt to create sympathy for the hero. In an almost Augustan manner Patterne is absurd because he is so s e lf- centred.
That the novel should have met with such acclaim suggests how desperately Meredith's contemporaries sought the kind of social argument it contained. Formally The Egoist departs radically from
Besant's requirements from fiction, but it asserts his moral values.
It maintains that there is an accepted standard of behaviour, and th a t there can be a generally agreed condemnation o f departures from his standard. The moral purpose o f The Egoist is one th a t could only re s u lt from a shared moral view, and c le a rly c r itic s f e lt th a t they could relate to this view. Fundamentally, it is a reactionary work, as it attempts to reassert a confidence that neither Dickens nor
George Eliot fe lt, and runs directly counter to the trend of fiction in the 'eighties. James, Hardy, and Gissing have little confidence in society, and offer a radically new emphasis on the individual, but Meredith's values are entirely social. The eccentricity of his style and method is the clearest testimony of how d iffic u lt it was to maintain his view; but the fact that critics allowed him such leeway on the question of the formal requirements of fiction suggests
i how his social confidence met a deep need.
In his Academy review Henley came out most p o s itiv e ly in favour of The Egoist. In his Athenaeum and Pall Mall Gazette reviews he had argued as a novel-critic, and had been forced to admit that The
Egoist had shortcomings, but in this review for The Academy, published three weeks later, he concentrated on the intellectual content of the novel. He maintained that the book contained so much truth that the normal requirements from fiction were an irrelevancy:
-62- Its personages are not human beings, but compendiums of humanity; th e ir language is not tha t o f l if e and society pure and simple, but that of life and society as seen and heard through the medium o f comedy; the atmosphere they breathe is as artifically rare as that of Orgon's parlour. To live with them you must leave the world behind, and content yourself with essences and abstractions instead of substances and concrete things; and you must forget that such vulgar methods as realism and naturalism ever were. Thus prepared, you w ill find The Egoist, as far as its i:i matter is concerned, a veritable guideto self-knowledge and a treatise on the species of wonderful value and comprehensiveness.!
In th is case Henley went fu rth e r than any other c r it ic in try in g to argue that the vision achieved was a consequence of the form adopted, although he could never eliminate his awareness that a certain amount o f a r tis tic loss was the consequence o f such an individual method.
But the nature of Meredith's vision was so valuable to Henley that he fe lt justified in making this sort of attempt to modify aesthetic values.
Most other reviewers did not make the same effort to connect the form and content of the novel. Their enthusiasm was almost exclus ively for the content, and often for the content which had to be unearthed from beneath the encrusted style. Nearly every virtue recorded was commended as if i t came through despite the deficiencies of the form. This aspect of the reviews was particularly evident in the response to Meredith's use of analysis and intrusion. No reviewer criticised the content of the commentary and analysis, and indeed many singled it out for special praise, but its manner was consistently held to be in a r tis tic . Hutton, fo r example, commented th a t;
The analysis both of Sir Willoughby and of Clara Middleton is exhaustive and we feel that much of it is correct, but ■'it does not enable us once to catch a genuine glimpse of either of them.2
1. 'New Novels', The Academy, VI (November 22, 1879), p .369. 2. 'Mr.George Meredith's New Novel', The Spectator, LII (November 1, 1879), p.1384.
- 63- A frequent impression from the reviews is that an intelligence is being praised, which the novel has failed to assimilate, but which is fe lt to be particularly valuable in itse lf. The Saturday
Review insisted on the importance of what Meredith had to say: 'There must be no skipping; the book must be read, not page by page lik e the ordinary novel, but line by line.'^ Henley, above a ll, was quite open about the fact that its achievement in terms of content was fa r greater than its success as a novel (even though he wavered towards the belief that Meredith might have created a new form):
To me it is certainly one of the ablest books of modern years. It is full of passion and insight, of wit and force, o f tru th and eloquence and n a tu re ... A ll the same, I cannot but believe that its peculiarities of form are such as must stand inevitably in the way of its success. I cannot but believe that, with all its aston ishing m erits, i t w ill present it s e lf to its warmest ad- • mirers as a failure in art, as art has hitherto been under stood. . .2
The firs t book on Meredith was published in 1890 by Richard
Le Gallienne. At th is time he argued th a t the form o f the novel must change to include work in Meredith's mould. But in 1900 he added a postcript to the book in which he revised this judgement. 3 While he held 'Meredith's greatness to be even greater ...' than he had believed e a rlie r, he had come to 'see th a t i t is perhaps more « a philosopher's mind and less an artist's greatness than I could have been brought to admit at twenty-three.'^ Le Gallienne's revised emphasis was close to the real feeling about Meredith in the majority o f reviews. But to promote him to the position o f the great no ve list
1. 'The E g o ist', The Saturday Review, XLVIII (November 15, 1879),p .608. 2! 'New Novels', The Academy,VI (November 22, 1879), p .369. 3. George Meredith: Some C haracteristics, 1900, p .176. 4. ibid., p.I/61 ~
- 64- of the day when his lim itations were so obvious reveals how much the period needed the particular ideas he developed and defended in his novels. Diana o f the Crossways is a weaker book than The
Egoist but it confirmed his reputation.
The Pall Mall Gazette described him as towering 'head and shoulders above contemporary novelists, an intellectual giant...
Arthur Symons wrote of ' a man who for a quarter of a century has been producing a series of the most b rillia n t works, written in
English, since the death o f Thackeray . . . ' Conan Doyle f e lt that
Meredith's novels marked the dawn of a new era in literature:
It is a safe prophecy to say that for many generations to come his influence will be strongly fe lt in fiction. His works might be compared to one o f those vast inchoate pyramids, out of which new comers have found certain materials wherewith to build many a dainty little temple . or symmetrical p o rtico . To say that Stevenson was under the influence of Meredith is no more than to say that he wrote in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, and was familiar with the literature of his day.
All this praise for Meredith's intellectual power was in very general terms, however, and, although there was a great deal o f agreement with his vision, there was very little analysis of it. It is in the often unfavourable responses to other novelists th a t the a ttra c tio n of Meredith's cast of mind becomes really apparent. Compared to Hardy,
James, Gissing and Zola he offered an optimistic vision. The Egoist defended the value o f harmony, synthesis and compromise. I t took a stand against the emphasis on the individual which was becoming central in many novels and reasserted the standards of the wider community. Even Meredith's intrusions had their value as representing the voice o f confident moral judgement, a moral confidence which was
1. 'Diana of the Crossways', The Pall Mall Gazett^, XLI (March 28, 1885), p.4. 2. Reprinted from Time, N.S.I (1885), in Williams, Meredith: The , Critical Heritage, 1971, p.275. 3. 'Mr.Stevenson's Methods in Fiction', The National Review, XIV (1890), p .650. -65- beginning to disappear from fiction. Meredith seemed to give trad itional values renewed intellectual justification, and, although his many qualities as a writer cannot be denied, his reputation appears to have been almost completely dependent upon th is defence o f tra d itional values.
The response to Meredith begins to show how the questions being asked and answered in c ritic is m were complex. The issue o f tr a d it ional values and their viability in fiction was a serious one, and one on which reviewers exercised their minds in an often impressive way. This was not true of the theoretical essay which by its nature encouraged reactionary intolerance, but actual c ritic is m was a d iffe re n t matter. Confronted with the novels of James Payn critics were honest enough to admit that there was more to fiction than such simple issues as p lo t and adventure. Even Mrs. O liphant's novels, which endorsed traditional assumptions in a not unimpressive way, were too obviously repeating old truths. Meredith, though, had managed to find a highly personal and apparently original way of arguing a particular social view, but only at an artistic cost that critics had to acknowledge.
So, in reviews of such traditional-thinking novelists, critics did manage to display both their critical ability and integrity. i The most s ig n ific a n t fic tio n in the decade, however, was beginning to dissent from fam iliar moral and aesthetic patterns and, almost in evitably, criticism was to have a far more d ifficu lt time in coping with the newer novelists. Criticism was at its most fascinating in its attempts to cope with James and Hardy but, for a time, no literary movement seemed to co n stitu te such an extreme challenge to social and artistic assumptions as the new sort of realistic novel that came over from France during the decade.
- 66- CHAPTER TWO : REALISM - DEVELOPMENTS IN THE 'EIGHTIES
1. THE DOMESTIC REALISM OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL
Besant's belief that the 'characters must be real, and such
as might be met in actual life ,' was widely shared by the 'eighties
but, according to Richard Stang, this had not always been the case.
He describes a very different situation in the firs t half of the
century:
. The type of novel that Emma represented, one which draws its materials from “the current of ordinary life ", seemed to be only a minor current in the thirties and early forties, and if we can trust Harriet Martineau, it was extremely d ifficu lt to find a publisher for a . book like Deerbrook, which dealt with middle-class life in a realistic manner.. John Murray rejected it in 1838, she notes in her Autobiography, because the heroine came from Birmingham and the hero was a surgeon. "Youths and maidens looked for lords and ladies on every page of a new n o vel."2
Yet, from the 'fiftie s onwards, the novel does repeatedly deal with
contemporary life , and with unpretentious characters, in a framework
o f moderate p ro b a b ility . The range includes the novels o f George
E liot, Trollope's Chronicles of Barsetshire (1855-1867), and Mrs.
Oliphant's Chronicles of Carlingford (1863-1866). Obviously, society
novels, crime stories, and religious fiction were not displaced by
a wave of realism. The position was that the solid novel, which
explored in three volumes the problems o f the ind ivid ual and society,
existed quite happily alongside the more fanciful methods of Rhoda
Broughton, Oui da, and Wilkie Collins. Such novelists were popular with the public, but the critical preference was usually for the more
realistic novelists. It is necessary to restate this familiar view
of the development of the novel because modern critics who concentrate
1. Walter Besant, 'The A rt o f F ic tio n ', 1884, p . l5. 2. The Theory o f the Novel in England 1850-1870, New York, 1959, p .143,
■ T • ' ■ .. -6 7 - ' ■■ ' on the 'eighties tend to distort the nature of the impact of
French naturalism . French fic tio n c e rta in ly shocked English c r itic s , but some modern commentators exaggerate its influence. They ignore a tradition of serious realistic fiction in England, and give the impression that Zola and his countrymen raised more new ideas than is in fact the case. For Zola's English contemporaries the most influential aspect of his novels was also the most obvious - his original subject-matter.
Modern misrepresentation is apparent in the views of W.C.Frierson,
On one occasion he lis ts the contributions French realism has made to the English novel. He claims that it
created in England new standards o f c r itic a l judgement; i t focused a tte n tio n upon the moral and social framework of contemporary society; it stimulated interest in a critical examination of human nature and suggested a wide and fresh range of human experience as subject for investigation.!
This lis t is startling. It is equivalent to suggesting that French realism led to the b irth o f the serious novel in England, and prompts speculation as to Frierson's picture of the English novel before the 'e ig h tie s . In his book. The English Novel in Transition 1885-
1940, he finally makes it clear that before the influence of Zola 2 it consisted of heroes, villains, and fair maidens. Frierson's ignorance has its source in his belief that the alternative to French realism was English prudery. His argument is representative of how defenders o f French realism a ll too often become dismissive o f the achievement of the mid-Victorian novel. It is pointless to consider the impact of realistic fiction in the 'eighties without firs t
1. 'The English Controversy over Realism in F ictio n 1885-1895', P.M.L.A., XLIII (1928), p.440. 2. Oklahoma, 1942, p.4. 'Some novelists... and often with considerable in te re s t and charm, commented on events and personages, but th is was hardly necessary. The hero-villain, fa ir maiden arrangement made the author's views perfectly clear. Few important characters
- 68 - accepting that by 1880 realism was already one of the great strengths of the English novel.
The r e a lis tic novel, however, is a broad and imprecise concept.
Unlike the naturalistic novel, it cannot be limited by a definition, only recognised by a family likeness. One of the most enthusiastic celebrations o f the mode, by Raymond W illiams, best shows some of its traits. He emphasises that it maintains a balance between its interest in individuals and interest in society as a whole:
Within this realist tradition, there are of course wide variations o f degree o f success, but such a viewpoint, a particular apprehension of a relation between individuals and socie ty, may be seen as a mode. I t must be remembered that this viewpoint was itse lf the product of maturity; the history of the novel from the eighteenth century is e sse n tia lly an exploration towards th is p o sitio n , with many preliminary failures.!
Williams then attempts a closer definition of the sort of relationship between the individual and society achieved in the realistic novel:
In the highest realism, society is seen in fundamentally personal terms, and persons, through relationships, in fundamentally social terms. The integration is controlling, yet of course it is not to be achieved by an act of w ill. If it comes at a ll, it is a creative discovery, and can perhaps only be recorded w ith in the structure and substance of the realist novel.2
When the realistic novel is discussed in these creative terms the localised concept of realism which Frierson claims so much for is exposed as extremely limited. Yet the excessive concentration on Zola's assumed originality lingers on, and w ill often be at the heart of any book which deals with the period. George J. Becker's Documents of
Modern Literary Realism is a valuable reference book for charting
= were permitted any mixture of good and bad qualities'. 1. The Long Revolution, 1961, p .279. 2. Ib id ., p .287.
- 69- the European discussion of realism; yet Becker can only character
ise the English reaction in the 'eig hties as follo w s: 'The immediate
reaction of the English was to withdraw behind their own innocuous
■j brand of realism ...' The value of the established realism of the
English novel, obvious to Williams but apparently non-existent to
Frierson and Becker, is really beyond question. The central question
here is how aware were English critics of the nature of their own
tradition in the novel.
The critical preference was certainly for a realistic novel
but reviewers were quick to criticise a book when its moral content
was not obvious. In no way was realism fe lt to be incompatible with
moralising. At a simple level, realism could be appreciated because
it invested trivia l daily life with qualities of duty, honour, and
s e lf-s a c rific e . In responses to George E lio t i t can be seen tha t
recognition of human effort, even on the pettiest scale, amounted to
a positive message virtually akin to religious affirmation:
This, then, I take to be the keynote of George Eliot's art - to paint the lives of those she saw about her, to describe th e ir joys and sorrows, th e ir successes and failures, and by insisting on the deep importance of this world to teach us to hinder as little as possible the good which is burgeoning around us.^
Realism was always appreciated when it provided such evidence of the nobility of the ordinary man. It was demanded of the novelist that he should provide some such significant revelation of value that would transcend mere documentation. It was rare, for instance, for a c ritic to praise Trollope for managing to create some overall significance above and beyond the social picture. It was even rarer to rank him with the greatest novelists simply because he suggested something of the vita lity and variety of life . The obituary notice in The Saturday Review was exceptional:
1. Princeton, New Jersey, 1963, p .15. 2. Oscar Browning, 'The A rt o f George E lio t ', The F o rtn ig h tly -70- For the most part, as our readers well know, he dealt with the ordinary affairs of life and the ordinary conversations and interests of life , lending to them tha t glamour and a ttra c tio n which the most finished art can give. In this respect his novels may take their place in the very highest rank of novels with those o f Miss Austen, Miss F e rrie r and Thackeray.
Most other critics fe lt that Trollope did not manage to transcend his realism.
The c r itic a l desire to fin d lo ftin e ss o f purpose in ordinary life often meant that mediocre novelists received more than their due praise. Such novelists made th e ir canvas ju s t re a lis tic enough to substantiate a positive message, and reviewers were often deceived into over-estimating the quality of such novels. Henry Norman, a fa irly shrewd c ritic , was fooled by F.Marion Crawford's Mr.Isaacs
(1882). To the modern reader i t is obviously a coy romance, but
Norman was taken in by its veneer of naturalness:
The two d istin guish in g m erits, however, o f Mr.Isaacs, apart from its attractiveness as a story, are, firs t, the loftiness of its sentiment, and second, the natur alness of the action, in which there are no puerile mis understandings and no ingeniously contrived obstacles, but which moves on simply, logically, clearly to the end.2
W illiam Black was another n o velist who impressed many o f his con temporaries as an able exponent o f a necessary degree o f realism .
The Saturday Review was not only impressed by his novel Sabina Zembra
(1887) but possibly offered an in d ire c t c ritic is m o f French novelists in its praise of his delicate realism:
= Review,X L III (1888), p .545. 1. 'Mr.Anthony T ro llo p e ', The Saturday Review, LIV (Dec. 9, 1882), pp.755-756. 2. 'Theories and Practice of Modern Fiction', The Fortnightly Review, XXXIV (1883), p .879.
-71- Mr.Black is too faithful a chronicler of ordinary life to make his books either all bitterness or all froth and sugar. This novel is more, even than most o f his s to rie s , a homespun tissue o f lif e , such as we see i t a ll around us. The men and women are walking about in the streets, staring in shop windows in High Street, Kensington, anathematizing the nursemaids and th e ir perambulators, tra v e llin g in the Underground Railway, and scrambling for tickets for private views and firs t nights at the play.'
This realistic texture appealed to the reviewer, as did the story
of the moral decline of a gambler. Two qualities especially impre
ssed him. One was that, from Black's picture of the degradation
o f Fred Foster, the gambler, he could draw a moral about the danger
inherent in Foster starting life 'with no worse intentions than of o amusing himself and taking all the fun possible out of life .' The
other quality was Black's picture of Sabina Zembra which, by way
o f contrast, exemplified the presence o f nobler q u a litie s in l i f e ;
she was 'sweet, unselfish, kind and beautiful.'^ By no modern
standard would Black warrant inclusion in a discussion of realism, yet it is obvious that he had picked up sufficient mannerisms of
the mode to convince many of his contemporaries that his novels had
some substance.
This basic requirement of realism, as a solid base for the
drawing of pictures which reassured the reader of the essential
goodness o f most men, meant th a t any novel which was unconvincing was usually censured. As a rule the more triv ia l sensation novels were not reviewed in the leading periodicals, but when Andrew Lang
published The Mark o f Cain (1886) his reputation as a lite r a r y
1. 'Four Novels', The Saturday Review, L X III (A pril 23, 1887), p .588. 2. Ib id ., p .588. 3. Ib id ., p .588.
- 72- personality demanded that it be noticed. It is a ridiculous adventure
sto ry, and c r itic s condemned i t as such. The Athenaeum f e lt that
'the serious defect in his tale is the absence of reality or vita lity about any o f the personages who figu re in i t . '^ C riticism along these lines was also directed at proper novels. A review of Marrying and Giving in Marriage (1887), a novel by Mrs. Molesworth, contained a typical comment. After reflecting on the mechanical contrivances of the plot the
reviewer asks, not only himself, but all such writers as Mrs.Molesworth, why, seeing that they have already got so far in the Art of Fiction, they do not take the next step, which is that out of the conventional into the real.2
This is far from being a highly-principled demand for realistic art.
The reviewer is asking only for that possible pertinence about life which might be expected in a novel which takes marriage as its theme.
He is demanding only the presence of those qualities which made
Mrs.Oliphant so popular during the period - that is, a natural exam ination of the domestic situation, finding values in that setting which cannot be lig h tly dismissed.
This sort of domestic realism may seem p itifu lly small in scale, yet it is not very different from the conception of the novel developed by W.D.Howells. Howells shared the conviction that the novel could be used to show the basic decency o f mankind. I t was expressed in his writings with a democratic, rather than a religious, emphasis, but the same small message of man's nobility was equally at the centre. It can be seen in his description o f the ideal American novel:
1. 'Our Library Table', The Athenaeum, No.3054 (May 8, 1886), p.615. 2. 'Three Novels', The Saturday Review, LX III (A p r il.9, 1887),p .520.
-73- It wishes to know and to tell the truth, confident that consolation and delight are there; it does not care to paint the marvellous and the impossible for the vulgar many, or to sentimentalize and falsify the actual for the vulgar few. Men are more like than unlike one another: le t us make them know one another b e tte r, th a t they may be a ll humbled and strengthened with a sense of their fraternity.'
This is a moral approach to fic tio n fixed w ith in r ig id ly narrow lim its. Howells differed from his English contemporaries not in the moral lessons he drew from the novel but in his technical approach, his wish to play down narrative interest. The narrative sparseness o f his a rt was the ch a ra cte ristic which gave i t no appeal fo r
English critics. When he did introduce an incident critics scoffed at him for contradicting his own principles:
We are not sure that on his own announced principles Mr.Howells has not been guilty of base complaisance in introducing a carriage accident to help out the solution of the difficulty, instead of giving us about ten more chapters o f marivaudage which would undoubtedly have been the more excellent w ay.2
The approach o f reading into a re a lis tic novel lessons th a t flattered the common man did not die out with the Victorians and
Howells. It was also the cornerstone of the value that Arnold Bennett found in the realistic novel:
To take the common grey things which people know and despise, and, without tampering, to disclose their epic significance, their essential grandeur - that is realism, as distinguished from idealism or romanticism. It may scarcely be, it probably is not, the greatest art of a ll; but it is art, precious and indisputable.3
The demand th a t a rt must always possess some moral significance meant that there was no sympathy for a self-sufficient theory of
1. W.D.Howells, C riticism and F ic tio n , 1891, pp.187-188. 2. George Saintsbury, 'New Novels', the Academy,XXIX_(Aprili3i.1886), . P.233. , : r : V . .. 3. 'Mr. George Gissing, an Inquiry', The Academy,LVIII (Dec.16, 1899), p .725.
-74- realism. Every critic was quick to criticise a novel which was
f e lt to re ly too much on ju s t reproducing a documentary picture o f
society. At some indeterminate point it became apparent that some
no ve lists, although dependent on realism, were also f u l f i l l i n g the
more responsible task of supplying an interpretation. In the general
estimation Trollope proved inadequate in this respect. The excep
tional complimentary obituary, which praised Trollope for the sheer
life of his novels, has already been referred to, but a comment in
The Athenaeum was nearer the consensus view:
He was almost as unlike Thackeray as he was unlike Dickens; and if he often excelled both these novelists in the technicalities of plot-making, it was chiefly because he attempted nothing more than the piecing together from realities around him of such every-day incidents and easy-going movements as served his purpose of affording healthy amusement by good-natured sallies at the types and groups with which he was most fa m ilia r. I f he was unlike both Dickens and Thackeray, his a rt d iffe re d as completely from the romancing o f Bulwer as it did from the character-painting of George Eliot.^
The Spectator agreed with this view that Trollope’s ability did not go deeper than painting the manners of society:
That Mr.Trollope's name w ill live in English literature follows at once from the fact that his books are at once very agreeable to read, and contain a larger mass of evidence as to the character and aspects of English Society during Mr. Trollope's maturity than any other writer of his day has le ft behind him... On the other hand, it is clear that there was little or no disposition in Mr. Trollope to pierce much deeper than the social surface of life . It is not often that he takes us into the world of solitary feeling at a ll, and of the power of the positive influence of their religion over men, you would hardly gain more knowledge from Mr. T ro ll ope‘ s stories than from those of the old-fashioned regime, where religion was thought too sacred to be touched-on at all as a real part of human life.2
1. 'Anthony T ro llo p e ', The Athenaeum, No.2876 (Dec, 9, 1882), p .773. 2. 'Mr. Anthony T ro llo p e ', The Spectator. LV (Dec. 9, 1882), pp.1573-4
-75- It is apparent that novelists far inferior to Trollope often received greater praise because they invested their characters with admirable and exemplary q u a litie s .
Kenneth Graham expresses some surprise th a t 'a more detailed theory of outright realism did not arise.It is difficult to agree with him. The Victorian critic did not believe that the reproduction of reality was at all difficult. Trollope was fe lt to have opted fo r the easiest method o f w ritin g novels. As David Ski 1 ton says, in his book on the critical reaction to Trollope:
The "imaginative" a rtist is universally regarded as greater than the reproducer of reality, for the former alone is truly creative. To the mid-Victorian mind there is something too facile in the so-called rendering o f observed r e a lity .2 ^
What this actually meant in criticism was that reviewers were prepared to praise a very su p e rficia l realism when the moral purpose o f the a r tis t appealed to them.
If this was the full story of realism in the English novel before
Zola there would be some truth in Becker's derisive reference to the
'innocuous realism' of British fiction. But, although critics were often satisfied with a simple emphasis on human dignity, this did not preclude an awareness th a t the novel a t its best offered something greater. Such greatness, however, was not to be achieved by the novelist attempting to be more fully realistic. As W.E.Henley, and many others pointed out, extreme realis'm would reproduce only the chaotic flow of life , paying too much attention to things 'ugly and paltry and mean...'^ The novelist, they argued, had to shape reality.
1. Graham, p .27. 2. Anthony Trollope and his Contemporaries, 1972, p .123, 3. W.E.Henley, Views and Reviews, 1890, p .15.
“ 76- While the lesser w rite r would shape i t by a simple moral pattern,
the great a r tis t would shape i t by the whole impact o f his moral
imagination. Critics may have pointed to a simple message as the
essence of George Eliot's novels, but they were also aware that her
novels offered both a realistic picture and an amount of in te ll
ectual assessment unparalleled in any earlier novelist. The fullness
of her realism was complemented by, and justified by, the fullness
of her ability to shape it significantly.
Stang has done fu ll justice to how this concept of fiction dev
eloped in George Eliot's own hands. It is most apparent in her
integration of ideas into the novel. As Stang says:
these ideas must become "thoroughly incarnate", must be represented by "breathing individual forms" grouped "in the needful relations, so that the presentation w ill lay hold on the emotions as human experience - w ill ... flash conviction on the world by means o f aroused sympathy."!
This approach to fiction became so commonplace that, by the 'eighties,
it was restated in discussions of Zola with a great sense of its
obviousness. Critics often spoke as if there were no real dispute
to s e ttle :
It has lately become a fashion to speak of realism, so called, as if it were a recent discovery or invention, like the telephone or the electric light. Realism in literature and art has always existed, and, when un accompanied by the imaginative fa c u lty , has always occ upied a secondary place.2
This was the opinion of the majority of critics, with only a hand
ful demanding that art adopt a more consciously romantic or imaginative ro le . One measure o f the general acceptance o f such a view can be . seen in the response to Gissing. It was not until New Grub Street
1. Stang, op.c i t . , p .166. Stang is quoting from George E lio t's L e tte rs, edited by G.S.Haight, New Haven, Conn., 1955, IV, pp.300-301. 2. 'The Contributors Club', The Atlantic Monthly, Boston, LX (1887), p .572.
- 77- th a t any s ig n ific a n t amount o f comment was made on the re a lis tic aspect of his work. Normally it was taken for granted, and the superstructure of ideas he built on his realistic base became the focus for discussion.^
It is interesting, and perhaps surprising, that Meredith held a view of the novel similar to that outlined above:
Between realism and idealism there is no natural con flict... Idealism is an atmosphere whose effects of grandeur are wrought out through a series of illusions, that are illusions to the sense within us only when divorced from the groundwork o f the real.2
As his own career progressed his novels tended to make less and less contact with the real, and, although critics respected his imagination, and spoke o f his genius, they remained troubled by the absence of an air of reality in his novels.
Formulations of a balanced English attitude to realism in fiction preceded, coincided with, and followed, the major debate about Zola.
Throughout the period the essential attitude remained consistent and unchanging. Apart from romancers, who dismissed all need for realism, there was only one alternative formula. Whereas most critics fe lt that realism on its own was dull, and that art needed the additional quality of the imagination of the author, there was some questioning of the whole notion of reality as a neutral concept. The latter position is tha t o f Henry Jame^; but i t does seem as i f nobody else was thinking in the same way in the 'eighties. By the second half of the 'nineties, however, Gissing was expressing a rather similar view.
In an 1895 essay on realism he put the position as follows:
1. The response to Gissing is discussed in chapter four. 2. Meredith's L e tte rs, 1912, p .156. Letter w ritte n September 1864.
-78“ what can be more absurd than to ta lk about the "o b je c tiv ity " of such an author as Flaubert, who triumphs by his extraor dinary power of presenting life as he, and no other man, beheld it? l
Such an emphasis on the inevitable subjectivity of any novelist's work was not characteristic of the 'eighties. Most critics believed that objectivity was possible, but fe lt that the goal was not worth pursuing, as it was the addition of the imagination that made for great a rt.
Consequently, English critics were in a sense well-prepared for the arrival of Zola's novels. They had a critical theory, almost universally shared, which seemed capable of exposing the lim itations of realism. In fact, this critical formula was used time and time again in order to question the value of Zola's work and its existence did mean that the English critics could at times handle the works of the Frenchman with confidence, even patronising arrogance. Yet the debate about Zola's novels was s t i l l the most heated o f the decade. There were obviously aspects of his work which could not be handled so rationally as his inadequate aesthetic theory.
2. THE.ENGLISH REACTION TO ZOLA'S NOVELS
The characteristic of Zola's novels that received the greatest attention was his subject-matter. Not only did he present pictures of depravity and greed but he failed to include any better, purer characters who could stand as representatives of nobler human tenden cies. Unlike in English novels, no character ever saw the error of his ways and decided to use his resources of personality to build an improved personal life . Once the characters in a Zola novel were caught in a sequence o f action there was no escape. He appeared to
1. 'The Place o f Realism in F ic tio n ', The Humanitarian, New York, VII (1895), p.15.
-79" merely record the downhill d r if t . He appeared to d e lig h t in documenting the lack o f moral significance in l i f e , and to remain c lin ic a lly detached. Some modern commentators have rid ic u le d the reviewers of the period because they found Zola's attitude immoral.
Kenneth Graham w rite s:
Compared with James and Howells, i t is s trik in g how c ritic is m o f Zola is dominated by the moral issue. Nearly a ll are agreed o f the squalor o f his m aterial, but only a few are able to condemn it as unpleasing, or untrue, or in a r tis tic fo r reasons other than those o f social m o ra lity .'
Becker derides an a r tic le by W .S .Lilly because its main concern is the threat Zola offers to established standards of behaviour;
The appeal is largely to emotion, to fear that the found ations o f c iv iliz a tio n are endangered: when the ideal is slain a mortal stroke has been given the moral life of the world.2
When he refers to this article as 'an almost perfect example of the stereo-typed thinking with which the claims of the new lite r ature were met in England and the United States ...'^ , it is clear th a t he shares Graham's low opinion o f the level o f the response.
Many other articles can be found to place alongside L illy's. All resort to almost hysterical rhetoric in their denunciation of Zola.
A c r it ic in Temple Bar described the new school o f French novelists as
Hyaenas, delighting in carrion, they have lost touch of humanity; and the contrast between their corrupt imag inations and the searching analysis of Balzac is as great as that between the obscene ravings of delirium - tremens and the quiet dignity of a clinical demonstration.
1. 6rah_am, p .56. 2. G.J.Becker, Documents of Modern Literary Realism, Princeton, New Jersey, 1963, p .274. Becker is commenting on 'The New N aturalism ', The F o rtn ig h tly Review, XXXVIII (1885), pp.240-256. 3. Ibid., p.274. 4. 'The Novels o f Balzac', Temple Bar., LXXVIII (1886), p .199.
-80- The germ of a critical idea exists in this statement, but it is
obscured by the frenzied tone. Haggard, from whom moderation would
not be expected, joined in the chorus of fear at the threat posed
by Zola. He claimed that, 'the publications of the French Natural
is t ic school are such seed as was sown by th a t enemy who came in
the night season.Some c r itic s went so fa r as to suggest th a t
the subversive nature of these novels had already completely dem
oralised the French nation. Henry Reeve wrote of their shattering
e ffe c t:
The popular lite ra tu re of France, judging from the volumes which obtain the largest sale in tha t country, is stamped, under the name o f realism, with p e s tile n t indecency and immorality. If the French nation suffers, as we believe it does, from an unjust estimate of its social and moral qualities, that is due to the false and vicious pictures drawn by it s own w rite rs .^
Such a rtic le s are numerous, and an easy source o f amusement,
but there were rather more non-agitated articles than Graham and
Becker are prepared to recognise. In other cases essays are often
rh e to rica l fo r long passages, and so can appear dogmatic and crude,
but a constructive view of fiction might be submerged in the in
vective. To some extent this is true of Lilly's article, 'The New
Naturalism '. The moral sense o f lite ra tu re dominates L illy 's essay,
and is the only value apparent on a firs t reading, but it contains
hints of an alternative aesthetic - the usual English one of the
necessity of realism being supported by the imagination.
However, the main interest of Lilly's article is not to be
Tuunu uy searching for, and emphasising, its positive qualities. What
is most striking is his real sense of shoek at Zola's novels. This
is something very different from prudish disapproval. Even L illy's
1. 'About F ic tio n ', The Contemporary Review, LI (1887), p .177. 2. 'The L ite ra tu re and Language o f the Age*, The Edinburgh Review, CLXIX (1889), p .330. -81“ attempts at sarcasm cannot hide his amazement that any w riter
could produce such cynical work:
the especial value of the writings of M. Zola and his school seems to me that they are the most popular lite r ary outcome of the doctrine which denies the personality, liberty, and spirituality of man and the objective foun dation on which these re s t, which empties him o f the moral sense, the fe e ling o f the in fin it e , the aspiration towards the absolute, which makes of him nothing more than a sequence of action and reaction, and the firs t and last word of which is sensism.'
To L illy it really did seem that Zola was cynically denying all established values, denying man's ab ility to improve himself and his society. Becker is fa r too ready to dismiss th is deeply f e lt sense of outrage as foolishness. Zola's novels were meant to shock, and would have received far less attention if they had not offended the reviewers. The squalor and calculated obscenity of his books was without precedent, and Becker seems to misjudge the nature of the novels if he believes that they could have been accepted calmly and reasonably. Becker stresses the originality of Zola's fiction, but condemns the English reviewers for concentrating on the un acceptable nature of this originality.
Just as Becker seems to approach the subject in a misguided way, so Graham seems wrong to question the lack of an aesthetic response to Zola's novels. In fact, there was far more aesthetic criticism than he acknowledges, but Zola's theories were not as startling as his subjectmatter. An idea of the lim its of realism had already been r«jrmed, and c r itic s possessed the c r itic a l vocabulary to assess the theory behind the novels. The apparent immorality of Zola's novels, however, had no precedent and its function could not be easily under-
1. The F o rtn ig h tly Review, XXXVIII (1885), p .251.
-82- stood. Consequently, the moral emphasis o f L illy 's essay re flected
the aspect of Zola which was most original for English readers.
Becker and Graham also seem wrong in suggesting th a t th is moral
discussion was conducted at a naive level; the comments made were
often interesting and intelligent.
One o f the few immediate defenders o f Zola was George Moore.
Confessions of a Young Man (1888) described his youthful attraction
to the scientific idea of realism, but it is obvious that it was the
attack on illusory and reassuring moral values that he welcomed in
the new school. He presented an apocalyptic vision of the old
standards being swept away:
suddenly, with all the horror of an earthquake, the slumbrous law courts awoke, and the burning cinders o f fornication and the blinding and suffocating smoke of adultery were poured upon and hung over the land. Through the m ightly columns o f our newspapers the te r rib le lava rolled unceasing, and in the black stream the v illa , with all its beautiful illusions, tumbled and disappeared.
In order to dismiss the English novel as timid and ridiculous Moore,
here, makes amusing use of the hysterical rhetoric of his opponents.
Only one other c r it ic in the 'e ig h tie s adopted the same a ttitu d e o f
hoping tha t realism would completely supersede the false values o f
the English novel. This was D.F.Hannigan, but his comments lacked
the ironic vigour of Moore's. His natural style was as rhetorical
as L illy's or Haggard's. He dismissed the English novel as a dis
traction for young ladies, despised its a rtificia lity, but, incapable of developing an argument, could only say of the new novel, 'It 2 should be true. ' His championship of Zola outlived Moore's, but .
his poinf-vf-view and his critical vocabulary were as limited as
1. p .238. 2. L e tte r in The National Review, X III (1889), p .415. Subsequent a rtic le s included 'The Decline o f Romance', The Westminster Review, CXLI (1894), pp.33-36.
-83- Lilly's, if not more so.
Between the extremes of rhetorical denunciation and rhetorical celebration there was a gradual acceptance of Zola's novels. A positive function was found for the dubious content, and the view that his works were only negatively disruptive steadily lost support
Naturally, such a change of attitude did not emerge simultaneously in all criticism . Many continued to find Zola's novels disgusting, and even those who came to appreciate them continued to have many reservations. But it can be said that in a period of less than ten years the main tendency o f c ritic is m changed from condemnation to rational evaluation and cautious approval. As w ill be seen in later chapters, critics were by no means so quick to accept the novels of
James, or even some o f Hardy's. In th e ir responses to these two novelists critics appear stubbornly inflexible. It suggests that
Zola's novels were by no means so radical as they at firs t appeared, to be. His contemporaries would almost doubtless have believed that they were the most controversial works o f the decade, and the volume of criticism substantiates this belief, but the fact that they were accepted so quickly suggests that they were by no means so original as the novels of some English novelists of the period. Zola offered a direct challenge to some assumptions of English critics, but
Hardy and James, as w ill be seen in chapters fiv e , s ix , and seven, presented a far more thoroughgoing challenge to accepted values.
Indulgence to Zola began as soon as i t was conceded th a t the world of the English novel was too limited, too censoriously cur ta ile d . Even Mrs. Oliphant began to have doubts about the pattern of the normal English novel, although she was unable to feel any sympathy fo r the menacing a lte rn a tiv e :
-84” The domestic ideal is often dull among ourselves [v/here, by the way, it is dying out); but it is not so dull as those complications of intrigue, the nasty situations, the disgusting details to which the wildest imagination cannot bring variety.'
A c ritic less committed to the traditional novel, Henry Norman, could feel th a t i t was in a more exhausted state than Mrs. Oliphant would allow . He f e lt th a t French fic tio n had something to contribute by making a 'passionate appeal for all fiction to be closely based upon 2 the realities of life .' Inevitably, English fiction would never be pushed ' to an extreme in a single limited direction,' but by the elimination of intrigue fiction could make its proper instructive commentary on l if e .
S u rp risin g ly, i t was Andrew Lang who f i r s t made an e x p lic it statement th a t Zola's coarse method was being used fo r the purposes of morality. Discussing L'Assommoir (1877), Lang pointed out 'certain
' • 4 qualities of real value ...' Supreme among these was Zola's moral fervour, especially in his denunciation of drink:
To me, I confess, the L'Assommoir appears a dreadful, but not an immorâl'.'l book. I t is the most powerful Temperance tract that was ever w r it t e n . 5
Lang's comment on the book's effect was tongue-in-cheek, but he had sensed its moral force. He went on to raise one o f the points which
1. 'The Old Saloon', Blackwood's Magazine, CXLIV (1888), p .420. 2. 'Theories and Practice o f Modern F ic tio n ', The F o rtn ig h tly Review, XXXIV (1883), p .873. 3. Ib id ., p .873. 4. ' Emi1e Z o la ', The F o rtn ig h tly Review, XXXI (1882), p .439. 5. Ib id ., p .451.
-85- would repeatedly concern critics in the 'eighties: did the end ju stify the coarse, and possibly corrupting, means. Lang returned to the problem in 1888, beginning with a defence of Zola's integrity:
i t seems extremely hasty fo r c r itic s to accuse M. Zola of wishing to deprave the minds of his readers, or of merely producing books like some of his because they sell. It is difficu lt, on the other hand, not to suppose that M. Zola really desires to exhibit a series of bad examples, with some kind o f purpose o f awaking mankind to a sense of their effects. His intentions may be austerely excellent.' •
Lang's remarks were a rebuke to the v iru le n t abuse o f Zola in the newspapers in the wake of the Vizetelly tria l. They.indicate that he was capable of intelligent criticism, but the latter sections of the essay are less im pressive.. He f e ll back on the old case o f the harmful effect of such work on adolescents. It is tempting to describe
Lang, with his taste for adventure stories, as a perpetual adolescent, but, whoever he fe lt needed protecting, he recorded his support of the decision to ban publication.
Others were less set in th e ir ways, and there were a few c r itic s who adjusted their ideas on moral decorum in fiction as a result of reading Zola's novels. One example was Mrs. Emily Crawford, writing in The Contemporary Review, in 1889. The c ru d ity o f Zola's novels offended her, but she dared to suggest that the coarseness was often 2 used to good e ffe c t, th a t he 'sometimes does good in a bad way.'
She found th is to be true o f Pot B ouille (1882): 'the most unclean of any, but one which shows that mean selfishness and animal lusts are 3 \ v ile ...' She could not accept the scientific pretensions, or the sheer volume of description, but she did respond to a vital and orig-
1. 'At the Sign of the Ship', Longman's Magazine, XIII (1888), p.222, 2. 'Emile Z o la ', The Contemporary Review, LV (1889), p .103. 3. Ib id ., p .95.
“ 86 “ inal way o f using the novel as a moral instrument:
His realism at times is powerful and healthy. The occasions are when the reactions of his own mind on what he has seen and taken in are patent, and when they necessarily point a moral. Therese Raquin occurs to me as an instance.'
In tentative criticism such as this can be seen the firs t signs of a new so rt of freedom being allowed to fic tio n . Mrs. Crawford was unsure about Zola, and joined Lang in demanding tha t his books be suppressed in a country where young people read novels, but the main tendency o f the a r tic le was towards a considerable degree o f in d u l gence. There was a fe e lin g throughout that fo r the adult reader the moral good outweighed the harm, and that there was a lo t to be said for extending the possible subject-matter of the novelist.
A common response in the period was that, after the in itia l shock o f a novel had passed, and questions of obscenity were distanced by time, Zola's individual novels could receive some praise. For example, in 1885 The Athenaeum dismissed Germinal as 'a dismal book about coal miners, written with much research and with considerable 2 power, but f u ll o f the coarseness o f L 'Assommoir . . . ' Yet the follow ing year i t referred to i t glowingly, complained tha t L*Oeuvre was not as good, and praised Zola's care in presenting the sufferings 3 of the miners. In both instances the reviewer was Norman MacColl. In
1892 W illiam Sharp referred to Germinal as 'one of the great books 4 of the age ...' At the time of its publication The Academy, for whom Sharp did most o f his reviewing, had not even mentioned i t .
1. Ib id ., p .96. 2. 'Novels of the Week', The Athenaeum, No.2996 (March 28, 1885), p.406, 3. 'Novels of the Week', I he Athenaeum, No.3074 (Sept. 25, 1886), p .397, 4. 'New Novels', The Academy, XLII (Nov. 12, 1892), p .432.
-87- Another c ritic who noticed Zola's morality was Henry Norman.
He criticised George Moore for being unaware of the fact: 'what
Mr. Moore does not understand is tha t the French method is not merely naturaliste but moraliste, that its works are Tendenzschriften 1 pure and simple, and ignorance of this fact spoils his book.' The im plications o f a m orality at work in a novel which was apparently immoral were explored most interestingly in an article by Vernon
Lee. It was cast in the form of a conversation, with one character
(Mrs. Blake) representing a narrow moral prejudice against French fiction, another (Marcel) defending it wholeheartedly, and a third
(Baldwin) developing a fresh aesthetic which would avoid the lim it" ations of both the French and English traditions. Baldwin claimed th a t the French novel
falsifies our views of life and enervates our character; the English novel, on the other hand, fa ls ifie s our views of life and enervates our character in a different way, by deliberately refusing to admit that things can have certain nasty sides, and by making us draw conclusions and pass judgements upon the supposition th a t no such g nasty factors re a lly enter in to the arrangement o f things.
The remedy, according to Baldwin, was simple. The English novel must be allowed a larger latitude but must avoid the pruriency which he fe lt was present in Zola:
I want absolute liberty of selection and treatment of subjects to the exclusion of all abnormal suggestion, of all prurient description, and of all pessimistic misrepresentation.3
By the early 'nineties the novel could be said to be developing in th is d ire c tio n , although c r itic s could not agree on what represented
'pessimistic misrepresentation'. Such novels as The Return of the
Native (1878) and G issing's The Unclassed (1884) had independently set
1. 'Theories and Practice o f Modern F ic tio n ', The F o rtn ig h tly Review, XXXIV (1883), p .879. 2. 'A Dialogue on Novels', The Contemporary Review, XLVIII (1885), p .394. 3. Ib id .,p .397. - 88 - new standards of openness before the influence of Zola. But Zola, by his excesses, stampeded this widening of subject-matter in the
English novel.
C ritic s were quick to notice, and in some cases to accept, these changes in the content of fiction. Edmund Gosse affirmed that a revolution in standards had taken place in ten years. Writing in 1890 he maintained that the old a rtificia l formulas, the repeated moral illu s io n s , o f the English novel had been destroyed:
Whatever comes next, we cannot return, in serious novels, to the inanities of the old "well-made" plot, to the children changed at nurse, to the madonna heroine and the god-like hero, to the impossible virtues and melodramatic vices .1
Gosse's case is exaggerated,in that the great novelists had never relied on such devices, but it is accurate in its suggestion that the novel was moving towards a more honest presentation o f a wider spectrum o f society. Gosse acknowledged the part th a t Zola had played in this development, but dismissed the other claims of realism, as an art free of the imagination, as only a 'lim ited and temporary , 2 influence...' Havelock Ellis also emphasised the change in the scope of the novel that had resulted from the influence of Zola.
Kenneth Graham has already commented on th is p o in t; E llis , he says:
never dismisses the relevance of morality even though he is one of the main pioneers in the expansion of the novel's frontiers. His plea is simply and continually that this morality should not be the Juggernaut of Grundyism. In 1895 he w rites th a t Zola is to be praised . for increasing the realm of experience open to the novel.x
1. Questions at Issue, 1893, pp.152-153. 2. Ib id ., p .lb I. ; 3. Graham, p .94.
-89- By the 1890s there did exist what James called the 'permiss
ib ility of the larger latitude'^. Few critics were as receptive
to such a development as Vernon Lee, E llis , and Gosse, but there
had been a s ig n ific a n t development in c r itic a l a ttitu d e s when at
least three reviewers were putting forward ideas that could not be
found in print at the beginning of the 'eighties. They had examined
the most original feature of Zola's novels - his subject-matter - and
had decided th a t the English novel would benefit from a s im ila r degree
of freedom. It would only be a matter of time before other critics
would follo w th e ir lead. They realised th a t such freedom did not
in e v ita b ly lead to the abandonment o f a moral purpose in fic tio n ,
and, in fact, this realisation that Zola's novels were intensely moral was fa irly widespread. So, despite the fury of the critical arguments,
there had been something of a move towards accepting Zola's influence
by both the radical and conservative critics. But this does not mean
th a t those who remained wary of his intentions should be rid ic u le d .
They were correct in feeling that Zola exaggerated the nastier side
of life , and, to some extent, were justified in feeling that a sense
o f social coherence would be lo s t i f the English novel was to fo llo w
his example.. It is easy for the modern critic to dismiss their fears
as a preference for reassurance from fiction as opposed to truthfulness,
but this desire that the novel should be positive cannot be separated
from interconnected social and religious convictions that some sense
of social order was there to be found by the writer. Zola's picture
of an animalistic society was bound to offend those who embraced
such convictions.
1. 'The Death Of The L io n ', The Yellow Book, I (1894), p .20.
-90- The response to Meredith, though, has shown how attached critics were to art that maintained a picture of social coherence, and the surprising thing is that a number of critics could very quickly become reconciled to Zola's pessimism. The deciding factor in th is was Zola's e x p lic it moral purpose - in exposing a rotten state of affairs the novels always implied a better standard of conduct. In a novel such as Germinal Zola was clearly as outraged as any of his readers at aspects of social injustice. Reforms were not brought about within the novel, but it did seem to critics that a social concern was being expressed, and that therefore the novels were fu lfillin g a morally constructive social function. What critics concentrated on were, in fact, those aspects of the naturalistic novel that would be taken up by Theodore Dreiser and his contemporaries
- the power of the novel to do good by merely exposing readers to the f u ll scope o f problems they might have been unaware o f. The emphasis of the most sympathetic and appreciative criticism was to take up the most questionable aspect of Zola and to find value in what had at f i r s t been considered merely dangerous. A moral purpose was found for the immorality of his novels, and, given the outrageous q u a lity o f many o f Zola's themes, th is was a considerable c r itic a l advance.
The lim ita tio n s o f th is response, however, was that,although i t made Zola more acceptable, it ignored the personal force of his work.
It was a way of coming to terms with the realistic novel, and finding some value in obviously powerful, even if deterministic, work, but it was rather too schematic an approach, too concerned w ith drawing lessons for the English novel. Zola's position as a moral - realist was accepted rather too straightforwardly, and the peculiarities o f his imagination were not probed. But c r itic s were not only concerned
- 91- with Zola's lessons for English fiction. They did investigate his temperament 9 and with the passing of time laid increasing stress on i t . Zola's unique q u a litie s as a n o velist can best be approached through looking at the response to his theory o f the novel, as i t was in such discussions that critics were most likely to point out the disparity between the ideas and the finished novels.
3. DISCUSSIONS OF ZOLA'S THEORIES
Although the question of Zola's subject-matter, and its morality or immorality, was the dominant theme of critical discussions, there were also considerations of his theory of fiction. From the criticism of his novels it is apparent that every critic was aware that these were not just characteristically French outbursts of immorality, but works w ritte n w ith in the framework of a theory. N aturally there were a number of reviewers who regarded the theory as a deception in tended to give bogus intellectual status to wanton filth . The
Saturday Review, fo r example, described L*Assommoir as 's ix hundred pages o f garbage given as a work o f ph ilo lo g ica l and moral preten sions J Generally a higher view was held of Zola's integrity, and i t would seem reasonable to assume th a t the arguments o f Le roman experimental (1880) would have been subject to rigorous analysis.
There was a fa ilu re , however, to study his theories at the most basic le v e l.
Zola's essential idea was understood to be that any given subject could be studied scientifically, objectively, and with a total commitment to truthful presentation:
1. 'French L ite ra tu re ', The Saturday Review, X LIII (1877), p .431.
-9 2 - he can, for instance, take any given character and place it among such surroundings as he pleases, and then study ^ at leisure the influence which those surroundings w ill exercise upon that particular characterJ
One common objection to the method, more often raised against James and Howells, was that it was boring. Critics complained that art was reduced to the level of a photograph. However, critics did not make the objection that the method was impossible. Angus Wilson refers to the theories of Le roman experimental as 'embarrassingly naive ...' but the evident foolishness of the claim to draw a picture approximating to predicated reality was not seen by critics.
Zola's theories were challenged, but not at this level of questioning the possibility of total realism in a novel.
Criticism stemmed rather from a secure conviction about the place of realism in fiction. Critics confidently demonstrated that he was deluded about the true method of writing a successful novel.
An Atlantic Monthly contributor stated the position in 1880 with what was to become a fam iliar note of certainty:
If it were possible for them so far to alter human nature as to slay the imagination, they would do harm to litera t ure, and they w ill never do much good to science; but their sole effect w ill be to encourage the study of nature, which is the ground on which the imagination must re s t.3
Critics were convinced that realism must serve as the basis of a novel but th a t the a r tis t was then given to ta l freedom to transform or develop the material as he pleased. Realism was never discussed in isolation. Le roman experimental was unproductive of criticism because c r itic s were not concerned with finding internal contradictions
1. F.T.M arzials, 'M.Zola as a C r it ic ', The Contemporary Review, LI (1887), p .60. 2. Emile Zola, 1952, p .25. 3. 'Zola's Essays', The Atlantic Monthly, Boston, XLVII (1881), p.119
-93“ In every piece of criticism they made an immediate transition to a larger context, to discussing the importance of the imagination and the personality of the artist. Thus, Zola's theory of realism was not met on its own terms. I t was opposed, and absorbed, by a more inclusive aesthetic.
Yet, Zola had always admitted that the temperament o f the a r tis t was o f supreme importance, and tha t in no sense was he a passive reporter. Consequently, there was no real contradiction between the English conception oP fiction and the theory of Zola.
The only marked difference was that English criticism laid its greatest stress on the author's temperament. A n a tu ra lis t doctrine o f a rt would take the temperament fo r granted and assess most keenly how well the artist has reproduced reality in spite of his temper ament. The undeniably personal nature o f Zola's a rt was, however, a g ift to English critics who could off-handedly, and with a great sense o f obviousness, accommodate him withTn th e ir general theory o f the novel.
The note of fam iliarity was struck as early as 1882 in Lang's article on Zola, the firs t essay-1ength consideration of the novelist to be published in England. Lang looked at Zola's theories and saw nothing unsettling or revolutionary in their content:
He goes on to define art as the reproduction of nature, and of life , as conditioned by the temperament of the artist. Again, there is nothing new in this definition; only we must deplore the temperament o f a w rite r who is almost always compelled to choose his subjects in "human corruption". The world is rich in beautiful lives, noble characters.. .V
Henry Norman was equally quick to see tha t Zola's temperament was of dominating importance. He concerned himself w ith the s c ie n tific analogy, and seemed unaware o f Zola's concession o f the temperament.
1. 'Emile Z o la ', The F o rtnig htly Review, XXXI (1882), p .445.
- 94- but from the evidence of the novels deduced the imaginative contrib
ution of the author: 'They are not faithful representations of life ,
and they are fu ll of faults of the romantic method,'^ Karl Hillebrand
wrote that Zola's works were 'productions of the imagination, and
consequently utterly useless to science...'^ Frank Marzials fe lt that
once Zola had conceded the temperament the s c ie n tific claims lo s t
all substance. Stressing the presence of the author, he argued:
And if the action of the individual upon the object presented be so all-important, what becomes of that dry light which is the light of science? What becomes of our novelist's claim to sit in the professor's chair, and conduct a series of experiments, coram populo, for the benefit of man?3
Complaining o f coarseness he maintained th a t, 'upon the q u a lity o f
the temperament w ill in a great measure depend the q u a lity o f the a r t . '^
By the end of the 'eighties critics were beginning to be more specific about the exact nature of Zola's contribution to his novels.
There was the dawning o f an awareness tha t his vision was powerful even i f perverted. Dowden described him as a novelist 'whose work, misnamed r e a lis tic , is one monstrous ide a lisin g o f humanity under the 5 types of the man-brute and woman-brute.' In the 'nineties it became common to talk of the grotesque ideal at work in Zola's fiction.
The idea was expressed by J.A.Symonds, Havelock E llis , and R.E.S.Hart.^
1. 'Theories and Practice o f Modern F ic tio n ', The F o rtn ig h tly Review, XXXIV (1883), p .874. 2. 'About Old and New Novels', The Contemporary Review, XLV (1884), p .392. 3. 'M.Zola as a C r it ic ', The Contemporary Review, LI (1887), p .63. 4. Ib id . , p .63. 5. 'Literary Criticism in France', The Fortnightly Review, XLVI (1889), p .741. 6. J.A.Symonds, ' La Bete Humaine. A Study in Zola's Idealiam '. The F o rtn ig h tly Review, L (l8 9 l), pp.453-462. Havelock E llis , 'Zola: the Man and his Work', The Savoy, I (1896), pp.67-71. R.E.S.Hart, Zola's Philosophy o f L ife ', The F ortnightly Review, LX (1896), pp. 257-271.
-95- It also began to be suggested that Zola's personal vision was so powerful, although distorted, that the correct description for it was poetic. It might seem that this peculiar personal vision cannot be reconciled with the strong moral sense that helped make Zola acceptable in England, but the contradiction is more apparent than real. Reading any novel by Zola one is aware of a simultaneous anger, sympathy, and desire for social justice and a revelling in the social problem and the depravity of the protagonists.
Those who wrote approvingly of Zola's achievement tended to emphasise the moral concern (an a ttitu d e which would reach its peak in support for Zola for his involvement in the Dreyfus affair). His works were often considered in the lig h t of what lessons they might contain fo r the English novel, and th is na tu ra lly encouraged c r itic s to look at his moral purpose. The method o f presenting social problems in their fu ll horror with the suggestion that something must be done won the support of English critics. But such an interpretation did not touch the heart o f Zola's real power, and th is real power was never an influence on the English novel. Hemmings has described his best work as 'irrig a te d by an underground current o f private fantasies, some of them rosy wishful filment, others dark and nightmarish terrors.'^
When the moral and aesthetic aspects of his novels had been discussed, and his influence on English fiction assessed, critics were s till le ft with the grotesque and inimitable power of his work. It was a power based on the horror o f his vision o f mankind, and i t could never be domesticated into the tradition of the English novel. The remarkable and enduring quality of his work is not to be found in his realism, or in his moral imagination, but in this bizarre personal vision.
1. F.W.J.Hemmings, Emile Zola, Second E dition, 1966, p .11.
“ 96“ And every attempt to discuss Zola's influence on English fiction distorts his novels by being obliged to leave out these personal elements.
This unacceptable personal vision was the heart of the problem o f accepting Zola in the 'e ig h tie s. C ritic s who te n ta tiv e ly defended him were always obliged to introduce reservations. They sought out those qualities in Zola from which English fiction could benefit, but were le ft with his vision of men as brutes. It was a vision that always provoked anger, and possibly i t is those in to le ra n t reviews th a t Becker and Graham are so ready to deride tha t best suggest the force of Zola's idiosyncratic view. Critical comment from the 'nineties on Zola's inverted idealism does not convey the same sense of the shock of his work as comments in the 'eighties on his presentation of men as beasts. An emotional comment by Marzials ignores the compensating m orality o f Zola and shows the sort o f disgust his work could provoke:
(Man's3 development has led him gradually and ever more to emancipate him self from the brute, and to conquer his f u ll manhood. That is what c iv ilis a tio n means. This is what m orality means. This is the e d ifice which C h ris tia n ity would crown with its sublime ideals. Here lies our hope for the future of the race.l
Many critics reacted in a similar way, but they were exaggerating IHe. danger. Powerful as it is, Zola's vision is so obviously distorted that its power to provoke anger could only be temporary. By 1893
Vernon Lee could w rite :
Zola is the last novelist in the world from whom we should expect an objective faithful picture of life . His vision is limited and peculiar .2
The response to the novels of George Moore clarifies the lim itations
1. 'M.Zola as a C r it ic ', The Contemporary Review, LI (1887), p .70. 2. 'The Moral Teaching o f Z o la ', The Contemporary Review, LX III (1893), p .198.
-97- and peculiarities of Zola's vision that made it so unacceptable. 4. THE NOVELS OF GEORGE MOORE
Naturalism in England has to be connected with George Moore
yet, after the publication of A Mummer's Wife M884). Moore's con
ception of the novel differed in no great measure from the conventional
th in king o f the 'e ig h tie s . There waSythoughythe period up to 1885
when he was committed to the naturalist ideal in literature. Alone
among English novelists he embraced the theory in its entirety:
I read that you should write, with as little imagination as possible, that plot in a novel or in a play was illite r- ate and puerile, and that the art of M. Scribe was an art of strings and wires, etc.*
From L 'Assommoir he caught the idea o f:
a new art based upon science, in opposition to the art of the old world that was based on imagination, an art that should explain all things and embrace modern life in its entirety, in its endless ramifications,be, as it were, a new creed in a new civilization, [it] filled me w ith wonder, and I stood dumb before the vastness of the conception, and the towering height of the ambition.^
This passage explains not only the essential features of naturalism
but its deceptive attractiveness to Moore just a few years earlier.
Naturalism does have an apparent logical charm as the promised results
are so absolute. Everything seems possible after the acceptance of
the scientific premise and, at this early stage of his career, the scope o f a synthetic and in tu itiv e novel seemed petty to Moore along side this new doctrine.
It was only the practice of fiction that revealed the short comings of the theory. Confessions of a Young Man representing a public statement of his break from this former ideal. His disen-
1. Confessions o f a Young Man, 1888, p .112. \ 2. Ib id ., pp.114-115. " '
-98- chantment did not result in any dramatically original theory of fiction. The autobiographical volume has a veneer of aestheticism, and an interesting emphasis on form and craftsmanship, but his new discoveries about fiction are consistent with the views of the majority of novelists and critics at the time. He prepares his ground by in s is tin g th a t he has always had a greater admiration fo r
Balzac than Zola:
I did not fa ll into the fatal mistake of placing the realistic writers of 1877 side by side with and on the , same plane of intellectual vision as the great Balzac...
The use of the phrase 'intellectual vision' suggests a shift of emphasis away from the impersonal process to the idea o f the con tribution of the author. In a similar way he develops an idea of digestion - the internal emphasis contradicting the externality he had previously commended in Zola:
Zola and Concourt cannot, or w ill not understand that the a r tis tic stomach must be allowed to do its work in its own mysterious fashion. If a man is really an artist he w ill remember what is necessary, forget what is useless; but if he takes notes he w ill interrupt his artistic digestion, and the result w ill be a lot of little touches, inchoate and wanting in the elegant rhythm of the synthesis.^
Moore writes with the verve of discovery, but there is nothing new in what he says. Synthesis has suddenly become important in his scale o f lite r a r y values, but i t had always been important in the aesthetic of novelists he despised. The value of Moore's criticism is that he had at least tested naturalism before deciding it was inadequate, rather than judging by tradition. Possibly it is embarr assment at having to conform to the majority opinion that leads
Moore to claim that these lessons can only be learnt from Balzac, who 'saved me from the shoaling waters of new aestheticisms, the \
1. Ib id ., p.121. 2. Ibid., p.165.
-99- putrid mud of naturalism, and the faint and sickly surf of the symbolists.'^ Moore is only really happy if he can appear icon oclastic and independent.
The main thing Moore salvaged from his involvement with naturalism was the conviction that the English novel needed new and more permissive subjects. In this respect he was again in complete agreement with other c r itic s :
i f the re a lis ts should catch favour in England the English tongue may be saved from dissolution, for with the new subjects they would introduce, new forms of language would a ris e .2
With the exception of Moore's firs t two novels neither realism nor naturalism in any sense even approximating to the French use of these words ever made any headway in England. Only a few sh o rt-sto ries from the 'nineties were deliberately confined to sordid subjects which were then explored intimately as if the documentation alone were self-sufficient. They are irrelevant to the sustained form of the novel.^
Moore's firs t attempt at realism was A Modern Lover (1883), but it is important to distinguish between this book and the more conscious naturalism of A Mummer's Wife. The earlier novel reveals mainly Moore's seduction by the surface sophistication o f the French novel. The end result is a composite montage of the sort of emphasis on sex and ambition found in Balzac, Flaubert, and the Brothers
1. Ib id ., pp. 127-128. 2. Ib id . , p .308. 3. "'Many so-called Naturalist works were frankly second-rate and have long been forgotten (who knows of, let alone reads, Wedmore's Renunciations, Crackanthorpe's Wreckage, Harland's Mile. Miss or "Egerton's" Keynotes?)'L.R.Furst and P.N.Skrine, NaturalismT 1971, p .32.
- 100 - Concourt. One modern c r it ic has commented:
Moore wrote A Modern Lover because he wanted to w rite about love, a r t, and la vie mondaine, three major interests. He was interested in these subjects because French novelists were interested in them before him and because he had some actual experience in the departments, more or less .1
The English response to the novel was f a ir ly favourable. The most impressive review was, in fa c t, one which, by being quoted only in p a rt, has often been used to show the narrowness o f c ritic is m . Mrs.
J. Cashel Hoey, writing in The Spectator, made the unfortunate mistake o f including a chauvinistic defence o f Moore:
Certain passages o f his novel make us aware th a t he admires and would fain imitate Zola and his odious school; but we venture to predict that he w ill never succeed in doing this. He has to combat two powerful obstacles to an achievementso much to be regretted; they are the faith of a Christian and the instincts of a gentlem an. 2
As Malcolm Brown uses only th is passage to illu s tr a te contemporary criticism of the novel it can be assumed that his intention is to ridicule the reviewers. John Dixon Hunt is more openly derisive, finishing his commentary with the following mocking sentence: 'I t did add, however, th a t Moore's fa ith as a C hristian and his in s tin c ts as a gentleman prevented a successful im ita tio n .'^ But i f the whole o f Mrs. Hoey's review is read i t promotes confidence in the a b ilitie s of Victorian reviewers.
Mrs. Hoey admired the honesty o f the book, praising in p a rtic u la r
1. M ilton Chaikin, 'George Moore's Early F ic tio n ', in Graham Owens (e d .), George Moore's Mind and A rt, Edinburgh, 1968, p .27. 2. ' A Modern Lover' , The Spectator, LVI (August 18, 1883), p .1069. 3. George Moore: A Reconsideration, S eattle, 1955, pp.89-90. 4. The Pre-Raphaelite Imagination, 1968, p.213.
- 101 - its avoidance of the complicated intrigue and exaggeration of so many novels. She referred to it as:
realism which, while it is not coarse, and unlike the tone of the "naturalistic" writers (for whom we suspect Mr. Moore of an admiration much to be deplored), does not offend, takes the g ilt off the gingerbread of sentiment, and ignores romance in a more thorough style than we are accustomed to, except in the utterances of professed cynics. '
Mrs. Hoey regretted that life was just as bad as Moore painted it but fe lt that the novelist must be honest: 'Mr. Moore's is, theri^ not an ideal novel; it is a study from life , and lifelike - more's p the pity!' Her criticism was of life rather than of the fact that
Moore had chosen to represent it. Yet the expression of these a ttitu d e s does not mean th a t Mrs. Hoey was in any way an unconven tional thinker. Indeed, the novel she praised most extravagantly 3 during the decade was Besant's All Sorts and Conditions of Men.
