Short Story World. the Nineteenth-Century American Masters

SHORT STORY WORLD The Nineteenth-Century American Masters BIBLIOTECA DE INVESTIGACIÓN n¼ 33

María Jesús Hernáez Lerena

SHORT STORY WORLD The Nineteenth-Century American Masters

UNIVERSIDAD DE LA RIOJA SERVICIO DE PUBLICACIONES 2014

Short story World. The Nineteenth-century American Masters de María Jesús Hernáez Lerena (publicado por la Universidad de La Rioja) se encuentra bajo una Licencia Creative Commons Reconocimiento-NoComercial-SinObraDerivada 3.0 Unported. Permisos que vayan más allá de lo cubierto por esta licencia pueden solicitarse a los titulares del copyright.

© El autor © Universidad de La Rioja, Servicio de Publicaciones, 2014 publicaciones.unirioja.es E-mail: [email protected]

ISBN: 978-84-697-0045-7 This book is dedicated with abiding love to my husband and child.

Amid the seeming confusion of our mysterious world, individuals are so nicely adjusted to a system, and systems to one another, and to a whole, that, by stepping aside for a moment, a man exposes himself to a fearful risk of losing his place forever.

Nathaniel Hawthorne, “Wakefield”

Contents

Preface...... 13 Introduction...... 15 Corpus...... 23

I. THE CONCEPT OF SHORT STORY ...... 25 1. Introduction ...... 26 2. On Construction ...... 30 3. On Subject...... 36 4. Textual Links and the Role of the Reader ...... 39 5. Relationships with Other Genres ...... 48 6. On Aesthetics...... 53

II. TEXTUAL ANALYSIS OF THE SHORT STORIES BY IRVING, POE, HAWTHORNE AND MELVILLE ...... 57 1. THE FABULA ...... 57 1.1. The Short Story Narrative Cycle ...... 57 1.1.1. Narrative Cycles: Lack of Possibility...... 58 1.1.2. Narrative Cycles: The Events...... 62 1.1.3. Exceptions to the “Rule” ...... 70 1.1.4. Questions Raised by the Analysis ...... 72 1.2. Narrative cycles: Development and Closure of the Fabula . . . . . 74 1.2.1. Processes of Improvement and Deterioration: Fabula progression ...... 74 1.2.2. Subject and Aim: The Sense of Closure...... 79 2. TIME IN THE SHORT STORY ...... 85 2.1. Fabula Time in the Short Story ...... 85 2.1.1. The Double Narrative Cycle...... 86 2.1.2. Real and Hypothetical Fabula ...... 91 2.2. Time Disruption in the Short Story ...... 93 2.3. Short Story Rhythm ...... 100 2.4. Sequential Ordering ...... 117

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3. CHARACTERIZATION...... 121 4. FOCALIZATION AND NARRATION ...... 133 4.1. The Concept of Focalization ...... 133 4.2. Intra-Homodiegetic Narrators and Unreliability ...... 135 4.3. Extra-Heterodiegetic Narrators...... 140

III. THE LOCAL COLOR SCHOOL ...... 153 III. 1. BRET HARTE«S SHORT STORIES: TEXTUAL ANALYSIS ...... 153 1. THE FABULA ...... 153 1.1. The Narrative Cycle ...... 153 1.1.1. Links between the Stages ...... 159 1.1.2. The Actors...... 161 1.1.3. The Actantial Structure...... 162 1.1.4. A Definition of Short Story ...... 167 1.1.5. Definition of New Concepts...... 168 2. RHYTHM ...... 169 3. CHARACTERIZATION...... 179 3.1. Characters and Situation...... 179 3.2. The Actants...... 183 3.3. Reader/Character Relationships ...... 185 3.4. The Problem of Characterization ...... 185 4. DEVIATIONS FROM THE CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER ...... 187 5. FOCALIZATION AND NARRATION ...... 189 III. 2. FRAME NARRATION IN THE SHORT STORY: MARK TWAIN ...... 195

IV. SARAH ORNE JEWETT«S SHORT STORIES ...... 203 1. SHORT STORY FABULA AND THE READER ...... 203 2. FABULA AND STORY TIME IN THE SHORT STORY ...... 214

V. CONCLUSIONS ...... 219

VI. REFERENCES ...... 227 1. Primary Sources ...... 227 2. Secondary Sources ...... 229 3. Recommended Bibliography...... 233

12 Preface

The short story is a way of thinking about ourselves and reality. It is not just a short narrative that comes in handy for those who are short of time. The short story translates into fiction a sense of life stuck in a detail unhinged from what came before or after. Those readers who think that their lives form a continuing plot, those who believe that they can make of their lives a narrative which keeps going non-stop are bound to dismiss the short story as irrelevant. If life is a continuous long path, why should they stop at a part that does not quite seem to connect to the whole? Those readers hooked on the short story possess intermittent souls, they are unable to assemble their biographies plausibly and turn to this form of fiction in order to discover new joys in worlds which momentarily step aside from the maddening continuity of life. The short story is a painful genre because it targets the incongruity of life, it shows the reader life«s fissures. The short story denies the comforts of narrative per se: its chaining of events, its sustained incursions into the characters« lives and minds, its reassurance that we participate fully in a world spread out there for us. However experimental a novel might be, we feel a gratifying sensation that we are accompanying characters in a journey from which some knowledge is to be gained. But the short story usually renders useless our habitual mechanisms to make reality intelligible. Nineteenth-century American writers understood this from the very beginning: they realized that a mere disturbance in a previously unmolested course of life can satisfy us imaginatively as the plot of a short story. They discovered that the individual consciousness is composed of very short incidents “highly telescoped” as the American writer Jerzy Kosinski has said. Short story writers believe that progression is unfounded, that it is our society that has taught us to think of ourselves as characters in the plot of a novel. But what if isolated

13 MARêA JESÚS HERNÁEZ LERENA perceptions are more important to us than any conventional narrative account? The short story does not reason in transitions, it shows the reader that the substance of life cannot be spread out and chaptered until a final destiny is reached. Also, that life may have no direction and that there are gaps in this gigantic mechanism of causes and effects. Short story writers focus on a piece of life to show that we are forever at the beginning. The genre reflects the impact of life, it does not dissect all the forces behind it. Because of this, it partakes of the visual arts greatly; significance is conveyed through a gesture, an attitude, an object which speaks through silence. An image persistent in our mind because we cannot fully articulate what it means. This book tries to show how to better appreciate the essence of the short story. Because of this, it focuses on the nineteenth century, when a number of writers struggled to express their notions of experience in a fictional medium at odds with the epistemology of the novel. The American writers discussed here are but a very restricted group, many others could have been included, but the task would have been then too overwhelming. I have preferred to deal with the selected stories at length rather than to offer a barely outlined panorama. My interest is to show students of American literature and also readers and critics interested in this genre one way to approach short story territory. Narratology is only one possible way, its advantage being that its classifications are relatively unified and that it allows us to identify certain components of the narrative with a view to comparison. However, the validity of the methodological tools I am using is never taken for granted. The book explores to what extent they are useful and to what extent many adjustments and additions are necessary. The weaknesses and contradictions of the method must per force interrupt our analysis with questions that need to be answered. I have tried to answer them without hampering the advance of textual analysis.

14 Introduction

The idea that triggered off this analysis was to discover the nature of the mechanisms of the kind of fiction which, despite depending on only a few pages, offers the reader complete imaginary worlds as in the novel. A second dominating idea was to study the possibilities that had been developed in order that a short piece of fiction could become a short story. Hence my choice of corpus: there was a difference of a century between the English novel and the North American novel, and it was in this century that the short story appeared in America. The nineteenth century abounds with authors who conceived of the short story as a miniature novel, as a short empty stretch into which an appropriately reduced plot should fit in, or as a frame in which to exhibit descriptive powers. There were, however a fair amount of writers, who, although they wrote in the absence of a genre, modelled their fiction to completely different methods of construction to those of the tale, the tall tale, the legend, the reportage, the sketch, the essay, the anecdote, the humorous piece, the parable, and of course, the novel. These are the writers chosen to be analysed, since, once conclusions about the specificity of their productions have been reached, arguments can be developed to refuse the inclusion of those other productions within this genre. The process of translating into observable textual terms such aspects as the illusion of expansion, the building up of characters, rhythm, etc., and the comparison between the strategies of different narratives, cannot be carried out without a method. Our most urgent demand was first of all to find a critical system which would make possible to identify the mechanisms that enable the functioning of the narrative, and which would offer a classification of their relationships, since we need to pin down the basic components of the short story and to study the nature of their combination.

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Narratology offers the tools to carry out this analysis since it classifies the constitutive elements which intervene in the construction of a story and their “enchasing” within a relatively unified critical framework. It was considered convenient, then, to handle just one critical proposal, a single form of terminology applicable to a wide range of short stories. My analysis relies mainly on Mieke Bal’s (1985) and Rimmon-Kenan’s (1983) categories, who have channelled previous criticism into a clear system of concepts. From a common point of view the system of comparisons is more effective. Besides, this method has double value since it allows us to examine the degree of its adaptability to another genre which is not the novel -where it has been most widely used-and, as a consequence, it offers a second line of analysis, that of its adjustment to the short story. Despite Bal (1985:4) asserting that this descriptive method can be applied to short stories, we will have to face some gaps). The adjustment of this critical system has been continued throughout my analysis, as it was necessary to create some terms which accounted better for the peculiarities of the fabula and textual organization of the short story. Besides, using this method to deal with diachronicity in literature constituted a challenge. This diachronicity is only relative since the selected texts have been grouped around interdependent syncrhonicities. The first great masters of the genre: Irving, Poe, Hawthorne and Melville have been analysed in the same chapter since their contribution to the genre cannot be considered independent. In the following chapters, the study centres on those authors who where somewhat influenced by the “local color school”, but as their work is codified in terms of independent systems, they have been analysed separately. (Although comparison between previous and forthcoming texts is a constant feature throughout the analysis). These short story writers are Bret Harte, Mark Twain and Sarah Orne Jewett. Once an author has applied certain combination of elements to his work which has proved enriching for the genre or successful in terms of the readership, it is likely to be repeated by other authors. This analysis will be an account of the fixed features which appear in the short story throughout the century, but as it aims at collecting the innovations as well, once the analysis of the first group of short story writers has been presented (those writers that laid the foundations of the genre in America), only those aspects which are new will be studied, to avoid repetitions of analysis. There will be, nevertheless, in all cases, a record of the common procedures. That is the reason why, from Bret Harte onwards, the study focuses only on certain elements, since the author has not provided any new strategy to the development of the concept of the short story.

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Concerning the organization of the sections, they have been divided according to the large sections offered by narratological analysis; fabula, story, text, and the components of these macro-concepts. The method is the same as that used by the formalists concerning poetic language, which is defined according to its breach of everyday speech. We will describe the structure of the narrative text in contrast with the fabula, which is the logical and chronological order of the events. Each section is provided with a set of conclusions in order to allow an overall view. On the other hand, it has been a further incitement to devote attention to those works of American writers that have remained almost invisible to syllabuses or serious criticism for a long time. It comes as a pleasure to discover that most American novelists or writers of romance can also be called short story writers with equal or greater justice. Finally, a justification for the selection of this particular range of authors and 1 texts . Although Irving is not yet a short story writer, my analysis starts with him because the character and nature of his writings constitute the first step towards the shaping of the modern concept of the short story. Previous American writers do not interest us, they wrote either anecdotes with didactic intention (Franklin), narrative propaganda (Freneau), abortive romances (Brown), or moral tracts. Irving’s short pieces consisted of a mixture of intentions: romance, legend, satire, chronicle, and a demonstration of flamboyant language. He will be offered as an example of short fiction that is not short story. Later short story writers would learn that diversity could not be exploited in short form. Although short fiction found a very profitable response in the mass of periodicals, newspapers, magazine annuals and gift books, there were other obstacles which restrained a forward movement towards quality and specificity of the genre. Firstly, it was not until very late in the century that the links between other literary genres such as the novel or the romance and short fiction disappeared. From 1825 onwards, many authors under the influence of the gothic tale and the romance produced stories conceived as condensed romances, with a plot-stuffed structure full of digression and comments, influenced by the analytical methods of the novel. Just to name some tales produced according to the German fashion: “Peter Rugg, the Missing Man” (1824) by William Austin, Carwin the Biloquist, and Other American Tales and Pieces (1822) by Charles Brockden Brown,

1. For a complete historical account of nineteenth-century short fiction, see Pattee (1975).

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“Medfield” (1832) by Bryant, “The Haunted Man” (1832) by John Neal, “The white Indian” (1827) by James K. Paulding, “Modern Chivalry” (1827) by Catherine M. Sedgwick. Most of them were published by The Token and The Atlantic Souvenir. Secondly, there was an invasion of stories which responded exclusively to the American eagerness to record historical and geographical peculiarities and customs, which produced a fad for native materials. This fiction was never totally freed from its links with non-literary writings such as the report or the chronicle. These writings were made short for the convenience of magazines and annuals and were given narrative form to attract readers. This second current was reflected in the sketch, the diary and the chronicle, forms influenced by the book of travels and the essay. The desire to preserve in print a vanished or vanishing past encountered three main geographical centres, or sources of romanticized accounts: the West, New England and the South. James Hall is among the first representatives of these historical sketches with his Legends of the West, Sketches Illustrative of the Habits, Occupations, Privations, Adventures and Sports of the Pioneers of the West (1832). The Mike School of Fiction, whose pioneer was Morgan Neville with his tale “The Last of the Boatmen” (1829) meant a first step towards realism. There was at the same time, in the twenties and thirties, a rise in the production of “lady’s books”. With them a kind of rambling, sentimentalised and moralizing fiction was promoted in short form. Although we can cite N. P. Willis as an author who favoured some modern concepts of the short story in connection with suggestiveness and approach to painting, the writers who published in these periodicals were too much influenced (N.P. Willis was influenced himself) by melodramatic romance and a lack of consciousness of form. Two of his collections are Pencillings by the Way and Inklings of Adventure (1836). Mrs. Stowe followed Harte’s successful method; she portrayed the early years of the century in New England and produced careful sketches accurate in dialect and detail: Oldtown Fireside Stories (1870). She was followed by Constance Fenimore Woolson and by Sarah Orne Jewett. With Jewett, for the first time in this tide of sentimentalism and patriotic recognition, artistry surpasses mere report. Again, after the Civil War, America discovered a new source of national romantic symbols: the South. The result was similar to that of previous literary fashions: many writers were just writing for the sake of the materials. The most popular writers were George Washington Cable, Joel Handler Harris and

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Thomas Nelson Page, they wrote from the 1870’s into the beginnings of the twentieth century. We have only dealt in this analysis with short stories by short story writers. That is, among the immense production of short fiction in the nineteenth century in America there are pieces which may be considered proper short stories and which may have allowed the short story to advance a little, but they have been left out so as not to give an overly historical emphasis to an analysis which concerns not the gathering of documentation but the obtaining of a “radiography” of a genre in gradual development according to a theory of narrative. We will therefore pay attention only to those writers who offer consistent production in this genre, although they may have written “pieces of fiction” that cannot be included within the short story genre. This is the case of Hawthorne’s work, which consists of short stories among sketches (of travels and personality) and allegorical tales. These are too similar to history, the parable, or the moral tract to be considered proper fiction. There is no characterization, no progression other than chronological and a too general and biblical approach to events. Among them “The Gentle Boy” (1832), “The Gray Champion” (1835), “The Great Carbuncle” (1837), “The Birthmark” (1843). However, he also wrote “pieces” with exclusively narrative interest and with a conscious method of composition: these are the ones which will be analysed: “The Hollow of the Three Hills” (1830), “Mr. Higginbotham’s Catastrophe” (1834), “Young Goodman Brown” (1835), and “Mrs. Bullfrog” (1837). Poe was the first writer to realize that he was writing within a genre responding to different rules and possibilities from those of the novel, and he proclaimed the short story (although that term was not yet used) to be the best kind of fiction: “Epics were the offspring of an imperfect sense of Art, and their reign is no more.” (Poe, 1977: 173). He eliminated from his narratives the characteristic obstrusiveness of previous writers who wanted to portray in different parts of the narrative independent parcels of society or traits of personality. “Ligeia” (1838), “The Fall of the House of Usher” (1839), and “The Tell-Tale Heart” (1843) have been selected, due to their high level of technical achievement and variety of means. Melville took to short fiction in his maturity, after having abandoned his romances. He deals with the short story as with a narrative experiment. However, very few of his pieces -apart from the ones analysed here- can be considered proper short stories since they consist simply of the reversal of the fixed

19 MARêA JESÚS HERNÁEZ LERENA assumptions of a single character with an overly obvious illustrative intention. We will study “Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall-Street”, “Benito Cereno”, and “The Piazza”, all published in Piazza Tales (1856). There was a parallel tradition to that of New England transcendentalism, that of the Local Color School. There were a great number of authors, who, according to the Mike school of fiction, produced funny local stories whose common feature was the anecdote, the faithful rendering of dialect, and the representations of American types such as yankee peddlars, greenhorns, tricksters and rascals. It is a home-grown literature which springs from the rude conditions of living in the frontier. Bret Harte and Mark Twain draw many useful elements from this specifically humorous American tradition. We have selected from Harte’s wide range of short stories “The Luck of Roaring Camp” (1868), “Tennessee’s Partner” (1869), and “The Outcasts of Poker Flat” (1869). After these narratives, the quality of his work decayed because he devoted himself to repeating the same formula over and over again. However, he and Irving were the two writers who exerted the greatest influence on the American short story. Mark Twain also has “wavering” production in respect of the short story. He wrote stories consisting exclusively of the speech of a singular character on the most varied topics and also parables similar to those of Hawthorne. “The Mysterious Stranger” is an example of the latter. We will analyse: “The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” (1865), “Jim Blaine and His Grandfather’s Ram” (1872), and “A True Story” (1874). From the “era of localized romance” as Pattee (1975: 245) defines it, we have “rescued” Sarah Orne Jewett. She was the first North American short story writer to endow the short story with the final element necessary for completeness, that of a consistent handling of the characters in dialogue form. She does so by conceiving in her texts an already modern reader: leaving out interpretation. She almost entirely relies on conversation and the ability of the reader to draw appropriate descriptive and emotional conclusions from that conversation. It is in this feature of “overestimating” the reader where the foundations of the modern concept of the short story lie. According to Bates (1988: 24) the modern short story was only possible thanks to a parallel evolution of the reader. Education, travel, wider social contact, the increased uniformity of life have made us all familiar with things which were once remote enough to need to be described. According to him, it is not necessary to describe: it is enough to suggest. Sarah Orne Jewett skilfully handled previous

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“findings” concerning textual strategies in the short story and gave it the last thrust towards a settlement of basic principles. I consider, therefore, my particular analysis to be complete with her. From Sarah Orne Jewett’s work we have selected “Miss Tempy’s Watchers” (1888), “The Town Poor” (1890), “The Only Rose” (1894), and “Aunt Cynthy Dallett” (1899). We consider they fulfil the demands of the short story according to modern judgement. Once the short story had been endowed with its essentials, its particular code of strategies was going to be “usable” for future short story writers whose production lies between the end of the nineteenth century and the beginnings of the new century. These were Stephen Crane, Ambrose Bierce, Jack London, Mary Wilkins Freeman, Kate Chopin, etc. They already offer the reader, without drawbacks, the modern magnificence of this little genre.

21

Corpus

Washington Irving “Rip Van Winkle” (1819) “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” (1820)

Nathaniel Hawthorne “The Hollow of the Three Hills” (1830) “Mr. Higginbotham´s Catastrophe” (1834) “Young Goodman Brown” (1835) “Mrs. Bullfrog” (1837)

Edgar Allan Poe “Ligeia” (1838) “The Fall of the House of Usher” (1839) “The Tell-Tale Heart” (1843)

Herman Melville “The Piazza” (1856) “Bartleby” (1856) “Benito Cereno” (1856)

Bret Harte “The Luck of Roaring Camp” (1868) “The Outcasts of Poker Flat” (1869) “Tennessee´s Partner” (1869)

Mark Twain “The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” (1865) “Jim Blaine and His Grandfather´s Ram” (1872) “A True Story” (1874)

Sara Orne Jewett “Miss Tempy«s Watchers” (1888) “The Town Poor” (1890) “The Only Rose” (1894) “Aunt Cynthy Dallett” (1899)

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I. The concept of short story

Before presenting an analysis of the combination mechanisms of fabula elements in the selected texts, we consider it necessary to present an up-to-date view of the short story in the twentieth century. Once we have become familiar with the possibilities and achievements of the established genre, we will be able to link them with manifestations of the genre at an earlier stage. Only by looking at the literary accomplishments nearer our time as modern readers, we will be able to grasp the full scope of the short story’s past development. At the same time, I believe that, besides exploiting the possibilities of applying a method to a certain text or texts (and therefore obtaining the answers concerning the question of literary specificity and the potential of the method itself), I must also gather the conclusions that specialized critics have produced and the analysis that short story writers themselves have elaborated. They have provided short story criticism -usually in a revealing and prophetic fashion, free from particular theoretical standpoints-, with accurate definitions of the nature of this particular type of short fiction. I consider that without these testimonies my analysis would not be complete since they raise questions which will be answered according to a strict method. They also foresee recurrent characteristics of the short story which will be detailed systematically thanks to narratological analysis. This chapter has been divided into different sections whose titles resemble O’Faolain’s (1974) exposition of ideas: 1. Introduction. 2. On Construction. 3. On subject. 4. Textual links and the role of the reader.

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5. Short story relationship with other genres. 6. On aesthetics.

1. Introduction

The basis of almost every argument or conclusions I can make is the axiom that the short story can be anything the author decides it shall be; it can be anything from the death of a horse to a young girl’s first love affair, from the static sketch without plot to the swiftly moving machine of bold action and climax, from the prose poem, painted rather than written, to the piece of straight reportage in which style, colour and elaboration have no place, from the piece which catches like a cobweb the light subtle iridescence of emotions that can never be really captured or measured to the solid tale in which all emotions, all action, all reaction is measured, fixed, puttied, glazed and finished, like a well-built house, with three coats of enduring paint. In that infinite flexibility, lies the reason why the short story has never been adequately defined. (Bates, 1988: 15-16)

The short story, like any art form, “can be anything” if we think of its range of possibilities, or if we look at the immense variety of results that have been and will be produced. This is the problem with trying to define art by its potential: it cannot be grasped in a formula. However, each form is ruled and limited by certain specific conditions, with these being both its limitation and its strength. It is the study of these limiting conditions and the way they are handled that offers the possibility of reaching conclusions concerning a particular art form. The aim of this study is to examine them closely in order to achieve a better understanding of the various results. The short story shares with the novel its constitutive elements: time, place, characters, events, narrator. Both novel and short story share the status of being a story. However, the short story is governed by precise principles of construction -which are very different from those of the novel- derived mainly from its compulsory brevity. The presentation of fabula elements, their extent of concentration and arrangement, the effect on the reader and the adherence to them, are ruled differently in the short story and in the novel. In fact, they are almost opposite forms. That the short story, as a separate fictional form possesses a codified system of producing significance does not mean that it stands alone avoiding any

26 SHORT STORY WORLD: THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY AMERICAN MASTERS relationship with the system of the novel or systems of any other genre. On the contrary, interpretation is dependent very often on cross-reference with other art forms such as painting, film, poetry and the novel. Indeed, without the novel, many short story devices would not have been possible. If a fixed definition of the short story is impossible as Valerie Shaw (1983: 21) concludes, a conclusion that is backed by many critics and short story writers, our aim will not be to reach a definition which will fit all short stories, but it will be to analyse the different definitions because this variety will account more completely for the concept. The fact that so many definitions of the short story are available, is not only due to the human need to limit, define and classify in order to understand and embrace, but it also accounts for the fact that the short story has been an invisible phenomenon in literary criticism for a long time. Such a bulk of definitions responds to the acute need to prove its existence and to differentiate it from the novel. The short story has remained hidden from the reading public as well - although to a lesser extent- because of the absolute predominance of the novel:

El desarrollo de esta novela [la novela europea del siglo XIX] llega a su apogeo hacia los años setenta del siglo XIX; desde entonces no nos hemos liberado de la impresión de cosa definitiva, creyendo que no existe forma o género literario nuevo en la prosa literaria. (Eichembaum, 1970: 150)

According to the Russian formalist, the syncretic nature of the novel and its mixture of all poetic genres explain the reluctance to accept new forms. The first English novelists strove to endow with dignity a genre which did not yet have a high position within the generic hierarchy, but nobody doubted its existence. That is why the novel has been analysed infinitely, but not so frequently defined. Another cause of the disadvantageous position of the short story with respect to the novel is that some critics consider the short story as a stage of apprenticeship for the would-be novelist. Even short story writers are timidly aware that they are not considered to be “fully -equipped” 2. Critics and publishers prefer “big things”, confusing -as Ian Reid (1977: 2) points out- significance with bulk. And he continues: “The lyric is by no means less potent and meaningful, inherently, than a discursive poem, and the short story can move us by an intensity which the novel is unable to sustain”.

2. See chapter 1 “`Only Stories´: Estimates and Explanations” in Valerie Shaw (1983: 2).

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One of the particular characteristics of the short story is that its texts are non- departing. The lack of disturbance of the readers’ affairs in the fictitious world presented favours an effect of intensity which unites with the effect of concentration produced by the restricted page-length presentation of an event or events. The short story was therefore conceived, from the very beginning, by the first great American short story writer as an intense grip on the reader which would pull him towards a single sustained moment of aesthetic enjoyment 3. As far back as 1842 Poe had compared the principles of the poem with those of the short story and rejected longer forms for the following reasons:

The ordinary novel is objectionable, from its length, for the reasons already stated in substance. As it cannot be read in one sitting, it deprives itself, of course, of the immense force derivable from totality. Worldly interests intervening during the pauses of perusal, modify, annul or counteract, in a greater or less degree, the impressions of the book. But simple cessation in reading would, of itself, be sufficient to destroy the true unity. In the brief tale, however, the author is enable to carry out the fullness of his intention, be it what it may. During the hour of perusal the soul of the reader is at the writer’s control. There are not external influences- resulting from weariness or interruption. (Poe, “Twice-Told Tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne: a Review” in Stern and Gross, 1977: 174)

After Poe many other writers have explained the distinctiveness of the short story by means of the links it has with lyric poetry. If the short story is a narrative form suited to an effect of intensity (the “exaltation of the soul” that Poe mentioned in his article on Hawthorne), the plot becomes a highly controlled narrative design, more dependant on the effect produced in the reader than on a diverse or extended exposition of fabula elements. Analysing Katherine Ann Porter’s short stories, Eudora Welty (1971: 36) remarks:

It appears to me irrelevant whether or not the story is conceived and put down in sensory images, whether or not is dramatic in construction, so long as its hold is a death-grip. In my own belief, the suspense -so acute and real- in Katherine Anne Porter’s work never did depend for its life on disclosure of happenings of the narrative (nothing is going to turn out very well) but in the writing of the story, which becomes one single long sustained moment for the reader. Its suspense is one with its meaning.

3. When speaking about the reader, we have used the form “he” as representing both male and female readers.

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The time span of the fabula and the use of time in the text is one of the main aspects which have served to establish the differences between the novel and the short story. O’Faolain (1974: 154) suggests that we accept the novel as a long book like life, in spite of the fact that it omits so much. The illusion of completeness and continuity can easily be created and sustained in the novel by reference to passing time, movements from place to place, births, deaths, and so on. The novel involves the reader by means of the generous amount of information allowed by its length:

Para gozar novelescamente tenemos que sentirnos rodeados de novela por todas partes. [...] Ahora bien: yo no columbro que esto pueda conseguirse de otra manera que mediante una generosa plenitud de detalles. Para aislar al lector no hay otro medio que someterlo a un denso cerco de menudencias claramente intuidas. ¿Qué otra cosa es nuestra vida sino una gigantesca síntesis de nimiedades? [...] El poeta puede echar a andar con su lira bajo el brazo, pero el novelista necesita movilizarse con una enorme impedimenta, como los circos peregrinos y los pueblos emigrantes. LLeva a cuestas todo el atrezzo de un mundo. (Ortega y Gasset, 1966: 413-414)

The world we enter when we read a short story must be left after a short time. All the same the reader must be satisfied with its scene and character and its grip must remain with the same power as it does in the novel. But the “sample of life” is so tiny in the short story compared with that of the novel. How can tiny bits of life speak for an entire life? How does the reader accept the relative lack of temporal scope? The following sections are an attempt to give an answer to those questions which sum up the essentials of the short story. In the first place, we must bear in mind that the short story cannot share the same artistic methods as the novel. A short story can never be a display of information, it can never wholly exhibit a world, and at the same time, its brief look at the world must leave us with the impression that our access to the represented world has been complete. A different use of time is made immediately necessary. H. G. Wells describes the use of time in the novel and short story with a curious comparison:

A short story should go to its point as a man flies from a pursuing tiger: he pauses not for the daisies in his path, or to note the pretty moss on the tree he climbs for safety. But the novel in comparison is like breakfasting in the open air on a summer morning; nothing is irrelevant if the writer’s mood is happy, and the tapping of the thrust upon the garden path, or the petal of apple blossom that floats down into my coffee, is as relevant as the egg I open or the bread and butter I bite.” (In Shaw, 1983: 48)

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Past, present and future cannot be presented discursively and therefore the achievement of the short story is to create an illusion with a minimum of description and characterization. To omit and, nevertheless, make present. The main aim of the short story is not to produce an “idle” verisimilitude, but to reveal by suggestion, and in doing that, to release the imagination.

2. On construction

The short story has been defined from the perspective of its neat plot-structure and the nature of its suspense as “pressure + release “. It has been pointed out that psychological development (or characterization) is sacrificed for the sake of the last turn. Satirically, Howard Nemerov (1963: 231) remarks that short stories

amount for the most part to parlor tricks, party favors with built-in snappers, gadgets for inducing recognitions and reversals: a small pump serves to build up the presser, a tiny trigger releases it, there follows a puff and a flash as freedom and necessity combine; finally a celluloid doll drops from the muzzle and descends by parachute to the floor.

The importance that the role of the ending has in the short story is not considered as a sign of cheapness and triviality by the Russian formalists who devoted a great part of their research to this particular narrative form:

El cuento se construye sobre la base de una contradicción, de una falta de coincidencia, de un error, de un contraste, etc. Pero esto no es suficiente; en el cuento como en la anécdota, todo tiende hacia la conclusión. El cuento debe lanzarse con impetuosidad, como un proyectil lanzado desde un avión para golpear con su punta con todas sus fuerzas el objetivo propuesto. (Eichembaum, 1970: 151)

The short story and the novel have a different nucleus. In the novel the end entails weakness because many elements have to be left out. Rather than a conclusion, the end is an epilogue. The ending in the short story is not exclusion, but inclusion. It provides reinforcement since it produces change and thus complexity because a second perspective comes to shatter our previous knowledge, which needs being reorganized (making a reconsideration of previous information necessary):

En la novela al punto culminante debe seguir una cierta pendiente, mientras que en el cuento es más natural detenerse en la cima que se alcanza. Se puede

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comparar la novela un largo paseo por lugares diferentes, que presupone un retorno tranquilo; el cuento a la escalada de una colina, que tiene por finalidad ofrecernos la vista que se descubre desde la altura. (Eichembaum, 1970: 152)

One popular short story technique is that of the trick or surprise ending. Unexpected endings are very rare in the novel because its dimensions and diversity of episode do not allow that type of construction. Unexpected endings produce frustration in novels because the previous development of the action has been completely revealed to the reader and he demands to have a complete access to any new important element of the plot. A full exposition of the consequences of the new turn is thought to be necessary. If the development of the plot in a novel goes together with the inclusion of information, the reader does not accept exclusion of information at the end. Both the excellence and the limitation of this method can be seen in Maupassant’s and O. Henry’s short stories. Maupasant’s “The Necklace” is the story of a woman who borrows a diamond necklace from a friend, loses it and buys another one to replace it, being condemned to ten years of suffering, poverty, and hard work to pay the money, only to make the awful discovery that the necklace was not diamond, but paste 4. This story, although dependant for effect on the shock of the last line, on the “trick ending” differs essentially from the stories by O. Henry or any other commercial story. The point is that a story is different from a short story. O. Henry relied only on the anecdote, on the ingenious tale. In commercial stories the only merit lies in the cleverness of the ending. O’Faolain (1974: 175) underlines the inferior importance of the anecdote in the short story by angrily exclaiming that “in a commercial story there is either no ultimate comment or it is as obvious as a kick from a mule”. Anecdotes do not bear a second reading because they are based only on a process of cheating and the reader cannot be tricked twice. “There is no place in the short-story for anecdote” O’Faolain continues, “far from it. All one may insist that anecdote alone does not make a story, and that it has to be kept severely in its place”. Maupassant’s short story has won its merit long before we come to the ending. And it would be still an excellent story if it had ended with the slavery of the little wife and there had been no revelation about the diamonds being paste, because those two people are real as are their surroundings, their sufferings and the waste of their lives. The short story survives a re-reading, as it is a credible piece of realism. And the last stroke is not merely a trick, it becomes tragedy because past

4. See Hammeton (The Education Book Company).

31 MARêA JESÚS HERNÁEZ LERENA experiences are brought into the present at the end and re-interpreted in the light of the new added cruelty of destiny, appearing then, intensified. Victor Shklovsky (1970: 130) studies the reader’s need to be confronted with an outcome: “Si no se nos presenta un desenlace no tenemos la impresión de encontrarnos frente a un argumento”. As a first approach to the problem it could be said that a short story differs from the episode of the novel due to the existence of a denouement that implies all the events that have appeared in the narrative. Nevertheless, not all denouements work in a similar fashion to that of the trick- ending. The Russian formalists and other critics such as Serra have studied how short story plots develop tropes such as metaphors, quibbles, parallelisms, anaphoras, and so on. These become “narrative tropes” which have a semantic aim 5. In those cases where there is no apparent change, the sense of closure is based on an outcome which exposes the opposition between truth and falsity. The reader’s sense of closure is satisfied by the fact that, after being deceived, the true situation is revealed to him. The demands met by fiction, to present a change or changes and an outcome, are articulated differently in the short story and in the novel. We accept that a short story is over when a change is produced, but we accept that a novel is over when everything that has happened is revealed to us. A short story opens possibilities at the end, the novel closes them. In the novel we are shown how possibilities develop, while in the short story we are shown how a possibility can alter the course of life. The short story exploits the unrest produced by the appearance of this possibility (which may be presented in the text by a reversal of a situation or by a recognition, the transition from ignorance to knowledge). However, not all short stories are constructed around this kind of denouement, traditionally conceived as a conclusion, where “the incidents in which the conflict called forth by the initiating action is irremediably resolved.” (Preminger, 1979: 625). The kind of resolution explained above is related, rather, to the first manifestations of the short story form. The lack of denouement gives modern short stories the appearance of inconclusiveness. There are no reversals or recognitions, there is rather a moment of private awareness which does not fit in with any traditional part of the plot of the novel. The creation of awareness is the aim of the short story even if it is not made coincide with a visible turn of the plot. Denouement, then, is replaced by the epiphany, and it may not be placed at the end. It may even be “distributed” throughout the text.