It was just that Moore used realism for a positive end. His documentation, she sensed, in no way indicated a withdrawal of moral assessment: ^
The author of A Modern Lover is not a cynic, he not only recognises, but he respects goodness, p u rity , and disinterestedness, and although the story he tells is a ll about the woeful waste o f those feelings upon a person absolutely unworthy o f them, he is quite a liv e to the pity of it, and gives his readers the notion that he really would have liked to make Louis Seymour a better fellow, if he could.4
She rightly detected that in one major incident of the book Moore presented an act of conscious self-sacrifice in complete contrast to the deterministic d rift of the naturalistic novel:
1. 'A Modern Lover' , The Spectator, LVI (August 18, 1883), p.1069. 2. Ibid., p.1069. 3. This review is discussed in chapter four. 4. 'A Modern Lover', The Spectator, LVI (August 18, 1883), p .1069.
- 102- It would be d ifficu lt to praise too highly the strength, truth, delicacy and pathos of the incident of Gv/ynnie Lloyd, and the admirable treatment of the great sacrifice she makes when, in his utter destitution, and under the influence of his threat to commit suicide, she consents to s it to Louis Seymour for the nude figure of VenusJ
A scene which might be expected to outrage a reviewer was admired because the author had not remained ob jective, as in French fic tio n , but had showed his feelings. In its balanced assessment of the q u a lity o f the realism and the q u a lity of Moore's mind Mrs. Hoey's review was merely characteristic of better reviewing during the period.
The Athenaeum was also aware th a t Moore's novel was e sse n tia lly moral. It stressed that the French influence on the narration was only superficial:
For a man who has evidently read a great many French novels, and who has an inclination towards naturalist literature and impressionist art, Mr. Moore is not at all shocking.2
The reviewer who regarded Moore as no different from Zola was the exception. Richard F. Littledale was one of the few who were over whelmed by the offensive subject-matter, and therefore proved unable to draw the discriminations of the previous reviewers:
the atmosphere is unwholesome, and the book does not leave a pleasant taste on the palate. It is Zola in evening dress and with a clean face, but Zola all the same.3
The following year, 1884, Moore published the consciously naturalistic A Mummer's Wife. The book recreates the deterministic d rift of French fiction, and Moore goes as far as possible in with holding his sympathy from the characters. However, the book ends
I 1. Ibid., p.1069. 2. "Hovels o f the Week', The Athenaeum, No.2906 (July 7, 1883),p .13. 3. 'New Novels', The Academy, XXIV (July 14, 1883), p .23.
-103- with a curiously moral twist. Kate's decline strengthens the
character of Dick Lennox and gives him a new sense of responsibility.
The book as a whole thus avoids the obsessive defeatism of Zola and manages to conform to the English pattern of experience having a sobering and revitalising effect. It follows in the Victorian
tradition that the individual has the resources to break out of a pattern of decline through his personal qualities, and therefore is irreconcilable with Zola's brutal istic conception of man. Once such positive possibilities in man have been suggested there is no lim it to how comprehensive a vision of social coherence the n o ve list can suggest. For Moore's contemporaries, though, this reformation of
Lennox must have come too late in an otherwise naturalistic novel to be noticed. Most reviewers were united in their hostility to the novel.
G.A.Cook was the most reasonable of the reviewers. He dist inguished between Moore and Zola:
it would be hardly fair to call it an experiment after the manner of M. Zola, for, considering that realism has come to mean chiefly the faithful delineation of filth , it is on the whole remarkably free from the element of unclean ness.?
His review then proceeded to Moore's realism , and Cook conceded that the social picture was portrayed with some force. The competence and honesty of Moore's description was admitted:
The woman's character is a very powerful study, and the strolling player, if less original, is no less completely presented. But i t is the woman who has engaged Mr.Moore's chief attention. In developing the commonplace lower middle-class woman, with whom religion is a strong prejudice and no more, and love a mere passion, into a heroine of comic opera and u ltim a tely in to a drunkard - a woman without intellect, education, principle, or any strong emotion - he has drawn a b it of human nature to the l i f e . . . 2
1. 'Novels o f the Week', The Athenaeum, No. 2981 (December 13, 1884), p . 767, 2. Ibid., p.767.
-104- This is an admirable description of the character, but then Cook turned to the crucial issue - what value was there in such a study.
The book, as far as Cook could see, was merely a record of decline.
If Kate had fought against her addiction to drink the novel might have made some constructive point about li f e and human nature. The novel. Cook wrote:
le f t only the question, which may be answered as one pleases. What does the reader gain by such a study? That the writer himself is benefited by the thoroughness of his labour it is impossible to doubt, but if the firs t aim of the novelist is to please, Mr. Moore has certainly not succeeded. To discuss his aim would, however, be only to open the whole subject of realism in fiction. I t is enough to say th a t no one who wishes to examine tha t subject with regard to English novels could neglect A Mummer's Wife.1
Moore's inability to maintain the naturalistic tone to the end, a fact which Cook failed to notice, suggests that he also had doubts about the value o f mere comprehensive documentation.
Other critics were far angrier than Cook about Moore's refusal to redeem the squalor of his material. The most extreme was
Robert Buchanan who f e lt that such base material had no place in fiction. His essay is trivia l, but it is of some interest because it is in the same vein as his notorious attack on Rossetti and p Swinburne. Rossetti had been attacked not for his aestheticism but for his choice of subjects and his realistic presentation of them.
Buchanan demanded that only healthy subjects be treated in literature.
The most ingenious aspect o f his essay on Moore was to blame "Zolaism" for the activities of "Jack the Ripper": 'As Zola or De Concourt, he seizes a living woman, and vivisects her nerve by nerve, for our in s tru c tio n or our amusement.' Moore himself was regarded as worse
1. Ibid., p.767. 2. 'The Fleshly School o f P oetry', The Contemporary Review, XVIII (1871), pp.334-350. 3. 'The Modern Young Man as C r it ic ', The Universal Review, I I I (1889),
-105- than Zola or the Concourt Brothers:
Truth, Reality, Naturalism, is his cry, as it is theirs; but while they keep to the pavement, he dances in the mud, reels along mud-bespattered, talks and yells, and thinks, C'est magnifique, et c'est la vie! There is no nonsenseâbout him - he does not pretend to be virtuous or literary - virtue particularly is all "gammon"...'
However, such virulence was not typical of the response to Moore.
Other critics were prepared to allow the novelist the right to choose questionable subjects provided that his treatment of them was morally acceptable. This extension of subject-matter was particularly true of the 'eighties', and in refusing to accept this effect of Zola's novels Buchanan was behind the mass of critics.
The attitude of James Ashcroft Noble was more representative.
He admitted that A Mummer's Wife showed literary s k ill, and found something admirable in its realistic force. He spoke of its 2 'vividness of presentation and real literary s k ill...' , but had reservations about the offensiveness o f the book:
Unless i t can be regarded as a pleasure to be compelled to witness the most revolting accessories of disease and debauchery, Mr. Moore's book stands condemned by the most universally accepted canon of a rt.3
His d is s a tis fa c tio n , however, was provoked less by the actual choice of subject than by the fact that Moore had not allowed his moral sense to inform and shape the novel. The moral role of the author was the idea Noble insisted upon most strongly:
In what may be called moral atmosphere i t is , o f course, altogether d e fic ie n t, fo r such an atmosphere is produced by the selective process, which is to realists an offence against truth...4
/ 1. Ibid., p.371. 2. HiTEnglish Disciple of Zola', The Spectator, LVIII (January 17, 1885), p.83. 3. Ib id ., p.84. 4. Ibid., p.84.
-105- This becomes most apparent in the criticism of Esther Waters where the treatment was to the liking of critics. This controversial novel was widely praised. The Spectator even fe lt that many c r itic s had been too generous and demanded a more reserved a ttitu d e :
"We know of no spectacle so ridiculous as the British public in one of its periodical fits of morality," said Lord Macaulay. We do not agree. Even more r id iculous is the spectacle of the British critic in one of his periodical fits of unchartered enthusiasm... An outburst of such uncritical enthusiasm has just been witnessed in regard to Mr. Moore's novel, Esther Waters. Its appearance threw the critics entirely off their balance, and made them vie with each other in the use of superlatives.!
3 W. C. Frierson assumes that this recognition for Esther Waters indicates that English reviewers had finally come to accept natur alism. His opinion is backed by contrasting the unfavourable reaction ten years earlier to what he calls 'the equally meritable 2 ...' A Mummer's Wife. To describe them as 'equally meritable', however, is to ignore the radical differences between the two novels. There is little that is naturalistic about Esther Waters.
Repeatedly we see a display of w ill by Esther that distinguishes the novel from the fatalistic d rift of A Mummer's Wife. In addition,
Moore's tone is not th a t o f cold analysis but a ffe ctio n a te , sympath etic, and involved. His compassion affects the whole texture of the writing, with the result that the novel displays none of the cynical detachment tha t c ritic s condemned in A Mummer's Wife.
Moore's attitude to his subject received almost universal praise:
1. 'A Betting Epic - Esther Waters', The Spectator, LXXII (June 2, 1894), p.757.: . ^ 2, The English Novel in Transition 1885-1940 (Oklahoma, 1942), New York, 1965, p .45.
-107- That a novel re a lis tic a lly drawn upon such lines as these must be gloomy and harsh in many of its d e ta ils follows as a matter o f course. But Mr. Moore, yie ld in g to the*wisdom which comes with years, has dwelt upon no needless crudity. He has drawn his grim picture very carefully and tenderly, with a thrilling sincerity of p ity . . . Some passages in th is novel are o f the most poignant humanity and f i l l the heart with com passion; it is impossible to read, for instance, of the death o f W illiam Latch without emotion.!
The Academy also welcomed 'a picture of unromantic life ...'^
when the author wrote 'with knowledge vivified by sympathy, and
sympathy directed to the ends o f a r t . '^ The Review o f Reviews
emphasised the transforming hand of the a rtist:
His is a great success. I t is a low lif e which he presents - a life where horse-racing is the be all and end all of existence - but he has presented it with the hand of an artist.4
Although The Spectator professed to be less taken with the book than other reviewers its critic praised the same qualities as they praised:
Esther Waters has, however, other elements o f the great novel. The heroic element is there. The love of the daughter fo r her mother, and o f the mother fo r her son, is portrayed with a passion, a force and a simplicity which fu lly deserve the word "heroic". The sense o f pathos is not less happily conveyed, and throughout, the book is, as regards the heroine, suffused with a true nobility of sentiment ... In spite of the squalid and degraded setting o f his book, Mr. Moore does not forget that man is a noble a n im a l. 5
These responses to Moore c la rify the d iffic u lty c r itic s had with
Zola. Of most significance is the reference to man as a 'noble animal'. Whereas Trollope's realism had seemed merely diverting and inconsequential Zola took things much further by the deterministic movement of his novels. His realism denied the power of the human . /
1. 'N ovels', The Saturday Review, LXVII (May 5, 1894), p .476. 2. George C o tte re ll, 'New Novels', The Academy, XLV (May 26, 1894),p .433. 3. Ib id ., p .434. 4. H ur Monthly Parcel of Books', The Review of Reviews, IX (1894),p.525. 5. 'A Betting Epit - Esther Waters', The Spectator, LXXII (June 2, 1894), p.757.
-108- personality to change and redirect a sequence of action, and his allegedly objective stance as an author underlined this negation of individual responsibility, Moore was an author who began by accepting this creed but then came to accept the idea of the power of the individual to act positively for his own good and society's good. Esther Waters was his clear statement of this new conviction, and was welcomed by c r itic s who were prepared to accept radical developments in subject-m atter so long as the author's moral voice was not abandoned, and so long as the action took the positive direction it did in this particular novel. Zola's deterministic philosophy was found quite unacceptable by English critics, and had no appeal for English novelists. At the same time, critics could respond to the indirect moral force op Zola's novels.
S urprisingly, Esther Waters was not compared with Tess o f the
D'UrbervUles. It is an obvious perspective for judging the novel, but in the comparison Moore suffers. His novel not only lacks Hardy's complexity of texture but Esther is merely pathetic alongside Tess.
The stress on Esther's nobility is,,in fact, rather perilously close to the emphasis on fortitude and duty in the fam iliar novel of domestic realism (a factor which no doubt influenced critics in their apprec iation of the book). Hardy takes the novel forward by presenting a fa r more complex character.^ But, even i f Esther Waters does not approach the level of Hardy's fiction, it was very much to the taste o f c r itic s at the time, and th is was because Moore had made the sort o f changes which were bound to make him acceptable; he had w ritte n a novel in which it was maintained that the individual could contribute to the good of society as a whole, because the individual had positive resources of personality.
1. Tess of the D'Urbervilles is discussed in chapter seven.
-109- 5. REASONS FOR THE CONTROVERSY OVER REALISM
By 1894 it was clear that naturalism was not going to take root in England. Zola had influenced the choice of subjects in the
English novel, and c r itic s had come to an accommodation with his own works by stressing the moral pattern th a t could be extracted from them. But other aspects o f his work - the documentary realism and the deterministic philosophy - were unacceptable, and had only a limited and temporary influence on George Moore. Yet the rejection of these ideas could have been anticipated at the beginning of the
'eighties. Critics were confident in their belief that realism on its own was inadequate fo r great fic tio n and were unimpressed by th is aspect o f Zola's thin king. They sought out the temperament of the author, but here again were equally well-prepared to handle Zola as they had no trouble in proving that his imagination was coarse and cynical. There is nothing old-fashioned about their feeling that
Zola had insufficient faith in human nature, and so they were right to question his deterministic pattern. Part of Zola's limitations as a novelist was the fact that his works did not present any ideas which critics were not already well-equipped to handle. Particularly when discussing his theories they adopted a superior and patronising tone as though they had already heard a ll these ideas before, and, although this is a familiar approach to original ideas, in this instance there was some justification for the pose. Yet, there was a great deal of controversy over Zola and realism in the 'eighties, and the concern f e lt by c r itic s seemed to be something more than a matter of a temporary shock. There emerges the problem of why novels reviewers could cope with should have created such a storm. They could equate Zola's determinism with cynicism yet it nevertheless annoyed them. First of all there was the question of immorality. Allegedly
- 110 - obscene novels have obviously always been the subject o f discussion on a scale not generally associated with literary matters. The more restrained works of Flaubert and Daudet did not attract such interest in England as the works of Zola. Indeed, Zola worked deliberately to create his own notoriety. If the novels had been less shocking it is quite probable that they would have received no more attention than the work of any other foreign novelist.
A deeper cause of renewed interest in the subject of realism, however, a cause which goes beyond the shock o f his subject matter, was the suspicion that Zola's theories might have some substance.
His ideas originated in the scientific thinking of the century with
Darwin's theories as. the principal shaping factor. The central idea, of course, was that man could be discussed in similar terms to animal-life. Zola's English critics were equally the inheritors of this scientific thinking. No previous theory of realism had maintained the scientific analogy so fully, and Zola's work was received by critics equally conscious of the growing influence of science. The connection of literature and science is simplistic, but for the c ritic in the 'eighties it was feasible that science might have mod ified the nature of fiction. Edward Dowden connected science with democracy as the two dominating features of the period:
I spoke of the literature of our time as being that of a period of spiritual and social revolution, a revolution not the less real or important because it is being conducted without violence. And of the forces e ffe ctin g th is revolution, I spoke o f democracy and science as among the most potent. Upon these forces we can certainly reckon; but when we ask the question. How are they related,to literature ? the answer is neither prompt nor sure.
Dowden divided his own answer in two, dealing separately with the
1. 'Hopes and Fears fo r L ite ra tu re ', The F o rtn ig h tly Review, XLV (1889), p.166.
- I l l - general idea of a scientifically-based literature, and the application of the methods of science to writing. His firs t point was that science did not contradict the imagination, but when he expressed th is idea his sentence was ingeniously organised. He began with the point that science had revealed a cosmos of in fin ite ly greater scope and complexity than had previously been imagined.
'Biologic evolution' was tucked away at the end of his lis t of s c ie n tific discoveries. Thus, his sentence was polem ically organised to emphasise scale and mystery, rather than reductive concepts of man:
The results of scientific study are in no respect antag o n is tic to lite ra tu re , though they may profoundly modify th a t view o f the world which has h ith erto found in l i t e r ature an imaginative expression. The conceptions of a great cosmos, of the reign of law in nature, of the persistence of force, of astronomic, geologic, biologic evolution, have in them nothing which should paralyze the emotions or the imagination.'
Dowden used science selectively in order to stress order and to refute the naturalists conception of the world. The idea of applying the methods of science to the actual process of writing books he rejected completely:
Although, however, s c ie n tific conclusions may in the end subserve literature, it is certain that the methods and processes o f science, and those employed in what De Quincey terms the lite ra tu re o f power, are e sse n tia lly different. Such literature is nothing if it is not personal; it expresses the thoughts, passions and imaginings o f an in d ivid u a l. Science aims at excluding whatever is peculiar: he must not read himself into the phenomena; his vision must be free from the mists of sentiment; his imagination is of use only in shaping an hypothesis to be v e rifie d by subsequent inq uiry or in varying the experiments by which he may attain to new objective facts. 2
1. Ib id .. p .179. 2. Ib id . . pp.179-180.
- 112- Although Dowden rejects the methods of science it is significant that he should have needed to consider the subject at a ll.
The most important example of literature being discussed from th is angle was an essay by Hardy, 'The Science o f F ic tio n ', published in 1891. Science, wrote Hardy, 'can have no part or share in the construction of a story, however recent speculations may have favoured such an application'.^ His argument continued:
The most devoted apostle of realism, the sheerest natur a lis t, cannot escape, any more than the withered old gossip over her fire , the exercise of Art in his labour or pleasure of telling a tale ... If in the exercise of his reason he select or omit, with an eye to being more truthful than truth (the just aim of Art), he transforms himself into a technicist at a move.2
The predictability of the argument is less important than the fact that Hardy should have dealt with the subject of science and lite r ature at all. It indicates the way in which the 'eighties had to face up to the scientific analogy. Critics were aware that strong reasons existed fo r the development of the s c ie n tific approach. This can be seen in the ambivalent response to an amateurish attempt at a realistic novel, Richard Pryce's An Evil Spirit (1887):
It is true that the scientific spirit of our age has made physiology part of the artist's subject matter, but there is a wide difference between method and material, and we are not yet prepared to accept the scalpel of the surgeon in exchange fo r the stylus of the w r ite r .3
In this case the pretensions of science as an influence on literature forced the c ritic to give serious consideration to an obviously bad novel. Julia Wedgwood, discussing James, also fe lt that, unlikeable as it may be, science did now seem to be dictating the terms in art:
1. 'The Science o f F ic tio n ', The New Review, IV (1891), p .315.
3! Novels'. The Saturday Review, LX III (June 25, 1887), p .916.
-113- The mistake is a re s u lt o f th a t obsequious deference which
Literature has in these days shown to triumphant Science; an instance
of that obliteration of all reserve which the new lav^^giver demands and she abhors.
The fear of Zola was based largely on the suspicion that his
novels, with their deterministic scheme, might be true, as they
did seem to correspond to the scientific view of existence. That
these fears were exaggerated is as obvious as the fact that Zola's
novels are in no way s c ie n tific , and as soon as c r itic s began to
realise that his novels offered a personal view of life the heat was taken out of the controversy. The realisation of Zola's subjectivity however, demanded a f a ir ly high degree of c r itic a l so p h istica tio n , and did not become a widespread view until the 'nineties. In the
'eighties Zola was regarded as a scientific novelist and critics had to challenge this scientific view of life . One answer was the idea of a 'higher realism' that transcended the insights provided by
Zola's novels, that looked beyond the gloomy material evidence.
It found admirable expression in the speed with which the works of Tolstoy won recognition. Edward Dowden fe lt that Tolstoy looked fu rth e r than the French re a lis ts :
Let the school o f observation but do its work more th o r oughly, and we shall again be in presence o f the nobler facts of human life as well as the baser, and perceive the glory of our manhood together with the shame. What the fru its of this higher realism in literature may be, we can divine from the perusal o f such works as Anna Karenina and War and Peace.2
1. 'Contemporary Records: F ic tio n ', The Contemporary Review, L (1886), p.301. 2. 'Hopes and Fears fo r L ite ra tu re ', The F o rtn ig h tly Review, XLV (1889), p.180.
-114- Matthew Arnold also expressed his admiration fo r Tolstoy's novels, praising Anna Karenina at the expense o f Madame Bovary:
Madame Bovary . . . is a work of p e trifie d fe e lin g ; over i t hangs an atmosphere o f bitterness, irony, impotence; not a personage in the book to rejoice or console us ; the springs of freshness and feeling are not there to create such personages. Emma Bovary follows a course in some respects like that of Anna, but where, in Emma Bovary, is Anna's charm? The treasures o f compassion, tenderness, insight which alone, amid such guilt and misery, can enable charm to subsist and to emerge, are wanting in Flaubert. He is cruel, with the cruelty of petrified fe e lin g , to his poor heroine; he pursues her without p ity or pause, as w ith m alignity; he is harder upon her himself than any reader even, I think, w ill be inclined to be. '
Arnold's defence of an emotional involvement by the novelist was consistent with the beliefs of nearly all English critics during the period. They could appreciate why the novelist adopted an a n a ly tic , objective, s c ie n tific stance but had to fin d reasons why it was inadequate. By the 'nineties they realised that the stance was not as objective and scientific as claimed.
One development in the 'eighties was both a reaction against
Zola and a response to his example. This was th a t c r itic s took a fresh look at the novelists of the eighteenth century who seemed to combine realism of subject-matter with a healthy morality. A new enthusiasm for Fielding was vividly illustrated in the crop of collected editions of his works edited by such prominent critics as 2 Leslie Stephen, George Saintsbury, Edmund Gosse and W.E.Henley.
For Henley, in particular, the work of Fielding and Smollett was a corrective both to the impersonality of the French novel and the false respectability of too much English fiction. O.H. Buckley has commented on this aspect of Henley's interests:
1. 'Count Leo T o ls to i', The F ortnightly Review, XLII (1887), p .791. 2. Leslie Stephen (e d.) ,THe~Works of Henry hi el ding, Esq., Ten Volumes, 1882, George Saintsbury (e d .). I he Works o f Henry F ie ld ing, Twelve Volumes, 1893, Edmund Gosse ( e d . ) , The Works o f Henry F ielding, Twelve Volumes, 1898-9, W.E.Henley (e d .), =
- 115- The true antithesis to the doctrine of Flaubert and the example of Zola lay in the theory and practice of the British "realists" of the eighteenth century, who had all the blessed g ift of seeing things as they are. And in the work of these Henley found the most e ffe c tiv e antidote to the denial, the sentimentalism, and the false respectability of his own time.!
The change o f a ttitu d e towards Fielding sums up the changes in critical expectations in the 'eighties. Fiction was allowed to use a broader range o f subject-m atter, but the idea o f the moral and social function of the novel was in no way modified. At no stage was the objective documentation of life admitted to create its own moral lessons - these lessons were the responsibility of the novelist. This was a view of fiction that had existed before the arrival of Zola, but the new wave of realism demanded a new defence of these principles as there was the possibility that Zola's novels might be the expression of a new scientific truth. But as soon as it was realised that Zola's vision was not only personal but bizarrely personal the controversy ended. The novels were not the scientific truth about life but just one man's unique and eccentric view o f lif e . The move towards freedom of subject-m atter, however, was bound to have further repercussions, but it was in the work of such novelists as Hardy, James, and Gissing tha t c r itic s would have to meet a flood of new ideas that could not be disposed of so quickly as the bias of the ideas in Zola's novels* The fuss over realism itse lf was noisy but short-lived; but it was sufficiently disturbing to produce a whole new movement o f reaction - the romantic fic tio n o f Stevenson, Haggard and Hall Caine.
=The Complete Works of Henry Fielding, Sixteen Volumes, 1903. 1. W.E.Henley: A Study in the "Counter-Decadence" of the Nineties, New York, 1971, pp.167-168,
- 116- CHAPTER THREE: THE REVIVAL OF ROMANCE
1. STEVENSON'S THEORY OF FICTION
The revival of romance in the 'eighties was a development that cannot be ignored. It represented a reaction by some writers against what they regarded as an excess of realism. That the public was ready for such a reaction is shown in the speed with which such w riters as Stevenson, Haggard, and Hall Caine established th e ir reputations. The response o f c r itic s , however, was rather more complex, and appears not to have been fu lly investigated by modern commentators on: the% periods Whatevervtheir reservations about Zola's realism very few%review8rs surrendered th e ir usual pre ferences for the attractions of the new romances. Yet, even for the critica l audience, romance seemedf for a limited period, a feasible alternative to realism, and was discussed with appropriate serious ness. Nor were these reviewers totally misguided in their in itia l enthusiasm. The new sort o f romance was introduced by Stevenson who defended his a r tis tic bias with an in te lle c tu a l grasp th a t deserved serious consideration. Leaving aside.Henry James, Stevenson was the most:thoughtfuT'and articulate'’theorist^ef"the'novel: in the decade.
His taste fo r romance, however; was in it ia lly temperamental.
Nor did the sophistication o f his subsequent comments ever lose sight of a simple taste for adventure, intrigue, and the pure mechanics of e xcitin g na rra tive. This temperamental preference fo r romance is most clearly revealed in his letters. Writing to Henley in 1884 he said:
I do desire a book o f adventure - a romance - and no man w ill get or w rite me one. Dumas I have read and re-read too often; Scott, too and I am short. I want to hear swords clash ... 0 my sighings after romance, or even Skeltery, and O! the weary age which w ill produce me n e ith e r.'
1. Sidney Colvin (e d.). The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson, I I , 1911, p .201. The le tte r Is undated and October 1884 is suggested by Colvin. -iiy- The same a ttitu d e was revealed when he wrote to James a fte r
completing The Wrecker (1892). He was as conscious of its lim it
ations as any subsequent c r it ic , but th is did not prevent a genuine
d e lig h t in the cleverness o f his own book:
As fo r The Wrecker, i t 's a machine, you know - don't expect augh-t else - a machine, and a police machine; but I believe the end is one o f the most genuine butcheries in literature; and we point to our machine with a modest pride, as the only police machine without a villain.!
. This taste of Stevenson's was shown again in an article, 'Popular ? Authors', written in 1888. He revealed an interest in melodramatic
romantic novels which would be inexplicable i f displayed by any
other notable novelist of the period.
Yet, from the beginning of his career, he was conscious of the
inadequacy of such an approach to fic tio n . What he hoped to do in
his more ambitious books was to make romance a mode worthy o f respect.
Ones of his strengths was that he could stand outside the adolescent
tendencies of his work, and indulge them in works which alternated
w ith his more important achievements. For example, St. Ives (1898)
seems to have provided a needed lowering of intensity for the
w ritin g o f Weir o f Hermiston (1896). He defined his position well
at the age of twenty-four, and the definition did not require re
formulating at any time in the next twenty years:
Romance is a language in which many persons learn to speak with a-certain appearance of fluency; but there are few who can ever bend i t to any practical need, few who can ever be said to express themselves in i t . ^
This is from his essay on Hugo, which is a remarkable piece o f
1. Janet Adam Smith (e d ito r), Henry James and Robert Louis Stevenson, 1948, p .206. The le tte r was w ritte n in October 1891. 2. Scribner's Magazine, New York, IV (1888), pp.122-128. 3. 'V irfn r Hugn'q Romances'. The C ornhill Magazine, XXX (1874), p .192.
- 118 - precocious theorising, but at the same time a false start. It
defines the strengths and possibilities of romance enthusiastically,
but the enthusiasm cannot hide the exaggerated rhetoric and vague
su^gestiveness:
The fa ct is that a rt is working fa r ahead o f language as well as of science, realising for us, by all manner of suggestions and exaggerations, effects for which as yet we have no direct name, for the reason that these effects do not enter very largely into the necessities of life . Hence alone is that suspicion of vagueness that often hangs about the purpose o f a romance; i t is clear enough to us in thought; but we are not used to consider anything clear until we are able to formulate it in words, and an alytical language has not been s u ffic ie n tly shaped to that end.!
Straining to celebrate the inexpressible q u a litie s o f Hugo's works
Stevenson brushed aside his lim ita tio n s : 'we see blemishes such as we can lay to the charge of no other man in the number of the
famous...'2
When Stevenson republished th is essay in Fam iliar Studies o f
Men and Books the preface included a retraction of his youthful
enthusiasm. He virtually acknowledged that in attempting to say too much he had really said too little about romance as a practical medium for the writer:
The fiv e romances studied with a d iffe re n t purpose might have given different results, even with a c ritic so warmly interested in th e ir favour. The great con temporary master o f wordmanship, and indeed o f a ll literary arts and technicalities, had not unnaturally dazzled a beginner. But it is best to dwell on merits, for it is these that are most often overlooked.3
His subsequent c ritic is m was s u p e rfic ia lly less ambitious. The title s he wrote under were virtual disclaimers of any critical impo rtance. 'A Gossip on Romance', 'A Humble Remonstrance', and 'A Note
1. Ib id . , p .183. 2. Ibid.. p.194. 3. 1882, p . x iii.
-119- on Realism' are consciously diminutive, but this seems a calculated
pose. The word 'gossip' challenged the scientific assumptions of
the realists. The hint of apology in the answer to James avoided
the arrogance of other defenders of romances. His belief in romance
was nevertheless stated without equivocation. But it is not only
the tone that makes his remarks superior to those of Haggard and
Caine. The difficulty in writing about romance is that there is a
great temptation to defend it on vague emotional grounds. The Hugo
' essay is a clear example o f th is tendency. Stevenson eventually
constructed a good case by making his examination increasingly
technical. By examining the methods of the romancer and the realist
he was able to argue a series of modest victories for the former.
In contrast. Haggard and Caine defended the mode n o is ily , but th e ir
claims for it were based on a view of life rather than on a con
sideration of the richness of the novel-form as such. Yet Stevenson's
aesthetic case fo r romance only evolved slowly, and his argument can
be seen maturing in four essays - 'The Morality of the Profession
o f L e tte rs' (1881), 'A Gossip on Romance' (1882), 'A Note on Realism'
(1883), and 'A Humble Remonstrance' (1884).V 2 'The Morality of the Profession of Letters' retains a great
deal o f the vagueness o f the Hugo essay. Stevenson almost completely
succumbs to a view o f lite ra tu re which panders to the emotional needs
o f the reader. For example, he claims th a t, 'Any lite ra ry work which
conveys faithful facts or pleasing impressions is a service to the
public'^ - a view which seems to accept comforting optimism as a
literary aim as important as any other. So long as a work is diverting,
amusing, or reassuring it is assumed to be of some value. This view
1. Kenneth Graham in his b rie f consideration o f Stevenson (Graham, pp.64-66.) discusses these essays as if they express a fixed view, so fa ils to show how Stevenson's view o f romance was a developing matter. 2. The F o rtnig htly Review, XXIX (1881), pp.513-520. 3. Ib id ., p .519. ' - 120- of romance is obviously a weak one. It is the aesthetic which leads
the form into sensation, intrigue, sentimentality, and escapism.
The essay is an almost classic statement of the view that public
demand justifies such books, and that means that they are necessarily
important. The weakness of the argument is most apparent in the
comment that, 'The slightest novels are a blessing to those in
distress, not chloroform its e lf a greater.
'A Gossip on Romance' begins to re je ct the 'chloroform ' view
■ of literature. An imagined reader is s till at the heart of the
argument, but he is now conceived as wishing to actively enter into
the work, rather than to be passively acted upon. Romance is the
form of literature in which this is most possible. This is because
the sort of delight sought by the normal reader is vicarious excitement.
The normal reader is conceived of as loving adventure, mystery, and
th rillin g human achievements; and this 'is one of natural appetites 3 w ith which any liv e ly lite ra tu re has to count.' The argument is
s till rather spurious because it depends upon a reader bringing to
fiction the same expectations as Stevenson. He could not understand
the contemporary preference for a quiet domestic novel, but at this
stage found i t impossible to prove it inadequate without introducing
the extra-literary consideration of a human weakness for picturesque
in cid e n t.
More original is his conception of art as a game, a conception
in which the reader becomes the player:
when the game so chimes with his fancy tha t he can jo in in it with all his heart, when it pleases him with every turn, when he loves to recall it and dwells upon its rec-. ollection with entire delight, fiction is called romance.
1. Ibid., p.520, ; 2. Tôïïqman's Magazine, I (1882), pp.69-79, 3. Ib id ., V .7 T . ~ ■ 4. Ib id ., p .77.
- 121- This points towards a future emphasis on the a rtific ia lity of all
art. Whereas James stresses the attempt to achieve the air of
reality Stevenson is content with illusion;
No a rt produces illu s io n ; in the theatre we never forget that we are in the theatre; and while we read a story, we s it wavering between two minds, now merely clapping our hands at the merit of the performance, now condescending to take an active part in fancy w ith the characters.!
The next two essays develop this idea of the a rtific ia lity of fiction,
'A Note on Realism' is a persuasive piece o f work as i t concen
trates on the technique of the novel and jettisons all mention of
the reader's expectations. The weaknesses of the realistic method are
discussed, but Stevenson's comments are not particularly original, He
' mentions the tendency o f the re a lis tic novel to become a catalogue o f
small details, a criticism which was commonplace at the time. More
important is his admission that romance is liable to the opposite
fault of becoming so generalised and vague that in effect it achieves
nothing:
The immediate danger o f the re a lis t is to s a c rific e the beauty and significance o f the whole to local dex terity, or, in the insane pursuit of completion, to immolate his readers under fa cts; but he comes in the last resort, as his energy declines to discard all design, abjure all choice, and with scientific thor oughness, stea dily to communicate matter which is not worth learning. The danger o f the id e a lis t is , o f course, to become merely null and lose all grip of fact, particularity, or passion.3 ,4 Romance is only to be favoured - 'on neither side is dogmatism fittin g .
- because i f handled c a re fu lly - 'conceived with honesty and executed
1. Ibid., p.76. 2. The Magazine of A rt, VII (1883), pp.24-28. 3. Ib id . , p .28. 4. Ib id ., p .28.
- 122- w ith communicative ardour.'^ - i t can give a more s ig n ific a n t
shape to the material. But the romance writer must avoid falling
back on accepted routines:
The old stock incidents and accessories, tricks of workmanship, and schemes o f workmanship (a ll being admirably good, or they would long have been forgotten) haunt and tempt our fancy; offer us ready-made but not perfectly appropriate solutions for any problem that . arises; and wean us from the study of nature and the uncompromising practice o f a r t . 2
Stevenson no longer regards romance as a refuge fo r the w rite r and
the audience. He now regards it as a serious form which the author
w ill find demanding, unless he is going to be merely repetitive, and
more demanding than the re a lis t method, as i t is more d if f ic u lt to
create a fresh gripping narrative than to marshall realistic details.
The argument has been shifted into the area o f craftsmanship, and
rests on the assumption that the execution o f o rig in a l broad effects
is the most difficult of all artistic feats. An idea of truth-to-life
is im plicit, but is not developed. Stevenson had not yet solved the
question o f v e ris im ilitu d e , but the publication o f James's 'A rt o f
Fiction' essay presented him with the opportunity to confront this
problem.
'A Humble Remonstrance' has a deceptive appearance o f slightness,
especially in the opening sequence where Stevenson fla tte rs Besant
and James. This is followed by some apparently inconsequential
bandying on what can le g itim a te ly be called a work o f fic tio n . For
several pages Stevenson is walking a tightrope between a bookman's essay and a serious discussion, but the justification of the opening stance emerges when we see that he is challenging the authority of
V 1. Ib id ., p .28. 2. Ib id ., p .27. 3. lôiTqman' s Magazine, V (1884), pp.139-147.
-123- fiction in its claims to compete with life :
No a rt is true in th is sense: none can "compete with life ": not even history, built indeed of indisputable facts, but these facts robbed of their vivacity and stin g ; so that even when we read o f the sack o f a city or the fall of an empire, we are surprised, and justly commend the author's talent, if our pulse be quickened.!
Stevenson in s is ts that a rt is a s im p lific a tio n , a matter o f looking
with half-shut eyes, and this theme of art being a deception is
essential for the rest of his case. On the surface he is contradicting
James's view, but as James pointed out: 'we agree, I th in k , much more
than we disagree ...' Stevenson repudiates a naive realism, but
James was conscious of his own limited vision. The ways in which they
decide to use their partial visions differ. James struggles to
achieve the air of reality. Stevenson regards the author's partial
vision as a licence to indulge his imagination. The danger of
Stevenson's position is that it appears to lead into aestheticism.
He has abandoned the idea o f a moral purpose to fic tio n , and has no wish to emulate James's representation of reality, which provides its
own moral atmosphere. At th is stage there seems to be no more to
praise, from Stevenson's point-of-view, other than fine writing
and the clever execution of an incident.
His argument is redeemed by his consideration of various types
o f novels. In terms o f craftsmanship, what he refers to as the
romance of adventure can achieve perfection, but Stevenson admits that
th is is not the paradigm o f the n o ve list's a rt. Only 'the fox o f
m aterial interest.can be pursued in such fic tio n . Another form
1. Ibid., p.141. 2. "Jinet Adam Smith (e d ito r), Henry James and Robert Louis Stevenson 1948, p .101. Letter w ritte n December b, 1884. 3. Longman's Magazine, V (1884), p .144.
-1 2 4 r of novel he discusses is the novel of character, as developed by
James, and again he respects such a method. I t can reveal a pre cision in the artistic ordering of materials similar to that achieved in the romance of adventure. The lim itation of such an approach is that i t concentrates on character to the exclusion o f other important facts. Stevenson's third kind of novel, the dramatic, is, he implies, the greatest. Although any novel is a rtificia l and incomplete, the dramatic novel at least tries to be true to the passionate cruxes of life :
The characters may come anyhow upon the stage: we do not care; the point is, that, before they leave it, they shall become transfigured and raised out of themselves by passion.1
Stevenson has fin a lly arrived at a sense o f the so rt o f novel he wishes to see, and, as far as possible, has arrived at this position by an aesthetic route. Yet, as always, an aesthetic case is ultimately moral. There appear to be convincing aesthetic reasons why th is so rt o f novel is be tter than a ll others, but submerged in the argument is a persistent impatience with psychological detail. Characters in picturesque confrontation are maintained to be most worthy of a rtistic presentation, but im plicit is the view that such confrontations, such external actions, are also the significant part of life . Yet, the bias which shapes the whole argument does not d is tra c t from the importance of the case developed.
Stevenson's name can be coupled with James's because they do a t lea st attempt to consider the form o f the novel o b je ctive ly.
They are virtually alone in the decade in rising above temporary dis putes to take a fairly impersonal look at fiction. Stevenson's
' . ' V ■ , ■ • - ' ' ■ . V
1. Ibid., p.146.
rl2 5 - achievement is that he considers the whole function o f romance,
and manages to construct a reasonable argument for its being the most truthful form of novel. James is, of course, the greater critic. He had realised already that 'reality has a myriad forms'^, and did not believe that any one sort of novel was any nearer absolute tru th . But Stevenson presented an in te re stin g case from something other than merely negative premises.
2. RIDER HAGGARD AND HALL CAINE ON THE AIMS OF FICTION
The q u a lity o f Stevenson's argument becomes apparent when i t
is compared with Rider Haggard's one lite ra ry essay. Haggard came to the fore in the wake of Stevenson, when the public and critics were anticipating further romantic adventure. If we accept the account of his daughter the influence was direct. Writing of King
Solomon's Mines (1885) she says:
I t happened apparently quite by chance. T ravelling up to London with one of his brothers they started discussing Treasure Island, ju s t then making a great success. Rider said he didn't think it was so very remarkable, whereupon his brother replied, rather indignantly: "Well, I'd like to see you write anything h a lf as good - bet you a bob you c a n 't.'' "Done," said Rider, and when the day's work was over, promptly sat down in the dining-room at Gunterstone Road to try. I t took him six weeks and when he had finished i t he was . entirely unaware that he had done anything remarkable - that he had opened up an untried path in romantic fiction , and accomplished that most d ifficu lt of all feats, found "some new thin g". His sleeping ta le n t was waking to l i f e . 3
The anecdote conveys well the atmosphere one associates' w ith Haggard.
But Haggard cannot be completely dismissed.
1. 'The A rt o f F ic tio n ', Longman's Magazine, IV (1884), p .509. 2. 'About F ic tio n ', The Contemporary Review, LI (1887), pp.172-180. 3. L ilia s Rider Haggard, The Cloak That I L e ft, 1951, pp.121-122.
rl2 6 - The Stevenson imitators could,by and large, adapt only the
most mechanical aspects o f his sto rie s . By the la te 'e ig h tie s there
was a flood of imitations. In April 1888 The Academy reviewed four
novels none o f which showed any sign o f o r ig in a lity . They were John
K.Leys's The Lindsays: A Romance of Scottish L ife , John Dal by's
TIayroyd o f Mytholm: a Romance o f the F e lls , H.B. H a rrio tt's Ha rah un a:
A Romance, and Julius Medley's Throttle Island: A Talé of Adventure.
. Reviewers were unimpressed and recognised these works as weak im it
ations o f Stevenson. James Ashcroft Noble wrote o f T h ro ttle Island:
Though not avowedly a burlesque, there can hardly be much doubt that Throttle Island has been written with a burlesque intention, the objects of its satire being Treasure Island and similar stories of romantic adventure. If this be so, the story is a very clever jeu d'esprit; if not, it is a mass of the wildest absurdities.^
This was the most charitable a ttitu d e that could be adopted towards
this and scores of other stories of buried treasure.
For Haggard to have developed beyond suclTlmTtative mediocrity
i t is natural to assume that he must have had a t lea st some sense o f
the possibilities of romance. In fact, his essay does reveal some
governing p rin cip le s, and a real commitment to romance, but compared
w ith Stevenson's his thoughts are naive. His fundamental position
corresponds to Stevenson's early view that the novel must have a
strong effect on the reader. He was ambivalent about whether this
effect should be escapist or inspiring. On the one hand he recognised
th a t:
a weary public calls continually for books, new books to make them fo rg e t, to refresh them, to occupy minds jaded with the to il and emptiness and vexation of our competitive existence.2
1. 'New N ovels' , The Academy, XXXII (A pril 28, 1888), p .288. 2. 'About F ic tio n '. The Contemporary Review, LI (1887), p .174.
> -127- This is close to the 'chloroform* view of fiction to be found in
'The M orality o f the Profession o f L e tte rs ', Haggard's complementary idea of the function of literature was also paralleled in Stevenson's essay. This is the view that, even in an age of realism, there is s till plenty of good le ft in the world, and it is the job of the novelist to draw attention to this:
what becomes o f the things tha t are pure and high - of the great aspirations and the lofty hopes and long ings, which after all, play their part in our human economy, and which i t is surely the duty o f a writer to call attention to and nourish according to his gifts?!
Haggard's view of fictio n , unlike Stevenson's never developed beyond these ideas of diversion and example.
C h a ra cte ristica lly though he paraded these ideas as i f they were great insights. The technical view of fiction at the heart o f these moral generalisations was, not su rp ris in g ly , extremely
-simple. A ll novelists require a strong ta le , which w ill appeal to . the reader's imagination, in which they can 'point (th ^ moral without being mercilessly bound down to the prose of a somewhat dreary age.'^
Such limited general principles go only a short way towards explaining a certain power in his work. It is only the references to a 'dreary age' and the 'emptiness and vexation of our competitive existence' that suggest the force behind his escapist urge. The good qualities in his work depend upon the peculiar nature of this escapist imagination, and his critical essay only underlines the probably obvious fact that Haggard was an instinctive novelist. But
1. Ib id ., p .176. 2. TFTÏÏ., p.180.
- 128 - despite its slightness as a piece of thinking, the essay at least
serves the purpose o f showing how Stevenson was joined by more
aggressive, less intelligent, defenders of romance.
Hall Caine also associated himself with the new vogue. In
1887 he expressed the hope that 'a tithe of "our noble selves" be
found worthy to assist at the revival of English romantic art ...'^
But Caine assumed for himself qualities of genius and inspiration
tha t Haggard would never have assumed. The peculiar thing about
Caine is that he never displayed any merely emotional preference
fo r romance. His in te re s t was never dependent upon the capacity o f
the form to d iv e rt the reader. Both in theory and practice he always
treated romance as the unlimited medium for supposedly profound
thought. One of his biographers suggests that Caine came to feel that
■'he had passed fa r beyond the-sim pler boundanes o f Tomance:
His chief motive in writing his novels, he said... was not romance, nor ter show his dramatic vigour as a ------story-teller and forcible character... but to reveal "the ever-present sense of the controlling power which the Greeks called Fate, but which the profoundly religious spirit of the Modern identified with the w ill of God. That no man is lost until his soul is lost, and that however low a man may fa ll, there is salvation for him so long as his soul can be kept alive.^
Caine seems re a lly to have believed that his works were o ffe rin g a
profound new vision, and was offended by any suggestion that:his"
work was shallow. He was convinced that he was the possessor of a
vision of synthesis that was available to a ll, but which most men were
too busy to see:
1. 'A look Round Literature, by Robert Buchanan', The Academy, XXXI (Feb. 26", 1887),” p. 141. 2. 'Samuel N orris, Two Men o f Manxland, Douglas, Is le o f Man, 1947, pp.28-29.
-129- The incidents of life are only valuable to art in degree as they are subservient to an idea, and an idea is only valuable to man in the degree to which it helps him to see that come what w ill the world is founded on justice... Justice is the one thing that seems to give art a right to exist, and justice - poetic justice, as we call it - is the essence of Romanticism.1
Caine is only interesting as a critic because of his presumption.
Mis novels reveal a furious e xp loitatio n o f melodrama, in tric a te
plots, stock situations, and standard narrative devices to hide
the paucity of thought. Yet the novels delighted the public
(The Manxman sold 400,000 copies.^), and the claims fo r significance
to some extent fooled the critics. In the 'eighties he was regarded
as a far from insignificant figure in the creation of possible new
directions for the novel.
3. CRITICAL REACTIONS TO THE NOVELS OF RIDER HAGGARD
Stevenson, Haggard, and Caine were the three main figures associated with the revival of romance. As has been seen, their sense of their own abilities and responsibilities in fiction varied widely. Yet all shared the belief that romance could be used as a creative alternative to realism, and all three believed in its super io rity as a mode. In view of the unpopularity with critics of the more extreme forms o f the re a lis tic novel, an appreciation o f Haggard and his contemporaries might well be expected. In fact, unqualified enthusiasm fo r Haggard was su rprising ly uncommon. Most c r itic s did not seem to share the belief that there was a simple opposition between realism and romance. Even Andrew Lang was quite well aware that his own preference for romance was purely emotional. He was prepared to admit that:
1. 'The New Watchwords o f F ic tio n ', The Contemporary Review, LVII (1890), p.487. 2. According to Samuel Norris, op.c it., p.7.
-130- No admiration, however enthusiastic or personal, of modern stories of adventure can blind one to the merits o f works^of Realism lik e A Modern Instance, or Le Crime et le Châtiment, or The Bostonians.1 " : '
He preferred, however, to escape into the world o f romance:
a reader in tune with his author [for all depends on that) w ill set the scenes in the sculptured catacombs, and the vision of moonlight in the city of Kor, the dead satellite shining on a city long dead, and the pathos of Ayesha's last caress. But this, be it reiterated, is the sense of a reviewer attached to impossible romance, of one who confesses himself incredibilium cupitor, an amateur o f savage l i f e , fond o f haunting, in fancy, the mysterious homes of ruined races, a believer, too, in the moral o f the legend.2
Other critics made it clear that they expected more from fiction than emotional stimulation. William Watson singled out Lang's response:
This is surely the very reductio ab absurdum of c rit icism. It amounts to a deliberate enthroning and deifying of every-day ignorant Philistinism that says, "Well, I don't understand principles but I know what I like." If this is how literature is to be estimated, there is an end to c ritic is m as a science at once. Individual — ignorance, incompetence, or caprice is henceforth the despot we are to grovel before. And what have our "moods" to do with the value of other people's productions?^
The majority of critics viewed their task as responsibly as Watson,
What some critics did single out for praise in Haggard was his character presentation, although a c ritic in The Saturday Review mentioned tha t he only dealt with 'ce rta in phases o f human character...'4 Umslopogaas was widely regarded as a valuable and interesting creation:
1. 'Realism and Romance', The Contemporary Review, LIT (1887), p.686. 2. 'She', The Academy, XXXI (January 15, 1887), p .36. 3. 'MF'Haggard and his Henchman', The F ortnightly Review, XLIV (1888), p.686. 4. 'Three Novels', The Saturday Review, LX III (March 19, 1887), p .414.
-131- Now, to have drawn such a figure is not only no small feat in itself, but it is answer enough to charges of plagiarism - for you cannot convey from another the fire which makes a character live. When a w riter has ^ given life in this way, it matters little that an incident here and there in his book reminds you o f somebody e ls e .'
The Spectator commented:
The true hero o f the tale is , however, the Zulu Umslopogaas, whose unswerving fid e lit y to Allan Quatermain, and more than Homeric exultation in the feats of his beloved battleaxe, gives a kind of epic unity to-the story.
This stress on character suggests how unprepared c r itic s were to
modify th e ir usual tastes. The most obvious q u a lity o f Haggard's
romances is the story, but the reviewers concentrated on the characters
at the expense of the plot.
They were even rather dismissive about the narrative interest.
The core o f The Saturday's Review's comment on Allan Quatermain
was that Haggard 'has written another lively tale of adventure, full
T Df"good 'fi-g h ti ng "amtd strange' scenes The-^pe ct a to r -s et- Mag ga rd ' s
_ achi«evement firm ly in perspective: 'This type of romance is not
one that we place very high in the literary scale, but in its kind it 4 could hardly be rivalled.' This sort of balanced awareness of
Haggard's lim ita tio n s was ty p ic a l. Reviewers approached his work
with the same expectations as they brought to any other novelist,
and when their interest in character was stimulated they were prepared
to offer their praise. But his qualities as a story-teller were not
considered an adequate substitute fo r other aspects o f a good novel.
The handling of plot was kept in its place as a quality of a fairly
iow order: 'It is told, moreover, with skill and power striking enough
1. 'A lla n Quatermain', The Saturday Review, LXIV (July 16, 1887),p .90. 2. R.H.Hutton, 'Allan Quatermain', The Spectator, LX (July 2, 1887), p .927. 3. 'Allan Quatermain', The Saturday Review, LXIV (July 16, 1887), p.90 4. R.H.Hutton, 'Tliat Quite Impossible She', The Spectator, LX (January 15, 1887), p.79. “ 132- to add to Mr. Haggard's reputation as a s to ry -te lle r/^
Consequently, even Haggard's most sympathetic reviewers never regarded his romance as an alternative to realistic fiction. In spite o f the widespread feeling that realism had robbed contemporary fiction of its imaginative appeal, no critic was prepared to be indulgent to Haggard's fiction simply because it was unrealistic.
Many reviewers were openly hostile. Emily Thursfield, who reviewed his novels for The Athenaeum, provided the most incisive analysis of his faults. In particular, her balanced discussion of She is striking as it was written at a time when most critics were s till concentrating on the originality of his work. She drew attention to the wide disparity between his wild imagination and his limited powers of expression:
The conception is weird, fantastic, and certainly fas cinating, but the treatment is lamentably unequal. Mr.Haggard's language and dramatic force ra re ly rise to the level of a really great occasion; they often fall dis appointingly below i t . 2
The failure was all the greater in Mrs. Thursfield's view in that he had been presumptuous enough to attempt to impose an a lle g o rica l pattern on his work (a level o f attempted significance which the reviewers in The Spectator and The Saturday Review did not notice).
She pointed out how inappropriate such an aim was for a novelist of
Haggard's limited resources:
Mr. Haggard has conceived a theme the adequate treatment of which demands elevation of thought and a corresponding d is tin c tio n o f language. The inequality o f the language is, perhaps, pardonable, but we do not find that the thought and imagination are any better sustained. It is d iffic u lt to take She seriously as a philosophical allegory and yet the touch ôT"allegory and the tinge of philosophy which belong to it spoil its effect as a romantic narrative.^
1. 'Novels and S to rie s ', The Saturday Review, LXVIII (July 6, 1889), p .18. 2. 'Novels o f the Week', The Athenaeum, No.3090 (January 15, 1887), p .93. 3. Ib id ., pp. 93-94. -133- The question of whether a more able novelist than Haggard could have made romance a feasible alternative to realism must be delayed until Stevenson's work is considered, but a number of comments on Haggard suggest that critics had very little faith in the p o te n tia lity of romance.. The only novel by Haggard which Mrs.
Thursfield did not condemn was Jess (1887), and this was largely because it seemed to her an altogether more realistic work;
In King Solomon's Mines Mr. Rider Haggard showed tha t he was a master hand in the narration of romantic ad ventures. Jess, like its predecessor, is again an African romance, but of a totally different character. King Solomon's Mines deals with the marvellous, the incred ible, we may say the impossible. Jess deals with real life ; nothing is narrated which might not be strictly, literally true.*
C.A.Cook also implied th a t the re a lis tic method was the real backbone of the novel, and that the more picturesque method of the romance hardly amounted to a real alternative:
When, after a ll, one pauses to reflect, it is quite absurd to see what a s lig h t equipment Mr.Haggard brings to his task in the matter of the more solid qualities of the novelist - study of character, accuracy of detail, . knowledge o f human nature, the power of making things seem tru e .2
No reviewer was prepared to create a different set of priorities for the novelist on the basis of Haggard's work. In fact, it was quickly realised that the originality of his fiction resided mainly in the settings and in an unprecedented degree of violence, but tha t in general respects he was only continuing a tradition of popular sen sational fiction. He was neatly compartmentalised, respected for his ability to create something exciting, but patronised as an inept n o ve list. C riticism soon became a matter o f degrees of indulgence.
1. 'Novels o f the Week', The Athenaeum, No.3099 (March 19, 1887), p.375. 2. 'Novels o f the Week', The Athenaeum, No.3186 (November 17, 1888), p .660.
-134- 4. CRITICAL REACTIONS TO THE NOVELS OF HALL CAINE
In contrast, critics found it fairly difficult to decide on
the importance of Hall Caine's novels. His work provoked some of the most contradictory c ritic is m o f the decade. Reviewers were s p lit
in to two f a ir ly equal groups holding opposing views on such matters as his characterisation, story-telling ability, imaginative power, and moral in te llig e n ce . By the time o f The Bondman (1890) some were convinced of his genius (a group which included Caine him se lf), while others dismissed his work as commercial contrivance. J.
Barrow Allen opened his review with the comment:
I t would be going too fa r , perhaps, to assert th a t Mr. Hall Caine has, by his la te s t novel. The Bondman, placed himself on the shelf where the classics stand. But there is no doubt that he occupies a position far removed from th a t o f the average s to ry -te lle r, and may be regar ded as standing on a pedestal of his own, secure from the kick o f the envious passing herd, and only to be approached with ladder, and at personal ris k , by him who would reverently wipe off a little dust and cobweb, or chip away, with apologies, some truant angularity.!
The Pall Mall Gazette was equally dogmatic, but saw nothing at all to respect in Caine's novel:
Since Mr. Robert Buchanan seems to be irrecoverably en- gulphed in the th e a trica l quagmire, Mr. Hall Caine may be regarded as the sole surviving champion of the Eternal Melodramatic in fiction. Situation is the beginning and end of his art - moving, startling, thrillin g, awe-inspiring Situation, presented with every device of emphasis and antithesis, limelight and slow music.^
An explanation o f th is extreme d ivisio n o f opinion is not to be found in any preference by Caine's admirers for the mere exploi tation of situation. In fact, those who most disliked Haggard were often loudest in th e ir praise o f Caine. J. Barrow A lle n, w ritin g
1. 'New Novels', The Academy, XXXVII (March 1, 1890), p .147. 2. 'Mr.Hall Caine's New Novel', The Pall Mall Gazette, L (February 7, 1890), p .3.
-135- about Lang and Haggard's collaborative venture. The World's Desire
(1890), p itie d Lang fo r being dragged down by an association w ith
Haggard:
As for the desperate predicaments and escapes, the harrowing scenes of cruelty, the gory combats - gorier, ' perhaps, in this book than ever - the sublime absurd ities inseparable from the introduction of magic and necromancy as a serious element in fiction, and all that sort of thing, no one doubts for a moment who is respon sib le fo r them. '
Even more curiously, D.F.Hannigan, the only consistent defender of 2 French naturalism , also admired Caine. He dismissed Haggard's works as 'simply grotesque exhibitions of bad taste, indifferent grammar, and imagination in its crudest form ...' But he regarded
The Bondman as 'a masterful production - a kind of prose epic.'^
I t seems th a t Caine was f e lt by many to transcend the adven turous surface of his work and to be the possessor of deeper qualities of vision and inspiration. This is certainly how he saw his own work, but it is the fact that critics could share his view that needs to be explained. Cosmo Monkhouse f e lt th a t romance was usually a petty thing but w ith The Deemster (1887) f e lt th a t 'the s p iritu a l grandeur of its conception and the tremendous character of the 5 forces engaged raise it to the region of tragic drama.' J.Barrow
Allen used similar tragic terms:
The c h ie f actors are something more than mere men and women... Their very woes are Promethean; the coincid ences that unite or sunder them appear as i f arranged by some overwhelming d e s tin y .6
1. 'New N ovels', The Academy, XXXVIII (November 29, 1890), p .500. 2. For Hannigan's views on Zola see chapter two. 3. 'The A r t if ic ia lit y o f English Novels', The Westminster Review, CXXXIIt (1890), p .262. 4. Ib id .. p .263. v 5. 'The Deemster: A Romance', The Academy, XXXII (November 26, 1887), p .346. 6. 'New N ovels', The Academy, XXXVII (March 1, 1890), p .147.
-136- Such praise is, of course, out of all proportion to Caine's achievement and is d iffic u lt to understand. The most plausible explanation seems to lie in the fact that Caine always exploited the same idea, the idea of self-sacrifice. The story was always elaborate, and the incidents colourfully described, so the repetit iveness of the central idea was almost obscured, but this fam iliar, yet always attractive and inspiring, idea held the work together.
Many c r itic s were convinced th a t his work offered an in s p irin g moral experience. The surface excitement was sufficient to conceal the glibness o f his moral scheme.
The c ritic s who did see through Caine's achievement wrote more cynically about the nature of his appeal. The most impressive analysis was by George Saintsbury who drew attention to the repet itive pattern of the novels. He observed that there had never been
'so close a hugging of one general form of plot and catastrophe as is the case w ith Mr.Hall Caine.He went on to describe the standard plan of the novels. This was that two men (either brothers, half-brothers, or cousins) fe ll in love with the same woman. The outcome of this complication was usually a noble self-sacrifice by one of the men, even to the point of death. The novels were thus simultaneously exciting and morally reassuring. The appeal of Caine's message is evident from the fact that even some of his detractors endorsed the a ltr u is tic theme. One f a ir ly harsh c r it ic o f Caine's 2 method approved of the fact that The Bondman 'enforces a lofty moral.'
Both his admirers and his critics admired Caine's intention. It was just that his more sceptical readers could see that the inspiring message was inadequately substantiated.
1. 'The Novels of Mr.Hall Caine', The Fortnightly Review, LVII (February 1895), p.186. 2. 'Current Literature', The Spectator, LXIV (May 10, 1890), p.666.
-137- James Ashcroft Noble was a close friend of Caine's but
commented on his f i r s t novel. The Shadow o f a Crime (1885), th a t
it lacked 'the sense of imaginative reality and coherence, and the I kind of pleasure which is derived from it.' Those c r itic s who
could detach themselves from the attractive moral resolution of
each book were well aware of the deficiencies of realism which made
the message its e lf bogus. These critics were not prepared to
. establish a different standard of judgement for the romance but
would judge it by exactly the same terms as the conventional novel.
But Caine had his admirers, and these c r it ic s , equally aware o f the
deficiencies of realism, made a not very convincing attempt to
„ describe Caine's achievement in terms of tragedy. They were prepared
to modify their conception of the novel because they approved of the
moral purpose; but Caine's novels were too insubstantial to maintain
th e ir appeal in to the 'n in e tie s .
5. CRITICAL ADVICE TO STEVENSON
The response to Hall Caine has shown how highly critics could
value e x p lic itly framed moral sig n ifica nce . I t went v ir tu a lly un
questioned even by those who found major faults in his work. Sur
prisingly, Stevenson could also be discussed in the same restricted
way. E. Purcell fe lt that Stevenson's great lim itation was the lack
of a confident non-ironic morality:
We have no rig h t to demand his scheme o f human l i f e ; but this is certain, that his puzzling enigmatic ethics, whether they be individual, or whether they are a true reflection of a present transitional state of society, are the real hindrance to his^aim of producing a great romance worthy of his genius.
1. 'The Shadow of a Crime', The Spectator, LVIII (May 2, 1885), p.585 2. 'Prince Otto , The Academy, XXIX (February 27, 1886), p.140.
-138- Purcell went fu rth e r and acknowledged th a t i t was unimportant
whether the moral resolution was based on true or false premises.
He claimed that 'without a firm, strong, undoubting (albeit ignorant
or insolent), moral standpoint, no great, grasping novel could be I achieved.' He referred back with approval to the confidence of
Scott's moral outlook, a confidence he wished to see reproduced in
Stevenson's works, even if it did not express Stevenson's deepest
convictions:
Sir Walter's mind was quite made up about the right and wrong of most things and persons. He could afford to describe and judge them steadily, without excitement or misgiving; and the reader, soothed and reassured, resigns himself with confidence to the prolonged spell of the great magician.2
' As this chapter has suggested, such absolute moral conviction was
likely to take the form of the jingoistic heartiness of Haggard, or
the noisy but empty poetic justice of Hall Caine.
Stevenson's novels do not fa ll into the same moralistic category.
The most consciously moral o f his sto rie s is Strange Case o f Dr.
Jekyll and Mr.Hyde (1886), which his w ife , fe e lin g more keenly the
requirements of the day, insisted on him rewriting in order that it
should acquire a more moral tone. The powerful plot holds the poss
ib ility of a disturbing examination of moral ambiguity, but the
published story is no more than a highly-moral entertainment. Apart
from Purcell's strictures, however, moral questions did not normally
enter into the contemporary discussion of Stevenson. He avoided con
troversial matters and did not introduce an explicit moral pattern
into his work.
1. ' Weir o f Hermiston*, The Academy, XLIX (June 27, 1896), p .522, 2. 'Prince O tto', The"Academy, XXIX (February 27, 1886), p,140.
-139- Much o f his appeal to his contemporaries was therefore as an entertainer, and critics displayed only qualified enthusiasm as they fe lt fiction should aim higher. Treasure Island (1882) and
Kidnapped (1886) were, i t is tru e , published to general acclaim, but the novelty.of his romances was the overwhelming factor in this favourable reception. After these two works critics began to make their fam iliar demand that fiction should be more realistic.
Stevenson did not make the same moral impact on c r itic s as Caine, and so, although the public were enthusiastic, the reviewers soon began to complain about his failure to produce a proper novel. Even
Andrew Lang was disappointed that The Master of Ballantrae (1889) sacrificed everything for the sake of the story:
My power of belief (which verges on credulity) is staggered by the ghastly attempt to reanimate the buried master. Here, at least to my taste, the freakish changeling has got the better of Mr.Stevenson, and has brought in an element out of keeping with the steady lurid tragedy of fraternal hatred.!
This corresponded to a widespread view of Stevenson. A basic good w ill and respect towards his novels was accompanied by the feeling that romance was holding back a writer of intelligence and ability.
Several c ritic s detected weaknesses that Stevenson was conscious of in his work. William Archer criticised Stevenson for his indiscriminate optimism and his refusal to face the deeper problems of life : 'is not the ever-recurring burden of Mr.Stevenson's wisdom an exhortation to cultivate lightness of touch upon the chords of 2 life?' Within days of Archer's article appearing Stevenson wrote to Thomas Stevenson commenting on Archer's c ritic is m o f him: ' (Arche>^
1. Essays in L it t le , 1891, pp.32-33. 2. Archer's a r tic le o rig in a lly appeared in the London periodical Time in November 1885 and was reprinted in The C r it ic , New York, V (1886), p.19. The title was 'R.L.Stevenson: His Style and Thought'.