5. Serra (1978: 180-195) and Shklovsky (1970: 127-146).

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The possibilities for construction in the short story are very wide, for the sake of clarity they can be divided into two types: those that give predominance to incident and those in which development is not subjected to the requirements of traditional plot structure, but derives from the knowledge distilled by the particular perspective of a situation. The first type of story can be defined as a story of crisis, Valerie Shaw opposes this to the second type because they create differences in narrative point of view, characterization, mood and style. Explaining the second type, Shaw (1983: 46-47) remarks:

Because a short narrative cannot reproduce, can only imply, extended periods of time, very often what is shown is one part of an action, perhaps an ordinary event cut out and framed to epitomize a life of continuing ordinariness; or possibly a crisis which momentarily halts the flow of time, leaving everything permanently altered once it has passed. Where the intention is to depict humdrum dailiness, it is the author who puts a frame around the incident by selecting it and inviting the reader to share in what he has noticed.

Before Shaw, Henry James (1984: 530) identified the two distinct effects which may be created. The short story related to incident was clear and “safe”, but in the short story devoted to perspective the author risked trusting the reader. Revelation is used not only to provide the text with a sense of closure but to provide it with the sense of development and change and to provide it with “a centre of gravity”. The idea of the single effect reappears much later on in Carson McCullers (1981: 282). She transforms this concept related to the audience into a principle of construction, there must be a nucleus and all the short story must be dependant on it. Short story construction is aimed at making just one process visible.

El papel primordial en la novela lo desempeñan otros factores: la técnica utilizada en demorar la acción, para combinar y soldar los elementos heterogéneos, la habilidad para desarrollar y ligar los episodios, para crear centros de interés diferentes, para conducir intrigas paralelas. (Eichembaum, 1970: 151)

The relevance of the short story, on the contrary, lies in the particular expression it gives to a single centre of interest. The moment of revelation is at the same time one of expansion. It does not only justify the aim of the narrative by making it transcendent, but it is the most frequently used principle of the short story to provide the narrative with time-depth. If the sense of movement, of development, of passing time cannot be reproduced through expositions, descriptions, multiple encounters, in short, action

33 MARêA JESÚS HERNÁEZ LERENA developed over time, revelation achieves the sense of development and change without time being presented in the text in a detailed fashion. Revelation suppresses time bringing about change which cannot be conceived except in temporal terms. And change connotes time. Development is therefore achieved statically in the short story whereas in the novel it is realized dynamically by means of several episodes. Etiemble (1977: 134) defines the short story according to its handling of time. The novel masters the continuity, the short story the instant. He includes in his chapter on short story the following definition:

Uno de los principios de la novela corta- es el de que en ella el ser desvalido o asombrado cuente su verdad. Quizá porque en pocas páginas no se puede contar la historia de muchos personajes. Pero también porque esta forma literaria, como la tragedia clásica, tiene por objeto la resolución de una crisis, la puesta en palabras de una aventura puntual, la reseña the un hecho, de un sueño, de un acto breve.

The essential feature of the short story is that there has been an intentional reduction of scope. It sticks to just one centre, whether this is a character, a situation, an event, an atmosphere, an image or an idea, and it never parts from this centre. The characteristic of intensity which so many critics use when defining the short story -Shaw: “brief narratives written at full pitch and intensity”- is not due to the special emotional intensity of the subject represented -since it is most commonly found in the novel as well,- or to a “density” of style, or to the successful control of suspense. It is due mainly to an intensity of gaze which results from the selection of a frame within which the fictional world is presented to the reader briefly, never allowing his eyes to withdraw from it. The short story conveys a concentration, a reduction of spatial and temporal scope. It can be compared to a close-up view. The object perceived appears intensified, transcendent, because it is cut out from the rest. What is said is placed out of the context of a whole process of life. The consequence of this is that we inevitably consider the situation presented to stand metaphorically for past and future. (Because we trust the writer and assume that what he tells has an intentional further-reaching significance). The intensity of gaze is then a synonym for reduction of scope or field of vision. Eudora Welty (1971: 90) saw this framing as a “spot-light”, a very illustrative term. Speaking about Hemingway’s short stories, she explains this relative absence of temporality:

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As we now see Hemingway’s story, not transparent, not radiant, but lit from outside the story, from a moral source, we see that light’s true nature: it is a spotlight. And his stories are all taking place as entirely in the present as plays we watch being acted on the stage. Pasts and futures are among the things his characters have not. Outside this light, they are nothing.

Similarly, Shaw (1983: 195) speaks of the more diffused and cumulative methods of conveying meaning in the novel, of its process of flow. However, fictional time in the short story is conceived in terms of discrete stages or periods. There is no slow progress from youth to maturity but periods of life “which are held in a steady light”. It is significant that another short story writer, so distant spatially and temporally from these modern short story writers and critics defines the short story in identical terms, in spite of the fact that, as we will see later on, he was not fully conscious that he was writing in a different form from that of the novel. This short story writer is Hawthorne:

The scene of a story or a sketch to be laid within the light of a street lantern; the time, when the lamp in near going out; and the catastrophe to be simultaneous with the last flickering gleam. (In Pattee, 1975: 108)

This quotation illustrates the strongly-focused nature of the light (or scope) which is not panoramic but restricted, the limiting point of view. Omniscience seems no longer necessary because we are witnessing a scene which is placed before us at a certain moment. The author becomes an spectator, he does not miraculously see into the character’s mind or over place and time; he just looks for the appropriate conditions (of light in this case) that will transform the object of representation. The short story offers knowledge by means of an approach to perception without explanation, without integration of that impression into a system of understanding. This must be provided by the observer. Short fiction refuses to interpret the stimulus, it is a proposal, never a guide. It does not matter if the light alluded to is trembling or steady, the object of representation is manifested in the text through one centre of gravity, through one thread:

El cuento recuerda el problema que consiste en plantear una ecuación con una sola incógnita, la novela es un problema complejo que se resuelve mediante un sistema de ecuaciones con muchas incógnitas cuyas construcciones intermedias son más importantes que la respuesta final. (Eichembaum, 1970: 152)

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3. On subject

Starting from the assumption that the short story develops an idea and the novel a process, some critics argue that certain subjects naturally fit into the short story or into the novel. According to Norman Friedman (1988: 152-119) a short story is short because it develops a “small action” or an action of small compass. He defines the size of an action in the following way:

[it] will depend upon what he (the author) wants his protagonist to do or to suffer and upon how far back, correspondingly, he must go in the protagonist’s experience to find those causes which are both necessary and sufficient to motivate and make credible that action. (p.156)

But how can we know an action is small? Friedman provides the answer, small actions “simply show its protagonist in one state or another and includes only enough to reveal to the reader the cause or causes of which this state is a consequence.” (p. 159) Small actions make static stories, actions of broader scope crystallize in dynamic stories and “will call into play a larger number of causes” (p. 156). These last actions cannot be understood if the reader is not shown every line of causation. Static stories develop a minor change because only one phase of the protagonist’s life is required, whereas dynamic stories (novels) portray a mayor change. Friedman exemplifies his taxonomy using Hemingway’s short story “ Hills like White Elephants”, which deals with a static situation, also Sean O’Faolain’s “Sinners”. They deal with minor changes, only one phase of the protagonist’s life is involved. In contrast, the action of The Great Gastby represents a major plot because Gatsby’s disillusion cannot be understood except in terms of his life as a whole. An “Outpost of Progress” by Joseph Conrad illustrates a simple change: the shallowness of the two characters makes deterioration quick when the two characters are subjected to the acid test of being put in contact with savagery. Heart of Darkness illustrates a major change because it requires more “doing”. It covers more aspects (those of the protagonist’s life and its involvement with another source of information: Kurtz). Friedman lists a series of requirements necessary for the complex change to achieve its effect, which are the tests the character has to undergo and that must compulsorily be presented to the reader so that he can assimilate the magnitude of the action. Friedman assumes that it is necessary to show in a narrative all the processes in which the protagonist has been involved in order to make it understandable and credible. He also assumes that the reader will not be able to

36 SHORT STORY WORLD: THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY AMERICAN MASTERS understand or imagine the state of a character if he is not shown what has happened to him by means of speech, scenes, and episodes. But that is precisely one of the most important justifications of the short story: causes or context are not shown and nevertheless the protagonist’s mental state is made credible, understandable and able to cause an impact on the reader all the same. The short story excludes causality and context and, therefore, makes coherence possible by means of other devices which do not drag along large amounts of page-space. It does this by implication, at sentence or plot level, by means of allusions and parallelisms. There is not a necessary connection between inclusiveness and the size of the action as Friedman states. Inclusiveness may not only be discursive: short stories and novels may include actions which are “physically” absent from the text. From this follows that the size of the action does not depend on the subject, but on the form, on the actual finished text. There is no certain amount of information that must necessarily be put before the reader. Nobody can say in advance how much needs to be said, and this does not depend on the subject but on the writer’s conception of his work. Perhaps Friedman’s background order is not correct: first subject and then form. The subject chooses the form depending on how large it is. We may invert the process, an author wants to write either a short story or a novel and then he organizes material according to its maximum of effectiveness. Much better than this is to admit the doubt concerning the existence of an order, and say simply that subject and form are inseparable. Schelling affirmed in La Relación del Arte con la Naturaleza (1985: 61) that art shares with nature its creation of body and soul at the same time. When an author starts to write, what he wants to say is already determined by the “how”, and it is the chosen form which re-arranges the subject. (If we can say a subject exists untouched by the particular perception that conceives it). The choice is not of subject but of significance. Not that authors think of a whole life when writing a novel or in an episode of a life when writing a short story. Both assumptions involve thinking of the characters as a whole, not only like possessors of existence at a certain period of their lives. The writer thinks of their meaning and this particular conception determines how much of their lives he is going to use. What he includes or omits only serves to carry out his particular idea. We must not confuse magnitude or complexity with bulk or size. Valerie Shaw (1983: 3) would strengthen this view when she declares that “Coppard’s belief, based on his own experience, that the short story is a totality which the writer as it were `possesses´ before he writes the first sentence”.

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Nevertheless, Friedman invalidates his own assumption by saying that a short story may be short not only because of the size of the action, but because “the material, being of broader scope, may be cut for the sake of maximizing the artistic effect” (p. 155). He confirms, then, that a short story can also deal with major changes. It is evident therefore that any subject can receive any form, it can be articulated in a short story or in a novel depending on how actions are shown 6. Although it is true that the technical difficulties the short story has to face are greater if it presents a long time span (but they are also due to other reasons such as the modern reader’s demand for presentation of action and rejection of summing-ups) 7. O’Faolain (1974: 189) seems to reinforce Friedman’s idea that “There are subjects which, of their nature, are unsuitable for short-stories”. He makes this statement when criticizing Henry James’s stories: “The sprawling theme is more suitable for a novel” (p.190). In my view, O’Faolain is speaking about treatment and not about subject. It is the sprawling method or treatment which is suitable for the novel. We may very well remember the quotation by H. G. Wells concerning the hunt and the leisure. O’Faolain remarks that Henry James’s stories are “so monstrously ill- constructed that if they were buildings they would have fallen long ago”. Henry James’s short stories are not acceptable as short stories because the short story does not admit the same methods as the novel which has a digressive nature and a degree of discursiveness not acceptable in short fiction. The same subject treated by a short story writer would not have appeared “sprawling”. Another reason why Henry James cannot be considered as a short story writer is that, according to O’Faolain, he did not recognize that there can be no development of character in the short story. It is the accepted view, however, that the short story can admit development of character, that it can handle changes. The simple fact is that many stories do portray character in the process of changing. Its particular techniques will be studied in this analysis. A further consequence -which has been mentioned briefly- is how short story writers have handled the problem of including a long period of time in the characters’ life in the narrative. In order to maintain the unity, the writer’s task is to enclose the

6. The section “ On Aesthetics” will deal with the hypothesis that the form will call for particular subjects. 7. Bonheim’s thesis (1986) is that the modern reader rejects explanations on the part of the narrator and any information that does not proceed directly from the diegetic level.

38 SHORT STORY WORLD: THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY AMERICAN MASTERS narrative in a frame, such as place, as O’Faolain suggests. If the narrative is expanded in the temporal sense, compensations are sought to restrain other elements of the fabula, because they cannot be shown on the same scale as time. Again, it is not the possibility of what a story can tell, but how significance is conveyed through a particular method of story-telling. O’Faolain’s (1974: 191- 192) conclusion is significant: since the frames of the short story impose certain restrictions, the subjects will be handled so as to make them suitable. The idea that subject does not influence but is influenced by form is skilfully summed up in Hanson’s (1989: 52) words:

The writer, unlike the reader, experiences the idea of a short story separately from the language it is written in. The idea comes, through it may come attended by point of view and voice; it is given, whereas words are chosen. This initial perception of the appropriate form may determinate not only structure and characterization, but even language.

4. Textual links and the role of the reader

Another consequence of the restriction of time is that many literary conventions must be left out. In the short story there is no space for cross- reference or repetition of the kind we are familiar with in the novel. The accepted convention for novels a century ago was to provide a complete physical and psychological description of the characters. Bates (1988: 22) alludes to this explanatory method which can be commonly found in the novel:

A writer takes a character and describes not only his physique, his weight, his moustache and glasses, but also his clothes, his manners, his mannerisms, his taste in food and drink, all in minute detail - in order to eliminate any possibility, it seems, of his being confused with the clothes-prop.

The short story must do without what Holub (1989: 93) calls “thematic referentiality”. The absence of a thematic “connectability” he calls “vacancy”. Many critics have defined the short story according to its apparent lack of textual links. In the first place, the absence of context causes situations, events, and characters in a short story to remain in a relatively unexplained state because they have not been tested before the reader’s eye. That is the reason why events in the short story tend to have a random and arbitrary nature.

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The point is that the short story does not depend on sequence and incidence in the same way as the novel. Bates (1988: 19) explains that the forward movement of time is the pulse and the nerve of the novel, “but in the short story time need not move, except by an infinitesimal fraction; the characters themselves need not move; they need not grow old; indeed, there may be no characters at all”. If plot implies time and the short story is freer from the bonds of time than the novel, the short story is freer from plot as well. And plot entails causation. The short story is not constructed only on an absence of thematic referentiality (or context) but on the absence of plot connectability. This kind of indeterminacy Iser (1980: 109) refers to as “blank”, that is, suspended connectability. It causes the events of the short story to appear as unconnected segments. In the short story, therefore, events are not the fruits of time or the culmination of a long process. Hanson (1989: 31) sums up this idea very clearly:

We are refused a point of entry into an identification with the text and are denied the v(ic)arious satisfactions which we derive from seeing the characters of a novel take action, thus appearing to control the fearful endlessness of reality.

This lack of contextual and temporal relation has led many critics to relate the type of construction of the short story to that of the dream or the film. Hanson develops the idea that, like dreams, short stories are composed of images that come out of nothing, and they stand isolated, without bearing any relation to other things. Following Lyotard’s interpretation of dreams, which is based on the assumption that we do not have to look for things which are behind the dream manifestation, but that the dream is desire literally expressed, Hanson (1989: 28) concludes: “We might say in this context that short stories often do not `tell« us things, despite the semantic proximity of the words story and tale. They `are´ things”. In the same way that “the dream consists of warring forces of the figural and discursive” (p. 28), desire, embodied in the image, exists in an adversarial relationship to discourse; so the image has primacy in the short story, and the other elements are dependent on it. It is the figural against the discursive. Hanson’s task (1989: 29) of describing the short story, has consisted of looking for an analogous structure that would account for the fact that images in the short story are presented in a relatively “untranslated” state. And he provides a very good example to illustrate his theory: Stephen Crane’s “The Blue Hotel”. This short story is constructed around an image that rises like a dream, related to nothing before or after. The meaning of the short story lies in the image of the

40 SHORT STORY WORLD: THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY AMERICAN MASTERS blue hotel itself. The image is permanent in the story and is unaffected by the story of the people who temporarily dwell in it. All this implies that the short story technique differs considerably from that of the novel: the information provided in the short story does not originate from rationality, but from perception of the senses, specifically in the visual sense. That is why explanations are absent, because there is no time to react and to explain a situation in human intellectual terms. The record has stopped before any interpretation can enter. Short stories do not provide the adjustment of judgement. Things in short stories appear to be recorded by a machine, sensitive to sensory perception since they are not integrated into a wider context of significance. When explaining Stephen Crane’s method, Bates (1988: 68) emphasizes that: “But like the camera, Crane reflected the surface of things; the eye was so swift in its reflexes that the mind behind it apparently had no time to check, re-direct or re-shape the image recorded”. Due to the brevity of the form, short story writers present their material differently. It cannot be swallowed, assimilated and thrown out converted into an elaborated concept. Short story technique consists of getting hold of the instant, the image has not yet turned into its concept, into a related system of ideas, into its relationship with the rest of the aspects of existence. It is the image, not its meaning what is presented. That is why there is an apparent disconnection of elements in the short story. Assimilation brings about the process of reasoning and relatedness, and there is not enough room for it in the short story. The short story method resembles that of the senses in their rapid apprehension. The short story’s rejection of certain levels of the narrative and discursive narration leads critics to conceive of the short story as similar to the film. Both forms share the techniques of cutting and oblique narration. They tell a story through implied gestures, swift shots, moments of suggestion. Bates (1988: 21- 22) affirms that the cinema has influenced the short story in its notion that elaboration, and, above all, explanation, are superfluous and tedious:

The scrap of dirty paper blown by the wind along the empty morning street, a girl sewing, on a railway station,the tear in her lover’s jacket and he hiding it by holding up a suitcase, a mother staring dumbly at her returned gangster son- these tiny moments, seen as it were telescopically, brightly focused, unelaborated and unexplained, stamp swiftly on the mind the impression of desolation, embarrassed love, or maternal despair. Each moment implies something it does not state; each sends out a swift brief signal on a certain emotional wave-length. Relying on the attuned mental apparatus of the audience to pick it up.

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This idea that certain information must be hidden, that transcendence must not be exposed is by no means new. It is significant that Maupassant, one of the fathers of the short story, was well aware of its importance in short story writing: “Psychology should be hidden in a book, as it is hidden in reality under the facts of existence. The novel conceived in this manner gains interest, movement, colour, the bustle of life”. (In Henry James, 1984: 530). Maupassant translated this principle into his short stories. He named his method “epic” in contrast with the analytic method. The simple epic manner “avoids with care all complicated explanations, all dissertations upon motives, and confines itself to making persons and events pass before our eyes”. (In Henry James, 1984: 530). The short story was the first narrative form to free the conventional narrative machinery of its overload of conventions and to experiment with a method that brings object and receiver closer by eliminating mediation. The short story demonstrates a distrust of explanation or any other intrusion from a higher narratorial authority by forcing the reader to provide an interpretation. The short story presents experience closer to our perception of it: there is no superior entity acting as a prompter. We obtain a vision closer to our own limited capacity. Omniscience is distrusted. The understanding of a short story as being composed of one or several images is also due to the structural restrictions the short story imposes. Because the action has not been integrated in a whole context slowly revealed to the reader, we are left with just an image. Let’s imagine that we are watching a sequence of incidents, from them we obtain a process, a line of movement (the plot) but if we subtract from that a tiny piece what we obtain is an image (not a sequence). Our own experience of life is conceived as a long process and we tend to identify it with the experience reflected in a novel. We only conceive of a process as complete, as a whole, when a possibility is realized (or it has been proved that it cannot be realized). The process begins blank and ends up coloured. The set initiates the possibility of achieving something, the sunset marks the outcome. However, the short story does not provide stages in which these expectations can be fulfilled, its signals are not clear, they do not correspond to our idea of completeness (propitiated mainly by the epic genre in general). The modern short story is not modelled on our expectation of “lack” and “achievement”, its conclusions are apparently absent.

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The short story tends to present anti-climactic situations, the dead-hours that the novel omitted because of their irrelevance or lack of suspense. They lack the traditional interesting moments full of action or psychological tension. We may be lead to ask “what’s the meaning of the story?”,”does it have any transcendence?”. This question accounts for the overwhelming influence of the novelistic techniques of packing and overcrowding a story to make it more intense and more appealing than life (to “pack” changes into turning points). Not all writers share the epic spirit. Henry James, for example (1984: 58) rejects the convention of offering in fiction “life with rearrangement”, and D. H. Lawrence strengthens the idea that explanation and interpretation must be taken out from the text:

As a matter of fact, we need more looseness. We need an apparent formlessness, definite form is mechanical. We need more easy transition from mood to mood and from deed to deed. A good deal of the meaning of life and of art lies in the apparently dull spaces, the pauses, the unimportant passages. (In Shaw, 1983: 24)

In the novel there is the principle of causality linked to time: past experience is the cause of present action. But in the short story this process is not developed. It ignores not only causality but also context. The question is then, how is coherence produced in the short story? If there is a lack of references, if the parts of the short story seem to be based on unexplained relationships, if the “when”, “how”, “where” of an action are almost completely left out, and the “why” completely disappears, can the short story communicate something?, can it impress us as credible or complete? The answer is that we do not even notice that all those elements are absent. The short story remains with us as powerfully as the novel since we are left with the impression that we have been completely submerged in an existing fictitious world. This is achieved due to implication 8. The technique of providing information by means of implication is, according to O’Faolain (1974: 151), one of the most successful inventions of the true modern short story:

It means that a short-story writer does not directly tell us things so much as let us guess or know them by implying them. The technical advantage is

8. We are dealing with implication in general terms. More specific devices will be treated in another chapter.

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obvious. It takes a long time to tell anything directly and explicitly, it is a rather heavy-handed way of conveying information, and it does not arrest our imagination or hold our attention so firmly as when we get a subtle hint. Telling never dilates the mind with suggestion and implication does.

Then he proceeds to explain how a single sentence, such as the opening sentence of Chekov’s short story “The Lady with a Lapdog” provides so much information and contains latent power that makes us imagine the place, the atmosphere, the faces, the attitude of those people. The sentence is: “It was reported that a new face had been seen on the quay; a lady with a dog”. We imagine the sea-side resort, the mild weather and the unfrequented type of place (“one does not observe new faces at big, crowded places”), the boredom, the gossiping, the interests she is liable to arise, etc. Implication works in such a way that it means much more than it says. A detail, a cue, opens up a whole situation. O’Faolain remarks on this property of fiction -on which the short story relies so much- that “the moment that an idea becomes general it is useless to the individual artist” (p. 23). Implication, then, provides context, and to a certain extent, causation. An example of how a brief allusion can give the clue to the meaning of the story can be found in Ernest Hemingway’s “Hills like White Elephants”. This story consists of a single conversation of a young American couple waiting in an isolated train station in the Ebro valley. Apparently, the two characters are on the way to get the girl an abortion. But the source of the story pathos is not here, it is in the girl’s plight. This is only revealed by degrees: the lack of love of the man towards the girl. Near the end we read: “He did not say anything but looked at the bag against the wall of the station. There were labels on them from all the hotels where they had spent nights” (Hemingway, 1974: 55). From this small detail we are able to infer a great deal of information about this couple’s situation. The shallowness of their relationship, its rootlessness, its transiency. This allusion to the immediate past, although not formally part of the action being shown, helps to place the situation in its proper light in the reader’s mind. This is, in my view, what Eudora Welty (1971: 32) refers to as “the visibility of fiction”: there is no need to see a story happen to know what is taking place. This visibility which produces awareness in the reader and therefore, coherence, is not transmitted in the text only at sentence level by means of allusions but through other formal devices. Only some of these will be mentioned here and they will be no more than briefly explained since their description is the aim of this study. They are the limiting point of view, the identification of image and concept, and revelation.

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In the first place, we have the existence of a frame, temporal, spatial, or thematic that enables the reader to follow just one thread of narration from which it is impossible to depart. This restriction of narrative scope to which we have already referred, acts as a fixed focus which allows concentration. The short story clings to an image, a mood, or an idea, and within this restricted semantic field, the reader is able to find the meaning. O’Faolain (1974: 197) refers to this “idea” as “the point”: “The point is that there is some point, and that the story is built up, or constructed, to carry it like a pennant”. Indeed, many short stories are based on an absolute elimination of happenings or events, or of traditional presentation of character, due to an almost absolute restriction of temporal span. “The Schoolmistress” by Chekov portraits no more than half an hour of the protagonist’s life in which there are no events, climaxes or conclusions. Apparently “nothing” happens. Things rather “happen off” as Bates (1988: 87) suggests. This short story is based on casual notes, trivial outlines, which, if properly filled in, would offer a picture of substance and depth, and as Bates (1988: 87) emphasizes Chekov “has done the reader the honour of believing that he is perceptive enough to fill in the very substance that is not stated.” On the way home, a schoolmistress finds a handsome neighbour, they say a few trivial things to each other and then they say good-bye. Chekov shows the schoolmistress, the inconvenience, discomfort, boredom, loneliness. She briefly remembers a detail of her past, and the two lives, the real and the remembered, are suddenly fused as they are so often in one’s experience. The man, who is himself suffering an unhappy marriage, is a real but unattainable symbol for her. As Chekov unfolds these thoughts, the boundaries of the story gradually widen, until what appears to be a series of causal notes about a trivial journey becomes a universal tragedy of misplaced lives and frustration. As Bates (1988: 88) remarks: “Chekov does not label, he does not point and push”, but when the story ends, the man and the schoolmistress step out into independent life. Secondly, another device to achieve coherence is the identification of an image and a concept. There is an identification of a signifier (some element of the story: a situation, an object, a character, an event) with a meaning that the text attaches to it. Most short stories are constructed on this basis. An example is “A Diamond Guitar” by Truman Capote. In this short story, an object, a guitar, is identified progressively with freedom and personal fulfilment. The last “stroke” of the story consists of presenting just the object, which make us think of the range of possibilities never to

45 MARêA JESÚS HERNÁEZ LERENA be realized by the character 9. Henry James (1984: 537) elucidates this principle in one formula: “Every good story is of course both a picture and an idea, and the more they are interfused the better the problem is solved”. Thirdly, in the novel we can get to know characters because they are “inserted” into its linear sequence. Scholes and Kellog (1966: 169) define this type of characterization produced in the novel as evolution or “chronological, in which the character’s personal traits are ramified so as to make more significant the gradual shifts worked in the character during a plot which has a temporal basis”. How is characterization possible in the short story? The term revelation as opposed to evolution has been used to describe its method of functioning. That is, not development over time but a moment of awareness. This chosen moment is symbolic, because it is made to stand metaphorically for a whole life. Many short stories seem to act as “hinges” between past and future because either the setting or the temporal coordinates stand midway between two states. Added to this, revelation, focused on the character’s private awareness makes the reader reorganize the whole story according to the new piece of information. For example, in Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman Brown” or “The Piazza “ by Melville the events must be reorganized again at the end of the story according to a completely different perspective. This revelation may be integrated in the story as “the last turn” (or unexpected denouement) or as a parallelism of perspectives that oblige the reader to change, over and over again, his interpretation of what is happening, as in Poe’s “Ligeia”, Eudora Welty’s “Keela, the Outcast Indian Maiden” or Capote’s “House of Flowers” and “Miriam”. Suzanne C. Ferguson (1988: 462) handles the same idea as Bates concerning the lack of signals in the short story because the traditional climactic turns are left out: “Elliptical plots may omit the exposition and never get back to it […]; or pass over what would ordinarily be “dramatized” or extensively reported parts of the middle, episodes that develop the plot conflict […]; or leave out the closure”. So the reader’s interest is made to shift from the outcome of a situation to the search for the hidden meaning. In order to achieve coherence, the reader is attentive to the concealed hints rather than passively passing along the landmarks of conventional fictional codes. Ferguson (1988: 470) defines the short story by means of an assumption that involves the reader: the difficulty of recognizing the theme:

9. For a detailed exposition of the metaphorical function of the short story see Serra (1978).

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Oddly, this kind of narrative, whose most typical epistemology assumes the privacy of truth in individual experience, becomes the genre in which the reader’s abstraction of theme, the statement of an interpretation- is a major factor in differentiating it form other kinds of narrative. The moral is no longer an easily abstractable truism verified by an implied author, but a complex and hardly won proposition whose validity remains conditional and implicit, unconfirmed by authorial voice, giving the story both “unity of effect and a certain vagueness or mystery.

The main effect achieved when reading a novel is that of being “wrapped”, we feel a sense of involvement. We may remember Ortega y Gasset’s observation that in order to enjoy “novelistically”, we must feel surrounded everywhere by novel. It seems that there is wide agreement that in order to achieve the effect of completeness, there must be a display of data: Pickering (1989: 52-53), Schorer (1988: 106-107). In the novel we enjoy the “dressing-up”, the fictitious world appears exhibited in the novel, glimpsed at in the short story. The main aim of the novel is apparently to “satisfy” the reader with fiction. The reader of short stories, in contrast, is led to ponder on the meaning of what has been presented. Reading a novel involves primarily identification, reading a short story involves primarily reflection. The first is based on expectation and recognition, the second is a pact between showing and discovering, between stimulus and intuition. Henry James (1984: 530) agrees with Maupassant on the immense importance conferred on this “guessing”. Short story writers, unlike novel writers, do not make the narrator or the characters think too much about themselves, they force the reader to make his own interpretation of them by presenting an apparently untouched material. Nevertheless, there is not insufficiency in the short story (at least “fiction- insufficiency”), only a selective method which refuses to handle material considered traditionally as events. O’Faolain (1974: 185) refers to this point when he says “the refinement of plot is one of the great achievements of the short story”. The short story does not provide the reader with so much desired certainty and guidance, he must put his own powers of perception to action. The short story instigates the reader’s discovery, it never frustrates his imagination. O’Faolain’s (1974: 152) claim that the short story can only exist providing the existence of alert readers is not trivial. Bates (1988: 22-23) considers “this game of underestimating the reader” proper of the novel, especially of nineteenth- century novel, and he believes that this accepted convention of explaining

47 MARêA JESÚS HERNÁEZ LERENA everything is the cause of the languishing of the short story in England throughout the first three quarters of the nineteenth century, “when no single writer applied to it a technique different from novel”; and when Dickens, for example, wrote “by the system of catalogue”. Maupassant and to a greater degree, Chekov, were the first great writers of the short story in a modern sense, because they used for the first time the risky method of placing immense responsibility on the reader. This in fact coincides with modern reader’s demands: we expect to gather things for ourselves. But this is a question that deserves isolated treatment.

5. Relationships with other genres

References to the relationship between the short story and the novel have and will be found in the course of these explanations, since to pin down their oppositions helps us to understand both genres more completely. This section, then, will deal with the affinities of the short story with other artistic forms such as poetry and the visual arts. Valerie Shaw considers that the affinities of the short story and a wide range of artistic genres spring from the technique of compressing meaning into very narrow boundaries. I would say, however, that the short story is related to poetry and the visual arts because it is not so dependent on time as other narrative forms such as the novel. The short story has been defined as “a prose poem” and “paint translated to words” (Bates, 1988: 12), or as “a snapshot” (Shaw, 1983: 14-15). In lyric poetry, the developing of time has no relevance since poetry is not devoted to events but to perceptions; its aim is to articulate concepts that discover particular relationships between things. Experience is not “incarnated” and therefore, not governed by laws of time. It is based on statements, not on creating fictional identities which behave like humans. Serra (1978: 15) claims that a quality of “timelessness” is the essence of both the short story and poetry. According to him, the short story can be defined as “synchronic writing”:

Se puede afirmar que el cuento es una estructura poemática fundada por la imaginación creadora y troquelada por el lenguaje; participa del poema como asociación motivada entre significantes y significados, como orbe esencialmente temporal, donde se da el acontecer puro y la pura experiencia

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en intensa condensación emotivo-intelectiva, donde se ofrece la imagen sintética de una realidad visible o invisible apresada en una instancia única, irrepetible, vuelta ya ácrona.

Serra attributes the absence of temporal links in the short story to the quality of experience which is conveyed, that is, the short story is an exposition of a particular perception of reality rather than an account of possible manifestations of that reality (a place, characters, actions, etc). This does not mean that the short story writer does not have the “duty” of creating fictional identities, it means that the short story is closer to the subjectivity of poetry than the novel because its process of selection is more evident and the extracted material functions as the projection screen of the writer’s consciousness. This “little piece”, the particular “sample” selected, is therefore, representative, and it shares with poetry this “summing-up” quality. Its illustrative nature will, in turn, make it a-temporal. It is representative not only for the writer, but in its relationship with the rest of fictitious time not presented. The short story may be viewed as “the summary” of a whole life. Just as poetry extracts the essentials of a process of life (or time), the short story also extracts the fundamentals of a continuous temporal process. Consequently, the short story appears free from time because it “stands” on the side of the concept that represents, not with the fact that is performed. O’Faolain (1974: 30) only takes into account the first option, that is, the short story is an emphatic personal exposition. But it is not so because of the use of authorial comment or because the characters are turned into obvious embodiments of the writer’s ideas, but because of the particular selection of a particular instance of life, and because this instance is going to be articulated by a particular position (the perception of the writer) that makes that instance special. If in the novel complexity is necessary, in the short story insight is specially sought:

Yes, surely. The obvious distinctive element in the short-story - distinguishing it from every other art- is its shortness, i.e., the fact that the writer has deliberately selected some special incident or character; and that there can, or should be, only one reason for this -because it is (to quote Maupassant again) “in good concordance with all the tendencies of this thought”. In other words, the short story is an emphatically personal exposition. What one searches for and what one enjoys in a short-story is a special distillation of personality, a unique sensibility which has recognized and selected at one a subject, that, above all other subjects, is of value to the writer’s temperament and to his alone- his counterpart, his perfect opportunity to project himself.

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Apart from lyricism, subjectivity springs from another source, that is, from the previously mentioned “limiting viewpoint”. If the focus of the short story is very much restricted, if there is a reduced temporal and spatial frame, omniscience is not so much needed. The narrator does not need to be so powerfully embracing: he does not need to witness action in several places and he does not need to know past and future. He even does not need to dwell in the character’s mind for very long since explanations of character’s psychology are not usually allowed into the short story. There is no necessity of the presence of a God-like master as in novels, and he is not necessary because the scope of the short story is not wide. One of the bases of the modern short story is that we receive a limited amount of information, and that this information may not go directly to the point because the narrator that should provide us with a sense of direction may be unwilling to make things obvious. This information may have the casual nature of overhearing a conversation on a train, or watching the unexpected reaction of a person we have not met before or spying through a keyhole. In the short story we are spectators, not privileged spectators. Short stories seem to be constructed by a limited human conscience, not by a god-like eye that has access to all secrets. There are many organizational principles which the short story shares with poetry. One of the first studies on short stories, the one Poe formulated in mid nineteenth century, compared the basic principles of composition of “short prose narratives” with the rules of poetic production. By exploiting opportunities denied to the novelist, the short story becomes according to Serra (1978: 15) “a narrative structure of poetical condensation”. Both poetry and the short story present experience as synthesis, and the short story, due to its brevity, enjoys a greater freedom than the novel in terms of the use of poetic devices. These possibilities are alliteration, recurrences and parallelisms at sentence or paragraph level, the use of paragraphs as stanzas, the grounding of short story’s construction on metaphorical processes, verbal echoes, etc. The short story«s alliance with poetry allows for a step aside from standard uses of language, and thus produces the effect of amazement which is usually produced in poetry by semantic displacement. Time restrictions bring the short story nearer the visual arts too. Firstly because it becomes almost literally impossible to show a detailed development over time, processes are narrated from a static perspective, through a single moment (or moments) of awareness or epiphany. Jean Pickering (1989: 48) defines the short story as “a snapshot taken at a representative moment”.

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Secondly, this fixed perspective, which also implies a restriction of scope over place and a relative absence of explanations, means that we are left with surfaces. Omniscience is not a common stance of narrators. The explanation is the following: the reader does not know what happened to the characters in the past (we are ignorant of the causes that make the character act or speak as he does in the story) -his time is absent; and we are denied to an extent the possibility of witnessing his relationships with other characters in other places- society. That is, place is absent. So, we are just presented before the character or the situation with no added clues, as in real life. The point is that we are not placed before a character, or before a personality, but before a “person”. In a novel we are given the personality, not the person. In the short story, characters are as intractable, almost as opaque as in real life. (The short story was the first narrative form to present characters like that, maybe due to the insurmountable restrictions of length). If we have a moment, and a thing presented before us, we obtain an image. That is the reason why we tend to conceive of the short story and the image as closely related forms, because in spite of their obviously different mediums, they bring about a similar form of knowledge. The short story is “subjective” in the previous sense (when related to lyric poetry) but “objective” in this new sense: we are placed before the object. There is a lack of intrusion and therefore interpretation must be provided by the reader. The “object”, that is, the event, the situation, the character, is apparently untouched by a deliberate intention to make it intelligible. Ortega y Gasset (1966: 401) explains the great difference between being given the definition of the character and “seeing” him directly:

Y este no poseer nunca su secreto suficiente, esta relativa indocilidad del prójimo a ajustarse por completo a nuestras ideas sobre él, es lo que le da independencia de nosotros y nos hace sentirlo como algo real, efectivo y transcendente de nuestras imaginaciones.

This predominance of the figurative over the discursive has led some writers to compare the short story to the snapshot. Valerie Shaw (1983: 14) provides a complete explanation:

If the photographic image is defined as a self-sufficient illumination which does not require the help of a “plot” or “study” to give its meaning, then it is possible to say that the creation of images which do not need be elaborated or

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explained, but which do expand in the reader’s mind, is the storyteller’s method of achieving a comparable effect.

However, I prefer not to over-emphasize the similarities between the short story and the snapshot because it may give the impression that the short story is artless since it simply consists of selecting an emotive arrangement, with no elaboration but only mechanical realization. Perception alone does not create. As Henry James (1984: 62) points out: “questions of art are questions (in the widest sense) of execution”. In my view, it is more appropriate to compare the short story to painting since the idea of elaboration comes to the foreground and their comparison becomes more fertile, not only the momentary freeze of the character’s movements at the peak of expressiveness. Firstly, it is surprising how many essential similarities the short story shares with that of impressionist painting, starting with their method of intentional subjectivity. Renoir said on one occasion:

Yo me pongo ante mi objeto tal como yo lo quiero. Entonces empiezo y pinto como un niño. Me gustaría que un rojo sonara como el tañido de una campana. Si no lo consigo la primera vez, tomo más rojo y otros colores, hasta que lo tengo. No soy más listo. No tengo reglas ni métodos. (In Feist, 1989: 28))

Eudora Welty (1977: 87) remarks similarly that: “a short story can be a situation or an impression of a situation”. Impressionist painters share with short story writers an almost obvious intention to essentially work on a single and personal point of view rather than showing an interest for the social survey. They painted simple scenes, the epic -in its wider sense- was abandoned. The aim was to capture not the object but the perception of that object. Impressionist and short story doctrine share the common aim of capturing the essence of an instant and, very importantly, the effect of casualness 10. Chekov’s method, a man whose influence has been powerfully felt in many short story writers, consisted in building on apparently casual notes. Triviality was discovered and held for a moment in the light. The first exhibitions of impressionist painters in France received the same attacks that can be commonly heard against the short story: paintings were blurred, realistic detail was omitted, the scenes depicted were ordinary or common, and conventional composition was neglected. The adverse criticism was based, as it is in the short story, on the fact that their pictures were unfinished, “nothing could be seen”.

10. See Feist (1989: 19)

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“Nothing happens” is not an uncommon reaction after reading a short story. As in the paintings by Monet, Sisley, or Renoir, information is hidden, detailed description is passed over, a certain blurred quality may be the effect of not presenting a record of linked events, or of an absence of discursive sequences. Objects and surfaces in painting, and events and characters in the short story, are not arranged according to an established representational outline. However, in both arts, atmospheric brightness and the impact of real life is achieved. Both forms create whole worlds with just a few strokes. They offer illusion without (ab)using traditional conventions (the realistic tradition in painting and the traditional novelistic conventions). Their art does not offer an officially codified program of communication. They project the magic of creation. Most important, impressionism and the short story share a common attitude to reception: the finishing touch must be provided by the observer/reader. Elizabeth Bowen regarded her short stories as “question asked: many end with a shrug, a query, or, to the reader, a sort of over-to-you”. (In Shaw, 1983: 13)

6. On aesthetics

The central question that the section “On Subject” dealt with was: are there certain subjects fit for short stories? We are concerned now with the question of whether there is a particular way of conceiving materials which make them suitable to the form restrictions imposed by the short story. This particular vision may be an attitude towards experience or knowledge or perhaps a particular intensity of perception that confers a degree of exceptionality on the incident narrated. It may also be a conscious opposition to the method of producing meaning in the novel. The question is whether there is a particular stance of the writer towards experience and if it exists, whether it can be defined or not. Actually, many critics do believe that the structural limitations favour the particular exposure of a concept of reality. This concept may be either the particular vision provided by “the fantastic”, or the depiction of marginal cases or the short story writer’s detached attitude. Finally, the short story is considered to be a reflection of fragmentation and other “signs” of the age. Elizabeth Bowen experienced the fact that the particular vision provided by the fantastic could only enter her short stories, never her novels. She writes about the way in which the supernatural filters only into her short stories in the following paragraph:

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I would point out that a number of my stories, such as “The Demond Lover”, “The Cheery Soul”, “Hand in Glove”, “The Happy Autumn Fields” have a supernatural element in them, which makes some of the happenings unable to be rationally explained. I do not make use of the supernatural as a get-out; it is inseparable (whether or not it comes to the surface) from my sense of life. That I feel it unethical -for some reason?- to allow the supernatural into a novel. “ (In Hanson, 1989: 7)

The fantastic entails the revelation of fictional worlds which are not rooted in everyday experience and knowledge. They do not have a cause, their source is unknown. They appear suddenly, shocking characters and readers, disturbing their and our roots with experience. The short story seems particularly able to convey the fantastic vision as well because its effects are those of intensification and of creating a symbolic relationship with the world of common sense from which it departs. Achieving, then, intensity and complexity by means of a double vision. Many recent studies develop the idea that the difference between the short story and the novel is not formal but ideological. The short story maintains a different relationship with reality from that of the novel because it exploits different qualities of life. For Nadine Gordimer, experience is more truthfully conveyed in the short story than in the novel:

Each of us has a thousand lives and a novel gives a character only one. For the sake of the form. The novelist may juggle about with chronology and through narrative overboard; all the time his characters have the reader by the hand, there is a consistency of relationship throughout experience that cannot and does not convey the quality of human life, where contact is more like the flash of fire-flies, in and out, now here, now there, in darkness. Short story writers see by the light of the flash; theirs is the art of the only thing one can be sure of -the present moment. Ideally, they have learned to do without explanation of what went before, and what happens beyond this point. (In Hanson, 1989: 2)

Other critics and short story writers like Gordimer, especially Frank O’Connor, agree that the short story has been the narrative form almost exclusively focused on showing the marginality of society. The short story presents a different “life” from that of the novel, experiences reflected in the short story do not form part of the official or “high” cultural hegemony. This ex- centricity does not involve only the subject, but the writer. According to Hanson (1989: 5) the short story has offered itself to losers and loners, exiles, women, and black-writers who, for some reason or another, have not been part of the

54 SHORT STORY WORLD: THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY AMERICAN MASTERS ruling “narrative” or epistemological/experiential framework of their society. O’Connor explains this startling assumption:

I am not, of course, suggesting that for the future the short story can be written only by Eskimos and American Indians: without going so far afield, we have plenty of submerged population groups. I am suggesting strongly that we can see in it an attitude of mind that is attracted by submerged population groups, whatever these may be at any given time - tramps, artists, lonely idealists, dreamers and spoiled priests. The novel can still adhere to the classical concept of civilized society, of man as an animal who lives in a community, as in Jane Austen and Trollope it obviously does,; but the short story remains by its very nature remote from society - romantic, individualistic, and intransigent. (In Hanson, 1989: 3)

Although the idea that it is mainly writers who are not socially integrated who direct their creative powers towards the short story does not correspond completely with the social milieu of many great short story writers, it is true that either because of the impossibility of portraying a whole society in short form or because of a conscious intention to reflect more private and neglected experiences, the short story has always been centred on subjects where individuals experience social or psychological isolation 11. There is another concept which remains close to this “sense of exile” attitude epitomized by O’Connor that Valerie Shaw (1983: 193) discovers and applies to group characteristics around the notion of the short story. It consists of a “sense of the frontier”, or rather, a metaphorical sense of the frontier. Rather than an attitude of the writer, it is the position in which many short story writers want to put their reader, imaginatively at least. She explains how short stories in each country have dealt with the frontier theme, not simply as borderland between two areas, but as a third entity. The constitutive elements of the frontier theme: unfamiliar circumstances, danger, lack of institutions, etc, bring to the short story many possibilities for creativeness. Complexity and transcendence may be achieved in a few pages because of: a) the appeal of seeing a character in an insecure position, facing something uncontrollable, b) the overlapping of several perspectives (frames of reference can multiply since fixity of interpretation is absent, and c) a wide range of possibilities for motivated change in the character in the narrative. This is how Shaw (1983:193) explains this concept:

11. On the other hand, there is major tendency in short story criticism to consider the short story as a reflection of the disintegration and fragmentation characteristic of modernity. See Shaw (1983: 43).

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Form and content do collaborate particularly closely in stories evoking a sense of barriers and boundaries; watching a character cross a frontier, literal or metaphorical, the reader can be made to feel that he too is discovering something new, experiencing in a short time span the dislocating sensation of entering a foreign state, unlike the one he normally inhabits.

The short story has always been related to the fantastic genre, not only because the fantastic short story may constitute a subgenre, but because of their analogous structure. However, only a few critics have paid attention to the affinities between both forms. The previous consequences of the frontier theme on narrative construction apply exactly to the fantastic vision, which is a branch of the frontier theme. The supernatural can be defined as “happenings unable to be rationally explained” (Hanson, 1989: 7), that is, it provides characterization as a result of the character«s quick and necessary adjustment to the strange or unexpected (feature c). It also provides a double vision, that of the common sense world, which appears represented by an absence, but is nevertheless the reference for the world presented textually, which lacks the rules of everyday existence. Shaw (1983: 193) relates the frontier vision to the single moment of revelation or epiphany towards which a short story aims, because at this moment it “exists on a boundary between the ordinary and the mysterious”, and it strives towards the dissolution of that boundary. In a certain way, then, all short stories are representative of this double vision which implies an awareness. But there is yet another aspect provided by the fantastic which makes it particularly suitable to be rendered in short story form: the short story and the fantastic vision rely on a common basis, both of them operate on an absence of referentiality towards the past, both are based on a logical emptiness and both lack a cause. Speaking about Kafka’s Metamorphosis, Ana González Salvador (1980: 62) remarks:

Por ausencia de una referencia al pasado que precede el fenómeno, de una causa que lo explique, hace que el relato se abra sobre un “vacío lógico”. La relación causa-efecto se ve pervertida en la medida en que el narrador camufla uno de los dos elementos, siendo la metamorfosis el efecto alucinante (para nosotros) pero verdadero (para el texto) de una causa inexistente (textualmente ausente).

Therefore, the fantastic possesses a non-existent cause, the short story an absent cause. The fantastic rejects continuity and integration like the short story because it implies juxtaposition, and thus unavoidable conflict between two irreducible perspectives.

56 II. Textual analysis of the short stories by Irving, Poe, Hawthorne and Melville

1. The fabula

1.1. The Short Story Narrative Cycle

Our first task is to produce an abstraction of the levels of the narrative. The advantage of this procedure is that the first level or the fabula -an abstraction according to logical, causal and chronological criteria- appears as neutral, closer to the reader’s understanding of reality. The fabula depends on the logic of events, which is defined by Bal (1985: 12) as “a course of events that is experienced by the reader as natural in accordance with the world” 12. Confronted with this logical organization, the peculiar disorganization that the literary process accomplishes at the next two levels acquires significance. It is a formal principle that deviations make specific structure visible. To begin with, we must compare the structure of the fabulas in order to discover their similarities or differences. This in turn will allow us to reach a generalizing principle necessary to separate the processes of the short story from other types of narrative. In fact, my procedure has been to apply the definition of every concept included in the first level to fabula processes in these short stories. Surprisingly, the practice of this method has resulted in the

12. All references to Bal and Rimmon-Kenan will be to the 1985 and 1983 editions respectively.

57 MARêA JESÚS HERNÁEZ LERENA alteration of the method itself; I found that several basic concepts had to be changed, or at least reconsidered, because when applied to the short story, they conveyed a different significance. The concept of narrative cycle is an example of this problem. A narrative cycle is derived from a certain organization of the events produced in the fabula. According to Mieke Bal, it consists of three phases: Possibility, realization and result. The starting point of the fabula would be a state of deficiency that calls for a change. The fabula starts when the subject “begins to want the execution of the program” (p. 33). However, the process of the fabula in the short story is triggered off by the opposite assumption: there no possibility that anything will happen. Nothing is foreseen, there is no possibility of the execution of a program. All the short stories that have been studied with the exception of two (the relevance of the exceptions will be explained later on) precisely lack this first stage characterized by the intention of the actor to get something he does not possess.

1.1.1. Narrative cycles: Lack of possibility “Ligeia” does not start by providing the fabula with a future, but with a past. It seems that all possibility of future action has been denied. The narrator remembers the life and death of the only person he loved and explains that she has been and will be everything to him always. Nothing can be added to his life. The fabula appears to be long past, and therefore, possibility (the conquering of the woman), realization (their marriage and life together), and result (her death) are presented as disappearing stages, no longer implicated in the customary suspense that stories usually offer. The fabula has been accomplished before the narrative starts moving, nothing is set off, there is no call for a change. (This happens at the level of the fabula, although, as we will see, the text establishes the possibility of the achievement of the subject«s aim, which is to see Ligeia again). A narrative cycle is closed at the beginning, and the narrative starts with a deficiency in which the actor cannot introduce changes, because Ligeia is his only desire. There is only one result: a process of deterioration. The initial phase of the fabula of “The Fall of the House of Usher” also resembles this strategy: there is a process of deterioration as the consequence of an undisclosed happening. Neither the narrator nor Usher possess a conscious intention to get

58 SHORT STORY WORLD: THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY AMERICAN MASTERS anything, they show a passive acceptance of a foreseen process of deterioration. They represent neither of the two processes that the actors carry out in the fabula according to Bal, that is, “the achievement of something agreeable or favourable, or the evasion of something disagreeable or unfavourable” (p. 26). This kind of active movement or change is absent in these short stories, replaced by another kind of direction: the different steps that actors take are related not to the change of an external imposition or to the flight from danger, but to a progressive realization of what happens outside their own subjectivity. The activity of the actors consists of self-analysis together with an examination of what is going on around them, and the outcome will bring about an understanding which undermines their own assumptions. But this activity of interpretation in which the actors get involved is not intentional (as in the case of detective stories, mystery tales, and in the case of some novels), but it is something towards which they are led, and they are even unwilling to perform (Usher). They are drawn by forces they do not understand, and all they do is reflect on them. One of the consequences of this design is that the character does not seem to be the main focus of the writer, the writer is mainly concerned with the situation itself (either to depict it exhaustively or to conceal it). Borges (1980: 221) claimed that the short story is essentially conceived as a situation; in these examples, no will is given to the actors, they only get the role of being “sucked up” by a more powerful element in the fabula. The narrator in “The Fall of the House of Usher” has no determination or will to proceed in action. He is supposed to be invited to the mansion to console or advise Usher, but he does not carry out either of these functions. He is just perplexed by what he sees and is unable up to the very end to come up with an explanation for his ominous impressions. Usher is aware of a pre-ordained programme against him, but he does nothing to avoid the execution of that programme (his own destruction). In the case of Irving´s narrative “Rip Van Winkle”, the initial stage of the fabula is not even deficient, but a long-accepted routine. Rip is a very happy henpecked husband who enjoys his peaceful life talking with his friends and doing nothing in particular. Nothing apparently is needed or can be done. The introduction of the fabula is again based on the hiding of any future possibility of interest for the subject. Hawthorne’s “Mrs. Bullfrog” has an analogous structure to that of “Ligeia”. The fabula sets as past a narrative cycle: the somewhat effeminate Bullfrog has found the wife of his dreams, has wooed her and married her and he is the happiest

59 MARêA JESÚS HERNÁEZ LERENA man when he returns home with his ideal woman. This, of course, creates expectations, but not of the kind of the development of a foreseen possibility, but of an unforeseen possibility. There is going to be the execution of a plan, but this plan remains beyond his powers, and therefore, again, he becomes passive, the receiver of an unexpected situation. The realization of the fabula is not provoked by him, but by an unexpected turn. The initial basis of the fabula is the hiding of any possibility. Change is therefore not motivated by deficiency. Completeness is the initial state of the subject and an uncontrollable factor is included in the first process. With the appearance of the new fact, the subject is placed -as in Poe’s or Irving’s narratives- in a deficiency of knowledge; he is unable to produce a plan of his own. Bullfrog cannot explain the facts to which he is confronted on his way back home, the sudden virile appearance of his wife and her rough behaviour. The short story reflects to some extent the reverse process of the novel (or at least the kind of psychological novel that belongs to the same time as these short stories). The novel portrays the realization of a trait of the character and its consequences in his/her relationship with the rest of the characters or with society. The novel explores an initial possibility. The short story rejects the fixity of the initial assumptions. The novel centres on the will of the characters, these short stories on the unwillingness of the characters to act or change the world. These short stories represent the direction of the impossibility, they emphasize the lack of a programme of the individual. In the novel, above all the English novel, the actor steps into a known world, however unexplored this world may be 13. In the short story, characters step out of the initial fixedness in which they were initially conceived. Another example of this feature is provided by “Young Goodman Brown”. Goodman Brown leaves his young wife, his security and happiness for a mission he does not know the nature of. He unwillingly ventures into the forest. He is rather drawn into the forest by what he supposes are evil forces. He does not resist. He leaves completeness, happiness -his wife is symbolically called “Faith”- to get lost in “deficiency”, so to say, to bear witness to a situation he cannot control. The second phase, that is, realization, consists of a progressive awareness of the unforeseen evil in mankind. This structure represents man’s lack of power towards the unexpected or towards unexplainable occurrences. It embodies the process of getting entangled. It does not produce one of the effects that we often seek in literature, that of assurance, but of insecurity. A good illustration is provided by Melville’s short

13. See Richard Chase (1986: 1-21)

60 SHORT STORY WORLD: THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY AMERICAN MASTERS story “Bartleby”. Bartleby is a man without a goal in life who progressively refuses to do anything, to understand anything, or to say anything. He starts by being a simple, hard-working man when suddenly and without apparent cause he becomes psychologically invalid. Most short stories reflect this scheme. Not a development of a peculiar trait of the protagonist but the development of something unusual. No projects or intentions but sudden unexpectedness. The inherent features of the subject as he is described initially will not be exploited, will not have any bearing on future events. There is an unforeseen potential that will find specificity in the second phase of the fabula. This unexpectedness does not exclusively refer to the theme of mystery, but it is related to other causes: destiny, the uncanny, circumstances, other people’s plotting, adversity, etc. In “Benito Cereno” the same process is observed. The state of normality and lack of danger of a captain in control of his ship is going to be disturbed by a complex series of circumstances which he cannot understand. And although he thinks he goes on to the other ship to help, he soon discovers he cannot produce any improvement in the situation of the new ship and that he is getting involved with and threatened by ambiguous enemies. There is a progressive development of the narrative to an uncontrolled situation that culminates in a climax of insecurity. The novel process is reversed, either with a conscious or unconscious intention in these short stories 14. They end in incompleteness, in deficiency. This strategy was not to be applied to the novel until much later. The scheme designed by Mieke Bal has to be modified when applied to the earlier conceptions of the short story: 1. State of normality. 2. Introduction of the unexpected factor (which is not governed by the laws of causality). 3. Efforts of the character to interpret it. 4. Final revelation. (This revelation may not put an end to ambiguity, but may reinforce it, as we will see later on. It may, in fact, shake all the previous assumptions and compulsorily demand a reinterpretation of past events.)

14. This is possible because the short story is “younger” genre than the novel and it may therefore be novel-conscious.

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1.1.2. Narrative cycles: The events The concept of event refers to the processes that take place in the fabula. Bal’s assumptions to define the events are based on the idea that the event represents the movement of the fabula, and movement involves a change. Again, change involves time. Event would be eventually defined as “the transition from one state to another state, caused or experienced by actors” (p. 13). Transition, change, alteration, all are meanings included in this concept. State, condition, position, situation, would be opposite concepts, but only according to the restricted meaning of “movement”. In fact these second terms are the components of the first terms, which have a double nature. When studying short stories, we come to realize that this concept of “event” must be redefined in order to understand more completely the processes that we are confronted with. We have said that “Ligeia” lacked the first phase of the fabula, that of purpose. There is just a description of the narrator’s perceptions of the beloved person along the first four pages -the complete short story consists of eight pages-. But is there in that big portion of the text an absolute stillness? Is there no movement at all? Of course there is movement, but this movement rather than change is the position of the subject in a certain reality. Or a mere perception. Even if there are no transitions, the reader has been witnessed to a transformation. In the first phase of “Ligeia”, the narrator has established his own relationship with the rest of the elements (actors, place and time) of the fabula. He transforms all the physical and spiritual attributes of Ligeia into mineral elements of nature through a complex metaphorical process. At the level of the fabula, the narrative does not move, but at the level of the text, we perceive that a possibility has been created after all: the actor desires to have the same perceptions of reality as he used to when his lover lived. The method by which this possibility can be realized has been advanced in the first half of the story: it is the actor«s strategy of turning what he sees into something else. The fabula is directed to the past (a man remembering Ligeia). But the text directs our expectations to the future by expressing the eternal and powerful qualities of the woman. Consequently, such a sentence as, “And then, I peered into the large eyes of Ligeia” (Poe, 1984: 112) and the description that follows it, is not just a state, a description of a state, the statement signals that the fabula has already started as is moving forward: the subject has got hold of his aim, and this aim stands in the future, so that change and movement are possible, the

62 SHORT STORY WORLD: THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY AMERICAN MASTERS character must undergo an experience to reach that aim. A narrative cycle has been started. A subject desires to recover his past. What is present in the text was absent in the fabula. Can we consider, then, the perceptions of the subject as events? My opinion is that we can, since they have consequences in the fabula: the subject will eventually be placed before his aim. It is worth noting that this process is nevertheless unconscious, unintentional on the part of the subject, which is proved by the fact that the existence of a possibility can only be ascertained at the level of the text. The possible future or “the call for a change” is present in the narrative due to metaphorical processes from the beginning of this narrative. The subject«s perceptions initiate a process in which a possibility will take the form of action. A certain relationship between subject (the actor) and object (Ligeia) has been developed. Bal says (pp. 15-16) it is very difficult to differentiate between a functional event and an indication or a description. In order to classify them properly, we must always consider whether they have any consequence in the fabula. In this story, we can clearly see that the events (in the traditional or conventional sense of the term) are rejected as irrelevant in favour of other kind of transformations. The meetings and marriages of the narrator to Ligeia and Rowena are verbalized in the text with just one word or sentence. No information is provided about them. However, the text pauses on the narrator«s perceptions of these two women. The consequence is that marriage, or even death, which normally would be considered the functional events in the fabula, do not have an actual bearing on the text. What has relevance, and, in fact, what is shown to be the cause of everything that happens, is the kind of obsessive mental approach of the protagonist towards an object. This provokes his deliberate isolation, his purchase of a solitary abbey, and the strange decoration of his chamber. There inanimate objects seem to become alive, there his visions take physical shape, making it possible for Rowena to be transformed into Ligeia. There is a constant emphasis that change is not motivated by external events, but by the subject’s standpoint. Because of that, the conventional, climactic events of marriage and death do not coincide with the central parts of the text. There is a clash in this short story (as in most short stories) between what happens and what is thought or felt. Supreme relevance is given to the second proposition. We may question, then, whether event is just action in its conventional sense of “doing things”. Change can be produced as well by perception. Fabula movement is implicit since this perception may coincide or not with the particular truth that is embodied in each short story.

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Many short stories will be action-purged in this sense, they will be characterized by an absence of the strictly narrative mode. It is a very modern technique, perception substitutes action. This allows a freer handling of time as we will see later on. That the nature of the events in these earlier short stories is related essentially to the interpretation of the individual is an almost unavoidable consequence of the number of actors involved and of the nature of the confrontation among them 15. The number of actors is very reduced, no more than three, normally two, and their contact is always unsuccessful because of different reasons, such as lack of understanding (“The Fall of the House of Usher”), hate (“The Tell-Tale Heart), fear (“William Wilson”), disbelief (“Mr. Higginbotham’s Catastrophe”), etc. It is also due to the fact that focalization only rests in one actor and events cannot be given from the outside. They are filtered through a conscience, thus, the result can only consist of the assumptions the subject makes of them. It is not that the events disappear when they are assimilated by the individual, it is rather that they are transformed, or better, created. They are presented as subjective, the events are imbued by the personality of the entity that absorbs them. The result is that the short story heavily relies on effect, rather than on cause; impression, rather than fact. The text consists of an overt game of transformations of people and objects 16. In “The Fall of the House of Usher” we are first presented with the ominous impressions that the narrator has when contemplating a mansion and a tarn. Only after there has been an exhaustive description of the impressions of the character, causality is introduced: he had been invited to the house by an acquaintance. So the impressions are presented firstly and they are not assigned a cause, we do not know the identity of the perceiver, nor the cause for his being there. The temporal reference remains undisclosed as well. Cause and chronology are introduced much later (and very briefly). This is because the real event has already been produced in the long description: the subject’s positioning towards his aim, that is, to get to know the cause of the terrible feelings produced by the sight of the house. The phase of realization comes after this: the strange incidents that the house propitiates. The

15. On the concept of confrontation see Bal (1985: 24). 16. Although the descriptive passages of this short story may appear as pauses of fabula movement (see Bal’s chapter on rhythm), there is a progression synthesized in the textual metaphors: what is alive becomes dead and what is dead becomes alive.

64 SHORT STORY WORLD: THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY AMERICAN MASTERS house adopts in the description human features, but they are the features of a dead person. This is done at the level of the text by a process of personification (“vacant eye-like windows”). The process of the narrative is summarized in this description: the house and all that is contained within it are doomed to destruction by corruption. Hawthorne’s “Mr. Higginbotham’s Catastrophe” provides us with a very good example of a short story whose fabula is based on the non-existence of events. Dominicus, a peddlar, suffers the terrible consequences of proclaiming an event that has never taken place. Twice he is told by someone that a certain “Mr. Higginbotham”, a well-known man, neighbour of a nearby village, has been hanged from the branch of a tree of his own orchard. Twice Dominicus expects to gain the attention, respect and recognition of the villagers by telling this thrilling piece of news, when an acquaintance of Mr. Higginbotham’s claims to have been with him recently. Dominicus is publicly insulted and beaten because of the inexistence of the event, the above-mentioned murder. This belief that Dominicus experiences twice in the fabula constitutes the event of the fabula (and not the murder itself, since it has not been committed yet, since Dominicus will prevent it from happening later on). Changes are produced in the narrative when the different assumptions of what has happened are confronted: there is the certainty of the murderers, who have not yet committed the crime, but know all about it and can transform a future event into a past event in order to get rid of their guilt; there is the assumption of the witnesses, who can prove that the event has not been produced and from that they infer that it will not be produced; and there is the assumption of the one who believes the story told. Future, present and past, the three actants are holders of a different reality, and their different conceptions are the events of the fabula, since there is no any external happening. Events in this fabula are made up by reactions. As we have said previously, we just confront effects, not causes. In this case, beliefs. The discordant interpretations produce the comic significance of the narrative. “Mrs. Bullfrog” provides an analogous example. The actor meets and marries his ideal woman after many years of lamenting the impossibility of finding the right person. Apparently, we have here a perfect model of narrative that fits narrative demands of possibility, realization and result (as success). However, the fabula of “Mrs. Bullfrog” does not consist of three processes; they are already completed when the fabula starts, the fabula exclusively deals with the recently married couple returning home. The events consist of the suppositions the subject makes: he believes he has married the prettiest and most delicate creature

65 MARêA JESÚS HERNÁEZ LERENA in the world. He is disturbed by certain strange visions, those of a rude and virile person who beats the coachman, swears and behaves rudely. So each characteristic related to his wife that he had taken for granted is completely reversed. His assumptions are so fixed that he refuses to believe that the rude person and his wife are the same person. In order to avoid this terrible revelation, he makes up an explanation: a man who has got into their coach. His assumptions are terribly shaken when he hears the truth. The fabula is based on the mistaken assumptions of the subject, and the text centres almost exclusively on the long process during which the character builds up the picture of his ideal woman and on the time taken to negate those early assumptions. But the attribution of wrong features to an actor or an object is not exclusively a source of comedy. In “Young Goodman Brown” a similar strategy is accomplished with quite different results. At night, the actor leaves home and meets several people from the village, people he had known since he was a child. The events consist of what he sees, a pious woman, the deacon of the village, some politicians. They turn out to be different people, shaking completely his outlook on life. They were good and generous people, but they are members of witchcraft group, all their newly discovered characteristics are related to evil. His assumptions of normality and security are totally undermined when he sees his wife in the meeting too. Nothing happens in the sense of action, the event consists of the subject perceiving and assimilating. As in “Ligeia”, “The Fall of the house of Usher”, “Mr. Higginbotham’s Catastrophe”, and “Mrs. Bullfrog”, the subject just stands and watches (or listens in the case of “Mr. Higginbotham’s Catastrophe”). The specificity of his perceptions constitute the change. This process is reinforced in this short story by an added final assault on the protagonist«s sense of certainty. He does not know if what he has seen did happen at all or if it has only been a nightmare. Are there events at all in this short story? His vision, being either a real or a dreamed experience, has consequences in the fabula. In the third stage, the result of the fabula, Goodman Brown returns home, he is totally devastated. He will not be able to be happy or to lead a normal life in future. He is doomed to see only the evil part of people and he will find no peace from that moment on. Melville´s best stories show the above (re)definition of event. In “Benito Cereno”, Delano, like the previously mentioned actors, just watches. Then he elaborates an interpretation, that is, he assigns certain features to certain objects or actors, and he assumes that reality is in correspondence with his perceptions.