-140- is quite furious at bottom because I am too orthodox...He then wrote to Archer to comment on his need to avoid pessimism:
the conscience, the affections, and the passions are, I w ill own frankly and sweepingly, so infin itely more important than the other parts of life , that I conceive men rather t r if le r s who become immersed in the la tte r ; and I w ill always think the man who keeps his lip s tiff, and makes "a happy fire s id e clim e", and carries a pleasant face about to friends and neighbours, in fin ite ly greater (in the abstract) than an a tra b ilio u s Shakespeare or a backbiting Kant or Darwin.2
Archer's criticism s were taken tip by Watts-Dunton who requested
Stevenson to fu lfill his promise by proving himself more than a writer of boys' books. Watts-Dunton noted hints of maturity in the latter stages of Kidnapped:
a fte r the fig h t in the roundhouse Kidnapped passes, as we are going to show, into a new artistic phase - the phase of true art, where no exaggeration and no artistic in sincerity can have a place.^
As the years passed and Stevenson fa ile d to produce a more mature work critics became increasingly exasperated. In 1889 J.M.
Barrie complained that Stevenson was such a superior w riter to
Haggard that there was really no excuse for him lim iting himself to romantic adventure:
We want that big book; and we think he is capable of it, and so we cannot afford to let him d rift into the sea weed. About the writer with whom his name is so often absurdly linked we feel differently.^
This feeling that he must make the attempt to p'roduce a real novel was widely shared. Stephen Gwynn put the case p la in ly when he said that readers had looked to Stevenson 'to redeem the tendencies of
1. S.Colvin (editor). The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson, II, 1911, p .250. (L e tte r w ritte n October 28, 1885). 2. Ibid., p.256. (Letter written November 1, 1885). 3. ' Kidnapped' , The Athenaeum, No.3068. (August 14, 1886), p .197. For details of Stevenson's contacts with Watts-Dunton see Hake and Rickett, The Life and Letters of Theodore Watts-Dunton, I, 1916, pp.238-239. 4. An Edinburgh Eleven, 1889, p .103.
-141- contemporary fiction but that he had not lived up to this
promise.
The promise began to be fu lfille d in the unfinished Weir of
Hermiston (1896), and one of the reasons must have been the constant
encouragement by the reviewers to produce a more ambitious novel.
The c r itic a l a ttitu d e to Stevenson has not always been fu lly under
stood, and this leads to wider misconceptions about the period. There
is a widespread view that the unpopularity of Zola and Henry James
led critics into an uncritical enthusiasm for the looser methods of
romance. But c r itic s did not want a re p e titio n o f Treasure Islan d.
They wanted something more ambitious. Kenneth Graham suggests th a t
when 'the last two decades of the century see the rise of a new
school of realism and a riv a l school of romance, d ia le c tic turns to 2 w a rfa re .' But th is was not the case. There is no evidence to
substantiate Graham's belief that:
Reviewers everywhere seized on any evidence of p lo t- contrivance or "strong situations" in a novel to hold it up as an example of heroic resistance to the foreign in va sio n.3
The most they hoped for was that analysis of character could be maintained in a more vigorous story than those offered by many
contemporary novelists.
Reviews o f The Master o f Ballantrae emphasise how c r itic s were only really interested in a romance which combined interesting characterisation with the story. 'Mr. Stevenson's skill and insight are strikingly exhibited in the conception and development of these
1. 'Mr.Robert Louis Stevenson: A Critical Study', The Fortnightly Review, LVI (1894), p .792. 2. Graham, p .19. 3. Ib id ., p .109.
-142- characters,'"* claimed one reviewer, and another regretted that
he sometimes descended to a lower level of adventure:
The author's s k ill and resource soon plunge one again into exciting adventures; but the fascination of the firs t part of the book does not return...2
Saintsbury was attracted by scenes where the characters and action
worked together, such as:
the much and ju s tly praised duel scene, which forms the central point of the long debate between Henry Durie and his brother, the Master...3
Critics in the 'eighties had to consider the chances of romance
developing into a medium that could maintain serious issues and
perceptive characterisation, but they were never, as Graham suggests,
" .attracted to it merely because it told an exciting story.
By the mid-nineties most critics realised that romance had
little to offer. The failure of Haggard and Caine to develop at
a ll, the host of abysmal imitators of Stevenson, and the publication
in 1894 o f Anthony Hope's The Prisoner o f Zenda, had exposed romance
as the mode of the inferior or simply popular novelist. Even Weir
o f Hermiston, the one novel in which Stevenson maintains a con siste n tly
mature presentation of character within a framework of exciting
action, was met with little enthusiasm. The Saturday Review dismissed
romance as an in fe rio r form:
The romance form prohibits anything but the superficialities of self-expression; and sustained humour, subtle character- . ization, are impossible.4
Weir o f Hermiston was f e l t to be as bad as any other romance:
1. 'Novels', The Saturday Review, LXVIII (October 19, 1889), p.435. 2. C.A.Cook, ' Novels o f the Week', The Athenaeum, No.3234 (October 19, 1889), p .520. 3. 'New N ovels', The Academy, XXXVI (November 2, 1889), p .284. 4. 'The Lost Stevenson', The Saturday Review, LXXXI (June 13, 1895), p .604.
-143- In Weir of Hermiston we have, in the essentials, a superbly clever book - in the Scott line of business - b u ilt around a central conception th a t would appeal to Mr.Hall Caine - romantic, effective, insincere, written down, if ever a book was written down, to a public upon which Stevenson fancied his hold was s lip p in g .!
Other critics were more moderate but could find little to praise.
The Athenaeum fe lt that with Frank Innes, Christina, and the Black
Brothers Stevenson failed to meet the demands of characterisation 2 imposed by a novel.
Weir of Hermiston should not be over-praised^as it is merely a fragment, and i t is questionable whether Stevenson could have maintained the tone to the end, but the book does have a quality that these c r itic s overlooked. Quite sim ply, Stevenson was w ritin g the so rt o f novel he had sketched out in his essay 'A Humble Remonstrance', and the sort of novel critics in the 'eighties had looked to him to produce. It was a novel that went against current trends in serious fiction as the story was vigorous and always exciting, but the char acterisation within this frame was subtle and impressive. Even in the sections of the book we have the tensions between the father and the son are conveyed w ith great force as are the other re la tio n sh ip s.
And the force is impressive because the various relationships in the book are conveyed both subtly - in the honesty of the dialogue of the novel - and picturesquely - in larger incidents such as the son condemning the father, and the Black Brothers committing themselves to revenge. Stevenson was beginning to create a dramatically im pressive novel which probably would never have constituted anything of a challenge to the dominant trend of fiction but which would have at lea st demonstrated th a t a d iffe re n t so rt o f novel could be produced
1. Ibid., p.603. 2. 'Weir o f Herm iston', The Athenaeum, No.3578 (May 23, 1896), p .673
-144- that did not abandon everything for cheap popular success, I t is more than a curiosity, it is artistically interesting in its own rig h t. But at the time of publication i t was even less well thought of than it is today. Critics had lost interest in romance and its possibilities and were prepared to respect nothing but realistic fic tio n .
In the general dismissal of Weir of Hermiston one of the few favourable reviews comes as a pleasant surprise. Stephen Gwynn realised that Stevenson had at last begun to write the novel that he had been promising fo r so many years.
We wanted, in short, from him something deeper and fu lle r; something in more v ita l contact with the permanent and universal springs of romance; loves and hatreds in all the ir elemental grandeur, proceeding out of nature its e lf and not from the accidental relation of partisanship or c o n flic t.!
Gwynn realised that Stevenson had achieved 'the fu lle s t expression 2 of his a r t,' but, now that the temporary controversy over realism had died down, i t was an art that c ritic s no longer sought with the same interest as in the 'eighties.
The revival of romance was so much a movement of reaction against certain contemporary developmsnbSj in the novel that its overall significance may be thought to be small, and certainly, with the exception of Weir of Hermiston, i t produced nothing that is lik e ly to greatly interest the lite ra ry c r itic . In another sense, however, i t was one of the most important developments in the general history of the novel. What was essentially a reaction against realism was in a broader way a reaction against the whole tendency of fic tio n .
The novel in the 'eighties had taken a more pessimistic, more in tro - * spective, altogether more grim direction. I t was not the sort o f ficblân
1. 'The Posthumous Works of Robert Louis Stevenson', The Fortnightly Review, LXIII (1898), p.553. 2. Ibid.,p .562 “ 145- that could maintain a broad popular appeal as i t no longer offered that zest and confidence that can be found in the mid-Victorian novel. Wiith the alienation of many readers from the most significant fic tio n of the day the time was ripe for the advent of a new sort of popular fic tio n . In this respect. Haggard and Stevenson mark the birth of the popular novel in England. Haggard, in particular, achieved his success by going against those tendencies of the serious fic tio n of the time that made i t unpalatable to many readers.
Stevenson also invented a formula for popular fic tio n , even i f he showed every sign of being able to go beyond its lim itations.
Together they had introduced the idea of a short, gripping, adventurous, and in the case of Haggard, salacious and violent, narrative that would remain the staple formula of the popular novel. Such a decisive split into popular and serious fiction directs attention to those ideas in the serious novel that made i t so unacceptable to the general public.
- 146- CHAPTER FOUR: THE DIDACTIC NOVEL AND THE NOVEL OF IDEAS
1. CRITICAL ATTITUDES TO DIDACTIC FICTION
The novel has always been used for didactic purposes and the years between 1880 and 1890 were no exception. The decade was littered with insignificant didactic novels of which the only re deeming feature was that they were usually no longer than one volume.
This was partly a consequence of the reluctance of major publishers to handle such work, but more important was the fact that as the concerns of their authors were other than a rtis tic they did not bring to the creation of character and incident the sustained energy demanded by the three-volume novel. The general character of the c ritic a l response was predictable. Didactic novels were condemned for two complementary aesthetic reasons. The less important of these was that didacticism was felt to ignore the entertaining function of lit erature, and this objection could be summed up in regret at the absence of an interesting story. Andrew Lang contrasted Mrs. Ward with Kingsley and Reade who, he maintained, although didactic, did not ignore the usual goals of fic tio n :
When Charles Kingsley and Charles Reade wanted to en force a doctrine, they put it^into a story; but then they were born story-telle rs.
Robert Elsmere (1888) has more narrative interest than Lang was pre pared to recognise, but his objection certainly applied to less able novelists than Mrs. Ward. The more serious objection to didactic novels was that they conveyed neither the spontaneity nor the complex ity of human nature. This criticism had been made for many years.
Stang quotes from an a rtic le in The Prospective Review of 1853 where the characters in a novel were said
1. 'Theological Romances', The Contemporary Review, L III (1888), p.815.
-147- not so much to have sprung into being from the fervent depths of a creative imagination ... as to have been called into being for the purpose of embodying certain moral ideas.*
George Saintsbury expressed sim ilar reservations about the charac ters in a novel published in 1888, Out of Work by John Law: 'they are not real, [ i n ] that they are copied back from fancy sketches 2 of life, not studied from life direct.' He went on to call didact- 3 icism, 'tha t deadly convention which is fatal to a rt.'
This awareness of the shortcomings of the didactic novel was widespread, as can be seen in a review in a socialist magazine.
Today. The c r itic drew a distinction between his response to Shaw's
An Unsocial Socialist as a novel reader and as a reader not unsym pathetic to political propaganda:
as novel readers, we have a rig h t to cry out when he stops the action of the story in order to fire o ff long- winded lectures on political economy, surplus value, emigration and all the rest of it - and, as Socialists, we have ju st cause of complaint against him, for having made the only Socialist in the book an unmitigated and irredeemable cad.4
It may seem surprising in such a periodical to find that the aesthetic criticism takes p rio rity over the p o litica l criticism , but such a response was common. Naturally, though, there were occasions when the personal interest of a critic transcended his artistic interest.
An example of this is to be found in the response to Margaret Dunmore, or a Socialist Home, by Jane Hume Clapperton, published, in one volume, in 1888. As a novel it is valueless, but it is of some social interest in that i t describes the establishing of a socialist commune. The 5 Saturday Review ridiculed its pretensions to be a novel, but The
1. ' Ruth. By the Author of Mary Barton', The Prospective Review, IX (1853), p.228. 2. 'New Novels', The Academy XXXIV (July 21, 1888), p.37. 3. Ibid., p.37. 4. 'Books of Today', Today VII (1887), p.121. 5. ‘ Novels', The Saturday Review, LXV (February 25, 1888), pp.235-236
\ -148- Academy, equally aware of its fictional limitations, found the
idea interesting i f naive, and recommended the novel on this basis;
I t is intended to combine the most solid instruction with the most rational entertainment, being a popularisation - for weak brethren and sisters - of the gospel of "scientific meliorism" ... This description may not sound appetising, so I must hasten to say that the story is by no means lacking in interest; and to any reader endowed with a moderate sense of humour i t w ill afford a good deal of genuine amusement, none the less enjoyable because unconsciously provided,*
The Athenaeum could also see that i t was a poor work of fic tio n , but regarded i t as a harmless way of becoming fam iliar with a certain school of thought:
I f any one wants to know what the professors of "scien t i f i c meliorism" have made, or attempted to make, out of the modern ideas of socialism, collectivism , communism, anarchism, and what not, le t him put himself for an hour or two under the tu itio n of Miss Clapperton and read Margaret Dunmore.2
C ritics patronised this novel because of the nature of its commitment, but when a novel was fe lt to have routed the arguments of socialism approval of its message could merge into the belief that it showed more substantial qualities;
A very unconventional novel is The New Antigone, and one written with marked ability ancTTiterary skill. It probes the new revolutionary doctrines of Free Love, Socialism, and so forth, to the core, and shows how u tte rly inadequate they are to satisfy the deeper cravings of human nature,3
It is to the credit of George Saintsbury that, despite his political views (which were fu lly expressed in the feature articles and leaders of The Saturday Review), he preserved exclusively lite ra ry standards in his review work, even for such a m ilita n tly pro-Conservative novel as W.H. Mallock's The Old Order Changes (1886);
1. J.A.Noble, 'New Novels', The Academy, XXXIII (March 3, 1888), p,147 2. Sergeant, 'Novels of the Week', The Athenaeum, No,3146 (Feb.11, 1888), p.177. 3. G.Barnett Smith, 'New Novels', The Academy, XXXII (October 15, 1887), p.250.
-149- The fatal defects of the book are its lack of action and event, the comparative dullness of the conversation even v/here i t is meant to be liv e ly , and above a ll the satur ation of the whole with disquisitions on religion, politics and p o litic a l economy. One of its latest chapters is an actual sermon of more than th irty pages on Transubstant- iation, Christian Socialism, and the duties of an aristo cracy. .. '
I f personal feeling sometimes affected the response to p o lit
ical novels it often affected the response to religious novels.
M elville Gray's A Life's Troubles (1885) is a typical religious tra ct, yet i t was treated with respect by most c ritic s . The impression is
that they would have regarded i t as tasteless to abuse such a
sincere work, even if it was a bad novel. Critics prevaricated
rather than offer a purely aesthetic judgement:
It is within the mark to say that for its full apprecia tion an intimate acquaintance with the forms of Anglican ritu a l is presupposed, and that the connexion of some of the characters with the plot is hard to discover.2
Criticism of religious novels was often as lenient as this. It is,
though, no more than part of a pattern of reviewers being far more
indulgent to didactic novels in practice than in theory. Critics
insisted on the artistic emptiness of didactic fiction but discussed
the ideas involved quite independently of th e ir imperfect realisat
ion. Such a s p lit is perhaps natural, but i t must be emphasised that
regular novel c ritic s (as opposed, say, to the various clergymen
who wrote about Robert Elsmere)^ always gave precedence to their
discussion of the aesthetic failings of a novel, before proceeding
to discuss the thematic interest.
1. 'Novels of the Week', The Athenaeum, No.3076 (October 9, 1886), p.463. 2. Graves, 'Novels of the Week', The Athenaeum, No.3058 (June 5, 1886), p.745. ' 3. Henry Wace, 'Robert Elsmere and C h ristia n ity', The Quarterly Review, CLXVII (1888), pp,273-302,, and Randall T. Dayidson%Dean of Windsor), 'The Religious Novel', The Contemporary Review, LIV (1888), pp.674-682. - 150- Both Stang and Graham point out that Victorian critics fe lt that the novel with a purpose could become a real novel i f the novel is t also kept in mind a commitment to produce a good story and fu lly - 1 rounded characters. Graham puts i t as follows:
Didactic purpose in fiction is only admissible where the author's imagination has been intense enough to fuse his abstract principles into artistic sym bols.. .2
S uperficially this seems a neat resolution of the problem, but i t is hampered by the fact that such.a fusion is not a mechanical process.
Successful didactic fic tio n could not be produced by the novelist merely showing some competence with narration and character pre sentation. The idea had to fuse totally with its expression, and this achievement was rare. The modern reader may well feel that no novel in the 'eighties began didactically but then progressed beyond its premises to become a fu ll and mature novel. Yet, at the time, i t seemed that Walter Besant was a thoroughly commendable didactic w rite r, not on the basis of the worthiness of his aims, but because of his powers as a novelist.
2. THE POPULARITY OF THE NOVELS OF SIR WALTER BESANT
A modern a rtic le on Sir Walter Besant describes his contemporary status accurately: 'For a period in the eighties Besant was in high repute; only Meredith and Hardy of the livin g novelists were raaKed dearly 3 above him.' Nor was Besant popular only with.the c ritic s . George
Gissing wrote to his brother in extravagant praise of Besant:
1. Richard Stang, The Theory of the Novel in England, 1850-1870, New York, 1959, pp./(J-/2 Graham, pp.88-89. 2. Graham, p.89. 3. Fred W. Boege, 'S ir Walter Besant: N ovelist', Nineteenth Century Fiction, X (1956), p.250.
-151- I f you want to get for the Library one of the most charming and delicate of modern novels, you should send for Besant's All in a Garden F a ir. I have ju st read i t with really extreme delight. Great part deals with a young man's struggles into literature, and is truthful enough. But the summer atmosphere of the whole is delicious.^
Besant's novels were lauded from a ll quarters.
The Spectator and The Saturday Review were the two period
icals loudest in their praise. In the view of Mrs, Cashel Hoey
i t was a mistake to regard All. Sorts and Conditions of Men as a
didactic novel. This was because the character of Angela Messenger was, she fe lt, not invented to illu s tra te the message of the book
but stood up as an independent character:
In this modern romance of philanthropy, fancy, fact, t o il, and love, which does not belong to any class of fic tio n , and has, in common with its predecessors, only the real seriousness and the unflagging interest that are characteristic of them all, .there is imagination of a high order, very much above mere ingeniousness, which might have constructed the plot more neatly. Angela Messenger ... is a fine ly conceived character, and the g ir l's grace, loveliness of person and mind, enthusiasm, good sense, ardent generosity, womanly tenderness, and girlish fun, make up a figure as attractive as it is unconventional. She is like no other young lady in any novel within our knowledge...
The Saturday Review was equally enthusiastic, claiming that Besant's
delicate poetical in s tin c t... finds its fu lle s t expre ssion in the character of Angela Messenger, the heir ess and heroine, whose figure stands out clearly amongst the most charming personages of modern fiction.
In its reviews of Children of Gibeon (1886) i t conceded that the plot
was far-fetched but stressed that a story, 'heavily weighted with
1. Letters of George Gissing to Members of his Family, 1927, p. 136. The le tte r was written in 1884. 2. 'A ll Sorts and Conditions of Men', The Spectator, LVII (October 21, 1882), p.1349. 3. 'A ll Sorts and Conditions of Men', The Saturday Review, LIV (Oct. 14, 1882), p .514.
-152- social d is q u is it io n s . \ was more than a theoretical argument because Besant transformed his material through his sympathetic imagination:
we are brought face to face with the sad re a litie s of the lives of the people who are perpetually struggling to save themselves from absolute starvation.2
The Spectator fe lt that Children of Gibeon presented a picture of
Hoxton 'worthy of Dickens in minuteness, vividness and quaint char- 3 acterisation ...'
The obvious explanation of Besant's success would seem to be that c ritic s were so inspired by his message that they became oblivious of his faults. This would put him in the same category as
Hall Caine^, a novelist who could appear profound because he was saying exactly what critics wanted to hear. The parallel is true to some extent in that Besant's reputation was ju st as ephemeral as Caine's.
By the time of his death in 1901 his c ritic a l standing was low. An obituary notice in The Athenaeum stated that
the leading characters, which typify altruistic virtues with some success, do not always produce the illu sio n which one expects from genuinely a rtis tic creations.5
There were, however, substantial differences in the responses to
Caine and Besant. The most striking fact is that enthusiasm for
Besant's achievement was almost universal. Many c ritic s exposed Caine's
1. 'Four Novels', The Saturday Review, LXII (December 4, 1886), p.756. 2. Ib id ., p.756. 3. Mrs.J.Cashel Hoey, ’A Romance of the Social Problem', The Spectator, LX (January 22, 1887), p.115, 4. The response to Hall Caine is discussed in chapter three, 5. 'S ir W. Besant', The Athenaeum, No,3842 [June 15, 1901), p.759. ^
-153- faults as a novelist while endorsing his intention. There was far
less, in fact hardly any, criticism of Besant's method. This also
. contrasts with the response to Meredith. Meredith's intelligence
was treated with excessive reverence by reviewers, but they were
aware of his formal lim itations. No reviewer suggested that Besant's
intelligence could rival Meredith's, but they did feel that in the ir
fusion of ideas and expression Besant's novels were, as a whole,
more of a success. C ritical praise for Besant was based as firm ly
on respect for his technique as on an attraction to his social
message. This places Besant in an unique position in the 'eighties.
He was the only new novelist of the decade^ almost to ta lly to escape
„ .criticism of his technique. Yet i t is the very immediacy of the
appeal of both the method and the morality of Besant's novels that
not only make them the object of only historical interest for the
modern reader, but within the decade, inspired some doubts about the ir
o rig in a lity and permanent value.
To reviewers such as Mrs. Cashel Hoey part of Besant's appeal
was that he seemed to echo the methods of older novelists. Yet he
had the advantage over such novelists as Mrs. Oliphant in that he
appeared to combine this traditional approach with new and important
subjects. All Sorts and Conditions of Men is set in the East End of
London, and appears to be a frank treatment of social problems.
Besant's choice of subject was clearly influenced by the naturalistic
novel, but the originality of his work is confined to the setting, and
the treatment of a class seldom presented in earlier fiction. These
are the lim its of Besant's realism as a traditional and comforting
1. Besant collaborated with James Rice for many years but i t was only in the 'eighties, after Rice's death, that he began to write on his own.
- 154” moral scheme is imposed on the material. The social problems
exposed in the novel are remedied by the intervention of Angela
Messenger who philanthropically comes to the rescue of the deprived
characters. The o rig in a lity of the novel was thus more apparent
than real, yet the setting was enough of a novelty to convince
c ritic s that they were reading about the 'sad re a litie s ...'^ of
life . Besant's gesture towards realism was also contradicted by
. his technique. The novel offered a liv e ly and ingenious story,
vivid , fa ir ly simple characterisation, ranging from the elegant
heroine Angela to numerous East End "characters", and a consistently
light humorous tone that directed attention away from any disturbing
implications in the content. All there is to admire in the book is
Besant's s k ill in borrowing ju st enough from the re a lis tic novel to
make his light-weight, morally-reassuring novel impressive to his
contemporaries. C ritics did expect new novels to be in some way
challenging, but the freshness of Besant's subject was challenging
enough to conceal the hollowness of his method.
Consequently, no c r itic in the 'eighties dismissed Besant's
novels completely, and, for most of the decade, even minor reserv
ations were uncommon. C.A.Cook was more sceptical than most c ritic s ,
but his comment on All Sorts and Conditions of Men contained only the
slightest hint that Besant's method was mechanical rather than a
great imaginative triumph:
His vivacity and humour, which often rise to pathos and never sink to caricature, tinge the whole story, and make even his most serious passages delightful. There are, indeed, many serious passages in the book, and i t is , perhaps, the greatest point in Mr. Besant's marked success that he has written a novel with a purpose and contrived to make i t as liv e ly and sparkling as any reasonable reader could wish.2
1. 'Four Novels', The Saturday Review, LXII (December 4, 1886), p.756. 2. 'Novels of the Week'. The Athenaeum, No.2867 (O ctober 7, 1882),p .461.
- 155- I t is only in a comparison with the reviews in The Spectator and
The Saturday Review that this review seems to suggest competence
rather than inspiration.
His comments on Children of Gibeon, however, suggested in
creased doubts about Besant's achievement:
Mr. Besant is inclined to adopt the mannerisms of the great masters who have such an attraction to him. So much may be said without diminishing the gratitude which is due to Mr. Besant for preserving the traditions of the older school of fiction.‘
The reviewers in The Spectator and The Saturday Review believed that these traditional methods could s t i l l be the basis of genuinely imaginative work, but Cook's position was rather ambiguous. Simul taneously he expressed the belief that these methods were now no more than mannerisms, and the view that they were traditions worth preserving. His attitude to the philanthropic theme of the novel was equally ambiguous. He both accepted and questioned the central s it uation in Children of Gibeon; he could regard i t as clever and con trived, and spontaneously charming: 'the cleverness of the main con trivance of his story, obvious to the inquiring critic, has that 2 spontaneous charm which is the mark of o rig in a lity .' Cook was s lig h tly sceptical about whether Besant's imaginative achievement was genuine, but could not completely abandon his confidence in the effectiveness of the traditional approaches to fiction.
Besant's novels did not receive a completely dismissive assess ment until the mid-nineties; the f ir s t to ta lly debunking comment appearing in The Saturday Review in 1895: 'His characters limp lame like the automata of the young girl's fancy; his plots befit the o romantic miss's notions of lif e . ' No review in the 'eighties in any
1. 'Novels of the.Week', The Athenaeum, No.3082 (November 20,1885),p.668 2. Ib id ., p.668. 3. 'The New Knights', The Saturday Review, LXXIX (June 1, 1895),p.718.
- 156- way anticipated such a lack of fa ith in Besant's a b ility . The
modern reader finds so l i t t l e to admire in Besant's novels that i t
requires some e ffo rt to avoid condemning his f ir s t reviewers for
th e ir enthusiasm. I t is easy to feel that i f they admired Besant
the standards of c ritic a l judgement must have been slack; but their
response was far from naive. It is common to feel over-enthusiastic
about some new work of a rt, and then, with the passing of time, to
. realise that its quality is questionable. Many novels have super
ficial characteristics that, on a firs t reading, make them seem more
original and significant than is in fact the case. This was the
case with those popular novels of the 'eighties that under a veneer
of realism offered a conventional and comforting moral scheme. Critics
did not hypocritically praise a novel just because they agreed with
its conclusions. They responded to what was new in author's work and,
quite naturally, often confused novelty with genuine originality.
Equally, an author such as Besant did not always s it down to contrive
something to fool the public. He was committed to traditional
values, both aesthetically and morally, and no doubt believed that he
was managing to make something new out of them. But, as soon as the
public realised that the newness of any work of art was only super
fic ia l, the author's reputation began to suffer. Besant, however,
preserved his reputation somewhat longer than such ephemeral successes
as Hall Caine. This was in part due to a certain competence Besant
had as a novelist - his works remain more readable than many from
the period - but i t was also due to the sort of ideas he presented
in his novels. Hall Caine's pictures of heroic se lf-sacrifice
followed by swift poetic justice were rather too inflated to remain
credible fo r very long at a ll. But Besant's philanthropic ideas
did not seem so superficial. The novels were at least related to some
-157- sort of social reality, and the actions of the characters were
also kept in perspective. Even i f the conclusion was tr ite day
dreaming the novels did seem to be making a gesture towards serious
social concern and towards the making of art out of the materials
of every-day life . Astonishingly, what c ritic s responded to enthus
ia s tic a lly in Besant bears many resemblances to what they found to
praise in Gissing's novels.
•. 3. GISSING: RESPONSES TO HIS EARLY NOVELS
Modern accounts of Gissing's career as a novelist are almost
invariably biographical. There are many elements in his work which
go some way towards ju s tify in g such an approach. The convenience r of being able to lin k the bitterness of The Nether World (1889)
with the réintroduction to slum conditions, forced upon Gissing by the
death of his f ir s t wife, has a neatness which some c ritic s seem
w illin g to accept as a total explanation of the book. Jacob Korg
writes: 'Helen's death seemed to recall him to himself and give him
new energy.' He then seems incapable of discussing the book as any
thing other than Gissing's response to an appalling shock. The
same biographical approach is found in more distinguished critics
than Korg (who, in fairness, was providing a biography). Mrs. Leavis
argues that:
Gissing's lif e and temperament, with the problems that they raise, are the key to both his many failures and his single success as an a rtis t.^
V.S.Pritchett maintains that with Gissing:
We are driven back, as always with imperfect artists, to the entanglement of the person and his work.3
1. George Gissing: A C ritical Biography, Seattle, 1963, p.111. 2. 'Gissing and the English Novel', Scrutiny, VII (1938), p,73, 3. 'Grub Street' (1965) reprinted in Coust1lias (ed.). Collected Articles on George Gissing, 1968, p.126.
-158- I t should be possible, however, to keep observations about Gissing's lif e and temperament in proportion and to assess his work from some other angle. The increasing recognition that he is an interesting novelist, although obviously not a great one, should re d ire c t.a tt ention from his weaknesses to his strengths; and in parallel with this a less personal approach should be hoped for. I f Gissing is of any importance he deserves to be discussed and judged by exactly the same standards as any other novelist. A less rigorous personal apologia is simply insulting.
Yet, even with c ritic s who have an exaggerated opinion of
Gissing's achievement, the emphasis is usually biographical, Pierre
Coustillas states that,. 'Investigation of late has rather borne on definite biographical areas such as Gissing's relations with important friends and publishers,'^ and finds nothing to c ritic is e in the lim it ations of such an approach. Indeed, he has been the major contributor of such information and seems unaware that substantial c ritic a l work is required on Gissing, In the potentially important introduction to the C ritical Heritage volume on Gissing he wastes space on the ir r - 2 elevant matter of Gissing's reputation in Japan,' Coustillas has laboured for years to boost Gissing's reputation, but whether he has done him a greater service or disservice is an open question.
Fortunately some recent work has tended in a different direction.
Bernard Bergonzi relates Gissing's work to a widespread late nine- 3 teenth century myth of the outcast alienated a rtis t. Peter Keating studies Gissing from the angle of the d iffic u lty of presenting working-
1. Pierre Coustillas (ed.). Collected Articles on George Gissing, 1968, p.x. 2. Coustillas and Partridge (eds.), Gissing: The Critical Heritage, 1972, p.7. ('He also believed that his reputation abroad would ultimately react in a favourable manner upon his reputation in his native country; however, he did not live to see his sudden rise to fame in Japan.') 3. Introduction to Penguin edition of New Grub Street, 1968, -159- -class scenes and characters in fictio n .^ John Lucas considers 2 Demos (1886), in relation to other p o litic a l novels of the period.
Such accounts begin to provide evidence that Gissing was a novelist who shared the fictio n a l problems of his age, and sometimes found answers that proved equally satisfactory for a number of other novel is ts . They provide hope that Gissing studies might now develop in the right direction. But the problem remains that, because of an excess of biographical evaluations, Gissing has not yet received 3 enough good criticism . I t is here that the f ir s t reviews have a particularly important role to play. His early critics wrote with no knowledge of his personal lif e . They had no alternative but to res pond directly to the novels, and their reviews fulfilled two functions that too much subsequent criticism has avoided. They discussed the worth of each novel as a work on its ov/n, and they tried to see
Gissing in relation to the novel of the time. Consequently, these early reviews provide the only substantial body of criticism that follows a desirable approach. More than with any other novelist of the period, the f ir s t reviews provide a particularly helpful basis for an assessment of the author. They demand and deserve an extended consideration.
The most common response in the period was to regard Gissing as a philanthropic novelist. In the more naive accounts the frus trations and defeats of his would-be philanthropists were ignored, and often considerable distortion was required to force Gissing into a
= pp.9-26, especially p.12. 1. The Working Classes in Victorian F iction, 1971, pp.53-92. 2. 'Conservatism and Revolution in the 1880's, in Literature and P olitics in the Nineteenth Century editor, John Lucas), 1971, pp.1732-219. 3. Peter Keating deals thoroughly with the weaknesses of c ritic a l work on Gissing in 'The State of Gissing Studies', Victorian Studies, X III (1970), pp.393-396.
-160- philanthropic mould. An anonymous introduction to an 1890 Colonial
edition of The Nether World ended in fulsome praise of the useful
ness of the book:
In a word. The Nether World, besides being a deeply interesting human story, has powerful claims on a ll who think and feel for their poorer brethren, and as a novel "with a purpose" has deep significance for a ll classes of Philanthropists, *
This reflected a common assumption about novels dealing with poverty.
If a novel of working-class life lacked a central philanthropic
character (a character such as Angela Messenger in All Sorts and
Conditions of Men) this charitable role was transferred to the novelist
himself. I t was assumed that he must be using his s k ills to bring
the situation to public notice with a view to its reform. This is how
F.W.Farrar read The Nether World, He claimed that i t would be immoral to read i t merely for aesthetic reasons, and that the consequences must be practical:
Millions of us read the accounts of the horrors in White chapel. I f we do so out of a morbidly aesthetic delight in the t h r ill and shudder of horror which they cause, we do i l l . I f , after reading them, we only shrug our shoulders and fold our hands, in callous acquiescence in that which is supposed to be inevitable, we do i l l , ^
Such a response may have missed the point of Gissing's novel, but i t was a humane response, and the product of a tradition of social concern in the novel.
Other c ritic s , however, were aware that a ll Gissing's novels did not aim at a simple social purpose, W.T,Stead is remembered principally as a campaigning jou rn a list, and when he wrote about fic tio n he brought the same standards into play. His sense of how
Gissing could best employ his a b ilitie s could have applied just as well to Besant:
1. P.R., Introduction to The Nether World. 1890. p.vi, 2. ' The Nether World' , The Contemporary Review, LVI (1889), p.374. ' X -161- i t is not as a novelist in the narrow sense of the word, but as a social reformer and as an eager student of social lif e that he occupies so important a place among living writers.^
When he saw that Gissing was deviating from his narrow social function he sounded a note of alarm, and urged him to return to, what Stead took to be, the single-minded purpose of his earliest work:
we sincerely hope that in his future work Mr.Gissing w ill confine himself to those phases of life with which he is familiar, and that there will be no falling off from the very high standard of excellence attained in Demos.2
Stead's response to Demos shows that, although he was aware that
Gissing, in some of his novels, was introducing elements which could not be reconciled to a philanthropic purpose, he could completely ignore them in a novel which had something of an a ir of philanthropy. He made no mention of Hubert Eldon, the aristocratic centre of Demos, and the character who, despite his lack of any social conscience,
Gissing most approves of in the novel. Sim ilarly, when discussing
The Unclassed (1884), Stead ignored Osmond Waymark, who represents the typical confusion of the early Gissing hero between the claims of art and social responsibility. He mentioned only Ida Starr, the reformed prostitute who by the end of the novel is an active philanthropist:
. As long as women like Ida Starr can raise themselves by dint of sheer courage and unselfish love'from degradation to virtue, no one w ill deny that all good results may be hoped for.
Stead was only slightly more perceptive than Farrar. He realised that
Gissing was producing some novels which did not serve any sort of • useful social purpose, but i f a novel could be forced into a philan-
1. 'George Gissing as a N ovelist', Pall Mall Gazette, XLV (June 28, 1887), p.3. 2. Ibid., p.3. 3. Ibid., p.3.
-162- thropic interpretation he ignored a ll the alien elements in such a
work.
A more interesting view was produced by Edith Sichel, who did
not d isto rt the novels, or ignore whole areas of the plot, in order
to satisfy her own interpretation. Yet she was as concerned as
Stead that the novel should be used fo r philanthropic purposes, and
took Gissing to task for his pessimism. Perceptively she pointed out
. that his aims appeared to be selfish rather than social:
I t seems indeed as i f , in hopeless confusion and tossed on the unstable waves, yet abhorring compromise, he wrote rather to make himself clear to himself and as a personal re lie f, than fo r any a ltru is tic purpose.*
She advised him to confine himself to useful social novels. The point
that emerges from a ll these articles is that the didactic novel was
more than tolerated when i t assumed a philanthropic role - i t was
positively welcomed. Gissing could be read selectively to give him
an easy connection with this established tra d itio n , and consequently
be respected fo r his social purpose. But Gissing was not a philan
thropic novelist, although he often wrote about philanthropists.
Nor was he usually a didactic novelist.
The one exception to this is Demos. It is the only one of his
novels that maintains a p o litic a l thesis. The distortions of the
didactic novelist are obvious. Mutimer, the main working-class
character, is given an unsympathetic villainous hue while the middle-
class characters are imbued with idealised good qualities, especially
in the areas of culture and general sensitivity. These points are 2 fam iliar and can be found in any modern account of the book.
1. 'Two Philanthropic Novelists', Murray's Magazine, I I I (1888), p.513. 2. For example, in Keating's The Working Classes in Victorian Fiction, 1971, pp.69-72.
-163- The issue here, however, is the early response. Some reviewers
did allow their delight at the theme to distort their responses.
The Saturday Review, for example, welcomed an attack on democracy,
and supported Gissing's view of the poor characters as
true children of Demos, true scions of the mob, in capable of simple, single-minded devotion to an ideal; vain, jealous, egoistic, narrow; ambitious above a ll of personal pre-eminence...!
The views expressed in the novel were so close to those of the reviewer
that he could even praise Gissing fo r his im pa rtiality: 'he handles
them with an impartial sternness of purpose which, in these days of 2 prejudice and special pleading, is uncommon...' Another Conservative
> periodical. The Scottish Review, also failed to judge objectively
this 'thorough exposure of that most transparent of shams, so called 3 "Socialism"...' Most periodicals were less biased, but gave the
novel a lo t of attention because of its to p ica lity. The Times made
this apparent in its opening sentence: ' I f a tale of Socialism does
not find abundance of readers i t is not because the times are not ripe
fo r i t .
Yet, although many reviewers fe lt the time was ripe for such
a novel, its didacticism was attacked repeatedly. An illegitimate
bias in the characterisation was commented on by The Athenaeum:
weak and vicious people are chosen as the exponents of ideas which the author intends to demolish, whilst the opposite ideas are maintained by persons of refinement and good fe e lin g .5
1. 'Four Novels', The Saturday Review, LXII (August 21, 1886), p .261. 2. Ib id . , p .261. 3. 'Ethics and Art in Recent Novels', The Scottish Review, VII (1886), p.329. 4. 'A Novel About Socialism', The Times, No.31,724 (April 3, 1886),p.5 5. Sergeant, 'Novels of the Week', The Athenaeum, No.3050 (April 10, 1886), p.485.
164- Julia Wedgwood found the book interesting but noted that the
powerful characterisation at times contradicted the thesis. The
sympathies of the reader were attracted by 'the sempstress, the f ir s t
love of the Socialist hero, deserted on his accession to wealth.
In this instance, Gissing was fe lt to be showing the novelist's
a b ility to create a sympathetic character but one who had no relation
to the overall political idea. The result in the novel as a whole
was that Gissing was at times writing like a novelist and at other
times like a polemicist:
opinion and feeling are not blended here in the same catholic union; the sympathy sometimes fa ils , the opinions are indistinct, and yet give too much colour ing to parts of the story.2
' The im p lic it criticism was that Gissing was throwing away his qual
ities as a novelist for the sake of a narrowly didactic purpose, and
the lim its of the didactic novel were commented upon by most reviewers
The response was, of course, consistent with the response to other
didactic novels of the period. But the philanthropic novel was fe lt
to fall into a different category.
Gissing's next two social novels, Thyrza (1887) and The Nether
World (1889) were widely accepted as novels conforming to philan
thropic expectations. They received a great deal of positive if mis
guided praise. The Whitehall Review offered the most exaggeratedly
complimentary misreading of Thyrza, commenting at length, and almost
exclusively, on its social usefulness:
1. 'Contemporary Records: F ic tio n ', The Contemporary Review, L (1886), p.295. 2. Ib id ., p.295.
165- It deals, as all Mr. Gissing's books have hitherto dealt, to some extent with a social phase which has seen a wide development among us of late years, and that is the attempt to bring two opposite classes of people into more friendly and intimate relations with each other. But of late years the subject has been treated as a matter for patient research,and the dwellers in the West have penetrated into the East, doing some good, and a vast deal of harm. Among the good may be counted such books as this one of Mr.Gissing's, which is doubtless the result of experience poetised by the hand of genius.'
As the novel deals with the disruptive effects Egremont has on the members of a South London community he makes contact with through a lib ra ry scheme, which proves a total disaster, the novel is anything but philanthropic. I t almost maintains that any such intervention only magnifies problems that already exist, and creates new ones. But
The Whitehall Review commented on how well the book presented the case for bringing education to the masses. The provision of books was said to cause the people to blossom 'into attainments that rise to 2 the surface and make th e ir mark sooner or la te r.' The only explan ation of such an inattentive reading is that the reviewer could see no purpose to the book i f i t was not the fam iliar one of social improvement. The facts of the narrative were twisted to meet his interpretation. In the novel Egremont comes between Thyrza and her friend Grail and destroys the ir possible happiness. I f he had kept to his own social class, Gissing suggests, the disaster would not have happened. In The Whitehall Review this aspect of the story was treated as a plot complication, devised to give the story added momentum. I t was not regarded as being in any way relevant to the book's theme.
1. 'A Novel of the People', The Whitehall Review, No.574 (May 12, 1887), p.20. 2. Ibid., p.20.
- 166- No other reviewer made quite such a distorted reading, but
a ll wished to make Gissing conform to an accepted pattern. Peter
Keating has described the main characteristics of the typical novel
dealing with the working-classes:
• F irst, a central character not himself working class who is brought into contact with slum life in, for instance, an attempt to redeem his wasted lif e , as a fugitive from justice or as an aristocratic changeling. Secondly, several rhetorical descriptions of slum life . Thirdly, the manifestation of some vague philanthropic concern. And, fourthly, one or two scenes of death, suffering or violence.
The trouble with Thyrza, in the eyes of its firs t critics, was that
the third category went wrong. The fact could be ignored, as in
' The Whitehall Review, or the philanthropist could be criticise d .
Accordingly, The Saturday Review called Egremont a prig and valued 2 only the scenes among 'the thoughtless poor of Lambeth.' There
was no real attempt to understand Egremont. The Athenaeum, Murray's
' Magazine, and The Whitehall Review even went so far as to completely 3 avoid a ll mention of him. Only James Ashcroft Noble sensed something
complex in the character, but admitted that he could not understand
Gissing's intention. He was happier with Gilbert Grail, the solid,
reliable workman who always appears in philanthropic novels. Grail
conformed to the conventions of the form:
Thyrza's lover, Gilbert G rail, the shy student-workman, is a more obvious triumph, because the lines of character^ are in him much less complex than they are in Egremont...
Critics fe lt confident with such a character. They could understand
1. The Working Classes in Victorian Fiction, 1971, p.44. 2. 'Novels', The Saturday Review, LXIII (June 11, 1887), p.848. 3. Sergeant, 'Novels of the Week', The Athenaeum, No.3106 (May 7, 1887), pp.605-606. 'Our Library L is t', Murray's Magazine, I (1887), pp.861-864. 'A Novel of the People', The Whitehall Review, No.574 (May 12, 1887), p.20. 4. ' Recent Novels', The Spectator, LX (June 25, 1887), p.869.
-167- him and know what he was meant to represent, A character like
Egremont seemed only to distort a familiar pattern, so critics pre ferred to ignore him and transform Thyrza into the sort of novel they had become used to.
The Nether World met with a sim ilar response, This is Gissing's most bitter working-class novel, yet it received even more praise 1 than Thyrza, The Court Journal provided a typical review. I t accepted the bleakness of the picture because i t was convinced that
Gissing was putting such,material to good use. I t recognised characters 'of which Dickens himself would not have been ashamed, and, as with the Master of this school of fic tio n , broad human charity is 2 the keynote of the book throughout.' The Whitehall Review again regarded Gissing's motive as social reform:
in this wonderful story of lif e amongst the sweater's victims. Mr. Gissing devotes his time to a study of this lif e , and his energies in trying to better i t , and to bring home to the rich the re a lity of "how the poor liv e " .3
The Guardian, however, recognised that there was no reforming impulse behind the w riting of The Nether World and commented on the dangers of such an impersonal approach: ‘ [ i i j has in i t more of cynical contempt than of sympathy and in s ig h t.'^ I t found the novel distasteful as i t could see no good reason why Gissing should have produced such a work. Im p licitly the reviewer would have been far happier with a conventional philanthropic novel.
1. The Nether World was not reviewed by The Academy, The Spectator, or The Saturday Review so there is something of a gap in sub- stantial reviews. 2. 'Literature and Literary Gossip', The Court Journal, No.3145 (April 27, 1889), p.590. 3. 'George Gissing's V/holesome Novel', The Whitehall Review, No. 677 (May 4, 1889), p.19. 4. 'Novels', The Guardian, XLIV (May 29, 1889), p.845.
“ 168 - Thus, there were two kinds of response to Gissing'‘S early
novels. There was the view that he was a philanthropic novelist,
a view which ignored the substance and direction of his novels, and
the view that he would have been better employed as a philanthropic
novelist, a view which denied the value of Gissing's personal view.
But his own view was something that c ritic s were bound to find
d iffic u lt to assess, as he was abandoning one of the strongest con
ventions in fiction. The appeal of the philanthropic novel was that
i t did deal with some of the most serious problems of the age, but
i t did not give way to despair. I t not only provided an answer to
social problems but an inspiring one, as i t suggested that the whole
" of humanity could cooperate for the common good. But this cooperation
never lost sight of the importance of the contribution of each in
dividual. Whenever the novel has attempted to come to terms with <=»•
social problem, and then to provide an answer, i t has always reverted
to the philanthropic idea in some shape or form. I t has always put
its trust in an unyielding better effort by individuals against ever
present social evils. It is just unfortunate that in the 'eighties,
as can be seen from the novels of Sir Walter Besant and the views of
critics, a particular idea of philanthropic intervention had grown
so stale and come to seem so unreal.
4. GISSING: THE NATURE OF THE EARLY NOVELS
Gissing was annoyed by the criticism his novels received. He
was even depressed by criticism which was meant to be complimentary.
Of Stead's a rtic le he wrote:
The Pall Mall Gazette had an a rtic le the other day headed ''George Gissing as a Novelist". Reviewed a ll my books. Poor s tu ff said to be written by Stead.! v
1. A. and E. Gissing (eds.). Letters of George Gissing to Members of his Family, 1927, p.197.
-169- What must have upset him was the fact that his novels were re peatedly associated with movements for reform. As early as 1883 he had decided that his interests were aesthetic rather than phil anthropic:
I am by degrees getting my righ t place in the world. Philosophy has done a ll i t can fo r me, and now scarcely interests me any more. My attitude henceforth is that of the a rtis t pure and simple. The world is for me a collection of phenomena, which are to be studied and re produced a rtis tic a lly . In the midst of the most serious complications of life , I find myself suddenly possessed with a great calm, withdrawn as i t were from the immediate interests of the moment, and able to regard everything as a picture.!
But the position is complicated by the fact that Gissing's novels are not'as dispassionate as he claimed. Demos is an obvious contradiction of his claims to aesthetic exclusiveness, and his career began with an unashamed commitment to reform. He commented on his f ir s t novel. Workers in the Dawn (1880), that he meant
to bring home to people the ghastly conditions (material, mental, and moral) of our poor classes, to show the hideous injustice of our whole system of society, to give lig h t upon the plan of altering i t , and, above a ll to preach an enthusiasm fo r just and high ideals in this age of unmitigated egotism and "shop". I shall never write a book which does not keep a ll these ends in view.2
None of Gissing's novels, not even Workers in the Dawn, are as positive as th is, but, although he lost interest in the traditional social novel, he did not completely disentangle himself from its influence. He repeatedly returns to the subject of philanthropy.
The difference from Besant is that Gissing always deals with its fa ilu re . Demos describes the aesthetic and human wreckage caused by a philanthropic factory scheme, Thyrza the misery caused by an un wanted and unnecessary intruder in Lambeth, and even The Nether World, a novel with no middle-class characters, uses as one of the main
1. Ib id ., p.128. 2. Ib id . , p.83. -170- threads of the plot the philanthropic ventures that Jane Snowden will undertake with her grandfather's money. It is this dream of philanthropy that touches and affects, but never improves, several lives. It blights Jane's own happiness as her friend, Sidney Kirkwood, w ill not marry a g irl with money.
Gissing's constant argument is that things are bad but that there is no easy philanthropic answer. With such a substantial case running through his novels he was obviously mistaken in believing that he was merely reproducing the substance of life . Yet his failure to understand his own bias is not that surprising. Time provides a perspective by which to judge the pattern of Gissing's fiction, but time also eliminates an awareness of the imaginative hold of the p h il anthropic tradition. Gissing was not a great enough a rtis t to cast the tradition aside in his early work, and then to move forward in great leaps of originality. He had to free himself slowly from the accepted methods of w riting fic tio n , and this meant a protracted and troubled relationship with the tradition of philanthropic fiction.
This was the tradition he had to cope with as it is characteristic of less able novelists to deal with identifiable social problems. In tackling such questions he probably never set out to write an exposure of philanthropy, even i f he did always produce a testing of the tradition. The interest of his work in the 'eighties is that it shows a writer painfully disentangling himself from certain approaches to the novel.
These social novels of Gissing's meet with two common reactions from modern c ritic s . One response is to regard the pessimism of these books as a consequence of both his b itte r experience of lif e and his anti-democrabrcc. e lit is t sympathies. This can be regarded as the biographical interpretation. The other response is to regard the
- 171 - main inspiration behind these works as the desire to write realis
tic fiction. The biographical approach is exemplified in an article
by Jacob Korg entitled 'Division of Purpose in George Gissing'. Korg
suggests that the experiences of Gissing's youth and young manhood made him deeply aware of social problems.^ Yet Gissing was also
intellectual and withdrawn:
This interest in social problems alternated ... with moods of discouragement in which, despairing of the efficacy of social reform, he turned to the consolations of a r t.2
Korg sees the confusion of elements in the social novels as a con
sequence of Gissing never being quite sure whether he really wanted to depict the working-classes, and being equally ambivalent about whether he really wanted to protest about social problems. Korg's
reading seems to do less than justice to a novelist he admires. I t
suggests that on five occasions (in Workers in the Dawn, The Unclassed
Demos, Thyrza, and The Nether World) Gissing made the same mistake of
beginning with a potentially useful social theme, which he then failed to do justice to by being distracted by an irreconcilable personal
theme. Korg states the position as being one of
Gissing's unwillingness to admit what his readers recognised immediately, that his novels were essentially didactic treatments of social themes which forcefully suggested the conclusions they w ithh eld...3
The "conclusions" Korg référés to are presumably the moves towards
social amelioration with which a philanthropic novel ends. The lim it ation of Korg's case is that he accepts the belief of Gissing's con temporaries that the philanthropic pattern could continue to produce
satisfactory fic tio n . Yet, Besant's All Sorts and Conditions of Men, the best philanthropic novel of the decade, illu stra te s the exhaustion of the mode. ^
1. P.M.L.A., LXX (1955), p.325. 2. Ib id ., p.330. 3. ib id . , p.332. -172- The extent to which c ritic s attempted to make Gissing a p h il
anthropic novelist does not suggest, as Korg believes, that his
main impulse was philanthropic until he deviated into personal
concerns. His novels represent something far more important than
personal confusion about the sort of fic tio n he should have been
w riting. They represent scepticism about, and subsequent dissociation
from, a powerful convention. Far from losing his direction in a
. traditional form, Gissing was testing the v a lid ity of the tradition in
a situation where an alternative approach v/as not readily available -
as the only possible alternatives were in the process of being devel
oped by the more important novelists of the decade. The difficulty
.of exposing the weaknesses of the philanthropic view is well illu s
trated in the hold such an assumption s t ill had over c ritic s .
Taking this attitude towards Gissing, the philanthropic theme
has to be seen as the clearest form of a larger impulse. The object
of the Victorian novel was obviously to achieve an accommodation
between the individual and the society in which he lived. Philanth
ropy provided an answer as i t connected the advantaged and disadvantaged
in a common social effort. But fiction did not, of course, always
have to deal with the same sort of social problem, nor was i t tied to
the idea of practical social intervention. The other "solutions"
offered by Victorian writers are, however, inseparable from the phil
anthropic idea. I f the novelist did not defend the idea of giving
direct social aid he was, nevertheless, likely to recommend the idea
of suppressing one's own desires and turning outwards to meet the claims
of other people. Consequently, the idea of the widest possible social
good dominated the novel, and the enemy was always selfishness, whether
this was signified by only thinking of oneself, or refusing to use
-173- one's time and money for social improvement. The philanthropic
novel was merely the most straightforward example of the social
concern of the Victorian novelist, as the social impulse was pre
sented in such an indisguised way.
Here, in unmistakable terms, was an argument that social problems
could be alleviated by individual e ffo rt. As this was only the most
direct expression of a fa ith that inspired the best and worst of
Victorian fic tio n the argument that philanthropic gestures usually
ended in disaster was bound to p ro v a 'difficult to accept. When
philanthropy is linked to the whole bias of Victorian thought i t can
be seen that Gissing's accounts of such failures do not signify merely
.the rejection of an isolated convention. They represent doubts about
the whole moral basis of society, and the contribution the individual
can make to the improvement of that society.
The schemes in his novels end in disaster partly because the
problems are too d ifficu lt to solve, but, more significantly, because
of the confused motives of the philanthropists. For the tra dition to
work at a ll i t had to be assumed that the impulses of a character could
fin a lly become selfless. But Gissing takes a sceptical look at motives
This is why c ritic s were so unhappy with Egremont in Thyrza. The
outward social tradition of fiction imposed certain expectations about
how a character would behave; but Egremont's motives for starting his
scheme were as negative as they were positive. He was bound to con
fuse c ritic s . The impulse towards such characterisation by Gissing
was two-fold. Probing a character's motives in the way he probed
Egremont's revealed so many complications that i t seemed to preclude
the possibility of explaining a whole society in satisfactory terms, ^
and the lack of confidence he fe lt about dealing with the whole of
-174- society increased his reliance on probing the individual. A testing
of the assumptions of the philanthropic novel thus allowed Gissing to
explore the possibilities of achieving the social comprehensiveness
of the Victorian novel, and increasingly made clear to him that
without a broad social philosophy the novelist must increasingly con
centrate on individuals. The outcome of this period of apprenticeship
in what was possible in the novel would be New Grub Street (1891).
Although the novels produced in the 'eighties are faulty they contain
a complex response to the lite ra tu re of the preceding age. I t seems
.reductive to pass them o ff as a matter of temperament or novels dom
inated by an interest in realism.
The unfairness of such approaches is magnified when Gissing is
viewed against a background of contemporary comment. He may not have
had the genius of James or Hardy in being able to strike out bold new
directions in fic tio n , but there is something impressive in his attempt
to emancipate himself from traditions that the contemporary criticism
indicates were s t ill very much alive fo r most readers. We see him
freeing himself, not from the trappings of the Victorian novel
(trappings which he never got rid o f), but from its central and most
respected characteristics. Contemporary criticism highlights the
extraordinary d iffic u lty of making such a movement from the social
comprehensiveness of the mid-Victorian novel to the more private world
of the greater novels of the 'eighties.
5. GISSING: RESPONSES TO HIS MOST CHARACTERISTIC NOVELS
Gissing fe lt that he had reached a new, if indefinite, position
upon completion of The Nether World. This is best illu stra te d in two
letters of 1889 to his friend Eduardt Bertz. In the first letter he ^
commented on remarks Bertz had made on the subject of philanthropy.
Bertz's half of the correspondence has been lost, but Gissing's reply
-175- indicated his weariness with the theme: 'The note re philanthropy is good; I shall perhaps never again deal directly with that subject.
Later in the year he had been reading the Norwegian novelist Jacobsen, and was becoming increasingly confident that it was both permissible and productive to entirely redirect attention to the individual. The nature of the novel he would write was s t ill something on which he found it impossible to comment positively, but it is clear that he had now v irtu a lly disentangled himself from the major conventions of the Victorian novel:
I am growing dissatisfied, in some degree, with my old method. Something I have learnt from Jacobsen. But what that "something" is , i t would not be very easy to describe. My own mind is not yet quite clear on the subject.2
By 1895, though, he had completed his two finest novels (New Grub
Street and Born in Exile (1892)),and could comment in retrospect on what he fe lt to be of most importance in his own work. In a le tte r to Morley Roberts he reacted angrily against the common c ritic a l assumption that he was only a chronicler of the poor. Roberts, in an a rtic le in 1892, had denied the assumption that Gissing was a p h il anthropic novelist - 'There can be no greater mistake made in the critical estimation of contemporary novelists than to regard this writer as a philanthropist in the ordinary meaning of the word. He is by no 3 means such a fool of prophecy as to offer us immediate therapeutics.'
Now Gissing asked him to deny that his importance was as a re a list.
Gissing referred to his typical hero as a member of 'a class of young men distin ctive of our time - well educated, fa irly bred, but without
1. The Letters of George Gissing to Eduardi Bertz, edited by A.C. Young, 1961, p.56. 2. Ibid., p.75. 3. Reprinted from Novel Review, I (1892), pp.97-103., in Coustiiias and Partridge, George Gissing: The Critical Heritage, 1972, pp. 208-214.
-176- money, ' ^ and went on to explain the exceptional nature of these young men:
Now think of some of the young men, Reardon, Biffen, Mil vain. Peak, Earwaker, Elgar, Mallard. Do you mean to say that books containing such a number of such men deal, f ir s t and foremost, with the commonplace and sordid? Why these fellows are the very reverse of commonplace: most of them are martyred by the fact of possessing un common endowments. Is i t not so ? .This side of my work, to me the most important, I have never yet seen recognised.^
I t is only of incidental importance that these characters are often self-portraits. It is of far greater importance that Gissing v;as participating in a general development of the novel at this time, and that he is only one of several novelists who presented a widening r i f t between society and the individual, and so made an extended study, even a defence^of the egotism of the individual. This devel opment achieved its finest expression in Jude the Obscure (1895), but i t is in the works of the second-level novelists of the 'eighties that the new emphasis was often given its most direct expression. In the case of Gissing, although he spent much of the 'eighties disentangling himself from the traditions of the novel, the new emphasis had been present from the beginning.
From his f ir s t novel onwards Gissing had presented an isolated and socially alienated young man. Consistently his critics were unable to cope with this aspect of his work. James Payn, in his capacity as a publisher's reader, made a typical response to Thyrza. He found fa u lt with Egremont and said that he would have been happier about accepting the book i f the character had been modified and made less 3 unusual. Egremont is , in fact, the character who disrupts what might
1. Reprinted in Coustiiias and Partridge, George Gissing: The Critical Heritage, 1972, p.244. 2. Ib id ., p.244. 3. According to Mabel Donnelly, George Gissing: Grave Comedian, Cambridge, Mass,, 1954, p,ll6T ~ ~
-177- otherwise have been an ordinary Victorian novel. But although these young men appeared in Gissing's social novels they received a
fu lle r treatment in the other novels he wrote in the 'eighties.
Three are of particular interest - Kingcote in Isabel Clarendon (1886),
Athel in A Life's Morning (1888), and Mallard in The Emancipated
(1890).
A critic in the St.Stephen's Review fe lt himself to be advanced
in his a b ility to understand Kingcote: 'A ll may not feel the scie n tific
truth which the story of Isabel Clarendon illu s tra te s ...'^ He was,
indeed, almost alone in his cool acceptance of
a careful study of an abnormal psychologic development. The man whose extreme sensitivieness has rendered him u tterly indolent can never Re a pleasing person, but he is scientifically accurate.^
More common was confusion at the purpose of such a piece of charac
terisation. J.A.Noble in The Academy wrote:
I t is impossible to be quite sure that one understands the nature of the hero, Bernard Kingcote, whose capacity for self-torment seems to have in it a touch of insanity. ^ _ But, without understanding, one can recognise the sympathetic subtlety of the p o rtra itu re ...^
Others, who fe lt they understood him a ll too w ell, were annoyed by such a personality:
His hero is one of the dyspeptic persons who, instead of going into a monastery, as in former days (where at least they plagued nobody but each other), mope and moan about the world without the pluck to do or the power to enjoy anything.4
1 'Our Library Table', St.Stephen's Review, No.173 (July 3,. 1886), p.23. 2. Ib id . , p.23. , 3. ' New Novels^, The Academy, XXX (July 10, 1886), p.24. 4. 'Novels and Stories', The Saturday Review, LXIT ([July 10, 1886), p. 58.
- 178 -^ In A Life's Morning Gissing presented a sim ilarly withdrawn
character in a far more conventional novel. I t has plenty of dramatic
interest, such as the heroine's violent courtship by her father's employer, Dagworthy. Consequently the c ritic s could concentrate on the areas of the story which provoked immediate interest, and dismiss
Athel in passing. The Spectator, for example, said:
The legitimate hero, W ilfrid, is a tame, insipid young gentleman, so far from being good enough for the two exceptionally gifted and attractive girls who fall in love with him, as to make us wonder whether the author intended him to exemplify the truth of the old saying that kissing goes by favour.'
I t is only in a circumscribed way that Athel is unusual. He has plenty of money and is successful socially, becoming a p o liticia n in the middle stages of the book. I t is only in his awkwardly suggested sensitivity that he is at all a misfit. The same is true of Ross
Mallard in The Emancipated. He is supposed to live a semi-bohemian a rtis tic lif e , but he conforms to most social conventions, and impresses the other characters with his confidence. As yet Gissing has not found the appropriate tone for this sort of character. He is attempting to draw young men who are conscious of th e ir alienation from society but this awareness of alienation is usually presented by the characters being embarrassingly self-dramatising. Mallard, for example, was described by one critic as
an artist, who, in gloomily anticipating his own epitaph, speaks of himself as one who had spent a ll his strength on a task which he knew to be vain; who suffered much and joyed rarely, and whose happiest day was his last.^
With such a self-conscious character as this it is easy to share the exasperation of the early c ritic s :
1. Miss Dillwyn, 'Three Novels', The Spectator, LXII (February 9, 1889), p.204. 2. G.Barnett Smith, 'New Novels', The Academy, XXXVII (April 19, 1890), p.263.
4179- I t is hard to d’ovine how far Mr Gissing's sympathies go with the doubting, questioning, self-analysing turn of mind, types of which he has laboured, not unsuccessfully, to set before us; but, whether designedly or not, the moral suggested by his book is that, i f advancing c iv iliz a tio n implied the definite multiplication of such unrestful and tormented beings as most of those who figure in his pages, one would, to use Professor Huxley's forcible words, "hail the advent of some kindly comet which would sweep the whole a ffa ir away".'
Up to and including The Emancipated Gissing was awkward in his
presentation of such characters. They are theatrical and unnatural
in a way which contrasts strangely with the force of his more con
ventional characterisation. As they are so unreal i t was easy for
c ritic s to dismiss them patronisingly. They amount to no more than
a series of experimental gestures towards the sort of character he
would eventually develop.
It is in New Grub Street that the typical Gissing character
finally becomes credible. Criticism of the novel was appreciative but
inadequate. The picture of London lite ra ry life fascinated the
c ritic s and they concentrated on his creation of a small but fu lly
documented world: 'He is fu ll of clever touches on lite ra ry and social
matters, and estimates to a nicety the lite ra ry pabulum which the 2 general public enjoys.' There was also a great deal of comment on
his realism:
Mr.Gissing points out with a truthful and realistic force what every sensible person cannot fa il to recognise - that i t is not the man who aims nobly who succeeds...3
The Saturday Review described i t as 'almost te rrib le in its realism,
[ i t ] gives a picture, cruelly precise in every d e ta il, of this 4 commercial age.' Gissing's realism and his grim moral reflection
1. 'Belles Lettres', The Westminster Review, CXXXIV (1890),p .334. 2. 'Novels', The Saturday Review, LXXI (May 9, 1891), p.572. 3. 'New Novels', The Whitehall Review, No.779 (April 18, 1891), p.19, 4. 'Novels', The Saturday Review, LXXI (May 9, 1891), p.572.
-180- on the age were almost universally acclaimed but, despite their appreciation of these aspects of the novel, c ritic s ignored the most important feature of the book. There was an almost total
fa ilu re to appreciate that the realism provided a context for the extraordinary character of Reardon.
In fact, the characters in the novel received very l i t t l e attention. Only Jasper Mil vain, the v illa in , excited widespread interest, while Reardon was v irtu a lly ignored. The Saturday Review coupled him with Biffen and dismissed them in a phrase: 'Edwin
Reardon and Harold Biffen, the unpractical dreamers...'^ The Athenaeum made a more substantial comment but did not feel that the character isation was a success: 'Reardon - sensitive, imaginative, low in vitality - is carefully elaborated, yet does not stand out so well 2 as he should.' I t would seem that i t was Reardon's paralysed in ability to come to terms with society, the very essence of his character, that made this c r itic feel that there was some omission in the p o rtra it.