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The perceived object is now the Spanish ship he has boarded. He also scrutinises the behaviour of the Spanish captain and of his Negro servant. The events consist of the attribution of causes to certain phenomena: - The negroes sharpening the axes. Delano considers it to be a sign of the inconsequent orders of Benito Cereno to the negroes. - The indocility of the blacks is attributed to Cereno«s lack of authority. - Babo«s docile behaviour seems to fit Delano«s views of the negro race, since he considers them to be inherently good-natured and stupid. - Cereno«s aloofness is attributed to his impoliteness. - Cereno«s continual faints are thought to be signs of physical weakness and mental disorder. - Cereno’s fear when speaking about his dead friend is assumed to be derived from the superstition associated to the old civilization in which Cereno was brought up. - The signal of the white sailor is attributed to a conspiracy of the whites against Delano. - Finally, when Cereno jumps into Delano«s boat, Delano thinks he is going to kill him. After these misperceptions, there is eventually an “external” event: Babo tries to kill Benito Cereno. Then the conspiracy of the blacks is revealed. But the text centres almost exclusively on the paradoxical considerations to which Captain Delano is lead. What has happened previously: the mutiny, the murders, the plotting, does not form part of the fabula, of the narrative itself. The actual events are resolved in another section of the short story, which is not strictly narrative but documentary, the witnesses« testimony at court. The fabula of “Bartleby” apparently has a different structure: an actor gradually becomes mentally ill. However, there is another narrative cycle parallel to this. Another actor, who turns out to be the narrator in the text, tries to imagine the causes of Bartleby’s change. Eventually, the significance of the fabula is attached to this actor, not to Bartleby, since the narrator will end up realizing the wrongness of his own assumptions. The third stage of the fabula, the result, is filled by a reversal in perception. “The Piazza” by Melville completes this process. The actor gets ready to look at a landscape for hours. He sits in his piazza and enjoys the view. No change can

67 MARêA JESÚS HERNÁEZ LERENA apparently be made in this situation. But he changes what he sees, he transforms the elements of nature into something else. In his imagination, mountains are powerful kings, the flowers of his garden live a story of heraldry, two sportsmen are turned into Macbeth and Banquo, his balcony becomes a ship, and the grass is nothing but the waves of the sea. What is motionless is endowed with movement. He believes that a distant house on the mountain belongs to fairyland. Fairies dwell there. He then sets off in search of them, this trip already transformed in his mind into a fantastic voyage. He attributes stories to static objects. His is a process of conscious deformation and his position is a symbol that can sum up what kind of events these short stories are engaged in. At the beginning of the fabula, he sets about perceiving. He imagines his situation is similar to that of the observer who sits on a bench at a picture gallery. He does not even need other actors to envisage a changing process. His particular deformation consist of attributing transcendence to objects. Perceptions function as anticipations of future events in Poe’s short stories, but this process is progressively considered as unreliable by Hawthorne and Melville. It implies deception in Hawthorne’s short stories, and deformation in Melville’s. Poe«s short stories claimed the validity of the imagination to achieve truth, but the individual´s perception in Hawthorne’s and Melville’s stories unavoidably lead to estrangement from truth. Reality becomes a mirage. The only perceiving subject in “The Piazza” eventually becomes aware of the artificiality of illusion. He has created something out of nothing. No event seems feasible at the end. He symbolizes the position of the writer who creates a text with a non-existent fabula. The writer names, invents causes and relationships, narrates the changes in a world of his own. This process is ultimately conceived as false. The fabula is not constituted by events, events do not have an a priori existence, they are the result of the characters« imaginings, of their obsession to attribute causes to what they see. The difficulty of abstracting the fabula in these short stories is derived from their special handling of such a traditional concept as “event”. “The fabula is nothing but the presentation of a series of events” (Bal, 1985: 41). But the fabula in these short stories is grounded on a series of interpretations of what is perceived. To say it in other words, the events in which the subject gets engaged consist merely of an approach to the fabula, of an attempt to know what is going on. The fabula is out of reach. Dominicus, Bullfrog, Brown, Delano, and the protagonist of “The Piazza” are not able to find what is happening outside them. “Undo it, quick” says a sailor to Delano showing him a knot. That will be his

68 SHORT STORY WORLD: THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY AMERICAN MASTERS task, to build up the proper interpretation. To get to know what really happens. The fabula is not based on the happening itself, but on the individual«s struggle to reach a conclusion. Therefore, change is produced within a subjectivity, the external world remains the same, unaffected by the character«s tribulations. Events are strictly produced within a single conscience. Events are defined as attitude, as perspective. And in the case of “Mr. Higginbotham Catastrophe” or “The Piazza”, there is sound proof of the inexistence of a fabula. Event is therefore defined as a perception, as a shift in perspective, or as a deformation. The act of seeing is compared symbolically to that of knowing or understanding. We can conclude after our analysis of the role of the events in the fabula, that the structure of the fabula in all these short stories is analogous. It is grounded on the opposition between “to be” and “to appear” (Todorov, 1976: 81), and these two poles bring to the foreground the problem of interpretation. The actantial schemes are qualified as true or false (Bal, 1985: 35). Previously, the concept of event has been defined as possessing a double nature, since it implies two states. In these stories, the meaning of event has been reduced to just one state, since this state -what is thought or perceived- already involves a certain perspective on a reality. This does not mean that the short story absolutely lacks the conventional changes in the characters« situation we expect from any story, only that these narratives revolve on the complexity of the subjects’ position towards an external situation and deliberately exclude any kind of conventional event or action. The process involved in most fabulas is the discovery of information. The actor is placed before something he cannot understand, and his definitions of that something constitute the events. The text reinforces this process because narration depends on a single focaliser: the subject who becomes the only character in the text. The text provides us with only one conscience and the reader becomes a witness to the character«s efforts of adjusting what sees into his own frame on mind. The reader does not have access to an actual conflict between characters, only one point of view is presented. Due to this, the reader, or the critic, is presented with the problem of the “irrecoverability” of the fabula if the character who focalises is not reliable. But narration will be devoted a chapter of its own in the level of the text. Nevertheless, it was necessary to include the level of the text in the analysis of the concept “event” because of the previously stated reason, and because what we consider as event depends to a great extent on the organization of the text itself. Abstraction is always relative. As it is produced in the after-reading, our conclusions on what is a functional and

69 MARêA JESÚS HERNÁEZ LERENA a non-functional event depend on the particular emphasis on certain issues at a textual level. As it has been said, the text focuses on certain events of the fabula and rejects others.

1.1.3. Exceptions to the “rule” We may argue that, within the group of short stories that have been analysed, there are at least three which in fact do not fit into the previous generalizations concerning both lack of intentionality in the first phase of the fabula, and the concept of event that has been previously explained. In fact, hypothetical exceptions of both arguments coincide: they are “The Tell-Tale Heart”,”The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” and “Mr. Higginbotham’s Catastrophe”. In “The Tell- Tale Heart”, the subject wants to kill somebody, in “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”, the subject wants to marry somebody, in “Mr. Higginbotham’s Catastrophe” the subject wants to communicate something. However, in “The Tell-Tale Heart” the execution of the plan (to murder an old person by terrifying him) is absent of intentionality because there is no causality. The subject does not know why he is doing what he is doing, there is no reason that he knows of. In the introduction to the narrative, the subject says:

It is impossible to say how first the idea entered my brain; but once conceived, it haunted me day and night. Object there was none. Passion there was none. I loved the old man. He had never wronged me. He had never given me insult. For his gold I had no desire. (Poe, 1984: 277) (My emphasis).

The plan the subject will carry out seems to be beyond his own will, since he is mad. “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” presents an actor who is not a psychopath, but whose will is almost inexistent and his plans or hopes for the future are laughable, since he is the most ridiculous actor in the fabula. He is ugly, greedy, weak and malleable. And the text is precisely based not on the execution of his plan, because he is not able to carry it out successfully, but on the assumptions this poor man makes about his own person and about his role in society. This actor is defined by his impossibility to act, which Bal calls lack of competence. Competence is a principle to specify actants: it “presupposes the possibility of the subject to proceed to execution” (p. 33). Actants can be described according to the degree or to the kind of competence they are endowed with at the level of the fabula. Ichabod Crane is constructed in the fabula through an absence of

70 SHORT STORY WORLD: THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY AMERICAN MASTERS competence, low degree of determination, absence or knowledge or skill, and absence of strength (since his rival possesses all these qualities in a much higher degree). In the case of “Mr. Higginbotham’s Catastrophe”, the subject, Dominicus, possesses the will to carry out his programme: to tell somebody a thrilling piece of news he had been told previously. The fabula is founded, however, on the inexistence of the piece of news, and therefore his plan is seen as absurd. His intention is not adjusted to reality. The principle of truth value explains this lack of adequacy. Truth value is another specification to qualify actantial schemes. Falsity being the initial background of the fabula, Dominicus’s programme cannot be of any weight. As to the concept of event explained previously, we may think that “The Tell- Tale Heart” diverges from it. The fabula process would offer instead a conventional narrative cycle with three main events: a man wants to kill his father, he does it by terrifying him, he is discovered by the police. There has been external alteration and change. However, after reading the short story we consider the previous abstraction rather inadequate. The real and astonishing event of the story is that a man thinks that an eye, the old man«s eye is evil. This is the actual first proposition of the fabula. The second phase of the fabula is an immediate consequence of the previous identification: the plan of murder is only directed to the eye. The result of the fabula depends on the subject’s assumptions as well: he thinks he can hear what no human ear can perceive. The result of the fabula is the beating of the heart, and this gives the actor away. The text reinforces these processes of the fabula, providing a first part that deals almost exclusively with the sense of sight (the presence and absence of light), and a second part centred on the sense of hearing (the use of time reflects the rhythm of a heart beating). The text conveys the kind of delusions or inventions in which the character gets involved, and the external changes are not presented objectively -since the character is also the narrator-, but they are presented exclusively according to his view of reality. The text confers primal saliency as well upon the assumptions of the character in “Rip Van Winkle”. There is external change in “Rip van Winkle”. Rip goes to the mountains, falls asleep, comes back twenty years later, and finds everything changed in his village. But the narrative’s interest lies precisely in this last stage where the character cannot understand what’s going on around him. He has brought his old-fashioned convictions into a society that is already condemning past values.

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The fabula of “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” fits in with the scheme: actor-function-actant-object, that is, Ichabod -wants to marry- Katrina. This is the possibility. The realization comes about when he gets everything prepared for the party, and the result is that he is tricked and defeated. We have noted that the text deals almost exclusively with the first stage: the assumptions that Crane creates about his life. The action -the party and the outcomet- is practically eluded. This is another characteristic of the short story: the text deals only with one of the stages of the fabula. Because space is extremely restricted, the emphasis is placed on just one phase of the fabula. The chosen stage confers its special significance on the short story.

1.1.4. Questions raised by the analysis The aim of this aside is to interrupt analysis for a moment in order to question the categories on which our analysis is based. Can my own definition of “event” be accepted?, does the concept depend on the specificity of each text? We will consider how the text specifically organizes the common processes of many fabulas. The event is that element which has relevance on what comes later on in the fabula, but this relevance can only be found in the text itself. For example, we may abstract the fabula of a narrative as follows: a young man wants to marry the woman he loves, he fights for her and eventually marries her. But this is not the proper fabula if the text (in spite of presenting the three stages) deals with a moment of that man’s life in which, for example, an object reminds him of his childhood. This episode of his childhood may be more important for him than his present life. And the textual devices make this appear as THE event. The particular narrative strategies may highlight the fact that the most obvious abstraction of plot (the fabula) does not represent, does not do justice to what the text is really saying. We may feel that the text addresses the character«s mind rather than what he does or the sequence of events in which he has got involved. The real fabula, then, would not correspond to the most obvious abstraction, but to what the character thinks, rather than what can be said of him in relation to change or alteration. This shows to what extent our abstraction of the fabula always depends on textual specificity. The fabula is easily abstracted when there is action, somebody fails an exam, or looks at the wrong side of the street and is run over by a truck, using Mieke Bal’s examples. But within this concept of event favoured by narratology, that is,

72 SHORT STORY WORLD: THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY AMERICAN MASTERS the event is something that produces a change in the subject or in the fabula, we should also include what is going on inside the subject. Otherwise, how do we proceed if the fabula is exclusively the subject? If there are no marks to signal a transition, the text may be based, as in fact is in a great deal of short stories, on a continuity of perceptions, feelings and thoughts of a single character. The main problem is, the narrative cycle according to whom? A second problem would be related to the inner coherence of those events. Bal says the rules that organise events into cycles are logical, causal and chronological; these criteria resemble the reader«s perception of his own reality, this is the way we understand life. But in many short stories events are not motivated, there may even be a rejection of a logical or chronological order. Thus, we have to deal with a series of issues: 1. The text may operate on a rejection of causal, chronological and other processes that are basic for organising the fabula. 2. Events may be unmotivated. This is specific of the short story, as we said in the previous chapter: causality is usually absent, we are just presented with the phenomenon, all the rest remains unexplained. 3. The concept of relevance should be included in our selection of the events which will be taken into consideration. Bal had used a similar concept, that of functionality. Functional events are those events that have a consequence in the fabula. But, if, for example, marrying the girl is given no relevance in the text in spite of being accounted for? That would mean that it is not the real event. Its previous stages, possibility and realization, would not be relevant either. A different procedure has to be followed in our abstraction of the text. As we have seen, texts usually offer narrative cycles involved in processes that turn the events of the fabula invalid. Indeed, texts sometimes deny the existence of a fabula at all. This awareness triggered off by literary texts is produced by narrative strategies of all kinds, not only by the amount of textual space allotted to each event of the fabula. “Ligeia”, for example, heavily relies on the effects of metaphor. In that story there is an identification of fear with pleasure. What we would normally consider to be a logic process of deterioration in the fabula is rendered in the text as a process of improvement. The conclusion would be the following one: texts can have and do have a different “fabula” from the one defined by narratology. This other fabula is not an abstraction of the processes of the text as if they were given a priori, it is the consequence of the particular organization of the text.

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1.2. Narrative cycles: Development and closure of the fabula

1.2.1. Processes of improvement and deterioration: Fabula progression Bal emphasizes the fact that a comparison of the structures of different fabulas may unveil unexpected aspects of the narratives. The aim, or the aspiration, is what produces movement in the narrative, since the subject has to abandon his initial stage to achieve something. Change is produced in the path towards his goal. A race sets off, an expectation is triggered off in the reader. Most of the fabulas examined so far are constructed on a lack of aim (at least a conscious aim) of the subject. But the absence of a goal at the beginning of the fabula does not mean that movement has not been set off. It means that the ending is not related to the subject intentionally, the outcome will have a more ambiguous relationship with the subject. Since the subject has not originated it, rather than an aim, we will speak of a “result”: its source remains unstated until particular discussion of each fabula. We may ask ourselves, then, what kind of change is produced and how the reader’s expectations are handled in this particular configuration of the fabula. If a state of normality is introduced at the start of the fabula, where the actors neither aspire to something nor try to avoid something, our expectations are naturally led to the certainty that something wrong is about to disturb the present state, or that an actor (or actors) are going to be removed from that initial situation and be placed in a different position. This is in fact what happens in Irving’s, Hawthorne’s, and Melville’s narratives. What is foreseen (not propitiated) in these narratives is what Mieke Bal calls a process of deterioration (p. 22). This process, together with the process of improvement, form the narrative cycle. Both processes may be realized or not. The fabulas of the short stories by Poe are initiated as well by a process of deterioration. The only difference with the previous fabulas is the presence of the initial state of deficiency, although possibility of an improvement is never envisaged, and so there is an initial gap in our knowledge of how possibilities may develop in the fabula. In the case of “Ligeia”, the fabula starts with the result of a past narrative cycle: the subject met Ligeia, he married her, and got to know her, then, she died. Death is conclusion, result. The subject laments her death. His state of deficiency can only favour a process of deterioration, a second narrative cycle which is aimless: he meets and marries a woman he does not love, and, as a parallel

74 SHORT STORY WORLD: THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY AMERICAN MASTERS process, this woman dies. This second narrative cycle has produced hatred and frustration, the previous one produced love and satisfaction. But this second process brings about, not deficiency, but fulfilment, since the result: death of Rowena, brings about a process of improvement: the return of Ligeia. The past has been made recoverable at the end. What in fact was conceived as a process of deterioration (loneliness, indifference, hatred, illness, terror of the night), turns out to be a process of improvement, since in each phase, the subject is unconsciously nearer his aim, Ligeia, regarded as impossible under logical and chronological laws. The unattainable was rejected as an aim at the beginning but it has turned out to be the result. It exceeds the expectations of the subject and the reader alike; it shows the limited frame of mind of the actor and the reader 17. It is very frequent to find in the fabula of these short stories a breach of the linearity of events. Chronological order is rejected, annulled, although the fabula is apparently based on it. But an element is taken from the past and thrown into the future. The fabula of other short stories is impelled as well by this breach of linearity, although it is also a disruption of the causal order. They are based on the ellipsis. The fabula of “The Fall of the House of Usher” consists of the concealment of an action: Usher has buried his sister alive. This causes Usher«s nervousness, keeps the guest ignorant (otherwise he could have avoided the situation), and also provokes Madeline Usher«s final revenge. The cause of those three events is hidden and comes to light only at the end. This means that the reader is not aware of the nature of the process of deterioration that is initiated at the beginning of the fabula. The process of deterioration may be classified as a “misstep” or a “punishment” (Bal, p. 23). The subject, who is the observer, comes to the fabula to initiate a process of improvement. Only at the end do we realize the deceitful nature of such process. In “Ligeia” the cause of the process of deterioration is hidden as well. It was Ligeia who walked along the corridors, who poisoned Rowena. Only when we know this, can we consider this process of deterioration as its opposite. The legitimate woman has replaced the usurper. Processes in both fabulas are deceptive, misleading. They develop in a non- linear way, in leaps. Linearity is broken by placing a temporal-causal event in the sequence it does not belong to. And so, the structure of the fabula propitiates a belated knowledge. We cannot know orderly, and therefore, we cannot fully

17. For an explanation of the idea of infractions of the external order, see Todorov (1976: 97).

75 MARêA JESÚS HERNÁEZ LERENA understand the meaning of what is happening until the very end. Suspense is not provided by helpers or opponents, but by an increasing state of ignorance. Suspicion is introduced in the fabula only at the last moment. Only at the end, do reader and subject become aware of their own blindness. The fabulas of these short stories cannot be abstracted until we read the very last sentence of the text, because they have the structure of a secret. Then, past events are to be reconsidered from a different light: we retrace our steps and read again. We find at the end the meaning of “the ruby coloured liquid” or of Usher’s mental disorders because the structure of the fabula depends on the following device: vital information concerning identities, causes, time references, is hidden (the presence of Ligeia in the chamber, or the premature burial of Miss Usher). The subject does not suspect anything, nothing is apparently lacking, and in the third phase of the fabula suspicion comes together with an immediate outcome. What has been hidden to the subject (and to the reader, because the text reinforces this opacity) is the cause, the “ propeller”, and this changes the functions of the actors once it is made known. The actor Ligeia turns out to be active in the events of the fabula, Usher turns out to be a murderer and a coward -in sharp contrast with his spirituality and sensitivity-; the anonymous actors in “Mr. Higginbotham’s Catastrophe” are the murderers; Mrs. Bullfrog is not a liar or an opponent, but a helper. Therefore, the nature of the processes (improvement or deterioration) and the function of characters are twofold. The novel is based on an initial attachment of responsibility to the actors; they must perform an action that we foresee, or we foresee the way they are going to perform it, because we have access to their personalities. There is no responsible actor who initiates the event in the short story. Or at least, we cannot guess how responsibilities are shared at the beginning. Motivation is given only at the end: the subject and the reader is left ignorant for a great period of time, in fact, the period of time that the fabula spans. These fabulas are based, then, on the concealment of causality, of the law that motivates the events. The fabula proves that any advance or movement in the fabula is false if the causing law has been left behind, the subject does not know it, and therefore he cannot understand. We shall denominate this kind of actor “the power “. Bal defines it as a class of actors “that support the subject in the realization of his intention” (p.28). It can also prevent the achievement of the aim. In many instances the power is not a person but an abstraction, such as fate, time, or a trait of the subject itself. Ligeia was the unexpected power, Usher was a liar. The three

76 SHORT STORY WORLD: THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY AMERICAN MASTERS main characteristics of the power, according to Mieke Bal are: 1. The power has power over the whole enterprise, 2. It is often abstract, 3. It often remains in the background, and 4. It usually is only one (see Bal, p. 31). The previous “powers” fit in this definition. The structure of Irving’s fabulas is similar to Poe’s, the power is either revealed at the very end (Brum Bones’s cunning defeats the scared Ichabod Crane), or the power remains unexplained because it belongs to the supernatural, to the unexplainable. Rip is introduced in a fantastic world, and its powers alters Rip’s impression of time: twenty years are like one night to him. What seems to be a process of deterioration -Rip finds himself suddenly old, in a strange society, his family and house have disappeared-, turns out to be a process of improvement: once his wife is dead, he can live freely and peacefully and be idle the rest of his life. The three short stories by Hawthorne that have been analysed present the same processes. In “Mr. Higginbotham’s catastrophe” and “Mrs. Bullfrog” the processes of deterioration: social rejection of Dominicus, and Mrs. Bullfrog«s deformation, bring about final success. An imminent final disaster finally turns out to be an improvement in the situation of the actants. On the other hand, “Young Goodman Brown” presents a progressive deterioration that is not finally righted, there is not an embedded process of improvement. It is worth noting that the power never lies with the subject, which is very frequent in narratives. This reinforces our conclusions derived from previous characteristics of the fabula: these short stories represent man«s lack of power. Man is drawn by forces he cannot understand, there is a superior will, sometimes wanton, sometimes cruel, to which he cannot have access. This superior external uncontrollable will is fate (“Usher”), the unconscious (“The Tell-Tale Heart”), the supernatural, or the dead (“Ligeia”), magic (“Rip”), time (“Mr. Higginbotham’s”), circumstances (“Mrs. Bullfrog”), or other man’s plotting against oneself, as in “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” and “Benito Cereno”. If there is one case in which power lies in the subject, as in “The Tell-Tale Heart”, it only favours a process of deterioration: acute sense of hearing causes madness. “Bartleby” illustrates again the typical structure of these fabulas. It is based on the concealment of Bartleby’s identity, and therefore, of the cause of his strange behavious. The subject is perplexed by the oddity of this scrivener. He in vain tries to order him to do things, then he tries to understand him, and finally he attempts to help him. If the fabula shows the subjects«s disorientation, it is necessary for the information to be carefully “dosed”.

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Only at the end does the subject get to know the cause: Bartleby had been working for the dead letter office for many years. There, he had understood the uselessness of existence, and then, of work, and he had slowly let himself go. Therefore, the fabula did not really develop, since the narrator only discovers this at the end and laments his own blindness to Bartleby’s problems. The fabula had a false development, since all the assumptions and attempts at improvement by the narrator were unfounded, there was no advance, there was no possibility of progress or improvement for Bartleby. However, there is at the end an initial process of improvement for the narrator, since he becomes aware of the narrowness of his past view on life. We observe that there is always a game of deception concerning the processes of improvement and deterioration in the fabula. If the causal order is defective, the logical and temporal order will be defective as well. Thus, knowledge is not possible. All these narratives, except “Ligeia” and “Young Goodman Brown” aim at final clarity; real knowledge substitutes previous shallow suppositions 18. The process of the novel is different from that of the short story: there are initial expectations, we know the causes and want to know the consequences. A “seed”, the actor, must undergo a series of stages in which possibilities (the actor«s traits) and/or the environment (other actors, place, time) are going to be developed 19. The reader regards this development as justified, we expect to learn the connections between the elements of the fabula. In these stories, in contrast, the consequence is given in the first place, and there is a delayed disclosure of the cause. It seems as if the short story writer’s intention would be to deceive the reader as long as possible. In the novel, the reader often foresees the nature of the world the writer is about to show, he takes pleasure in fiction itself before a particular drama is displayed before him. In the short story, we seem to “taste” fiction afterwards, because, paradoxically, possibility is given at the end, it is not a preparation for something to come but an undoing of that possibility itself. It seems as if understanding was only possible through belatedness. The consequence is that until the very end we will not know if character and outcome are related, and if they are, we do not know the nature of their relationship. This information is usually available in longer narratives, excepting those whose theme is mystery, since these narratives depend on a final shock.

18. This will be explained when dealing with the “irrecoverability” of the fabula. 19. There are also novels whose fabulas are initiated by the actor wanting to find something in the past, or a cause or an entity responsible for some fact. But in them, we learn as time progresses. This, as we have observed, does not coincide with the short story.

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Fabula structure in American nineteenth-century short stories gets rid of one of the fundamental links usually present in the fabula of novels: intentionality. Intentionality brings about opposition to one’s desires (the character tries to overcome the difficulties in achieving something), and this involves another actantial structure with its own aims. But the short story lacks all this, it lacks the helpers and the opponents, since its line of development is aimed at the character«s sudden entanglement in situation he cannot control. This process, rather than the “war of wills” customary in the novel, revolves on an only experiencing conscience engaged in a give-and-take game with external causality.

1.2.2. Subject and aim: The sense of closure When analysing a number of fabulas, we may realize that they consist of a very restricted group of actors. The narratives centre almost exclusively on one actor. This is a logical consequence of the nature of their fabulas and of the restrictions imposed by the form. If we happen to find several characters in the text, they are normally grouped into just one actant in the fabula, they all perform the same role. (The question actors-characters will be discussed in a separate chapter). The fabulas described so far only call for the elaboration of one process, several lines of development are precluded. Even if the fabulas do not exclusively focus on one subject, but address mainly other elements of the narrative, such as a situation, only one line of action is necessary (we know that the novel develops several), not much information is need about other actantial groups. Another reason why the short story can do without a heavy load of information is its high degree of “arbitrariness”. Mystery and lack of certainty reign, causes will not be spelt out because they must not be explained. They remain hidden until the very end. In may cases they are also unknown (and unknowable). Texts possess a great freedom to deal with processes which are not linear. There might be another reason why the amount of actors becomes so limited in the short story. The final result of the fabula may be the reaching of a state, rather than the empowerment of an object. According to Bal (pp. 26-27), the relationships between a subject and his aim have a different structure from that of the sentence: “subject/function (the verb)/direct object”. Sometimes the object may be a person, or an external thing, and sometimes the object may be the reaching of a certain state, a quality within the subject. The first relationships are objective, the second subjective. The rule is that those fabulas which are subjective tend to reduce the number of actors.

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The relationship between the subject and the object is subjective in all these fabulas. Although there are some cases in which the subject wants an external object or a person, as in “Mrs. Bullfrog”, the outcome of the fabula proves that Bullfrog does not so much desire a woman, but achieve a state: tranquillity, comfort. Because of that he does not care any more whether his wife is beautiful or not. He considers his past expectations as foolish, because he is happy now. He has not achieved something external, but an internal quality, he learns to be practical. The object (the goal) is an ideal state that only exists within him. He does not consider marriage any more as the possession of a woman, but as an inner peaceful state. We can conclude that in these fabulas the subjects never aim at achieving external objects, but an internal state. In “Ligeia”, the aim is not to possess a woman again, but to perceive the same things again, to sense the presence of the past embodied in the person of Ligeia. Ligeia is part of the subject, it is a quality of his inner life. She is his past. In “Young Goodman Brown”, as in “The Fall of the House of Usher”, there is ambiguity with respect to the relationship of the subject and the result. Both subjects are reluctant to undergo the process, but they do. Goodman Brown gets further and further into the forest, Usher dives more and more into chaos. We cannot know whether Brown desires to go into the forest, whether he desires good or evil, or whether Usher desires recovery or death. As we have said, however, we cannot properly speak of aim, but of result. In any case, the result is defined as the subject«s awareness of a situation that remained veiled in the course of the fabula. The movement of the fabula is directed to the presentation of what remained beyond the subject. It expands the knowledge of the subject, the roles of the actors take their own positions in the mind of the subject. The result does not bring about external but internal change, a shift in view or perspective. The fabula must “come to a stop”, which is the result or the conclusion stage. We discover in it the kind of relationship between the outcome of the events and the entity that has experienced them. Only then can we know the cause. The fact that there is no aim does not mean that the actor does not have expectations, even if they consist of expecting no future change. This attitude is more properly described by the verb “to expect” than by the verbs “to hope” or “ to wish”, terms that Bal applied to the initial state of the subject (p. 28). The difference lies in the passivity of the subject, in the lack of any prospect or change. The result exceeds the expectations of the subject in all the fabulas analysed here. In most texts we feel the closure through this ironic surpassing of the initial

80 SHORT STORY WORLD: THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY AMERICAN MASTERS expectations. What comes at the end in the fabula overwhelms the expectations the subject had. Even in those cases where the fabula seems to be based on the execution of a plan, the conclusion is not provided by the completeness of the plan, but by a change in aim. In Hawthorne’s “Mr. Higginbotham’s Catastrophe” and “Mrs. Bullfrog”, the subjects initially want to tell a piece of news, to have some fun, or to marry the ideal woman. But the conclusion of both fabulas causes the characters to change their aims and their perspectives. This can be exemplified by Todorov’s model (1976: 74-81) of the relationships between characters. According to him, the three basic relationships are: to wish, to communicate, and to participate. To these, another one could be added, to realise, to become aware. Dominicus’s function was firstly to communicate with the others, to gossip. But after being rejected twice (because his story was untrue), he changes his aim, he becomes disinterested and sets out to find the truth himself. His relationship with reality has changed, he wants to be true, not just to enjoy himself on account of others’ sorrows. Only then can he change his future, he saves Mr. Higginbotham, and Mr. Higginbotham offers him his pretty niece. Mr. Bullfrog just wanted to obtain delicacy and beauty from his wife; he had made the perfect purchase. But then, he realizes this is not his ultimate aim, his aim is to live happily and peacefully with the person who can support him financially. Both subjects realize that the relationships they maintained with other characters are not what they believed them to be or are not what they should be. The intended execution of a plan is replaced by a shift in perspective. In these short stories the result is imbued with the irony implied by the unexpected, unimaginable outcome. In every case, the result exceeds the subject´s expectations. In “Ligeia”, the dead woman comes back, in “The Fall of the House of Usher”, the subject discovers that Madeline was buried alive, and Usher finds his own destruction. In “The Tell-Tale Heart”, the subject is discovered by the police, despite being so confident of his ability to lie. In “Rip van Winkle”, Rip is deprived of his hateful wife but he is deprived as well of twenty years of life, of his family and of his friends. In “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”, Ichabod does not only lose the girl but is expelled from the village. Dominicus, in “Mr. Higginbotham’s Catastrophe”, saves the uncle and marries the niece in spite of being an outcast. Goodman Brown finds out that the effects of one night will last a whole life. The narrator of “Bartleby” finds out that Bartleby was not narrow-minded at all, on the contrary, he possessed an uncommon power of insight. Captain Delano in “Benito Cereno” finds out that the

81 MARêA JESÚS HERNÁEZ LERENA murderers are not the whites but the blacks. The subject in “The Piazza” finds out that there are real stories, tragic ones. Indeed, that the world is not only fantasy. The sense of closure is achieved by a change in the subject’s beliefs. This strategy can be traced back to Renaissance collections of tales. Shklovsky (1970: 131) uses Le Diable Boiteux by Lesage to illustrate this idea. The tales were based on a description of several pictures. The story came to an end when previous false assumptions of what was being observed were replaced by the truth hidden in the pictures. There is, for instance, a tale where a young man and an old man are observing several people. Through the window of a big house they see a young pretty woman kissing an old man, but holding the hand of a young man. The man who is watching them interprets that the old man is the lady’s husband and the young man is her lover. But this appearance is deceptive. The truth, as the wise old man expresses, is that the lady is married to the young man, but they are very poor, and in order to cope with their plight, she must yield to the caresses of the rich old man, while the young man suffers the impotence of this situation. There has been an internal, not an external change. The result in all these narratives is awareness. The results of the previous analysis enable a certain prediction of how the text is going to deal with all this 20. 1. Since the fabula deals with the subject«s adjustment to a certain reality, devices of the narration will place the reader in the same situation as that of the subject. That way the final “impact” of the outcome will be one for both character and reader. That implies that focalisation will be reduced to one subject, and that we will only have that limited kind of focalization if the writer wishes to conceal the identity of the other actors or the causes of the action. Besides, if the relationship between the subject and the result is not of intention, but of suspicion, it means that we are bound to find a plot against the subject. Clear examples of this are “Benito Cereno”, “Young Goodman Brown”, “Mr. Bullfrog”, “Ligeia”. The text will favour a delay in awareness, and, if a high degree of reader involvement is to be achieved, the reader must remain in the same state of confusion or limitation as the subject. So, the fabula will be a riddle for the reader as it is for the subject. The text must therefore place the correct

20. One of the advantages of the method of narratology is that we can reverse the process of reading, we can go backwards: we can imagine, once we have abstracted the fabula, the narrative possibilities that the writer had when dealing with the fabula. Also we can make hypotheses about how the structure of the fabula will influence its final textual shape.

82 SHORT STORY WORLD: THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY AMERICAN MASTERS information at the end, in the order that the subject receives it. This, as a general rule, prevents the use of an omniscient narrator. 2. A second consequence is that only the characteristics of the protagonist of the story will be specified. Information about the other actors will be not needed as much, since their role in the fabula is concealed. And, if there is no aim, the role of the helpers and opponents does not have much relevance in the development of the fabula. The characteristics of the other actors will be relevant only if the subject tries to disentangle a plot. Then, the conclusion of the fabula will be reached at the same time as the discovery of the plot. Besides, since the fabula is not based on an aim, the text will not have to work out a detailed intentional net between the characters. Causality need not be explained. The elimination of information involves a reduction in the number of pages necessary to put across this scheme. 3. Fabula structure in these short stories is not related to fabula structure in folk tales, anecdotes, or legends. In the short story the subject does not set out to perform a desired or assigned role, there is an absence of helpers and opponents and suspense is based on suspicion (not on expectations). 4. Alterations in the order cause/consequence have the effect of burning the reader«s curiosity. We are first shown a startling situation and if we want to know how things could have happened that way, we will have to read on. (“The Tell- Tale Heart”, “William Wilson”, “Bartleby”, etc.) 5. Above all, the reader will feel that reading a short story is a different experience from reading a novel. The novel constructs a fictional world as pages are summed up. We are provided with data about actors, their particular roles in the narrative. We become acquainted with a place and a time. The reader is assured he is going to gain a deep knowledge of people and places. But the process of the short story is destructive, as in “Young Goodman Brown”, where the identity of the actors and the assumptions of the subject about the rules of the world are progressively destroyed and cannot be replaced by any ascertainable truth. In the short story, nothing is fixed, no rule can be applicable to the basic processes of the fabula, since it seems to be based on the disintegration of time and of logical cause, as we will see later on. In the short story we “fear” the impact, while in the novel we expect a certain realization. In the novel we are provided with the clues to decode the events either at the beginning or along the development of the narrative. In the short story we know the “why”, if we do, only at the very end. We do not learn while we read, but in a prolonged after- reading. The short story reverses the reading order of the novel. It is at the end when we in fact start to read and to understand.

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On the other hand, it is worth mentioning that the themes of these short stories strike us as contemporary, in spite of the fact that they were written between 1819 and 1850. They deal with individuals in a world where traditional rules do not seem to work, where the individual cannot carry out a plan or be fully aware of his destiny. The character cannot be in contact with other individuals because of perceptual and psychological barriers. The movement of the fabula is based on a delay in knowledge; these short stories are painful examples of man«s inability to abstract the universe. For example, in “Mr. Higginbotham’s Catastrophe”, the narrator has to provide an explanation of what has happened at the end of the narrative, without that information, neither the subject nor the reader can understand the plot. Novels are very frequently based on the concealment of identity, of an event, etc., but some elements in the text remain fixed. In the short story, all the elements are turned upside down, they “mutiny”: the conscience of time is blurred (“Ligeia”, “Rip”), every character seems to adopt a different identity all of a sudden (“Brown”, “Benito”, “The Piazza”). The relationship cause-effect is also arbitrary to a very great extent. In addition to theme of the isolation of the individual, it is significant that events are exclusively based on an individual«s outlook on reality. Only the image the individual has built up becomes relevant. Perhaps we need to be reminded that impressionist painters did not paint the object, but the image they had of the object in their minds. They wished to portray a vision of reality, not the reality. These narratives represent reality, the reality we take for granted, the reality we think is shared by all, as unreliable. In the next section we will study how the subsequent layers of the narrative express the abstractions of this first level.