Gissing referred to this failure to understand Reardon in a letter to Bertz where he commented on a review by Besant. Besant had assented to the truthfulness of the novel, saying that he had met a ll these literary types in his time. He gave a glib representation of Reardon:
He has no education to speak of; he has no knowledge of society; he has no personal experiences; he has no travel. In fact, he is absolutely devoid of any equipment except a true feeling for Art, and a burning desire to succeed. He cannot succeed. I t is not possible for such a man to succeed.3
This description makes Reardon seem shallow and effete, a charlatan rather than a victim. Understandably i t annoyed Gissing, who commented.
1. 'Novels', The Saturday Review, LXXI (May 9, 1891), p.572. 2. 'Novels of the Week', The Athenaeum, No.3315 (May 9, 1891),p.601. 3. ^Notes and News', The Author, II (1891), p.15,
- 181 - 'You w ill notice how very imperfectly Besant has understood the book. His description of Reardon is ludicrous.It was not until
Frank Swinnerton published his study of Gissing, in many ways s t ill the best book on the author, that i t began to be accepted that the p o rtra it of a young man so much at odds with society, even i f pass ively, as is the case with Reardon, amounted to a didactic assertion that the relationship between society and the individual was radically 2 wrong. As would be expected,. Gissing's contemporaries proved unable to see any degree of representativeness in the character of Reardon.
In Gissing's next novel. Born in E xile, the hero was presented so assertively that it was impossible for critics to overlook him.
He had considerable difficulty in placing it with a publisher, despite the success of New Grub Street, and i t is obvious that this was a 3 consequence of the speculative nature of the story. The idea of Peak preparing himself for the church in spite of his lack of faith was an iconoclastic theme which could only be welcomed by periodicals adopting a consciously modern outlook. The Speaker responded enthus iastically to the picture:
In his delineation of the character of the hero Mr.Gissing has achieved by far the best thing in these three volumes. Peak is intellectually brilliant, emotionally sensuous, at one moment really noble and at another contemptibly weak. It is impossible to sum up his character in a few words; one must hear him speak in the pages of the story; one must follow his unhappy career to appreciate him properly. It is a clear and vivid picture of a d iffic u lt and paradoxical character.4
1. The Letters of George Gissing to Eduart Bertz, edited by A.C. Young, 1951. p.128. 2. George Gissing: A C ritical Study, 1912, p.82. 3. The Letters of George Gissing to~~Eduard Bertz, edited by A.C, Young, 1961, p.153., indicates that even his friend was puzzled by the book. Gissing reassured him: ‘you and I are not going to part so widely - don't think it . ' 4 .'F ic tio n ', The Speaker, V (May 14, 1892), p.599,
-182- In this review there was a complete absence of judgement on Peak's
hypocrisy. The Academy also responded in te lle ctu a lly to the theme,
praising Gissing's a b ility to keep the reader objective in his
response:
The cleverness of the book is attested by the fact that Godwin Peak neither fo rfe its the reader's sympathy nor wins his admiration. We take him for what he is ; and though the whole result is unsatisfactory, it includes much that is worth having.'
' Such cool assessments of the novel were exceptional.
Far more representative was the view of The Specbo-br. Its reviewer,
James Ashcroft Noble, was puzzled that a book could contain such a
'wealth of intellectual interest and ... mastery of literary pre- 9 ' .sentation... ' and yet be so negative:
With a ll his intellectual vivacity. Peak is a depressing companion, and the whole book - which is in many respects one of the cleverest of recent novels - is one of those presentations of life which are thoroughly depressing, because utte rly devoid of any feeling for the simple human hopes and enthusiasms and affections which give to lif e its interest and charm.3
Noble considered Peak's story unduly pessimistic. What is d iffic u lt
for the modern reader to accept is that i t could also prove distressing.
Whereas we find the pretence merely interesting the reviewer in the
'eighties found i t disturbing. The Athenaeum concluded with the comment
that, 'There are many clearly drawn characters in the book, who
relieve the painfulness inevitably associated with Godwin Peak's
vagaries.'^ C ritics were perplexed that an author for whom they had
1. George C otterell, 'New Novels', The Academy, XLII (July 23, 1892),p.68, 2. 'Recent Novels', The Spectator, LXVIII (June 25, 1892), p.883. 3. Ib id . , p.883. 4. 'Novels of the Week', The Athenaeum, No.3370 (May 28, 1892), p.693.
-183- a good deal of respect should have written such a novel. Those who
took the ir duties most conscientiously, such as Noble, sought an
explanation but could find none.
No reviewer looked back to New Grub Street to make the suggestion
that Peak and Reardon were equally sufferers in their inability to
find a working compromise with society. In March 1892, two months
before the publication of Born in E xile, Gissing wrote to Bertz
\ commenting on the success of Tess of the D'Urbervilles: 'Indeed, after
Hardy's Tess one can scarcely see the lim its of a rtis tic freedom.'^
But as the response to Born in Exile showed, there was a great
difference between the picture of an emotionally vulnerable g irl, and
-• .a character such as Peak, who made a w ilfu lly arrogant stand against
the social code.
Alongside the social novels New Grub Street and Born in Exile
may seem a fragment of Gissing's output, but i t is in these two novels
that he achieves most. It is over-ridingly the presentation of his
abnormal heroes that makes these novels his best and most character
istic, and also representative of the period. In looking for parallels
for this disaffection modern critics have normally turned to foreign
literature. Walter Allen, for example, finds parallels in
Turgenev's Bazarov and Dostoevsky's Raskolnikov, and Turgenev was 2 certainly a major influence on Gissing. But George Orwell placed
Gissing within an English tra dition . He valued him because he was 3 'interested in individual human beings...' , and linked him with the
1. Letters of George Gissing to Eduard Bertz, edited by A.C.Young, 1951, p .149. : 2. Walter Allen, Introduction to Born in Exile, 1970, p.12. 3. 'George Gissing' (I960), reprinted in Coustiiias, Collected Articles on George Gissing, 1968, p.55.
-184- quiet independence that W,H.White strove for with his autobiograph ical hero, Mark Rutherford. Although Orwell made the comment that,
'The English w riter nearest to Gissing always seems to be his cont emporary, or near-contemporary, Mark Rutherford,'^ this likeness has never received enough attention.
6. THE "MARK RUTHERFORD" NOVELS
In his creation of the character of RutherfordyWhite in some ways anticipates what is most important in Gissing's novels. Ruther ford, like Reardon and Peak, is introspective, a social m isfit,. The character could be expected to be as unpopular with c ritic s as
Gissing's heroes and in some cases this was so. The Spectator, in the most dismissive review of The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford, insisted that the author would have been more profitably occupied in turning his attention outwards. The reviewer went on to suggest that morbid self-analysis was a feature of a limited mind rather than of a person with true intellectual a b ility . A summary of the novel was interrupted for an abusive, estimate of White:
One of the reasons he gives for taking the public into his confidence is that he has "observed that the mere knowing that other people have been tried as he has been tried is a consolation;" so that his summum bonum of friendship would be the perpetual outpouring of the morbid fancies of a weak and small mind, whose chaotic throes remind us of the mountain that brought forth the mouse.2
No sympathy was shown fo r Rutherford. His loss of fa ith was regarded critically, an attitude which was bound to follow from the reviewer's censures on the author's intellect:
1. Ibid., p.56. 2. 'The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford', Thé Spectator, LIV (May 28,1881), p.706.
rl8 5 - Disbelief follows upon doubt, while at the same time the problem of a lif e beyond the grave absorbs him to the pitch of monomania. I t is in the treatment of all this that the book is morbid and unhealthy. Such dissection of a man's mind is too suggestive of v iv i section, not to create a feeling of disgust in more healthy minds. The picture may be a true one, but a consuming disease of the mind is not more wholesome to dwell upon than a kindred disease of the body.*
This is close to the criticism of the intellectual presumption of
Godwin Peak. The only difference is that this reviewer was equally
c ritic a l of the analytic technique that revealed the character. The
hero of Born in Exile confused and exasperated the reviewers so much that they seemed to find i t unnecessary to condemn the method as well as the idea.
Yet, despite the severity of The Spectator's review. White was
generally treated more sympathetically than the Gissing of Born in
Exile, and this was because? his defence of the individual conscience was far more hesitant. The more perceptive reviewers noted that
Rutherford was troubled by his loss of religious conviction, and i continued to act in fear of God. He has none of Godwin Peak's arro gance, and, after his lif e has been shattered, he attempts to pick
up some threads and establish some continuity. He directs his
remaining energies outwards in useful social a c tiv ity . Born in Exile may be regarded as a defence of egotism, but White was as concerned as George E liot with suppressing egotistical behaviour. The West minster Review was not unjustified in regarding Mark Rutherford's
Deliverance as a sim plified version of a George E liot novel:
The motive of the book is to preach a kind of undogmatic C hristianity, the religion of love and patience and of going about doing good. I t contains some able sketches of character, and a few shrewd sayings not a l i t t l e in the style of George Eliot.2
1. Ib id . , p .706. 2. 'Contemporary Literature', The Westminster Review, CXXIII (1885),p.597.
- 186 - A similar loss of traditional convictions had produced Rutherford and Peak but White showed the characteristics of an ea rlier gener ation in searching for what could s t ill be clung to in the old pattern of thought. . .
As much as.the c ritic s , White himself reacted against works which took scepticism that stage further where i t became arrogance.
He broke into the narrative of Mark Rutherford's Deliverance with the following observation:
So many books I find are written which aim merely at new presentation of the hopeless. The contradictions of fate, the darkness of death, the fleeting of man over this b rie f stage of existence, whence we know not, and whither we know not, are favourite subjects with writers who seem to think they are profound, because they can propose questions which cannot be answered... The characteristic of so much that is said and written now is melancholy, not because of any deeper acquaintance with the secrets of man than that which was possessed by our forefathers, but because i t is easy to be melancholy, and the time lacks strength.'
In this comment White echoes The Spectator's review of his own f ir s t novel. He jibes at the individual who indulges in a posturing melancholy because his mind is too limited to seek any larger trans cendent pattern. Im p licit in White's comment is a contrast between healthy and unhealthy fic tio n sim ilar to that made in The Spectator.
White is thus a curiously transitional novelist in that he reflects the beginnings of doubt and introspection in the novel yet resists the characteristically pessimistic drift of fiction in the
'eighties. He remains conscious of the need for Rutherford to integrate, to deny his peculiarities, and to accept social and religious codes. White was aware that his novels tended in the direction of pessimism and was so concerned about the fact that, in the second edition of The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford, he went beyond
1. Mark Rutherford's Deliverance (1885), 1910, p.112.
“ 187“ c ritic is in g the pessimism of his contemporaries and attacked his own hero. In a preface added to the second edition he attacked
Rutherford's excessive introspection. White was close enough to the ways of thinking of the mid-century for his warning to be accepted as to ta lly non-ironic. He warned that:
I t is a ll very well that remarkable persons should occupy themselves with exalted subjects, which are out of the ordinary road which ordinary humanity treads; but we who are not remarkable make a very great mistake i f we have anything to do with them. I f we wish to be happy, and have to live with average men and women, as most of us have to liv e , we must learn to taken an interest in the topics which concern average men and women. We think too much of ourselves.’
Some reviewers did think that Rutherford was too introspective but others emphasised the "manliness" of the book. Emily Thursfield drew attention to its positive qualities:
I t is sad and gloomy in tone, yet not u tterly hopeless, fo r the w riter, in the midst of his drawn battles with unbelief and despair, manfully strives to "accept life „ as God had made i t " , and goes on fighting again and again.
R.F.Littledale praised the humility of the hero:
The distinguishing peculiarity of the book, marking it off from many not dissimilar narratives, real and fic titious, which have been published at intervals for many years past, is that the doubter is represented as never very sure of his very doubts themselves, not at all convinced that he is in the righ t path in his negations any more than he had been in his affirm ations.3
Thus, most critics noticed the hesitancy of Rutherford's thinking and praised his attempt to conserve something. Others could see only the pessimism and dismissed the book:
1. Autobiography of Mark Rutherford, Second Edition (1888), 1923, pp. XXVI1 - xxvm . 2. 'Novels of the Week', The Athenaeum, No.2791 (April 23, 1881),p. * 555. 3. 'New Novels', The Academy, XIX (May 21, 1881), p.370.
” 188 - the subject, real or imaginary, and the author, whoever he is , appear both to have suffered severely from the malady of the day which has been brutally termed "religious pip."'’
7. THE. RESPONSE TO OLIVE SCHREINER'S THE STORY OF AN AFRICAN FARM
White and Gissing were regarded by the ir contemporaries as
"novelists of ideas", as they both described the effects of the s c ie n tific and philosophical developments of the age upon their characters. In Gissing's case, in particular, the consequences of these ideas angered critics. At firs t sight Olive Schreiner's The
Story of an African Farm may seem to have l i t t l e in common with this development. The setting, the dream and visionary sequences, and such eccentric pieces of characterisation as Tant Sannie and Bonaparte
Blenkins, seem to make the novel quite unique. Yet the character of Lyndall parallels certain characters in English fiction. She is atheistic, interested in women's emancipation, and generally con cerned to express herself freely without the restrictions of her traditional farm life. The f ir s t reviewers were quick to pick up these aspects of the book and submit them to the sort of criticism already seen in the responses to White and Gissing.
The Saturday Review expressed a conventional preference when i t complained that the book did not live up to the expectations aroused by the t it le :
We own to a certain preliminary disappointment, for we fancied that we should have a story of South African spec ulation and adventure on the borderland between savagery and c iv ilis a tio n . We had hoped to hear of encounters with ravening lions, and of hairbreadth escapes from raiding Zulus... For we love, by way of variety, a novel of wild incident.2
1. 'The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford', The Saturday Review-, LIX' “(May"3ÏÏ, 1885)", p.734. 2. 'The Story of an African Farm', The Saturday Review, LV (April
217im3]7 p.MT: ~ ~
-189- The reviewer also regretted that the author, known at the time as
Ralph Iron, had not made his characters direct and purposeful:
' I f he had pulled himself together and condescended to be more prac
tical, he had the materials for an entertaining and exciting novel.
The firs t half of the review was filled by such facetious remarks
about the sort of novel Schreiner had failed to w rite, but the
fu ll weight of the c r itic 's wrath was reserved for attacking the
•. presentation of Waldo and Lyndall:
That boy of the Overseer's, and his child-companion, the pretty little girl Lyndall, who blooms under our eyes into the beauties of womanhood, are to our mind, not withstanding their natural graces, the most obj ectionable people in the novel. They are conceived with imagination, ingenuity, and o rig in a lity ; and they might ' . easily have been made interesting and even engaging. They have quaintly far-fetched thoughts and shape bright fancies into picturesque visions. But...they are made the mouthpieces of the maddest and most mystical rhapsodies. Taking these at the best, and regarding them s tric tly from the c ritic a l point of view, they become a tiresome drag on the swing of the story. The l i t t l e imps are both precocious sceptics, expressing the ir disbelief of those deeper mysteries of which we dare to say that they could never even have dreamed, in profanities and inanities; while l i t t l e Miss Lyndall, when grown to maiden's estate, speaks out on the most delicate subjects with a candour which may possibly be innocence, but which sounds like something very d iffe re n t.2
The reviewer was outraged by ScKreiner's plea for freedom of thought
and action, and this feeling of anger with Waldo and Lyndall was
shared by most of the reviewers.
The Spectator praised the presentation of the farm and Tant'
Sarnie but declared its distaste fo r the p o rtra it of Lyndall:
1. Ib id ., p.508. 2. TBTÏÏ., p.508.
-190- The Story of an African Farm has the merit of being tn two volumes instead of three. We are inclined to think that i f i t could be reduced to one by the almost complete excision of Lyndall and the cutting-short of Waldo's meditations, i t would be entitled to a high rank among recent novels.!
The Westminster Review argued that such a novel was unhelpful and that fic tio n could be more usefully employed in studying the ordinary problems of life :
His principal characters are so absorbed by the vast problems of the past and the future - in asking "Whence?" and "Whither?" - that they neglect the present, with its joys and sorrows, its affections, its tears, and its laughter, which to healthy human beings are infinitely more vita l and more absorbing than any abstract spec ulations whatever.2
These objections to the moral bias of the novel had the effect of preventing c ritic s from responding to its imaginative force,
There was, though, one c r itic who took a different view. This was Henry Norman, who found the central dilemma in the book gripping and realistic:
I t is the story of the growth of a human mind cut o ff from a ll but the most commonplace influences, facing its own doubts, crushing its own and others' deceits, and at last beating out a music which is not very melodious, but which is thoroughly honest.3
I f Norman could appreciate a novel which questioned existing social codes there exists the po ssib ility that he would be less impressed than other c ritic s by novels which made a simple defence of accepted social mores, and this was the case. He was the only reviewer to criticise Besant's work as unrealistic, imaginatively defective, and
1. Miss Walker, 'An African Novel', The Spectator, LVI (June 2, 1883), p.714. 2. 'Belles Lettres', The Westminster Review, CXX (1883), p.298. 3. 'Theories and Practice of Modern Fiction', The Fortnightly Review, XXXIV, (1883), p.882. "
191 superficial in its ideas. His reyiew of All Sorts and Conditions of Men was the only hostile one the book received:
[ it is] not a pleasant sight to see Mr. Besant frisking about in the solemn fields of p o litica l economy, and apparently proposing in a ll seriousness his scheme of an a r tific ia lly nurtured society of Associated Dressmakers, his wild flight of imagination in the Palace of Delight, and holding up for our admiration several other d is tin c tly wrong charities, all based upon Miss Messenger's m illions. Not even Mr. Besant's charming sto ry-te llin g and warm human sympathies can cover up such impracticable and unwise teachings as these.!
Reading a review such as th is, which is so close to a modern view of the novel, there is an immediate temptation to feel that Norman must be an exceptionally good critic; but this is not necessarily the case. He ju st happened to be a younger man than many reviewers and so more sympathetic to the work of his own generation. The fact that c ritic s were annoyed by the work of Gissing and Schreiner does not indicate that they were poor critics. All it indicates is the grip the idea of a constructive moral purpose to fic tio n had at the time. Reviewers could not be expected to abandon such a view when it was only a minority of novels, even if they were the better novels, that took a different line. In reviewing the great novels of the decade the c ritic s often give the impression of floundering hopelessly, but i t should be appreciated that there was a valid social morality informing th e ir comments, which had produced a tra dition of great fic tio n , and which did seem something hardly worth sacrificing for the more pessimistic novels of the decade. The strength of the traditional view is perhaps best demonstrated in the fact that exactly the same sort of objections were raised against The Story of an African Farm in 1883 and against Born in Exile nine years late r in 1892. Despite a steady flow of sceptical novels c ritic a l ideas
1. Ibid., p.881. -192- remained unchanged.
8. THE RESPONSE TO ROBERT ELSMERE
In spite of the unpopularity with critics of the novel which
concentrated on the problems of the alienated individual, by the
end of the 'eighties one novelist had exploited the commercial poss
ib ilitie s of the idea. Mrs. Ward's Robert Elsmere displayed the
ability of the best-seller to dilute the considerations of serious
fic tio n into a popular form. Mrs. Ward took the idea of the conse
quences of one man's fa ith disintegrating and recorded the process
in the most obvious character - a clergyman. Her interest in the idea
did not spring from any personal source, or from any concern about
„ the direction the novel must take. I t was merely an idea that
concerned her, and which seemed capable of being treated most in te r
estingly in a fictio n a l format. As the story of Elsmere's loss of
faith is so obviously a contrived consideration of the problem one
would not expect i t to anger the c ritic s ; but i t proved almost as
distasteful to some as any other novel which touched on this problem.
The Saturday Review, for example, was appalled at the arrogance
of Elsmere in rejecting his religion:
Her hero is one of those no doubt well-intentioned persons who are, we venture to think, not, indeed, equally hateful, but equally despicable, to God and to the enemies of God; one of the folk who cannot bear to be without a religion, and for whom the religion which was intellectual enough for St.Paul and St.Augustine and St. Anselm and Butler and Berkeley is too unintellectual, the religion which was spiritual enough for St.John and for, Thomas a Kempis and for Jeremy Taylor too unspiritual. *
1. 'Novels', The Saturday Review, LXV (March 24, 1888), p .356.
- 193- Many reviewers shared this annoyance at 'the religious throes of a highminded bat imperfectly informed and very conceited young man,.,
But Elsmere's story was so carefully controlled that i t could never annoy c ritic s as much as the works of Gissing and his more interesting contemporaries. Although Elsmere lost his fa ith Mrs.
Ward made i t quite clear that he remained as morally earnest as ever, so completely avoided that moral scepticism in evidence in such a book as Born in Exile. ■ Mrs. Ward also invented a reassuring ending as Elsmere found a new role for himself in a quasi-religious foundation devotdd to benevolent work among the poor of London.
Thus, in spite of the controversial nature of the basic idea behind the book, everything was fin a lly organised into a traditional philan thropic pattern. But the reassuring conclusion was not enough to satisfy a ll the reviewers. The fact that many objected to the whole conception of the novel illu stra te s oaâîni the strength of a certain
. V conservative view.
However, in rather more cases the book provided an opportunity fo r a balanced discussion of its theme. Elsmere was taken seriously and his problem given extended consideration, but i t was usually concluded that he had made a great mistake in giving up his religion, and that his new job was no real substitute for former certainties.
Both Gladstone and Hutton made this response to the novel .2 For them, and for other c ritic s in the 'eighties, Robert Elsmere touched the lim its of the amount of intellectual freedom the novel could assume. * Mrs. Ward had taken the one proposition of loss of faith, had del-
1. R.Y.Tyrrell, 'Robert Elsmere as a Symptom", The Fortnightly Review, XLV (1889), p.731. 2. Gladstone, ' Robert Elsmere and the Battle of B e lie f, The Nineteenth Century. XXIII (1888), pp.766-788. Hutton, 'Robert Elsmere' , The Spectator, LXI (April 7, 1888), pp.479-4M^
-194- iberately avoided discussing any really unpleasant or dangerous consequences of this event, but s t i l l managed to either shock her contemporaries or convince them that hers was a radically advanced novel.
The novels discussed in this chapter have been referred to as i f they represent the main trend of fic tio n in the 'eighties. In a sense this is misleading. Several hundred novels were published every year, and the majority of novelists rejected both stylistic and thematic innovations and conformed to the expectations of c ritic s .
A novelist such as Gissing was the exception. But it is significant that a ll the second-level novelists of the 'eighties (with the exception of Stevenson) can be referred to as "novelists of ideas", and all make a sim ilar plea for the individual. I f the circumstances of publication had been d iffe ren t, Samuel Butler's The Way of All Flesh
(1903) would have been another novel for inclusion in this chapter.
Although James and Hardy cannot be discussed in a narrow context of ideas th e ir novels, as the next three chapters w ill show, display certain sim ila ritie s to the novels discussed here, and naturally there were similarities in the critical response. If a pattern of sceptical fiction can be established it is also possible to establish a pattern of c ritic a l response - c ritic s reacted against the assumption of social breakdown and against one of its consequences, an increased emphasis on the individual.
-195- CHAPTER FIVE: HENRY JAMES AND THE ANALYTIC NOVEL
1. MODERN CRITICS ON THE CONTEMPORARY DISCUSSION OF JAMES'S NOVELS
In 1890 George Saintsbury reviewed Henry James's The Tragic Muse
for The Academy. H o stility to James's novels had increased steadily
for a decade but Saintsbury's comments represented a new degree of
viciousness. His review opened bluntly:
We have sufficie nt respect for Mr.Henry James to review him frankly - the greatest compliment that can be paid to a novelist. And, therefore, we shall say at once that, to our thinking, The Idiot Asylum would have been a better title for his newtook than The Tragic Muse. Such a company of, by th e ir own showing, imbeciles in word and deed has rarely been got together by a w riter of great talent.'
This was an extreme reaction, but in general James was the victim of
the most dismissive criticism published in the 'eighties. Zola's
novels provoked a noisier, more intense, debate but the excitement
was short-lived. By the early 'nineties many critics had managed to
define for themselves the nature of Zola's achievement. They regarded
him as a w riter with a powerful but jaundiced vision, a valuation
that few have ever sought to revise. Defining James's achievement
proved a far more d iffic u lt matter. Indeed, one of the more obvious
features of the reviews is an impression of confusion as c ritic s
attempted to organise some sort of significance in what they could only
. see as a protracted discussion built out of the thinnest of raw mat
erials. C ritical exasperation often led to an angry dismissal of
James's whole e ffo rt.
Yet, despite the shortcomings of such responses, modern c ritic s
have often treated these attempts at criticism unfairly. I t is rare
to find a modern commentator on James who is prepared to recognise
that when confronted with a difficu lt new novel the better Victorian
c r itic would struggle to come to some sort of reasoned assessment
1. 'New Novels', The Academy, XXXVIII (August 23, 1890), p.148. -195- of its value. It is far easier to suggest that he would back out of the challenge and lapse into prejudices about how good novels had been written for years. There is insufficient recognition that the principles of the critics were part of a mature aesthetic of the novel. All too often modern c ritic s offer nothing more than a caricature version of the values of the reviewers.
Examples of sim plification are easy enough to find. Mrs.
Ramadan, in a thesis completed in 1960, bases her research on the assumption that there was an easily identifiable sort of novel, almost the exact opposite of James's, which a ll reviewers were supposed to appreciate. This was, she claims, the 'romantic adventure novel which represented a standard of correctness by which James's novels could be judged:
James's essay 'The Art of Fiction' expressed ideas that were to affect a ll the analyses of James's work there after. I t seemed to classify James even more clearly, in the minds of the reviewers, as an opponent of the romantic adventure novel then more palatable to most tastes than the "microscopic analysis".2
The'romantic adventure novel' did exist but was not taken seriously by c ritic s . There is obviously no room in Mrs. Ramadan's thesis for an explanation of Meredith's eminence, a factor which would complicate her impression of the period. Her denunciation of the reviewers is based on a simple contrast of James's method and an assumed a lte r native standard, but i t bears no relation to the facts.
A more disturbing example of such misrepresentation is when a c r itic as well-bnown as Tony Tanner indulges in sim ilar generalisations
He does not sim plify matters as much as Mrs. Ramadan, but his comment
1. The Reception of Henry James's Fiction in the Main English Periodicals Between 1875 and 1890, Unpublished Doctoral~~l'hesis, London, 1960, p.177. 2. Ib id ., p.177.
-197- on the period does less than justice to the reviewers' interest in serious fiction. He offers a very superficial explanation of contemporary tastes:
The majority of late-nineteenth-ccntury readers s till preferred "warm" novelists, such as Dickens, Scott and Thackeray, who seemed so reassuringly simple, so fu ll of heart, so happily above meddling with the.,devious and problematical motions of the inner world.
The majority of readers at a ll times have problably preferred "warm" novelists who are ' reassuringly simple'-, but c ritic s have usually set higher standards. Certainly in the 'eighties they looked to fic tio n for more than warmth. Tanner seems to recognise only two sorts of novels - the old-fashioned "warm" novel, and the psychological novel of James. He ignores the fact that other writers in the period, writers such as Meredith, Hardy, Moore and Gissing, were also exper imenting with the novel. Although fa ilin g to produce "warm" novels, and not always producing novels that the c ritic s liked, they were, 2 nevertheless, proving more acceptable than James.
Peter Buitenhuis ridicules the early response. His description of the English criticism of The Portrait of a Lady (1881) makes the reviewers a butt for laughter;
1. Henry James: Modern Judgements, 1968, p.13. 2. Another feature of Tanner's discussion of the contemporary re action to the novels is that he is wrong about the reception accorded to the various books. At a late stage in his essay he reveals the foundation of his peculiar assessment of the response. He has taken his information from a thesis which deals exclusively #ith the American reaction to the novels. He makes no attempt to suggest that the English response may have been different. The thesis, by Richard Foley, is titled. Criticism in American Periodicals of the Works of Henry James from f86F~ to 1916, Washington, 1944.
-198- Reviewers objected to James's aestheticism and to his book's length. Several c ritic s complained that i t was le ft unfinished. Part of the resentment probably stemmed from Isabel Archer's temerity in rejecting the proposal of an English lord, a subject on which English c ritic s had shown a considerable touchiness in earlier reviews of James's work.*
As Buitenhuis admits, no reviewer actually made this last objection to the novel. I t seems a rather unusual approach to the subject to pick out as the central objection to the novel an objection which was never made. The c ritic s Buitenhuis is so ready to c ritic is e never sunk quite to Buitenhuis's own level of pettiness, nor did they give quite such a stupidly one-sided picture. A majority of reviewers were antagonised by The Portrait of a. Lady, and a ll reviewers objected to its aestheticism, length, and ending, but there was some apprec iation of the novel; and this Buitenhuis is either unaware of or fails to mention.
James Ashcroft Noble, for example, conceded to James the right to break a ll established precedents when the result was an engrossing as in this particular novel:
Mr.James not only disappoints his readers, but does injustice to himself when he.implicitly assumes that the interest aroused by the lady whose p o rtra it he draws w ill be so luke warm as to inspire no curiosity concerning the outcome of a great crisis in her history. S till, though in this and in one or two minor matters, Mr. James's stories are less im aginatively satisfying than they might be, the "peculiar difference" of his work is so valuable, so interesting, and at the same time so rare that one wants space for adequate celebration of i t , and can spare none for complaint that some things are absent which we can get in plenty elsewhere. 2
Part of the interest of this response is that it outlines a conven tional response and then admits there are times when certain principles become redundant.
1. Twentieth Century Interpretations of The Portrait of a Lady, Englewood C liffs , New Jersey, 1958, p .l, 2. 'New Novels', The Academy, XX (November 26, 1881), p.398.
-199- Another c r itic who recognised a peculiar strength in the novel
was Mrs. Oliphant. Her response comes as a surprise as she was in
various ways^the embodiment of conservative principles. It is true
that she had many reservations about the novel, and there were also
contradictions within her review, but she fin a lly came down on the
side of creative freedom:
The book altogether is one of the most remarkable specimens of lite ra ry s k ill which the c ritic could lay his hand upon. It is far too long, infinitely ponderous, and pulled out of a ll proportion by the elaboration of every detail; but there is scarcely a page in i t that is not worked out with the utmost s k ill and refinement, or which the reader will pass over without leaving something to regret - that is , i f he has leisure for the kind of reading which is delightful for its own sake in complete independence of its subject. The conversation in it is an art by itself.1
Mrs, Oliphant's comment indicates that she could not regard The
P ortrait of a Lady as a successful novel, as James's analysis seemed
to her to become an end in its e lf, but she could see that there were
things to admire in the book.
The open-minded attitude both she and Noble adopted when they
read this novel illustrates the absurdity of such a generalisation
as Donald M. Murray's comment that: 'The strong undercurrent in a ll
this detraction was a distaste for realism and a preference for 2 romance.' Mrs. Oliphant and Noble would join other c ritic s in a tt
acking James's subsequent novels, but their attitudes were never the
result of such a simple preference as Murray suggests. Neither were
they, or other critics, as petty as Buitenhuis believes. Nor were
■they as committed to one form of novel as Mrs. Ramadan and Tanner maintain. All of these modern c ritic s fa il to recognise that c ritic s
1. 'Recent Novels', Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, CXXXI (1882), pp.382-3. 2, 'Henry James and the English Reviewers, 1882-1890', American Literature, North Carolina, XXIV (1952), p.20,
-200- did at least try to cope with James's novels, and did not just dismiss them without consideration on the basis of some ready-made set of rules. The responses of Noble and Mrs. Oliphant to T_he
Portrait of a Lady shows that such a static code did not exist, and also begin to indicate that the response to James's fic tio n was a far more complex matter than most modern c ritic s have recognised.
Fortunately, misrepresentations of the early response should begin to lose credence as a result of Roger Card's introduction to the C ritical Heritage volume on James, In the opening sentences of this excellent essay Gard draws attention to the way in which modern c ritic s d isto rt the contemporary response, I t is true that Gard generalises about the c ritic a l expectations of the period, and almost suggests stubbornly unreceptive critics:
We quickly learn to recognize a certain set of c ritic a l terms, used alike by hostile and favourable reviewers, which have the effect of shutting out from consideration many of James's most individual and valuable achievements,1
But Gard shows an awareness,lacking in other discussions^that such standards were not always insisted upon. In particular, he draws atten tion to the fle xib ility reviewers showed with some other difficult novelists:
when we have done fu ll justice to a ll the complaints of James's f ir s t audience, we s t ill have a body of work which the admirers of George E liot or (for obscurity and id io syncrasy) Meredith should, one would have thought, have been able to read with ease and p ro fit. Only a very few of them did this...2
Dismissing the idea of an absolutely re strictive c ritic a l consensus
Gard concludes his introduction with the valuable suggestion that we should not look for an explanation of the h o s tility to James in a
1, Henry James: The C ritical Heritage, 1958, p.5, 2. ib id ., p.I/.
-201 direct contrast between what James offered and what c ritic s often demanded, but in the vaguer area of "se n sib ility":
I think we have to discount relatively superficial con siderations like overt subject-matter or - the most popular candidate - James's technical d iffic u lty , and.,, return to the idea of "se n sib ility", the readiness to feel with an author in his most important perceptions,
Gard does not expand on this point as he is about to present a mass of evidence from which the reader can make his own assessment of what this "sensibility" involves. Yet any sort of definitive descrip tion is elusive in the often confused reviews of James's novels. The response to other novelists, however, adds weight to apparently in significant comments in the f ir s t reviews. Therefore, an approach which takes into account the whole range of criticism at the time does make i t possible to put forward suggestions concerning the real causes of the h o s tility to James which are possibly more accurate than any ideas suggested by the C ritical Heritage volume on its own. The criticism of James's novels is complex, though, and the whole range of the response needs to be considered,
2, DISCUSSIONS OF JAMES AS A REALISTIC NOVELIST
There was some criticism of James's novels as conformist as
Tanner and others have suggested. For example, several c ritic s were very annoyed by W.D.Howell's a rtic le 'Henry James, Jr,', published in November 1882. I t is not a very interesting essay, and i t is quite apparent that James, even at this re la tively early date, was w riting in a way that Howells could not fu lly understand. Whereas
Howells was s t i l l developing his own simple notions of realism James had progressed into areas of character presentation and analysis which his fellow American could not fu lly appreciate. At times i t
1. Ibid. , p.17.
-202- seemed that the basis of his praise was nothing more than friendship:
I do not find much that I should call dramatic in The Portra it of a Lady, while I do find in i t an amounirof analysis which I should call superabundance i f i t were not all such good literature. The novelist's main business is to possess his reader with a due conception of his characters and the situations in which they find themselves. I f he does more or less than this he equally fa ils . I have sometimes thought that Mr.James's danger was to do more, but when I have.been ready to declare this excess an error of his method I have hesitated. Could anything be superfluous that had given me so much pleasure as I read?'
This is very sim ilar to the response of Noble and Mrs. Oliphant to the same novel - impressed rather than comprehending. Yet, despite the lim itations of his understanding, Howells was prepared to present an assertive case in defence of James. One section of his essay in particular caused deep offence:
The art of fiction has, in fact, become a finer art in our day than i t was with Dickens and Thackeray. We could not suffer the confidential attitude of the la tte r now, nor the mannerism of the former, any more than we could endure the p ro lix ity of Richardson or the coarseness of Fielding. These great men are of the past - they and the ir methods and interests; even Trollope and Reade are not of the present. The new school derives from Hawthorne and George Eliot rather than any others; but it studies human nature much more in its wonted aspects, and finds its ethical and dramatic examples in the operation of lighter but not really less v ita l motives. The moving accident is certainly not its trade; and i t prefers to avoid a ll . menner of dire catastrophes.2
As a vast generalisation Howell's statement has some tru th, but his ridiculous claim for a 'new school' of novelist's suggests that it was a calculated!;/ offensive manifesto statement rather than his genuine view. I f Howells wanted to provoke a confrontation his essay certainly had the desired effect. A year after the pronouncement •
James wrote to Howells that articles 'about you and me are as thick
1. The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine, New York, I I I (1882), p. 26. 2. Ib id . , p.28. -203- I as blackberries...' Sections of the English press had launched
into furious attacks on both American novelists,
The Quarterly Review provided one heated rejoinder:
True Mr. Howells assures us that Mr. James's style "is, upon the whole, better than that of any other novelist;" but some of us may perlTa~ps”Ti^pF~fôi~~pardoiT'iTwe prefër Scott, Thackeray, or George Eliot, It is evident that the Trans-atlantic aesthetic reformers w ill not run the risk, of placing too low an estimate upon the services which they are rendering to lite ra tu re ,^
It was in such articles as this one by L,J,Jennings that the
simplest sort of case for a good story and plenty of action was
argued. Reading a sim ilar a rtic le in Temple Bar, for example, one
would get the impression that Thackeray was the only sort of novel
is t c ritic s could appreciate:
We devour, breathless, whole pages of that "old fashioned" and "intolerable" w riter.. .without pausing to trouble our minds about ethics or aesthetics.3
Such sentiments seem to endorse Tanner's case about the English reader.
But it is important to realise that this was only one group of
critics. The vast majority did not approach ?
oF rWay In this respect, the article
in The Quarterly Review must be recognised as an apoplectic exception
rather than as the rule. I t is a mistake to accord i t any sort of
representative status, such as when Mrs. Ramadan links 'The Art of
Fiction' essay and Howell's essay to conclude that these 'greatly affected James's reception in England and made most of the reviewers
less enthusiastic.'^ The vast majority of reviewers did not start
1. Everett Carter, Howells and the Age of Realism (1954), Connecticut, 1966, p.250. 2. 'American Novels', The Quarterly Review, CLV (1883), p.214. 3. 'The New School of American F ictio n ', Temple Bar, LXX (1884),p.385. 4. The Reception of Henry James's Fiction in the Main English Period- ■ icals between 1875 and 1890* Unpublished Doctoral Thesis, London, 1960, p.177.
-204- attacking James's novels simply because Howells had attacked their
tradition in the novel. But modern critics will insist on exagger
ating the consequences of Howell's essay, Kenneth Graham writes
that, 'The Storm broke around Howell's famous essay on James in 1882,
He draws the conclusion that:
Reviewers everywhere seized on any evidence of plot- contrivance or "strong situations" in a novel to hold it up as an example of heroic resistance to the foreign invasion.^
Only a few article s, such as the ones in The Quarterly Review and
Temple Bar, offered this beleaguere4 impression.
But, although Howel1s did not reduce a ll reviewers to petty
spite, he did help to determine the course of criticism of James's
novels. A consequence of James's association with Howells was that
he had to suffer the complications of being discussed as a re a list.
There is , of course, much in James that can be described as realism.
He went to contemporary life for his subjects, cultivated an objective
method, and accumulated detail in a way that was generally referred
to as re a lis tic . So the novels alone provided some ju s tific a tio n for
his contemporaries seeing him and Howells as the nucleus of a school
of American realism. Yet his novels are radically different from
Howell's drab efforts, most dramatically in their concentration on
the growth of self-awareness of one individual. Reviewers often failed
to see this pattern in James's work because Howells, by his journal
is tic celebration of realism, encouraged them to approach James from
'this single, limited perspective. A discussion of James as a realist
usually made little progress into his work as critics were trying to
assess complex novels with one inappropriate c ritic a l term: and Howells
cannot escape the blame for pointing criticism in this direction, and
1. Graham, p .108. 2, Ib id . , p.109. -205- causing some of the d iffic u ltie s experienced by the f ir s t reviewers.
Several c ritic s complained that the novels were too re a lis tic .
A.J.Butler 5 The Athenaeum's resident, and extremely lim ited, commen tator on James's works, found fa u lt with The Princess Casamassima on these grounds:
An enormous quantity of the book...might be excised without affecting the progress of the story one whit. Unless the author's object was merely to sketch various types of the people who try to improve social unevenne sses, i t may safely be said that the benevolent Lady Aurora Langrish might go bodily and never be missed. The same applies pretty nearly to her invalid protegee. Of course in real life we see a good deal of a great rnanÿ~people whose existence cannot be said to have any perceptible effect on our fortunes, but a literal transcript of real life does not necessarily make a novel any more than a fa ith ful rendering of a view which makes a picture.!
Butler was making the mistake of assessing the book purely as a
II i l work of realism. He had no reason to believe that the one word realism might not sum up all of James's intention. Arthur Tilley, in The
National Review, was also irrita te d by James's realism:
May i t not be said that while George E liot elevates the commonplace, the new school vulgarizes it . And i f so, is this true realism?^
Tilley, in common with many other critics at the time, wanted stronger evidence of the author's imagination. He saw the faults of The
P ortrait of a Lady as 'absence of plot, over-analysis and laboured realism ...'3 A sim ilar view appeared in The Edinburgh Review in 1891.
The author, R.E.Prothero, attacked 'the new England school of impersonal realists' for lacking the qualities of imagination found in good fiction.^
1. 'Novels of the Week', The Athenaeum, No.3080 (November 6, 1886), pp.596-597. 2. 'The New School of F ictio n ', The National Review, I (1883), p.264. 3. Ib id ., p.266. 4. ^American F ictio n ', The Edinburgh Review, CLXXIII (1891), pp.57-58.
-206- Some of these reviews are quoted by Kenneth Graham who argues that, 'Most adverse criticism of James and Howells is aimed at their excessive realism, by c ritic s of varying ide alist standpoints...'^
This corresponds with Graham's belief that the central debate of the
'eighties centred around the rival claims of realism and romance.
Yet, as this thesis has attempted to show, there was no simple preference for romance, and c ritic s were more committed to the re a lis tic novel.
Far from c ritic is in g James for being too re a lis tic , the majority of critics, despite what Graham says, attacked James for his failure to be realistic. Graham says that a minority of critics argued 'in 2 favour of tru th -to -1 ife .. . ' , but they are not the minority he claims.
His view is based on reading the most general article s, whereas reviews of the actual novels almost invariably c ritic is e James's unreality.
This feeling that James was unrealistic was perhaps the major source of confusion in the reviews as critics tried to reconcile this perception with HowelIs's argument that he and James together con stituted a school of realism. A conception of James as a re a lis t was at the back of Mrs. Oliphant's mind when she wrote:
Mr. James carries on his word-fence with the most curious vraisemblance and a ir of being real. But nothing so elaborate ever could be real, and the dazzle sometimes fatigues, though the effect is one which cannot be con templated without admiration.3
This referred to The Portrait of a Lady, and she had similar feelings about The Princess Casamassima. She began by concentrating on its apparent realism:
1. Graham, p.49. 2. Ibid. , pp.49-50. 3. 'Recent Novels', Blackwood's Magazine, CXXXI (1882), p.383
-207- The novels of this remarkable w riter are a ll most care fully studied. There is, perhaps (one feels), nothing in them that could not be backed by the authority of a living model, no incident that has not actually happened in some human combination or other. The scenery, the accessories, the costume and make-up, are a ll done from the lif e . !
But she then turned on James for his lack of realism - the lack of that precise, almost documentary, realism for which Gissing and Moore both received praise in the period. As Graham has to acknowledge, she disliked The Princess Casamassima 'because i t seems manufactured, 2 mere enamel with l i t t l e of the actual in i t . '
The London Quarterly Review was irrita te d by an identical def iciency:
We cannot call the work a study, i t is evidently the product of speculation and imagination, rather than of knowledge and insight. Want of re a lity is stamped on almost the whole.3
Mrs de Mattos, Stevenson's cousin, reviewing The Tragic Muse, complained about its remoteness from accepted notions of the real:
Altogether those who know Mr James's w riting well are principally struck by the sense of flatness and absence of re lie f, and the undeniable cleverness of what is, however, after a ll, much more like studio work than work that is the result of direct contact with nature.4
Saintsbury was also annoyed by its vaporous insubstantiality. He commented that the characters
come, like the language that they ta lk, of constant im it ation and re-imitation, not of real life or of anything like real life, but of thrice and thirty times redistilled lite ra ry decoctions of l i f e . 3
1. 'Novels', Blackwood's Magazine, CXL (1886), p.786. 2. Graham,p .50. 3. 'Belles Lettres', The London Quarterly Review, LXVII (1887), p.383. 4. 'Novels of the Week', The Athenaeum, No.3274 (July 26, 1890), p.124. 5. 'New Novels', The Academy, XXXVIII (August 23, 1890), p.148.
-. 208 - Observations on James's lack of re a lity merit most attention when
they come from a c ritic such as Noble, who had shown himself prepared
to appreciate the peculiar virtues of The Portrait of a Lady, Con
sidering The Tragic Muse he was as irritated as any other critic:
In The Tragic Muse. ,. the chatter hardly ever bears any recognisable impress of the character of a situation..,, only the outer shell of their nature is in evidence,,, i f Mr James had made Miriam Roth and Peter Sherringham and Nick Dormer s u fficie n tly substantial to bear i t , he might have polished and refined them at pleasure: as i t is , so far from possessing substance, they have hardly recognisable outline.!
Noble is complaining because the novel offers nothing tangible; James
has not presented the hard core of a character before elaborating on
the picture. This was a fam iliar enough complaint during the period,
but the remarkable thing is that ten years earlier Noble had seemed
prepared to accept the suggestiveness of James's characteristic
approach. In the review of The Portrait of a Lady i t had seemed that
Noble had grasped the essence and subtlety of James's method. In a
passage of great perception he had written:
To note one achievement among many, I think that nothing in this book or in its predecessors is more remarkable than the masterly painting of moral and intellectual at mosphere - the realisable rendering not of character its e lf, but of those impalpable radiations of character from which we apprehend i t long before we have data that enable us fu lly to comprehend it . As soon as we fa irly see Mr James's personages we have an impression, vague but sufficing, of their full possibilities so that when we part from them we feel that they have not surprised or disappointed us, but have proved themselves consistent and homogeneous. . .the heroine is a very masterly p o rtra it, and the account of her relations with Osmond before and after her marriage is fu ll of psychological interest.2
The Tragic Muse is an in fe rio r work to The Portrait of a Lady, but one would not expect such a complete disappearance of interest in James's ■ method as is seen in Noble's comments on the later novel. I t had
been the very fact of the obliqueness of the method of characterisation
1. , 'Recent Novels', The Spectator, LXV (September 27, 1890), p.410. 2. 'New Novels', The Academy, XX (November 26, 1881), p.398. ------209- that had impressed him in The Portrai t of a Lady, yet i t was the same obliqueness that irrita te d him in The Tragic Muse:
The secret of this density of the conversational medium, which makes his characters appear like men and women seen through a mist, is to be found in his persistent refusal to employ the method of characteristic selection. Open a novel of Jane Austen at any page (and we name her because she, like Mr James, is a re a list who loves the commonplace) and you cannot read a couple of pages without forming a fa ir ly clear idea of the situation and of the attitudes of the actors, because the ta lk, both in its matter and in its tone, is not merely talk which would have been natural at any time, but talk which would have been inevitable at that special time to those special talkers.!
This change of attitude by Noble is d iffic u lt to understand, and can be explained in several ways, but one explanation centres on the sort of approach c ritic s fe lt they should take when dealing with a novel by James. Noble appears to have approached The Portrait of a Lady with few preconceptions, and to have responded to the power of it . He acknowledged that the book had a force which made his usual expectations from fiction irrelevant. In fact, what he noticed was the subtlety of the analytic method, and in his readiness to respond to this he was exceptional among English c ritic s . But in his response to The Tragic Muse he had nothing to say that was not paralleled in a dozen reviews; and one reason for this would seem to be the fact that he had adopted the common c ritic a l approach of dis cussing James as a re a lis t. His comments on The Tragic Muse all centred on the topic of realism. There was direct castigation of
James as a re a lis tic novelist, with the suggestion that he followed the methods of a school rather than trusting to his own impulses;
There was the most ordinary sort of objection to realism - that it failed to follow the usual selective processes of art; and there was
1. 'Recent Novels', The Spectator, LXV (September 27, 1890), p.410.
-210- irrita tio n that James did not adhere to his own assumed re a lis tic standards. Realism thus raised its e lf as an issue which obscured and hindered a satisfactory response to James, and caused even more confusion in reviews in the complication that James did not even seem to be doing what i t was assumed he was doing. ‘ In a c r itic such as Noble the obsession with realism squeezed out an earlier interest in the possibilities of psychological portraiture.
I t was Howells who to a large extent determined the limited vocabulary of this debate, and so i t is not at all surprising that the same approach was applied to his novels. The contrast in the general competence of reviews of works of James and Howells is enormous.
In general, HowelIs's work is trivial - the sort of slight realism he advocated - and c ritic s had no d iffic u lty in assessing his aims, achievements, and lim itations. C ritics were unsympathetic to his novels, but coped with them perfectly well. It is quite obvious that realism as a c ritic a l term provided an adequate dimension for a dis- , cussion of the fu ll scope of his work; in contrast, realism as the perspective for discussion patently failed to cope with the complex ities of James's activity in the novel. Howells‘s idea of a school of American realists would have seemed absurd without James as his only piece of evidence, and i t is unfortunate that his vulgar pro paganda effort on behalf of the greater novelist should have side tracked a sincere c ritic a l e ffo rt from the reviewers.
3. DISCUSSIONS OF JAMES AS AN ANALYTIC NOVELIST
There was no clear-cut division between reviews which con sidered James as a re a lis t and reviews which considered him as an analytic novelist. Often both approaches merged in one review. But when the comments on the analytic method are extracted from the reviews i t is obvious that these comments are more relevant to James's work than comment on his realism. Hardly any reviewers wrote as apprec
-211- iatively of the method as Noble did in the case of The Portrait of a Lady, and,indeed, the method provoked a ll the traditional prefer ences of the reviewers. Yet they at least give the impression of being able to say with some precision what they find unsatisfactory in the novels. The approach through realism did not even progress this far.
At f ir s t the comments seem d is p iritin g . Discussing novel after novel c ritic s showed a preference for the most insignificant and th in ly sketched characters. For example, Hutton's review of The
P ortrait of a Lady opened with the most extraordinary statement:
I f Mr. Henry James had called his book The Portrait of Two Gentlemen we might have admitted the aptness of the description, for the real power of the book consists in the wonderful pictures given of Ralph Touchett and Mr Osmond, which have rarely been equalled in fiction for the skill and delicacy of the painting. But as for Isabel Archer... who is the lady of whom the p o rtra it is taken, we venture to say that the reader never sees her, or realises what she is, from the beginning of the book to the close.'
The basis of Hutton's admiration for the picture of Osmond is obvious.
He is the most melodramatically villainous character in all of
James's novels. Isabel Archer he could only regard as a thinly-drawn cipher on whom Osmond could work his deception. James's analysis of her struck him as extenuated and inconclusive. Hutton's attitude retlects the common view at the time that a character must be grasped as a whole, and that only this could be the basis of convincing char acterisation. The Saturday Review echoed Hutton's objections:
Mr. James has certainly many of the qualities of a fine novelist; but his reluctance to go below the surface, or to grasp a character as a whole, renders his short sketches and l i t t l e episodes more successful than his longer works.2
1. ' The P ortrait of a Lady', The Spectator, LIV (November 26, 1881), p.1504 2. 'the P ortrait of a Lady', Tlie Saturday Review, LI I (Dec.3, 1881),p.703.
-212- Like Hutton, this reviewer concentrated on Osmond, making a, valid
comparison with George E lio t's Grandcourt:
Tlie character of Osmond - a selfish, heartless, accomplished, and s t ill ineffective man, reminding one in a good many points of George E lio t's Grandcourt - is one of the most successful in the bookJ
He was irrita te d by the presentation of Isabel, expecting a more
rhetorical intrusive stance than James was prepared to provide.
Although the modern reader is more fam iliar with such oblique charac
terisation this c r itic did have some valid objections to the presen
tation of Isabel. He picked on the one point which has continued
to trouble some readers:
Surely i f the p o rtra it of Isabel's character is to be a livin g one, we ought to see something of the mental processes which decide her to take the greatest step of her life ... The trains of feeling and association which lead a good and clever woman to p re fe r... a person of Osmond's stamp, and the illusions she must create for herself before she can do so, are precisely the subjects on which a s k ilfu l analyst of human nature should be able to throw some lig h t; but i t is just here that Mr James leaves us most in the dark,2
Of course, much of the beauty of the book lies in the subtlety with which James does suggest Isabel's illusion s, and the c r itic appar
ently failed to spot these clues to Isabel's behaviour. But there
is a sense in which we understand Isabel's motives because we have the
privilege of possessing a ll James's works, and accept the conventions of his encounters and relationships. His f ir s t reviewers lacked this context, lacked experience of this way of seeing, and naturally pre ferred definite characters to characters existing in an aura of suggestion.
1. Ib id ., p.703. 2. TTTïï., p.703.
-213- Yet in 1881 Noble and Mrs Oliphant were prepared to admit that
there might be some unique advantages to James's method. The
peculiar feature of the response to the subsequent novels is that
the experience of reading James's fic tio n did not enlighten more
c ritic s , but alienated even those who had been receptive to The
Portrait of a Lady. After 1881 any willingness to achieve an accomm
odation with James disappeared, and there was a repeated and incre
asing demand for traditional characterisation. A.J.Butler commented
on The Bostonians:
he has to f ill page after page with long analysis of feelings, or minute descriptions, whether of character or scenery, which, subtle and delicate as they often are, produce at last in the reader's mind the same kind of irritation as results from an over-elaborated picture of a subject which might be sufficiently indicated by a few bold strokes. We know Basil Ransom and Olive Chancellor perfectly well by the end of the f ir s t chapter; and every fresh touch put upon their portraits after this seems almost an impertinence.!
The Saturday Review demanded characters whom, 'we can regard... as fellow-creatures, in whom we can take a real living, instead of a 2 languid psychological interest.'
This preference for traditional methods of character present ation was most clearly expressed in the response to The Princess
Casamassima. The only piece of characterisation Mrs Oliphant could wholeheartedly admire was the p o rtra it of M illicent Henning:
there is nothing better in this book than Millicent Henning: the large, buxom, blooming shop-girl, with all her outrageous vulgarities and demonstrations, her immense v ita lity , her expansive flesh and blood, her violent instincts and expressions.3
1. 'Novels of the Week', The Athenaeum, No.3045 (March 6, 1886), p.323 2. 'Four Novels', The Saturday Review, LXI (June 5, 1886), p.792. 3. 'Novels', Blackwood's Magazine, CXL (1886), p.791.
-214- Richard Littledale fe lt that the Princess herself was too exotic
a character to respond well to James's method of characterisation.
He suggested that Ouida would have handled her in a more interesting
way:
It is rather a gallery of portraits than a story, and the portraits are very carefully individualised. But the very profusion of de ta il, the m u ltip lic ity of touches, like too much cross-hatching in an engraving, detracts from the vigour and definiteness of the original outline, and diminishes the reader's power of realisation. This is especially true of the heroine - one of Mr James's in te r national cosmopolitans; but very much the kind of personage who would be more at home under the treatment of an author whose canons of art are widely unlike those of Mr James - Ouida herself.1
Whereas Hyacinth Robinson is 'over-elaborated almost as much as the 2 heroine, and equally fails to arouse active interest,' three char
acters did impress Littledale:
More successful, though scarcely generic enough for a type, is M illicent Henning, the London g irl of the shopwoman and factory-hand class, who is very cleverly conceived, and not so painfully elaborated as the princess, because occupying a less important place. Lady Aurora Langrish, the shy and nervous philanthropist, is also well-sketched, and so is a shrewd-witted bedridden sister of one of the men actors.3
By now i t should be obvious that exactly the same objections would be made against The Tragic Muse, and this of course proved
to be so. The Dublin Review put the substance of the objections in a concise, and even quite convincing way:
The book is , as a matter of course, rich in clever satire of minute points of character, but shows total inability to grasp or present any one as a whole. Mr. James's a rt istic vision is microscopic, and consists entirely of analysis of detail without the synthetic power of combining the magnified minutiae on which our whole attention is concen trated. He is consequently best as a s a tiris t, or in the lig h te r sketches, where a caricature likeness of character w ill suffice. On a large canvas his vagueness becomes blottesque rather than suggestive, and his attempt to f ill in his outlines only makes them more unreal.4
1. 'New Novels', The Academy. XXX (November 13, 1886), p.323. 2. Ib id ., p.323. 3. 4. î H ê ; K O e l s ' . The Dublin Review. XXIV (1890), pp.466-467. ' -215- Such a statement as this seems to ta lly creditable. I t recognises a wide technical divergence between the method of James and the
preferences of his reader, and offers a reasoned and logical objection to James's approach. That is to say, i t argues the merits of the
synthetic presentation of character. There is nothing crude in such a response. The c r itic can see nothing to admire in James's method and can only feel that James is not succeeding as a novelist. The necessity of light, shade, and complexity in character portrayal was recognised by most c ritic s , but they could not help feeling that
James took his reaction against over-simplified characterisation to an unnecessary extreme.
It was James Ashcroft Noble who gave this feeling its most balanced expression. Possibly he did identify an aloof strain in
James's fic tio n which does have some basis in fact:
He has a passion for perfection in the technique of craftsmanship, and a rather too unreserved disdain for what would be considered by the Philistine mind much more essential conditions of success in fiction. There is surely something both illo g ic a l and perverse in the argument that, because many novels have become popular in spite, or even in virtue, of their bad qualities, all popular qualities must, therefore, be necessarily bad; and yet i t is impossible to avoid the thought that much of Mr James's work is the result of conscious or unconscious reasoning of this kind.!
This is a reasonable response and underlines the fact that c ritic s were not necessarily incompetent ju st because they fe lt that James's a rt was peculiar, idiosyncractic, or even quite unnecessary. There were many things about a James novel that any reasonable c ritic would have objected to, given that his training as a c ritic had been based upon the appreciation of a very different sort of fic tio n .
But there had been a thin vein of appreciation for The Portrait
1. 'New Novels', The Academy, XX (November 26, 1881), pp.397-398.
-216- of a Lady, and i t is possible to see why. I t did appear, to some critics, to make valid use of an analytic method. In concentrating on one character i t ignored the sort of broad social study often found in the novel of the day, and there did seem something in this approach that ju s tifie d the exhaustive analysis. But James's subsequent novels were less amicably received because c ritic s fe lt that his continued use of an analytic method could not be reconciled with the broader social picture he was now presenting. The problem was accentuated by the fact that not only did The Bostonians and The
Princess Casamassima present a wide social panorama but the stories themselves seemed to offer po ssibilities of a strong conventional treatment.
This was most obvious in discussions of The Princess Casamassima.
A.J.Butler, for example, objected that in The Princess Casamassima
James was working in a form quite inappropriate to the potentially vivid anarchist story:
The style in which he has succeeded is adapted well enough fo r gentle satire on human weaknesses, for tender analysis of such elements of interest as exist in commonplace characters; it fails altogether when it has to deal with the really dark places of human nature.'
Butler was prepared to recognise a role for the analytic novel, but found it quite inappropriate for a story of any substance. The c r itic in The Saturday Review shared this view:
His material is excellent, his method is the wrong one; and i t speaks volumes for his talent and intelligence that he should have gone so near as he has to reconciling and ordering a set of elements essentially conflicting and diverse.2
1. 'Novels of the Week', The Athenaeum, No.3080 (Nov.6, 1885), p.597. 2. 'Four Novels', The Saturday Review, LXII (November 27, 1886), p .728
-217- I t was widely fe lt that in this novel James's theme was too strong, too dramatic in the traditional sense, to be suited to his usual manner. The c r itic in The Saturday Review fe lt that the story of
Hyacinth Robinson did not require 'a superabundance of analysis and
1 an excess of ta lk .'
I t is interesting that James discusses this very point in the preface to the New York Edition of the novel. Nearly twenty years late r he defends the lack of a c tiv ity in a novel which seemed to many to demand more vigorous action. He defends his refusal to confine his characters to "doing":
I then see the ir "doing", that of the persons just mentioned as, immensely, their feeling, their feeling as their doing; since I can have none of the conveyed sense and taste of their situation without becoming intimate with them.2
Selecting Hyacinth Robinson for this sort of defence suggests that
James was aware that his approach was open to valid objections. His rebuttal of the criticism is not totally confident. It contains a hint of special pleading as if attempting to explain away an attempt to meet the public taste for a more exciting story.
The fact that James may have been compromising with the expec tations of the public was mentioned by The Graphic. Their reviewer,
Francillon, wrote: 'he has evidently done his utmost to write a novel with a story in it, and has, to put the case as mildly as possible, 3 not succeeded.' He argued that James's style:
1. Ib id ., p.728. 2. New York Edition, Macmillan, 1913, p.xi. 3. 'New Novels', The Graphic, XXXIV (December 18, 1886), p.646.
-218- does not lend its e lf to decided character and dramatic situations without a very decided strain, and the mann erisms of the microscopic analyst of infinitesim al trifle s are not to be lig h tly thrown aside.
Francillon had no likin g for James's analytic method but was even
more angered by such a misapplication of the method. The Dublin
Review agreed:
Mr James, whose vaguely suggestive style places him at the head of the impressionist school of fic tio n , is out of his element among the social deeps where he has here sought his subject.
Roger Gard has said that 'the obviously exciting and topical theme 3 of The Princess pleased a number of reviewers...' , but might have
added that James's treatment of this theme caused uniform delay.
The response to The Bostonians was only s lig h tly different. James
was not so obviously wasting a good story as in The Princess Casamassima,
but c ritic s could see that the theme of women's rights was su fficie n tly
a "subject" to respond to a discursive treatment. Hutton regarded
i t as 'a tru ly wonderful sketch of the depth of passion which has 4 been embodied in the agitation of woman's wrongs and woman's rig h ts ...' ,
yet he was annoyed that James had not approached the subject d iffe r
ently:
we must say that Mr Henry James has fallen so deeply in love with his own study, that he is tempted to dwell on i t and almost maunder over i t , t i l l i t bores his readers...we have never read any tale of his that had in i t so much of long- winded reiteration and long-drawn-out disquisition.
, 1. Ib id . , p.646. 2. 'Notes on Novels', The Dublin Review, XVII (1887), p.198. 3. Henry James: The C ritical Heritage, 1968, p.12. 4. ‘The Bostonians', The Spectator, XlDi (March 20, 1886), p.388. 5. Ib id ., p.389.
-219- The S a t. u rd ay Re v 1 ew fe lt there must be better ways of presenting a story of women's rights than commenting at such length on the characters of Ransom and Verena Tarrant:
The love passages between a Southerner... and a Boston professional female orator... might have made an amusing magazine a rtic le . Three volumes of them would cloy the appetite of a Lydia Languish...'
As with The Princess Casamassima, i t was fe lt that James had wasted his opportunities with The Bostonians.
When c ritic s read The Tragic Muse they became even more con vinced that James was interested only in technique. Mrs de Mattos expressed cogently the objections which were to appear in every review:
The Tragic Muse has a good deal of the ingenuity and careful accomp1ishment which one expects from him, but l i t t l e or none of the keenness of perception and discernment, the delicacy and distinction of touch, which marked 'Daisy Miller' and 'A Bundle of Letters', and made them famous. The handling is i l l assured and tentative, as well as too heavily laboured for the issues and interests at stake, which are slig h t, not to say tr iv ia l, in essence, or postponed and attenuated to the merest nothingness. Mr. James s t ill shows himself fond of working round a situation, of circlin g and wheeling about i t , but always receding without even carrying away the barriers, yet returning to i t again and again from another direction or from another vantage, but never, so to speak, vaulting i t triumphantly.2
Mrs de Mattos's objection was that James's method was diffuse, losing the object rather than bringing i t into focus. Im plicit in her comment was the feeling that James had reduced art to an elaborate game. I t was widely fe lt that in this novel form had gone beyond elaboration to the point of etiolation. To a greater degree than with any of James's other novels during the decade. The Tragic Muse seemed to offer c ritic s no points of id e n tifica tio n , nothing to hold on to, nothing at a ll
1. 'Four Novels', The Saturday Review, LXI (June 5, 1886), p.791. 2. 'Novels of the Week', The Athenaeum, No.3274 (July 26, 1890), p.124,
-220- concrete or tangible from which they could begin to formulate a view.
I t did not even seem to possess a potential theme as had been the
case with The Bostonians and The Princess Casamassima.
Yet, before the c ritic s are dismissed as inept for their
failu re to appreciate The Tragic Muse, i t must be remembered that
of a ll James's long novels this is s t ill perhaps the least read. Even
James's staunchest admirers often discuss i t only for its importance
in reflecting James's ideas about art. I t appears never to have
been defended as a fine novel in its own right. The reasons for the
continued neglect are quite possibly a continuation of the early
feeling about the novel. The most admired of James's novels remain
those where his "fine consciences" are set in a palpably real context.
Although the characters in The Tragic Muse move freely in London and
Paris they are v irtu a lly independent of these backgrounds. The modern
reader is more prepared to accept James's concentration on individuals,
but he remains unsympathetic to novels where the characters are not
affected by the complications and frustrations of the real world.
The characters in The Tragic Muse are not frustrated in the same way
as the characters in The P ortrait of a Lady, The Bostonians or The
Princess Casamassima and i t is a major weakness of the book that his
a rtis t characters have too much freedom from normal responsibilities
and pressures.
I f at any stage in his career James neglected the need for the
. novel to achieve the a ir of re a lity i t is not in the late novels but
in The Tragic Muse. The situations in which the characters are pre
sented ring false as James's purpose is often the investigation of
some idea about art rather than a direct interest in the situation for
its own sake. This point has been well expressed by S. Corley Putt.
-221- He says that the characters, 'most of the time, [a rc ] diagrammatic figures who illustrate an attitude to life rather than a way of living, and The Tragic Muse suffers accordingly - as a novel . ' ^
James's contemporaries were aware of this a r tific ia lity , but the fact that this novel does have real weaknesses was not the reason why i t attracted more hostile criticism than James-s earlier novels. Most of the complaints were only a repetition of objections made against the e a rlier novels. No reviewer fe lt that the characters in The Tragic Muse were in any way less credible than the characters in his other novels. They seemed of a piece with his usual insubstantiality. It was the fact that there was, apparently, not even an attempt at a story or a theme more purposeful than the life of the artist that especially angered critics. The portraits in The Tragic Muse seemed consistent with the portraits in the e a rlie r novels, and, moreover, seemed to fa il in the same way. Critics could see what James was challenging in the tradition of fiction, but found i t impossible to understand what he was trying to construct in its place. Consequently, they had no alternative but to make a defence of the value of the conventions.
4. AN EXPLANATION OF THE FAILURE TO UNDERSTAND JAMES"5 NOVELS
Several modern commentators have drawn attention to this persis tent failu re to understand what James was attempting to do, but they have failed to push the question further and consider why the c ritic s should have found i t so d iffic u lt to accept his novels. The usual explanation goes no further than saying that they found James's novels too d iffic u lt technically, so returned to the novels they could cope
1. The Fiction of Henry James (1966), 1968, p.182.
-222- with. But technical views almost invariably were nothing more than the oblique expression of a moral view. With James, the hostile reception his works received obviously had deeper sources of distaste than merely irrita tio n at his technique.
An apparent contradiction in the response possibly gives a clue to the bitterness against James. Although the reviews were repeatedly dismissive his novels were always reviewed prominently and at length,
He did not, for example, suffer the fate of Haggard/who rapidly slipped to a lowly position in any omnibus collection of reviews. This is the only sense we can get that James was regarded as a w riter of any importance, as the reviewers only used their generous allocation of space to demolish the James novel under review. Yet i t can be inferred that the length of the reviews indicated that critics were aware that James had something of importance to say. They were, though, seldom e x p lic it about why the implications of his novels were dis turbing. The frequent anger of the reviews suggests that c ritic s found something original and annoying in the assumptions of his fic tio n , but they could never really isolate whab was objectionable in James's thinking.
The explanation of this failure to grasp the implications of
James's content lies in the fact that other progressive writers in the period always gave their theme a substantial bias towards social dissatisfaction and social protest. Hardy in his last novels, for example, could be said to assume the role of social prophet which is so often expected in literature. This was a gift to the critic as he could frame his exposure of the novel in the opposed social terms.
James, though, is an exception. His novels express a new vision but i t has none of the obvious p o litic a l or social overtones so common in fic tio n . Consequently, i t was that much more d iffic u lt for the
-223- c ritic s to understand the nature of his vision. The apparent aesthetic exclusiveness of James's novels could only be met by arguing along contradictory aesthetic lines. I t is not immediately obvious that these aesthetic objections are synonymous with the social views expressed in comments on other novelists, or that, although most c ritic s found i t d iffic u lt to say why, there were social and philosophical objections to the direction taken by James's fic tio n .
A few c ritic s , however, did go beyond aesthetic objections and define what was subversive and unacceptable in James's novels. The most notable example was Hutton in his review of The P ortrait of a
Lady. He interpreted the closing passage of the novel as a suggestion that Isabel Archer would elope with Caspar Goodwood:
He ends his Portrait of a Lady, if we do not wholly misin terpret the rather covert, not to say almost cowardly, hints of his last page, by calmly indicating that this ideal lady of his, whose belief in purity has done so much to alienate her from her husband, in that i t has made him smart under her contempt for his estimates of the world, saw a "straight path" to a liaison with her rejected lover. And worse s t i l l , i t is apparently intended that this is the course sanctioned both by her high-minded friend. Miss Stackpole, and by the dying cousin whose misfortune i t had been to endow her with wealth that proved fatal to her happiness.'
To Hutton the novel seemed a defence of unconventional, and,moreover, unacceptable, social behaviour. Isabel's immorality may have been most clearly reflected in the ending he imposed on the novel, but his whole reading had been characterised by an increasing distrust of
Isabel. It was his distaste for her as a reckless and selfish character that determined his interpretation of the final passage of the book:
1. 'The P ortrait of a Lady', The Spectator, LIV (November 26, 1881), p .1506.
-224- Isabel is painted as trusting to nothing to keep her right in life but vague, generous aspirations, without compass and without clue; and for such a one, i t is natural enough that, at the last pinch, all morality should seem nothing but convention, and the "straight path" a mere descent to selfish indulgence.1
All Isabel's actions seemed socially disruptive to Hutton, and therefore open to criticism.
Yet the book its e lf is not as radical as Hutton seemed to believe. James's intention is not to defend a character in conflict with conventional morality, but to illu s tra te the individual's fear of acting independently, Isabel's adventurous speeches are always contradicted by the imagery of her clinging to the shadows, her nervousness, and the conventionality of her behaviour. But Hutton was not trained to expect such contradictions. In his experience of fic tio n the real co n flict took place between the individual and society, and was not centralised in the heroine's mind. He could only respond to the novel as a challenge between Isabel and the society
James presented, and with the exception of Osmond and Madame Merle this seemed a sufficiently healthy society. He could see Isabel's arrogance and pride but'remained oblivious to her vulnerability, and of JamesSirony at her expense. As far as Hutton was concerned,
James could only have redeemed the book by outright condemnation of his heroine.
Hutton's feelings about the dangerous tendencies . of this work were apparent in a number of other reviews. The Saturday Review saw Isabel as a rebel :
1. Ib id ., p . 1506.
-225- What Isabel's charm is we can hardly make out, She is young, pretty, imaginative, and apparently has the faculty of striking her company as a g irl of much depth and strength of character. She is, in truth, a rather selfish and heart less young lady who acts as i f the world were arranged in order to satisfy the claims of her imagination.
Isabel was almost universally disliked by the f ir s t reviewers. They expressed a feeling of smug satisfaction when her dreams were fin a lly shattered: 'the scene changes to Italy. Here Isabel, who has hitherto brought disappointment to a ll her lovers, becomes in her turn the 2 victim .' I t is not that this reviewer had failed to understand
Isabel's aspirations. It is rather than he found them selfish and unsatisfactory, and could not see that James was simultaneously mocking and admiring his heroine. Yet this was not simply a failure to respond to James's method of presenting her. The major impression the book must have made must have been of Isabel's independence. Astonish ment at her views, her indecisive behaviour, her refusal to commit herself where i t would have seemed most sensible to do so, presumably overwhelmed any interest in the subtleties of James's stance towards his heroine. She stood condemned on the bare facts of her lif e and
James's qualifications and reservations did not affect such facts.
Hutton and The Saturday Review's c ritic were offended by s e lf ishness posturing under the banner of freedom. Yet they were more perceptive than many c ritic s . Butler, in The Athenaeum, could make no sense at all of Isabel:
There are, indeed, portraits of ladies enough and clear enough; the only one who is not portrayed so as to make the reader understand her is the heroine. This may be a bit of mystification on Mr James's part; if so, it can only be said that it is not a novelists business to mystify his readers, certainly not at this length.^
1. 'The P ortrait of a Lady', The Saturday Review, LII (Dec.3, 1881), p .703. 2. Ib id . , p.704. 3. ' Novels of the Week', The Athenaeum, No.2822 (November 26, 1881), p.699. ------226- Butler could n o t' understand Isabel because her behaviour was not described explicitly in terms of social rebellion. If she had been so presented there would have been something to cling on to. Beneath the surface confusions of the reviews i t is possible to see that all readings of James's novels in the ‘eighties veered between the emphasis of Hutton's review and the emphasis of Butler's, The characters were either seen as challenging an idea of community, or else their significance escaped the c r itic because he could only recognise dissent when i t took on directly social overtones. Most criticism embraced something of both these extremes. The common reaction was a demand for a return to the traditional novel, for it was in the confines of the accepted forms that the idea of preserving the social ties could best be conveyed. C ritics did not realise that James's method did not necessarily mean a single-minded dis ruptiveness. They could not see that his method allowed considerable scepticism about the behaviour of the characters. What criticism really lacked was an awareness of the uses of authorial irony when it did not originate in an intrusive comment by the author. The
Victorian critical terms, in fact, made James a more radical novelist socially than terms such as irony and point-of-view, as the older critical terms did not allow for uncertainty and the lack of a straight forward authorial viewpoint in the same way as the newer terms.
With the benefit of hindsight it seems easy to point to James as "the historian of fine consciences", and to admire the ambivalence of his position as narrator. But at the time of publication it was difficult to bring into focus the substance of his view. Critics could only see confusion, or a picture of egotism which the author
-227- appeared to defend. And there was some justice to this view.
Although James presented his characters with ironic detachment his emphasis on the individual in its e lf constituted a new emphasis on the importance of individual choice and self-determination, His ironic tone undercuts any assertive message of liberation but i t was the emphasis on individual freedom that overwhelmed even the most perceptive c ritic s . I t was particularly unpleasant to a c ritic such as Hutton whose constant case was that the individual must conform for the good of the whole, and that the social norms were quite broad and accommodating enough to make individual dissent unn ecessary. I f James had ju st set out to challenge this be lie f c ritic s could have coped with him, but i t was the fact that he dealt with the complications and self-contradictions of the person who was already an outsider that made him d ifficu lt.
An approach to James through contemporary criticism indicates the strong links between his practice and that of other novelists in the 'eighties. What is central is an increasing concentration on the individual. This is what offended Hutton but merely confused most c ritic s . The same irrita te d and bewildered attitude has already been seen in the response of c ritic s t o Born in Exile and The Story of an African Farm. In both these novels the author did not ju st present a message of adolescent defiance but explored the complexities of the protagonist. As with James, bewilderment, but bewilderment mixed with fear and suspicion, was inevitably the reaction.
The Bostonians, however, met with a rather different response. A not uncomnron reaction to this novel was delight that James had put ideas of women's rights in th e ir place, by showing the defeat of
Verena Tarrant and her acceptance of marriage. This view was expressed
-228- by G. Barnett Smith in The Academy:
All goes smoothly until Verena finds her real womanhood by fa llin g in love with a young Southerner from Mississippi; then she recognises the hollowness of all that she has been doing. The book closes with the collapse of Miss Chancellor's hopes; the moral being that a ll schemes must ultimately fa il which seek to uncreate the woman whom God has made, and to reconstitute her as another kind of being.1
Smith failed to perceive any ambivalence in James's treatment of
Verena's fate. I t is not surprising that as Smith saw the novel as
a defence of established values he could offer one of the most gener
ous compliments to James to be found anywhere in the period: 'James's 2 novel is brilliant, full of points, and eminently readable...'
As soon as a reviewer agreed with the morality of a novel his technical
objections could evaporate as quickly as on this occasion.
Other reviewers shared this view of the intention of The
Bostonians. The only thing that bewildered them was why James should
have spent so long over presenting his central characters. The issue
seemed clear-cut and not to require such an amount of analysis. The
Times' s c r itic did not even respond to Olive and Verena as individuals:
'Olive and Verena are good and careful sketches of the v irile and the 3 feminine woman's-righter respectively.' In common with other
reviewers he displayed no great sympathy for either character. When
Verena accepted marriage i t was interpreted as a socially responsible
decision, and no c r itic sensed that James might simultaneously be presenting it as a defeat.
As The Bostonians could be read, or misread, in such a way as
1. 'New Novels', The Academy, XXIX (March 6, 1885), p.162. 2. Ib id . , p.162. 3. ' Recent Novels', The Times, No.31,747 (April 30, 1886), p .3.
^229^ to make it conform to the moral convictions of the critics it did not provoke much criticism on the grounds of James's identification with the individual. In fact, criticism did not pass beyond object ions to the excessive length of the analysis, and as a whole was far less angry than usual. There was no recognition that the novel shared The Portrait of a Lady's theme that there vms something regrettable in such innocent, even i f naive, ideas of freedom having to surrender to an unalterable standard of re a lity. Nor was i t ever recognised that Basil, ju st as much as Olive, represented a selfish desire to possess and destroy such independence.
In The Princess Casamassima James again explored the complic ations of the individual desire for self-fulfilment. Inevitably c ritic s approached the novel expecting, or hoping fo r, a certain kind of treatment of a social theme. To satisfy the critics the novel would have had to present a picture of social integration and cohesion, but it di'd not, and no character was quite so obviously outside the social fold as Hyacinth Robinson. The more perceptive c ritic s admitted their distaste for him and what he represented. At least one critic advised him that he would have been wiser i f he had stayed in his original job. Hutton criticised Hyacinth's aimlessness and lack of genuine idealism:
his mind is as much adrift to the true ideal of human life as the minds of a ll the other persons, not slaves of convention, painted in this book...l
Hutton then adopted a characteristic position, characteristic of himself and of criticism in general, in suggesting that the i lls docu mented in the novel were not so much a true picture of society as the creation of the author:
1. 'The Princess Casamassima', The Spectator, LX (January 1, 1887), pTT51
-230- this sort of novel is the novel of a writer who thinks all the world aimless, and loves to exaggerate the aimless ness in his own descriptions of it . The world is not an easy matter; but we can at least see more of a clue and a plan in the world as i t is, than in Mr Henry James's pictures of i t , in which the tangles are made much more conspicuous than they are in real lif e , and the helplessness much more universal.*
So long as c ritic s believed there was a satisfactory plan, i f the
novelist would only reveal i t , i t remained impossible for much sympathy
to be fe lt for James's concentration on the desires and frustrations
of the individual who was permanently alienated from any sort of
society. Opposition to James may have been most frequently expressed
as a distaste for his method but, as Hutton's reviews revealed most
clearly, i t went deeper and consisted of an opposition to the premises
of social scepticism on which James's analytic method was constructed.
In an im p licit way, in a number of c ritic s , James's work was recog
nised as a serious challenge to a variety of social assumptions and
certainties. Many c ritic s could not pin this subversive quality down,
and so went no further than condemning James's technique, but their
reviews were informed by a vague awareness of unacceptable ideas.
The Bostonians andTThe Princess Casamassima are often regarded
as attempts by James to provide his contemporaries with novels more
in line with their expectations. This is particularly true of The
Princess Casamassima, and the fact was recognised, often sarcastically,
by the first reviewers. But if this modification of his art was aimed at attracting a larger audience the attempt failed. I t failed because the individuals who continued to occupy such a large part of his novels
remained as enigmatic or as unattractive to the reviewers as ever. The only tactic he could have adopted to make his audience more aware of
1. Ib id . , p .16.
-231- his intentions (though this does not mean they would have been
in any way more sympathetic) would have been to become more intrusive.
Understanding would certainly have progressed further i f James had
been at hand explaining the significance and directing the reader's
attention. If he had followed such a practice more critics would
have at least have been able to emulate Hutton's perceptions; confusion
could have at least have given way to distaste for the central charac
ters. But to expect large scale intrusion would be to interfere with,
not only the aesthetic arrangement of the novels, but the whole
emphasis of th e ir content. The omniscient author is a stance that
presupposes that some sort of order can be perceived, that in its
extreme form reduces the individuals to pawns to be rearranged at the
w ill of the author to illu s tra te his social thesis. By eliminating
his own voice to a degree unprecedented in the English novel James
shifts far more of the focus onto the characters themselves. He does
manage to convey the illu sio n that the lives being chronicled are far
more important than the voice of the author.
The trouble at the time of publication was that the reviewers could
not grasp his view of character as they could not see that such a close
detailed view was necessary. But his emphasis on individuality would
be v irtu a lly negated by interfering with the apparent independence
of the protagonists. James was really in a position where he could not
adjust to public expectations. His moral and social thinking demanded
the technical innovation, yet the technical innovation so baffled the
c ritic s that only a few could see through i t to question the morality
im p lic it in the technique. Explanation of the dilemmas faced by his
characters would only have transformed bewilderment into distaste, and
then the distaste would have been provoked by a dramatic situation weakened by its very claims fo r independence being compromised. Some
- 232- evidence for this view is provided by the fact that c ritic s failed to react in the right way to the considerable intrusions James does make in these novels. In The Bostonians he is constantly so licitin g our sympathy and pity for Olive, yet no c r itic at the time expressed the slightest concern for her. I t was altogether better that James should have been considered a fanatic about form, rather than that he should have weakened the form of his novels to make the content more vulgarly explicit.
Yet even James's presentation of the individual is not always finely poised between admiration and irony, as in The Portrait of a Lady and The Bostonians and The Princess Casamassima. In these three novels
James maintains a b r illia n t awareness of the lim itations of his heroes and heroines. In The Princess Casamassima the tone begins to become suspect, as James is rather patronising in his treatment of Hyacinth.
But the real faults of this book do not lie here so much as in the general setting and a slight sense of absurdity about the whole novel.
The combination of characters is too fan ciful, and the anarchistic theme scarcely ju s tifie s the ir being brought together. This overall fa ilu re , however, does not eliminate from the novel a sense of the poignancy of Hyacinth's life .
I t is in The Tragic Muse that the same stance towards the indiv idual fa ils to be maintained. I t often appears that i t is James himself who is naive as he makes his characters, with the exception of Miriam Rooth, too confidently independent. In some respects the novel resembles Gissing's The Emancipated where Gissing places too much reliance on the positive qualities of the artist figure Ross
Mallard. Both novels express the conviction that the a rtis t can move around independently beyond the restraints and conventions of society
-233- and, moreover, do so with unqualified success. Nick Dormer as an a rtis t is as unconvincing as Gissing's Ross Mallard. The unreality is only marginally altered by the conclusion of the book, his marriage to Julia Dal low, with its suggestion that even the a rtis t must bow to ordinary pressures. James is inadequately sceptical of mannered behaviour so that Dormer, Nash, and Sherringham are not convincing.
They live successful creative lives and are never really frustrated by the demands of the real world. I t has often been said that James's characteristic theme is tragic as it deals with an ideal of individual freedom that is incapable of realisation. Of the major novels i t is only The Tragic Muse that is in no sense tragic.
To the reviewer in the 'eighties, however. The Tragic Muse did not appear qualitatively different from the other novels. The response was angrier, but this was because this was James's fourth long inpenetrable novel in a row, and i t seemed to have even less of a story or theme than its predecessors. Only one reviewer looked back to The Portrait of a Lady as a greater achievement than The Tragic
Muse, and this was hardly for the most significant reasons. He suggested that only occasionally in The Tragic Muse do 'we come across some suggestive epithet, some delicately-turned phrase which we feel to be worthy of the author of Daisy M iller and The P ortrait of a Lady. ' ^
The P ortrait of a Lady had now had nearly a decade to sink into the minds of the reviewers but the style, and the theme that demanded the style, were s t ill too radical to be acceptable. C ritics demanded credible, even detailed, characterisation in fic tio n , but they reacted against the method the moment i t was used to make the individual seem more important than the sense of society as a whole. C ritics accepted questioning of accepted standards, but drew a distinction between criticism
1. 'Our Library L is t', Murray's Magazine, V III (1890), p.431. -234- of social structures, and complete scepticism about the existence
of a social morality. James seems the most reticent of novelists,
but underneath the poise of his novels were attitudes that his contem
poraries would have regarded as subversive. Although only a few
c ritic s could explain why they found James's novels so annoying a
distaste for his assumptions was im p lic it in more reviews. As has
been said, most modern commentators are dismissive of these reviews
of James's novel, but, despite a ll the ir lim itations, they are important.
The uniformity of the view they shared increases one's respect for
James in being able to embark on a new course in the novel while the
whole c ritic a l audience pulled in the opposite direction.
5. CONTEMPORARY APPRECIATION OF JAMES'S NOVELS
Drawing attention to the uniformity of the critical response it
may well be wondered whether there were any exceptions. There were
remarkably few. Partly because of the desire to promote an American
novelist, and partly because of a more widespread ide ntificatio n with
Howells's concept of the novel, the criticism in American periodicals
was at times more appreciative. But Richard Foley, who has studied
the American response fu lly , suggests that James was slighted and
attacked by the majority of American critics, and that the 'eighties,
after some enthusiasm over The Portrait of a Lady, was a slack period
for James with few appreciative comments. Consequently, i t is not
possible to turn to the American periodicals for a deeper contemporary
^ understanding of James.
In England, in the 'eighties, there was only one appreciative •
a rtic le . This was by Mrs. Ward. She pointed to some of the positive
qualities of James's art, such as the analytic approach to character.
1. Criticism in American Periodicals of the Works of Henry James from iBbb to 1916, Washington, 1944, p.33 and p .143.
-235- but s t ill had many reservations. These mainly concerned the extreme lengths to which, she fe lt, he had taken an individual method.
But her tone was more sympathetic than that of most critics^and no doubt reflected her interest in similar approaches to character pre sentation in fiction.^
In the general run of reviewing there was nothing to set beside even the moderate enthusiasm of this essay. Indeed its isolation is quite astonishing. It was not until 1891 that any critic expanded and developed the sympathetic hints in her a rtic le . This a rtic le , in
Murray's Magazine, was again an isolated response, but i t is important as i t was one of the most impressive and original pieces of criticism in the period. The anonymous c ritic was impressed by the delicacy of
James's technique, preferring the oblique and cautious exploration of character to the cut-and-dry characterisation of the majority of novelists. His attraction to the handling and rehandling of a situation went against the preference of nearly every other c r itic . He claimed that i t was impossible for James
in contemplating a subject seriously to look at i t from one point only; he turns i t in his hands, so to speak, as one turns a globe, considering i t from every side. ■ This habit of mind is, of course, one of the finest g and most essential that a writer can bring to his work...
The casually introduced 'o f course' went against the whole grain of contemporary criticism , but this was a c r itic who was keenly aware of the po ssibilities of the analytic technique, who fe lt that i t was a way of getting nearer the truth:
1. 'Recent Fiction in England and France', Macmillan's Magazine, L (1884), pp.250-260. 2. 'Mr Henry James', Murray's Magazine, X (1891), p.644.
-236- It results naturally from the perfection to which Mr James has brought this particular method of observation, that the men and women of his tales should have, both physically and mentally, an air of solidity and reality only occasionally attained to in the same degree.1
Again, this went against most criticism^where the constant complaint was that James's aura of suggestion missed the essential features.
The explanation does not lie in the fact of two rival notions of technique being brought into irreconcilable confrontation. I t is that this c r itic was more sympathetic to the implications of James's con tent. He was prepared to accept the emphasis on the individual, and his acceptance of this made him sympathetic to all the related exper iments in form. He was the only c r itic who regarded the characters as in any sense representative:
His characters are types and yet individual; they belong at once to the universe and to their own epoch; they have, in short, that combination of the general and the part icular that is indispensable to the complete v ita lity of a creature of the imagination...2
He went on to explain the issue at the heart of each novel as i f the matter were self-evident:
An involved situation, a moral dilemma, the giant and complex grasp of society in its widest sense, upon the individual - these and such as these are the problems to the tracing out of which he brings an extreme fineness and sublety.^
No other c r itic displayed such a sure grasp of James's intention, the majority not even showing any awareness of James's special sort of emphasis on the individual.
As the a rtic le continued he drew attention to subleties of pre sentation where most c ritic s could not even gain simple bearings:
'I t is only by degrees that we come to a perception of the profound irony .4 implied by that attitude of good-humoured neutrality, of genial indifference.
1. Ib id . , p.644. 2. Ib id . , p.644. 3.■ Ib id , , p.645, 4. Tbid., p.650. -237- Again, no other c r itic showed any awareness of the ironic stance
James developed in the novels.
Why this c r itic was prepared to accept James's emphasis on the individual, and why he could see the subtleties of the author's position, was because he agreed with James's pessimistic social view;
a profound disenchantment, what we have ventured to call a profound irony lurking at the root of his conception of life , a sense of the singular sadness, f u t ilit y and vanity on the whole, of the beings whom he observes and depicts as they cross and recross the stage of the world.1
A clear illu s tra tio n of the gap between his response and the normal response can be seen in his attitude to the presentation of marriage in the novels. He says, purely descriptively: 'There are lovers, of 2 course, and marriages, - often unhappy ones...' He accepts the idea of failure without feeling the need to make any comment, whereas with nearly every other critic the idea of presenting unhappy marriages would have been interpreted as misrepresentation, and excessive cynicism about a necessary and fru itfu l social in stitu tio n .
With such values dominating criticism i t was impossible for James's emphasis to win the attention of critics. It was only a critic who accepted the premises of social scepticism who could make any sort of sense out of James's fic tio n . The c r itic in Murray's Magazine leapt over the technical barriers because he had an immediate sympathy with the premises of James's art.
James put in jeopardy the conviction that the community was, although faulty, capable of accommodating everybody and allowing everybody a ll necessary freedom. James's dissent from the socially, confident attitude of his contemporaries puts him in company with the
1. Ib id . , p.650. 2. Ib id . , p.652.
-238- other young novelists of the 'eighties. Yet James was the only novelist of the period whomthe critics entirely failed to cope with, and this seems to have been because the emphasis on the indiv idual was taken furthest in his work. He missed out a stage of increasing social disillusion, which we do find in the English novelists. His work started with the assumption of the individual alone, and consequently was rather a long way from any novels English critics had previously had to deal with. If a novelist started with a concept of community, and only slowly worked his way through to a position of scepticism, and then fin a lly decided that he would have to make a greater emphasis on the individual, we might expect that c ritic s would be able to go along with him. Hardy, in fact, f u lf ills this role, and in the attempts to cope with his novels we can see the c ritic s having to meet the ir most interesting challenge - a challenge that was radical, but which, unlike that of James, never went that far beyond their experience and understanding.
-239- CHAPTER SIX: THE RESPONSE TO HARDY'S NOVELS (FAR FROM THE MADDING
CROWD TO THE WOODLANDERS)
1. REVIEWS OF FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD (1874) Apart from Meredith, Hardy was the only important novelist in the 'eighties whose work was widely praised. Indeed, enthusiasm developed so rapidly that as early as 1887 Frederick Wedmore could write: 'notwithstanding Mr Meredith's d ifficu lt genius and Mr
Stevenson's facile charms, Thomas Hardy remains the f ir s t of living
English novelists.'^ Over the next few years a similar view was repeated many times, with a frequent assertion that Hardy could stand comparison with Meredith. Edmund Gosse, for example, referred to them as the two contemporary writers who had 'cultivated the 2 highest branches of serious imaginative fiction,' This liking for both Meredith and Hardy is at f ir s t puzzling, Meredith is an optim istic writer while Hardy is generally regarded as a pessimistic writer. It is possible to understand the critical approval of the optim istic novelist but a sim ilar degree of enthusiasm for Hardy seems rather contradictory.
The problem is resolved when i t is realised that Hardy was often praised for endorsing values which his works in fact did not endorse at a ll. A close reading of the reviews makes i t clear that much of the appreciation was the result of critics forging a light and amenable interpretation of his work, which often bore l i t t l e resem blance to his intention. I t becomes apparent that Hardy was far more appreciated than understood and, as far as the modern reader is concerned, appreciated at a false level. For many reviewers Far From
1. ' Celebrities of the Century, edited by Lloyd Sanders', The Academy, XXXI (March 12, 1887), p.177. 2. 'Thomas Hardy', The Speaker, II (September 13, 1890), p .295,
-240- the Madding Crowd remained the central achievement and the more complex works of 1886 and 1887, The Mayor of Casterbridge and The
Woodlanders, were either dismissed, or read in such a way as to make them resemble the tone of the earlier novel. It was only a minority of reviewers who made a positive response to these novels.
Yet, despite the fact that c ritic s often attempted a positive reading of works which were more commonly pessimistic, the f ir s t reviews are of great interest. They reveal with particular c la rity the positive values c ritic s sought in fic tio n . They also draw attention to an interesting aspect of Hardy's novels. This is that they struck a rare balance - original enough to defy a satisfactory interpretation yet traditional enough to attract enthusiastic admiration. His contemporaries found qualities in his works which made them great fic tio n but qualities which are often very different from those a modern c r itic would draw attention to. So these early reviews are helpful both in te llin g us more about the period and in suggesting an alternative, albeit unsatisfactory, way of looking at
Hardy's novels.
A fact of some importance is that Hardy's rise to fame was quite unspectacular. His name hardly ever appeared in general dis cussions of the contemporary novel and, in the 'eighties, his work never stimulated the degree of controversy associated with the novels of James, Zola, or even Howells. There was simply a growing sense of his greatness expressed in the normal course of reviewing and in a few a rticle s. Even these articles could easily be overlooked as they are so calm in comparison with the heated arguments over realism, romance and analysis. I t is not immediately obvious that they bear any relation to the energetic debate about fic tio n which focused on the works of Zola and James. But, as this chapter w ill suggest, in
-241- many ways the themes of Hardy's fic tio n were those of central importance to c ritic s in the decade. This means that his career as a novelist demands attention in the years before 1880 and after
1890. The response to the early novels not only shows the beginning of his reputation but is even more important in that Far From The
Madding Crowd became a key work, a point of reference, for the c r itic in the 'eighties. The response to the last two novels stands as a concluding statement on the prevailing, yet at the same time changing, c ritic a l expectations of the period.
Far From the Madding Crowd, with its obvious advance in scale and maturity on his three earlier novels, is the point at which an examination must begin. The attitude linking most reviews of Far
From the Madding Crowd was the feeling that Hardy was w riting force fu lly within the conventions. But the reviews were appreciative, so the critics naturally began by noting the original qualities, and in nearly every case this meant calling attention to the setting.
Andrew Lang wrote that Hardy had 'the advantage of dealing with an almost untouched side of English life .'^ Richard Holt Hutton opened his review with an almost identical comment: 'The lif e of the agri cultural districts in the South-Western counties - Dorsetshire 2 probably - is a new fie ld for the novelist The Saturday Review recalled the e a rlier novels yet s t ill found the setting most worthy of comment in its opening remarks:
Mr Hardy s t ill lingers in the pleasant byways of pastoral and agricultural life which he made familiar to his readers in his former n o v e ls ...it brought with i t a genuine fresh flavour of the country, and a part of the country that has not yet become hackneyed.3
1. ' Far From the Madding Crowd', The Academy, VII (January 2, 1875),p.9, 2. 'Far From the Madding Crowd', The Spectator, XLVII (December 19, 1874), p.1597. 3. ' Far From the Madding Crowd', The Saturdav Review, XXXIX (January 9, 1875), p.57. -242- The attraction of the setting meant that a number of reviewers
did not search for other original qualities, but this is under
standable. Hardy was a new w riter and c ritic s had no reason to
suspect that the novel merited any closer examination than the
usual new novel. Equally, the freshness of the setting was, for
its f ir s t readers, the most original feature.
Other characteristics of Hardy's novel were described, however,
and not always favourably. His narrative a b ility was widely noted,
but i t was the development of situations within the story, rather
than the organisation of the story as a whole, that received the
greatest attention. Troy's sword-play was mentioned by most critics
but several, including A.J.Butler, fe lt i t was too extravagant for
a serious novel. 'Some of the scenes, notably that where Sergeant
Troy goes through the sword exercise before Bathsheba, are worthy,
in th e ir extravagance, of Mr Reade, and of him only The Saturday '
Review was worried that the incident threatened the re a lity of the
characterisation: 'Are they a fa ith fu l rendering of real events
taking place from time to time in the South-Western counties, or
are they not imaginary creations with some small ground-work of 2 re ality?' Most reviewers were uncertain about the v a lid ity of such
scenes, but The Westminster Review attacked them vigorously:
in Far From the Madding Crowd sensationalism is a ll in a ll. I f we analyse the story we shall find that i t is nothing else but sensationalism, which, in the hands of a less s k ilfu l w riter than Mr Hardy, would simply sink the story to the level of one of Miss Braddon's ea rlier performances. Take the career of Gabriel Oak, who is the least sensat ional of the chief characters. He loses the whole of his property in a sensation scene of two or three hundred sheep being driven by a dog over a precipice. He finds his mistress in a sensation scene of blazing ricks. He regains her in another sensation scene of thunder and lightning in the same rick-yard. So the story progresses in a succession of sensation scenes. 3
1. 'Novels of the Week', The Athenaeum, No.2458 (December 5, 1874),p.747, 2. 'Far From the Madding Crowd', The Saturday Review, XXXIX (January 9, 1875), p.58.-— ------3. 'Belles Lettres', The Westminster Review, GUI N.S.XLVII (1675),p.266 -243- ______This intolerance of sensation may at firs t seem irreconcilable with the antipathy for fiction lacking in incident, which was a constant feature of reviews in the'eighties. But critics could, of course, distinguish between the valid use of colourful incident and scenes which were too sensational. In the 'eighties Far From the
Madding Crowd became recognised as a great novel, but this was not due to any greater indulgence to exaggeration. The development of the analytic novel and the re a lis tic novel did not lead c ritic s into uncritical enthusiasm for any extravagant story. In the case of this novel of Hardy's the sensation scenes remained suspect but critics became aware of more valuable qualities in the novel.
Even in 1874 the praise the novel received indicates that critics did see more in it than just sensationalism. They realised that i t offered a serious study of personal relationships, but they tended to use George E liot as a standard that Hardy had to match.
Consequently, although Hardy's efforts were liked they were judged as comparatively simple in relation to her achievement. The Saturday
Review showed some aloofness, a confidence that i t fu lly understood the moral pattern of the novel. The reviewer commented perceptively on Bathsheba's education out of her youthful vanity, but in a tone that suggested that Hardy's scheme was contrived rather than inspired
He determines, for instance, that the moral discipline through which his heroine has to pass to render her a fittin g helpmate to Gabriel Oak shall culminate in the scene where she sees her husband weeping over the coffin of her rival and kissing her dead lips,*
There was no disapproval of the painfulness of such material because
1. 'Far From the Madding Crowd', The Saturday Review, XXXIX (January 9, 1875), p.58.
” 244- of the over-riding clearness of the moral scheme. The Athenaeum also suggested that the characters were manipulated in a conventional moral structure:
The contrasted characters of the three chief men of the story are also well worked out; the man of single eye, who waits and works patiently, scarcely hoping even for recognition, but ready to help the woman he loves, l it e r a lly through fire and water; the profligate soldier, who comes, sees, and, for a time conquers; and the reserved, middle-aged farmer, fa llin g in love for the f ir s t time at forty, and then driven almost, i f not quite, to insanity by disappointment, - all play their parts well, and take their due shares in the development of the s to ry .'
The reviewer here was A.J.Butler, and his immediate grasp not only of character but of the moral implications of character contrasts with his confusion when dealing with Henry James's novels.. With James he could see nothing with certainty and get no grip on the informing ideas. Far From the Madding Crowd he could handle with ease and assurance. This almost aloof examination of the significance of
Hardy's novel was to a large extent ju s tifie d . Hardy follows the standard pattern of much Victorian fic tio n in that the erring character is educated, largely by suffering, to an appreciation of her respon s ib ilitie s . Equally, the dutiful character receives his reward. Such a structure was familiar, and bound to meet with approval, even if the approval was s lig h tly patronising.
There were hints of superiority in many of the reviews. C ritics suspected that the characters were there slig h tly too much in i l l ustration of a thesis. Butler chose the significant phrase 'all play their parts w e ll,,.', and Hutton commented that:
Oak is from the f ir s t a paragon of a shepherd and manager, and though he can speak his mind plainly enough to his mistress to whom he is so much devoted, there is always a sense on the reader's part o f not knowing the background of his character.2
1. 'Novels of the Week', The Athenaeum, No.2458 (December 5, 1874),p.747. 2. ' Far From the Madding Crowd', The Spectator, XLVII (December 19, 1874), -245- There is some justice in this view as Oak, with his overtones of
Adam Bede, noticed by most reviewers, is, although vivid, a contrived
model of s ta b ility and correct conduct. But the response of the
fir s t reviewers indicates the d iffic u lty the serious novelist
always encountered in the period. A book which was in any way adven
turous was lik e ly to be found offensive, but i f the moral attitude
of the author was fam iliar the work was lik e ly to be judged derivative.
Far From the Madding Crowd, however, was a special case. In the late
'eighties it was viewed far less patronisingly. This was partly
because the critics had learnt to appreciate the characteristic
atmosphere of a Hardy novel, and had come to see that a character
such as Oak was not just a figure derived from George E liot. But a
heightened appreciation of the novel was also based on the fact that
this was one of the last obviously powerful novels in which the moral
assumptions were positive and confident. There was a widespread feeling
that fiction was going through an excessively morbid introspective
phase, and i t became common to hope that fic tio n could reachieve the
s o lid ity and positiveness of Far From the Madding Crowd. For example,
William Minto, w riting in 1891, looked back with pleasure at Hardy's
firs t important novel. He regretted the increasing pessimism of his
late r works: 'Farmer Oak, who meets us on the threshold, is not in tro duced in the grave s p irit in which Mr Hardy afterwards made us acquainted with the Reddleman and Giles Winterborne.. . ' ^ By the late
'eighties Far From the Madding Crowd would be regarded as evidence that a living novelist could write a novel which was, in most respects, optim istic and reassuring, and yet s t ill impressive as fic tio n .
The tendency among c ritic s when the book was published to c lin -
= p.1599. 1. 'The Work of Thomas Hardy', The Bookman, I (1891), p.99,
-246- ic a lly indicate the function of each character might well lead to the question of what they did find to admire in the novel. The fact is that although they were quick to classify the characters morally they were just as alert to the vitality of their realisation.
The Westminster Review, although unhappy with Hardy's sensationalism, thought that in some respects his characterisation surpassed George
E lio t's :
Sergeant Troy, we must say, is far more true to life than Arthur Donnithorne, who is one of George E lio t's failures. Again a comparison might be made between Adam Bede and Gabriel Oak. Here again, we think Mr Hardy's character, -j making allowance for the sensation scenes, is truer to nature.
Respect for Hardy's character drawing was accompanied by admiration for the manner in which, despite his tendency to sensationalism, he found suitably vivid incidents to illustrate traits of character.
Hutton drew attention to such a quality:
The stiffness, the awkward reserve, the seeming s to lid ity , the latent heat, and the smouldering passion which when once kindled eats up Farmer Boldwood's whole nature, are painted with the pen of a considerable artist, nor does the vigour of the picture ever flag for a moment; and the tragical denouement is in the s tric te s t keeping with the firs t description of Boldwood's mode of receiving Bathsheba's careless valentine.2
This sort of vitality and confident presentation of a picturesque scene did not go unnoticed by any of the f ir s t reviewers.
I f these features of the novel received the most praise i t was details of style that were most severely criticised. A major crit icism was that Hardy had attempted, unsuccessfully, to emulate George
E lio t's style and tone of judgement. Hutton stated the objection perceptively:
1. 'Belles Lettres', The Westminster Review, CIII N.S. XLVII (1875), p.265. 2. 'Far From the Madding Crowd', The Spectator, XLVII (December 19, TB74)Tp.~l'5'9'8r
-247- Mr Hardy himself has adopted a style of remark on his own imaginative creations-which is an exaggeration of George E lio t's but he has made the mistake which George E liot never makes, of blending a good deal of this same style of thought with the substance of his drawingsJ
This sort of criticism was acute and necessary. Hardy did fe y on
her method, probably in an attempt to invest his work with an authority and seriousness which he might have fe lt was not present
in his story alone. Every c r itic complained about the ponderous and affected style which often imperilled the achievement. The Westminster
Review mentioned faults ' which seem to be due to George E lio t's influence - a use of a semi-scientific phraseology and a striving 2 after profundity of meaning.'
This debt to E liot probably encouraged the view that Far From the Madding Crowd, although entertaining and powerful, was neverthe less a conventional novel - original in its setting but not at its heart. But i t is not, of course, as conventional as the c ritic s assumed. I t would have no lif e i f its structure, which is in many ways commonplace, did not contain some original elements. Although the s h ift in moral perspective is moderate in comparison with Hardy's later novels there are new ideas at the heart of the book, and these eluded or annoyed the f ir s t c ritic s .
The most original aspect of the novel is the conception and presentation of Bathsheba. I t is noticeable that the reviewers paid more attention to the male characters because they could be fitte d neatly into a framework of inherited views. Bathsheba was too dis quieting for the critics to cope with quite so confidently. Although
1. Ib id . , p.1598. 2. 'Belles Lettres', The Westminster Review, CIII N.S. XLVII (1875), p.267.
-248- the major criticism of the novel was concerned with Hardy's imitation of E lio t's voice a second line of attack concentrated on the por trayal of Bathsheba. What annoyed c ritic s was the extent of her selfishn.yess, and the fact that Hardy did not intervene to condemn the behaviour of his heroine. For example, The Westminster Review observed that ' Upon her he has lavished a ll his s k ill',^ but found her annoying and unsympathetic:
Whatever Mr Hardy may wish us to think of his heroine, the one leading tr a it of her character, and of all such characters, is at the bottom - selfishness... She is hard and mercenary. When she at last marries Gabriel Oak we feel, whatever Mr Hardy may intend to the contrary, that she marries him not from any admiration of his no bility of character, but simply because he w ill manage her farm and keep her money together. Bathsheba is the character of the book, and Mr Hardy may be proud of having drawn such a character. But she is a character not to be admired, as he would seem to intimate.2
This c r itic had protested at Hardy's use of sensation yet when confronted with something original he refused to analyse Hardy's intention^reverting to an external moral judgement.
In the character of Bathsheba Hardy is already beginning to examine the sort of character who will become central in his fiction, and in the work of other novelists in the 'eighties. She has lost respect and feeling fo r her roots, is disturbingly independent, yet so v ita l in her independence that she cannot altogether be condemned.
Although in this novel the final movement is conciliatory Hardy has suggested a character who would not have been able to come to terms with society. Boldwood is potentially as disturbing because his violent personality is equally beyond social restraint, but in this book the suggestions are not developed. The o rig in a lity of the
1. Ib id ., p.266. 2. T5Td., p.267.
-249- picture of Boldwood is held in check by his behaviour being a consequence of Bathsheba's behaviour. Consequently he can be suppressed into the pattern of the novel. His violent tendencies are fu lly developed later in the character of Michael Henchard.
Despite Boldwood's presence i t is Bathsheba who carries the dis turbing stress of Far From the Madding Crowd.
Hutton was among the many c ritic s unhappy with the picture of her presented by Hardy. He could not see why she should f l i r t with
Boldwood after the loss of Troy. The continuing independence of
Bathsheba at a time when she should be showing some form of g rie f is one of Hardy's best examples of her refusal to conform, but Hutton would not accept this:
Bathsheba is at f ir s t much more strongly outlined [than Oak], and during the scenes in which she fa lls in love with Troy we begin to think Mr Hardy is lik e ly to make something great of her. But, on the whole, she fa lls back into an uninterestingness of which we cannot exactly define the reason, unless i t is her disposition to shilly-sh a lly with Farmer Boldwood, after her loss of Troy, which seems unnatural in a young woman of so very strong a character, who had already had so much experience of the consequence of a false step. *
Hutton's reaction to Bathsheba was predictable. It is more surprising to see Henry James condemning her for sim ilar reasons:
we cannot say that we either understand or like Bathsheba. She is a young lady of the inconsequential, w ilful, mettlesome type which has lately become so much the fashion for heroines...2
This is an extraordinary judgement from a novelist who, in a few years, would produce, in Isabel Archer, a character who would provoke an almost identical reaction from critics. It is even possible to
1. 'Far From the Madding Crowd', The Spectator, XLVII (December 19, 1874), p .1599. 2. Published in The Nation, New York, in 1874 and reprinted in A. Mordell, Literary Reviews and Essays by Henry James, New York, 1957, p.296.
-250- argue that in the idea of Isabel and her three suitors James is
adapting the situation in Far From the Madding Crowd. I t is James's
tone that explains his remark. This is the voice of the young
James, not yet aware of his own directions in fiction, imitating
the style and tone of the ordinary reviewer. His later criticism is entirely free of this language of the superior moral judge.
Although most c ritic s discussed Bathsheba in terms sim ilar to those used by Hutton and James,The Saturday Review proved an
exception. Its c r itic discussed her in a fa irly neutral tone merely
recording those features which other reviewers regarded with suspicion,
The selection of quotations indicated an acute and appreciative
reading:
She is a rustic beauty, fond of admiration, loving her independence, without much heart but with a brave spirit, a sharp hand at a bargain, an arrant flir t over flowing with vanity, but modest withal. . . 'She has her faults', says Oak... 'and the greatest of them is - well what i t is always - vanity.' ' I want somebody to tame me', she says herself: 'I'm too independent.' Oak is not the man to perform so d iffic u lt an achievement.
This reviewer managed to draw attention to the dual aspect of all
Hardy's women characters, who are always a mixture of conventional tra its , such as vanity, and something more radically assertive,
rig h tly described here as independence. A consequence of The Saturday
Review being prepared to tolerate such tra its in a heroine was that the c r itic saw more to admire in the book than any of his colleagues.
He saw the faults as being only things which Hardy had to 'unlearn, 2 before he can be placed in the f ir s t order of modern novelists.'
1. 'Far From the Madding Crowd', The Saturday Review, XXXIX (January 9, 1875), p.58. 2. Ibid., p.57.
-251- other reviewers, unsympathetic to his presentAtion of Bathsheba, recognised his power and o rig in a lity only by default.
By the late 'eighties Far From the Madding Crowd would be regarded as a very reticent treatment of the theme of individual freedom. I t would also come to symbolise the fact that the novelist who presented a character who refused to conform could nevertheless conclude with a vision of the reconciliation of the individual and the community. But in 1874, i t was viewed with some concern about
Hardy's future development. His presentation of the setting, his use of description, the development of the plot, and his general ability to handle characters were all treated with respect. The problems of style were ones that experience would eliminate. But the great doubt was over his reason for presenting Bathsheba. I f
Bathsheba was to be brought to her senses by the end of the novel i t seemed unnecessary that Hardy should have presented her selfish behaviour so vigorously, and possibly even with approval, Hutton, in fact, censured him for trying too hard to be original:
Mr Hardy goes wrong by being too clever - preposterously clever where the world is stupid - too original where he ought to be accommodating himself to the monotonous habits of a world which is built on usage. It is a rare kind of mi stake.1
2. REVIEWS OF THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE (1878)
The difficulty for a novelist of passing beyond critical pre conceptions without causing offence is reflected in the opening words of The Athenaeum's review of The Return of the Native:
where are we to turn for a Novelist? Mr Black having commanded success, appears to be in some l i t t l e danger of allowing his past performances to remain his chief t it le to deserving i t ; and now Mr Hardy, who at one time seemed as promising as any of the younger generat ion of sto ry-te lle rs, has published a book d is tin c tly inferior to anything of his which we have yet read,2
1. 'Far From the Madding Crowd', The Spectator, XLVII (December 19, 1874), P.T599. 2. A.J.Butler, 'Novels of the Week', The Athenaeum, No.2665 = -252- ^ Black was criticise d for not daring to experiment while Hardy, as the rest of the review confirms was faulted for being too original.
But the d iffic u lty Butler of The Athenaeum had in accepting The
Return of the Native was shared by nearly a ll the c ritic s . Whereas criticism had to a large extent coped with Far From the Madding
Crowd, fa ilin g only with the character of Bathsheba, The Return of the Native, bolder and more personal, proved far more unacceptable.
I t was widely condemned on both aesthetic and moral grounds.
Only The Spectator met the challenge of the novel with any confidence, and even there Hutton”* only revealed its qualities by his opposition to Hardy's intention. By this stage of his lif e Hutton's reviewing was impressive in a curious way. He condemned most of the great novels of the decade but his reviewing showed a grasp which few c ritic s could riv a l. He had the a b ility to go unerringly to the heart of any book, and i t is impressive how in reviewing The Return of the Native he was not detracted by any of its superficial eccentr ic itie s . His strength as a reviewer was that he wrote from a con fident idea of the responsibilities of fic tio n , and those responsib ilit ie s could be summed-up in one phrase - to perpetuate tru st in the idea of community. Hutton's convictions were settled and immoveable and firm ly brought into action in a ll his reviews.
I t is not immediately apparent that this moral sense of fic tio n should have been productive of good reviewing at a time when the morality of the novel was altering rapidly. The common feature of most of the important novels in the 'eighties was that they a ll more
= (November 23, 1878), p.654. 1. The review is unmarked in the editorial f ile but i t is obviously by Hutton,
-253- or less began from a premise of disillusion, primarily disillusion with society and the v a lid ity of^even existence of^communal values.
Novel after novel consequently focused on the experience of the individual. So nearly every major work of fic tio n at the time was a challenge to Hutton's idea of the real nature of society. He opposed the d r if t of the contemporary novel, and his criticism was always a confrontation of thesis with thesis. This is why he could always identify the theme of any controversial novel. He identified the elements he found unacceptable or untrue and these were also the features he distrusted aesthetically. His approach can be seen in his discussion of The Return of the Native. Eustacia Vye's conduct was reprehensible:
His coldly passionate heroine, Eustacia Vye, never re proaches herself for a moment with the inconstancy and poverty of her own affections. On the contrary, she has no feeling that anything which happens within her, has relation to right and wrong at a ll, or that such a thing as responsibility exists.1
This would be acute analysis, i f the tone did not imply condemnation, and disapproval of Hardy for introducing such a character. For Hutton,
Eustacia's mistake was .the absence of any social sense. Equally, Clym was seen as being unhealthily introspective. According to Hutton he should have snapped out of his moping; Hardy's failu re was that he failed to change Clym's behaviour even when he had the opportunity to make a novel more positive:
1. 'The Return of the Native', The Spectator, LII (February 8, 1879), p.182.
-254- The death of Mrs Yeobright, - the mother of the hero, - is gloom in its deepest intensity; and even her son's excraclating self-reproaches, though they have at least plenty of remorse in them, are too li t t l e softened by religious feeling or anything else to express anything but misery. Mr Hardy refuses to give us what, even without any higher world of feeling, would have raised this alienation of mother and son into tragedy - the mutual recognition of mother and son, and the recognition of the ir misunderstanding, before her death. The hero's agony is pure, unalloyed misery, not g rie f of the deepest and noblest type, which can see a hope in the future and repent the errors of the past.'
This comment illu stra te s many of Hutton's convictions - the belief that when the a rtis t makes events gloomy he is being w ilfu lly and untruthfully pessimistic; the idea that the novelist should attempt to create a sense of shame at self-indulgence by showing characters rediscovering their social and family obligations; the argument that the rejection of a pose of alienation would have healthy effects which would reverberate beyond the novel for the good of society as a whole. Hutton bad seen that the major theme of the novel was a form of alienation, but his comments a ll proceeded from his refusal to believe in such an alienated stance. His feeling was that i t was neither deeply fe lt nor ju s tifie d . I t could only be explained away as the foolishness of youth and the fashionable pessimism of the author.
By isolating the theme of the novel Hutton achieved more than most c ritic s , but there is a lim it to the value of his comments.
Refusing to distinguish between a certain fashionable pessimism and anything more deeply fe lt, he faile d to perceive how desperate and moving Clym's situation was. Hutton refused to accept that any ind ividual could lose contact with his community and traditional way of lif e , and so could not respond sympathetically to the emotional force of Hardy's novel. Yet, despite these lim itations, Hutton
1. Ib id ., p .182. ^ > -255- remains the outstanding reviewer of the period. The majority of c ritic s could offer only a pale imitation of his judgements.
Lacking his directness they were lik e ly to be confused and annoyed by a new novel in a fa ir ly vague way. This is true, for example, of a c r itic such as A.J.Butler who could respond angrily to a challenge to his beliefs but who never made any very constructive use of his beliefs in his reviewing. From a critical point-of-view the decade would perhaps be more exciting i f there were c ritic s who consistently modified th e ir own standards as they read new works of fic tio n , but such c ritic s did not exist. The most that happened was that the isolated c r itic would occasionally be so overwhelmed by the power of a work that he might be expected to find offensive that he would forget his preconceptions and praise the book. An example of this sort of response may be seen in James
Ashcroft Noble's discussion of The P ortrait of a Lady, discussed in the previous chapter, and the same was true of the response to
Hardy's novels. There was usually at least one c r itic who would rise above his colleagues and offer a really incisive view of a novel.
But these sort of reviews are the interesting exceptions. In terms of assessing, interpreting, and placing the whole range of contem porary fic tio n no c r itic could rival Hutton's confidence, insight, and intelligence, even if his remarks were consistently antagonistic.
There was no critic in the 'eighties consistently enthusiastic and perceptive about the contemporary novel.
The Return of the Native is a typical example of a novel which met with hardly any understanding. Yet the fa u lt lies partly with the novel which gives the impression of Hardy trying too much too soon. I t is clearly an ambitious work, as the set-piece nature of the opening alone would suggest. This does not, of course, mean
-256- that Hardy is successful yet, as w ill be shown la te r, the f ir s t reviewers failed to respond even to the intensity of the opening.
The characterisation works at a darker level than in Far From the
Madding Crowd, as is seen when the sim ila rity of the structure of relationships of the two novels is noted. Eustacia and Thomasin parallel Bathsheba and Fanny, and Wildeve has much of Boldwood's violent nature. Oak has been transformed into the heavily symbolic character Diggory Venn. Possibly Hardy fe lt that by a symbolic, consciously over-written, treatment of his material its profundity would not fa il to strike the reader. His f ir s t reviewers noted the dramatics, but i t seems that the manner obscured rather than cla r ifie d the presentation of the serious issues in the book. The re l ationship of Eustacia and Wildeve, for example, seemed flo rid and romantic but nothing more, Hardy's late r novels would abandon the restless suggestiveness of The Return of the Native for a more socially precise treatment of his material.
Clym Yeobright, whomHardy himself drew attention to as the most important character, fits awkwardly into these wild situations. He is well-realised, and in his horror at rootlessness, his desperate wish to return home, and his inability to return home naturally, by far the most interesting character. It was vital that Hardy should study such a personality but he cannot be fe lt to integrate into the wider pattern of events which are treated with a different sort of emphasis. For the significance of such a character to have been clear to the f ir s t reviewers the novel would have required a more . focused attention on his life . I t was not until Jude the Obscure that Hardy again presented such a young man, and then the inhospitality of Jude's own village was far more subtly suggested. In his main
-257- works in the 'eighties Hardy developed a fu lle r, more certain presentation of the significance implicit in the setting and other characters of The Return of the Native.
What goes wrong in the novel is that Hardy attempts to concen trate a ll his later themes, themes which would need careful and more spacious consideration, into one book. Intensity of atmosphere is meant to suggest what needed to be carefully stated and fu lly documented. On the one hand he tried to suggest a sense of the disintegration of community and the erosion of traditional certainties.
As with any disruption i t produces violence and, as yet, i t seems that he could not organise this into a seemingly mundane atmosphere which would suggest the real world. The symbolic emphasis of the novel often appears to be nothing more than a sim plification of I processes which he would later embody in terms of more normal experience,
The major novels of the 'eighties would transform these feelings into substantiated fact. In addition to his weighty but vague in tu i tions on this idea of decay he also attempted to present the reaction, and the reaction was embodied in Clym. So, not fu lly in command of the description of one enormous process of social chang^he attempted, too soon, to show how i t would lead to the creation of a new sort of character. Predictably the novel confused his first critics. The presentation of disintegration was too vague to seem anything other than atmospherics. The significance of Clym simply eluded the reviewers as they were not yet prepared for such a character. Nor were they helped by those parts of the novel which in a way explained his feelings. The novel is full of important themes but is only an anticipation of Hardy's fu ll realisation of them.
The degree to which i t confused the c ritic s varied. A.J.Butler was the most perplexed. At one stage he said; 'One sees what he means, and is a ll the more disappointed at the clumsy way in which
-258“ the meaning is expressed.'^ Despite this confident note the review did not bear out Butler's faith in his own powers as a c ritic . He circled around making minor points about 'forced allusions and images'^ and people talking 'as no people ever talked before , , but failed to provide an overall interpretation. He did venture to say that the 'general plot of the story turns on the old theme of a man who is in love with two women, and a woman who is in love with two 4 men; the man and the woman both being selfish and sensual,' I f this was his impression of Hardy's intention i t is far from being an impressive reading of the novel. The sole reference to Clym was in a lis t of the characters. He mentioned 'a young man who is assistant to a Paris jeweller...'^
The Saturday Review was more adventurous in its comments. Its analysis centred on Eustacia^whom the reviewer disliked as 'wayward and impulsive...'^ Clym went virtually unnoticed. The critic took a more original line in suggesting that Hardy was using a commonplace story but straining to invest it with significance. He commented that, 'Originality may very easily be overdone, especially when it is often more apparent than genuine,'^ In a reading which almost
1. 'Novels of the Week', The Athenaeum, No,2665 (November 23, 1878), p.654. 2. Ib id . , p.654. 3. Ib id ., p.654. 4. Tbid. , p.654. 5. Ib id . , p.654. 6. The Return of the Native', The Saturday Review, XLVII (January 4, 1879), p.24. ~ 7. Ibid., p.23.
-259- completely ignored Clym i t was legitimate to feel that the balance
of presentation was wrong, and that the working for significance was imposed. But the real fa ilu re of the review, and a characteristic
failing of criticism at the time, was to treat originality as a matter for instant suspicion.
This suspicious attitude contrasts greatly with the response
of W.E.Henley. Henley's review is a good example of how in the
response to most new novels there was usually at least one c r itic who did have something original and perceptive to say. Henley's
review follows the pattern of these more positive reviews. Although by no means completely enthusiastic he showed more respect for the ambition of the book than most c ritic s . He showed complete deference to Hardy's experiments in technique, conceding the right to the a rtis t to present his work in esoteric terms. Henley had the humility to suggest that Hardy probably had a better idea of what he was doing than the c r itic who could not fu lly understand his work:
His work may be, to an outsider, neither wholly satisfac tory nor wholly right; but it has so much in it of intention and of execution that the outsider, compelled to strike a balance of opinion, finds that balance imm ensely in his author's favour... Perhaps, too, it is false art; but of that, believing Mr Hardy to have a -j very complete theory about his books, I w ill not speak.
Although Henley had begun to concede points in Hardy's favour there came, however, a point in his review where i t is clear that he fe lt unable to accept a deviation from the normal moral standards of fiction. As with most favourable reviews of controversial novels, the tendency to slide into an accommodation with the view of the author was checked as soon as the critic realised the full implications
1. 'New Novels', The Academy, XIV (November 30, 1878), p.517.
-260- of the view, Henley disliked morbidity in fiction and was made
impatient by introspection, Henry James was the novelist he most
disliked. His review of The Return of the Native turned from
praising the technique to condemning the moral direction of the
novel. He was as unresponsive as Hutton to a tragedy bred on
introspection:
The story is a sad one; but the sadness is unnecessary and uncalled for. A chapter of accidents makes the hero seem to cast o ff his mother, who thereupon dies; a second chapter of accidents sends the heroine to death by drowning. And the hero, burdened with a double remorse is le ft to live on, and to take what is sub? sta n tia lly the place in the world that he had desired ere destruction came upon him. It is a ll very mournful, and very cruel, and very French,.,!
Henley, in common with many c ritic s , turned with most pleasure to
Meredith where he could see egoism attacked and social norms defended, yet gain the impression that the a rtis t was experimenting seriously
with the form of fic tio n and pushing the novel into new te rrito ry .
It was not until the 'nineties that any considerable number of
c ritic s emerged who could identify with the assumptions of the new
generation of novelists. In this later decade there was a fair
amount of understanding of Hardy's point-of-view. For example, Lionel
Johnson, in his 1894 book on Hardy, paid close attention to Hardy's
presentation of the modern young man:
A vast deal of imposing nonsense is dealt out to us, under the cover of these modern conceptions: s illy heroes posture in a f i t of "male green-sickness", unwholesome heroines display sim ilar imaginations, disease and del irium are portrayed with abnormal gravity or delight. But from the weighty masterpieces of George E lio t, down to the daintiest t r if le of Mr Henry James, works of sin gular power and beauty have sprung from brains, that brood upon, and imaginations, that dwell among these problems and questionings bred of modern introspection,^
1. l ^ . ,p.517. 2. The Art of Thomas Hardy, 1894, p.35.
-261- Johnson wrote this in 1892. In 1878 the character of Clym baffled the reviewers.
They were no more appreciative of other aspects of the novel.
Eustacia was disliked and reprimanded. Egdon Heath v/as just the wild romantic setting for her story. According to The Saturday
Review the opening was one of 'many tableaux of wild and powerful picturesqueness. ' ^ For Hutton the interest of the opening was topographical: 'To us, Mr Hardy is at his best when analysing, as he does with a touch of rare genius, the natural lif e of such a 2 solitude as Egdon Heath.' Thus, The Return of the Native met with a fairly baffled response from its first reviewers. But it is such a strange, orig inal, and uneven novel that a fu lly compre hending response could hardly be expected.
3. REVIEWS OF HARDY'S MINOR NOVELS IN THE EARLY 'EIGHTIES
The real starting point of The Return of the Native had been
Clym's return to a community where he wished to re-establish his roots. The community was strange, barbarian, and physically un welcoming, yet also attractive and rich in a sort of lif e Clym wished to share. But Hardy presented this ambiguous atmosphere without much precision, and without ever really establishing whether at some stage something went wrong with the life of the community. One way of looking at Hardy's development in the 'eighties is to see him as making a pragmatic examination of the past, and the concepts of traditional values and community values. Beginning with The
Trumpet Major (1880), the historical dimension in Hardy is made concrete.
1. 'The Return of the Native', The Saturday Review, XLVII (January 4, 1879), p.24. 2. ' The Return of the Native', The Spectator, LII (February 8, 1879), p.182.
-262- The attempt is laudable because i t seems the most pressing need in the novel at the time. Hutton's concept of community remained the central value of most c ritic s . But for a concept of community to be viable it required that values be handed on from generation to generation. Hardy now stands back and examines whether the idea of the community is s t i l l meaningful or whether a certain disloc ation has occufred. The great novels of the 'eighties present his findings. James and Gissing, in contrast to Hardy, start with a more absolute sense of the individual alone. I t seems almost a fa ilu re of intelligence that they should not show more thoroughly how the assumptions of their heroes and heroines have come into being, but the explanation is simple. Gissing sees himself as a dispossessed man with no real roots. His character Godwin Peak, sees himself as relating to only a mean and vulgar tradition, and wishes to sever his connection with these roots as quickly as possible,
Gissing never fe lt that there might be a po ssibility of wholeness in recent history, and starts from an assumption of isolation. James also starts from the premise of the individual on his own. His characters are newcomers and the entire thrust of the novels is forward. Characters such as Isabel Archer must search for new places of security as they can discover none by exploring their own past.
William Hale White and Mrs Ward are more like Hardy in that they examine the content of a tra d itio n , but they both confine themselves to the emptiness of religious traditions whereas Hardy presents a more inclusive disillusionment. George Moore's A Drama in Muslin
(1885) attempts something as ambitious as Hardy's novels in its account of how the progressive disintegration of the Irish community of the novel causes and explains a new development among individuals.
But Moore is limited by the Irish situation where political consid
-263- erations have a large role to play. As it stands, it is only Hardy who offers a really inclusive study of the past. Only his fic tio n explains why the feeling of being a m isfit became common in the novel in the 'eighties. Hardy thus represents a lin k between the earlier Victorian novel, which never began with a sense of disillusion, however i t might end, and the novels of the 'eighties which began with an assumption of alienation. Not until the 'nineties does Hardy fu lly consider the burden of independence.
The Trumpet Major is a modest novel recreating a more con fident era. There is a sense of unity in the face of the threat of invasion, and the family groups presented are secure in th e ir sense of place. Simple loyalties are s t ill in evidence and virtues such as self-sacrifice are s till meaningful. There was thus little in the novel to anger c ritic s , although its remoteness from contemporary issues precluded over-enthusiasm. Julian Hawthorne, in an excellent review for The Spectator, commented perceptively on its scope and achievement. He suggested that a ll Hardy's usual merits could be seen in the novel ('His genius is observant, tru th fu l, humoreas;, ■j and at once masculine and shy.' ), and was delighted with the picture of Anne Garland:
What we want, and what a rtis tic beauty demands, is colour, warmth, impulse, sweet perversity, pathetic error; an in a b ility to submit the heart to the guidance of the head, a happiness under conditions against which a ra t ional judgement protests; and a ll th is, and more, we get in Anne Garland and her kindred.^
For the reviewers^The Trumpet Major seemed to emphasise a ll the more pleasant aspects of Hardy's work. But i t was also an important
1. 'Mr Hardy's New Novel', The Spectator, L III (December 18, 1880),? p .1627. 2. Ib id ., p .1628.