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2. Time in the Short Story

It is on the question of time that most generalizations have been made when trying to explain the specificity of the short story. The generally assumed conclusion is that the short story, due to page restriction, can only deal with a short period of time, with a restricted illustration, with a minute “sample” of life, with a moment in the life of the protagonists. This conclusion, however, proves to be inadequate very frequently. In this section, we will examine the function that time performs in the fabula and how it shapes the connections between fabula elements. Then, we will deal with the specific treatment of time at the level of the story: how the story re- organizes time, how fast or slow it is made to appear and why. An analysis of the role of time is especially important to understand how short stories are constructed and how they affect our reading experience. As I have said, our aim is to discover some constant features which will allow us to devise a system of interrelationships that will help us to confront the specific nature of each short story in a more advantageous way. For the time being, we will leave aside considerations about the time of the reader and we will centre on the time of the narrative.

2.1. Fabula time in the short story

The time span of the analysed short stories may consist of a period of some years, as in “The Piazza”, or “Rip van Winkle”; some months, as in “ Bartleby”, “Ligeia”, “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”; several days, as in “The Tell-Tale Heart”, “The Fall of the House of Usher”, “Mr. Higginbotham’s Catastrophe”; one night or one day, as in “Young Goodman Brown” or “Benito Cereno”, or a period of one hour or less, as in “Mrs. Bullfrog” 21. Problems arise if the time span is very long or if it is very short. In the first case compactness must be achieved, since it is very difficult to deal in short form with events that span a long period of time without causing the effect of unevenness. Certain special connections must be developed between the events so that the fabula does not become a list or a mere enumeration. If the time span is very short, its temporal limitation must be avoided, and the writer will strive for giving continuity and complexity to a narrative that otherwise would appear to be too simple.

21. A lifetime is less frequent but there are cases as well: “William Wilson”, “A True Story”.

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There are means -at the level of the fabula- of stretching the time pan, on the one hand, and of providing it with compactness on the other. These procedures are mainly three: 1. The double narrative cycle. 2. The coexistence of two fabulas. 3. The disruption of the sense of time 22.

2.1.1. The double narrative cycle In the first place we will deal with the “long fabulas” in order to analyse the structure of the two narrative cycles they contain, and the kind of connections between them that generate the significance of the fabula. These are the narrative cycles of “Ligeia”:

1. Possibility: the subject finds a woman. 2. Realization: they get married and live happily together. 2.A. There is an embedded process of deterioration: she gets ill. 3.A. Result: she dies. 3. Result: the subject has no possibility of recovering from his suffering.

In this process of deterioration of the subject, a second cycle is introduced:

1. Possibility is absent, however, he meets another woman. 2. Realization: there is another embedded process of deterioration: they marry and hate each other. 2A. There is an added process of deterioration: the woman gets ill. 3A. Result: Rowena dies. 3. Result: Ligeia is brought back to him. The two processes of deterioration have brought about a process of improvement. The final result contradicts the first result.

22. This strategy will be analysed in a different section due to its textual implications.

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Compactness has been achieved by making the two cycles parallel. The second one is opposed to the first one. In it, the process of deterioration is conceived, paradoxically, as a process of improvement: hatred and indifference prove to be positive, since it means the subject is faithful to Ligeia. Rowena«s illness and death are not related to negation, but to life; only after Rowena«s death the subject will be free and Ligeia will be brought back to life. The undesirable future of the subject (presented in the second narrative cycle) has taken him to the past again. The two processes are identical in their order and structure, but their meaning is opposite. The second narrative cycle achieves its significance thanks to the contrast with the previous one. In the second narrative cycle love becomes indifference, security becomes fear. However, these two cycles are reduced to one by this process of identification, in such a way that we may sum up their phases within a single process: the fabula starts with a result, and it inverts the process, it moves towards the origin: the possibility. There is only one beginning and one end, the rest of the processes are fused into the basic three phases: result (death and loss of something essential for the subject), realization (the things that happen after his second marriage), and possibility, -which is also a result- (the possibility of a process of improvement since the actor now possesses what he most desires). The movement of the fabula can be represented as follows:

Fabula—————————> ———————-> —————————-> ——————————> Ligeia Rowena Ligeia (Past fulfilment) (Present frustration) (Future fulfilment)

Other fabulas achieve compactness as well by an structural identity between the two cycles and by the kind of links established between them, although one of the narrative cycles may be disguised or concealed. Thus, an apparent linearity is expanded into different perspectives. In “Ligeia “, the same subject undergoes two cycles, in other narratives, there are two narrative cycles belonging to different subjects. In “The Fall of the House of Usher”, the fabula starts with Usher´s initial process of deterioration:

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1. Possibility: that Usher’s degeneration will come to an end. 2. Realization: he seeks solace in an old acquaintance, they spend their time playing music and reading books. 2.A. There is an embedded process of deterioration: his sister dies. 3. Result: Usher finally dies of terror because of the unintentional murder of his sister.

But this is not the only narrative cycle of this fabula. There is another one that may appear imperceptible because it influences the fabula very little. The actor is Usher«s friend, he is given no name, it is the narrator of the story. We will call him “the observer”:

1. Possibility: the observer is invited to the mansion of an old acquaintance who seems to be mentally ill. He goes there to help him. 2. Realization: He cannot bring relief to the friend, on the contrary, he progressively feels as frightened as Usher is. 2A. There is also an embedded process of deterioration: the observer cannot guess what is the cause of Usher’s vagaries, and therefore, cannot prevent the inhumane suffering of Usher’s sister. 3. Result: He runs from the house in terror, now he knows the reasons of his initial ominous impressions of the house.

The first narrative cycle in “Ligeia” and “The Fall of the House of Usher” has a counterpart, a reflection, in the second narrative cycle, it also has influence on it. And this occurs in the same phases of both cycles. They are not separate processes, they are interrelated, providing at the same time depth or complexity, and unity or compactness. A secondary effect of this strategy is that time is expanded because we are provided with two frames of reference, those of the two subjects. One subject, the observer, belongs to a world which is temporally previous to that of Usher«s. And this first subject moves into another temporal sequence that stretches towards the future at the end of the fabula: he returns to normality, to a future. Therefore, when Usher’s time is finished, the observer’s time is prolonged.

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The same happens in “Ligeia”. She belongs to the past, and in the second narrative cycle, she is given a possibility in the future, while Rowena is “enclosed” in the temporal limitations of the second narrative cycle. Thanks to this double process, actors can be projected into the past or into the future. The fabula is not restricted to a limited present, it is provided with continuity. The two narrative cycles offer two different “passages” through the flow of the narrative and, as a consequence, deviousness is produced, an effect impossible to achieve if the fabula consisted of an uninterrupted line. Time is not a one-way road; linearity is broken because time can be “projected” towards several directions. In “The Tell-Tale Heart”, the fabula can be also divided in two parts:

1. Possibility: the subject desires to kill an old man. 2. Realization: he devises a strategy to inflict pain on the old man. 3. Result: Success: the subject finally kills the old man.

The second narrative cycle follows the first chronologically:

1. Possibility: the subject desires to construct a perfect lie. 2. Realization: He does it by showing off his self-assurance. 3. Result: failure: he is discovered because of an actor (an object in this case) which belongs to the first narrative cycle: the beating of the heart.

These two cycles cannot be conceived as separate because the first one has not been left behind, it exercises its power over the second one. The beating of the heart, the result of the first narrative cycle that symbolized the last sign of the old man«s life, appears as well in the result of the second narrative cycle. This time it does not bring fulfilment, but frustration; it will force the subject to confess his crime. As in “Ligeia”, the same element appears in the same phase, but with different consequences for the fabula. There are two processes that create different temporal frames, they expand a single temporal frame. Besides, they are fused because they imply each other. The result of the second narrative cycle always takes the first cycle to the foreground. They are composed of the same elements but organized according to

89 MARêA JESÚS HERNÁEZ LERENA a different perspective. As a consequence, the closure of the narrative, the result, is at the same time beginning and end. In all these fabulas, the end is a return. There is an element of the fabula, an actor, that disappears in the first narrative cycle and appears at the end of the second cycle: Ligeia, Madeline Usher, who is supposed to be dead but reappears to take revenge on her brother, and the beating of the heart, the symbol of the old man’s life, which also reappears in the end to alter the course of the events. “Bartleby” has a parallel structure to that of “The Fall of the House of Usher”. There is an imperceptible narrative that apparently has no influence over the events. It belongs to the narrator, or observer (we used the same term in Poe«s story). However, this secondary subject is not just a teller, he creates a second line of development in the fabula. The two narrative cycles occur at the same time in the fabula. They are the following: First narrative cycle

1. Possibility: Bartleby gets a new job. He may find it satisfactory. 2. Realization: he progressively refuses to do any work. 2.A. Embedded process of deterioration: he loses his job and he has no place to live in. Then he sleeps in the office. 3. Result: Bartleby dies, he has even refused to eat.

But there is another subject: the observer who -like the observer of “The Fall of the House of Usher”- does not influence the fabula, but is influenced by it. His narrative cycle could be summed up as follows:

1. Possibility: That he can understand or help Bartleby. 2. Realization: He is increasingly startled by Bartleby’s behaviour. 2A. Embedded process of deterioration: he is unable to help Bartleby. More than that, he dismisses Bartleby and moves his office to another building so that Bartleby cannot disturb him. 3. Result. Due to Bartleby«s sad end, the observer is made aware of Bartleby«s real plight, and abandons his narrow-minded and pragmatic view of life.

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Again, one actor is immersed in a restricted temporal stretch, that of the second narrative cycle, while the other actor is given a past and the possibility of projecting the result of the fabula into the future. The structure of all these fabulas may be considered to be double, in the sense that they contain two parts that are unfolded in the linear order of the fabula or at the same time. “Rip van Winkle” belongs to the first case, like “The Tell-Tale Heart”, for example23. Rip gets unwillingly involved in two perplexing situations. The second situation resembles the first one. First, he finds himself in a fantastic world which he cannot understand, and the second world that he encounters when he wakes up is no less fantastic for him. He is misplaced twice and can not understand the meaning of the words uttered by the inhabitants of this new world. Initially he had been placed in the past (the time of the Dutch settlers), and then in the future (the time of American democracy). When Rip comes back in the second narrative cycle, he sees himself reflected in his son, who is a “precise counterpart of himself” (Irving, 1977: 16). The fabula is based on a twofold nature of events which gives the impression of continuity. In the first narrative cycle, Rip belonged to a “restricted present”, he was bullied by his wife and consoled himself with his friends and hobbies. The second cycle liberates Rip from a past which would inevitably lead to a bleak future. He has the chance to live in different circumstances and the reader can intuit the kind of life he is going to lead in the future. Another characteristic of short story fabulas with a long time span is the reduction of the spatial coordinate. The events take place in one, never more than two locations. Even in the case when there are two locations, they may be identified in the text and become the same one, as in the case of Poe’s stories.

2.1.2. Real and hypothetical fabula Those fabulas whose time span is relatively short: “Mr. Higginbotham’s Catastrophe” (three days), “Mrs. Bullfrog” (approximately one hour), “Young Goodman Brown” (one night), and “Benito Cereno” (a day), present just one possibility in their construction. Their limited temporal frame is compensated by

23. Those fabulas whose narrative cycles follow each other can always be abstracted in pairs of opposite terms. For example: “Ligeia”: death/life, or loss/recovery; “The Tell-Tale Heart”: murder/revenge; “Rip van Winkle”: slavery/freedom.

91 MARêA JESÚS HERNÁEZ LERENA a double frame within the fabula 24. Two fabulas coexist within the story. One is real and the other one only hypothetical. We hope these concepts will be adequately explained by the following examples. The real fabula of “Mr. Higginbotham’s Catastrophe” is that Mr. Higginbotham will be murdered. The hypothetical fabula is made up by the subject: Mr. Higginbotham has been murdered. The lack of adequacy between the two versions produces the events of the fabula. There are consequences for those who believe the hypothetical construction and those who reject it. In this short story, the hypothetical fabula depends on a misinterpretation of the time when events happened. Each of the actants locates an event in a mistaken temporal frame. A future event is proclaimed as past by the actants that will perform it, the murderers. Then, they become hypothetical murderers. The second group of actants, the witnesses, represent a different past, their past is not hypothetical or invented, but real. They have seen Mr. Higginbotham with their own eyes and he is alive. Finally, Dominicus is the first actor to be deceived by the hypothetical fabula, but will be the only one to get to know the real fabula. Three temporal references have been created and each has a real and a hypothetical counterpart. The time limit of three days has been expanded in our minds due to the inclusion of a parallel or invented fabula. Let´s briefly look at “Mr. Bullfrog”, in which the duality of the fabula is already expressed in the title of the story. We are warned of the hidden possibility of another fabula. Husband and wife return home happily, they are enjoying the newly-tasted sweetness of marriage. But suddenly, something very strange starts to happen (a second fabula), which Mr. Bullfrog cannot understand. His wife turns into an opposite person. Delicacy becomes coarseness; beauty, ugliness; a feminine woman into a manly creature. The fabula proves to be twofold. The wife possesses the real fabula, the ugliness of existence inscribed in it forever: she was dumped by her bridegroom and she sued him. Then, he was taken to court and he had to pay a great amount of money to compensate her. These events transform the fabula Mr. Bullfrog thought he was living in into pure hypothesis.

24. By fabula with a double structure we mean either that it has two narrative cycles or that it has a real and a hypothetical fabula. This concept must not be mistaken with the concept of sub-fabula introduced by Mieke Bal (pp. 32-33). A sub-fabula implies that there is an autonomous subject that pursues his/her own aim, which may occasionally hamper the achievement of the first subject«s aim. But we mean parallel fabula, not sub-fabula, that is, two processes which are equally important. The fabula with a double structure does not imply the existence of an anti-subject with his own aims that oppose those of the protagonist«s.

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One fabula replaces another. However, both of them coexist up to the very end. The linearity of the fabula is broken because the past is reintroduced in the present, and this provokes a reconsideration of the future from a new light, the new possibilities of the couple opening up just at the end. “Young Goodman Brown” presents a double fabula as well, the real one (in which society makes a pact with evil) and a taken-for-granted fabula (society is based on a contract of mutual help among individuals). The appalling effects of these two plots on the individual result from their contrast and their coexistence. One night, the actor becomes aware of the consequences of these two fabulas in his past and in his future life. He realizes his past has been a lie and that his future is completely hopeless. “Benito Cereno” exemplifies again the existence of a fabula “against” the subject. He thinks that those who keep the power, the whites, are the ones who create the rules in the world he is living in. However, he eventually realizes that the blacks are the leaders and the whites follow their orders. The past, therefore, consists of the acts of violence perpetrated by those in power in the real fabula. The future proclaims their victory: Babo, the docile servant seems to exert power even after death. His severed head triumphantly looks down at the tomb of the two white actors, Aranda and Cereno. One day is stretched unbelievably; it sums up the past and future of a society. One fabula is false, the other one is true. In “The Piazza”, one fabula is invented, the other one is real. What the subject takes for reality: the transcendence of every object is brought face to face with the realization that objects and people are empty, deprived of any meaning. This is bound to have consequences that reach further than the specific time span dealt with within the fabula. The character«s past is viewed as senseless, his future as an adjustment to the bleakness the real fabula. Nevertheless, “The Piazza” is somehow an exception to the more conspicuous “plottings” embedded in these stories, since it is essentially a long fabula constructed on the recurrent principles of short fabulas. This proves how rooted the topic of deception is in the initial stages of the short story. This short story is perhaps more closely related to long narratives or romances, such as Don Quijote, to which the narrator explicitly refers (Melville, 1949: 444). Our impression of the duration of time is then enlarged due to the inclusion of a double process within the fabula. It is deepened by adding two perspectives that propitiate a complex vision of the events. Lack of extension over time is made up by a “doubling” of the events. Not by compressing many events in a

93 MARêA JESÚS HERNÁEZ LERENA short period of time, but by exploiting their complex nature and its bearing on the development of the fabula.

2.2. Time disruption in the short story

Another strategy which expands the fabula«s time span is the disruption in the chronological order of time. The temporal frame may appear to be unstable, ambiguous, or impossible to ascertain clearly, and so the temporal restrictions are abandoned in favour of a non-linear interpretation of events. This can be done at the level of the fabula and at the level of the text. At the level of the fabula it implies that the actor is confronted with a lack of temporal fixity. The theme of the fabula is that man’s traditional categories to measure time prove to be unreliable or relative. In “Rip van Winkle”, Rip, for example, is deprived of a precise notion of time. Twenty years are like one night to him. At the level of the text, the ambiguity is directed directly at the reader. The text is organized in such a way that the reader experiences uncertainty when attempting to order temporally the events. But this ambiguity does not necessarily occur at the level of the fabula. In both cases the reader may feel confused, but ambiguous texts may not depend on fabulas dealing with time disruption. “Rip van Winkle”, “Mr. Higginbotham’s Catastrophe” and “Young Goodman Brown” are the short stories in which temporal ambiguity is produced at the level of the fabula. The fabula of “Rip van Winkle” is based on the trick that time plays on a subject. He falls asleep and his impression that his sleep had lasted one night is deceitful: twenty years of his life have elapsed, when he wakes up he is already old. There has been an ellipsis of twenty years at the level of the fabula. This ellipsis functions as the “hinge” on the other world Rip is going to find. The second part of the fabula cannot deal, therefore, with the same actants, they are replaced by others unknown to Rip. Because such a long time has passed, Rip must perforce consider “yesterday” as remote past and “ today” (the day he wakes up), as far-distant future, because he has been deprived of a present whose development would have enabled him to understand what he is witnessing: voting, democracy and so on. This present in which he has waken up is, in fact, his future. Due to this ellipsis, we are led to consider the life Rip and his colleagues were leading at the beginning of the fabula as a symbol of the gone days of American life, and the life the inhabitants

94 SHORT STORY WORLD: THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY AMERICAN MASTERS of the village are leading now as a symbol of the future to come. Time has been constricted at the level of the fabula, there is a hole, a gap, that precludes a normal consideration of time. Past and future are made to stand next to each other. In contrast, the time span of the fabula is expanded in “Benito Cereno” because a day sums up a long period in history. We have already referred to the fact that the fabula in “Mr. Higginbotham’s Catastrophe” deals with the problem of misplacement of temporal information. The subject is possessor of a truth, but this truth is considered as a lie by the other actants because it does not belong to the past, that is, to what has already been perceived and recorded. He is placed by some peculiar circumstances in a very special position: he can change the future of somebody he has never met. The group of actants who do not believe in the murder are restricted in their past perceptual knowledge: they have seen Mr. Higginbotham alive. The murderers, in contrast, know the future, they will be the future agents of a crime. Only the subject, in the present, can set these events in their proper order and, in order to discover the truth, save Mr. Higginbotham from his certain death. This fabula breaks the chronological order: future is given at the beginning (although it is thought to be the past), and the subject is shown to be the master of time, since he can change this past. The outcome of the fabula proves that the individual can be involved in circumstances in which time works differently (or is ordered differently) and that future is not always ahead -as it is commonly assumed- but may be behind us. The rejection of temporal fixity carried out in “Young Goodman Brown” is not due to the merging of different temporal perspectives, as in the previous fabula, but to the equation of the actual time span of the fabula -one night- to a situation in which the sense of time is completely lost: a dream 25. The duration of both situations, a sleepless night, or a night dreamed away is the same, but the consequences in the fabula are not the same. The dream does not refer to the past or the future of a life; it is self-contained. But the implications of the real events

25. This has been done in other short stories old and new. In “The Hollow of the Three Hills” by Hawthorne, the time span of the fabula, one hour, is expanded because it is spent on an activity where the sense of time is completely lost: the subject is under a spell, or is hypnotized, and her sense of time is expanded. She sees her family and everything that had happened to them for some years. In “La Noche Boca Arriba” de Julio Cortázar, the subject is under the effects of anaesthetics and he perceives two realities. The time when he awakes at the hospital and the time when he feels the effects of the drug. In this second experience he is taken back to the origins of his race, and he is the victim of a ritual sacrifice. In the end, this turns out to be the real experience.

95 MARêA JESÚS HERNÁEZ LERENA announce that his past was a lie and that he cannot confront his future with a wife and a society that have deceived him 26. Within the group of analysed short stories, there are two in which there is a special textual treatment of time: they are provided with a false chronology. They are “Bartleby” and “Ligeia”. In “Bartleby” the past comes after the present in the text. We become acquainted with the life of a man who works as a scrivener in a small office in New York. We are told how his days pass, his tasks at work, and his attitude towards life. Only at the end is the past of this strange man provided: before working in that office he had been a subordinate in the Dead Letter Office at Washington. When the story comes to an end we understand Bartleby at last: his previous job had consisted in burning letters whose addressees were dead, and therefore, the letters were useless. The fact is that the narrator, Bartleby’s current employer, tells Bartleby’s story backwards by means of an internal retroversion, but he could have placed this crucial information at the beginning. He breaks the chronological order on purpose: to make the reader feel the same perplexity concerning Bartleby’s behaviour as he felt once, since he did not know why Bartleby behaved so strangely while he lived. This narrative order brings to the foreground the uselessness of Bartleby«s existence. Only at the end, after Bartleby«s death, can the narrator make up for the loss of this life by paying serious attention to the problems of his own existence and make amends for his blindness towards others. Chronological order has been altered, information only coming too late, as in life. By accounting for Bartleby«s past only after his death, the narrator«s future is seen from a different light. Then the reader is able to reorganize the temporal sequence and imagine Bartleby doing that terrible job. Eventually the reader will be given the chance of understanding Bartleby«s behaviour as a scrivener. It is in “Ligeia” where the breach of the temporal order is more problematic because it affects the textual organization more powerfully. The processes of the fabula in “Ligeia” can be summed up as:

Meeting (subject & Ligeia)-> Marriage-> Death (Ligeia«s)->(*) Madness->

Meeting (subject & Rowena)-> Marriage-> Death (Rowena«s)-> Ligeia«s presence (**)

26. Films occasionally use this method. The initial normality is substituted by a sudden unmasking of all the characters the individual lives with. In “Total Recall” by Paul Verhoeven, which is based on a short story by Philip K. Dick, the protagonist’s wife proves to be his worst enemy, and his friends, his executioners. The sense of time of the protagonist has been deliberately deformed: a few weeks of his life are inscribed in memory as a life of marriage and routine.

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The text reflects the chronological order of the fabula, but there is ambiguity, however, as to where to ascribe the primary time within this sequence 27. In this text, we would place the primary time within the narrator«s period of madness or suffering (marked with *). Our choice must be attributed to two reasons mainly. Firstly, the narrator does not assume the consequences that the result of the fabula would have on the primary time. He is mourning for Ligeia, he speaks about Ligeia’s unique qualities. She is not present in his current life, therefore, he cannot be positioned in a temporal sequence following the outcome, in which Ligeia returns. Secondly, the first narrative cycle is assumed as past in the text, there is no suspense. It is a process already given. In the second narrative cycle suspense and surprise is introduced, the outcome is not made explicit at the beginning. The reader consequently feels the second narrative cycle is being disclosed at the same time he is reading it and not before. The narrator knows all that happens in the first narrative cycle, but he does not know what is going to happen next in the second cycle. So we are given the impression that the narrator’s temporal reference precedes this second part. This impression, is however, false. We are trying to explicate the temporal position of the narration (the time of the telling) in the sequence of events in the fabula. But our first conclusions must perforce be wrong. The text begins with an internal retroversion that stretches up to the very end of the events of the fabula. The narrator is then speaking after those events have taken place (in **). If he did not, he could not have known what had happened after Ligeia«s death, he is a first-person narrator. In fact, both options are contradictory. First, if we suppose that the character is narrating just after Ligeia«s death, this temporal position would not allow him to know what happened afterwards. And if we suppose that the narrator has placed himself at the end of the fabula to narrate the events, we may question why he is lamenting his loss, why he has not assumed that Ligeia is back. The only possible solution is to consider the existence of a hypothetical fabula. If the narrator cannot enjoy a state of happiness as would be the logical consequence of the result of the second narrative cycle, we may think that there has not been a real fabula, that the second narrative cycle is pure imagination. The existence of an invented fabula would account for the fact it does not affect

27. Primary time is considered by Mieke Bal “that moment in the fabula which is being presented when the anachrony intervenes” (p. 54). As a general rule, we will consider as primary time the most recent time in the text, the time from which the fabula is being told, as in “Ligeia”.

97 MARêA JESÚS HERNÁEZ LERENA the course of events, that Ligeia does not form part of the primary time because the outcome does not belong to the real fabula. Ligeia has not actually come back, instead the narrator is under the delusion that her return is possible. This hypothesis is supported by the narrator«s unreliability; his unhealthy obsession prevents the recoverability of the fabula. This issue will be dealt with in the chapter devoted to narration. However, the false chronology is the one that remains in the reader. This deceptive chronology consists of a narrator, who speaking after the events have taken place, does not assume these events. This is why we are left with the impression that there is not linearity in the chronology presented. There is a suspended past situation (the mourning) and a future one that is not related chronologically to it: what will happen after Ligeia has appeared? Our impression that the primary time is to be located in the middle rather than at the end of the fabula makes us perceive the text -which follows the chronological order of the fabula precisely- as divided into two separate parts. This device manages to separate two parts which were otherwise linked chronologically. The primary time being placed in the middle, the narrator functions as a hinge between the two parts. Correspondingly, they are equated. The first narrative cycle does not seem to form part of the fabula since it presents a process as finished. Choice has been eliminated, action is to be concentrated on the second cycle. Although its time span is very long, it does not seem to be so because it does not belong to the fabula. This, together with the presence of a hinge in the text, provokes the equation of the parts and also the identification of their time spans, although the first cycle is much longer than the second one. The first time span consists of several years, the second, of several months but they are given the same page-length in the text. To sum up: the text is misleading, it makes the reader believe that the primary time is different from what it really is. The false primary time refers to the time just after Ligeia«s death (after the first narrative cycle), but a more adjusted primary time would include the time after Ligeia appears, although the effects of this amazing situation are concealed. A false chronology has been developed: the narrator, speaking at the beginning, does not assume the end. That is why we are left with the impression that there is no linearity in the chronology, but that there are two different times. Time is not used in the text as a fixed frame, it creates a deceptive structure: the reader is led to several misjudgements.

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This contradictions do not annul the short story’s impact on the reader. The apparently pending issues reinforce the final surprise, since the reader has been screened from the information that the narrator would theoretically possess. In order to keep the reader ignorant, the narrator has simulate that he is still mourning Ligeia«s death. He has to pretend he is unaffected by what happened afterwards. He must pretend that he is speaking before the second narrative cycle has been developed. That is why the reader is presented with a false chronology. The incongruity is not felt until a close study of the structure has been performed. The narrator has been providing false information about the primary time. Although the narrator tells the story by means of internal retroversion, he provides explicit information on the events of the first cycle and hides the nature of the events of the second. The fact that the narrator remains unaffected by the events of the fabula makes us think that time has not influenced the narrator, although Ligeia is given back to him, he is still bereaved of her. He has not been relieved by the events that time has brought with it. Time does not seem to have moved at all. A second strategy that breaks the normal course of time is provided by the special relationship between the most recent time for the narrator, the primary time, and the most recent time of the fabula (the outcome):

Textual order 1. Narrator remembering 2. First meeting with Ligeia - (furthest point to primary time) 3. Second marriage 4. Terror of one night 5. Ligeia’s return.

The end of the fabula should be the nearest point to the present in which the narrator is narrating. But this is false, the end of the fabula represents the furthest point from the primary time because Ligeia does not appear in the present. She does not form part of the primary time, she is absent, she is not with the narrator. She is “given” in the past. There cannot be recovery of the real person because she is dead. There is, instead, a recreation of the initial situation in which the narrator used to contemplate her: the narrator has retrieved his perceptions of her in order to admire her again, there is no return of the person in flesh. The narrator

99 MARêA JESÚS HERNÁEZ LERENA has recovered the past, not because the past is given again, but because he has been finally swallowed by it. In that position, he can look again at Ligeia. Not in the present, but in the space of memory and fantasy. The “eyes of Ligeia” are eternal, they do not disappear with the passing of time. Therefore, they can be available in any temporal sequence. They are the symbols of eternity that look instead of being looked at. The character’s perception has been overlapped by Ligeia’s perception. The impression that this provokes is that time has stopped; it is life by values, not by time. This would account partly for the static character of the short story. Time is used just to deny its existence, the text refuses to assume its power over characters. The initial possibilities of the text lead to the conclusion that time is not recoverable, however, the text has made the past recoverable. As in “Mr. Higginbotham’s Catastrophe” there has been a victory over time. In Hawthorne«s story what happened to be the future is organized so that it belongs to the past; in Poe«s story the past appears to belong to the future. The confusion of temporal sequences at the level of the fabula and the ambiguity of the primary time make the different temporal perspectives merge. This “fusion” expands the otherwise limited time-span allotted to short stories. The effect on the reader is hallucinatory to a very great extent, he is wrapped by invisible frames that reject fixity and linearity. The reader is unable to provide characters and events with a reliable context because they have been displaced, unhinged from a logical temporal order. Not only the temporal barriers are broken and then expanded, but concentration of long periods of time is achieved thanks to the merging of the several temporal perspectives. In Ligeia, the present of the narrative disappears because the memory of past events overpowers all other temporal sequences and the text is rooted in the past never to come back to the primary time.

2.3. Short story rhythm

The study of rhythm is another step in our approach to the concretion of the hypothetical fabula. Mieke Bal studies the relationship between the duration of events in the fabula and the amount of attention paid to them by the story (pp. 68-76). My opinion is that, since this “amount of attention” can only be measured in the text, it should be a characteristic of the text, and not of the story. Only in the text can we know whether an event is given extensive treatment or whether

100 SHORT STORY WORLD: THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY AMERICAN MASTERS it is expressed in a few sentences. Bal (p. 69) justifies her decision by qualifying these relationships as abstract or general, without relating them to the particular characteristics of the textual fragments (descriptive, argumentative, and so on). As a first step, we will study, as Mieke Bal does, the amount of attention, that is, the amount of time, given to each phase of the fabula by the story, as a first approach to the pattern of the text, and not the kind of attention paid to the events of the fabula (through speech, report, description or comment). Our main interest now is to discover if these short stories follow a similar rhythm, how attention is distributed along the events of the fabula, and which functions the components of the rhythm have in each particular narrative. I will expand Bal’s scheme by trying to spell out the connections between fabula and text. Bal does not mention the possibility of studying how the temporal sequence of the fabula is ascertained specifically in the text, but I consider this aspect to be very useful, especially in those types of narratives which accomplish an accelerating rhythm. In the text, the events of the fabula may be assigned a specific time or not, and an analysis of this aspect may lead to a better understanding of particular methods of handling time. Before starting our analysis of rhythm, I will briefly revise the terms which will be used. The central ones are the scene and the summary. The scene represents the closest relationship between fabula time and story time, since in the scene -by scene we mean an ideal abstraction- we see the most faithful representation of an event, where information is neither added or suppressed. Of course, this concept is relative, and if it can be applied more clearly to a conversation, for example, it cannot be pinned down so clearly in the case of an action which does not involve words or in the case of the presentation of a character’s thoughts. Nevertheless, we will consider as scene any part of the story (of the text, in fact) that reflects our own concept of the passing of time. The fact that scenes are presented in detail must not lead to a confusion with the “pause”, in which an element which takes up no fabula-time (thus an object, not an event) is presented in detail. In the pause, the time of the fabula is infinitely smaller than the time of the story (Bal, p. 70). Therefore, in the scene, time moves in a similar way as we perceive events in real life, whereas in the pause, the time of the story moves, whereas it does not do so in the fabula. At the other extreme come the summary and the ellipsis. In the ellipsis the story omits an event of the fabula, in the summary, events are treated with great speed, several years may be dealt with in just one paragraph. Traditionally, summaries are used for periods of time where there are non-functional events. Usually they

101 MARêA JESÚS HERNÁEZ LERENA are used for connecting scenes, or to provide background information. Scenes are traditionally used for decisive points in the fabula, those upon which the action turns. We will see if these assumptions are valid for these short stories or if they use a particular rhythm different from that of the novel, which deals with long time spans and usually needs much more summarizing. The rhythm of “Ligeia” can be abstracted as follows:

1) Summary -> pause -> summary -> scene 2) summary -> pause -> summary-> scene

We can observe that this structure has two identical parts. These two parts belong to each narrative cycle. So time is distributed equally among them:

1) Period of marriage -> description of Ligeia -> illness of Ligeia-> death of Ligeia

2) Period of marriage -> description of the chamber -> illness of Rowena -> death of Rowena

Due to this parallel structure, parts of the fabula which are given extra time serve as connection. The description of the chamber is an anticipation of events to come, since it is identified with the previous detailed description of Ligeia«s personality. What is more relevant: the only two scenes of the story are those dealing with a death. The short story is built around these two deaths, the same element is repeated with a difference. The rhythm abstracts the central significance of the narrative, one death means loss, the other means recovery. The initiating cause and the closing cause are presented in scenes, whereas the consequences of them are presented by means of a summary. The story stops twice in each narrative cycle, for an object and for an event. Short periods of time are presented extensively (a night with a dying person), whereas long periods of time (years or several months) are presented very quickly. In them, we obtain information about the character«s background, they prepare for the impact that the character (and the reader) are going to receive in the scenes. Only at these two moments (which are the third stage, the result of their corresponding narrative cycles) does the time of the story coincide with that of the fabula. The reader can experience them as a present which he is living at the same time as the character. The rest of the time appears blurred, but these two

102 SHORT STORY WORLD: THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY AMERICAN MASTERS scenes are made to stand out vividly, as the only fully realized moments. Death defeats and death is defeated. The story ends with a scene, which means that the reader is going to be given the same amount of information that the characters possess because future time is not summarized. There is a textual link to this rhythmic structure which starts with summary and ends with scene. It is the particular concretion in the text of the temporal information alluded to previously. Time is progressively compressed by the text. Firstly we are told of years, an indefinite period of marriage, then, one night (“at high noon of the night she departed”), then, a few months, then one month, one night (“near the closing of September”), and then “now”. Although the fabula includes a relatively long temporal span, the text only defines two nights temporally. The manifestation of fabula time in the text covers two fundamental aspects, the first being that time is progressively pinned down in the text, the second that temporal references are progressively restricted or reduced. The story starts with indefiniteness, but this chaotic period is increasingly given definition in the text: the months, first and second, the night, at an hour after midnight, until it ends in a definite moment. Years, months, days, hours, seconds. Only the result of the second cycle is minutely accounted for. The same could have been done with the rest of the events of this or the previous cycle. However, the story is progressively made to slow down until we feel the passing of every second. This has to do with the creation of suspense in the text. The first part of the text is presented as an indefinite temporal process. That process is considered as past. However, with the increasing temporal definiteness provided by the text, the reader feels he is approaching a certain important point (which is going to be presented to him through a scene, not through summary). This point, the centre of gravity of the story, takes place at the same time as the reading time, in a “now”, as the text repeats so frequently in the last three pages. The effect produced by this device is one of strong direction. The narrative seems to move with increasing speed to a climax towards which all previous temporal references must unavoidably lead. The particular temporal design suggests that fate has progressively reduced the possibilities of the individual. The previous multiplicity becomes secondary in the face of a crucial situation. All the elements are directed to just one point 28. There is a movement from abstractness to materialization. The progressive temporal reduction is uninterrupted, it is not double, like the narrative cycle.