-264' novel fo r Hardy himself. In writing this book he had not only
created a picture of wholeness but set it at a precise and signif
icant historical moment. His subsequent novels could look at the
process of decay that then followed.
Emphasising the security of the picture in this book there is
a tendency to overlook a fa irly sharp vein of irony which distances
and controls the characterisation. Most reviewers were too soph
isticated to regard this as anything other than a good quality.
But there were reviewers who were so m oralistic in their comments
that they even managed to disapprove of The Trumpet Major. For example.
The British Quarterly Review normally only looked at the most limp and p a llid fic tio n and regarded The Trumpet Major as a shocking novel.
The reviewer was alarmed by a novelist who 'as i t really appears,
does not care to encourage high ideals of manhood, [and] who almost seems to aim at robbing us of the l i t t l e ideal of womankind that may be le ft to us.'^ Reviews of this nature were not common in the decade, only appearing in the overtly religious magazines. They are only of interest in that they help to show how in te llig e n t c ritic s could find qualities to admire in the works of writers such as Mrs
Oliphant and William Black. Although the moral assumptions of these two novelists were traditional their novels did contain a certain amount of incidental irony which most c ritic s found in te llig e n t and stimulating. The B ritish Quarterly Review, through its review column, provides evidence of a whole sub-level of fic tio n which did not aspire to Mrs Oliphant's level of sophistication. It also pro vides evidence that there were c ritic s who did not expect fic tio n to
1. 'Novels of the Quarter', The B ritish Quarterly Review, LXXII (1881), p.227.
-255- go beyond the most naive moral purpose.
While Hardy's achievement in The Trumpet Major is unambitious but certain the next two novels are oddities. A Laodicean (1882) takes up the theme f ir s t anticipated in the story of Clym Yeobright, but i t is treated with l i t t l e v ita lity , and as an independent work has l i t t l e value. Its real handicap from the beginning is that the main character, Paula Power, is unreal. She is planted in the novel as the focus for a story of modern scepticism but never comes to life . The novel provides an outline account of the confro ntation of old and new which The Return of the Native had treated so extravagantly. The c ritic s noted Paula Power's modernity, but with amusement rather than outrage, a response which was only to be expected in view of the intrigues into which the book degenerates.
For The Spectator, 'The study of this curious, uncommon, but by no means inconceivable middle-class young lady is very interesting, and sometimes she is as puzzling to the reader as she was to her lovers.'^
Hardy's presentation of her was too unconvincing to create the sense of shock the theme would in other circumstances have provoked.
Although Hardy's achievement in this novel might seem very in adequate to the modern reader his contemporaries were far less severe.
To them i t seemed that the imagination of a good average novelist had flagged and that in lieu of inspiration he was designing a reasonably complicated plot and placing at its centre a character who might prove lively, attractive, and entertaining. Hardy was thus neatly accommodated into the pattern of development, or decline, of most promising novelists. I t seemed that the creative freshness of the
1. ' A Laodicean' , The Spectator, LV (March 4, 1882), p.296.
-266- period of Far From the Madding Crowd had passed, and that Hardy v/as
settling down into the routine of producing competent, but uninspired,
books.
His next novel. Two on a Tower (1882), was no better. Hardy's
three novels in the early 'eighties may be said to isolate themes
from his more finished achievements. The Trumpet Major offers a
simple historical view of Wessex, A Laodicean relies on an uncompl
icated presentation of a modern character, and Two on a Tower uses
Hardy's idea of the pathos of human lif e against vast patterns of
space and time. His presentation of the idea in this novel was
undisturbing, and there was no reason why i t should receive much
praise. The Saturday Review actually rebuked Hardy for not fu lfillin g
his early promise: 'Mr Hardy's novel, A Laodicean, can hardly have been thought an improvement on the previous works by which he delighted
so many readers and made for himself so ju st a fame as a novelist; and, unfortunately, it is not easy to think that Two on a Tower is much of an improvement on A Laodicean.
With the exception of discussions of The Return of the Native the response to Hardy's novels up to this stage seems ju st right.
His f ir s t reviewers had proved enthusiastic where appropriate and more guarded when necessary. Close analysis cannot be expe-cted in a f ir s t review but the immediate appraisals showed degrees of appre ciation which to a large extent resemble any modern classification of the varying quality of the novels. Only The Return of the Native stands outside this generalisation. Critics had noted his ability.
1. 'Two on a Tower', The Saturday Review, LIV (November 18, 1882), p.674.
-267- to tell a story, to develop a situation, and to draw a character.
His humour and s k ill as a novelist were appreciated, and these
qualities were fe lt to give him sufficie n t momentum to get through
in fe rio r material without a novel losing a ll its appeal. I t was
only his attempts to be serious, to suggest some depth of meaning,
that c ritic s remained uneasy about. This was partly because his
manner of being profound was inelegant, but also because potentially
offensive and disquieting thinking determined the direction of his
novels. But this was of little importance in the early 'eighties
when his new novels were something of a disappointment. There was
a widespread feeling that the early promise had fizzled out; but a
more positive view was taken in some of the general assessments
which had now begun to appear,
4. GENERAL ASSESSMENTS OF HARDY'S WORK BEFORE 1886
A single purpose linked the general articles which were written
about Hardy's novels. I t was the attempt to localise those qualities
which distinguished him from the mass of novelists. One noteworthy
point is that all these articles were written by critics who admired
Hardy. This might seem unsurprising, but when Zola or James were
discussed at length i t was usually with the object of deflating their
pretensions as novelists. The response to Hardy was consistently
positive and appreciative.
Two surveys, in the New Quarterly Magazine and The B ritish
Quarterly Review, were published in 1879 and 1881 respectively. Both
essays are interesting, and the one in the New Quarterly Magazine, by Mrs Sutherland Orr, made some pertinent observations on the nature of his vision:
- 268 - I t tends always to a prim itive conception of human life and character. Man seems, to impress him as a natural, rather than social, or at least socialized being,..!
This sort of elemental quality in Hardy's fic tio n has always received attention, even though the greater richness of a novel such as The
Mayor of Casterbridge depends upon the fact that this animal energy is considered in a fu lly realised social context. In view of this i t is interesting that Mrs Orr argued that the tendency of Hardy's method might 'seriously hamper him in any larger handling of the 2 realities of social life .' She had no way of knowing that in
The Mayor of Casterbridge and The Woodlanders Hardy would transcend his early approach.
In the novels she had to consider, however, there was not this sort of social reach so she had to confine her discussion to such issues as his method of character presentation. She dealt in particular with his presentation of women, making the point that his conception of his heroines was prim itive, almost mythic:
his idea of women is that of a pagan grace which does not require and often excludes the estimable... His women develop from the moral and the aesthetic side, but they never become thoroughly responsible creatures.3
Her emphasis fe ll on a mythic pattern in the whole structure of the novels, which were said to be 'gothic in expression, but largely pagan in s p ir it. '^ The tendency of her response was to see him as a tragic novelist, dealing with the permanent conflicts of life .
1. 'Mr Hardy's Novels', The New Quarterly Magazine, N.S.II (1879), p.414. 2. Ib id ., p.414. 3. Ib id . , p.415. 4. Ib id ., p.414.
- 269- Although unstated,a sense of the Brontes was im p licit in a ll her comments as she described the passions, clashes, and tragedies of the novels, and i t was a response to lif e for which she clearly had the greatest admiration.
I t needs to be considered, however, whether this was a ju s tifie d and adequate response to the novels. I t is , to begin, a b rillia n t article^noting for the f ir s t time many of the various qualities of
Hardy's fiction. There is also a great deal of justification for regarding Hardy's novels as broad studies of the human condition, and the po ssibility of reading Hardy in this way would contribute to the immediate popularity of Tess of the D'Urberülles. But to regard
Hardy as the novelist of timeless human problems seems to be to focus on one aspect of his work. The main bias is far more often social and realistic. The article by Mrs Orr to a great extent anticipates the "poetic" approach to the novels, but this approach rather devalues Hardy by separating him from the main tra dition of the English novel, which is one of realistic density.^ It is fair to say that the "poetic" approach was most justified just after the publication of The Return of the Native, the period of Mrs Orr's essay. I t is the most elemental of the novels, but the principal works in the 'eighties are more than "poetic" in th e ir impact. Nev ertheless,Mrs Orr had introduced a certain approach to Hardy and one which s t i l l has its supporters today.
1. A modern "poetic" approach is well illustra ted in Jean Brooks, Thomas Hardy: The Poetic Structure, 1971. 'The Return of the Native is concerned with the Promethean struggle of conscious lif e against the "rayless" universe from which i t sprang. The poetic-dramatic structure of the f ir s t chapters in itia te s the underlying metaphor of the novel, the ancient conflict of light and darkness.' (pp.178-179). Mrs Brooks is well aware that she is reasserting a now unfashionable view of Hardy.
-270- Like Mrs Orr, Charles Kegan Paul in The British Quarterly Review was also intent on identifying the special quality of Hardy's work.
He noted Hardy's competence in a ll the necessary s k ills of novel- writing but went on to in sist that 'more is wanted than the power of creating characters and a good literary style.This seems promising, but Paul seems to have been overwhelmed by the piety of
The British Quarterly Review, and his a rtic le degenerated into something not very much better than the homily that magazine usually substituted for criticism . He regarded Hardy's strength as a sympathy for ordinary people and compared him with George E liot in this respect:
George E lio t has for the most part taken a society which changes l i t t l e - homely people with homely lives. I t has been remarked that a boundless sympathy was her character is tic , but on a somewhat low level. Mr Hardy, in the same way, but even to a greater extent, takes lif e where i t changes least, and considers i t in its most simply human aspects.^
This 'boundless sympathy' is no small part of Hardy's a rt, but Paul emphasised only the most gentle, most positive, aspects of his work.
His essay emphasised the continuity of certain ways of lif e in
Hardy's rustic settings, and reduced the novels to moralistic tracts.
The Return of the Native was made to conform to a to ta lly wholesome interpretation:
The leading thought is man's duty to man under discour agement, under the loss of love and health, and of hope for self. We scarcely know where in the range of English fiction to look for a more noble, more pathetic figure than that of Clym Yeobright, the itinerant open-air lec turer, who, after his life was shattered, s till "went about doing good".3
1. 'Mr Hardy's Novels', The B ritish Quarterly Review, LXXIII (1881), p.344. 2. Ib id . , p.345. 3. Ib id . , p.355.
-271- By making duty the central value of fic tio n , and by annexing
Hardy to the task of illustrating duty in action, Paul clearly did less than justice to the novels.
Yet, i f Paul emphasised only the moral aspect of Hardy's novels,
Mrs Orr had been as extreme in the other direction by emphasising only the imaginative qualities. Neither article did justice to the variety and complex appeal of his work. Such shortcomings were b r illia n tly avoided by Havelock E llis . E llis is usually thought of as an iconoclastic writer of the 'nineties, but this early essay was a restrained and thoughtful analysis of Hardy's ability as a novelist,
E llis 's strength was that he recognised something really new in
Hardy's fic tio n . Mrs Orr and Paul tended to give the impression that Hardy was only offering variations on established qualities of the novel. E llis was aware of a completely new vision:
We feel in his work not subtlety only, but a certain freshness of vision in looking both at Nature and at life , which is at once intensely original, and at its highest point altogether impersonal. Blacke had i t in a supreme degree; Wordsworth now and then; Mr Ruskin at his best; the Brontes had i t ; this freshness of in sight as regards peasant life is one of the points in which Mr Hardy resembles Tourgueneff, although he can make no claim to the delicacy and precision of touch which marks the great Russian novelist. I t is largely on account of this quality - this freshness of insight into certain aspects of Nature and human character - that Mr Hardy's work is so interesting.!
This is an eloquent suggestion of Hardy's o rig in a lity , but on exam ination proves imprecise. Phrases such as 'a certain freshness...',
'intensely original...', and, 'this freshness of insight...' carry a largely rhetorical weight. It was difficult to be precise about
1. 'Thomas Hardy's Novels', The Westminster Review,CXIX (1883),p.351.
-272- Hardy's o rig in a lity ; but this d iffic u lty is understandable in that the essay was written in 1883, before Hardy's work had established a consistent emphasis.
Yet at several points in the essay E llis was more specific.
This was when he drew generalisations from a consideration of
Hardy's women. He realised that in his presentation of the individual Hardy offered a view which, in effect, contradicted
Charlotte Bronte, and went beyond George E lio t:
With Charlotte Bronte morality is always a very simple thing. I t is duty against passion, and for her passion has no rights... George Eliot will not sacrifice the desires of the individual because they are contrary to a general principle; she w ill seek to make those desires true to their relations, "to a ll the motives that sanctify our lives," as Maggie Tulliver says.!
In comparison with these authors Hardy's view of the individual could be regarded as selfish and self-interested, but Ellis saw that i t was something more than this:
with Mr Hardy the individual self with its desires is neither per se, a devil to be resisted, nor a soul to receive its due heritage in the fellowship of souls. I t is an untamed instinctive creature, eager and yet shy, which is compelled to satisfy its own moderate desires for happiness before it can reflect its joyou sness on others. It is instinct only that saves so egoistic and prim itive a moral conception - i f i t can be so termed - from becoming utte rly e v il. In so far as i t is a guide to conduct, i t stands at the opposite pole to Charlotte Bronte^s.^
That other c ritic s had realised something of the same theme could be seen in th e ir condemnation of Bathsheba and Eustacia, but E llis was the firs t critic to defend this view as creative and possibly 3 necessary. He also pointed out that these 'irre s is tib ly fascin ating ...'
1. Ib id ., pp.337-338. 2. TbTd., p.338. 3. TbTd., p.337.
-273- women were quite likely to seduce the sternest moral critics. It is a fact that Hardy always had more difficulty in getting his controversial male characters accepted by critics. But even Ellis, as receptive as he was to Hardy's new vision, had some qualms about the selfishness of Hardy's heroines, and had to insert some words of moral disapproval: 'For the great flaw in Eustacia's nature - the cause of that want of adaptation to her environment which we I will soon see will make life impossible to her - lies in this lack of discipline.'^ But Ellis was far more indulgent than other critics, and, moreover, did not condemn Hardy for presenting such characters.
Ellis's essay amounts to a brilliant analysis of a central feature of Hardy's a rt, but at this stage he could not, of course, foresee the broadening of the scope of Hardy's fic tio n . Yet he had drawn a picture of a serious novelist with a significantly new attitude towards the individual. I t would take years for most c ritic s to catch up with him.
5. REVIEWS OF THE MAYOR OF CASTERBRIDGE (1885) AND THE WOODLANDERS (1887)
The five years following the publication of The Mayor of
Casterbridge established Hardy as a leading novelist. This surge in his reputation had several causes. The major works of 1886 and 1887 were not only important in th e ir own right but provided fresh in d i cations of what mattered in the earlier fic tio n . Uncertain works such as Two on a Tower could now be overlooked by c ritic s as they could see that they deviated from his usual concerns. So, in the last years of the decade, criticism progressed both on the evidence of the new novels and on a surer sense of the quality of the earlier fic tio n .
1. Ib id ., p .349.
-274- However, the picture of Hardy created by most c ritic s was
far from adequate to the power and o rig in a lity of his fic tio n .
Although the view was coherent, and to some extent supported by
the content of the novels, i t was a view that avoided a confrontation
with the real strength of his art. The desire was to make Hardy a
reassuring novelist. It necessitated ignoring whole areas of his
work, and i t meant that a novel such as The Mayor of Casterbridge
met with very l i t t l e understanding. This is such a violent and
dramatic novel, so clear in its account of the co n flict between
Henchard and the community which can no longer accommodate him, and
to which he can no longer relate, that there is every justification
for believing that i t could not have failed to impress its f ir s t
reviewers. That the majority of c ritic s did not rise to the
occasion; comes as a surprise.
The Saturday Review provided a quite fascinating review by
managing to discuss the novel in terms more frequently applied to
James: 'The worst feature of the book is , that i t does not contain
a single character capable of arousing a passing interest in his or 1 her welfare.' For this critic there was no obvious tension in the
story of Henchard's r i f t from his community. I f the plot had pro
gressed on the basis of defining some sort of relationship between
Henchard and Casterbridge, rather than on the basis of recording
progressive separation, the novel might have made more impact. As
in the response to James there was no understanding of the socially
alienated figure. But the novel, of course, is quite unlike any
of James's. This is partly because the action is so violent, but more importantly in that Henchard is a figure who once had a role
1. 'Three Novels', The Saturday Review, LXI (May 29, 1886), p.757.
-275- in Casterbridge.' For James the emphasis is always on the newcomer.
In this novel of Hardy's i t is not a matter of po ssibilities but of the decay of former certainties. The move towards alienation, though, was too original a theme for The Saturday Review to recognise any dramatic substance in the novel. The story was referred to as
'very slight and singularly devoid of interest.
As this critic failed to see any significance in the overall structure i t becomes interesting to note what he did admire in the novel. He regarded Far From the Madding Crowd as Hardy's greatest achievement, and The Mayor of Casterbridge only appealed to him when he found qualities in it that had been present in the earlier novel; these related to a sense of wholeness in the community presented
Nothing can be better than his sketches of Casterbridge, the old Roman garrison town, overgrown rather than ob literated by an English urbs in rure... The dialect of the agricultural labourer, his ways of thought, and his mode of speech are alike admirably given.
The pervasive sense of this review was that Hardy had set out to draw a community and, however bad the story as a whole, he had managed to create a picture of rural life as vivid as that in Far From the Madding
Crowd. The novel was read and valued on these terms and the presence of Henchard seemed irreconcilable with the purpose the c r itic had assumed for Hardy. I f Hardy intended, as this c r itic assumed, to show the richness of lif e in a small community there seemed no expl anation of why he should have introduced a character who was in con f l i c t with the community. Significant incidents were regarded as nothing more than amusing snippets of country-life. Henchard's v is it to the water-diviner was 'proof of how thoroughly Mr Hardy has studied
1. Ib id . , p.757. 2. Ib id ., p.757. -276- the workings of the rustic m ind,,,'^ The "skimmity-ride" was
2 ’ described as 'a n o ve lty,.,' as i f Hardy's intention had been to present one of the more curious aspects of v illa g e -life . I t did not seem to matter that the book, by this reading, failed to have any integral structure.
This lack of concern for the overall structure of a book was a feature of many reviews. Many c ritic s read Hardy for what they valued most and were quite happy to ignore the plot and various characters, and to place a false emphasis on his vision of rural life.
Hardy seemed to present a solid picture of a community and i t mattered little that the vitality of his writing now relied on scepticism about the continuing existence and value of such social structures.
The Mayor of Casterbridge was widely c ritic is e d , and even more widely misinterpreted, yet nevertheless furthered and strengthened Hardy's reputation, because critics could extract from it something positive, agreeable, and reassuring.
This preference for a lighter more comforting Hardy was also found in reactions to The Woodlanders. I t provoked an unprecedented amount of anger, which was often directed at Hardy for what was re garded as a misuse of his powers, Hutton, for example, stressed that Hardy was unrivalled in his ability to present a certain way of life : 'Mr Hardy, as usual, is stronger in his pictures of genuine rural life than in any other part of his story.' Hutton felt that
Hardy should make the virtues of this way of life central, and re-
1. Ib id . , p.757. 2. IM d ., p.757. 3. ' The Woodlanders' , The Spectator, LX (March 26, 1887), p.419.
-277- gretted the fact that in this novel he had minimised their effec tiveness by suggesting that they were precarious:
I f he would give us a l i t t l e less "abstract humanism" and a l i t t l e more of human piety, we should find his stories not only more agreeable, but more life lik e also. There is something glaring and unmellowed in pictures of human life which even on their best side, even in such studies as those of Giles Winterborne and Marty South, leave us nothing better to admire than the fidelity of wholesome instincts, destitute alike of fa ith and hope...1
As usual Hutton had grasped the theme of a novel by his opposition to its conclusions.
Unlike some c ritic s he did not fa ls ify the "rosiness" of
Hardy's picture; i t was more a case of regretting that Hardy should have been misguided enough to give a pessimistic and sceptical bias to his work. Following on from th is, Hutton's review also brought up another recurring theme - the moral position of the author. Hutton and others, disliked Fitzpiers, but the fault was compounded by
Hardy's fa ilu re to make apparent his own view of the young doctor:
I t is impossible to admire Giles Winterbourne, and Marty South as Mr Hardy intends us to admire them, without also feeling indignation and disgust towards Fitzpiers which Mr Hardy not only'does not express, but even renders i t impossible for us to suppose that he entertains.2
Hutton's aesthetic of the novel required a rhetorical attack by the author on any character whose conduct was reprehensible. Such an expectation was an integral part of his whole scheme of life and a rt: society must lash out at those who break its conventions. The disappearance of the author as judge was, however, inevitable in the novel of the time. With a vision of society in disarray the
1. Ib id ., p.420. 2. Ib id ., p.419.
-278- author lacked any shared standard by which he could judge indiv idual conduct. Hardy could offer approval of Giles and Marty because he could judge them by the old codes of conduct: but i t was a waste of time to judge Fitzpiers by the same codes when the advent of such a man was fe lt to be inevitable.
Hutton's answer to such an argument would have been that society was not in such a poor state as Hardy imagined; and that even if social ties had weakened it was the job of the novelist to demonstrate that things could be held together. Hardy was unaccep table as he seemed content to record passively, if regretfully, a process of disintegration. Hutton saw this as a fa u lt in Hardy's a rt, but less perceptive c ritic s merely ignored a ll the disturbing aspects of the novels. They continued to read the mature work with the sort of emphasis which was only relevant in reading Far From the
Madding Crowd.
For example, when A.J.Butler listed the merits of The Mayor of Casterbridge he mentioned nothing of real significance. His entire emphasis fe ll on Hardy as the wise chronicler of rural life :
He has a wonderful knowledge of the minds of men and women, particularly those belonging to a class which better- educated people are often disposed to imagine has no mind... Also he knows the ways and humours of country-folk, and can depict them vividly and in few strokes. Also he is most ingenious in devising problems... And, most of a ll, he has the gift of so telling his story that it sticks by the readers for days afterwards...^
Thus, Far From the Madding Crowd continued to dominate Hardy criticism throughout the 'eighties.
1. 'Novels of the Week', The Athenaeum, No.3057 (May 29, 1886), p.711.
-279- With c ritic s reading the novels in such a way as to see what
they most wanted to see, key elements in Hardy's work were over
looked and other qualities were given exaggerated weight. Coventry
Patmore, in a review of The Woodlanders, ranged over Hardy's novels
and found in them a loving record of rural life :
he confines himself, in his best work, almost exclusively to the manners of the humblest and simplest classes; and in depicting them evokes a tenderness, re a lity , and force for the like of which we know not where to look in cont emporary lite ra tu re , unless i t be in the poems of his friend William Barnes.1
In The Woodlanders i t was only with 'the secondary characters and 2 their natural surroundings...' that Hardy was felt to be 'all
h im se lf. Coventry Patmore read the novel as i f everything ambit
ious in its conception was irrelevant to Hardy's true value as a w riter. He ignored such elements as the disruptive outsider and the
disintegration from within.
This fa ls ific a tio n of Hardy's intention meant that his popul
a rity was based largely on misconceptions. By this sort of distortion
Hardy could even stand as a symbol of confidence against the tendencies
of the contemporary novel. Yet, although the common approach to
Hardy missed the complexity of his novels, i t cannot be completely dismissed. There is much in his work to ju s tify a view of him as
someone always looking back with reverence at the old order. As
David Daiches has said, 'his most characteristic mood was...nostalgia,^ and, although the novels present a complex vision, the nostalgic
1. 'Hardy's Novels', The St. James's Gazette, XIV (April 2, 1887), p.6. 2. Ibid., p.7. 3. Ibid., p.7. 4. Some Late Victorian Attitudes, 1969, p.76.
-280- inclination is always present as one current. Most of his first c ritic s gave the mood great prominence. Because his novels do contain this sort of wistful ness the weakest explanations of his greatness do have some semblance of coping with the novels.
There was, though, other criticism more alive to the true implications of his work. Havelock Ellis had anticipated such criticism and there were several more examples over the next few years. A notable example was William Wallace's review of The
Woodlanders for The Academy. Wallace refused to join in the con demnation of Fitzpiers:
In recent fiction, even in recent French fiction, there has figured no more exasperating scoundrel than Edred Fitzpiers, who yet, in the third volume of The Wood landers figures as the repentant, or, at all events, the returned prodigal - weakly susceptible alike to vulgar sensuality and to superficial coquetry in woman, yet perpetually wallowing in the mire of egoism.1■
Wallace disliked the character but did not c ritic is e Hardy for imagining him. Instead, he attempted to examine how this character fitte d in with Hardy's intention. This necessitated a very clear explanation of the fact that Hardy's vision was no longer optimistic
Mr Hardy's mission in The Woodlanders... is to exhibit, as he says "The u n fu lfille d intention which makes life what i t is ." In Par From the Madding Crowd, when he was younger, or more of an optimist or less of an Emersonian, he exhibited the fu lfille d intention in the death of Troy and in the marriage of Bathsheba Everdene and Gabriel Oak - the fu lfille d intention, that is to say, of his own imagination. In The Woodlanders he gives us the u n fu lfille d intention of the actual world.2
1. 'New Novels', The Academy, XXXI (April 9, 1887), p.252. 2. Ib id ., p.252.
-281- This was far more perceptive and appreciative than most criticism of the novel. The only lim itation is that, as the use of the phrase 'the u n fu lfille d intention' suggests, Wallace tended to read the novel as a timeless study of the human condition. The novel was easier to accept when its contemporary relevance was minimised.
Wallace did not completely ignore its immediate social relevance, but tended to make more of its tragic and timeless qualities. Yet the phrase Wallace took up was Hardy's own and the book ju s tifie d the sort of response Wallace made. Therefore, Wallace cannot be blamed for concentrating on this aspect of Hardy's vision.
However, a review in The Saturday Review is more impressive because the c r itic did concentrate on the contemporary relevance of Hardy's pessimistic vision. He accepted without complaint Hardy's picture of the disintegrating confrontation of old and new:
In The Woodlanders we find the natural order of devel- opment in a c ider-vi1lage disturbed by two figures whose place should be rather in London or Paris than in a remote Dorsetshire community. These two personages set a ll the woodland music in a discord, and what would else be comedy comes in th e ir hands to a tragic issue.'
The review also made the point that Giles represented 'the incarnation 2 of a phase of village civilization...' and, without criticising
Hardy, accepted the fact that this phase was passing. By accepting the novel as a realistic social picture this critic may not appear to be doing anything extraordinary but a_b the time of publication such a response was rare.
By 1887 most other reviewers had made Hardy the sort of novelist they wanted him to be. Only a few realised, or were prepared to
1. 'New Novels', The Saturday Review, LXIII (April 2, 1887), p.484. 2. Ib id ., p.485.
- 282- accept^Hardy's vision. I t seemed almost impossible for c ritic s
to accept or understand that a novelist could be describing the
decay, rather than the worthwhile continuation, of established
patterns of livin g . For c ritic s less perceptive than Hutton^Giles
Winterborne had to be a symbol of continuity even i f the evidence
of the book contradicted the idea the c r itic had formed of the
character. Many c ritic s were happy to recognise Hardy as an
important novelist but only after they had defined his achievement
in the least disturbing, even in a positively reassuring, way.
6. LONGER ARTICLES ON HARDY'S ACHIEVEMENT
A distorted idea of Hardy's intention and achievement also
appeared in three longer articles on his fiction which were published
at around this time. Only one, by J.M.Barrie, made any progress
towards a genuine appreciation of Hardy's achievement, but even
Barrie shied away when the conclusions he drew became disturbing.
His a rtic le , however, is interesting both because of its positive
response to Hardy and because i t shows very clearly what c ritic s
could not accept in his work. F irst of a ll Barrie drew attention to
Hardy's 'fixed ideas about young women',^ and his feeling for 'the 2 tragedy of humanity',, both of which were themes that had been dis
cussed by several c ritic s . The essay moved into more original te rr
ito ry when Barrie started to discuss Hardy's picture of Wessex. He
emphasised that i t controlled the scheme of the novels and was
.therefore the central feature of Hardy's art: 'it is part of his
greatness as a novelist, the part that may make the historian of
Wessex a personage to posterity when i t has lost the names of a ll
1. 'Thomas Hardy: The Historian of Wessex', The Contemporary Review, LVI (1889), p.58. 2. Ib id . , p.58.
-283- his contemporaries in fic tio n save one.'^ There had obviously been a great deal of appreciation of Hardy's pictures of Wessex lif e but Barrie was the f ir s t c r itic to give the idea of Wessex a more substantial character; Wessex was in the novels as a geographical area in which Hardy could describe a large process of social change:
The closing years of the nineteenth century see the end of many things in country parts, of the peasantry who never go beyond th e ir own parish, of quaint manners and customs, of local modes of speech and ways of looking at existence. Railways and machinery of various sorts create new trades and professions, and k ill old ones...the shepherds and thatchers and farmers and villagers, who were, w ill soon be no more, and i f th e ir likeness is not taken now i t . will be lost for ever.^
This was an important realisation. Few critics had seen that Hardy's picture of a society in the process of disintegrating was an accurate social picture. But Barrie failed to pursue the theme to its proper conclusion. He retreated into the position that the surer side of Hardy's art was when the presentation was fixed, when he was recapturing an order in society which had not yet experienced any stresses and strains. The previous quotation continues: 'Mr
Hardy has given much of his lif e to showing who these rustics were 3 and how they liv e d ...' When Hardy stopped dealing with the old ways and dealt directly with the process of change Barrie lost interest in the novels. Consequently, he could judge The Woodlanders as 'a fa llin g away...'^ I t is curious- that he could have acknowledged a social process in the real world, seen that Hardy's novels related to this changing order, but hesitated to accept the novels when
1. Ib id . , p.58. 2. Ib id . , p.59. 3. Ib id ., p.59. 4. Ib id ., p.66.
-284- they actually documented change. Recapturing a historical moment, when order seemed to reign, was, for Barrie, the prime achievement of the novels. Nevertheless, his essay is important as i t was the f ir s t piece of criticism to recognise that the social relevance of the novels was based on an awareness of social change. Although
Barrie's conclusions were timid he went further than most critics by even accepting that the novelist was dealing with a true situation when he wrote about the disappearance of traditional ways of life .
His essay is impressive, for example, when i t is set alongside an essay by Edmund Gosse. Although Gosse wrote that Hardy, along with Meredith, had cultivated 'the highest branches of serious imag inative fiction,'^ his essay did little to substantiate his view.
He praised Hardy's pictures of Wessex life and his striking land scapes but hé seemed to lack any sense of Hardy's distinctive contribution to the novel. Like many critics he saw the pictures of women as central but had l i t t l e to say about them that was in any way original:
Mr Hardy's women are moulded of the same flesh as his men; they are liable to flutterings and tremblings; they are not always constant even when they are quite nice; and some of them are actually of a coming-on disposition. 2
The only real interest of Gosse's a rticle is its inadequacy in comparison with his forthrig ht and impressive a rticle on Jude the
Obscure, which is discussed in the next chapter.
Another very superficial response to Hardy came from William
Minto who, as with so many other c ritic s , could only see Hardy as a defender of traditional values. In his essay he referred to Hardy
1. 'Thomas Hardy', The Speaker, II (September 13, 1890), p.295 2. Ib id ., p.295.
-285- as the 'champion of rural character and the exponent of the noble heart that beats beneath the smock-frock...'^ Having established that Hardy's novels were set in a stable rural world Minto went on to describe the sort of theme that stimulated the w riter. They were said to be stories of some 'curious problem in man or woman's 2 conduct...' Minto thus followed a number of c ritic s in making Hardy the chronicler of emotional encounters in a fa irly idealised rural setting.
I t would not be expected that Hardy's f ir s t readers could have produced an adequate account of the scope and quality of his novels. Such an assessment necessarily takes time. But i t might well be fe lt that they adopted an excessively casual approach to the novels. They were often content to describe the books as richly entertaining, and Barrie, for example, could waffle aimlessly about the importance of love intrigues in the novels. Yet the c ritic s were never completely wrong when they wrote in such terms - hpwever distressingly realistic Hardy's picture may be it is always accom panied by a vein of nostalgia which points in a different direction.
There is seldom one simple tone or point of view in the novels. As the books were like this they could easily be read in a relaxed manner.
The enjoyment which could be derived from a Hardy novel on the level at which his women are attractive, his rustics amusing, and his stories dramatic, was not only important in their firs t reception but s t ill contributes to th e ir appeal today.
But even when the novels were f ir s t appearing i t was something more serious and substantial in Hardy's novels that attracted most
1. 'The Work of Thomas Hardy', The Bookman, I (1891), p.99. 2. Ib id . , p .100.
- 286 - attention. A number of critics drew attention to the tragic
qualities of his work, while others discussed his treatment of
timeless emotional relationships, but by far the greatest number
concentrated on the social significance of the novels, and it was
in this response that they most failed to come to terms with his
achievement. His social view was taken to be conventional and i t
was the very fact of its conventionality that stimulated the
respect of the c ritic s . But again this raises the problem that they were not completely misguided in th e ir responses. The novels
focus on a crisis of social change where a conservative or radical
reading is possible. The Mayor Of Casterbridge and The Woodlanders
impress upon us a sense of disruption, but the memory of an older
securer world s till survives. Whereas the modern critic is likely
to concentrate on the awareness of disintegration the early critic was more interested in drawing attention to the picture of a stable
life . C ritics shied away from the picture the moment i t began to show signs of disintegration. But the reason why they did this seems to be something more than a desire that fic tio n should be comforting above everything else. It really does appear that the vast majority of c ritic s could not understand what sort of process was being examined in The Mayor of Casterbridge and The Woodlanders. There were excep tions. Hutton understood exactly what Hardy was doing but refused to believe that the novels were an accurate reflection of life . A couple of c ritic s realised what Hardy was saying in The Woodlanders and praised him as they realised that he mourned the passing of a certain way of life. But the vast majority failed to grasp the social experience at the heart of the novels.
That the c ritic s could neither detect the dark undercurrents
-287— in the novels, nor offer any explanation of those darker themes
they did notice, reinforces the sense of how settled critical con
victions were . I t is most striking of all in the case of Hardy and the response to his novels. Hardy and his readers did seem to share the same point of departure, both started with the concept of, and belief in, community and community values. The in itia l premise was not strange as i t was in a James novel, which began with the idea of an individual on his or her own. Hardy began with the community and only gradually over the course of more than a decade, became aware of its disintegration. The method of Hardy's novels in the mid-eighties was to examine the concept of the well- ordered rural society and to illu s tra te in well substantiated detail how the sense of order and permanence had disappeared. I t was a pragmatic examination of what had happened to traditional certainties
But in spite of the fact that i t was undertaken so throoughly and responsibly^critics refused to accept Hardy's findings, finding i t d iffic u lt to see what he was talking about. His work was valued because, by ignoring large areas of his plots, and the experiences of the characters, i t could be read as a denial that things were fa llin g apart. The two novels in the 'nineties, however, would not offer the po ssibility of such a comfortable reading. Partly in discussions of Tess of the D‘Urbervllles, but far more in the con troversy over Jude the Obscure, c ritic s had to fin a lly come to terms with what had been happening not only in Hardy's novels but generally in fic tio n in the 'eighties.
-288- CHAPTER SEVEN: HARDY'S REPUTATION IN THE 'NINETIES
I. HARDY IN THE 'NINETIES
Although Hardy's reputation had advanced steadily during the
'eighties discussions of his work had never been very prominent in the literary periodicals. Reviews had been appreciative but restrained. Longer articles had been retrospective rather than stimulated by his latest publication. There was never any sense of the need for an urgent debate as had been the case with Zola and James.
This situation changed with the publication of Tess of the D'Urbtr^d lcs
(1891). I t received far more reviews than any earlier novel by Hardy and for the f ir s t time one of his works attracted extreme judgements.
But the book did not meet with as many disapproving reviews as the modern reader might imagine. This is surprising as i t contains a number of themes and incidents that might well be expected to have shocked an audience at that time. This becomes clear i f the novel is considered alongside Far From the Madding Crowd. This early novel of Hardy's can be regarded as defining a standard for fic tio n in the
'eighties. In its story, its characterisation, and its assumptions i t increasingly came to represent a sort of traditional steadiness by which other novels, including Hardy's own, could be judged.
Bathsheba's irresponsibility, critics had come to realise,provided an acceptable tension in the novel as Hardy portrayed an unprecedented anarchic impulse but one which society could s t ill cope with, could s t ill tame. Tess of the D'Urbervîlles is in a way the antithesis of this early novel. Whereas Far From the Madding Crowd presents a fundamentally reassuring picture of rural life ^Tess of the D'Urbervilles, apart from dealing with the emotional problems of Tess, presents a
-289- larger picture of an agricultural society in a state of decay.
It seems to deny that there is anything left of that concept of community that Hutton and others expected to see defended in fic tio n .
By going against c ritic a l expectations of this nature Tess of the
D'UrbervYlles would seem to be the sort of novel that should have been widely condemned.
In fact this did not happen. There were unfavourable reviews, but far more were published in praise of the novel. While admitting that i t was a controversial book, and one that went much further than most novels, many critics were unrestrained in their praise.
This unexpectedly positive response obviously needs to be explained.
The f ir s t po ssibility is that there might have been a very abrupt change in critical expectations in the course of a few years, so that critics in the early 'nineties no longer made the same demands of fiction as critics in the 'eighties. Such a theory is, however, not very credible, as the assumed change in values is too dramatic to be feasible. Another possibility is that Hardy cleverly calculated the degree of controversy and experiment that the c ritic s would be lik e ly to accept. Again, this seems unlikely. An explanation nearer the truth emerges if the response to his earlier novels is recalled.
Contemporary c ritic s had often emphasised certain aspects of his books and overlooked others. I t is quite lik e ly that the tolerant response to Tess of the D'Urbervtlles could equally be a result of c ritic s misinterpreting the book and imposing on i t a set of values they could agree with. As reviews discussed in this chapter w ill reveal, i t was indeed on the basis of such a distorted reading that c ritic s managed to cope with the novel.
Yet i t would be wrong to suggest that c ritic a l attitudes were not changing at a ll. The question of changing expectations needs close examination, but in general terms i t can be said that the morài-
-290- ity and attitudes of Far From the Madding Crowd would have been endorsed ju st as positively in 1891 as at any time since its publication. The opposite issue is whether Tess of t he D'Urbei-yfl les would have proved acceptable a decade ea rlier, and clearly i t would not. Hardy did take advantage of an increasing freedom in the choice of subject-matter, a steady development of the previous decade which had been accelerated by the influence of Zola. Another factor that made the novel acceptable in 1891, whereas i t would not have been a decade e a rlie r, was Hardy's reputation. His pre sentation of female characters was widely admired and so readers rather placed themselves in his hands, tolerating a degree of expl- icitness that might have proved offensive in the work of any other author. But these factors, a slight adjustment in c ritic a l expect ations and confidence in the author, do not change the fact that a bold and original work was an immediate success because c ritic s read i t in a certain way - in a way that softened and modified its content.
However, in spite of this widespread praise for Tess of the
D'Urbegyilles, there were c ritic s who disliked i t and th e ir views can profitably be considered f ir s t as they sometimes had a clearer impression of Hardy's intention in ^the novel.^ This did not apply
1. For reactions to Tess of the D'Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure 1 have relied on the collections of reviews made by Lerner and Holmstrom in Thomas Hardy and his Readers» 1968., and R.G.Cox in Thomas Hardy: The C ritical Heritage, 1970. A systematic search of periodicals from the 'nineties would not only have been formidable but irrelevant to the main subject of this thesis. As Hardy is the only author considered in detail in this later decade i t seemed unnecessary to duplicate a search which has already been performed so thoroughly. I t should also be pointed out that my emphasis on the tragic and social approach to Hardy's novels has been anticipated by Lerner and Holmstrom (pp.101-102). They do not, though, deal with the question of admiration for his characterisation which is arguably the main=
-291- to a ll hostile c ritic s . There were those who were so abusive that nothing of value can be retrieved from their reviews, but there were surprisingly few examples of such abusive criticism .
The only notable example came from Mowbray Morris, the editor of
Macmillan's Magazine, but writing on this occasion in The Quarterly
Review. His comments degenerated into a personal attack on Hardy:
The coarseness and disagreeableness of his present manner come from within rather than from without. That they come unconsciously we most w illin g ly believe; indeed i t would be only charity to suppose that they come from an inherent failure in the instinct for good taste, and a lack of the intellectual cultivation that can sometimes avail to supply its place, added to a choice of subject which must always be fatal to an author, no matter what his other g ifts may be, who has not these two safeguards.!
I t was this review that hurt Hardy most - 'Well, i f this sort of thing continues, no more novel-writing for me. A man must be a fool 2 to deliberately stand up to be shot a t.' I t is easy to understand
Hardy's bitterness. Objections to his technique, or even the moral bias of his thinking, were fa ir enough,but this review was no more than personal abuse. But such a to ta lly tasteless and unintelligent review of the novel was rare.
More common was the sort of response where a c r itic treated * Hardy with respect but made a fa ir ly awkward attempt to present a case against the novel. The Saturday Review provided a fa ir example of such a limited review. The c r itic commented that
= factor in the favourable nature of the response to Tess of the D'Urbervîlles. However, this chapter is an attempt to complement, rafHer than to contradict, their interpretation of the early response. 1. 'Culture and Anarchy', The Quarterly Review, CLXXIV (1892),p.325. 2. F.E.Hardy, The Life of Thomas Hardy, 1962, p.246'.
-292- The story gains nothing by the reader being le t into the secret of the physical attributes which especially fascinated [Alec] in Tess. Most people can f i l l in blanks for themselves, without its being necessary to put the dots on the i's so very plainly; but Mr Hardy leaves little unsaid.*
The sort of comment this reviewer objected to was, 'a luxuriance of 2 aspect; a fullness of growth...' It might seem an absurd objection, but criticism often seems petty when i t dwells on minor details.
The real lim itation of this review was that the c r itic could not pass beyond such minor quibbles. I t was not within his powers to present a broad and inclusive judgement on the shortcomings of the work. But clearly such incisiveness was not to be attained by every c r itic . Only a few in any period are capable of transcending small objections to produce a grander pattern of objections that possess some intellectual substance, some broad awareness of values. Most unfavourable criticism of Tess of the D'Urbervilles consisted of piecemeal objections from critics of limited abilities. However, such comments found a focus and more commanding expression in the reviews of two good c ritic s - R.H.Hutton and Mrs Oliphant.
Hutton's review displayed his usual mixture of perception and moral motivation. With insight he noted that Tess was
much more sinned against than sinning, though Mr Hardy is too "fa ith fu l" a portrait painter to leave out touches which show that her instincts even as regards purity, were not of the very highest class.3
1 . . 'Novels', The Saturday Review, LXXIII (January 16, 1892), p.73. 2. Ibid., p.73. 3. 'Mr. Hardy's Jess of the D'Urbervilles', The Spectator, LXVII (January 23, 1892), p.121.
-293- This quickness of response is what one would expect from Hutton, ju s t as one would expect to find evidence of his moral values; revealed here in the righteousness of the final phrase. His moral
sense emerged even more clearly when he took up the theme of duty.
Tess's failu re to te ll Angel about her past, 'was the very way to
ensure the steady lowering of her sense of duty, and invite the misery which was the natural consequence.This was only one
example of how Tess 'repeatedly shrinks from the Obvious and emphatic
duty of the hour...' These might seem crudely moralistic objections
but, if Hutton's tone is ignored, they can be seen as the central objections to the novel as they deal with crucial assumptions about
individual behaviour and social commitment. Hutton concentrates on
decisions by the characters where his assumptions about behaviour would lead him to believe that the character would take a different
course of action from that represented by Hardy. He makes the assum
ption that even a character such as Tess would, or should, be fa ir ly
rational in her behaviour, and make the decision that would suit the
needs of society as a whole. In his eyes the assumptions informing
Hardy's novels can only*be described as dangerously in d ivid u a listic.
What is admirable in Hutton's response is that he is far more
consciously aware than many of his contemporaries of the need for
the novel to comment closely on the nature of society, for the novel to record the process of social change. The limitation of his
response stems from his refusal to believe that Hardy (or any other
significant novelist of the period) was actually presenting a true
record of the course in which society was heading. As quick as he
1. Ib id ., p.121. 2. TbTd., p.121.
-294- was to see the tendency of a wide variety of modern novels he could only characterise ideas that contradicted his own social vision as reckless and anarchic. Consequently, although he could see that
Hardy's values tended in a certain direction he had so l i t t l e sympathy with such thinking that he was unable, and unprepared, to distinguish any subtleties in Hardy's picture. Hardy just fe ll into that category that seemed to include so many modern novelists - he was a social cynic making an exaggerated emphasis on the individual. The result of Hutton's unreadiness to examine the precise nature of Hardy's vision was that Hardy became represented as a far more rebellious w riter than was in fact the case. But to gain a fu ll impression of how Hutton distorted Hardy's novels some idea has to be formed of
Hardy's intention in his last great novels.
Tess of the D'Urbervîlles repeats Hardy's awareness that i t is the process of change which is painful, but with a more complex awareness of change than had existed in the novels in the 'eighties.
In The Mayor of Casterbridge and The Woodlanders the stress had been on the change from the secure life of the village to the village being, for a number of reasons, in disarray. Tess of the D'Urb&n4lles and Jude the Obscure adopt a more complex view of the past. It was not only secure but repressive. It is difficult to say which is preferable - Tess's Standard Six education, which distances her from the traditional ways, or the former imposed ignorance, the re a lity of the traditional way. As Merryn Williams has b r illia n tly pointed out, however, the earlier novels contain a muted expression of this complex view of the real significance of the past.^ In The
Woodlanders, she points out, i t is made quite clear that the past was
1. In Thomas Hardy and Rural England, 1972.
-295- far from id y llic . For example, Fitzpiers seduction of Suke is
far more complex than many c ritic s have assumed:
The harmful social effects of this liaison are emphas ised; Suke's husband is forced to emigrate to conceal the disgrace and Fitzpiers, by way of retribution, narrowly escapes being caught in the hideous man-trap which was set to mutilate poachers only a generation before the novel begins. Indeed i t is noteworthy that this, one of the mode "idyllic" of all Hardy's pictures of country life , contains the figure of Suke, the man trap, and the operations of a prim itive code of revenge.!
When these aspects of the book are pointed out i t becomes clear that
Hardy's scepticism about the concept of a meaningful community with
values worth preserving is far more radical than Hutton's generation
realised. The novels cease to be a simple matter of the contrast
between a once meaningful rural way of lif e and a community in the
process of collapsing, and become something far more complex.
But, as Merryn Williams points out, i t was not only his f ir s t
reviewers who were unaware of this attitude he held to the past. She
claims, with total accuracy, that modern c ritic s continue to read
Hardy in a way not very much different from the earliest responses.
Whereas the f ir s t reviewers, such as Hutton, refused to accept that
the picture of social disintegration was true, modern critics, she
suggests, recognise the process but s t i l l side with the old world
and s till feel angry at the destroyers such as Fitzpiers. It
follows that they make Hardy over-committed to a vision of past
s ta b ility . They are not prepared to recognise that in The Woodlanders,
for example, the village contains a ll the ingredients for self-
destruction on which Fitzpiers acts as no more than the spark. Merryn
Williams thus performs a valuable c ritic a l task when she points out that in many ways the old world was fu ll of faults and weaknesses.
1. Ibid., -p.160.
-296- Yet i t does not change, and she does not attempt to change, the basic division in the novels before Tess of the D'Urbetvilles.
In the confrontation of old and new.the old, for all its superstit ions and cruelties, s t i l l has more to offer than the new. It was this feeling for the past that enabled many of his f ir s t c ritic s to deceive themselves that traditional values s t ill lived on in
Hardy's novels. Only the more perceptive c ritic s , such as Hutton, realised that he was writing about a way of life that was represented as disappearing. So far as Hutton was concerned, the view taken by
Hardy was so cynical, so much a contradiction of the facts of social life , its existence and continuation,- that he could not feel any concern for the allegedly rootless characters in the novels. I t is not these points that concern Merryn Williams, however, but the fact that modern c ritic s attempt to impose on Hardy's two novels in the nineties the sort of tension which has some relevance when the earlier work is being discussed. She challenges the view that some sort of sense of loss can be read in Tess of the D'Urbervtlles : 'Douglas
Brown calls this "the contemporary agricultural tragedy", and other c ritic s betray a romantic view of the old rural England which is equally disto rtin g .'^ Once the point has been made,it does not need very much e ffo rt to see that,as she suggests, from the evidence in
Tess of the D'UrbervHles^nothing very positive can be alleged about the past. There is the poverty of the family, the ir drinking in a low inn, and the careless sending of Tess into a potentially dangerous situation. It is difficult to dissent from Merryn Williamstreinter- pretation. The past does seem to consist of nothing but a poor, slothful and ignorant security hardly compensated for by the annual
1. Ibid.,p.xii.
-297- May Day ritu a l. • It makes us aware that Hardy's exploration of the principal theme of the novel at the time - the breakdown of community and the disappearance of shared values - was even more complex than has previously been assumed. He was, incidentally, offering a vision that would have been even more offensive to his c ritic s than the one the better c ritic s , such as Hutton, deduced from his work. He not only presented the breakdown of values but queried whether such values had ever existed or, i f they had, whether they had ever done anybody any good. His social scepticism was therefore not merely current but retrospective. In Jude the Obscure the breakdown has been going on for so long that i t presumably even predates that period of security Hardy had once been so happy to turn to - the era presented in The Trumpet Major.
His late books offer a vision of a sick past merging into a sick present, but, and this is Merryn Williams's final point, and perhaps a rather more questionable one, with some hope for the future. The hope is contained in what might have become of the relationships between Angel and Tess, and Jude and Sue. Although Merryn Williams's interpretation of how Hardy views the past is completely convincing the way in which she makes him positive about a new tomorrow is rather less so. Her emphasis fa lls on Hardy as a social visionary.
In Jude the Obscure^he is said to present, 'an ideal of a society of integrated human beings, in which s p irit and flesh, intellectual and physical labour, can be fused into a harmonious whole.'"* The vision is certainly there, and accounts for a far from negligible part of the force of the novel. I t would naturally not only be an in fe rio r, but a worthless, book i f the visionary element was excluded
1. Ibid. , ‘ p.190.
-298- But the balance of Merryn Williams's response seems wrong. In her emphasis on the positive social vision of the last two novels she seems to pay in su fficie n t attention to Hardy's concern for
Tess, Jude and Sue as independent characters, not just representative characters, whose own lives, and whose chances of happiness or even survival in the ir own 1ifetim eâreoP supreme importance. A great novelist/Of course^has to have the sort of breadth and reach of vision she refers to but he also needs the sort of commitment to detail which the earlier sections of her account do such justice to.
Her c ritic a l work moves at the end from the re a lis tic texture of
Hardy's novels to the vision, which could not exist i f i t did not emerge from such a thoroughly substantiated picture. But in moving to the vision she seems to imply that this is where the real value of his work lie s , and that the re a lis tic examination of life was only a preparation for his vision of a way out of the contemporary misery.
Curiously, although Merryn Williams manages to expose so many of the limitations of earlier criticism of Hardy, in her final con clusions she sim plifies matters almost as much as those c ritic s she rebukes. What she has to say about his f ir s t reviewers is correct:
They continually abused his best and most serious work because they would have liked to reduce him to a mass entertainer, giving support to their own conventional and misleading views of what the English countryside was lik e .!
This is true, but i t is d iffic u lt to escape the impression that at the end of her book she substitutes another set of simplifying notions for those imposed by most of the f ir s t c ritic s . In the majority of
1. Ibid., p.xi.
-299- cases reviewers were committed to a fixed standardise imposed on the
novels an idea of s ta b ility . She is attracted to an idea of
criticism and change but shows the same concern as the more conser
vative c ritic s for something positive and useful to emerge at the
end of the novel. She seems to sacrifice the subtlety of earlier
sections of her response for dogmatic conclusions which do less than
justice to the experience of reading the novels.
Against her emphasis on a "message" or "vision" i t can be
suggested that Hardy's main concern is with the individuals who are a d rift between a dead way of life and a better world, which Hardy might speculate on but which does not come into existence in the
novels. In the last two novels his intention has shifted from picturing a world in decay for the reality of living in a world that
has already decayed. The burden now fa lls completely on the individual.
There is no member of a community that the individual can turn to for
support - in the way that Bathsheba could turn to Gabriel. Hardy's
novels now also become more inte lle ctu a l. Making the assumption that social disintegration has occurred he turns away from presenting the disintegrating process to deal with the survival of moral codes. The characters are now as often as not threatened more by such codes than , by the practical problems of life . Obviously Tess and Jude have many practical dilemmas to cope with^but the tone of Hardy's treatment of these problems has changed from the period of The Woodlanders.
For Giles Winterborne the problem of the disappearance of a way of life that would have enabled him to continue with his traditional s k ills was crucial. In the two main novels in the 'nineties Hardy seems to accept the precariousness of the employment' of Tess and
Jude. I t is the weight of moral condemnation that is the real barrier to happiness - a moral condemnation which they level against themselves ju st as much as any outsiders c ritic is e them. I t is this
-300- moral condemnation that even creates the precariousness in their employment.
Therefore, Hardy's late novels express a radical scepticism not only about the survival of certain values but scepticism about whether such values ever had any humane content. I t was a sceptical attitude that, as has been seen, seemed nothing more than cynicism to c ritic s such as Hutton. Yet, as radical as Hardy's view is in these late books, his point of departure is s t ill closer to the experience of c ritic s than is true of, for example, Henry James.
James starts with the idea that the main character is a newcomer with no inheritance to refer to. Hardy, on the other hand, was immersed in the question of the nature and influence of a character's inheritance from the past. When he turned to examine moral codes of an earlier society, and their continuation in his time, he did more than express his dislike for such cruel dogmas. He simultane ously expressed his fondness for the security offered by familiar ways of acting and thinking. His tone is often angry but in detail his treatment is often more reticent. Hardy accepts, objectively, that people are in the grip of certain beliefs and that it is no lig h t matter to abandon them for new and undefined values.
. This objectivity can be seen in Hardy's treatment of Angel
Clare, Angel does tend to appear as a prig in the novel, but his d iffic u lty in accepting Tess's confession is treated sympathetically rather than, as is sometimes assumed, with the intention of condemning him. In the following extract it is noticeable that it is Tess who accuses Angel of callous formula judgements:
She perceived in his words the realization of her own apprehensive foreboding in former times. He looked upon her as a species of impostor; a g u ilty woman in the guise of an innocent one. Terror was upon her white face as she saw i t ; her cheek was flaccid, and her mouth had almost the aspect of a round l i t t l e hole. The horrible sense of his view of her so deadened her that she staggered; and -301- he stepped forward, thinking she was going to fa ll. 'S it down, s it down,' he said in pure pity. 'You are ill; and it is natural that you should be.''
Here i t is Tess who voices the prejudices of society, while Hardy neutrally presents her imaginings about Angel's thoughts. Angel himself acts in a manner which rather contradicts Tess's assumptions.
The whole scene resists simple interpretation, particularly when a slight revision Hardy made after the publication of the first edition is considered; 'he said in pure p ity' was modified to 'he said gently', to make i t less clear whether Angel's last comment was an expression of concern or a moral judgement. Throughout the scene a similar refusal to make a simple judgement on Angel is apparent, as Hardy is most concerned with presenting the experience of characters trapped by an inherited morality, and on this occasion Angel is just as much a victim of such codes as Tess.
The hectoring notes in the last novels might qualify Hardy as a revolutionary, always looking to the future, but the real achie vement is in showing characters trapped between two ways of thinking
- between an outdated morality and a morality which has not yet been defined, and in which they obviously have no experience. The sympathetic treatment of a character such as Angel Clare is com pletely in keeping with what Hardy wrote in the Preface added to later editions, where he pointed out that 'the novel was intended to be neither didactic nor aggressive.. .a novel is an impression not 2 an argument...' Hardy's deepest motivation is not to present a new social vision, nor to refer fondly to the past, but to present as fu lly as possible the dilemma of those trapped in the contemporary situation.
1. Tess of the D'Urbervtlles, 1891, Volume I I , p.203. 2. Preface to the Fifth Edition, Tess of the D'Urberyllles, 1892,p.viii
-302- I t is the closeness of his characters to inherited values, and his own obviously complex involvement with such values, that makes
Hardy the novelist of the period with most to say to his contem poraries. He is as concerned with such concepts as community as
Hutton or any other critic. It is just that his concern leads into the discovery of complicated and discomforting truths. But one would think that with such a gradual movement from Far From the
Madding Crowd to Jude the Obscure - a journey in which a ll the steps to disillusion and despair are carefully, sensitively, and comp assionately worked out - that Hardy would have met with more under standing. One would not expect immediate appreciation of James's novels. He presented a picture of the individual on his or her own to critics who had not yet accepted an idea of social disruption.
But Hardy did deal with the process of social disruption, and worked only gradually from a position of slight social scepticism to the complex vision of Jude the Obscure. I t seems to be the sort of response to the problems of the age that should have met with some understanding. But, as relevant as his theme was to the needs of his time, the novels never met with the sort of informed appreciation they deserved.
I t underlines the fact that the social disintegration recorded by the better novelists of the period did not match the experience of the c ritic s , or at least they did not wish to see such disinteg ration presented in fic tio n . Most c ritic s managed to cast Hardy as the defender of an older order and never attempted to do justice to his questioning of assumptions of social cohesion. Hostile c ritic s were more aware of his scepticism, but they went to-the extreme of representing him as thoroughly subversive. The alternative ways
- 303- of responding to Hardy point to the ultimate lim itation of
Victorian criticism - the in a b ility to see that a novel could represent a complex, even ambiguous and self-contradicting, moral attitude. In the eyes of the c ritic s a novel represented one man's point of view, and i t did not seem too much to expect that a w riter should have definite opinions. Of course, the further back one goes in the novel the more easy i t becomes to extract the prefer ences and prejudices of the author, but by the 'eighties the author no longer made the assumption that he was speaking to an audience who shared his values. Critics did not accept that any such change had occurred. Essentially, for the Victorian c r itic , a novel always had to be serving some purpose. Hardy was acceptable i f his intention was to defend a concept of community, and, paradoxically. Hardy would have at least been understood i f his intention had been to attack an idea of community and attach himself in a revolutionary manner to the interests of the individual. Either stance would have represented commitment and could have been explained in straight forward moral terms. The very fact of bias would have given the c ritic s a v ita l clue to the meaning of his work.
The problem with Hardy, as with a ll great a rtis ts , was simply one of reticence; that his work refused to yield a simple meaning, a simple preference. The social process, specifically the social process of change, is just presented as fu lly and tru th fu lly as poss ible, with a particular emphasis on the characters caught up in such a social movement. The objectivity defeated the c ritic s who could only cope with an author i f they could accuse him of being optimistic or jaundiced. Neutrality was an effective barrier to appreciation, so effective that c ritic s magnified any perceptible
-304- bias his work offered - such as nostalgia, or anger at social con ventions. By exaggerating the emotional response they missed the substance of his art.
The peculiarity of such a response is that it meant that critics never really fu lly understood the ir own deepest preferences in the novel. A morally e x p lic it a rtis t, such as Sir Walter Besant, received great praise, but the praise was always short-lived. But the artists who made a real contribution to the novel were approached in the same way. The only explanation critics could offer of why Eliot or
Hardy were greater novelists was that their moral insight probed deeper, but all that was meant by this was that they examined a more complex canvas. I t was always assumed that the informing morality was essentially positive and straightforward. It was never recognised that the strength of the morality of the greatest fic tio n was that it was self-questioning, that as committed as it might be to social cohesion, the principle of social cohesion could at the same time be questioned. Good moral fic tio n for the Victorian c r itic became good through its thoroughness rather than through its complexity.
Those c ritic s who condemned Tess of the D'Urbervllles, principally
Hutton and Mrs Oliphant, made no comment on the complexity of Hardy's thinking. They commented only on the force of his thinking, and as far as they were concerned his principles, although forcefully expressed, were subversive and unacceptable.
Hutton could see how Hardy fe lt about the restraints of a trad ition al morality but could not get beyond acknowledging this subversive stance to appreciate Hardy's objective sympathy for a character bereft of the security of an old morality. Mrs. Oliphant's response was sim ilar. Her emphasis fe ll on trying to achieve something positive
-305- within the existing order. She commented that, 'Tess was a skilled
labourer, for whom i t is very rare that nothing can be found to
do.'^ Faced with the objection that the novel shows that an old
way of lif e has disappeared so completely that Tess could not hope
to start again,the response would have been to question, 'the 7 untrue picture of a universe so blank and godless...'
The extent to which criticism of Tess of the D'Urbenwlles
was morally-based is vividly illustrated when an isolated aesthetic
consideration of the novel is considered . Francis Adams,in The
Fortnightly Revi ew .compla ined of the unnatural ness of the conversation,
the faulty characterisation, and the absurdity of incidents such as
the murder: 'Mr. Hardy's novel is not a success - is a fa ilu re . I t
is fa r too faulty to pass. The gaps that represent bad work are 3 too large and too frequent.' The interest of Adams'$ review is not
so much the fact that he raised objections that have won some subsequent
support so much as the fact that he raised objections that no other
critic made very much of. He was the only critic to make an aesthetic
assessment of the novel. With every other c r itic the interpretation
made of Hardy's views determined the whole tone of the response.
This is even true of what might at f ir s t appear to be well-argued
aesthetic objections to the work'. A number of critics argued that
the book was too didactic. For example, Richard Le Gallienne referred
to 'the noble, though somewhat obtrusive ."purpose". . . '^ However,
the fu lle s t criticism of Hardy's didacticism came from Lionel Johnson.
He referred to Hardy's intrusions as:
1. 'The Old Saloon', Blackwood's Magazine, CLI (1892), p.473. 2. 'Mr. Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbevilles', The Spectator, LXVIII (Jan. 23, 1892), p .122. 3. 'Some Recent Novels', The Fortnightly Review, LII (1892), p.22. 4. 'Mr. Hardy's New Novel', The Star, No.1212 (December 23, 1891),p.4,
-305- this irrita b ility of casual comment: this refusal to le t the facts of the story convey the ir own moral, without the help of epigrammatic hin ts,,.the passion of revolt has led the w riter to renounce his impassive temper; and to encounter grave d if f iculties, in that departure from his wanted attitude towards a r tJ
Johnson not only appears to be arguing for an objective approach in
novel-writing but to be adopting an equally objective stance in his
own criticism. His response is not that exceptional^as all critics
professed to be aware of the dangers of didacticism. I t is just
that his aesthetic objections to Tess of the D'Urbawil1 es appear
to be particularly well-argued. But Johnson's real objection was
moral. Although a younger man than Hutton, and one associated with
a very different intellectual circle , his comments revealed that,
like Hutton, he found the social message he took to'be the essence
of Tess of the D'Urberyilles both disturbing and untrue:
I t is Mr Hardy's apparent denial of anything like conscience in men, that makes his impressive argument so sterile: granted, that there is no sign of conscious morality in the world, apart from man; and that is a vast concession; yet, to place man upon the level of other animals is to ignore the whole weight of evidence from the history of mankind in general, and of single men in particular..»^
This distaste for Hardy's moral assumptions determined Johnson's
criticism of the didactic stmiA in the novel. But, as with Hutton
and Mrs. Oliphant, it was the determination to believe that Hardy's
novel contained a subversive social message, and the excessive con
centration on a deducible moral theme, that prevented Johnson from
seeing more in the novel than didacticism. All remained unaware of
1. The Art of Thomas Hardy, 1894, pp.236-245, 2. Ib id ., p.255.
-307- Hardy's rich and honest picture of the past and present. Johnson's comments as a whole indicate that the younger generation were far from ready to cast aside the social convictions of Hutton and his contemporaries
2. ENTHUSIASTIC REVIEWS OF TESS OF THE D’URBERVILLES
Nearly every c r itic would have agreed with the social and moral assumptions informing Johnson's discussion of Tess of the ile s , yet many gave the novel an enthusiastic welcome. As has been suggested, this was because the disturbing implications of the book could be ignored and i t could be discussed as a defence of traditional assumptions,
But to make such a response to Tess of the D'Urbendlles might seem impossible. It appears to offer no possibility of the sort of re assuring interpretation that could be placed on an earlier novel such as The Woodlanders. However, the problem could be circumvented by regarding Tess of the D'Urbandlles as a tragedy, and such a response was widespread. The way in which the term "tragic" was used in reviews suggested a general study of the human condition not specifically related to any place or time. The reviews make i t clear that by concentrating on the book as a tragedy the immediate , and disturbing, social message could be ignored. I t could also be regarded as achieving that positive effect and influence which is a part of the tragic work of art. The distinction between an unfavourable view
Superficially, Johnson's distaste for Tess of the D'UrbervîHes may seem difficu lt to reconcile with his interest in the character of Clym Yeobright (discussed in chapter six). However, there is a great deal of difference between appreciating the sort of alienated character he could see as representing some of his own feelings and drawing the full implications of the stance of alienation. In Johnson's case alienation was some thing of a pose based on social weariness rather than on profound social scepticism.
-308- of the novel, when regarded as a social document, and a favourable view, when regarded as a tragedy, can be seen in the comments of
Hutton. While he deplored the book morally, bec&wse of its views on the current state of life in England, he had great respect for its tragic power: 'While we cannot at a ll admire Mr Hardy's motive in writing this very powerful novel, we must cordially admit that he has seldom or never written anything so tru ly tragic and so dramatic.'^ In Hutton's review as a whole the tragic aspect received less attention than the social theme of the novel, so the response was inevitably hostile.
Other c ritic s , however, made the tragic dimension the focus of a ll the ir comments. William Watson, for example, indicated the direction he intended to pursue in the opening words of his review:
'In this, his greatest work, Mr Hardy has produced a tragic master- 2 piece which is not flawless, any more than Lear or Macbeth is . . . '
Throughout the review the themes were removed from their contemporary setting and discussed as timeless problems of human misery and human suffering:
The great theme of the book is the incessant penalty paid by the innocent for the wicked, the unsuspicious for the crafty, the child for its fathers; and again and again this spectacle, in its wide diffusion, provokes the novelist to a scarcely suppressed declaration of rebellion against a supraniuadane ordinance that can decree, or permit, the triumph of such wrong.3
The consequence of such an approach was that Watson found nothing to
1. 'Mr.Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbevilles', The Spectator, LXVIII (January 23,T897)7"p7ÎT2. 2. 'Tess of the D'Urbevilles', The Academy, XLI (February 6, 1892), p.125. . 3. Ib id ., p.125.
-309- object to on moral grounds in the novel. Events were regarded as being almost symbolic in terms of presentation and impact rather than directly relevant to the experiences of everyday life .
It is , of course, not a misreading to interpret the novel as a tragedy, and subsequent criticism has often referred to it as one of the few English novels where the use of the term is deserved and meaningful. There is also adequate justification in Hardy's c ritic a l writings for discussing the novel in such terms. His
1888 essay, ‘The Profitable Reading of Fiction*, argued for just such a conception of the novel:
Good fic tio n may be defined here as that kind of imag inative writing which lies nearest to the epic, dramatic, or narrative masterpieces of the past. One fact is certain: in fiction there can be no intrinsically new thing at this stage of the world's history. New methods and plans may arise and come into fashion,.as we see them do; but the general theme can neither be changed, nor (what is less obvious) can the relative importance of its various particulars be greatly interfered with,'
This statement appeared between the publication of The Woodlanders and Tess ofthe D'Urbervi 1 les and clearly relates to the broadening of scope in the later novel. I t seems to uphold the c ritic a l idea that Hardy was working away from p a rticu la rity to a vast general vision. Later in the essay he expressed the hope that the perceptive reader:
w ill see what his author is aiming at ... catch the vision which the w riter has in his eye, and is endea vouring to project upon the paper, even while i t half eludes him.
Bearing in mind his view of the texture and direction of "good fiction"
1. 'The Profitable Reading of F ictio n ', The Forum, (lew York, V (1888), pp.60-61. 2. Ibid., p.63.
-310- i t would seem that this is exactly what a c ritic such as Watson managed to do. Watson fe lt that Hardy offered a powerful, almost epic, statement of the most traditional themes.
But the views formulated in the 1888 essay are complemented by, and modified by, Hardy's 1890 essay, 'Candour in English Fiction
As is characteristic of Hardy's critical writings^it is far more valuable as a comment on his own work than as a general comment on the art of fic tio n . He repeated the theme that:
There is a revival of the artistic instincts towards great dramatic motives - setting forth that "collision between the individual and the general" - formerly worked out with such force by the Pertclean and E liz abethan dramatists, to name no other.1
The argument attempted to give his own current work the highest status by suggesting precedents and implying that a ll the best a c tiv ity in the novel was tending in the same direction. But Hardy did go on to admit something that had not concerned him in his earlier essay; he suggested that something more than tragedy was required: • •
in perceiving that taste is arriving anew at the point of high tragedy, writers are conscious that its revised presentation demands enrichment by further truths - in other words, original treatment, treatment which seeks to show Nature's unconsciousness not of essential laws, but of those laws framed merely as social expedients by humanity, without a basis in the heart of things; treatment which expresses the triumph of the crowd over the hero, of the commonplace majority over the excep tional few.2
This is a significant advance on the earlier essay. The timeless epic theme must now be complemented by direct contemporary social criticism . The combination is , of course, particularly revealing
1. 'Candour in English F ictio n ', The New Review, 11 (1890), p.16 2. Ibid., p.16.
-311- of the way in which his mind was operating during the conception and writing of Tess of the D'Urb^iryilles. But, perhaps, what i t most clearly indicates is that Hardy was a far better novelist than c r itic or theoretician of the novel. I t is an attempt to under stand the impulses of his own w riting and to give them some formal definition but the theory does not suggest anything of the richness of the finished work.
Hardy's essay, in fact, is adequate only to the obvious themes of Tess of the D'Urh&f.villes. I t relates to the features that are most on the surface of the novel, the features that the f ir s t c ritic s concentrated on. When the novel is read^the tragic emphasis and the repeated protests against nature and social convention can even seem irrita tin g . They are the rougher, unassimilated aspects of the work, transferred from the essay as though to give Hardy's mind shape and direction. Why he should have needed such props to his imagination obviously needs consideration, as within the framework is an inex pressibly richer novel. In his studies of the individuals battered by various forces he achieves an immediacy and directness which is far more impressive than the rather self-conscious tragic and pro testing commentary. I t is , however, not possible to dismiss the tragic dimension as a mistake. In its fina l form the book consists of a variety of tones of voice, from compassion through to anger, a ll of which make a distinctive contribution to its greatness. Those elements which might seem aesthetically gross contribute qualities of intensity which are part of the book's impact. But i t is s t ill possible to feel that the commentary is at times over-heated, and almost threatens the delicacy of presentation of thé central events and the major pieces of characterisation. Why Hardy should not have aimed for a quality of transparency in the narrative is the question
-312- that needs to be considered. The answer is complex as i t involves his own temperament, his class and background, and the danger of imposing Jamesian standards of technical care and balance of tone on a very un Jamesian novelist. But i t can, perhaps, best be explained by again emphasising Hardy's closeness to the general experience of most readers and c ritic s , and how his work was far more closely a development of the tradition they knew than was the case with any other novelist at the time. Tess of the D'Urbemnlles, I with its 'irrita b ility of casual comment...', retains a great deal of the social commitment of the English novel. Hardy could not sever himself from the belief that fiction must be serving a purpose, that the significance must be made obvious. In this respect he is obviously closer to Eliot than James, But the peculiar tension of
Hardy's work was caused by the pessimism of his vision, the complete lack of social-confidence. Such a vision could not be presented in an aesthetically exclusive form as Hardy s till fe lt the tug of an older tradition where you talked to, and explained events to, an audience. Consequently, Tess of the D'Urbemlles is often written as i f a coherent audience with shared beliefs exists whereas the narrative clearly states that such coherence has gone. C ritics attached themselves to the coherent half of the achievement. Here was a novelist presenting a tragedy, a form which was generally recognised, generally understood, and its significance unmistakable.
In fact, the apparent contradiction of Hardy's form - a tragic structure containing something essentially mundane and realistic - enacts the dilemma of the theme of his novels. A fam iliar form, tragedy, a form which in the end implies order, even reassurance.
1. Lionel"Johnson, The Art of Thomas Hardy, 1894,: p.236.
-313- is held in tension against the incoherence of the realism. The
form, thus, parallels and deepens Hardy's theme of the desire
for order and the awarensss of lack of order. The modern reader,
reconciled to a chaotic world, is likely to find the tragic
emphasis irrita tin g . The f ir s t readers, more attached to images
of coherence, reacted most positively to the tragic pattern.
The tendency amongst c ritic s , to treat Hardy's novel as a
defence of coherence^rather than as a vision of incoherence, can
also be seen in the response to his characterisation; and, again,
it reflects a conflict of response made possible by the contradictory
impulses of Hardy's creative mind. The Victorian c r itic was always
interested in characters, and in line with normal practice the
characterisation of Tess of the D'UrbervIlles was its most studied quality, receiving even more attention than the tragic shape of the work. But here again c ritic s opted for the most secure interpretation of Hardy's intention. This was obvious in a review in The Speaker.
After some general compliments along the lines of, 'Never has he drawn 1 a sweeter heroine than the g irl whose story concerns us here,' the c r itic soon reached his main point:
All this simply means that Mr Hardy has succeeded once more in the most d iffic u lt of a ll the tasks which the writer of fiction can attempt - the portraiture of a livin g woman."*
Obviously this was something for which Hardy deserved praise, and the point was made by many reviewers. For The Pall Mall Gazette
Tess was the perfect heroine for a tragic novel:
1. 'Mr Hardy's New Novel', The Speaker, IV (December 26, 1891), p.770. -
-314- Tess, whose verisim ilitude in art and human quality is maintained throughout with a subtlety and a warm and live and breathing naturalness which one feels to be the work of a ta le -te lle r born and not madeJ
The attraction to Tess was so emotional that c ritic s could not easily f i t her into any wider context. No reviewer had anything to say about her which in any way matched the penetration of Havelock E llis 's earlier discussion of Hardy's women, and i t was again E llis who had the most original comment to make. He dismissed Tess of the D'Urber^lles as illu s tra tin g only 'a fashionable sentimental moral,' - which is , of course, unfair, but is at least preferable to the excessively sentimental interest of most reviewers in Tess. But Hardy had drawn the sort of character who could stimulate such a purely emotional response. These reviewers who concentrated on her realised that the novel did not just consist of her portrait, so either drew attention to the tragic events in, which she was involved or noted a very limited socially critical perspective to the novel. In most cases this social reading was so timid that the argument in the book was emasculated. 3 For Le Gallienne i t was a timeless illu s tra tio n of how 'the woman pays' .
For The Bookman the novel was:
an argument for Tess - an argument steeped in passion, an argument by one who knows the coarse facts are against him, and who does not try to hide them. He hopes by revealing the soul and the history behind the facts to win the reader's verdict, and his appeal is to humanity in every camp of thought.4
This argument was as general as possible. The same broad approach was repeated in The Pall Mall Gazette: Indeed, the book is , among 5 great novels, peculiarly the Woman's Tragedy 1 In this appreciative
1. 'Mr Thomas Hardy's New Novel', The Pall Mall Gazette, L III (December 31, 1891), p.3. ' 2. 'Concerning Jude t he Obscure' , The Savoy Magazine, No.6.(1896),p .36. 3. 'Mr Hardy's New Nove'F^ The Star, No.l212 (December 23, 1891,p.4. 4. ' Tess of the D*Urbem l 1 es ', The Bookman, 1 (1892), p. 179. 5. 'Mr Thomas Hardy's New Novel', The Pall Mall Gazette, L III =
-315- reviewing there was no awareness that the novel was set at a specific time and in a specific place so that the book became a reflection of the current position in society. Such an aspect was only mentioned by hostile c ritic s . Tess is of course so vivid and attractive that the degree of concentration on her by critics is understandable, but the a b ility to cut out any social implications in their interpretations is astonishing. Critics were prepared to patronise and feel sorry for Tess but not to see any particularly modern problems reflected in the events surrounding either her or
Angel.
Some c ritic s even fe lt that Hardy's picture of Wessex was as rich and sunny as ever. The important word in the following comment from Le Gallienne is "quaint":
we are once more in Mr Thomas Hardy's "Arcady of Wessex"... villages with all kinds of quaint-sounding names lie about us, Bulbarrow, Nettlecombe, Tout, Dogbury, High Stoy, Bubb Down... here all roads do not lead to Rome, but to Casterbridge.l
This is from the opening of the review, and one would expect a later suggestion that preconceptions are proved false. In fact no such expectation is justified. Wessex, with Hardy's 'fields, his sympa- 2 thetic atmosphere...' is the same as ever. Other reviewers also suggested that the setting was id y llic . The Speaker claimed that:
= (December 31, 1891), p.3. 1. 'Mr Hardy's New Novel', The Star, No.1212 (December 23, 1891 ), p.4. 2. Ibid., p.4.
-316- I t deals with the old country, the old scenes, and, we might almost say, the old people. The Wessex peasantry are once more brought upon the stage, and the dignity, the tragedy, the comedy of th e ir lives are again presented to us.l
The tone here was nostalgic and patronising.
To criticise these early responses is not to insist that
modern interpretations must be used as a standard. One would not
expect the f ir s t accounts to have the sophistication of Douglas
Brown's view of the novel as dealing with the passing of an agricul
tural order, or of Mertyn Williams's awareness that Hardy sees
nothing to value in the Wessex past. What could be expected, however,
is a vague sense that things were far from well in Hardy's Wessex and that, regardless of explanation, the life there now seemed
fa irly harsh. In fact, only the hostile c ritic s showed any awareness that the vision in the novels was one of disruption and dislocation.
These c ritic s who admired the novel avoided the issue and found alternative grounds on which to praise the work. I t is a further example of the almost universal reluctance to accept a criticism of society which in the end was not reassuring; a vision which did not conclude by judging the old standards as satisfactory and productive was intolerable. C ritics thus took the line that the book was ju st about Tess, and not about Tess, society, and morality and how society and its values affected her, specifically in the late - nineteenth century. Again, this is not a criticism of the reviewers for fa ilin g to approach the book with the p rio ritie s of a modern reader. A serious consideration of the entanglement between the individual and society was exactly what Hardy's con-
1. 'Mr Hardy's New Novel', The Speaker, IV (December 26, 1891), p.770. .
-317- temporaries expected to see in the novel. But a book was only
appreciated i f the encounter was productive, and the relationship
between the individual and his society was shown to be for the
benefit of both sides. The moment a book cast doubt on such a positive inter-relationship i t was dismissed as subversive and
intolerable. Hardy, more than any other a rtis t, was the w riter who dramatised the painful ness of that breakdown of community. But even Hardy could not take the majority of c ritic s along with him.
They clung on to, and exaggerated, any positive element in his novels, any moment of security, even if the overall impulse of a novel by Hardy was to dramatise the destruction of any such security.
So, one is not demanding that Hardy's contemporaries should have stepped outside the ir normal approaches to fic tio n in order to make a social reading of the novel, as the social approach was as fundamental then as at any subsequent time.
The very few critics who did not evade the social questioning of Tess of the D'Urberwilles a ll disapproved of the direction of
Hardy's thinking. The Athenaeum saw the social and moral questions as unnecessary: 'To have fashioned a faultless piece of art b u ilt upon the great tragic model were surely sufficient.'^ Lang, with that clear perception often shown by the most conservative reviewers, ridiculed the sort of approach which would examine the social theme:
Indeed, the story is an excellent text for a sermon or subtly Spectatorial article on old times and new, or modern misery, or the presence among us of the s p irit of Augustus Noddle.2
1. 'Tess of the D'Urbervi 11 es', The Athenaeum, No.3350 (January 9, 1892), p.50. 2. 'L ite ra tu re ', The New Review, VI (1892), p.247.
-318- Although Lang makes such an approach seem absurd i t is a pity that no enthusiastic c ritic did approach the novel in this way. I t might have led to some observations on Tess which were more than an account of the c ritic s emotional attraction to her. In the case of Tess of the D'UrberAlles there were even less observations on the general condition of society as presented in the novel than there had been in respect of The Woodlanders. Most c ritic s came to the book with a preconceived view of Wessex and did not allow the evidence of the book to challenge the ir picture. Jude the Obscure would force c ritic s to take a more direct look at Hardy's presentation of the problems of the past and present. I t was only in this last novel of Hardy's that c ritic s fin a lly had to meet fu lly the challenge of the tendency of fic tio n in the 'eighties; as Tess of the D'Urb&nwlles had the, perhaps unfortunate, potential to be read in a way which side-stepped any consideration of its major themes.
3. RESPONSES TO JUDE THE OBSCURE (1895)
Unlike Tess of the D'Urbe:v\lles, Jude the Obscure immediately became the focus for the discussion of a wide range of controversial issues. The response thus demonstrates how a variety of c ritic s felt about certain topics in the mid-nineties. The continuation of certain ways of looking at fiction can be observed and yet, at last, a few c ritic s began to find new approaches and new standards of judgement. Understandably, the f ir s t question the novel raised was the whole matter of sex and obscenity in literature. Naturally
Jude the Obscure offended many. The f ir s t debatable incident in the novel seemed to many reviewers to sum up its tone; The Morning
Post euphemistically called attention to the scene:
-319- Arrived at manhood, he falls an absurdly easy victim to the wiles of a coarse-grained g irl, who introduces herself to his notice by the simple expedient of throwing a piece of greasy bacon at his face... The chapters in which the entrapping of Jude is described are surely among the most unsatisfactory ever perpetrated by any novelist who could claim a prominent place among contemporary w rite rs.'
Mrs Oliphant shared the feeling that this new novel was "perpetrated" rather than written:
There may be books more disgusting, more impious as regards human nature, more foul in detail, in those dark corners where the amateurs of f ilt h find garbage to th e ir taste; but not, we repeat, from any Master's hand.2
Although Mrs Oliphant was outraged she did, in the course of her review, develop some reasoned objections to the book. Others did not progress so far. The Pall Mall Gazette was quick o ff the mark with the inevitable pun^Jude the Obscene, and its review consisted only of a facetious summary and such criticism as, 'd irt, drivel, and damnation... Give us quickly another and a cleaner book to take the taste out of our mouths.'3
Such expressions of shock were, however, usually accompanied by the recognition that this was not the firs t novel to deal e x p lic itly with sexual matters. Even before the publication of
Jude the Obscure James Ashcroft Noble had written on 'The Fiction of
Sexuality'j protesting at what amounted to a new movement in literature:
1. 'Books of the Day', The Morning Post, No.38, 506 (November 7, 1895), p.6. 2. 'The Anti-Marriage League', Blackwood's Magazine, CLIX (1896), p.138. 3. 'Jude the Obscure', The Pall Mall Gazette, LXI (November 12, 1895), . p741
-320- The new fic tio n of sexuality presents to us a series of pictures painted from reflections in convex mirrors, the colossal nose which dominates the face being rep resented by one colossal appetite which dominates lif e . . . Is this persistent presentation of the most morbid symptoms of erotomania a seeing of life steadily and wholly? Is i t even a clear, truthful seeina of that part of life which is unnaturally isolates?*
Following the publication of Grant Allen's The Woman Who Did
(1895) c ritic s were in some ways prepared for the theme of Jude
the Obscure, so criticism is rather less outraged than might be expected. I t is certainly more temperate than i t would have been
in the previous decade, although The Spectator, for the f ir s t time,
failed to review a Hardy novel. Mrs Oliphant fe lt that such fic tio n was now distressingly common:
What is now freely discussed as the physical part of the question, and treated as the most important, has hitherto been banished from the lips of decent people, and as much as possible from their thoughts...2
Indeed, i t was so generally recognised that litera ture now assumed a greater freedom that even one of the most outraged c ritic s , R.Y.
T yrre ll, could remain calm enough to distinguish between Hardy and
Grant Allen:
we cannot but class i t with the fic tio n of Sex and the New Woman, so rife of late. It differs in no wise... save in the note of distinction and the power of touch which must discriminate Mr Hardy at his worst from the Grant Allens and Iotas at their best.3
Most reviewers, however shocked, managed to present some sort of argument along these lines. Only The Pall Mall Gazette repeated the theme of the early responses to Zola that the book was too filth y to justify discussion.
1. 'The Fiction of Sexuality', The Contemporary Review, LXVII (1895), p.493 2. 'The Anti-Marriage League', Blackwood's Magazine, CLIX (1896),p.137 3. ''Jude the Obscure', The FortmgFtTy““Review, LiX (1896), p.858.
-321- Despite this awareness of "a fic tio n of sexuality" there was little discussion of why it should have come into existence. The only explanation seemed to be that such things were a matter of fashion and one novelist followed the lead of another. The original culprit was obviously Zola so discussions of realism, so prevalent in the 'eighties, again found some favour. As in the ea rlier decade realism did not prove a very useful term for discussing any w riter other than Zola. In relation to Jude the Obscure i t clearly le ft out of consideration many aspects of the book, just as it did with any of the really noteworthy novels of the 'eighties. Its inadequacy as a perspective for discussion was so obvious that in effect it was only very inept c ritic s who made such an approach to Jude the
Obscure. Jeanette L. Gilder, w riting under the t it le 'Hardy the
Degenerate', could offer only a limited account of the novel. She saw i t as being fu ll of, 'pages of re a lis tic details which are not merely gratuitous, but disgusting.'^ The blame was felt to lie partly with Zola but also with Tolstoy: V. Mr Hardy, in short, seems to have become equally enamoured of the methods of Zola and Tolstoi - Zola of La Terre, and Tolstoi the decadent sociologist. It is a bad blend, and the results, as manifested in the volume before us, are anything but satisfactory.^
Few other critics bothered to use realism as a critical term for discussing the novel.
The fury over Zola had passed its peak and only a small minority of reviewers made anything of a possible connection of the French w rite r's interests and Hardy's novel. R.Y.Tyrrell complained that:
1. 'Hardy the Degenerate', The World, No.1,115 (November 13, 1895), p.15. 2. Ib id ., p.15.
-322- Mr Hardy has long been creeping nearer and nearer to the fr u it which has been so profitable to the French novelist, but which t i l l quite recently his English fellow-craftsman has been forbidden to touchJ
But this sort of view was exceptional. Hardy's work had never been much discussed in terms of realism, and the fashion of regretting
Zola's influence had largely passed. Havelock Ellis was only stating the facts of the case when he commented:
Zola's chief novels, which today are good enough to please Mr Stead, the champion of British Puritanism, were yesterday bad enough to send his English publisher to prison.4
Zola had become acceptable, and the disputes about realism, so inflated in the 'eighties, had v irtu a lly disappeared. Indeed, realism had only proved a matter for controversy at all because it seemed to provide the novelist with the freedom to present the sort of picture on which pessimistic social assumptions could be imposed.
Even in the 'eighties, when the disputes had been at their height, i t had been realised that realism its e lf was not the central issue
- that the a ll important issue was the tendencies of the author's vision. So c ritic s were more or less continuing in the approach they had followed in the 'eighties when they said l i t t l e about Hardy's realism but concentrated on another matter - his informing social vision; which they took to be unsatisfactory and untrue. The difference was that for the f ir s t time this vision could not be misinterpreted, could not be read in a lig h te r, more congenial way; and i t was a more disturbing vision than any advanced in any earlier novel by any novelist.
1. ' Jude the Obscure' , The Fortnightly Review, LIX (1896), p.858. 2. 'Concerning Jude the Obscure', The Savoy Magazine, No.6. (1896), p.43.
- 323- As Hutton failed to review the novel, the most coherent
argument against Jude the Obscure was produced by Mrs Oliphant.
Her dissatisfaction centred on Hardy's attitude to marriage:
I t becomes more clear that i t is intended as an assault on the stronghold of marriage, which is now beleagured on every side... the lesson the novelist would have us learn is, that i f marriage were not exacted, and people were free to form connections as the s p irit moves them, none of these complications would have occurred, and a ll would have been w e ll.'
She had a simple answer to the problems raised in the novel - i f
Jude had shown self-control he would not have found himself in such
a predicament:
Suppose, however, that instead of upsetting the whole framework of society, Jude had shown himself superior to the lower animals by not yielding to that new and transitory influence, the same result could have been easily attained: and he might then have met and married Susan and lived happy ever after, without demanding a total overthrow of all existing laws and customs to prevent him from being unhappy, 2
It is significant that even in this short extract the emphasis goes out twice from Jude himself to an idea of 'the whole framework of society...' Individual conduct is felt to relate to the well
being of a whole society. Mrs Oliphant, of course, assumes a radical bias in Hardy's novel which sim plifies the work - as in Tess of the
D'Urbervilles, beneath the polemical surface there is a more objective
interest in how Jude and Sue cope with their experiences. Mrs
Oliphant fe lt that the intention was exclusively subversive, and this feeling was shared by the majority of hostile reviewers. Such an attitude was best summed-up by the Bishop of Wakefield who burnt the
1. 'The Anti-Marriage League', Blackwood's Magazine, CLIX (1896), p.141. 2. Ib id ., p.141.
- 324- book because of its , 'hateful sneering of a ll that one reveres...'^
It was perhaps natural to contrast Hardy with healthy novelists.
The Athenaeum reviewer contrasted Jude the Obscure with the wholesome
achievement of Meredith, who has 'triumphantly shown...' that 2 discussion of the marriage-tie 'is in place.,.' But Meredith's
convictions were essentially the same as those of his reviewers.
Clearly many of these reviewers were making v irtu a lly identical
points, but i t is noticeable that reviewers who shared Mrs Oliphant's
opinions seldom reached the level of competent expression found in
her comments. A.J.Butler, for example, cast a retrospective eye
over Hardy's career and decided that The Woodlanders was the best
novel. It was felt to illustrate an important truth:
"You can't have everything" is a formula with which most of us have been fam iliar from our tenderest years; and, in truth, it lies at the base of social existence.3
Jude the Obscure was unsatisfactory. I t neglected to mention how many good people one met in life . Butler could not understand why
a vicar had not been included as there must have been one in Beersheba who was helping to convert
a slum which could hardly be named in polite society to a decent artizan quarter. Surely men like these, and they are not solita ry instances, are real elements that should not be ignored in anything that claims to be a faithful picture of rural life and its possibilities.^
The absurdity of this criticism paradoxically draws attention to the
fact that the traditional socially-focused view of fic tio n could be perceptive and impressive. Butler starts with the same premises as
1. From The Yorkshire Post (June 8, 1896), quoted by Lerner & Holmstrom, Thomas Hardy and His Readers, 1968, p.138. 2. 'Jude the Obscure', The Athenaeum, No,3552 (November 23, 1895), p.709. 3. 'Mr Hardy as a Decadent', The National Review, XXVII (1896),p.387 4. Ib id . , p.389.
-325“ Hutton and Oliphant,but the quality of his reviewing is derisory.
They, on the other hand, are usually intelligent and stimulating.
The persistence of this m oral-utilitarian view of fic tio n among both good and bad c ritic s overwhelmed any aesthetic considerations.
Finer points of a novelist's art were only ever noticed if the critic found the general tendency of the vision acceptable, and this was true of the response to Jude the Obscure. As had been the case with
Tess of the D'Urbervllles, there were apparently technical objections to Hardy's didacticism, but these were always disguised moral objections
For example. The Morning Post critici-sed its over-explicit intention:
'fo r unless i t is to be regarded as "a novel with a purpose" i t is hard to imagine why i t should have been written at a ll. . . '^ The substance of the review, however, was an attack on 'such a farrago 2 of miscellaneous m iseries...' In fact the attacks on the didacti; of Jude the Obscure are not unjustified. Some years later Hardy regretted that his f ir s t reviewers had practically ignored the greater part of the story:
that which presented the shattered ideals of the two chief characters, and had been more especially, and indeed almost exclusively, the part of interest to myself.3
Yet i t was inevitable that the often hectoring tone would have made i t d iffic u lt for c ritic s to appreciate the richness of the charac terisation. They had naturally been most struck by the anger of the book and had replied in sim ilar terms. But, as so often in the period, this did not really affect the general nature of the reviewing.
1. 'Books of the Day', The Morning Post, No.38,506 {November 7, 1895), p.6. 2. Ibid., p.6. 3. Postscript to Preface, Jude the Obscure, Wessex Edition, 1912, pp. v iii - ix.
- 326- Didacticism gave c ritic s a recognised formal basis from which to attack the novel, but they would have been just as alive to its implications if the tone had been less strident.
Attitudes to plot and character also depended on the response the c r itic made to Hardy's informing vision. For The Pall Mall Gazette the structure seemed absurd:
ending up in the remarriage of a ll the divorcees, making, to the best of our reckoning, a total of six marriages and two obscenities to the count of two couples and a half - a record performance, we should think.*
For the appreciative Gosse, however, i t was a 'study of four liveSy a rectangular problem in failures, drawn with almost mathematical 2 rigidity.' There was no consistent attitude to plot amongst reviewers.
A simple story could make a general appeal i f i t was acceptable morally. In practice, however, it was the newer novelists who dispensed with complicated plots and so the novel with an uninvolved plot became associated in the critics^minds with suspect moral values.
The same, verdict applies to characterisation. Any sort of complexity or extended analysis was permitted i f the moral scheme was regarded with favour. One reaction to Jude the Obscure made this especially clear. The Athenaeum c r itic complained that he had no understanding of Jude:
there is no tragedy, at any rate so far as Jude's unfulfilled aims go, because i t is impossible to understand the man and feel any sympathy with him, and without the sympathy at least of human fellow feeling there is no tragedy possible.3
He then compared him with Meredith's Sir Willoughby Patterne, with a ll the advantages being given to The Egoist:
1. ' Jude the Obscure' , The Pall Mall Gazette, LXI (November 12, 1895), p.4. 2. 'Mr Hardy's New Novel', Cosmopolis, 1 (January 1896), p.61. 3. 'Jude the Obscure', The Athenaeum, No.3551 (November 23, 1895), pT709:
-327- there is a tragedy in Sir Willoughby Patterne's fate for which one feels a sympathy; for however odious he is made, he is always a man, and one knows enough about him to say that he would have done exactly what he is said to do. Now about Jude, one does not feel that; he is rather a flabby atom without any individuality, who does things because Mr Hardy wants to point a moral by them...
The comparison is amazing because to modern readers i t is Jude who seems real and Patterne who seems abstract and manipulated. In fact this was a wayward judgement and most reviewers had some sense of the s o lid ity of Hardy's character. They even quite liked his ordinariness, although they detested his extraordinariness. The Pall
Mall Gazette hated the novel, but could say: 'Of a ll the unlovely and unloveable characters Jude himself seems to us the least unlovely 2 and the least obscure. He is, in truth, a fine conception.' But this admiration was qualified: 'though marred and shadowed by an 3 almost impossible weakness of w ill and wisdom.' The Guardian's reviewer also fe lt that the book deteriorated as soon as Jude became awkward and implacable: 'As a boy he is interesting and touching, 4 but as a man contemptibly weak, unstable, and maundering.' There was some sympathy for Jude -as he went through the normal experiences of lif e , but only annoyance was fe lt when Jude created abnormal experiences for himself. The same view was taken of Sue. .
These statements need to be qualified, however, by the fact that not many reviewers paid much attention to the characters. Jude and
Sue were discussed far less than most characters in most novels in the normal course of reviewing. The theme of a questioning of the
1. Ib id . , p.709. 2. 'Jude the Obscure' , The Pall Mall Gazette, LXI (November 12, 1895),p.4 3. Ibid., p.4. 4. 'Novels', The Guardian, L (November 13, 1895), p .1770.
-328' marriage bond proved so offensive that the argument did not usually proceed beyond this point. Before Jude the Obscure i t had always been possible to fa ls ify and moderate the emphasis of
Hardy's novels, but on this occasion i t proved impossible. The novel unavoidably presented a pessimistic view of marriage, the very basis of society. On the evidence of this novel the majority of marriages were either unhappy or disastrous. There was a feeling that Hardy had broken fa ith with his readers. The Pall Mall Gazette ] made a plaintive request: 'So, Mr Hardy, don't disappoint us again'.
Most reviewers were dismayed and disgusted that a leading novelist could be maintaining such a socially sceptical, or in their eyes cynical, thesis.
Yet, despite this distaste for Jude the Obscure, the publication of the novel also offered the f ir s t signs of the emergence of a new generation of c ritic s more sympathetic to the assumptions of such a work. There were a number of reviews which were d is tin c tly a product of the 'nineties and which were quite uncharacteristic of the earlier decade. Lerner and Holmstrom suggest that, 'The picture is not very 2 different from the mixed reception that greeted Tess. . . ' , but this is inaccurate. There was not only, as they mention, 'a new note 3 of vi Lu-j^eration... ' , but the emergence of new views which had not been revealed in the response to any of Hardy's other novels.
Edmund Gosse, in the finest review, showed far more awareness of the value of Hardy's work than in his essay six years before. The profoundest realisation of Gosse's review was that Hardy was not just fashionably pessimistic^but that the misery and complications of the
1. ' Jude the Obscure' , The Pall Mall Gazette, LXI (November 12, 1895),p.4. 2. 'Lerner & Holmstrom, Thomas Hardy and His Readers, 1968, p.147. 3. Ib id . , p.147.
-329- novel were founded on fact and historical experience. He regretted
that Hardy had to abandon the old Wessex, but recognised the
necessity of turning to a less pleasant landscape;
The local history has been singularly tampered with in Berkshire; it is useless to speak to us of ancient records where the past is obliterated, and the thatched and dormered houses replaced by modern cottages.
He indicated how the local history was paralleled by the family
history: 'he has undertaken to trace the lamentable results of 2 unions in a family exhausted by inter-marriage and poverty,'
Decay could not be accepted this passively by the majority of reviewers. Consequently they could not understand Sue, whereas
Gosse saw clearly the sources of her idiosyncrasy : 'Sue is a strange 3 and unwelcome product of exhaustion,' For the f ir s t time a reviewer accepted the brunt of Hardy's theme that the past offered no sense of order, no continuing values which could influence and help the present, but that i t s t i l l reached out to trap and destroy people.
There were lim its to Gosse's understanding of the novel.
He could not see the va lid ity of Christminster as a symbol. I f any
institution should have the capability of representing the continuing v a lid ity of the past in the present i t should have been the university, but this merely repeats the long process of betrayal.
Gosse could not see th is, and so could only regard the Christminster aspect as an imperfectly integrated theme:
it is difficult to see what part Oxford has in his destruction, or how Mr Hardy can excuse the rhetorical diatribes against the university which appear towards the close of the book, 4
1. 'Mr Hardy's New Novel', Cosmopolis, I (1896), pp.62-63. 2. Ib id . , p.64. 3. Ibid., p.67. 4. Ib id . , p.64.
- 330- This, however, was only a minor failing in an important review.
The central point about Gosse's comments was that he accepted
Hardy's pessimism and its historical and social ju s tific a tio n .
Moreover, unlike some appreciative c ritic s , he saw how this was not ju st presented as sociology but converted into the imaginative substance of art. He praised the manner in which Hardy managed
'to rive t our attention on the prosaic arable land encircling the dull hamlet of Marygreen.' He also went on to suggest that this was probably a more d iffic u lt achievement than the ea rlier, sunnier setti ngs.
It would appear at first that in accepting this sort of vision
Gosse had managed to abandon the social position so many c ritic s expected from fic tio n , and indeed he claimed that i t was not his place to make a moral judgement on the book: 'Criticism asks how the 2 thing is done, whether the execution is fine and convincing.'
In fact, though, his response was more complex. The review showed him to be wavering between two kinds of thought. On the one hand, he could not completely abandon the traditional social expectations ' . of fiction, and it is clear that he was to some extent scandalized.
Yet he revealed a sympathy for the individual and his problems - even i f these problems were of the individual's own making, due to a lack of will and self-discipline - that indicates a different, and new, view of society. The tension is particularly evident in the response he made to the analytic method. He began by expressing a fairly common view: 'the physician, the neuropathist, steps in.
1. Ib id . , p.63. 2. Ibid., p.66.
-331- and takes the pen out of the poet's hand.'^ The comparison between modern fic tio n and the investigation of disease had been made time and time again^and so Gosse's expression of such a view did not seem very promising. In the course of his review, though, he opted for a new perspective, and his understanding of Sue stemmed from a sensitive appreciation of the plight of the individual:
She is a poor, maimed "degenerate", ignorant of herself and of the perversion of her instincts, full of fertile, amiable illusions, ready to dramatize her empty life , and play at loving though she cannot love.^
The Illustrated London News also admired the book, but the lim itatio n of this review was that the c r itic , unlike Gosse, did not see that the novel probed deeper than an unconventional and self-consciously modern stance. I t found in Sue a 'too evident e ffo rt to focu s...a ll the restless imaginings of our modern adven- 3 turous womanhood...' Gosse had a fu lle r awareness of Sue as 'a te rrib le study in pathology,..'^ He found her te rrifyin g but not distasteful or untrue. He saw the negative as well as the positive aspects of her personality whereas the critic in The Illustrated
London News,viewed her rather too positively as a "New Woman".
As this review suggests, there was a tendency for some enthusiastic reviewers to view the book from a committed position. The Saturday
Reviews appreciation could even be described as socia list in its sympathies. I t saw Jude's attempt to enter university as the main theme:
1. Ib id . , p.65. 2. Ib id . , p.67. 3. 'Mr Hardy's New Novel', The Illustrated London News, CVIII (Jan 11, 1896), p.50. 4. 'Mr Hardy's New Novel', Cosmopoiis, I (1896), p.67.
-332- For the f ir s t time in English litera ture the almost intolerable d iffic u ltie s that beset an ambitious man of the working class - the snares, the obstacles, the countless rejections and humiliations by which our society eludes the services of these volunteers - receive adequate treatment.'
For this reviewer the book was:
Mr Hardy's tremendous indictment of the system which closes our three English teaching Universities to what is , and what has always been, the noblest material o in the intellectual lif e of this country - the untaught.
The novel obviously appealed to him as i t made a conscious challenge
to the past, but as a reviewer he was already in agreement with the
thesis he extracted from the novel. It was natural that there
should have been an a ffin ity between progressive p o litica l groups and
some developments in lite ra tu re , and this was the case here. I t was
particularly so in the 'nineties with the emergence of such men as
Shaw and Wells. But these heterodox thinkers tended to be positive, and The Saturday Review offered a very positive socially - corrective view of the novel. This meant that the issues were rather sim plified;
but, nevertheless, this limited sort of appreciation would at least contribute towards making some formerly notorious novels and novelists
> * acceptable in the last years of the century. There seems to be no evidence of such political stirrings affecting literary criticism in the eighties.
As has been suggested, however, Gosse's response was unpolitical, and perhaps suggests a rather fu lle r modification of assumptions.
The development of Gosse's emphasis on the individual would prepare the ground for a later acceptance of James, an author unlikely to receive much attention from politically-minder critics. Gosse's
1. 'Jude the Obscure', The Saturday Review, LXXXI (February 8, 1896), pTT5J7 2. Ib id . , p .154.
-333- view of Jude the Obscure was far more pessimistic than that of
The Saturday Review's c r itic in that he saw Jude and Sue mainly as examples of exhaustion and fatigue. Yet he provided indications of an altogether new sympathy and understanding for the complex personal dilemma that resulted from the floundering of a known social order:
Sue is a strange and unwelcome product of exhaustion. The vita sexual is of Sue is the central interest of the book... Fewer testimonies w ill be given to her re a lity than to Arabella's because hers is much the rarer case.l
Gosse's review marked the beginning of some sort of appreciation of 'the rarer case...'
In this response Gosse is an even more interesting reviewer than
Havelock E llis , because Gosse was converted by the evidence of the book. E llis was emphatic in his welcome for a new stress on the individual because his own mind had been nurturing such ideas. He celebrated, 'the more organic and radical way in which he now grips 2 the individuality of his creatures.' Gosse, on the other hand, seems to have been more attracted by traditional values and accepted concepts. In order to appreciate Jude the Obscure he had to wrench himself away'from a certain set of beliefs and accept that a new social situation had arisen. His review thus becomes one of the few examples of a c r itic making a quite dramatic adaptation of his ideas as a consequence of reading a novel. But the change of attitude
Gosse made.was only that enacted in Hardy's career as a novelist.
He had worked slowly and reluctantly from a concept of community to an idea of the isolated individual. He was as reluctant as critics to accept that such a painful process of dislocation had occurred.
So, in view of this extraordinarily sensitive and concerned treatment
1. 'Mr Hardy's New Novel', Cosmopolis, I (1896), p.67. 2. 'Concerning Jude the Obscure', The Savoy Magazine, No.6 (1896),.p.41
-334- of this theme, i t is amazing that Hardy could not take the c ritic s with him step by step. But, the situation was that c ritic s refused to recognise this problem of social decay, even though Hardy faced up to i t with every acknowledgement that i t was a painful fact to accept, and that nostalgia for an old order was tempting. I t was only when Jude the Obscure eliminated any possibility of nostalgic reference to the past that c ritic s were forced to rethink their view of Hardy, and i t was s t ill only a minority who could accept his vision
However, the isolation of Gosse, and the few c ritic s who could appreciate the novel on p o litica l grounds, is in some ways not very important. The breakthrough to a new attitude had been made, and i t would only be a matter of time before more c ritic s would join Gosse in seeing that Hardy's theme was change. But the immediate situation was that Gosse and a few others stood alone. The majority of c ritic s in 1896 s t ill expressed that preference for a socially positive novel, with no alien or alienated elements, that had been the standard expectation throughout the 'eighties. The astonishing thing is that the c ritic s seemed to be defending a sort of positive novel that had never existed. A degree of social scepticism accompanied by a commitment to the individual had been the pattern of the English novel since the 1840's. The peculiar problem arises that i t was not ju st the novels published in the 'eighties that failed to match c ritic a l expectations, but the whole tradition of the novel seemed to be at odds with the demands made by the reviewers.
-335- CHAPTER EIGHT: GEORGE ELIOT IN THE 'EIGHTIES - SOME CONCLUSIONS
ON THE PERIOD.
1. CRITICS AND THE TRADITION OF THE NOVEL
Resistance to the increasing emphasis on the individual by
Hardy, James and Gissing would be understandable i f th e ir novels had shown no continuity with the tradition of the English novel.
I f preceding works had offered a credible impression of social cohesion then the new fic tio n of the 'eighties would have represented an unwelcome and disturbing break from tra dition . But earlier novels were not as socially positive as critics in the 'eighties seemed to demand. George E liot did not offer an easy and reassuring concil iatory theme, and a tradition of social scepticism extends back beyond her novels. Hard Times (1854) presented a vision of industrial society strangling individual freedom and concluded with a vision of defeat - Tom and Louisa cannot achieve a working compromise with society. Such social pessimism was characteristic of Dickens's novels. Emily and Charlotte Bronte also sided with the individual and both present a disturbing vision of society repressing individual freedom. Even a novel such as Mrs Gaskell's North and South (1854-55) has sim ilar elements. On the surface i t is a rather superficial treatment of social problems with the extremes of social life rather obviously presented. It achieves a reconciliation in its final pages that would have appealed to c ritic s in the 'eighties - social improvement is brought about by more altruistic, less selfish behaviour on the part of a ll involved. Of course, Mrs. Gaskell's sincerity cannot be denied, but a rtis tic a lly much of the pattern of the novel, and especially the resolution, is thin and unconvincing.
But at the heart of the novel, and giving the work a resonance that
-336- the social theme does not supply, is the character of Margaret
Hale. This is an impressive picture of alienation, of the single woman of intelligence who has no way of expressing and f u lfillin g herself. Clearly Margaret Hale does not act as independently and recklessly as Sue Bridehead, but the reader can hardly fa il to notice that Margaret is less than completely satisfied with the role she is offered. Even in the overall conciliatory pattern of the novel we are aware that the social compromise leaves desires unfed, needs unattended, and possibly lim its , as much as i t extends, the personality.
So the c r itic in the 'eighties was not presented with a to ta lly new view of the relationship between the individual and the wider community. Even i f he ignored its expression in the early
Victorian novelists he could not avoid the fact that Middlemarch deals with the same sort of problem. Presumably not even the heartiest Victorian critic, eager for the well-being of society at any cost to the individual, would have advocated that such an extra ordinary g irl as Dorothea should have settled for marriage with Sir
James Chettam. But i f she had been criticise d fo r not accepting
Chettam i t would only have been consistent with the lack of sympathy for the self-regarding individual that seemed to inform so many reviews in the 'eighties. C ritics seemed to refuse to accept that some social institutions and conventions had permanent lim itations which meant that many people would always suffer as a consequence.
This led criticism into intolerance of an extended study of the in dividual, and in the cases of those novelists in the 'eighties who . repeatedly offered such a study c ritic s often became hysterically
-337- antagonistic. Pre-eminently this applied to James's novels and the later novels of Hardy. But the curious point is that critics reacted as i f fic tio n had suddenly changed direction, rather than the fic tio n of the 'eighties developing themes that earlier novelists had already touched on, and touched on, in the case of
Emily Bronte, for example, in a far from muted form.
Not only the tradition of novels which challenged complacent social assumptions but the quantity of such novels that appeared in the 'eighties might have been expected to affect the c ritic s . By the end of the decade i t was realised that not just a few but many novelists were at odds with traditional values. Gladstone even welcomed a book because i t took a stand against the sceptical values of modern fic tio n , and in such a response he was not alone:
It is with great gallantry as well as with great ability that Margaret Lee has ventured to combat in the ranks of what must be taken nowadays as the unpopular side, and has indicated her belief in a certain old-fashioned doctrine that the path of suffering may not be the path of duty alone, but likewise the path of glory and of triumph for our race.'
Reviewing time and time again fe ll into such a morally -insistent manner. Even books which only marginally transgressed the bounds of respectability were censured. In 1887 the immensely popular novelist William Black published Satina Zembra. I t could stand as a case - study of the reassuring novel. Its only interest for the modern reader is in the manner in which i t f lir t s with a dangerous theme but quickly reassumes a wholesome pattern. Especially expedient is the death of the v illa in at the point in the story where a real problem is anticipated. The novel deals with the marriage of
Satina Zembra, the daughter of a p o liticia n , to a breezy young man,
1. 'Noticeable Books', The Nineteenth Century, XXV (1889), p.215.
-338- Fred Foster. Foster, a former jockey, is chosen in preference to an a rtis t, Walter Lindsay. Foster inevitably proves a waster and is soon wanted by the police. He is lent money by Lindsay in order to protect Satina from too much pain. Fortunately Foster k ills himself, and after a decent interval Satina and Lindsay marry.
The plot has one final tw ist. There is some danger of Lindsay losing his sight, but an operation is successful and his career and marriage both prosper. The possible loss of sight seems to have no connection with what has gonebefore. I t appears to be added only as another item of interest to help pad out the novel to the required length. m
Such a novel was lik e ly to meet with a fa ir amount of enthusiasm from reviewers. For The Saturday Review:
This lif e of Fred Foster, the turf-man and better on horseraces, is a tragic sketch of stronger and darker colour than Mr Black often allows himself to place upon his palette. Fred is such an idle, good-humoured, amusing sort of commonplace fellow, that it is not until we have followed him through his course of rapid degen eration, seen him clutch at every protruding bit of the scaffolding of frivolous mischief of which alone his life is built, seen every false chance fail him, that we realize the whole meaning of the picture.'
However, fo r another c r itic Black's novel revealed a disturbing degree of cynicism. B. Montgomerie Ranking thought i t unlikely that Foster would have proved such a v illa in when the moral influence of his wife should have been sufficient to save him:
In the man's case, i t is painful to trace the gradual deterioration of a nature, o rig inally frank and honest, if rather self-indulgent and egotistical. One may be pardoned for doubting whether Foster would, in real life , have sunk so rapidly, and shown himself so utte rly in capable of realising what he owed to the woman who had stooped to marry him.^
1. 'Four No-vels', The Saturday Review, LXIII (April 23, 1887),p.588, 2. 'New Novels', The Academy, XXXI (April 23, 1887), p.286.
-339- Ranking's attitude was excessively moral, even for the 'eighties, but his point-of-view was only an extension and exaggeration of the moral impulse that dominated most criticism .
The response to Black's novel illu stra te s another curious aspect of criticism in the period. Although Black shared the values of most of the c ritic s none of them ever seriously maintained that he was a great novelist. He seemed ably to f u l f i l l the demands c ritic s placed upon fic tio n , yet they remained aware that something more was required for real success. But any more challenging novel was met with disapproval. The position of the reviewers then was that they demanded that fic tio n illu s tra te certain values, but when a work did they dismissed i t , either immediately or within the space of a few years, as superficial. This was true of the response to Black and also of the response to Sir Walter Besant, for a short time the most praised novelist of the period before the a r t if ic ia lit y and naivety of his work became apparent. But this rapid disenchant ment with safe novelists did not provoke any sympathy for work that attempted to present a flu id social situation. Neither the novels published in the 'eighties nor the tradition of English fic tio n made critics appreciative of work which tended in a certain direction.
The great Victorian novels are disturbing works which do not offer complacent social solutions. As c ritic s seemed to want a social solution above a ll else, but one accompanied by qualities of a rtis tic greatness, the best way of resolving the apparent problems of critical views is to see how critics responded to this tradition.
And the novelist who can be most profitably studied from this per spective is George Eliot. Dickens could obviously be classified as an entertainer and so c ritic s could avoid a confrontation with the fu ll force of his work. The social impact of the Bronte's could also
-340- be disguised - they could be classified under a general label of
"romance", with the im p licit suggestion that the ir novels had l i t t l e relevance to real life . I t was thus easy to overlook the complexity of these novelists, to make them comfortable and conformist.
George Eliot was a different case. She dealt directly with social issues and was so obviously a "re a list" that the social issue had to be considered as d ire ctly by c ritic s as she considered i t herself.
Her work also displays sim ilar tensions to those found in Hardy's fic tio n , and which have been said here to be the crucial problems faced by c ritic s in the period. George E liot is, of course, in many respects more positive than novelists in the eighties. She trie d to achieve a positive sense of community, and in her overall structures usually did, but in the course of events she suggests, especially in the character of Dorothea, radical discontent with the social order. Clearly she is not as pessimistic as Hardy, but even though she can envisage a continuing social order i t is one she is resigned to, and defends not because i t displays any particular strengths but because she can simply see no alternative. Consequently,
George E lio t, p o s itiv is t as she was, does not have such a positive social sense as c ritic s seemed to demand. The reaction to her novels, therefore, should suggest correspondences and parallels to the response to the novelists of the 'eighties.
2. GEORGE ELIOT'S REPUTATION IN THE 'EIGHTIES.
The most extreme reaction to Eliot in the 'eighties was to regret her influence and dispute her importance. Such heavy-handed criticism was fortunately not that common. It can only be found amongst the keenest defenders of romance, and in particular i t is seen in the comments of Hall Caine. Caine saw himself as standing
-341- out against pessimism and fighting for a fiction of ideals.
Realism and analysis were the enemies of the sort of idealism he
believed the public now demanded. He took up such points in his
discussion of a book by Robert Buchanan, A Look Round Literature.
In the course of his review Caine turned to discuss George E liot
and c riticise d her method, not ju st as revealed in Middlemarch and
Daniel Deronda but also as seen in Adam Bede:
Her veracity is her originality. The old story of seduction, flight, disaster, death is now her story, because she has made i t her own in the pathos and power of the episode of Hetty Sorrel. But this is the art of the microscope. It is the perfect veracity that finds its highest exponent in Goethe. I w ill go farther than Mr Buchanan, and say that this veracity which is so admirable in its way, has, in the works of George E liot and in George E lio t's influence, done more harm to imaginative lite ra tu re in England. Now adays the c r itic who te lls you that a novel is a true picture of everyday life , that it is natural and probable, and so forth, believes that he has struck the best, if not the highest, note of praise. As if this fidelity to the pots and pans of life , this naturalness, this probability, this authenticity, could be rig id ly applied to any masterpiece whatever! Of the rapture of inspiration, of the rugged power of creating ideals, I see nothing in George E lio t.'
Despite the obligatory notes of respect the main d r if t of Caine's comment was hostile. I t obviously represented a defence of his own approach to fic tio n . Although formal considerations were in tro duced, and although realism was made the e x p lic it focus for the attack, i t was the assumptions behind George E lio t's fic tio n that
Caine was mainly concerned with attacking. George E liot did not attempt to offer the reader a transcendental pattern of values. Caine's view was that as the modern novel consistently refused to uphold ideals its o rig in a lity could not be the basis of 'any masterpiece whatever!'
1. 'A Look Round Literature, by Robert Buchanan', The Academy, XXXI (Feb 26, 1887), p.141,
-342- Caine's case gives weight to a common impression among modern
critics that George Eliot's reputation declined in the 'eighties.
This over-simplifies the nature of the response to her novels;
although such a sim plification was already being established within
the period. C.H.Herford wrote in 1887:
George E lio t's reputation has, since her death, palpably waned, partly because the predominance of a very different school of romance has thrown into glaring re lie f the undoubted flaws in her a rt...*
To give some credit to Herford, he did add that the other reason for the declinein her reputation was, 'the recurring impatience of the naturalman in the presence of a g e n i u s . But this was subsidiary to his argument that the emergence of romance had made
George E lio t's art seem too mundane. When Caine expressed the same view i t was simply self-deception but Herford had no particular allegiance to romance. He was, however, w riting at the time of the firs t energetic outpouring of romance, and there was some justification for him believing that i t might be more than a temporary phenomenon.
Most c ritic s , however, did not take romance very seriously, or were rapidly disenchanted, so i t is not sufficie n t to say that E lio t's reputation fell with the rise of the romance. The pattern of response to her work was more complex than th is, and in turning away from Caine to more reasonable voices the views expressed become tha,t much more complicated and interesting.
Mrs Oliphant, for example, preferred the early books, and i t was in comments on Scenes of Clerical Life (1858) that she revealed her expectations from George Eliot's fiction:
1. ' George E liot: ih r Leben und Schaffen. Van H. Conrad', The Academy, XXXI (May 7, 1887), p.318. 2. Ib id ., p.318.
-343- she never struck a stronger or a deeper note than in the simply story of Arnos, or rather of M illy Barton, the poor curate's mild and lonely wife, the mother of many children, the smiling domestic martyr, whose l i t t l e tragedy has taken a place among our most cher ished recollections as completely as i f we had been members of the l i t t l e rural parliament which discussed her simple storyJ
Mrs Oliphant's stress fe ll on illu stra tio n s of simple n o b ility and
courage in domestic situations. No less than Caine, she read
E liot by the standards of her own work and v/as not concerned with
looking for an ambitious vision informing the novels. She expected
nothing more than a modest moral fable. The sustained popularity
of her own novels suggests that i t was ju st such heart-warming
qualities that many readers expected to find illustrated in fiction.
Mrs Oliphant thus conforms to that image of the c r itic in the
'eighties with which this chapter began. She did not wish to see
fic tio n taking a pessimistic lin e , she expected an impression that was comforting and reassuring to emerge from a novel, and she would
read selectively among an author's works to find such positive values. She regarded the later works of George E liot as an unfortunate, misguided and essentially uncharacteristic development;
The latter works of this great writer are, to our mind, injured by too much philosophy and the consciousness of being considered a public in stru cto r,.
Presumably Mrs Oliphant objected as much to the increasing complexity of the problems considered, and the treatment and discussion of these problems, as she did to George E lio t's role as 'public instructor'.
Mrs Oliphant's response is interesting as i t resembles the common response to Hardy in which c ritic s ignored a ll the unacceptable
1. 'The Old Saloon: The Literature of the Last F ifty Years', Blackwood's Magazine, CXLI (1887), pp.756-757, 2. T bi d ".',-f77571
-344- elements. Many c ritic s , and especially members of the reading public, seemed to share Mrs Oliphant's preference for Eliot's early work. But she dismissed the later novels rather sweepingly and i t is more interesting to turn to a critic who did attempt to come to terms with Middlemarch and Daniel Deronda. Hutton made a considered study of the late novels both on the occasion of the ir publication and again in the 'eighties. Astonishingly, on the different occasions his views were v irtu a lly opposed. He f ir s t considered
Middlemarch on its appearance and he had no doubts that i t was a masterpiece:
i t is not too much to say that George E liot w ill take her stand amongst the stars of the second magnitude, with the cluster which contains Scott and Fielding, and indeed a ll but Shakespeare, on a level of comparative equality with them.. . ‘
He praised the characterisation, the 'delineation of two ill- assorted unions...'2, the 'groups of Middlemarch townspeople. . . ' 3 , and 'the wonderful humour of the book...'^ Holding all this together was a purpose which was admirable, although never obtruded: 'The whole tone of the story is so thoroughly noble, both morally and 5 in te lle c tu a lly ...' Hutton was impressed by the earnest and serious treatment, and had only praise for the honesty of the presentation of the two main marriages in the book.
He returned to the subject of George E lio t in 1885, and the comments could be by a different man. The occasion was the publication of Cross's biography of his wife in which he revealed the extent of her lack of faith and also the details of her personal life , specif-
1. 'MiAdJemarch', The Spéctator;, XLV (December 7 , 1872)V- p.T555., 2. Ib id ., p.1555. 3. Ib id . , p.1556. 4. Ibid.,-p.l556. 5. Ib id . , p.1556. .. . .
-345- ic a lly the relationship with Lewes.^ Hutton's 1885 essay seemed to open reasonably enough; he described E lio t's works as stemming from:
deep-rooted helplessness, and, what may have had the same origin, sheer incredulity as to the existence of that of which she had no plain evidence.2
His review of Middlemarch had recognised this but had praised her sympathetic treatment of the problem of how lif e could be continued in spite of such feelings of a wider hopelessness. In 1885 he condemned such a despairing attitude. I t had become a 'chronic feebleness of hope and in a b ility to take a strong grasp even of 3 the true significance of past moral experience...' The passing of time did not make Hutton more appreciative of the humanity of
Eliot's presentation of existence but more and more intolerant of the fact that the problems she raised should have been treated at a ll. In 1872 the book had struck him as 'thoroughly noble, both morally and in te lle c tu a lly ...'^ , but by 1885 he had doubts about
George Eliot's' in te lle c t. He argued that she had completely abandoned ideas for a facile scepticism:
For nothing strikes me more in this biography than the absence of the least trace of struggle against the conclusions of the various ra tio n a lis tic schools through which George E lio t's mind p a s s e d .
The a rticle went on to suggest that she was a woman of only small capabilities and that the intellectual reputation was largely a mis conception. To be fair, Hutton was now dealing with George Eliot's
1. J.W.Cross, George E lio t's Life as related in her Letters and her Journals, 3 Volumes, 1885. 2. 'George E lio t', The Contemporary Review, XLVII (1885), p.375. 3. Ib id . , p.376. 4. "'Middlemarch', The Spectator, XLV (December 7, 1872), p.1556. 5. 'George L'liot',~The Contemporary Review, XLVII (1885), p.376.
'346- lif e and not directly with the novels, but the whole tone of his comments did seem to withdraw approval from the fic tio n . On no occasion in the a rtic le did he state that the novels were greater than might be expected from such a woman.
I t is possible to dismiss this a rtic le by Hutton as an unpleasant deviation from his usual intellectual standard. I t could be argued that he was over-reacting to the biography, and its revel ations, and that this led him in to an uncharacteristic insensitivensss
For example, one section of the a rtic le , where he dealt with the relationship between E liot and Lewes, is distasteful. He argued that such immorality in her private life inevitably led to her taking marriage less seriously than respectable people; with the im p licit suggestion that in her works she could not appreciate the feelings and sense of responsibility of married people:
the woman who sets the example of dispersing with that lie in her own case, sets the example of entering upon relations which no good intentions on either side, nor even mere, good intentions on both, can secure by giving to these relations the seriousness and permanence which George Eliot so justly valued.'
This drawing of conclusions from her private lif e does strike the modern reader as unnecessary and offensive, and does seem unrep resentative of Hutton and the usual high standard of his criticism .
But the views expressed here were only a cruder version of those views that informed his criticism generally, and which were supported by most c ritic s . The criticism of E lio t's personal conduct was an extension of criticism of characters in novels who did not accept social conventions, and this parallel was taken further when
Hutton criticised Eliot for a lack of humility: 'of humility, which
1. Ib id ., p .382.
-347- seems to me so essential to the moral life of such "beings as we are", there is a remarkable deficiency in her judgements.
I t was the lack of humility of such characters as Godwin Peak and dude Fawley that so annoyed c ritic s when Born in Exile and Jude the
Obscure were published. Another charge Hutton levelled against
George E lio t could have been brought against many characters in many novels in the 'eighties:
She tried to do for herself all that religious people rightly leave to God, as well as all that religious people rig h tly do for themselves.2
As has been said, on this occasion Hutton was only commenting in d ire ctly on the novels, but the whole scope of the achievement could not but be reduced when i t was argued to be based on such a shallow and inadequate view of life . The grasp of Middlemarch, so lauded in 1872, had now to be seen in relation to, 'the kind of determination to make the best of a bad business which constituted 3 George E lio t's philosophy of human l i f e . . . ' Hutton now made i t clear that he was opposed to George E lio t's assumptions and his argument suggests that he fe lt i t could not be the basis of great fic tio n . She had become, 'George E lio t acquiescing, almost eagerly, 4 in the poverty of human nature...' , with only, 'an artificial and 5 enervating theory of human nature...'
As usual, Hutton, although hostile, showed far greater perception
1. Ib id ., p.383. 2. Ib id ., p.384-385, 3. Ib id ., p.388. 4. Ib id . , p.390. 5. Ib id .a p.391.
-348- than most c ritic s . He realised that George E lio t's novels con
tained a sceptical view of society, and that terms such as "lack
of humility" which were so commonly applied to novelists in the
eighties also applied to George E liot. Consequently, he was far more
aware than most c ritic s of a consistent pattern of development in
the novel; aware of the fact that the novels of Hardy and James
developed naturally out of George Eliot's novels. The other
admirable quality of Hutton's response is that he went straight
for the greatest works. Mrs Oliphant and other c ritic s discovered
a positive and reassuring George Eliot in the earlier novels and
refused to face up to her greatest achievements. Hutton could
have discovered a more optim istic E lio t by ignoring areas of her
life and work, but he dealt directly with the most controversial
aspect of her lif e and work - her fa ilu re to support and fu lly
endorse the value of the social forms and conventions.
But the fact that Hutton was unhappy with the tra dition of the
novel is less surprising than the fact that there had been a time when he was impressed by the moral force of E lio t's art. I t
seems as i f , in the 'eighties, he began to make moral demands of
fiction that he had not made previously, but his social and
religious convictions were so steady that this is difficult to believe. Nor was i t a case of being temporarily overwhelmed by
Middlemarch. His review of Daniel Deronda contained a ll the terms of approbation, such as "no bility" and "in te lle c t", which he withdrew in the 'eighties:
No book of hers before this was ever conceived on ideal lines so noble, the whole effect of which, when we look back to the beginning from the end, seems to have béen so power fu lly given. No book of hers before this has contained so many fine characters, and betrayed so subtle an insight into the modes of growth of a better moral life within the shrivelling buds and blossoms of the selfish lif e which has been put o ff and condemned.'
' Daniel Deronda', The Spectator, XLIX (September 9, 1876.p .1131. -349- Again, these conclusions are completely different from the conclusions of the 1885 essay, and i t is the late essay, for all
its unpleasantness of tone, which possibly came nearer the truth about George Eliot's novels in its realisation that they were built on profoundly pessimistic assumptions. The question with Hutton
is simply one of why he did not realise earlier that these were novels that represented a challenge to a ll his deepest convictions.
I t is the 1885 a rtic le which perhaps best explains why. I t seems the culmination of a protracted consideration of the nature of George E lio t's a rt, and he seems only slowly to have become fu lly aware of her sense of hopelessness. When the books had f ir s t come out his attention had naturally focused on immediate issues, immediate struggles. The most obvious quality was, not surprisingly, the dutiful example set by various characters, and Hutton was impressed by such developments in the plot as the defeat of Dorothea's egotism. But with the passing of time Hutton's attention shifted from E lio t's meliorism to the wider bleakness of her novels. The shift in his response was, in fact, from an appreciation of the avowed purpose of George E lio t's novels to an awareness of the wider, less positive, vision on which they were based. I t could be characterised as a realisation that the subject of Middlemarch was not only the conduct of the community, and how various characters, especially Dorothea, came to suppress th e ir own desires for the wider good, but that the novel had as much to do with the fact that
Middlemarch offered Dorothea no possibilities of self-realisation..
I t was the fact that Middlemarch could not satisfy Dorothea's special needs that Hutton refused to accept, and which he could only regard as fa cile social cynicism. The 'eighties saw the publication
-350- of many novels which made an even greater commitment than E liot
to the needs of the individual. The effect on Hutton must have
been to increase his awareness of the direction in which fic tio n
had been tending for many years, and the result was a direct attack on the author who could be held to have instigated a tra dition of
social scepticism, George Eliot, The tendency of fiction since
her day, especially its unprecedentedly ind ivid ualistic development,
led Hutton to make a retrospective condemnation of the author he had once valued and respected so much.