28. See Poe (1977: 171-178).

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This strategy can be related to the conclusions we reached in previous sections concerning the distribution of information along the fabula. We said that the fabula delayed our understanding of events. The events cannot be assigned either to a time or to a cause until the very end. This structure echoes Poe’s theory of the short story: all the elements of the narrative are designed to serve the final effect. The method is also very useful when handling long spans of time in the short story because they are rapidly reduced producing an accelerating and pre- ordained effect. Only in the last second is the text provided with significance. The narrative has a concentric structure, since multiplicity is directed to just one centre. The text begins with an emotion to which no temporal frame may be assigned, and ends with an event that took place at a certain time. It starts with a state and it ends with an event. The handling of time reflects very closely the structure of the fabula. The initial stage (the possibility) deals with the character«s thoughts, and the result deals with the materialization of that idea. This rhythmic structure is present in most of Poe’s narratives and can be set in contrast with the usual rhythm of the traditional novel. A long novel does not allow a last second of surprise that can shake the fixity of the previous fictional world. The novel requires an explanation at the end which, usually by means of summary, gives us a glimpse of the characters´ future: “la novela desemboca en un puerto tranquilo” said Shklovsky (1970: 278). But the short story reverts to the past, to what has already been told; the last stroke either provides an explanation or breaks the assumptions of the previous perspective. In “The Fall of the House of Usher”, “the clock of the narrative” is felt to be slow as well. The presentation of time changes from iterative to punctual. First, the indefinite and far-distant years of the characters’ childhood, then, several days of the narrator’s visit to Usher, then the many hours passed in various occupations, and then comes the specifics of “the night of the seventh or eighth day after placing Madeline within the donjon” (Poe, 1984: 151). After that, a repeated “now”. In this narrative we also have the impression that there is a progressive approach to inevitable events. As in the previous narrative, as time is slowing down -the minutes are accounted for in detail-, we sense that it is accelerating because the character (and the reader) are nearer a feared outcome. In the first narrative cycle of “Ligeia”, the clock of the narrative is not present in the first part of the text, but it starts to tick in the second part of the text, and it is progressively slower up to the last second after which it is extinguished. This effect is strengthened by the sounds that imitate the rhythmic ticking of the clock. In “Ligeia”, the repeated comings to life of Rowena, her sobs, and her

104 SHORT STORY WORLD: THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY AMERICAN MASTERS breathing indicate the proximity of destiny. In “The Fall of the House of Usher” the echoes produced by the approach of Lady Madeline from the vaults echo the noises to which the book they are reading refers. In “The Tell-Tale Heart” it is the beating of the old man’s heart that sounds louder and louder: “It was a low, dull, quick sound -much such a sound as a watch makes when enveloped in cotton” (Poe, 1984: 281). So the clock of the narrative cannot only be ascertained by analysis but can be “listened to” in the text. The rhythm of “The Fall of the House of Usher” is no different from that of “Ligeia”:

SLOW DOWN ——> SUMMARY ——> PAUSE ——> Arrival of the narrator Childhood Description of at the House of Usher Usher

SUMMARY ——> SCENE ——> SUMMARY —— > SCENE Account of their Burial Deterioration Last night occupations of Usher appearance

There is an alternation quick/slow rhythm and again, there are only two scenes that appear connected. This rhythm cannot be attached symmetrically to each narrative cycle, as in “Ligeia”, because the two narrative cycles in this short story do not succeed each other, they are are simultaneous. So, the two scenes are not connected by the same phase of the narrative cycle as before, but by the same actor: Lady Madeline. She is the cause of Usher’s process of deterioration and she will be the future agent of action (as in “Ligeia”). The first scene is also shorter than the second one; it functions as an introduction or an anticipation of the culminating last scene. By this same process, there is a connection between those parts of the story in which the time stops, those of the slow-down and the pause. In the first one, there is an exhaustive description of the house, in the second a description of Usher. Both elements, the object and the actor, will appear identified and will be subjected to the same process. The house swallows Usher and they are swallowed by the tarn, to which the first slow down is devoted. There is a slow-down at the beginning of the story, which serves to introduce the characters and to explain the causal and temporal sequence, since the chronological order has been inverted (there has been an inversion of the order of the information). The narrator looks at the tarn of the house, and when he lifts his eyes again we already know the main features of

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Usher’s personality, his present physical and mental state and the relationship he had with the narrator. The character-narrator has remained still all the time. The slow-down is reinforced by a subjective retroversion. This formula, as Mieke Bal points out (p. 75), is used most frequently with the arrival of a visitor, as in this case. A short time may be filled with many thoughts and recollections, and thus the narrator’s looking at the tarn takes up two pages (whereas a period of several days of the visit takes up one paragraph). The slow-down explains the reason why the narrator is there and explains the temporal sequence to which he and his friend belong. The initial anachrony of the story inverts the chronological order, we only know somebody is walking about a place that makes him anxious. There is an internal retroversion which is embedded in the text as a slow-down, since the narrator remembers his childhood and his friend in detail, and expresses his increasing superstition while he is looking at the tarn. The internal retroversion explains the past, and therefore, it explains the initial sequence in which we do not know who is speaking, when, and why the character is in that place. The same order is always repeated, we have the character’s impression, devoid of any temporal and causal context, which will be explained afterwards. There is an emphasis on the unexplained, in opposition to the certainty of intuitions or impressions. The slow-down is the key to decode the story: the tarn keeps a secret. That the slow-down occurs together with an internal retroversion makes an identification between “past” and “tarn” possible: looking at the tarn implies looking backwards. And so we suspect that the tarn will appear at the end of the story, then its meaning will be revealed. In these two narratives the scene does not only function as the turning-point of the story, but contains the cause that triggers off the events of the fabula. This cause has been left out of the text: the identity of the ghost in “Ligeia” is hidden, and Usher´s terrible deed is concealed too. The first scene contains an ellipsis and the second scene is devoted to the filling of the gap. In “Ligeia”, the scenes describe the death and the reappearance of Ligeia. In “The Fall of the House of Usher” the scene concentrates on Madeline«s return. There we find out that she had been buried alive 29.

29. We find a contradiction here, contradiction which derives from the previously discussed problems arising from the concept of fabula itself. The fabula will be different for different characters, different for each reader. Now, if we exclusively centre on the characters of this story, we cannot say that the ellipsis forms part of Usher«s account of events, since he does not consciously omit anything. His life, “his fabula” is based on the consequences of being unaware of the ellipsis. If we give a thorough account of the fabula here, we have not a fabula any more, since the fabula of the “The Fall of the House of Usher” is based on the existence of an ellipsis, a blackout, in the character´s life.

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The rhythm of “The Tell-Tale Heart” follows the same pattern, although it is simpler because it consists of a summary and a scene. The frequency is that of iterative presentation that leads to a punctual presentation of the last and single scene. Poe’s rhythmic pattern was specifically designed to be applied to a narrative form that is different from the novel. Our task now is to discover if the other short stories follow it or if they are constructed around more traditional patterns. These are the main features and implications of the previous use of story time: 1. There are only two scenes, and they are closely related. They contain the elements that allow us to interpret the story. 2. The choice of the kind of rhythm assigned to every part of the fabula depends on the phases of the narrative cycle to a great extent. If the narrative cycle is double, the same speed of presentation is used in the same stages of the cycle. 3. The handling of story time is a formal reflection of fabula structure. The increasing textual accumulation of details about temporal context is on a par with the movement of the fabula, progressing towards the discovery of a causality that has been hidden. The movement of the text, from abstractness or indefiniteness to materialization, encapsulates the design of the fabula. 4. The increasing restriction of time limits (the story initially deals with a long period of time which is presented iteratively and finally becomes a brief moment, a “now”), resembles the structure of the fabula, which aims at a certain moment of awareness. This confers the narrative a quality of inevitability; the character«s freedom of action and thought are progressively reduced until it disappears completely. 5. The stories end with a scene, not with summary. This device enables the reader to share the character«s experience of time until the very end. It also gives an open-ended quality to the narrative. When stories are brought to an end through summary, the future of the characters is made known and we move onto the narrator«s account of time, leaving the characters« particular experience of time behind. By choosing the scene over the summary, writers are bringing the short story closer to more modern notions of narrative, if we compare them to the more conventional endings of the tale or the legend. In the scene the narrator«s explanations are absent; we remain within the limited world of characters. This technique precludes any authoritative moral interpretation. 6. The period of time dealt with in the story is adjusted to fabula time. Only the period in which events occur is used in the story, and if there is an iterative

107 MARêA JESÚS HERNÁEZ LERENA presentation, the frequency is never external, it always belongs to the time of the fabula. This feature accounts in part for the specificity of the short story. Now we will use Poe’s model as a starting point in our study of rhythm in other short stories. The purpose of this analysis will bring to the foreground how short stories may cope with rhythm, since there are narratives which fail to adapt rhythm to the particularities of the short story, and therefore their parts appear to be unbalanced and lacking in coherence. This is due to the interference of other genres such as the novel. Once we have abstracted and studied in detail the specific rhythm of the rest of the stories, we can conclude that Poe’s stories and the other short stories share a main characteristic: they tend to use the same devices when pinning down action in the text. However, there are, at least, two other models of time. This common characteristic, with the exception of Irving’s stories, concerns the rapid shrinking of the temporal frame as the narrative approaches its end. Also that information about time becomes more and more explicit towards the end. This strategy gives the impression that nothing matters more than a certain perspective on things only to be achieved at the end. This climactic peak is reached the moment Dominicus in “Mr. Higginbotham’s Catastrophe” realizes that he had misunderstood the plot. It is the moment when Mr. Bullfrog learns of the plan his wife had schemed. When the narrator of “Bartleby” becomes aware of Bartleby´s plight, and when the character in “The Piazza” discovers how tragic life is. All these moments of the fabula are presented as scenes, and they signal the closure of the narrative. This final point or climax consists of a new piece of information that had remained undetected so far, it may have been intuited or anticipated but it finally comes to light in the story through an equation of the time of the story and the time of the fabula. This idea, this truth, is finally spelled out in the story and is given a context. These scenes appear to be similar to the slow-down because the speed of story time suddenly lessens. That moment of realization is made to function as a magnifying glass. It conveys the thoughts of the character, meaning then acquires depth and complexity. In “Benito Cereno” this moment calls for a shift in perspective. Delano will have to abandon his assumptions of how power is distributed among people. The scene where he gets out of the Spanish ship is presented in slow motion. Cereno, the sailors, and Delano, seem to move very slowly. Each step, each gesture, takes up a great amount of time in the story, they are filled with explanations, impressions, doubts. That moment, the moment upon which all the past events depend and which explains everything eventually arrives:

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That moment, across the long-benighted mind of Captain Delano, a flash of revelation swept, illuminating, in an unanticipated clearness, his host’s whole mysterious demeanor, with every enigmatic event of the day, as well as the entire past voyage of the San Dominick. (Melville, 1949: 328).

It is that moment which makes all other things secondary, which precludes any further progression of the narrative. Events acquire significance only with it. Although the text continues with another summary and a final scene with a mini- summary, the narrative cycle of the fabula has been closed there. We feel that what comes after this in the narrative is expendable: if the text gives us more information is probably due to the influence of longer forms of narrative, whose method is to explain and to seek transcendence, to include the future somehow. This problem will be given more attention at the end of this section, when we deal with the implications of rhythm on short story specificity. Focusing our attention now on the kind of rhythmic pattern used in these short stories, we will divide, as a first step, the remaining stories into those which have a very simple rhythmic structure and those that present a repeated alternation of summary/scene which extends along the story. “Mrs. Bullfrog”, “Young Goodman Brown” and “The Hollow of the Three Hills” are constructed on the basis of one summary and a single scene. This order is inverted in “Young Goodman Brown”, which starts with scene and ends in summary. We may note that the time span of the fabula is very limited in these three narratives: an hour or less in “Mr. Bullfrog and “The Hollow of the Three Hills”, and one night in “Young Goodman Brown”. We may note as well that these three narratives were written by Hawthorne. He considerably reduced the time span of the fabula. Melville’s “Benito Cereno” has also a short time span, but its rhythm is different as we will see later on. The summary may serve, as in the case of “Mrs. Bullfrog”, to introduce a thesis, an idea which is going to be reflected in the following scene. The conclusion has been placed at the start, the verification at the end. This is in contrast with the traditional tale or “exemplum”, whereby the conclusion, in the form of a moral, was placed at the end to give the narrative a wider application. In “Mrs. Bullfrog” the rhythm suggests the steps taken in an experiment. There has been an initial experience in the matters of marriage that has led to a general conclusion, only that this conclusion is placed at the beginning as a hypothesis which needs to be proved. In “The Hollow of the Three Hills” the initial summary provides the information necessary to understand the following scene. There is a presentation of time, place, and characters. Summary in “Young Goodman Brown” is used to rapidly specify the consequences of the previous

109 MARêA JESÚS HERNÁEZ LERENA scene in the future of the character, and so, it is related, as it is by tradition, to the result of the narrative cycle. However, it extends beyond fabula time. “The Piazza” presents a similar structure. The years, and then the seasons that the character lives in his house are presented through summary, and the final encounter of the protagonist with the character who can change his views is presented in a scene. As in previous narratives, this encounter is the answer to the protagonist’s questions. The scene plays the central role within the structure of the narrative. This may be not so in novels, where scenes may serve just as a recreation of the world in which characters live. Here, the scene or scenes provide the narrative with its centre of gravity. Iterative presentation through summary is taken to a climax by the punctual presentation of the scene. This story ends, however, with a summary of an action that has been repeated several times and presented only once. It ends with an iterative presentation, which is not common, because iterative presentations are related to an initial state of normality which we intuit will change all of a sudden later on. However, in this short story the summary introduces change and conflict, the change that the character undergoes has been eluded because it remains hidden in the previous scene. The structure is deceptive: after the iterative presentation in which a character makes up a fantastic world that does not correspond to reality, we expect in the scene a change in the character«s attitude. However, he remains the same and our expectations are thwarted. In the summary of the last paragraph, we realize that the character had been pretending he was the same, that he had not been influenced by the conversation in the scene. He has, in fact, altered his views due to his conversation with the girl of the mountains. Surprisingly, the final summary, which is usually related to the result of the narrative cycle rather than to conflict or change, presents a change: the character has finally faced reality, and every night he is haunted by the misery of people’s real existence. There has been a breach of the traditional scene-conflict alliance. The same happens in “Benito Cereno”. The new information released at the end is not presented through a scene, as usually is, but through summary. In the summary we are made to change our expectations. We had believed so far that the story of Benito Cereno and Delano had had a happy ending: they were saved, the negroes were executed. But in the last summary we are told that, the Negro, Babo, remains triumphant in spite of having been executed; his head looms up there, challenging Aranda and Cereno in their graves. This is the last paragraph of the story:

Some months after, dragged to the gibbet at the tail of a mule, the black met his voiceless end. The body was burned to ashes, the head, that hive of

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subtlety, fixed on a pole in the Plaza, met, unabashed, the gaze of the whites; and across the Plaza looked towards St. Bartholomew«s church, in whose vaults slept then, as now, the recovered bones of Aranda: and across the Rimac bridge looked towards the monastery, on Mount Agonia without; where, three months after being dismissed by the court, Benito Cereno, borne on the bier, did, indeed, follow his leader.

The author has used summary, which usually quickly dispatches information we already know or is devoted to an uneventful period of time, to turn our world upside down. The function of summary is usually that of providing a background for readers to understand other parts of the narrative. In “Benito Cereno”, summary conveys essential information that unbalances our position: Babo is executed, Benito Cereno dies three months after the trial, he was not able to recover from his experience at the San Dominick. And he followed his leader when he died. It thwarts our expectations because we expect the final summary to tell us about the consequences of the previous parts of the text that have already been solved and to show us the characters’ prospects once the conflict has been solved. But summary is not a confirmation of our views, instead it creates an open ending, it conveys information that startles the reader. That means that suspense is still present, that there has not been a resolution, the conflict remains unsolved. Thus, summary is deceptively assigned to a result, but it points at the permanence of a conflict. The fight between blacks and whites has not finished yet, the power of the blacks continues to haunt the whites even after death. The other group of stories consists of a summary-scene alternation, which is repeated several times. The scenes are always related to the realization stage of the fabula: in “Mr. Higginbotham’s Catastrophe”, there is a scene every time Dominicus tells his story and is scorned by the inhabitants of the village. In “Bartleby” the scenes are exclusively related to Bartleby and always show his process of deterioration, all the rest is given by summary. The same happens in “Benito Cereno”. There are scenes only when Benito appears. These scenes, as in Poe’s short stories, are always related to the enigma of the fabula, and every time this enigma appears, there is a scene. This way the narrator can avoid giving an explanation and the reader is made to experience the same perplexity as that of the character 30. These scenes are considerably reduced since

30. Rhythm exerts its influence over other textual aspects of the narrative: the scene or the summary are related in these short stories to the narrator«s position. There is a scene when the character is unable to understand, or misunderstands, and the narrator does not intrude. There is a summary when there is an explanatory intervention of the narrator.

111 MARêA JESÚS HERNÁEZ LERENA these actors are characterized by their incapacity for verbal communication. Summaries are appointed for the character-narrators, scenes for the characters- narrated. The effect of this frequent alternation is to lengthen a short span of time, as in “Benito Cereno”. Scenes are constructed on a line of crescendo, each scene is a repetition of the previous one which causes in the character-narrator an aggravating state of anxiety and perplexity. Each time Bartleby refuses to perform his tasks, every time Benito Cereno produces a more confusing explanation, each time Domicicus tells his story, it proves to be false. The climax is placed in the last scene, which is the longest one. The repeated previous scenes convey the process of deterioration of the characters, the last scene makes changes in this situation. Progressively, the summaries are reduced and the scenes are extended, and so the narrative comes to an end when fabula and story time become the same. As we will see later on, the summaries placed at the end of the story, especially if they are very long, are felt to be an epilogue, an attachment, and they seem to be unhinged from the true course of the story. The strategy used in previous stories cannot be applied, however, to Irving’s narratives. The particular “dosage” of information in the previous stories provided clues about the specificity of the short story. However the rhythmic characteristics discussed so far differ considerably from those found in Irving’s stories. We must take into account that he was the first author to write in short form, also that he did not write with a conscience of genre, and therefore did not apply a pre-arranged method to his narratives. If the method of narratology does not allow us to define what a short story is, at least by means of narratology we can identify the recurrent mechanisms in these narratives, and then we can compare these strategies with other kind of narratives in which they may be absent or may play a different role. These narrative “mechanisms” have been essentially the following ones: 1. Rhythm alternates summary and scene to end in a scene, where the action is brought to an end. 2. Summaries and scenes are related to the same parts of the narrative cycle of the fabula, mainly, to the second stage, realization. 3. At the level of the text there is a progressive specification of the temporal frame in which the character is immersed. 4. Together with this, the temporal co-ordinates are increasingly reduced and the speed of presentation slows down progressively until it stops at a single second. 5. Adherence of the time of the story to the time of the fabula.

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The patterns of “Rip van Winkle” and “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” are the following:

PAUSE —> SUMMARY —> SCENE —> SUMMARY Description of Life of A night and a day: Rip’s happy the village and Rip Rip finds some strange future life its inhabitants people and then finds is secured a different village

PAUSE —> SUMMARY —> SCENE —> SUMMARY Description Routine of A night: a party People of a place Ichabod and an incident attempt to after the party guess Ichabod«s future

In these narratives, the scene (not allotted much space in the text) is placed between two big blocks of summary. This structure is opposite to the ones already analysed, since it ends with a very long period of time (years). The clock of the narrative has disappeared before the ending of the story, the last part consists of iterative presentation of a long and indefinite period of time. There is not a progressive specification of temporal information, the only specified sequence is found in the scene: “In a long rumble of the kind on a fine autumnal day” (Irving, 1977: 9) and “It was, as I have said, a fine autumnal day”, but the gap between the summary (that covers a period of many years) and the scene (that takes place in just one day) is very great, there is not the slow progression found in previous narratives. When the scene is finished, the summary again jumps forward into the character’s distant future. The continuity of the temporal line that produced suspense and a strong sense of direction in the other short stories is absent here. It seems as if the story were made of big chunks of information juxtaposed rather than linked. Time moves only when we are halfway through the text. There is an irregular treatment of the time of the fabula and a lack of adherence to fabula time. This means that fabula time is made to move in the text only briefly, at the beginning the pause predominates and the summary extends beyond fabula time. Then, the equation story time and fabula time is kept fugaciously and then there

113 MARêA JESÚS HERNÁEZ LERENA is a summary which belongs again to a time outside the fabula. Fabula time is only reflected in the scene in between. Mieke Bal defines iterative presentations as generalizing, when they are “concerned with general facts that exist outside the fabula” (p.78). They are situation-descriptions. This is the kind of iteration presented in these two narratives; what is more relevant to our study of time is that they are external iterations, which exceed the time span of the fabula. Irving is very much influenced by the creative method of the novel, which handles large amounts of information, and can use many pages in the recreation of a particular world. As in novels, Irving uses these extended initial summaries and pauses to portray a typical way of life in which to insert his character. But in the short story the summary that does not belong to the fabula is actually a pause because it extends beyond the sphere of functional events. This use of summary turns the narrative into a mere descriptive sketch because time remains still “for” many pages in the text. However, the short story can not handle large amounts of time which do not belong to the fabula -as the novel can- without losing effectiveness and appearing incoherent. Suspense can not exist if time is not made to play a very decisive part in the narrative. Irving’s narratives, then, cannot be considered as short stories in the modern sense because they do not follow a design which makes the processes of the fabula play a functional role in the story. Irving has just filled the gaps of a narrative model that must have an introduction, a development and a conclusion. The short stories discussed so far, as we have seen, seek to annul this order by thwarting our expectations. The final summary, which in previous stories was used to reject the validity of the previous scene, as in “Benito Cereno” or “The Piazza”, does not offer new information. The final summary of “Rip van Winkle”, for example, does not add new information, it just confirms a foreseen future of and connects with the same generalising mood of the initial summary. The problem about the final summary is that it narrows down the possibilities of interpretation because the narrator passes judgement on the character. It also leaves out the implications of the events in the fabula. If we strip from the text the initial and the final summary, the scene could have constituted a short story, whose generic potential is to produce meaning through a tiny sample of life. But Irving uses traditional novelistic devices to provide the narrative with a sense of opening and of closure: initial description of setting and final summary of a future. Such a long introduction prevents fabula time from being developed. The conclusion is that time outside fabula time cannot be thoroughly treated in the short story. In the short story movement is required from the very

114 SHORT STORY WORLD: THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY AMERICAN MASTERS beginning of the text, even if it goes unnoticed at the beginning, as in the initial descriptions of Ligeia. Movement cannot be hindered: any amount of story time that does not belong to this internal narrative coherence is felt to be redundant, an blockage in the line of development, a part that does not unite with the narrative, but that is “glued” on to it. The short story is constructed on a strict principle of relevance: all its aspects must be functional. By using summary, the possible interpretations of the events of the fabula have been eliminated (the significance of the dream, the waste of years, the changes in a country, the powers that exist beyond human conscience, the existence of a magical world, etc.). The final summary does not point at the scene (the fabula) but to the previous summarising introduction: the comic traits of the character. Thus, our final conclusion in this section devoted to story time is that the handling of time in the fabula helps us to differentiate between a short story and any narrative that is short. The summary and the scene condition the source of the information provided to the reader and the presence or absence of the narrator. This is not necessarily so in the novel. However, in the short story, the narrator never intrudes in the scene. The short story always addresses the character’s perplexity, and the narrator must not provide an interpretation: lack of interpretation is the axis of the fabula. When talking specifically about those treatments of story time which depart from the model first exposed, we can summarize that: 1. Summarizing external to the fabula is a pause in the short story. 2. Stretching the story time outside the limits of the fabula results in an imbalance in the story, which loses compactness and suspense. Our reading experience, then, approaches that of the tale, the anecdote, or even the joke, whose obvious intentions are to provide a useful or funny generalization about mankind. It results in a lack of narrative coherence, since expanding or reducing time serves the demands of a too conspicuous satirical aim. When Irving presents the protagonist of “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”, there is a long pause in the description of Ichabod Crane that responds exclusively to the demands of the genre he is parodying. In order to illustrate the lack of correspondence between fabula time and story time, we will present in detail both processes in “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” (whose structure is identical to that of “Rip van Winkle”). We must bear in mind, that the “amount of attention” paid to every event of the fabula is placed under the title “story time”, and that each point under this title represents at least one page of the text.

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STORY TIME FABULA TIME Pause: -characteristics of the place -trip of the narrator to that place -character of the inhabitants -legends -presentation of Ichabod Crane -description of Crane -description of his school -description of his teaching -Crane’s habits -Crane’s attitude to sex -description of his singing activity -description of Katrina’s heirdom -Crane’s wish to posses it 1. Possibility: Crane wants to marry Katrina -presentation and description of his rival -narrator description of women Summary: -Bones bothers Crane 2. Presence of an opponent -announcement of the invitation to a party -Crane gets dressed and walks to the farm -activities of the people at the party Scene: -what Crane does at the party 3.Crane is rejected, tricked by his rival, and finally vanishes (process of deterioration completed) -On his way home he is frightened by a ghost Summary: -speculations about Crane -how the legend is passed on

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Only at the marked numbered points (in italics), does story time deal with fabula time. In opposition to the lack of adherence to fabula time presented in Irving’s narratives, the rest of the short stories omit one phase of the fabula. That is, there is a special emphasis on one of the three phases of the narrative cycle in such a way that at least one of these phases is unaccounted for in the story. Irving’s narratives were characterized by a great deal of external iterative presentation, by a deviation from fabula time, whereas the rest of the short stories are characterized by a concentration on one specific temporal reference within the fabula time, resulting in an almost complete elimination of one phase of the fabula. The most frequent case is that the third stage of the fabula, the result, is reduced in the story -usually to one short paragraph- if compared to the amount of attention paid to the previous phases. This occurs in “Ligeia”, “The Fall of the House of Usher”, “Mr. Higginbotham’s Catastrophe”, “Young Goodman Brown”, “Bartleby” and “The Piazza”. They focus mainly on the realization stage, which can be provided by a long scene, as in “Young Goodman Brown”, or by a summary-scene alternation, as in “Bartleby”. This structure is connected to fabula progression. We have said that it typically depends on the character«s belated understanding of a situation, or on the concealment of essential information. Therefore, the result of the fabula provides the clue which allows the reader to decode preceding situations. The key to the fabula is, then, just one idea, presented as something punctual and of short duration. Greater attention is paid to the initial state of uncertainty than to the final explanation. The reader is forced to complete what has only been hinted at. The amount of information concerning each stage of the fabula is different in the novel and in the short story. We cannot satisfactorily decode the meaning conveyed in a two-hundred-paged narrative on the basis of just a few sentences at the end. This explains the different role of the reader in the novel and in the short story. The fact that in the short story the result of the fabula does not become a display of story time means that it favours a more open ending; it tends to be non-explanatory fiction. Irving’s narratives do not follow with this scheme. The same attention is paid to the result as to previous stages. However, not all short stories highlight the realization stage; “Mrs. Bullfrog”, for example, eliminates the first two stages of the fabula and concentrates on the result. Possibility and realization are summarized in just one sentence: “I made a journey into another estate, and was smitten by, and smote again, and wooed, won and married, the present Mrs. Bullfrog, all in the space of a fortnight.” (Hawthorne, 1937: 1066). Here story time focuses on the result: the consequences of that marriage.

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2.4. Sequential ordering

Deviations from the order of the fabula may serve to highlight a particular event, to show various interpretations of an event, or to work out particular effects of the narrative (Bal: 52). Concerning the short story, these deviations serve the purpose of expanding a limited temporal frame. There are other effects, and these will be classified below. It must be noted, however, that there are not many deviations from a chronological order in these short stories, and that the only kind of deviation is the retroversion. Besides, all retroversions are subjective. The only short stories that include anachronies are “Ligeia”, “The Tell-Tale Heart”, “Mrs. Bullfrog”, and “Bartleby”. These are the implications of the sequential ordering: 1. By means of an internal retroversion, the primary story time, that is, the time in which the character speaks, seems to be very close to the reader’s time. The primary time appears at the beginning and it is not pinned down in detail, thereby becoming the ever-present in which the character tells his story. For example, primary time is located at the beginning of “Mrs. Bullfrog”; after the following paragraph, there will be an internal retroversion:

It makes me melancholy to see how like fools some very sensible people act in the matter of choosing wives. They perplex their judgments by a most undue attention to little niceties of personal appearance, habits, disposition, and other trifles which concern nobody but the lady herself. (Hawthorne, 1937: 1065)

That indefinite time that corresponds to the “last time lived by the character within the narrative” becomes a “now”, a space in which the reader’s time is immediately placed. The character’s present state seems to belong to the time in which the reader is reading. The retroversion that comes after it takes both character and reader to the past. In this present time, the character seems to speak directly to the reader, making it clear that he is going to speak about what happened to him. “The Tell- Tale Heart” simulates a conversation between two people, as in real life, with the purpose of annulling the unbridgeable distance between character and reader: “Hearken! and observe how stealthily- how calmly I can tell you the whole story.” (Poe, 1984: 277). Primary time is then abandoned, and the character returns to the past. This repeated formula places character and reader in the same room because they are

118 SHORT STORY WORLD: THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY AMERICAN MASTERS made to share the same temporal sequence: the reader, can only “see” and “hear” if he is with the character when he speaks. Subjective retroversions produce another effect: they offer the reader an agent who is “personally” responsible for the narrative. According to Etiemble (1977: 138) oral stories involved a “real” storyteller; they offered audiences the presence of a person, a non-fictional narrator who disappeared with the advent of the novel. In these early short stories we find a similar narrator, somebody directly involved in the events narrated, somebody who shares the listener’s time. The ultimate effect of this approach between primary story time and reading time is immediacy. 2. By means of a subjective retroversion that overlaps primary story time, the story never returns to the initial “present” but creates another structure, at odds with chronological time, and more adjusted to the fabula. We are not eager to know what happened, but why it happened. This structure is oriented towards a moment of final awareness. The return to the past serves the purpose of explanation. There is an appeal to our curiosity: an enigma is placed at the beginning and the only way to disentangle it is to read on. An unusual situation is presented at the beginning of the text and the reader expects to be told why and how events happened. Mieke Bal refers to this aspect when dealing with the another type of anachrony, the anticipation:

One more or less traditional form of anticipation is the summary at the beginning. The rest of the story gives the explanation of the outcome presented at the beginning. This type of anticipation can suggest a sense of fatalism, or predestination: nothing can be done, we can only watch the progression towards the final result […]. Another kind of tension may take its place, prompting questions like “How could it have happened like this?” (pp. 63-64)

In these short stories, the anticipation does not present the outcome fully, just one of its effects, like “madness” in “The Tell-Tale Heart”, where the outcome is the discovery of the character’s murder, or “pragmatism” in “Mrs. Bulfrog” where the outcome is the unexpected double personality of the protagonist’s wife. 3. Subjective retroversion allows a high degree of concentration: information will only refer to one character and to a single aspect of his or her life. Let’s compare the beginning of Jane Austen’s novel Pride and Prejudice with the beginning of Hawthorne’s “Mrs. Bullfrog “ in order to see how they call for a different treatment of the story:

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It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. (Austen, 1972: 51)

It makes me melancholy to see how like fools some very sensible people act in the matter of choosing wives. (Hawthorne, 1937: 1065)

Although these two narratives are opened through a general statement, the second case presents a personal opinion, whereas the first one represents a generally admitted idea or a taken for granted course of action. The second example is similar to the close-up because it selects a smaller sample of “reality” than in the novel and it limits information to one single experience, leaving aside the infinite implications of mankind«s behaviour in the matters of marriage. The first opening sentence demands from the writer a thorough description of a society and their members, whereas the second one anticipates a single outcome. The reader knows from the very beginning that the second narrative will deal with one single case, also that the first narrative will offer a panorama, many characters will be involved. The short story creates a beginning in which the outcome is somehow hinted at: the character will be fooled exactly as others were fooled before him, however, the potential of the opening sentence in Jane Austen«s novel suggests a number of possible experiences. This strategy supports the hypothesis that the short story illustrates only one case. 4. Subjective retroversions also justify the summary of long spans of time: only the events that have caused an impression on the character will be recorded. Thus, summary appears to be functional. If retroversion is subjective there is a greater adherence to fabula time. Irving illustrates the opposite case, the narrator deals with a period of time which outlasts characters. 5. Retroversion is used in some of these narratives to create a false chronology, as has already been discussed. In “Ligeia” the author deliberately creates confusion when trying to identify the primary story time from which the retroversion deviates. In “Bartleby” an incomplete retroversion is given the appearance of a complete retroversion, thus not entirely explaining the events. When retroversion overlaps primary time, it serves to define the traits of the character: the narrator of “Ligeia” can not get over his past and come back to the present. He dwells in the past and that is why there is not a return to primary time in the text.