Although Hutton lost much of his respect for E liot other c ritic s continued to find her acceptable. I t is d iffic u lt to avoid the impression that this was because they were less aware than
Hutton of the pessimistic nature of her vision. The most common view of her as an intellectual novelist was that she represented a tolerable lim it to scepticism. This view was expressed by Lord
Acton in The Nineteenth Century. His admiration was based upon the fact that she dealt with the central intellectual and personal problem of the century:
I f ever science or religion reigns alone over an undivided empire, the books of George E lio t might lose the ir control and unique importance, but as the emblem of a generation distracted between the intense need of be lieving and the difficulty of belief, they will live to the last syllable of recorded tim e j
Like many readers he admired her novels because, although atheistic in tendency, they never gave way to despair. Something positive was always offered which could be taken as a practical lesson. I t was common to emphasise E lio t's positivism and Acton spoke for many
1. 'George E lio t's L ife ', The Nineteenth Century, XVII (1885), p.485. 2. Ib id ., p .485.
-351- readers when he referred to her novels as moral tracts of a high, if distinctly modern, order:
Her teaching was the highest within the resources to which Atheism is re stricte d ... there are few works in literature whose influence is so ennobling...^
I t was not that Acton was in any way more indulgent to E lio t's atheism than Hutton, ju st that he made more of the positive structure of her novels; that he was more attracted to those "simple Christian truisms" which constituted her positive case. Hutton was more aware of the disparity between the surface position and the deeper level of doubt in the novels.
As few c ritic s could see this as clearly as Hutton, E liot did remain highly thought of in the 'eighties. For Hutton she led directly on to the novel in this decade . For most c ritic s she represented a positive force that stood as a rebuke to fic tio n in the 'eighties. On her death The Contemporary Review spoke res pectfully of how:
her reverence for human bonds and her abhorrence of a self- pleasing choice as against a dutiful loyalty have been set forth with such eloquent conviction and varied force of illu s tra tio n in her books that we believe the testimony has outweighed even the counteraction of what was adverse to i t in her own career.^
This stress on duty leads on to the fact that many c ritic s continued to find Middlemarch her greatest novel. There were, i t is true, many like Mrs Oliphant who preferred the earlier novels, but an even greater number thought she was at her best in her later years.
Oscar Browning, for example, fe lt that Middlemarch and Daniel
Deronda offered a more complete insight into the ethical and moral
1. Ib id ., p.485. 2. 'The Moral Influence of George E lio t', The Contemporary Review, XXXIX (1881), p.179.
-352- problems of the age. Claiming that Middlemarch gave her 'the chiefest claim to stand by the side of Shakespeare...'^ he praised both novels as the culmination of 'twenty-five years of
lite ra ry production puring which] she was ever conceiving deeper 2 views of the problem of l i f e . . . ' For Browning she took despair as far as i t could go in the novel. He argued that she was not only fu lly aware of the sadness of lif e but refused to offer any simple reassurance:
Deep in human nature lies the instinct of compensation, the confidence that everything must be for the best; that misery in this world is certain to be made right in the next, and that very probably in our present condition there will be something to set off on the other side. George E lio t's nature rejected with scorn this easy method of making things pleasant.^
This is clearly a mature response to E lio t's novels; Browning does not expect an easy form of reassurance but expects to see life 's problems fu lly and courageously faced. But, and this is character is tic of even such in te llig e n t reviewing, the novels in the end were only approved of i f they did manage to offer some shreds of hope.
For the c r itic in the 'eighties there was nothing to be derived from a novel which did not offer some eventual indication not only of resistance and triumph, but of resistance and triumph expressed in fa ir ly broad social terms. Browning allowed the novelist to take an ever-darkening view of lif e so long as at the end of the process some hope emerged. In the following quotation it is noticeable that
Browning starts writing about 'our duty' suggesting this shared responsibility to see that society functions as well as possible:
1. , 'The Art of George E lio t', The Fortnightly Review, XLIII (1888),p.539, 2. Ib id . , p . 551. 3. Ib id ., p . 542.
-353- I f the lives of Dorothea, of Maggie T ulliver, of Romola, are failures i t is not because George Eliot wishes to teach that most lives are and must be failures, but because she believes that such failures are preventible, and that i t is our duty to prevent them as far as possible.'
This agreement with the e xp licit moral purpose of E lio t's fiction, a highlighting of her melioriom accompanied by a failure to appreciate that her total canvas was often far bleaker, was typical of appreciative criticism in the 'eighties. Hutton was almost alone in pointing out the more disturbing aspects of her vision. In these respects the response to E liot bears obvious sim ilaritie s to the response to Hardy, who was also characterised as a positive and reassuring novelist. But when Hardy was read in such terms it was only at the price of considerable distortion of his novels, of ignoring characters and whole areas of the plots.
In order to read George Eliot's novels positively critics did not have to commit such acts of distortion. In Middlemarch for example, the po rtra it of Dorothea is ambivalent and the reader has the lib e rty of interpretation. In Tess of the D'Urberwlles Hardy is far more e x p lic it than E liot about the fact of social decay and his general bias is more apparent. E liot wavers in a far more undecided way between commitment to the individual and commitment to the wider community.
In this sense she is like the other major mid-Victorian novelists. Many Victorian novels contain a disturbing vision of the individuals isolation while, on the surface, offering a far more conventional appearance. I t could be said to be the characteristic feature of Charlotte Bronte's novels. They make an obvious defence
1. Ib id . , p.544.
-354- of social convention, and Charlotte Bronte shares the common awareness of Victorians that life would be dangerously anarchistic without restraint of the individual, but at the heart of the novels are extended studies of characters isolated from social forms and conventions. The same is true of E lio t's novels, except that her presentation of society and its patterns of behaviour is far more complex, and her awareness of the socially isolated heroine is ironic rather than intense. I t is part of the greatness of the mid-
Victorian novel that i t can present such an honest picture of individual needs while attempting so strenuously to make sense out of the larger social order. It would be so easy for George Eliot to simplify her attitude towards Dorothea in order to achieve a more coherent awareness of the community of Middlemarch. But the maturity of the social scrutiny is never achieved at the cost of sacrificing
Dorothea's in d ivid uality; George E liot continues to present characters who can never be given social definition although there must have been such a need in her period to make sense of everything in society, and to place and define every object, every person, firm ly in relation to the whole.
I t is the obviously desperate need for social confidence that creates sympathy for those insistent moral p rio ritie s pursued by the Victorian critics. The familiar intellectual and cultural developments of the Victorian period made the need to come to some understanding of society and its forms more pressing, and the novel offered the most comprehensive insight into the nature of society. .
The highest goal of the Victorian novelist was to achieve a vision of social integration, even though such a goal was impossible to attain. I t was possibly an unstated awareness of c ritic s that
-355- the passing of a religious era meant the disappearance of any
meaningful underlying pattern to society. An unwillingness to
face up to this fact may well have made c ritic s all the more
conscious that the novel should present an image of coherence.
Amongst c ritic s with such a desperate need for reassurance there
was obviously no time for pessimistic or sceptical works. The
sort of works critics did praise, at least temporarily, because
they did offer some comfort and consolation, may be mocked today,
and the critics may be criticised for praising such works, but
this does not discredit the need for reassurance. The need its e lf
was inevitable at a period when former certainties had eroded. I t
was impossible for c ritic s to calmly accept such works as Hardy's and
Gissing's which offered a picture of permanent social insecurity.
Appreciation of such work could not come about until c ritic s
could reconcile themselves to the fact that certain values had gone.
The relationship between Jude and Sue, for example, which the modern
reader can appreciate as something meaningful in the chaos of the ir world, did not strike its f ir s t readers in the same way. To them
i t was only a part of that chaos, that general social breakdown.
The modern reader can extract positive qualities from the best
novels of the 'eighties and ‘ nineties but a ll these positive qualities
are concentrated in the area of personal in te g rity, the value of
individual relationships. To a socially-oriented Victorian critic
such values either did not exist or were a poor recompense for
shared social values.
The novelists themselves, although striving to make sense of the social order, did, as has been suggested, achieve a dimension
-356- in th e ir works which cast a more radical scepticism on the redemptive value of social compromise. Middlemarch, on one level, suggests that there is no reason why Dorothea should compromise into the ordinariness of Middlemarch. But this is where the modern reader needs to be wary of his own biased response. The tendency among Victorian c ritic s was to treat Dorothea as an egotist who only becomes admirable when educated out of her egotism. A modern reader is lik e ly to place far more emphasis on her egotism and re title it self-respect, a refusal to belittle herself just because certain behaviour is expected of her. The richness of the book, of course, is that i t contains both points-of-view. E lio t can turn her irony from Dorothea onto society in a moment. But the point is that whereas the Victorian c r itic probably over-emphasised the defeat of egotism the modern c r itic perhaps over-emphasises the darker aspects of Victorian fic tio n . The modern c r itic w ill always search the literature of one period for anticipations of the themes of the next period, and he naturally finds qualities in Eliot's work which were not as important or as obvious to her contemporaries.
The modern c ritic w ill unavoidably sim plify in a way not dissim ilar to the Victorian c ritic as he cannot, and should not, eliminate his own age's anxieties and needs in responding to the tradition of lite ra tu re . The c r itic can only hope to remain aware that the work remains more complex and more comprehensive than any interpretation, and that the tendencies of his own response might in time appear just as sheltered and old-fashioned as the p rio ritie s that are apparent . in the Victorian response.
So much criticism in the 'eighties appears somewhat limited today because of the width of the gap that had developed between
-357- the interests of novelists and the interests of critics. Novelists no longer made the same e ffo rt to present a picture of social
cohesion and so c ritic s were bewildered. But George E lio t's
novels, whatever significance they may have for modern readers, did conform to c ritic a l expectations. On the whole, the response to her work was to appreciate the fact that she probed deeper into questions of conduct and social responsibility than most, i f not a ll, writers. There were many like Oscar Browning who admired her achievement most when she probed deepest, seeming to find connections and explanations at a variety of levels. There was enough to discuss in the area of how George E lio t presented this broad social picture without the necessity arising for the critic to confront the question of alienation. Just in the social sphere, the novel achieved a level of complexity which remains unparalleled.
In fact, the complexity of George Eliot's broad social analysis was probably the most significant influence on novel criticism for the twenty years or so following the publication of Middlemarch. Middle march as a work of social exploration struck c ritic s as an achievement on which other novelists could build. C ritics fe lt that, given an author of Eliot's intellect, society could again be probed to these depths. O riginality would not be achieved by throwing everything in doubt and posing unanswerable questions but by a deepening examination of a stable structure. I t is evident that this expect ation was often present in the response to Hardy. C ritics were dismayed when he introduced a character such as Henchard who did not seem to fit into a scheme of responsible social evaluation. Critics expected i t to be fin a lly proved that everybody had a place, role and function in society. This is why they so often praised Hardy's pictures of rustics - here, whatever the evidence of the novel
-358- suggested to the contrary, were simply characters leading an
unchanging life . O riginality for most c ritic s would thus be a
process of digging deeper into what already existed rather than
speculating on anything new, or anything which even involved
change. Middlemarch provided massive evidence that i t was possible
- especially as Dorothea had not assumed that significance she
carries for modern critics.
What c ritic s could not accept was fic tio n which did not
elaborate on a steady moral view, fic tio n which did not f u l f i l l
an u tilita ria n role. And what happened in the eighties was that
the balance of fic tio n did change. Whereas E liot had offered a
social novel with a subdued vision of isolation at the centre, the
characteristic novel of the 'eighties became far more pessimistic
about making any sense out of the social order, and placed an
increasingly explicit emphasis on the individual. George Eliot's
tone of voice, the narrative voice which implied shared values, also
disappeared. C ritics were both confused and annoyed. The novel
in the 'eighties seemed a radically new departure, and only a
c r itic of Hutton's intelligence could detect the precedents. I t was
not until the 'nineties that c ritic s began to accept the new
emphasis of fic tio n - and the second half of the nineties was rec- ognisably a different period; the range of periodicals was wider,
the views more diverse, and the unity of c ritic a l assessments, which had been a feature of the 'eighties, had largely disappeared.
The breakdown of shared values which the novel documented was now
apparent in a ll areas of intellectual life .
This makes the period from about 1880 to 1895 one which, in c ritic a l terms is not only important but almost self-contained.
The period experienced problems and tensions which had not been
-359- faced before and which, as the visions of the novelists eventually
became acceptable, would not be faced again. Although c ritic s
failed to come to terms with the novels that were being produced
in the period i t was this very failu re that indicates the rapidity
and force of change in the novels. Almost simultaneously, in the
works of James and Hardy, as well as in the lesser works of
Gissing, Schreiner and White, a dramatic development occurred.
The emphasis on the individual ceased to be im p lic it, as could be
said to be the case In tbe works of E lio t, and became e x p lic it.
I t was accompanied by an e xp licit social scepticism which again was
in contrast to E lio t's avowed positivism . These developments
naturally alarmed c ritic s . Fiction seemed to be making such a
direct challenge to social institutions, seemed to be so recklessly
and repeatedly challenging traditional certainties, that it inspired
a predictable, almost ju s tifie d , panic reaction. C ritics saw
themselves as holding out with positive social values against an onslaught of pessimistic fiction. It meant that criticism was often more socially insistent than in e a rlier periods when values had not
been so openly challenged. And this frenzied reaction to modern fic tio n “ frenzied in the sense that its value was disputed or that, as in the case of Hardy, its intention distorted - continued
until the mid - nineties, when a new generation of critics with different values began to emerge.
This is to present the criticism of the period at its most negative. But the other side of the coin, and one not generally
looked at, is that only certain novelists bewildered the c ritic s .
To look at the response to James and Hardy in isolation would suggest that c ritic s were extremely lim ited. But they could, of course.
-360- cope with those novelists whose social vision they shared. They dealt ably with such novelists as Meredith, Stevenson, Haggard,
Hall Caine, Mrs Oliphant, James Payn, and William Black. The methods, a b ilitie s , themes, and importance of these novelists were assessed and discussed with steady assurance. In addition, c ritic s also coped well with such questions as those of the importance of the novel, the lim its of realism, the relative unimportance of romance, the dangers of didacticism, and the problems raised by analysis. I t was only in responding to the best fic tio n of the period that criticism failed, and failed in a way that had not been the case a few years earlier when c ritic s had responded so positively to George E lio t's novels as they appeared.
But the fact that criticism did fail to keep pace with fiction is in the end not so much a reflection on its shortcomings as a tribute to the originality of the novelists in the 'eighties who had the courage to direct fic tio n in such a bleak direction. I t is Hardy in particular who emerges with the greatest credit - as
Hardy started with that sense of a secure world of shared communal values - the world recognised by c ritic s - but worked his way through to a radically different conception of the countryside, and a radically different awareness of the pattern of the lives of his country - dwellers. As Hardy's characters lost the security of place and became itinerant wanderers the novel moved from the knowable. world of the Victorian period to the chaos of the modern world. To c ritic is e the reviewers of the 'eighties for fa ilin g to cope with such novels is to c ritic is e them for not being prematurely aware of, and in agreement with, the shifting and confused values of the modern world.
-361- SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
A. PRINCIPAL NOVELISTS REFERRED TO IN THE TEXT,
Barrie, J.M., A Window in Thrums, 1889,
Besant, Walter, and Rice, Charles, The Chaplainof the Fleet, 1881.
Besant, Walter, All Sorts and Conditions of Men,1882.
Besant, Walter, Children of Gjbeon, 1886,
Black, William, Sabina Zembra, 1887,
Caine, Hall, A Son of Hagar, 1887,
Caine, Hall, The Bondman, 1890.
Crawford, F. Marion, Mr Isaacs, 1882.
Crawford, F. Marion, Saracinesca, 1887.
E lio t, George, Middlemarch, 1872.
E lio t, George, Daniel Deronda, 1875,
Gissing, George, Workers in the Dawn, 1880.
Gissing, George, The Unclassed, 1884.
Gissing, George, Isabel Clarendon (1886), 1969. Introduction by Pierre
Coustillas,
Gissing, George, Thyrza, 1887.
Gissing, George, The Nether World, 1889.
Gissing, George, The Emancipated, 1890.
Gissing, George, New Grub Street (1891), 1968, Introduction by
Bernard Bergonzi.
Gissing, George, Born in Exile (1892), 1970. Introduction by Walter
Allen.
Gray, Melville, A Life's Trouble, 1886,
-362- Haggard, H. Rider, She, 1887.
Haggard, H. Rider, Allan Quatermain, 1887.
Haggard, H. Rider, Jess, 1887
Hardy, Thomas, Far From the Madding Crowd, 1874.
Hardy, Thomas, The Return of the Native, 1878.
Hardy, Thomas, The Trumpet-Major, 1880.
Hardy, Thomas, A Laodicean, 1881.
Hardy, Thomas, Two on a Tower, 1882.
Hardy, Thomas, The Mayor of Casterbridge, 1886.
Hardy, Thomas, The Woodlanders, 1887.
Hardy, Thomas, Tess of the D'Urbevilles, 1891.
Hardy, Thomas, Jude the Obscure, 1895.
Howells, W.D., The Rise of Silas Lapham, 1885.
Howells, W.D., Indian Summer, 1886.
James, Henry, The Portrait of a Lady, 1881.
James, Henry, The Bostonians, 1886.
James, Henry, The Princess Casamassima, 1886.
James, Henry, The Tragic Muse, 1890.
Lang, Andrew, The Mark of Cain, 1886.
Law, John, Out of Work, 1888.
Mallock, W.H., The Old Order Changes, 1886.
Meredith, George, The Egoist, 1879.
Meredith, George, Diana of the Crossways, 1885.
Meredith, George, Lord Ormont and his Aminta, 1894.
Molesworth, Mrs, Marrying and Giving in Marriage, 1887
Moore, George, A Modern Lover, 1883.
Moore, George, A Mummer's Wife, 1884.
Moore, George, A Drama in Muslin, 1886.
Moore, George, Esther Waters, 1894.
-363- Oliphant, Margaret, Miss Marjoribanks (1856), 1969. Introduction
by Q.D.Leavis.
Oliphant, Mrs, He That Will Not When He May, 1880.
Oliphant, Mrs, Harry Joscelyn, 1881.
Oliphant, Mrs, In Trust, 1882.
Oliphant, Mrs, A Lover and His Lass, 1883.
Oliphant, Mrs, The Ladies Lindores, 1883.
Oliphant, Mrs, The Wizard''s Son, 1884.
01iphant. Mrs, The Son of his Father, 1887.
Oliphant, Mrs, The Duke's Daughter and The Fugitives, 1890
Payn, James, From E xile, 1881.
Payn, James, Thicker than Water, 1883.
Pryce, Richard, An Evil S p irit, 1887.
Schreiner, Olive, The Story at an African Farm, 1883.
Shaw, G.B., Cashel Byron's Profession, 1886.
Stevenson, R.L., Treasure Island, 1882.
Stevenson, R.L., The Master of Ballantrae, 1889.
Stevenson, R.L., and Osbourne, Lloyd, The Wrecker, 1892.
Stevenson, R.L., Weir of Herniston, 1896.
Ward, M.A., Robert Elsmere, 1888.
White, William Hale, The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford, 2nd
Edition, 1888.
White, William Hale, Mark Rutherford's Deliverance, 1885.
Zola, Emile, L'Assommoir (1877), English edition, 1884.
Zola, Emile, Germinal (1885), English edition, Germinal : or Master
and Man, 1885.
- 364- B, NON-FICTION WORKS FROM THE PERIOD 1880-1912.
Barrie, J.M., An Edinburgh Eleven, 1889.
Besant, Walter, The Art of Fiction, 1884.
Besant, Walter, Autobiography, 1902.
Coghill, Mrs. Harry (editor). Autobiography and Letters of Mrs
Oliphant, 1899.
Cross, J.W., George E lio t's Life as Related in her Letters and her
Journals, Three Volumes, 1885.
Gissing, George, Charles Dickens, 1898.
Gosse, Edmund, Questions at Issue, 1893.
Hamilton, Walter, The Aesthetic Movement in England, 1882.
Henley, W.E., Views and Reviews, 1890.
Henley, W.E., Criticism and Fiction, 1891.
Howells, W.D., Criticism and Fiction, 1891.
Howells, W.D., My Literary Passions, New York, 1895.
Johnson, Lionel, The Art of Thomas Hardy, 1894.
Lang, Andrew, Essays in L ittle , 1891.
Le Gallienne, Richard, George Meredith: Some Characteristics,
Revised Edition, 1900.
Moore, George, Confessions of a Young Man, 1888.
Moore, George, Literature at Nurse, or Circulating Morals, 1885.
Nichol, John, American Literature: An Historical Sketch 1620-1880,
Edinburgh, 1882.
Noble, J.A., Impressions and Memories, 1885.
Noble, J.A., Morality in English Fiction, 1887,
Payn, James, The Backwater of Life, or Essay of a Literary Veteran,
1899. Introduction by Leslie Stephen.
-365- Poole's Index to Periodical Literature: January 1882 - January 1887,
1888.
Saintsbury, George, Miscellaneous Essays, 1912.
Saintsbury, George, Essays on French Novelists, 1891.
Stevenson, R.L., Familiar Studies of Men and Books, 1882.
Zola, E., Le Roman experimental, Paris, 1880.
-366- C. PRINCIPAL PERIODICAL ARTICLES AND REVIEWS CONSULTED
In this section the periodicals consulted have been listed alpha betically, and the individual articles and reviews in each periodical listed chronologically. Where appropriate the title and author of the book under review, and the name of the reviewer, have been added in brackets after the main details of the entry.
Most reviews were of an omnibus nature and the novel referred to is in every case the one fo r which the review has been specif ic a lly consulted. In most cases the same c r itic wrote an entire a rtic le , but this was not so in the case of The Athenaeum where different c ritic s reviewed each novel, th e ir comments being combined in one review a rtic le .
The Academy
Lang, Andrew, ' Far From the Madding Crowd', VII (January 2, 1875),
9-10.
Henley, W.E., 'New Novels', XIV (October 1878), 354-355. (Review of
Henry James's The Europeans. )
Henley, W.E., 'New Novels', XIV (November 30, 1878), 517-518.
(Review of Thomas Hardy's The Return of the Native.)
Henley, W.E., 'New Novels', XVI (November 22, 1879), 359-370.
(Review of George Meredith's The Egoist).
Little dale , R.F., 'New Novels', XIX (May 21, 1881), 369-370. (Review
of The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford) .
Noble, J.A., 'New Novels', XX (November 26, 1881), 397-398. (Review
of Henry James's The Portrait of a Lady).
-367- Purcell, E., 'New Novels', XXIII (January 27, 1883), 57-58. (Review
of Mrs 01iphant's It Was a Lover and his Lass).
Wallace, William, 'New Novels', XXIII (May 19, 1883), 344-345.
(Review of Mrs Oliphant's The Ladies Lindores).
Little dale , R.F., 'New Novels', XXIV (July 14, 1883), 23-24. (Review
of George Moore's A Modern Lover).
Wallace, William, 'New Novels', XXVI (November 29, 1884), 353-354.
(Review of George Moore's A Mummer's Wife).
Noble, J.A., 'New Novels', XXIX (January 23, 1885), 55-56. (Review
of Stevenson's Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde).
Purcell, E., ' Prinee O tto ', XXIX (February 27, 1886), 140-141.
Smith, G. Barnett, 'New Novels', XXIX (March 6, 1886), 162-163.
(Review of Henry James's The Bostonians).
Saintsbury, George, 'New Novels', XXIX (April 3, 1886), 233-234.
(Review of W.D.Howells's Indian Summer).
Noble, J.A., 'New Novels', XXX (July 10, 1886), 23-24. (Review of
George Gissing's Isabel Clarendon).
Littledale, R.F., 'New Novels', XXX (November 13, 1886), 323-324.
(Review of Henry James's The Princess Casamassima)
Peacock, F.W., 'New Novels', XXX (November 27, 1886), 359-360.
(Review of Walter Besant's Children of Gibeon).
Noble, J.A., 'New Novels', XXXI (January 1, 1887), 6-7. (Review of
Hawley Smart's The Outsider).
Lang, Andrew, ' She' , XXXI (January 15, 1887), 35-36.
Caine, Hall, 'A Look Round Literature, by Robert Buchanan', XXXI
(February 26, 1887), 140-141.
Wedmore, Frederick, 'Celebrities of the Century, edited by Lloyd
Sanders', XXXI (March 12, 1887), 176-177.
-368- Wallace, William, 'New Novels', XXXI (April 9, 1887), 251-253,
(Review of Thomas Hardy's The Woodlanders).
Ranking, B. Montgomerie, 'New Novels', XXXI (April 23, 1887), 285-
285 (Review of William Black's Satina Zembra),
Herford, C.H., 'George E liot; ih r Leben und Schaffen. Van H, Conrad',
XXXI (May 7, 1887), 318-319,
Smith, G. Barrett, 'New Novels', XXXII (October 15, 1887), 249-250,
(Review of The New Antigone),
Noble, J.A., 'New Novels', XXXII (November 5, 1887), 299-301, (Review
of several minor novels),
Monkhouse, Cosmo, ' The Deemster: A Romance', XXXII (November 26, 1887),
346-347,
Noble, J.A,, 'New Novels', XXXIII (March 3, 1888), 147-148, (Review
of J.H.Clapperton's Margaret Dunmore),
Noble, J.A., 'New Novels', XXXIII (April 28, 1888), 287-288, (Reviews
of several romances,) ■ '
Noble, J.A., ' Partial P o rtra its ', XXXIII (June 16, 1888), 406-407,
Saintsbury, George, 'New Novels', XXXIV (July 21, 1888), 36-37.
(Review of John Law's Out of Work),
Saintsbury, George, 'New Novels', XXXVI (November 2, 1889), 284-
285, (Review of R,L,Stevenson's The Master of
Ballantrae),
Allen, J. Barrow, 'New Novels', XXXVII (March 1, 1890), 147-148,
(Review of Hall Caine's The Bondman).
Smith, G. Barrett, 'New Novels', XXXVII [April 19, 1890), 263-264.
(Review of George Gissing's The Emancipated).
Wallace William, 'New Novels', XXXVII (May 17, 1890), 333-334, (Review
of Mrs Oliphant's The Duke'sDaughter, and The
Fugitives).
369- Saintsbury, George, 'New Novels', XXXVIII (August 23, 1890), 147-148.
(Review of Henry James's The Tragic Muse) .
Allen, J. Barrow, 'New Novels', XXXVIII (November 29, 1890), 500-501.
(Review of Haggard and Lang's The World's Desire) .
Watson, William, ' Tess of the D'Urbevilles', XLI (Feburary 6, 1892),
125-126.
Dotterel 1, George, 'New Novels', XLII (July 23, 1892), 67-68. (Review
of George Gissing's Born in Exile).
Sharp, William, 'New Novels', XLII (November 12, 1892), 431-433.
(Review of Zola's La Debacle) .
C otterell, George, 'New Novels', XLV (May 26, 1894), 433-434. (Review
of George Moore's Esther Waters) .
Purcell, E., ' Weir of Hermiston' , XLIX (June 27, 1896), 521-522.
Bennet, Arnold, 'Mr George Gissing, an Inquiry', LVIII (December 16,
1899), 724-726.
The Athenaeum
'Novels of the Week', No. 2458 (December, 5, 1874), 747-748. (Review
of Hardy's Far From the Madding Crowd, by
A.J.Butler).
(All novels reviewed under the general t it le 'Novels of the Week' unless otherwise stated).
No.2665 (November 23, 1878), 654-655. (Review of Hardy's The Return
of the Native, by A.J.Butler).
‘ The Egoist' , No.2714 (November 1, 1879), 555-556 (Reviewed by W.E.
W.E.Henley).
No.2762 (October 2, 1880), 431-432. (Review of Mrs Oliphant's He That
Will not When He May, by C.A.Cook).
-370- No. 2769 (November 20, 1880), 672-673. (Review of Hardy's The
Trumpet-Major, by A.J.Butler).
No.2772 (December 11, 1880), 775-776. (Review of Payn's A Confidential
Agent, by C.A.Cook).
No.2791 (April 23, 1881), 555. (Review of The Autobiography of Mark
Rutherford, by Emily Thursfield).
No.2793 (May 7, 1881), 622. (Review of Payn's From E xile, by C.A.Cook)
No.2822 (November 26, 1881), 699. (Review of James's The P ortrait
of a Lady, by A.J.Butler).
No.2833 (February 11, 1882), 186-187. (Review of Mrs Oliphant's
In Trust, by Col Iyer).
No.2867 (October 7, 1882), 460-461. (Review of Besant's All Sorts and
Conditions of Men, by C.A.Cook).
'Anthony Trollope', No.2876 (December 9, 1882), 772-773.
No.2883 (January 27, 1883), 119. (Review of Payn's Kit by C.A.Cook).
No.2884 (February 3, 1883), 143-144. (Review of Mrs Oliphant's
I t Was a Lover and his Lass, by Col Iyer).
No.2906 (July 7, 1883), 13-14. (Review of Moore's A Modern Lover,
by George Saintsbury).
No.2981 (December 13, 1884), 767. (Review of Moore's A Mummer's Wife,
by C.A.Cook).
No.2996 (March 28, 1885), 405-406. (Review of Zola's Germinal, by
Norman MacColl).
No.3045 (March 6, 1886), 323-324. (Review of James's The Bostonians,
by A.J.Butler).
No.3050 (April 10, 1886), 485-486. (Review of Gissing's Demos, by
Sergeant).
371- 'Our Library Table', No.3054 (May 8, 1886), 614-615. (Review of
Andrew Lang's The Mark of Cain) .
No.3057 (May 29, 1886), 711-712. (Review of Hardy's The Mayor of
Casterbridge, by A.J.Butler).
No.3058 (June 5, 1886), 744-745. (Review of Melville Gray's A
Life's Troubles, by Graves).
No.3059 (June 12, 1886), 775-776. (Review of Payn's The Heir of Ages,
by C.A.Cook).
' Kidnapped' , No.3068 (August 14, 1886), 197-198. (Reviewed by
Theodore Watts-Dunton).
No.3074 (September 25, 1886), 397. (Review of Zola's L'Oeavre, by
Norman MacColl).
No.3076 (October 9, 1886), 462-464. (Review of W.H.Mallock's The Old
Order Changes, by George Saintsbury).
No.3080 (November 6, 1886), 596-598. (Review of James's The Princess
Casamassima, by A.J.Butler).
No.3082 (November 20, 1886), 668-669. (Review of Besant's Children
of Gibeon, by C.A.Cook).
No.3090 (January 15, 1887), 93-94. (Review of Haggard's She, by
Emily Thursfield).
No.3099 (March 19, 1887), 375-376. (Review of Haggard's Jess, by
Emily Thursfield).
No.3146 (February 11, 1888), 175-177. (Review of J.H.Clapperton's
Margaret Dunmore, by Sergeant).
' Partial P ortraits', No.3161 (May 26, 1888), 658-659.
No.3186 (November 17, 1888), 659-660. (Review of Haggard's Mr
Meeson's W ill, by C.A.Cook).
-372- No.3234 (October 19, 1889), 519-520. (Review of Stevenson's
The Master of Ballantrae, by C.A.Cook).
No.3274 (July 25, 1890), 124-125. (Review of James's The Tragic
Muse, by Mrs de Mattos).
No.3283 (September 27, 1890), 414-415. (Review of Payn's The Ward
and the W ill, by Col Iyer).
No.3315 (May 9, 1891), 601-602. (Review of Gissing's New Grab Street)
'Tess of the D'Urbevilles', No.3350 (January 9, 1892), 49-50.
No.3370 (May 28, 1892), 693-694. (Review of Gissing's Born in E xile ).
' Jude the Obscure', No.3351 (November 16, 1895), 709-710.
' Weir of Hermiston' , No.3578 (May 23, 1896), 673.
'S ir W. Besant', No.3842 (June 15, 1901), 758-759.
The Atlantic Monthly (Boston)
'Zola's Essays', XLVII (1881), 116-119.
' The Portrait of a Lady and Dr. Breen's Practice', XLIX (1882),
126-130. (by H.E.Scudder).
Preston, H.W., 'Mrs Oliphant', LV (1885), 733-744.
'The Contributors Club', LX (1887), 572-576.
The Author
'Notes and News', II (1891), 13-18. (Review of Gissing's New
Grub Street, by Walter Besant).
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine
'New Novels', CXXVIII (1880), 378-404. (Review of Meredith's The
Egoist, by Mrs Oliphant).
-373- 'Recent Novels', CXXXI (1882), 365-391. (Review of James's
The Portrait of a Lady, by Mrs Oliphant).
'A L ittle Chat About Mrs Oliphant', CXXXIII (1883), 73-91, (by
John SKelton).
'Novels', CXL (1886), 776-798. (Review of James's The Princess
Casamassima, by Mrs Oliphant).
'The Old Saloon: The Literature of the Last F ifty Years', CXLI (1887),
737-761. (by Mrs Oliphant).
'The Old Saloon', CXLIV (1888), 419-443. (by Mrs Oliphant).
'The Old Saloon', CLI (1892), 455-474. (Review of Hardy's Tess of
the D'Urbevilles, by Mrs Oliphant).
The Bookman
Minto, William, 'The Work of Thomas Hardy', I (1891), 99-101.
' Tess of the D'Urbevilles', I (1892), 179-180.
The British Quarterly Review
'Novels of the Quarter', LXXIII (1881), 223-231. (Review of Hardy's
3 The Trumpet Major).
'Mr Hardy's Novels', LXXIII (1881), 342-360. (by Charles Kegan Paul).
'Novels of the Quarter', LXXV(1882), 226-234. (Review of James's
The P ortrait of a Lady) .
'Novels of the Quarter', LXXXIII (1886), 477-486. (Review of James's
The Bostonians) .
The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine (New York)
Howells, W.D., 'Henry James, J r . ', I l l (1882), 25-29.
-374- The Contemporary Review *
Buchanan, Robert, 'The Fleshly School of Poetry', XVIII (1871), 334-
350.
'One Who Knew Her', 'The Moral Influence of George E lio t', XXXIX
(1881), 173-185.
Hillebrand, Dr. Karl, 'About Old and New Novels', XLV (1884), 388-.
Hutton, R.H., 'George E lio t', XLVII (1885), 372-391.
Lee, Vernon, 'A Dialogue on Novels', XLVIII (1885), 378-401.
Wedgwood, Julia, ' Contemporary Records: F ictio n ', 1(1886), 294-301.
(Review of Gissing's Demos) .
Marzials, F.T., ' M. Zola as a C ritic ', LI (1887), 57-70.
Haggard, H. Rider, 'About F ictio n ', LI (1887), 172-180.
Lang, Andrew, 'Realism and Romance', LII (1887), 683-693.
Qui Her, Harry, 'A Living Story-Teller (Mr Wilkie Collins)', LI 11
(1888), 572-593.
Lang, Andrew, 'Theological Romances', L III (1888), 814-824.
Davidson, Randall T., 'The Religious Novel', LIV (1888), 674-682.
Crawford, Mrs Emily, 'Emile Zola', LV (1889), 94-113.
Barrie, J.M., 'Thomas Hardy: the Historian oF Wessex, LVI (1889),
57-66.
Farrar, F.W., ' The Nether World', LVI (1889), 370-380.
Caine,Hall, 'The New Watchwords of F ictio n ', LVII (1890), 479-488.
Lee, Vernon, 'The Moral Teaching of Zola', LXIII (1893), 196-212.
Noble, J.A., 'The Fiction of Sexuality', LXVII (1895), 490-498.
Cope's Tobacco Plant (Liverpool)
'George Meredith's New Work', II (1880), 430-431. (Review of
Meredith's The Egoist, by James Thomson).
-375- The CornhiH Magazine
Stevenson, R.L., 'Victor Hugo's Romances', XXX (1874), 179-194.
Cosmopolis
Gosse, Edmund, 'Mr Hardy's New Novel', 1 (1896), 60-69.
The Court Journal
'Literature and Literary Gossip', No.3145 (April 27, 1889), 590-
591. (Review of Gissing's The Nether World) .
The C ritic (New York)
Archer, William, ' R.L.Stevenson : His Style and Thought', V (1886),
19-20.
The Daily Chronicle
'Mr Hardy's New Novel', No.9,296 (December 28, 1891 ), 3.
The Dial (Chicago)
Anderson, Melville, B., 'A Novelist's Theory of the Art of Fiction',
V (1884), 132-133.
The Dublin Review
'Notes on Novels', Third Series XIII (1885), 420-430,
'Notes on Novels', XVII (1887), 197-202, [Review of James's The
Princess Casamassima),
-376- 'Notes on Novels', XXIV (1890^,462-469. (Review of James's The
Tragic Muse).
The Edinburgh Review
Oliphant, Mrs, 'The Life and Letters of George E liot', CLXI (1885),
514-553.
Reeve, Henry, 'The Literature and Language of the Age', CLXIX (1889),
328-350.
Prothero, R.E., 'American Fiction', CLXXIII (1891), 31-65.
The Fortnightly Review
Stevenson, R.L., 'The Morality of the Profession of Letters', XXIX
(1881), 513-520.
Lang, Andrew, 'Emile Zola', XXXI (1882), 439-452.
Norman, Henry, 'Theories and Practice of Modern Fiction', XXXIV (1883)
870-886.
Lilly, W.S., 'The New Naturalism', XXXVIII (1885), 240-256.
Arnold, Matthew, 'Count Leo Tolstoi', XLII (1887), 783-799.
Saintsbury, George, 'The Present State of the Novel', XLII (1887),
410-417.
Browning, Oscar, 'The Art of George E liot', XLIII (1888), 538-553,
Watson, William, 'Mr Haggard and his Henchman', XLIV (1888), 684-688.
Dowden, Ernest, 'Hopes and Fears for Literature', XLV (1889), 166-183.
Tyrrell, R.Y., ' Robert Elsmere as a Symptom', XLV (1889), 727-731.
Dowden, Ernest, 'Literary Criticism in France', XLVI (1889), 737-
753.
-377- Symonds, J.A., 'La Bete Humaine: A Study in Zola's Idealism',
L (1891), 453-462.
Adams, Francis, 'Some Recent Novels', LII (1892), 13-22.
Gwynn, Stephen, 'Mr Robert Loais Stevenson: A Critical Study',
LVI (1894), 776-792.
Saintsbury, George, 'The Novels of Mr Hall Caine', LVII (1895), 180-
196.
Tyrrell, R.Y., 'Jude the Obscure' , LIX (1896), 857-864.
Hart, R.E.S., 'Zola's Philosophy of Life', LX (1896), 257-271.
Gwynn, Stephen, 'The Posthumous Works of Robert Louis Stevenson',
LXIII (1898), 561-575.
The Forum (New York)
Hardy, Thomas, 'The Profitable Reading of Fiction', V (1888), 57-70.
The Graphic
'New Novels', XXXIV (December 18, 1886), 646. (Review of James's
The Princess Casamassima, by R.F.Francillon).
The Guardian
'Novels', XLIV (May 29, 1889), 844-845. (Review of Gissing's The
Nether World).
'Novels', L (November 13, 1895), 1770. (Review of Hardy's Jude the
Obscure) .
The Humanitarian (New York)
Gissing, George, 'The Place of Realism in Fiction', Vll (1895), 14-16
378- The Illustrated London News
'Mr Hardy's New Novel', CVIII (January 11, 1896), 50,
The London Quarterly Review
■Belles Lettres', LXVII. N.S.VII (1887), 383,
Longman's Magazine
Stevenson, R.L., 'A Gossip on Romance', I (1882), 69-79,
James, Henry, 'The Art of Fiction', IV (1884), 502-521.
Stevenson, R.L., 'A Humble Remonstrance', V (1884), 139-147,
Lang, Andrew, 'At the Sign of the Ship', X (1887), 659-666,
Lang, Andrew, 'At the Sign of the Ship', XIII (1888), 218-224,
Macmillan's Magazine
Ward, Mrs Humphry, 'Recent Fiction in England and France', L (1884),
250-260.
Birrell, Augustine, 'The Office of Literature', LIII (1886), 361-363,
The Magazine of Art
Stevenson, R.L., 'A Note on Realism', VII (1883), 24-28.
The Morning Post
'Books of the Day', No.38, 506 (November 7, 1895), 6.
Murray's Magazine
'Our Library List', I (1887), 861-864. (Review of Gissing's Thyrza) .
Sichel Edith, 'Two Philanthropic Novelists', III (1888), 506-518.
'Mr Henry James', X (1891), 641-654.
-379- The National and English Review
Tilley, Arthur, 'The New School of Fiction', 1 (1883), 257-268.
Hannigan, D.F., Letter on Realism, XIII (1889), 414-416.
Doyle, Sir A.C., 'Mr Stevenson's Methods in Fiction', XIV (1890),
646-657.
Butler, A.J., 'Mr Hardy as a Decadent', XXVII (1896), 384-390.
New Quarterly Magazine
'Mr Hardy's Novels', N.S.II (1879), 412-431. (by Mrs, Orr).
'The Egoist', III (1880), 228-232.
The New Review
Hardy, Thomas, 'Candour in English Fiction', II (1890), 15-21.
Hardy, Thomas, 'The Science of Fiction', IV (1891), 315-319.
Lang, Andrew, 'Literature', VI (1892), 243-251.
The Nineteenth Century
Acton, Lord, 'George Eliot's Life', XVII (1885), 464-485.
Gladstone, W.E., ' Robert Elsmere and the Battle of B e lie f,
XXIII (1888), 766-788.
Gladstone, W.E., 'Noticeable Books', XXV (1889), 213-215.
The Pall Mall Gazette
'Mr Meredith's New Book', XXX (November 3, 1879), 10. (The Egoist
reviewed by W.E.Henley).
'Diana of the Crossways', XLI (March 28, 1885), 4.
'George Gissing as a Novelist', XLV (June 28, 1887), 3. (by W.T.Stead)
-380- 'Mr Hall Caine's New Novel', L (February 7, 1890), 3. (Review of
The Bondman).
'Mr Thomas Hardy's New Novel', LIII (December 31, 1891), 3.
'Jude the Obscure' , LXI (November 12, 1895), 4.
The Prospective Review
' Ruth. By the Author of Mary Barton', IX (1853), 222-247.
The Quarterly Review
'American Novels', CLV (1883), 201-229. (by L.J.Jennings).
' Robert Elsmere and Christianity', CLXVII (1888), 273-302. (by
Henry Wace).
'Mr Norris's Novels', CLXVIII (1889), 419-448 (by R.Y.Tyrrell).
'Culture and Anarchy', CLXXIV (1892), 317-344. (by Mowbray Morris)
The Review of Reviews
'Our Monthly Parcel of Books', IX (1894), 523-525. (Review of
George Moore's Esther Waters).
St.James's Gazette
Patmore, Coventry, 'Hardy's Novels', XIV (April 2, 1887), 6-7.
St.Stephen's Review
'Our Library Table', No.173 (July 3, 1886), 23. (Review of Gissing's
Isabel Clarendon) .
The Saturday Review
' Far From the Madding Crowd', XXXIX (January 9, 1875), 57-58.
?381 r 'French Literature', XLIII (1887), 429-431. (Review of L'Assommoir) .
'The Return of the Native', XLVII (January 4, 1879), 23-24.
'The Egoist' , XLVIII (November 15, 1879), 607-608.
'The Portrait of a Lady', LII (December 3, 1881), 703-704.
'All Sorts and Conditions of Men', LIV (October 14, 1882), 514-515.
'The Modern Novel', LIV (November 11, 1882), 633-634.
'Two on a Tower', LIV (November 18, 1882), 674-675.
'Mr Anthony Trollope', LIV (December 9» 1882), 755-756.
'K it', LV (January 20, 1883), 86-87.
'The Story of an African Farm', LV (April 21, 1883), 507-508.
'Mr Chambers and Popular Literature', LV (May 26, 1883), 657-658.
'The Art of Fiction', LVII (May 31, 1884), 702-703.
'Penny Numbers', LVIII (August 16, 1884), 199-200.
'The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford', LIX (May 30, 1885), 734.
'Three Novels', LXI (May 29, 1886), 757. (Review of Hardy's
The Mayor of Casterbridge) .
'Four Novels', LXI (June 5, 1886), 791-792. (Review of James's
The Bostonians) .
'Some Novels', LXI (June 19, 1886), 855-856. (Review of Shaw's
Cashel Byron's Profession) .
'Novels and Stories', LXII (July 10, 1886), 58-59. (Review of
Gissing's Isabel Clarendon).
'Mr George Meredith's Novels', LXII (July 24, 1886), 116-117.
'Four Novels', LXII (August 21, 1886), 261-262. (Review of Gissing's
Demos).
'Four Novels', LXII (November 27, 1886), 728-729. (Review of
James's The Princess Casamassima).
-382- 'Four Novels', LXII (December 4, 1886), 756-758. (Review of Besant's
Children of Gibeon) .
'Three Novels', LXIII (March 19, 1887), 413-415. (Review of
Haggard's Jess) .
'New Novels', LXIII (April 2, 1887), 484-485. (Review of Hardy's ■
The Woodlanders) .
'Four Novels', LXIII (April 23, 1887), 588-589. (Review of William
Black's Satina Zembra).
'Novels', LXIII (June 11, 1887), 847-848. (Review of Gissing's Thyrza).
'New Novels', LXIII (June 25,1887), 916-917. (Review of Richard
Pryce's An Evil S pirit).
'Allan Quatermain' , LXIV (July 16, 1887), 90.
'Novels', LXV (February 25, 1888), 235-236. (Review of J.K. Clapperton's
Margaret Dunmore).
'Novels', LXV (March 24, 1888), 356-357. (Review of Mrs Ward's
Robert Elsmere) .
'Novels and Stories', LXVIII (July 6, 1889), 18-19. (Review of
Haggard's Cleopatra).
'Novels', LXVIII (October 19, 1889), 435-437. (Review of Stevenson's
The Master of Ballantrae).
'Novels', LXXI (May 9, 1891), 571-572. (Review of Gissing's New
Grub Street).
'Novels', LXXIII (January 16, 1892), 73-74. (Review of Hardy’s
Tess of the D'Urbevilles) .
'Novels', LXVII (May 5, 1894), 476-477. (Review of Moore's Esther ■
Waters).
'The New Knights', LXXIX (June 1, 1895), 717-719.
-383- 'Jude the Obscure', LXXXI (February 8, 1896), 153-154.
'The Last Stevenson', LXXXI (June 13, 1896), 603-604.
The Savoy
Ellis Havelock, 'Zola: the Man and His Work', 1 (1896), 67-71. Ellis, Havelock, 'Concerning Jude the Obscure', 6 (1896), 35-49.
The Scottish Review
'Ethics and Art in Recent Novels', VII (1886), 315-330.
Scribner's Magazine (New York)
Stevenson, R.L., 'Popular Authors', IV (1898), 122-128.
The Speaker
Gosse, Edmund, 'Thomas Hardy', II (September 13, 1890), 295-296.
Mr Hardy's New Novel', IV (December 26, 1891), 770-771.
'Fiction', V (May It, 1892), 598-599. (Review of Gissing's Born in
Exile) .
The Spectator
'Middlemarch', XLV (December 7, 1872), 1554-1556. (Reviewed by
R.H.Hutton).
' Far From the Madding Crowd', XLVII (December 19, 1874), 1597-1599.
(Reviewed by Hutton).
' Daniel Deronda', XLIX (September 9, 1876), 1131-1133. (Reviewed
by Hutton).
'The Return of the Native', LII (February 8, 1879), 181-182.
(Reviewed by Hutton).
- 384- 'Mr George Meredith's New Novel', LII (November 1, 1879), 1383-1384.
(Reviewed by Hutton).
'Mrs Oliphant's New Novel', LIII (October 16, 1880), 1316-1317.
'Mr Payn's New Novel', LIII (November 13, 1880), 1449-1450.
'Mr Hardy's New Novel', LIII (December 18, 1880), 1627-1628. (Review
of The Trumpet-Major, by Julian Hawthorne).
'Harry Joscelyn' ,LIV (May 28, 1881), 703-704. (Reviewed by Miss
OilIwyn).
'The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford' ,LIV (May 28, 1881), 705-707.
' From Exile' , LIV (June 4, 1881), 735-736. (Reviewed by Miss Dillwyn).
'The Portrait of a Lady', LIV (November 26, 1881), 1504-1506. (Reviewed
by Hutton).
'Mrs Oliphant's Last Novel', LV (January 28, 1882), 124-125. (Reviewed
by Meredith Townsend).
'A Laodicean' , LV (March 4, 1882), 296-297.
'All Sorts and Conditions of Men', LV (October 21, 1882), 1349-1350.
(Reviewed by Mrs J. Cashel Hoey).
'Mr Anthony Trollope', LV (December 9, 1882), 1573-1574.
'Mr Payn's Latest Novel', LVI (January 27, 1883), 118-119. (Reviewed
by Mrs J Cashel Hoey).
'An African Novel', LVI (June 2, 1883), 713-714. (Review of Schreiner's
The Story of an African Farm, by Miss Walker).
'A Modern Lover' , LVI (August 18, 1883), 1069. (Reviewed by Mrs.J
Cashel Hoey).
'The Wizard's Son', LVII (May 31 , 1884), 713-714. (Reviewed by
Meredith Townsend).
-385- 'An English Disciple of Zola', LVIII (January 17, 1885), 83-85.
(Review of Moore's A Mummer's Wife, by J.A.Noble).
'The Shadow of a Crime', LVIII (May 2, 1885), 585-586. (Reviewed
by J.A.Noble).
'The Bostonians' , XLIX (March 20, 1886), 388-389. (Reviewed by Hutton).
'Current Literature', LIX (July 24, 1886), 998-999. (Review of Payn's
The Heir of Ages) .
'The Princess Casamassima', LX (January 1, 1887), 14-16.
'That Quite Impossible She', LX (January 15, 1887), 78-79. (Reviewed
by Hutton).
'A Romance of the Social Problem', LX (January 22, 1887), 114-115.
(Review of Besant's Children of Gibeon, by Mrs J.Cashel Hoey)
'The Woodlanders' , LX (March 26, 1887), 419-420. (Reviewed by Hutton).
'Recent Novels', LX (June 25, 1887), 868-870 (Gissing's Thyrza,
reviewed by J.A.Noble).
'Allan Quatermain, LX (July 2, 1887), 927-928. (Reviewed by Hutton).
'Robert Elsmere' , LXI (April 7, 1888), 479-480. (Review by Hutton).
'Three Novels', LXII (February 9, 1889), 203-204. (Review of Gissing's
A Life's Morning, by Miss Dillwyn).
'Current Literature', LXIV (May 10, 1890), 665-667. (Review of
Cain's The Bondman).
'Recent Novels', LXV (September 27, 1890), 409-411. (Review of
James's The Tragic Muse, by J.A.Noble).
'Mr Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbevilles', LXVIII (January 23, 1892),
121-122. (Reviewed by Hutton).
'Recent Novels', LXVIII (June 25, 1892), 883-885. (Review of Born
in Exile, by J.A.Noble).
'A Betting Epic - Esther Waters', LXXII (June 2, 1894), 757-758.
-386- The Star
LogroTler (Richard Le Gallienne), 'Mr Hardy's New Novel', No. 1212
(December 23, 1891), 4.
Temple Bar
'The New School of American Fiction', LXX (1884), 383-389.
'The Novels of Balzac', LXXVIII (1885), 197-212.
The Times
'A Novel About Socialism', No 31,724 (April 3, 1886), 5. (Review
of Gissing's Demos).
'Recent Novels', No.31,747 (April 30, 1886), 3. (Review of James's
The Bostonians) .
Today
'Books of Today', VII (1887), 121-124. (Review of Shaw's An Unsocial
Socialist).
The Universal Review
'Buchanan, Robert, 'The Modern Young Man as C ritic', III [1889), 353-372,
The Westminster Review
'Belles Lettres', CXX N.S, LXIV [1883), 274-305, [Reyiew of Schreiner's
The Story of An African Farm.
'Belles Lettres', CIII N.S. XLVII (1875), 265-279.
Ellis, Havelock, ‘Thomas Hardy's Novels', CXIX N.S, LXIII (1883),334-364,
-387- ’Contemporary Literature', CXXIII, N.S, LXVII (1885), 581-598,
(Review of Mark Rutherford's Deliverance) ,
'Belles Lettres', CXXVI N.S. LXX (1886), 554-558. (Review of Moore's
Literature at Nurse; or Circulating Morals)
Hannigan, D.F., 'The A rtific ia lity of English Novels', CXXXIII (1890),
254-264.
'Belles Lettres', CXXXIV (1890), 333-337. (Review of Gissing's The
Emancipated) .
Hannigan, D.F., 'The Latest Development of English Fiction, CXXXVIII
(1892), 655-659.
Hannigan, D.F., 'The Decline of Romance', CXLI (1894), 33-36.
The Whitehall Review
'A Novel of the People', No.574 (May 12, 1887), 20. (Review of
Gissing's Thyrza) .
'George Gissing's Wholesome Novel', No.677 (May 4, 1889), 19.
(Review of The Nether World).
'New Novels', No.779 (April 18, 1891), 19-20. (Review of Gissing's
New Grub Street) .
The World
'Hardy the Degenerate', No.l, 115 (November 13, 1895), 15.
The Yellow Book
James, Henry, 'The Death of the Lion', I (1894), 7-52.
-388- D. MODERN WORKS OF CRITICISM, WORKS OF REFERENCE, COLLECTIONS OF
LETTERS, ETC.
Aldington, Richard, Portrait of a Rebel: The Life and Work of
Robert Louis Stevenson, 1957.
Allen, Walter, The English Novel, 1954.
Anderson, Quentin, The American Henry James, 1958.
Auerbach, Erich, Mimesis (1946), Princeton, N.J., 1953.
Becker, George J., Documents of Modern Literary Realism, Princeton,
N.J., 1963.
Beer, Gillian, George Meredith: A Change of Masks, 1970.
Bennett, Arnold, Books and Persons: Being comments on a Past Epoch
1908-1911, 1917.
Bevington, Merle Mowbray, The Saturday Review 1855-1868: Representative
Educated Opinion in Victorian England, New York, 194'
Block, H.M., Naturalistic Triptych. The Fictive and the Real in Zola,
Mann and Dreiser, New York, 1970.
Blunden, Edmund, Thomas Hardy, 1942.
Boege, Fred W., 'Sir Walter Besant: Novelist', Nineteenth Century
Fiction, Berkeley, California, X(1956), 249-280,
and XI (1956), 32-60.
Boll, Ernest, 'Walter Besant on the Art of the Novel', English Fiction
in Transition, West Lafayette, Indiana, II (1959), 28-35.
Booth, Wayne C., The Rhetoric of Fiction, Chicago, Illin o is, 1961.
Brooks, Jean, Thomas Hardy: The Poetic Structure, 1971.
Brooks, Van Wyck, The Pilgrimage of Henry James, 1928.
Brown, Douglas, Thomas Hardy, 1954.
-389- Brown, Douglas, Thomas Hardy: The Mayor of Casterbridge, 1962.
Brown, Malcolm, George Moore: A Reconsideration, Seattle, 1955.
Buckley, J.H., William Ernest Henley: A Study in the"Counter-
Decadence" of the Nineties, (1945), New York 1971.
Buckley, J.H., The Triumph of Time: A Study of the Victorian Concepts
of Time, History, Progress and Decadence, Cambridge,
Massachusetts, 1967.
Buitenhuis (editor). Twentieth Century Interpretations of The Portrait
of a Lady, Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1968.
Bullock, George, Marie Corelli: The Life and Death of a Best-Seller,
1940.
Burdett, Osbert, The Beardsley Period, 1925.
Botts, Dennis, R.L.Stevenson, 1966.
Cargill, Oscar, The Novels of Henry James (1961), New York, 1971.
Carroll, David (editor), George Eliot: The Critical Heritage, 1971.
Carter, Everett, Howells and the Age of Realism (1954), Connecticut,
1966.
Cazamian, Louis, The Social Novel in England (1903), translation by
Martin Fido, 1973.
Cecil, Lord David, Hardy the Novelist, 1943.
Chapman, Raymond, The Victorian Debate: English Literature and Society
1832-1901, 1968.
Chappie, J.A.V., Documentary and Imaginative Literature 1880-1920, 1970,
Cohen, Morton N., Rider Haggard: His Life and Works, 1960.
Colby, Vineta and Robert A., The Equivocal Virtue: Mrs Oliphant and
the Victorian Literary Market Place, New York, 1966.
Colby, Vineta, The Singular Anomaly, New York, 1970.
-390- Colvin, Sidney (editor), The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson, 1911
Connell, John, W.E.Henley, 1949.
Conrad, Joseph, 'Henry James: an appreciation'. The North American
Review, New York, CLXXX (1905), 102-108.
Coustillas and Partridge (editors), George Gissing: The Critical
Heritage, 1972.
Coustillas, Pierre, Collected Articles on George Gissing, 1968.
Cox, R.G. (editor), Thomas Hardy: The Critical Heritage, 1970.
Daiches, David, Some Late Victorian Attitudes, 1969.
Daiches, David, Robert Louis Stevenson, Glasgow, 1947.
Decker, C.R., 'Zola's Literary Reputation in England', PMLA,XLIX
(1934), 1140-1153.
De La Mare, Walter, The Eighteen-Eighties, 1930.
Donnelly, Mabel, George Gissing: Grave Comedian, Cambridge, Mass.,
1954.
Dupee, F.W., Henry James, 1951.
Edel, Leon, Henry James: 'The Middle Years 1884-1894, 1963.
Eigner, Edwin M., Robert Louis Stevenson and Romantic Tradition,
Princeton, New Jersey, 1966.
Eliot, T.S., 'In Memory', The Little Review, New York, V (1918),
44-47.
Elwin, Malcolm, Old Gods Falling, 1939.
Fletcher, Ian (editor), Meredith Now, 1971.
Foley, Richard Nicholas, Criticism in American Periodicals of the
Works of Henry James from 1866 to 1916,
Washington, D.C., 1944.
Frierson, W.C., 'The English Controversy Over Realism in Fiction,
1885-1895', PMLA, XLIII (1928), 533-550.
-391- Frierson, W.C., The English Novel in Transition, 1885-1940.
Oklahoma, 1942.
Frierson, W.C., 'George Moore Compromised With the Victorians',
The Trollopian, Berkeley, California, I (1947),
37-44.
Furst, Lilian R., and Skrine, Peter N., Naturalisni, 1971.
Gard, Roger (editor), Henry James: The Critical Heritage, 1968.
Gissing, A. and E. (editors). Letters of George Gissing to Members
of his Family, 1927.
Graham, Kenneth, English Criticism of the Novel, 1865-1900, 1965.
Graham, Walter, English Literary Periodicals, New York, 1930.
Grant, Damian, Real ism, 1970.
Green, Roger Lancelyn, Andrew Lang, 1946.
Gregor, Ian and Nicholas, Brian, The Moral and the Story, 1962.
Griest, Guinevere L., Mudie's Circulating Library and the Victorian
Novel, 1970.
Gross, John, The Rise and Fall of the Man of Letters, 1969.
Guerard, A.J., Thomas Hardy: The Novels and Stories, Cambridge, Mass,
1949.
Gunn, Peter, Vernon Lee, 1964.
Haggard, Lilias Rider, The Cloak that I le ft, 1951.
Hammerton, J.A., George Meredith: His Life and Art in Anecdote and
Criticism. Revised Edition, Edinburgh, 1911.
Hardy, Evelyn, Thomas Hardy: A Critical Biography, 1954.
Hardy, Evelyn, Thomas Hardy's Notebooks, 1955.
Hardy, Florence Emily, The Life of Thomas Hardy, One Volume edition,
1962.
- 392- Harlow, Virginia, Thomas Sergeant Perry, Durham, North Carolina, 1950.
Hemmings, F.W.J., Emile Zola, Second Edition, 1966.
Hergenhan, L.T., A Critical Consideration of the Reviews of the Novels
of George Meredith From the Shaving of Shagpat to
The Egoist, Unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation, London,
1960.
Hewitt, Douglas, The Approach to Fiction: Good and Bad Readings of
Novels, 1972.
Holland, Laurence Bedwell, The Expense of Vision: Essays on the Craft
of Henry James, Princeton, New Jersey, 1964.
Holloway, John, The Victorian Sage, 1953.
Howard, Lucas, and Goode (editors), Tradition and Tolerance in Nine
teenth Century Fiction, 1966.
Howe, Irving, Thomas Hardy, 1968.
Hunt, John Dixon, The Pre-Raphaelite Imagination, 1968.
James, Henry, The Art of Fiction and other essays. Introduction by
Morris Roberts, New York, 1948.
Jefferson, D.W., Henry James, 1960.
Jefferson, D.W., Henry James and the Modern Reader, 1964.
Johnson, R.V., Aestheticism, 1969.
Keating, P.J., The Working Classes in Victorian Fiction, 1971.
Keating, P.J., 'The State of Gissing Studies', Victorian Studies,
Bloomington, Indiana, XIII (1970), 393-396.
Kiely, Robert J., Robert Louis Stevenson and the Fiction of Adventure,
Cambridge, Mass., 1964.
Korg, Jacob, ‘ Division of Purpose in George Gissing', PMLA, LXX
(1955), 323-336.
-393- Korg, Jacob, George Gissing: A Critical Biography, Seattle,
Washington, 1953.
Krook, Dorothea, The Ordeal of Consciousness in Henry James, 1962.
Leavis, Q.D., 'Gissing and the English Novel', Scrutiny, VII (1938),
73-81.
Leavis, Q.D., Fiction and the Reading Public, 1932.
Lerner, L., and Holmstrom, J., (editors), Thomas Hardy and His
Readers, 1968.
Lockhead, Marion, 'Margaret Oliphant: A Half Forgotten Novelist',
The Quarterly Review, CCIC (1961), 300-310.
Lodge, David, Language of Fiction, 1966.
Lubbock, Percy (editor). The Letters of Henry James, Two Volumes, 1920,
Lucas, John (editor), Literature and Politics in the 19th Century,
1971.
Lynd, Helen Merrell, England in the Eighteen Eighties (1945), 1968.
Melville, Lewis, Victorian Novelists, 1906.
Meredith, W.M. (editor). Letters of Meredith, 1912.
Miller, J. Hill is, Thomas Hardy: Distance and Desire, 1970.
Mi 11 gate, Michael, Thomas Hardy: His Career as a Novelist, 1971.
Mordell, Albert (editor), Discovery of a Genius: William Dean Howells
and Henry James, New York, 1961.
Mordell, Albert (editor). Literary Reviews and Essays by Henry James,
New York, 1957.
Murray, Donald M., 'Henry James and the English Reviewers 1882-1890,
American Literature, North Carolina, XXIV (1952),
1- 20.
Norris, Samuel, Two Men of Manxland, Douglas, Isle of Man, 1947.
-394- Owens, Graham (editor), George Moore's Mind and Art, 1968.
Pritchett, V.S., George Meredith and English Comedy, 1970.
Putt, S. Gorley, The Fiction of Henry James (1966), 1968.
Ramadan, Mrs. A.M.E. The Reception of Henry James's Fiction in the
Main English Periodicals between 1875 - 1890.
Unpublished Doctoral Thesis, London, 1960.
Roberts, Morris, Henry James's Criticism, Harvard, Cambridge, 1929.
Root, W.H., German Criticism of Zola, 1875-1893., New York, 1931.
Rutland, W.R., Thomas Hardy: A Study of his Writings and their
Background, 1938.
Saintsbury, George, A History of the French Novel, 1919.
Ski 1 ton, David, Trollope and his Contemporaries, 1972.
Smith, Janet Adam (editor), Henry James and Robert Louis Stevenson,
1948.
Southerington, F.R., Hardy's Vision of Man, 1971.
Stanford, Derek (editor). Critics of the 'Nineties, 1970.
Stang, The Theory of the Novel in England 1850-1870,New York, 1959.
Stern, J.P., On Realism, 1973.
Stewart, J.I.M., Thomas Hardy: A Critical Biography, 1971.
Stone, Donald David, Novelists in a Changing World, Cambridge,
Massachusetts, 1972.
Stromberg, Roland N., Realism, Naturalism, and Symbolism, 1968.
Swinnerton, Frank, George Gissing: A Critical Study, 1912.
Tanner, Tony (editor), Henry James: Modern Judgements, 1968.
Wellek, Rene, A History of Modern Criticism: The Later Nineteenth
Century, 1966.
The Wellesley Index to Victorian Periodicals (edited by Walter Houghton),
Toronto, Volume One, 1966., and Volume Two, 1972.
-395- Wharton, Edith, A Backward Glance, New York, 1934.
Wilkinson, A.B., The Principles and Practices of the Criticism of
Fiction in the Quarterlies, Monthlies, and Weeklies,
1850-1860, Unpublished Doctoral Thesis, Cambridge,
1958.
Williams, loan (editor), George Meredith: The Critical Heritage, 1971
Williams, Merryn, Thomas Hardy and Rural England, 1972.
Williams, Raymond, The Long Revolution, 1961.
Williams, Raymond, The English Novel: From Dickens to Lawrence, 1970.
Wilson, Angus, Zola, 1952.
Young, A.C. (editor). The Letters of George Gissing to Eduard Bertz,
1961.
-396-