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3. Characterization

Rimmon-kenan (1983: 29-42) affirms that the specificity of literary characterization is destroyed by realist criticism and by semiotics. Realists deal with characters as they do with real people, semiotics consider them as part of a design, as recurrent motifs. He tries to reconcile both theories by relating each of them to different levels of the narrative. At story level, which is an abstract construct, characters are pre-verbal constructions and can be thought of as person-like, “since they are modelled on the reader’s conception of people” (p. 33). Therefore, at this level we can analyse the personality traits that create our image of characters. In the text, characters are not “people”, as he says, but “words”, dependent on the context, on a design. We can analyse here which are the elements of the text that help us form our image of the characters, focusing now on the “how”, rather than the “who” or the “what”. I believe that an analysis of the character as an autonomous whole cannot shed any light on the specificity of the short story, since characters in the short story strike us as being person-like, the same as the characters of novels or plays. It is more useful to study how the character is reconstructed from the text and what type of textual indicators are used. This is the reason why the title of this section is “characterization”, and not “characters”. Characterization belongs to the text. At the story level the character is a complex semantic unit, a set of personality traits. But we are not going to describe characters, but to analyse how they are presented in these short stories. This study may highlight differences in the presentation of character in the novel 31. Let«s return to Rimmon-Kenan: his attribution of the two most wide-spread theories of criticism to two different levels of the narrative is also observed by Bal’s method (pp. 79-93). Although Bal does not mention the textual component of characterization, it is implicit in her study of the characters at the level of the story. Both critics use similar categories when classifying the ways in which the reader reconstructs characters from a text. In fact, Rimmon-Kenan presents the conclusions of Hrushovski and Ewen (pp. 37, 59, 136). One

31. As I have previously mentioned, conclusions from this analysis do not intend to be a precept of all short stories and of all novels, they outline broad differences between the novel and the short story method. Differences become more evident when comparing novels written in the same period as these short stories.

121 MARêA JESÚS HERNÁEZ LERENA difference between Rimmon-Kenan«s and Bal«s proposal is that Bal suggests that referentiality -included within the broader term of predictability (p. 82)- is one of the ways in which the image of the character is formed, however Rimmon-Kenan does not contemplate this idea. In contrast, he includes the term “implication”. As a whole, Rimmon-Kenan presents a more developed system of textual character-indicators. These two systems sometimes overlap and sometimes attribute a category to a different level, but other times they offer new categories, so if we include all of them we will gain a more complete knowledge of how character is manifested in a text. The following analysis does not consist of an exhaustive application of every term to every text. Instead, I have selected those aspects that remain common to most short stories, or those that may illustrate some aspects of the early state of the American short story. In the first stage of abstraction of any narrative, there is a need to subordinate characters to actions in order to create “grammars” that represent the characters’ relation to the events and to other characters. In this process, the characters become actors, structural positions that can be assigned certain functions, similar to the functions of every element within a sentence. This analysis was accomplished at the beginning of this book, when we dealt with the narrative cycles. There we offered a description of the relationship between the actors and their aims, also of the relationship between actors and events. Before dealing with textual indicators, I will provide a brief summary of some of the conclusions reached in the first chapter in order to see how they relate (if they relate at all) to textual design. 1. The aim is absent in the first stage of the fabula: the actor does not have any particular intention that would justify a forthcoming narrative. The initial stage may not be that of deficiency, but of a normality disturbed by the appearance of the unexpected. This implies that the fabula does not start with a foreseen possibility of realization, and therefore, that there is not going to be a development of a particular trait of the protagonist. Rather, unexpected, unknown features of the actor will necessarily come to the foreground since he will be involved in out of the ordinary circumstances. The text will not offer, then, a “landing-field” to develop the actor’s potential, but rather quicksand, since predictability will be replaced by the character’s unexpected reactions. 2. Most fabulas are based on the reversal of the character«s leading trait. The actor in “Bartleby” substitutes his narrow pragmatism for a more humane

122 SHORT STORY WORLD: THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY AMERICAN MASTERS idealism. Idealist Mr. Bullfrog becomes eventually a pragmatist. Young Goodman Brown changes his honest views to become an evil worshipper. Trusting captain Delano becomes distrustful of any human action. The course of the fabula covers the time span of this change; it is devoted to show why and how the character changed. 3. Most short stories except Irving’s, which borrow a great deal from the novel, include few actors, no more than three. Thus, there is no need to discard any of them, as Bal (p. 25) claims when analysing narratives in general, since all actors are functional in the short story. In Irving’s narratives there are non-functional actors, many of whom do not play any role in the development of the fabula. Lack of functionality is not allowed in the short story whereas it is a recurrent characteristic in the novel. In fact, in the novel there is a profusion of non-functional characters which expand the complexity of the fabula, but which may not add any change to it. On the contrary, the short story tends to reduce the number of actors presented at first. It is very frequent for two actors to become one, as in Poe’s short stories. The character-narrator in “The Fall of the House of Usher” becomes “Usher-like” to such an extent that it is very difficult to distinguish two different kinds of traits or two different characters. In “Ligeia”, Rowena turns into Ligeia. The old man in “The Tell-Tale Heart” is not conceived as a separate character, but as a sound only perceived by the protagonist. The old man seems to be a projection of the protagonist. 4. The actantial structure of most short stories is based on “truth value” and “competence”. (See Bal, pp. 33-35) Now we will study how the character is reconstructed from the text, where and how we find our main sources of information. We will examine the uses of referentiality and of the textual character-indicators. It is also relevant to study what aspects are selected from a character to describe him and in which parts of the text the character-indicators can be found. There are two basic types of textual indicators: the explicit and implicit qualification. According to Rimmon-Kenan (pp. 60-61), the direct definition and the indirect presentation. Explicit information about the character may be provided by the narrator, by the character itself, or by other characters. Rimmon- Kenan only considers a part of the text as direct definition when it is provided by an authoritative narrator. The source of the information on the characters is directly dependent on the kind of narration used and many short stories are narrated by a character who

123 MARêA JESÚS HERNÁEZ LERENA takes part of the action. Therefore, all information about other characters will be filtered through the character’s perspective. It is an outstanding feature of these short stories that most of the information about the character is explicit and non- reliable. We cannot trust the self-analysis provided by a man who anxiously repeats that he is not mad and tells the story of how he killed another man in cold blood. Poe’s characters are made unreliable on purpose, but character-narrators in other short stories are made to adopt the signs of authoritative narrators only for us to discover at the end that we could not trust them and that they have given a wrong version. We will concentrate on Poe’s short stories first. The task that the main characters are assigned in Poe’s three short stories “Ligeia”, “The Fall of the House of Usher” and “The Tell-Tale Heart” is to describe another character, that is, they become narrators who try to characterize someone else. Sometimes, as in “The Tell-Tale Heart”, the character will try to describe or define himself. When describing other characters, these character-narrators carry out an overt process of deformation. The character in “Ligeia” idealizes a woman to such an extent that she acquires supernatural qualities. The character-narrator in “The Tell-Tale Heart” believes that another character, an old man, is one blank eye. For this character, the old man is just the eye, and it appears in the text as an object, rather than as a character. Many actors at the level of the fabula disappear as characters at the level of the text, since they are described as if they were objects, only one physical characteristic describes them, and they remain “inanimate” for the reader. “The Tell-Tale Heart” presents an obvious example of unreliable description. The character tries to convince us that he is not mad by telling a story that confirms his madness. “The Piazza” is another example where the character´s lack of common sense produces a continuous deformation of reality. He believes that the elements of nature possess a human existence, and he seems to observe how plants, mountains, and houses live stories as if they were people. What interests us here is not only that the character becomes the only source of information, but that the short story is based on the clash between this unreliable characterization and what turns out to be the truth. Most short stories are based on a character who tries to characterize another character. Two consequences derive from this: first, that this characterization may turn out to be false, and therefore our information will have to be revised at the end of the fabula; second, that it is the character who describes the other the one who is ultimately described.

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These character-narrators are engaged in the description of another character. For more than half of Ligeia” the narrator deals with the character’s attempts at a proper description of Ligeia. In “The Fall of the House of Usher”, the first- person narrator does little else other than describing Usher. “Mrs. Bullfrog” consists of Bullfrog’s description of his ideal wife and how this idealized portrait turns out to be false. “Bartleby” is the biography that a manager of a small office writes about one of his employees. In order to write about Bartleby, he has to characterize him, and he is aware at the end of his biography how limited his knowledge of “his character” was. Captain Delano becomes the one who characterizes the mysterious Benito Cereno and his servant. All his generalizations prove to be very different from reality. In addition to the events that may form part of the fabula, there is a character responsible for the description of another character in all these stories. The text becomes the proof of the terrible responsibility of this task, and of the difficulty of properly describing and interpreting another character. The conclusions drawn from this characterization will have a bearing on the outcome of the fabula. For example, the narrator of “The Fall of the House of Usher” does not manage to decipher Usher’s secret and consequently cannot avoid the cruel outcome of the fabula. The wrong assumption of the character in “The Tell-Tale Heart” that he is not nervous and can remain calm under any circumstance gives himself away to the police. The fact that Mr. Bullfrog or the manager in “Bartleby” do not know how to interpret facts turns them unable to change the events. The same happens in “Benito Cereno” where Delano misinterprets Cereno and is about to kill him. The character of “The Piazza” discovers at the end how wrong his descriptions of the landscape were, also that he had been inventing stories and that he had been blind to the “real” ones. Characterization becomes a problem within the narrative itself in these short stories. But this strategy is not only restricted to the presentation of a false image that will be eventually blotted out. There is a second contrast or clash between interpretations. When a character is describing another, he describes himself in the process. Besides, although these character-narrators seem to be weakly marked and quite impartial, they progressively move from that neutral position to a position more liable to be criticized by the reader 32. Most of the times these character-narrators judge other characters severely, but their authority becomes questioned in the text as they start to show traits which are opposed to the ones the reader had taken for granted.

32. For a definition of the terms “strongly” and “weakly marked” characters, see Bal (pp. 87-88).

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The character-narrator in “The Fall of the House of Usher” distrusted Usher because he was mentally ill, however he becomes more and more Usher-like as the narrative unfolds: superstitious, weak, a slave to his fancies. A strong counterpart was needed so that Usher could get over his obsessions, yet the narrator turns out to be Usher«s mere reflection. Mr. Bullfrog describes himself as a pedant, touchy, demanding man. He sees himself at the end of the narrative as possessor of the opposite traits. “Bartleby” devotes the first page to the description of the character-narrator. Yet there is a lack of coherence between this information, presented as direct definition, and the image we have created of this character by the end of the story. According to Rimmon-Kenan (p. 38):

A trait is sometimes explicitly mentioned in the text and sometimes not. When it is, the textual label may confirm the one reached in the process of generalization, but it may also be at variance with it, creating tension whose effects vary from one narrative to another.

This variance between what is explicit or given in the text and what we have concluded becomes a source of irony in the text. It is produced, in the first place, by the contrast between the initial image of the characters presented by the character-narrator and the one we are offered in the end and, in the second place, by the contrast of the image the character-narrators present of themselves and what they truly are. A grasp of the differences between what the narrator is saying and what we can decide for ourselves is the key to a good understanding of the story. In the first chapter I mentioned how difficult it was sometimes to understand the meaning of short stories. Among other things, we are assailed by an apparent lack of meaning, by its plotless nature. The nineteenth-century short story was already experimenting with unguided, clue-free stories. They will be misleading and the reader will have to assess the true nature of every element in them without authorial comment. We cannot consider the character-narrator of “Bartleby” to be the trustable, patient, wise, generous man he seems to be at the beginning, because his narrow- minded and prejudiced interpretation of Bartleby betrays his egoistic and hypocritical behaviour towards him. There is a certain degree of deficiency in the narrators. The clearest example is “Benito Cereno” where Delano´s unprejudiced, civilized frame of mind is exposed when his views are overtly shown as being brutal and thoughtless. There are means to make the reader think that characters or narrators are reliable or authoritative. In “Bartleby” the narrator presents himself as patient and commonsensical in contrast to his reckless employees. He adopts the role of

126 SHORT STORY WORLD: THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY AMERICAN MASTERS biographer, of an old man who has been in contact with many “human samples”. He has established himself as being responsible of the story, in the same way as a storyteller is responsible of his narrative. In “Benito Cereno” the narrator makes Delano observe and Cereno is only in the position to be observed, and therefore we tend to trust Delano and distrust Cereno. Focalization is centred on Delano, and the events are related only through his perspective. The narrator never parts from Delano’s focalization and this gives the impression that only Delano’s view is trustworthy. Furthermore, Delano is presented as a careful observer, meditating wisely on his conclusions. He is an amiable, open- minded, civilized man, whereas Benito, accessible to us mainly through Delano’s descriptions, appears as a doubtful, whimsical, inefficient young man. In the cases where there is an authoritative narrator, as in “Mr. Higginbotham’s Catastrophe” or “Young Goodman Brown”, the direct definition is considerably restricted when compared to the exhaustive introductory “physical-psychological” descriptions customary in novels33. Explicit characterization is reduced to a minimum since the aim of the short story is not so much to know a character in depth, with all his/her specific individual traits, as to present a particular situation. We do not need to be confronted with a huge range of circumstances. In this situation, we become more interested in the particulars of a certain conflict than in the personality of every character involved. Philip K. Dick (1995: 333) said that a short story deals with a crime, the novel deals with the criminal. Only the characters«s traits which are relevant to the development of a situation will be made explicit. Characters are not built up in these short stories by a complex apparatus of characterization, they serve the purpose of rendering a situation visible. Characters are described through just one trait without becoming caricatures or “flat” characters. The presentation of just one trait does not mean the character only possesses that trait, but that only one trait of the character is brought to the foreground without preventing the reader from imagining the character as a “complete person”. The fact that the actors cannot be grouped within one actant is typical of the short story method of characterization. If there are not several actors representing the same idea, it means that each actor is made to stand for something different. In most of the cases the two actors are related to two different semantic fields. An

33. Irving«s narratives also differ from the other short stories in this aspect. He describes characters mainly with direct definition, and these descriptions amount to more than one half of the text.

127 MARêA JESÚS HERNÁEZ LERENA example of this is the great amount of short stories that deal with the double nature of characters, with two sides of their personality which are set in contrast, as in “Young Goodman Brown”, “William Wilson”, or “The Piazza”. In other short stories, two opposed concepts are personified in two different characters, such as manhood and womanhood in “Mrs. Bullfrog”, democracy and aristocracy in “Benito Cereno”, open-mindedness and stubbornness in “Bartleby”. Hawthorne’s characterization represents a progression from the repetitive methods of Irving or Poe. Rather than characters, he initially defines a “contrast”: each of the characters is endowed with significance due to the unlimited references that this contrast creates in two directions, without any necessity of making them explicit. Their actions oscillate between two semantic poles. This is the initial paragraph in “The Hollow of the Three Hills”:

Two persons met together at an appointed hour and place. One was a lady, graceful in form and fair of feature, though pale and troubled and smitten with an untimely blight in what should have been the fullest bloom of her years; the other was an ancient and meanly dressed woman, of ill favoured aspect, and so withered, shrunken and decrepit, that even the space since she began to decay must have exceeded the ordinary term of human existence. (Hawthorne, 1937: 941)

Hawthorne uses implication to enlarge the otherwise vague description of the two characters. Implication is one of the ways in which character is manifested in the text, and one of the strategies that lead the reader to generalize. Implication takes place when “a set of physical attributes implies a psychological AP (Attributive Proposition).”(Rimmon-Kenan, p. 40). Nothing else is said of the characters by direct definition. There has been a sufficient dosage of information for the reader to absorb the impact of the next scene. The situation which follows this introduction describes how the old woman makes the young woman see what has happened to her family, who lives far away. Short story writers are intensely aware that the reader can perfectly imagine and visualize a character without offering abundant biographical slices or exhaustive analysis. We visualize appearance and reconstruct attitude and a world view after reading just a little. This extreme contrast between two characters, as in “The Hollow of the Three Hills”, favours symbolical interpretation, we immediately recall a set of opposed characteristics. Hawthorne uses the same method in “Young Goodman Brown”. The following quotation is the only allusion to Faith, Brown’s wife: “And Faith, as

128 SHORT STORY WORLD: THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY AMERICAN MASTERS the wife was aptly named, thrust her own pretty head into the street, letting the wind play with the pink ribbons of he cap, while she called to good-man Brown.” (Hawthorne, 1983: 315). Her description is limited to one element, a pink ribbon, which stands for innocence, childhood, and a world of niceties. Both characters are described by “analogy” 34. Nothing more is directly told about either actor, both being presented in such a way that they provide the following situation with coherence. This brief description has immediately become real: the reader is in the middle of a situation where he can relate characters to certain kinds of “people”, to stereotypes. We imagine a young, pleasant, recently married woman waving goodbye to his honest husband, who is worried because they are going to be separated for the first time. The question is not whether action is subordinated to character or character to action, but that characters are subordinated to a situation 35. This characterization initially presents a situation within which the characters acquire certain connotations. There is not initial block description of every character and then description of the way they relate. This is proved by the fact that the two characters are described together, as in “The Hollow of the Three Hills”, and their relationship is described in the first place as in a “traditional” introduction of characters. This strategy implies a greater economy of words, since both character and action are presented at once and not separately as is usual in the novel of manners, for example. This quick approach to the character«s world results in the typical arresting beginnings of short stories. Texts does not start with a pause -in descriptions the story time is longer than fabula time- but when time is moving. It means that the characters are not conceived separately from their action or circumstances, since no story time is exclusively devoted to them. Moreover, they cannot be analysed outside time since their presentation is temporal, linked to an action. This method can be used either to make a situation credible and engaging or to favour an allegorical reading, as it is the special case of Hawthorne. He introduces two characters whose characteristics are radically opposed, and we inevitably turn them into symbols that transcend a particular situation. Hawthorne tended to apply certain religious frames of reference to his stories. Symbolism, then, is a useful

34. See Rimmon-Kenan (p. 68): “analogous names”. This kind of analogy is very frequent in the short story. Symbolical names save up description. For example, the names “Usher”, “Rip Van Winkle”, “Bullfrog” are anticipations of the character´s destiny. “Goodman Brown”, “Ichabod Crane”, “William Wilson” are descriptions of the character´s main trait. 35. See Rimmon-Kenan«s chapter devoted to characters (p. 34).

129 MARêA JESÚS HERNÁEZ LERENA device to suppress information, since just one noun or adjective is needed to fill the narrative with added meanings, with just one trait of the character being selected. Because of this very reduction, the trait becomes symbolical and we extend it to the rest of the character’s psychological and physical traits. The selected trait produces a certain attitude of the reader towards the situation presented in the text. In the example of “The Hollow of the Three Hills”, the characters are described as if they were people seen at a distance. The emphasis is on the general appearance and profiles. The figures of the two characters appear minute in comparison with the bigger frame of the landscape, the hollow basin as a juncture of the mountains. The narrative also deals with distance, the spatial distance of the young woman’s beloved relatives, whose words she can hear as whispers. The mountains act as a frame isolates the two characters, the rest is empty of life. We consider the scene we witness as “drama enacted on a void”, as an illustration of human ordeal. On the other hand, the reader is made to be view the scene from a “non- physical” stance. The narrator warns the reader that the situation takes place: “In those strange old times, when fantastic dreams and madmen’s reveries were realized among the actual circumstances of life”, and that “In the spot they encountered, no mortal could observe them.” (Hawthorne, 1937: 941). The narrator warns the reader that the ensuing situation cannot be found in a real place, but in the realm of the dream or the imagination. Besides, the reader’s position within the narrative is a reflection of the character’s situation within the narrative. The young woman is in the reader’s very same position, being made to listen, to imagine she is seeing a situation that is not displayed before her eyes; she is helplessly stranded in her own space. Literature becomes through this comparison an act of witchcraft, whereby the reader, like this young woman, can hear other people who will vanish once the spell is finished. In contrast, “Young Goodman Brown” gives us the impression that we take a closer look at Faith, only the door functioning as a spatial frame. The reader stands in the middle of a street and is made to feel the comforts of civilization where relationships between its members are classified. After this initial presentation where characters behave socially, the spatial frame changes, but our physical presence in the scene is made evident by the close-up descriptions and the abundant information from the sense of sight and of hearing. Thus, in spite of the symbolic nature of the descriptions, we stand, so to speak, near the character and the rest of the figures loom very large. Focalizations are character- bound in this short story.

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In the short story we are not told much about the characters, only what we need to know. Short story writers found that this reduction did not damage the reader’s possibilities of effective visualization. Another device to reduce the amount of direct explicit qualification is to use predictable or referential characters. Referential characters, according to Mieke Bal “are more strongly determined than other characters” (p. 83). Their frame of reference may be closely linked with a well-known section of reality, as with historical characters, or with genre conventions, like the detective or the murderer. In general, sex, profession, age, social status, etc., restrict the possibilities of action. The characters in these short stories are highly referential: Poe’s fanciful romantic aristocrats and Irving’s henpecked husbands and boastful fools. But we also find yankee pedlars, lady-like men, honest men bound to be corrupted, experienced and professional men, unprejudiced Americans, mysterious European aristocrats, Quixotic figures, etc. Their frame of reference can be found in literature or in reality or in both like the yankee pedlar. The advantage of high referentiality is that characters are described merely by mentioning of a couple of traits, and they bring a whole context with them 36. This well-known frame of reference is used to produce a fast depiction of character, avoiding to a great extent direct definition. However, these referential characters are not used in these short stories to develop their dramatic and comic potential or any other kind of inherent predictability. On the contrary, the value of referentiality will be undermined along the course of the narrative. The development of the events of the fabula will question the validity of these abstractions or assumptions, which are taken for granted in the frame of reference presented initially. We previously said that characterization of one character by another proved to be inadequate, therefore, its method, referentiality, will be rejected as well. This is the case of “Mrs. Bulfrog”, “Bartleby”, and “Benito Cereno”. Mr. Bulfrog describes his wife by means of a false frame of reference, typical of

36. Irving is an exception. Despite using highly referential characters, he includes great amounts of information to describe them. There is a continuous parody of characters that belong to longer genres. As a result, he uses block description as in the novels of his time. The advantage of referential characters is that, being well known by the audience, there is no need to describe them fully. Referential characters share some of the advantages of flat characters: they are easily recognizable and they stand out in the reader«s memory. However, a referential character is not the same as a flat character. A referential character may refer to a kind of “people” or character we are familiar with, but this does not mean that the character is unable to change or is deprived of psychological depth.

131 MARêA JESÚS HERNÁEZ LERENA women in his time. But she is not the romantic and inexperienced woman he believes her to be; her frame of reference changes at the end, when she is given traits more adjusted to the stereotype of man: power to act, work, money, decision, and toughness. The character-narrator of “Bartleby” provides himself with a frame of reference, that of the elderly, watchful, experienced professional man. However, action progressively reveals him to be an inefficient man. When he tries to describe Bartleby, he finds it impossible to do so since he cannot locate Bartleby’s frame of reference. He has never met anyone like him. The narrator describes his two other employees comically, that is, partially. But he cannot group Bartleby’s traits into an integrated recognizable character or can ascribe any typical behaviour to him, and therefore, he cannot write Bartleby«s authentic biography. Captain Delano also tries to understand Benito Cereno with the aid of one fixed frame of reference. Cereno is described as an eccentric, weak, European aristocrat. The black crew are thought to be loyal, good-tempered negroes. These frames of reference turn out to be misleading, they do not correspond to the characters. They are exposed as inadequate because they classify people, and this classification does not represent the true identity of the characters. A wrong identity is attributed to the characters although they are made apparently predictable. The basis of predictability is thus undermined. All generalizations prove to be dangerous. This contradictory structure forces the reader to think again. The reader has to grasp all these contradictions for a complete understanding of these short stories.

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4. Focalization and narration

4.1. The concept of focalization

Mieke Bal defines the focalizor as “the point from which elements are viewed” (p. 104). This point entails a perceptual, emotive, and cognitive position in relation to the thing narrated (the focalized). However, Bal does not seem to bear in mind her own conclusions when she considers that the character is the exclusive focalizor every time his or her thoughts are presented: these thoughts may not be conveyed from the character«s perspective. I quote her example:

“A woman stood on her back step, arms folded, waiting. Thinking? She would not have said so. She was trying to catch hold of something, or to lay it bare so that she could look and define; for some time now she had been ‘trying on’ ideas like so many dresses off a rack. She was letting words and phrases as worn as nursery rhymes slide around her tongue: for towards the crucial experiences custom allots certain attitudes, and they are pretty stereotyped. A yes, first love!.. Growing up is bound to be painful!.. My first child, you know... But I was in love!.. Marriage is a compromise.. I am not as young as I once was” (p. 105)

According to Bal, the character is focalizing from sentence two onwards. But here the character is not the focalizer of her thoughts, they are not presented from the woman«s point of view. Focalization cannot be defined exclusively by the entity who sees, feels or thinks, but according to whom these experiences are transmitted. We are not only given the character’s thoughts, we are given the narrator’s opinion on those thoughts. The narrator is critical, even bored by what the woman is thinking, he considers her experiences as shabby, cliché, stereotyped. In this example we get to know what the woman is thinking, but her train of thought is biased by a narrator who discards these feelings as repetitious. We are confronted with two perspectives, that of the character on her own life, and that of the narrator on the character«s frame of mind. Besides, the narrator is verbalizing ideas that the character is unaware of. The narrator is interfering; we know his opinions and his attitude; this attitude ultimately becomes the perspective that guides us to the fictional world of the narrative. This is the case every time the narrator presents the contents of a character«s mind: once the narrator verbalizes them, it may be impossible to clearly identify the source of information, because words, language, imply a style of thought which may be at odds with the character«s view: this woman may not consider her

133 MARêA JESÚS HERNÁEZ LERENA feelings to be stereotyped. In this example, the narrator is the focalizer, the thoughts of the character are the focalized. If we use Bal«s terminology, we can say that there is a non-perceptible object (the character«s thoughts) which are focalized by the narrative agent, which has a different perspective from that of the character. In this example we can see that although perceptions originally belong to the character, they are focalized by the narrating agent who accommodates them to his own perspective. This type of “false” focalization is very frequent because it allows the narrator to project his “superior” knowledge on the character; narratives become more complex due to this strategy. Bal does not elaborate on her proposal, on the implications of her classification of possible narrative points of view. However, we intuit that focalization may not be one-sided, that there may be discrepancy between the facets of focalization. We could suggest another interpretation on this passage: focalizations overlap. The character may be the perceptual focalizer (she is the one perceiving and remembering), and the narrator may be the cognitive focalizer, imposing on that initial material his own world-view: a contempt for human behaviour. The sameness of human experience is something the narrator is intensely aware of, not the character. It is not only important to ascertain who perceives in a text, but also to identify the ideological or moral stance through which perceptions are given. Since Bal does not assume this distinction in her analysis, we will use Rimmon- Kenan«s categories, based on Genette«s (1972), which offer a more exhaustive classification on kinds of narrators. Another problem arises when distinguishing focalization from narration. The concept of focalizor answers the question: “whose are the perceptions?”, and its nature is non-verbal. The concept of narrator answers the question: “whose are the words?”, and its manifestation is verbal. But using words, verbalizing any kind of reality, already implies a certain position because language is a giveaway: it shows that our position can never be impartial. The narrator then adds, abstracts, deforms, interprets, and his position as a focalizor, not only as a narrator, has to be taken into account. That the narrator is the “official user of words” that not locate him exclusively in the level of narration, since language implies perspective, focalization. In most cases there will be two focalizors. In our analysis we must take into account this degree of interference that is produced by the narrator’s codification of the character’s focalization. Rimmon-Kenan briefly comments on this idea in one sentence: “It is almost impossible to speak without betraying some personal point of view; if only

134 SHORT STORY WORLD: THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY AMERICAN MASTERS through the very language used” (p. 72). This implies that focalizations may overlap, and that extra-heterodiegetic narrators are in most instances focalizors when focalization is character-bound. Summing up, focalization includes both perception and ideology, which implies that there may be more than one focalizer in a text; and secondly, it is necessary to study this overlapping focalization, that is, the relationship between narration and story, the extradiegetic and diegetic level.

4.2. Intra-homodiegetic narrators and unreliability

Most of the short stories analysed use this type of narration: intra-homogiegetic. “Ligeia”, “The Fall of the House of Usher”, “The Tell-Tale Heart”, “Mrs. Bullfrog”, “Bartleby”, and “The Piazza”. The narrators are diagetic characters, they take part in the story. First we will analyse the main features of these narrating agents and their relationship with the diagetic level, then we will examine the textual manifestations of the extra-heterodiegetic narrators, together with the changes we have observed concerning the relationship between focalization and narration in the short story Irving«s stories onwards. According to Rimmon-Kenan:

Intradiegetic narrators, especially when they are also homodiegetic, are on the whole more fallible than extradiegetic ones, because they are also characters in the fictional world. As such, they are subjected to limited knowledge, personal involvement, and problematic value-schemes, often giving rise to the possibility of unreliability. (p. 103)

In Poe’s short stories the unreliability of the narrator can be made explicit as in “Ligeia” or “The Tell-Tale Heart”, since the narrator expresses his own inability to produce a complete record of past events. The narrator in “Ligeia” cannot properly remember how events happened, and he is continually subjected to visions and fantasies brought on by his opium addiction. We immediately suspect the narrator of “The Tell-Tale Heart”: he himself states that everybody considers him to be mentally ill. The unreliability of these narrators explains the difficulty in recovering the fabula of these short stories. All the events are told from just one perspective, that of the narrator, since focalization is fixed and there is no other source of information. In “Ligeia”, contradictions in the information

135 MARêA JESÚS HERNÁEZ LERENA provided by the narrator make us suspect that what he is narrating might not have happened at all. I mentioned in an earlier chapter that the narrator -who is telling his story retrospectively- does not assume in the narration the obvious consequences of the outcome of the fabula. This may be due to the fact that what he narrates (the return of Ligeia) occurred only in his imagination. And as the realization and result of the second narrative cycle are non-existent, our abstraction of the fabula will be a different one from the one obtained previously. That means that there is not just one fabula and hence, the two fabulas become hypothetical:

1. The subject desires to meet his wife again. He gets involved in a difficult situation. Finally, he recovers his first wife through the body of his second wife. 2. (Second narrative cycle). The consequence would not be the return of Ligeia, but the madness of this character-narrator.

A second source of unreliability is the narrative«s degree of involvement with character«s subjectivity. The character may be interpreting events in a way we discard as inadequate or disruptive. The narrator’s description of Ligeia makes apparent that he can only can grasp reality by deforming it. When he describes his chamber, his own necrophiliac tendencies are disclosed. In “The Tell-Tale Heart” the narrator’s arguments betray his psychotic tendency to believe his father is a malevolent being. This old man is conceived of and described only in terms of possessing an “evil eye”. We have to face the same problem in Melville’s “The Piazza”. In this story the reader finds it impossible to retrieve the fabula. The narrator’s presentation of the elements of the story is progressively felt as a deformation: actual locations are transformed into other places belonging both to the realm of reality or of fiction. All his descriptions are felt to be distorting and his continual transgressions to our everyday world lead us to the conclusion that he is insane. For the reader, the fabula proves from the very beginning to be invented or non-existent (for the narrator only at the very end), such as the one presented in “Ligeia”. The reader feels that he has not been in contact with a “story”, that the expected “diagetic level” is absent. The reader only had access to a character«s subjectivity, whose obsession is to relate things that never happened. The fabula, then, as in Poe’s “Ligeia”, would have a double nature. The one we abstract: a

136 SHORT STORY WORLD: THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY AMERICAN MASTERS character moves to the countryside, there he invents stories, finally, he meets a girl who makes him aware of his own hypocrisy. And the false fabula presented by that character: the flower’s story, the mountain’s story, the fairies’ story, etc. This structure seems to unearth the very mechanisms of fiction, which depends on illusion rather than on reality and often points at our tendency to stick to beliefs which are in discordance with reality. The narrators we find in this corpus are made comparable to the real writers, they work on a world of imagined fantasies, and through this falsity they give us the truth. In the short story it is not usual to reach a hypodiegetic level, and therefore there cannot be analogies between this level and that of the diegetic level, as is common in the novel. However, we can find an analogy between the diegetic level and the implied author, in other words, the “mise en abyme” structure is very common. Mise en abyme is described by Gide, as quoted by Rimmon-Kenan as “a transposition of the theme of a work to the level of the characters” (p.93). We consider the implied author as a construct based on the text: the ideological and aesthetic issues implicit in the text (Chatman, 1988: 369). If the meaning of this text is the problematic relationship between man and reality, between a writer and his/her account of reality, this same theme appears to be the most relevant in the story: how a man interprets his reality. The last paragraph in “The Piazza” shows that this short story deals with the activity of telling stories in the light of their reality or unreality: “But, every night, when the curtain falls, truth comes in with darkness. No light shows from the mountain. To an fro I walk the piazza deck, haunted by Marianna’s face, and many as real a story.” (Melville, 1949: 453). Other times unreliability is not made explicit, on the contrary, the narrator«s ability to tell stories is sanctioned with the usual signs of authority. For example, by presenting one character as “normal” in contrast with the abhorrent nature that other characters may possess, we consider him as dependable. In “The Fall of the House of Usher” the narrator appears to be perfectly reliable in contrast with Usher´s eccentric and highly-strung behaviour; in “Bartleby” the narrator is considered to be a “normal”, “ordinary” sample of humanity in comparison with Bartleby’s weird and anomalous behaviour. Once the character that is under discussion strikes us as strange, we tend to become uncritical of the character- narrator, who is described as experienced and patient. We consider him our guide and ally from the very beginning. Another device to redirect our suspicions the focalized-character instead of the character-focalizer is to immediately present us with the events of the fabula.

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Our attention will be drawn to these events because of suspense. Consequently, the figure of the narrator may recede to the background. As a rule, we assume that the author has chosen the character who best knows the story, or the character who can best express it. Besides, as the character-narrator is the only source of information we have, we stick to him immediately, and take what he says as true unless his version strikes us as unlikely, incoherent, or too limited. Rimmon-Kenan claims that the main sources of unreliability are the narrator’s limited knowledge, his personal involvement, and his problematic value-scheme (p. 100). The problematic value-scheme of the narrators in “Ligeia”, “The Tell-Tale Heart”, and “The Piazza” is the main source of unreliability. And they are presented as the protagonists of the story. However, in “The Fall of the House of Usher”, and “Bartleby”, unreliability is unnoticeable for most of the narrative. By making intra-homodiegetic narrators appear as intra-heterodiegetic, we are not aware that they are offering us a very partial version. Heterodiegetic narrators are more reliable since their stance on the events is neutral, and in a way, superior to the characters in the story because they know more or are more objective; they behave in a way as extradiegetic narrators. Extra-diegetic narrators are usually heterodiegetic as well, and this implies that their perceptual and psychological knowledge is unrestricted. The narrator in “The Fall of the House of Usher” presents a story about an acquaintance. He describes himself as a mere observer, not belonging to the peculiar world of Usher. The narrator in “Bartleby” also places himself in a superior position than that of the character, being detached from the foolish behaviour of the rest of his employees. He is there to write about his staff: he writes biographies. He stresses the fact that he is writing a biography of Bartleby, not a story; he merely records the facts. He wants to prevent the reader from thinking that he is influenced by personal feelings. However, as we read on, we realize that these narrators are homodiegetic, that they are deeply involved in the story, and that to a very great extent they trigger off the outcome. The narrator of “The Fall of the House of Usher” is not only Usher’s observer, he also becomes entangled in the action and bears witness to the same horror. The narrator of “Bartleby” is not just Bartleby’s biographer, he becomes the only contact Bartleby maintains with the outer world, and his attitude Ðhe is patient at the beginning but ends up dismissing Bartleby- shapes Bartleby’s destiny. According to Rimmon-Kenan, all retrospective narration by a character that belongs to the story makes the narrator extradiegetic, that is, “a higher narratorial authority in relation to the story he narrates” (p. 95). In spite of not being

138 SHORT STORY WORLD: THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY AMERICAN MASTERS omniscient, this character knows everything about the represented world. However, in these two short stories focalizations are not typical of an extradiegetic narrator, since character-narrators possess only a limited knowledge (they have no clues about future events) and they participate in the events. It is their “younger self” that is being conveyed, not an “older self” who is already in possession of the truth. Therefore, we can conclude that the narrator behaves as an intra-diegetic, not as an extra-diegetic narrator. Rimmon-Kenan (p. 73) holds Great Expectations as an example to show the possible contradictions involved in the presentation of the narrator«s younger and older self. In this novel, the perceptual focalizer is Pip, the child, and the ideological focalizer is Pip, the adult. But we are not in the presence of such a case in “Bartleby”: there is no overlapping focalization. Although focalization is retrospective, we only have access to the limited knowledge of the intradiegetic narrator at the time he is living events. A more wiser narrator will make his appearance at the very end, but this fact does not influence the way the story has been told. The case of “Mrs. Bullfrog” is different. The narrator describes the advantages of his present situation and refers to his younger self as having a mistaken idea on marriage. Two stances are taken, that of extra-diegetic narrator, and that of intra-diegetic narrator, the former is reliable, the latter unreliable. The first kind of narration is presented outside fabula time, the second is linked to the time of the diegesis. Here the narrator’s knowledge is much more restricted than the reader«s, and therefore, his inadequacy to present a proper record of events is clearly manifested. In “Bartleby” and “Mrs. Bullfrog” unreliability can only be judged by the reader at the end of the text. Then we discover that Usher’s observer was inefficient, since he could not overcome his own misapprehensions, also that the narrator of Bartleby is not just his biographer, he tries to understand him but is too prejudiced to do it satisfactorily. They have a limited knowledge of events: they are unacquainted with events such as the burial of Madelaine or with the nature of Bartleby’s previous job. Their involvement is highly personal: the narrator of “The fall of the House of Usher” behaves as a coward and does not try to save the other two characters, and the narrator of “Bartleby” thinks Bartleby is an obstacle for the proper development of his business. And, finally their values are problematic: the narrator of “Usher” turns out to be as feeble- minded as Usher, and the narrator of “Bartleby” is eventually revealed as selfish and narrow-minded. These three sources or unreliability are discovered by the reader only at the end. Rimmon-Kenan«s argument precisely spells out the theory implicit in the cases we have discussed so far:

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Various factors in the text may indicate a gap between the norms of the implied author and those of the narrator: when facts contradict the narrator’s views, the latter is judged to be unreliable (but how does one establish the “real facts” behind the narrator’s back?); when the outcome of the action proves the narrator wrong, a doubt is retrospectively cast over his reliability in reporting earlier events. (p. 101)

4.3. Extra-heterodiegetic narrators

Unlike the similarities that unreliable narration presents, there are considerable differences among the intra-homodiegetic narrators in the other short stories. A clear difference regarding narrative complexity can be appreciated between Irving’s narratives and those by Melville. We refer to the short stories whose narrators are superior to the story (extradiegetic) and that are no participants in it (heterodiegetic): “Rip van Winkle”, “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”, “Mr. Higginbotham’s Catastrophe”, “Young Goodman Brown”, and “Benito Cereno”. The narrators of Irving’s narratives stand apart from the story they are narrating and, by means of certain textual strategies, they are positioned in the same sphere or field of experience as the reader, that of a reality external to the story. The narrator is presented as a real person, a historian who writes about real people that he has actually met, who lives in an existing place on the American map, and whose activity of writing is linked to that of travelling. The narrator is presented as an author who writes about people, not characters, who has solid opinions on political and social issues: institutions such as monarchy or marriage, the role of man and woman in a society, etc. He is made to appear as a real author, sharing the same experiences as the reader. In order to perform the role of a “real narrator”, he must become an overt narrator, an independent entity from that of the story, an almost physical presence which possesses a certain personality. This overt narrator has certain traits in the same way that characters within his story have traits, the only difference is that the characters’ personality is given through the narrator’s explicit definition, and the narrator’s personality is defined by his abundant commentaries on the story, also on his own narration, and on issues outside the world of the fabula. Before the characters are presented in these two short stories, the reader has already built up a picture of the narrator, who has accompanied the reader so far and has already inscribed his world-view in the text.

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In “Rip van Winkle”, the narrator can be identified as a middle-aged man, traditional and patriotic. He is sympathetic to the male victims of matrimony, and expresses his views on general human issues like old age: “Being arrived at that happy age when a man can be idle with impunity” (Irving: 1977: 18), women or history. He overtly speaks of his own habits in “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”: “I recollect that, when a stripling, my first exploit in squirrel-shooting was in a grove of […]” (Irving: 1977, 20). This narrator also discusses the problems involved in writing, such as authentic reports versus folk legends. An introduction which precedes the narrative offers a biographical profile of the man -a historian keen on American people and lands- in an attempt to make the reader take this narrative for a history or a geography treatise. All these strategies seek to reinforce the links between the story and a real world shared by all Americans: the manuscript belongs to history, the man who found it speaks directly to the reader. Although, of course, parody is a strong component of the narrative here. This man, this storyteller, becomes the only figure responsible for the narration, he is someone we recognize and he urges us to believe that we are listening to his speech at the same time that he is uttering the words. This emphasis to locate the narrator in the same field of experience as that of the reader emphasises the narrator«s need to proclaim the authenticity of the fabula. In the oral tradition, the storyteller was responsible for his own story, but this authoritative figure disappears with the advent of the print. Irving was the first American writer to write short narratives, and his links with folklore are stronger than for short storytellers to come. The narrators of Poe’s short stories, for example, emphatically refuse to accept any connection with the actual physical world. But Irving reproduces the physical presence of the oral teller who is outside his story. This narrator is, therefore, fully equipped for the real world and the real America; he shares the same habits, political views, or opinions on social issues, with any other person living in his time. Focalization in these two narratives by Irving is fixed, it belongs almost exclusively to the narrator. This implies that characterization is manifested in the text only through the perspective of the narrator. This overt narrator appears continually as the only independent source of information; he defines the characters, classifies them, and criticizes them by commenting on their inadequacy as regards assumed social and sexual roles. This fixed focalization also accounts for the fact that there are no scenes: the narrator does not allow characters to offer their own perspective. The only time focalization approaches the character«s perceptual and cognitive position takes place within fabula time, which divides the narrative into

141 MARêA JESÚS HERNÁEZ LERENA two disconnected parts, that of the diegesis, that corresponds to fabula time, and the rest of the narrative (most part of the text) that belongs exclusively to extradiegetic commentary, definitions, and descriptions of situations that do not form part of the proper fabula. It is significant that the narrator only adheres to Rip’s perceptions in the second part of the text: that is, within fabula time. The narrator moves from his higher position and approaches the character momentarily. This different position implies that a less general view will be provided and that events are now bound to occur. The sentence “On waking” (Irving, 1977: 11) marks the narrators closeness to the character because, for the first time, the narrator presents himself as being as limited as the character is. When fabula-time is over, there is a return to summary and the narrator departs from Rip again. Restricted focalization is necessary for this part of the fabula: inability to properly interpret a situation is a main source of comedy. In my view, the following passage is the only example of character-bound focalization in “Rip van Winkle”. This passage focuses on Rip«s return to his village:

Instead of the great tree that used to shelter the quiet little Dutch inn of yore, there now was reared a tall naked pole, with something on top that looked like a red night-cap, and from it was fluttering a flag, on which there was a singular assemblage of stars and stripes -all this was strange and incomprehensible. (Irving, 1977: 14)

Sometimes we may find that the character is apparently focalizing, but these focalizations are false: although Rip is the perceptual focalizer, there is an ovelapping of the narrator’s focalization. The narrator«s ideology is interfering with Rip«s perceptions. Here is an example:

Panting and fatigued, he threw himself, late in the afternoon, on a green knoll, covered with mountain herbage, that crowned the brow of a precipice. From an opening between the trees he could overlook all the lower country for many a mile rich woodland. He saw at a distance the lordly Hudson, far, far below him, moving on it silent but majestic course, with the reflection of a purple cloud, or the sail of a lagging bark, here and there sleeping on its glassy bosom, and at last losing itself in the blue highlands. (Irving, 1977: 9) (My emphasis)

We have got to know the narrator before becoming acquainted with Rip and we sense that these perceptions do not belong to Rip (since he has not been described as bright enough to notice subtleties), but to the narrator. There is not only

142 SHORT STORY WORLD: THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY AMERICAN MASTERS description of a landscape, but presentation of the narrator’s worldview. Nature is assimilated as if it inherently possessed a hierarchical order, similar to human societies. The narrator had previously projected on landscape a “monarchic” sense of dignity: the “noble height” of the mountains, a setting sun as a “crown of glory”, the “gallant and chivalrous days of Peter Stuyvesant”. He also makes fun of Rip because he had not inherited the “martial character of his ancestors”. Although Rip is looking, it is the narrator that sees and presents us with his vision. The narrator«s style betrays a certain attitude to nature, which is the focalized, a style imbued with the narrator«s belief that beauty in nature necessarily reflects the grandeur of old civilizations. Almost the same can be said of the focalization of “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”; the narrator’s focalization predominates to such an extent that there is not even a scene where we would have expected to find one: the party. Instead, that part of the fabula consists of further commentary and definition of the characters involved. A consequence of this fixed focalization is that the narrator alone interprets the story for us and in doing so he restricts the scope of significance of the story. This is due to the fact that the narrator«s interpretation of Rip is based mainly on parody; the narrator never departs from the assumption that Rip is a henpecked husband: “Happily that was at the end; he had got his neck out of the joke of matrimony, and could go in and out wherever he pleased, without dreading the tyranny of Dame van Winkle.” (Irving, 1977: 18). The narrator limits the significance of the fabula because his interest does not seem to be engaged by the fabula -Rip encountering a magic world-, but by the social and historical background which he had provided outside fabula time as an extradiegetic agent. Irving considers the time of the narration to be contemporaneous with the time of the story. This device is not frequently found in short stories, although it is typical of novels. The extradiegetic narrator has to speak about various characters or groups of characters who are involved in different actions in different places simultaneously. This is just another intrusion of the “person” of the narrator on the story. It occurs when the narrator of “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” wants to keep pace with his story, and to do so he must make haste and reduce some of his descriptions so that “he can narrate” at the same time that the story “is happening”. In this passage, Ichabod is eating some delicious food from the Dutch country tea-table. The narrator is forced to hurry up: “Heaven bless the mark! I want breath and time to discuss the banquet as it deserves, and am too eager to get on with my story. Happily, Ichabod Crane

143 MARêA JESÚS HERNÁEZ LERENA was not in so great a hurry as his historian, but did ample justice to every dainty.” (Irving, 1977: 37). The narrator of Hawthorne’s “Mr. Higginbotham´s Catastrophe” is an extra- heterodiegetic narrator as well, but, unlike Irving’s, focalization is shared by narrator and character. This feature has a bearing on characterization, since the reader constructs the character not only through direct definition, but through implication derived from the character’s focalization. The story becomes more credible and the text devices more complex because the elements of the fabula are not utterly transformed by the narrator’s personality. We must remember that the narrator in Irving’s narrative is male, conventional, chauvinistic, a pedant. Any character in the story who does not represent these views is bound to be mocked. We can say that Irving’s narratives are narratives of one character, the narrator’s views are overwhelming. Hawthorne constructs “more democratic” narratives, the only voice of the narrator is opened to other perspectives and the reader has direct access to the fabula. The narratives therefore become less discursive, more modern. Besides, Hawthorne introduces dialogue. The degree of overtness in the narrator is considerably reduced as well, although there are still a few signs of the narrator being overt: he mentions things that the character has not said or thought, especially for ironic purposes: “here was a sad resurrection of old Mr. Higginbotham”, or “[h]is suspension [of the old farmer] would have pleased him rather than Mr. Higginbotham’s” (Hawthorne, 1937: 914). However, commentary on the story is almost non-existent; the narrator once calls Dominicus “our friend” or he says once “my story” referring to an event that we will find out later on. And there is no commentary on the world outside the fabula. This narrator does possess an attitude to the story, but does try to imprint on our minds his attitude towards life, like Irving’s narrators. Although at the end of the story he says that the incidents occurred at his village, he narrator does not presents himself as a “person” but as a mere recorder of a series of events. It is important for us to pay attention to the reader’s conception of the narrator. Only when we can abstract a trait or certain traits do we conceive the narrator as a different entity (or character) apart from the story. This trait or traits make us identify an “attitude” of the narrator towards his story. We detect these signs of personality mainly through commentary on the story or on the narration, through generalization, interpretation, or judgement. Overt narrators possess “views” or “traits” and it is only when the narrator possesses a personality that we notice his intrusion on the character’s focalizations. We do not notice the narrator’s mediation if the narrator is only

144 SHORT STORY WORLD: THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY AMERICAN MASTERS engaged in the first three tasks listed by Rimmon-Kenan (p. 96-97) -description of setting, identification of characters, and temporal summary- unless they strike us as being conspicuously subjective. Rimmon-Kenan’s classification of the degrees of perceptibility of the narrator could be expanded by the addition of some other aspects, for example, style. If the narrator’s speech differs considerably from the character’s, the presence of the narrator becomes overt. The narrator may also constitute a different source of perception from that of the characters. The perceptual powers of the narrator are greater than those of Dominicus. After Dominicus’ conversation with an anonymous man, the narrator says:

Dominicus had spoken in too great a hurry to observe, at first, that the stranger himself had a deep tinge of negro blood. On hearing this sudden question, the Ethiopian appeared to change his skin, its yellow hue becoming a ghastly white, while, shaking and stammering, he thus replied [..] Scarcely had the yellow man spoken.” (Hawthorne, 1937: 915).

These visual perceptions do not belong to Dominicus, who does not notice the colour of the man’s skin; to Dominicus, who is unaware of the secret, this feature is irrelevant. He is perplexed by the news, as we see from what comes after this passage, and not by the appearance of the stranger. Although the narrator offers the limited version of the character, he provides subtle cues that remain unnoticed for the character, but that connect him (the narrator) directly to the reader. In the previous passage the narrator winks at us, signalling his existence, and therefore making sure that the reader knows more than the character does. Another clue that points to the solution of the enigma can be detected in the use of an impersonal tense where normally the thought would have been attributed to the character: “These ambiguous circumstances, with the stranger’s surprise and terror, made Dominicus think of raising a hue and cry after him, as an accomplice of the murder; since a murder, it seemed, had really been perpetrated” (p.915), (my emphasis). The degree of intrusion of the narrator on the character’s focalizations can be examined too; the perceptibility of these intrusions being directly proportionate to the degree of perceptibility of the narrator. The narrator of “Mr. Higginbotham’s Catastrophe” has an attitude to the story, that of a sympathetic, acquiescent man who watches his character’s actions with certain irony. Bi- focalization, or shifting focalization in “Mr. Higginbotham’s Catastrophe”

145 MARêA JESÚS HERNÁEZ LERENA contributes to a comic effect: we get to know the character’s perceptions and thoughts first-hand, as if we were looking at him directly, and at the same time, there is a certain distance between the character and the reader caused by the slightly ironic version of the narrator. This twofold structure allows us to perceive the situations as paradoxical. The following passage is an example of shifting focalization that add irony to the short story. Dominicus sees for the first time Mr. Higginbotham’s niece as she is getting off the coach. Each sentence has been numbered for the sake of clarity:

(1) She was a fine, smart girl, now wide awake and (2) bright as a button, and had such a sweet pretty mouth, (3) that Dominicus would almost as lief have heard a love tale from it as a tale of murder. (Hawthorne, 1937: 917)

In (1) the narrator is describing the girl, neutrally and dispassionately, and he knows (because he is the one with the widest scope of knowledge) that she had been sleepy during the journey, and that when she arrived at the village, she was totally awake, whereas in (2) there is the use of a colloquial expression, typical of Dominicus. We know by now that Dominicus is a plain villager fond of propular sayings. This sentence represents the transition from the narrator’s focalization to the character’s focalization. The latter is not so embracing and is reduced to the first object in which Domicicus is interested: the lady’s lips. He was waiting for a lady whose testimony was essential either to make him triumphant or to face accusations of slander. Thus, his attention is primarily drawn by the niece’s mouth. However, in her lips, he first discovers, not words, but beauty. The expression used in the text is almost sensual, and it exclusively belongs to the character. At the end of the paragraph, in sentence (3), we notice that we get the narrator’s focalization again and he does not identify with the character, but makes fun of his sudden change in attitude, his aggressiveness has become attraction all of a sudden. When Dominicus first sees this girl, he forgets all about Mr. Higginbotham’s case, and concentrates on her physical appearance. Therefore, the same paragraph contains both the character«s fresh perceptions and the narrator«s interpretation. However, this use of mixed focalization at the end of the short story seems to imply that the character’s focalizations alone are not enough for the reader to understand the events. Focalization has been limited throughout the story to the knowledge of the character. When Dominicus sees Higginbotham hanging on the tree, neither he nor the reader understand what is going on. Dominicus will find out when he listens to Higginbotham and the reader will solve the enigma only after

146 SHORT STORY WORLD: THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY AMERICAN MASTERS reading the narrator’s explanation of the events. The narrator’s final commentary on the narration is thus essential and his power is made evident at the end. The narrator eventually proclaims his knowledge as the only true knowledge, compared to which the characters’s and the reader’s discerning abilities appear as ridiculous. He places the temporal events in their proper order, and then, character and reader must reinterpret and set things right again. The ending of “Mr. Higginbotham’s Catastrophe” reminds us of the folk tale because Dominicus is turned into an archetype: the fool with luck. In the last paragraph, the narrator calls him a “pedlar” and Dominicus’s focalizations completely disappear. The narrator sums up what happened to the hero after these events: he marries the girl, gains an heirdom, has children. These events fall outside the time of the fabula, and the narrator becomes the only entity responsible of the narrative when explaining the further-reaching consequences of the previous confusing situation. In “Young Goodman Brown” the narrator is less overt and focalization is conferred almost constantly on the character. The narrator does not intrude on the character’s thoughts since he does not posses a “personality” which could interfere with the character’s focalizations. There is more dialogue and the narrator does not provide a final interpretation of the events, and so the reader has the same doubts as the character in the end, unlike the previous case. We can appreciate in these stories a gradual development: they hand over interpretation to character by means of an increasing use of character-bound focalizations and a reduction of the degree of perceptibility and mediation of the narrator. We will finally deal with Melville’s “Benito Cereno”, which represents the opposite narration strategy to that of Irving’s. Irving’s narratives are constructed on just one focalization belonging to the narrator, and there is an attempt at making this single focalization appear as two, by means of false focalizations, that is, focalizations attributed to the character but actually belonging to the narrator. The strategy of “Benito Cereno” is that of making two focalizations appear as one. Apparently all focalizations belong to Delano, but there is a great deal of information that does not come from Delano although it is attributed to him. When Delano sees the ship approaching for the first time, the description of the movements and appearance of the ship are not those of a sea man, but of a literary man who believes every element of the ship belongs to a gothic fantastic world:

Peering over the bulwarks were what really seemed, in the hazy distance, throngs of dark cowls; white, fitfully revealed through the open port-holes,

147 MARêA JESÚS HERNÁEZ LERENA

other dark moving figures were dimly descried, as of Black Friars pacing the cloisters. (Melville, 1949: 257)

These sophisticated descriptions are very frequent, about the negroes aboard the San Dominick, we read: “Their heads like black, doddered willow tops, who, in venerable contrast to the tumult bellow them, were couched, sphynx-like […] (p. 260). This makes us suspect that the narrator is far from being a “neutral” presence, and that although the perceptual focalizer is Delano, the ideological focalizer is not the captain, but the narrator. Nevertheless, the text maintains the illusion that Delano is the only focalizer and we tend to attribute all that is said him because he take Delano for a character-narrator (Todorov, 1976: 100). The narrator sticks to Delano throughout the text, and apparently we only know what Delano knows, no additional information is given. We think that all the information comes from Delano because there are not focalizations from other characters. If we do not pay attention to passages as the one quoted above, in which the narrator inscribes in the text his particular perspective, we will be bound to believe that the narrator is not relevant for our understanding of the narrative. But “Benito Cereno” plays at disguising the figure of the narrator. The narrator does intrudes and interpret things in a certain way, but we do not notice his presence because we believe that Delano is our only source of information, the only focalizor. The narrator does not refer to himself, he avoids giving the impression that he is mediating, and makes himself imperceptible so that the reader does not consider him to be an independent source of information. The author wants us to believe that the narrator never breaks his attachment to Delano. These are the main devices by which the narrator’s mediation is made imperceptible: 1. The narrator’s views are identified with those of Delano’s by direct attribution. This is very frequent in the text, by means of expressions such as “he thought” or “in Captain Delano’s mind”. 2. Only Delano’s views are presented overtly, and therefore, he is given the function that any narrator has: to observe and register events, to thread them into a story, and to explain the meaning of what happens to the reader. We identify narration with Delano, since it is his order of perceiving events that is followed to the letter, and he is the only one in the text that justifies the information provided. Although Delano is a character, he never shares his views or communicates his thoughts with other characters. He behaves like a narrator, whose views seem to be expressed just for the reader’s sake. In most fiction, the narrator does not communicate with the characters, but with the reader; in the same way, Delano

148 SHORT STORY WORLD: THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY AMERICAN MASTERS does not communicate his conclusions to other characters but he is the mediator between the story and the reader. We believe that Delano is the narrator because he engages in perceptible focalizations in a continuous way, although as I have said, focalization is not exclusively his. 3. The only perspective adopted on the events is external, that is, the will be no incursion into the other characters«s minds. This is the perspective Delano assumes, looking and listening, and trying to make intelligible what he sees without knowing what the other characters are thinking. The third-person narrator restricts his powers so that he is not considered to be an independent source of information. Descriptions always start with “it appeared” or “it seemed”, or “such were the American thoughts” in an attempt to give the impression that there is no omniscient view, and that the only perspective is that of Delano, who cannot make head nor tail of what is happening. The narrator’s views tend to be identified with Delano’s because the narrator looks at events -with the exception of Delano«s mind- from the outside, as Delano does. And Delano can only grasp external appearances. Non-perceptible objects remain non-perceptible, since it is only the narrator who can make them perceptible and he refuses to do so for some reason. 4. The narrator also conceals his presence by timing his focalizations with those of the character. Every time the text presents us with a description, we see Delano looking at something. Although the narrator has imperceptibly been pouring his interpretation of events in the description, we always think that the contents of the description refer to Delano«s thoughts. The reader believes that the origin of these descriptions lies in the character. This gives the impression that the narrator depends on Delano, and a totally dependent narrator is less perceptible. However, although Delano may be looking, the narrator is interpreting the focalized object. 5. Summary is absent to a great extent as well. Summary implies there is another entity that selects events and handles time at will. However, since the temporal frame is restricted to one day, the story time seems to cover the events which occurred on that day without many ellipses. By means of the preceding devices, the narrator’s views are identified with Delano’s. These are the two directions taken by narration and focalization, in the first place:

focalized <————————- narrator <———————- character

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In this case, the character is the perceptual focalizer, but the narrator is the ideological focalizer. Both of them focalize the same thing, but the narrator’s perspective of the object is the one which is manifested. An example is the description of the approaching ship. The character’s perceptions are not taken into account and it is here that we can abstract the traits of the narrator. This is a misleading character-bound focalization. That the narrator looks at the same things at the same time as Delano has the advantage that the narrator can introduce additional information, and present two views as one, thus creating a more complex and poetical record of events. This allows the inclusion of anticipations as well. There is more interpretation than observation in these descriptions. Other times we find:

focalized object <—————- Delano <—————- Narrator

In this case, Delano is the focalized object, and the narrator presents Delano’s focalizations (with or without intruding on them). Therefore, the narrator’s overlapping focalization is not in the external object, but in Delano’s thoughts. If there is any discrepancy between focalizations, it cannot be so easily noticed as in the previous case. Character-bound focalization is real in this case. Another aspect concerning the narrator is his unreliability, since he has been attached to the character who knew less about the situation presented. The narrator could have discarded Delano«s interpretation of things, and he could also have offered the reader the right version of events aboard the San Dominick, but he remains silent. This silence is only partial: as we discover afterwards, the gothic shadow the narrator projects on events is essential for the reader to understand that events are “darker”, more tragic than Delano thought. The narrator«s occasional interventions are omens of what the reader will find out later on. However, limited focalization is the basis of the narrative -it strengthens suspense-, and the narrator«s intrusions are anticipations that the reader cannot grasp until the very end, like Delano. This short story, like “Mr. Higginbotham’s Catastrophe”, is codified by means of character-bound focalization, only to establish its inadequacy at the end. Then, in order to understand what happens, the narrator must intervene. Only when Delano«s revelation occurs, does the narrator establish himself as a different entity, responsible for the narration. Then the narrator compares the speed of narration time and the speed of fabula time: “In images far swifter than

150 SHORT STORY WORLD: THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY AMERICAN MASTERS these sentences, the minutest details of all his former distrust swept through him.” (Melville, 1949: 323). At this moment the narrator judges Delano for the first time (and separates from him momentarily) by using an adjective:

That moment, across the long-benighted mind of Captain Delano, a flash of revelation swept, illuminating, in unanticipated clearness, his host’s whole mysterious demeanor, with every enigmatic event of the day, as well as the entire past voyage of the San Dominick. (Melville, 1949: 328) (My emphasis)

The narrator has presented himself up to this moment as limited in order to highlight the character’s limitation. The narrator«s unreliability lies in the choice he has made, since he has been bound to the only character in the story that has been continually wrong. This selection shatters the convention that the narrator is allied to that character who can best express or notice what is happening. In any case, the narrator has been bound to a perspective that, within a group of characters, can best symbolize man«s engagement in two different realities, that of his own mental constructions and that of reality “outside” him. It is not only that man can never know the truth because of his prejudiced mind, as in “Mr. Higginbotham’s Catastrophe”, but that evil conspiring forces actually exist, and they deceive the protagonist. If the first extradiegetic narrators of short narratives had a maximum degree of overtness, monopolizing focalization as well, focalization is progressively handed over to the character, thus highlighting the problems involved in limited focalization: deception and lack of adjustment to reality. If approaching the focalized (the event or the object) implies approaching the character (the focalizer), we are shown how the reader’s conceptual distance from the event seems to be greater the more the narrator approaches him. Narrators become less and less perceptible, and a degree of overtness is channelled, rather than through commentary, as was typical of early stories, but through almost imperceptible interference with the character’s focalizations. Short story writers are growing out of their initial awkwardness and are now able to handle the system of focalization and narration in a way that contributes to the depth and complexity of the genre.

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III. The local color school

III. 1. Bret Harte’s Short Stories: Textual analysis

1. The fabula

1.1. The narrative cycle

We will proceed with our analysis in the same order we followed in the previous chapter. It will be convenient to examine the narrative cycle firstly; once it is abstracted from the text it serves as the axis that explains fundamental principles of the short story. We need to know how many and what kind of events are included in the fabula, how the events are organized in the fabula, and what is the significance of the fabula. This abstraction also allows to foresee the kind of treatment these elements will be given in the text in order to compare this hypothetical arrangement with the actual organization of the text. When studying these new range of short stories, it will be necessary for us to bear in mind the steps already taken by the previous authors. Sometimes we will find common structures at the three levels of the short story, but changes are bound to occur. And these new perspectives can be said to contribute to the development of a genre which was established in the nineteenth century by the first masters, whose powerful influence could be felt by the next generation of writers. We will analyse the following short stories by Bret Harte: “The Luck of Roaring Camp”, “Tennessee’s Partner” and “The Outcasts of Poker Flat”. We observe that, as had become customary for previous short stories in our corpus,

153 MARêA JESÚS HERNÁEZ LERENA they consist of a double narrative cycle. Previous analysis showed that all the short stories had a twofold nature, and that the significance of the narrative depended on links established between the two narrative cycles. The stories had either two actors associated with a different narrative cycle which appeared simultaneously in the text, or the stories included two different actions developed and realized in a separate manner. Although in Bret Harte«s stories these two cycles relate differently, they share with other stories one idea: the actor or actors change their aim in the course of the fabula, and their aspirations and efforts are then redirected towards a different field of experience from that presented at the beginning. These are the narrative cycles that we can abstract from the three texts:

“The Luck of Roaring Camp”:

1st NARRATIVE CYCLE. Aim: to save a motherless Indian baby. 1. Possibility: a marginal male community will try to raise the baby. 2. Realization: how this uneducated community cares for the child. 2a. There is an embedded process of regeneration. 3. Result: survival.

2nd NARRATIVE CYCLE. Aim: to form a decent society. 1. Possibility: that each man has to change his inappropriate behaviour. 2. Realization: the way everyone in the camp gives up bad habits. 3. Final result: There is a flood and they all die.

These two narrative cycles are embedded, the second and third phase of the first one generates the other: 2a. originates 1. (possibility) of the second cycle, and the final result is opposed to the result in the first narrative cycle. Later on we will examine how both results relate to each other since they are the key to the meaning of the story.

“The Outcasts of Poker Flat” follows the same structure: the second narrative cycle is a consequence of the first one, in which survival is replaced by self-denial:

1st NARRATIVE CYCLE 1. A group of “corrupted” people are forcefully driven out from a village. (Initial state of deficiency) Possibility: survival

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2. Realization: they leave and have to make a dangerous journey through the wilderness. 2a. A couple about to marry joins the group. 3. Result: all the “roughs” behave differently in order to please the young couple.

2nd NARRATIVE CYCLE 1. Possibility: That generosity prevails among the group. 2. Realization: Every character becomes selfless. 3. Result: They become trapped in the snow and die.

Abstracting the two cycles of “Tennessee’s Partner” entails problems because it consists of a number of episodes. However, it is possible to account for these episodes as cycles because they represent actions which are foreseen, realized, and concluded in a specific way. However, we intuit that the abstraction of narrative cycles depends on each reader to a very great extent; different readers may come up with a different amount of narrative cycles. All narratives are filled with incidents and our search for symmetry may distort the original design of the text. Let«s briefly consider the concept of narrative cycle itself. How do we form the idea of narrative cycle?, is it shaped exclusively by our organization of the elements of the fabula, or do textual markers condition this abstraction? I believe that only the second question is valid. For one thing, the above abstractions of Harte«s short stories seems to be an attempt to force our way (as critics) into the particular texts. Besides, another short story, tale, or novel with the very same elements would have demanded a different abstraction, because every text makes some elements relevant and some others irrelevant. This means that the fabulas of different literary works can never be the same, even if they have the same plot. We cannot pretend that the fabula reaches us before we have read the text. Once we have gone through the text, the fabula will be a consequence of our conclusions about the text. Every fabula is a product of the after-reading, and our abstraction is never free from the worldview conveyed by the text. We cannot abstract and order the causal relations among the elements as if they had been produced in a blank space. An example of this takes us back to our analysis of Poe´s “The Tell-Tale Heart”. In this story the fabula did not consist of a man who wanted to kill another man, although this is the kind of simplification demanded by narratology. The fabula of this story is that a man believed in the existence of an evil eye and he directed all his efforts to eliminate it. The specificity of that short story involves a rendering of

155 MARêA JESÚS HERNÁEZ LERENA human behaviour in particular terms, within a certain system of relationships, and this system must be included in our abstraction of the fabula. However, we must not conclude that fabula abstraction is a useless exercise. Once we bear in mind its relative nature, it helps us to imagine a “bare” structure which allows us to identify crucial ideas around which action and psychology revolve. In the case of Harte«s stories, we realize that they are based on the replacement of one aim by another, and that the new aim will provoke important changes in action and in characters« attitude. The first narrative cycle is unintentional, that is, it does not depend on the characters« will, instead, an unexpected situation calls for changes 37. The inhabitants of Roaring Camp have to face a surprising occurrence: a birth. Tennessee’s Partner will have to face betrayal, and the outcasts of Poker flat are driven out of the village and have to face the wilderness, which is a new situation for them. These initial narrative cycles will have success as a result. But this result brings about a change of aim, the characters will aspire for something else than survival, they will adopt a deliberate attitude towards themselves and the others which will justify their lives. In “The Luck of Roaring Camp” this second aim - fleshed out by the second narrative cycle- is spiritual regeneration. The aim of the second cycle in “Tennessee’s Partner” is to help Tennessee, and in “The Outcasts of Poker Flat” the aim is to give comfort and solace to the young and inexperienced couple that have joined the outlaws on their journey. Deficiency is not felt by the actors until they have to face this new situation. That is, the characters were not aware of their defects and vices until the unexpected makes its appearance. Besides these changes in fabula structure, there are also textual signs that divide the fabula into a multiplicity of narrative cycles. These textual marks are mainly indicators of place. Whenever an episode about the characters is told, there is an brief description of nature«s moods, either at the beginning or at the end or both. This brief sketch provides each episode, in which only one event is narrated, with a sense of closure. In this way the fabula is divided into thematic units whose time span is clearly separated by the inclusion of an element of the fabula: nature. Nature can be classified as an actor because it has power to act. Nature is ever-lasting and superior to the actors« apparently insignificant drama.

37. Harte«s short stories, like Irving«s, Hawthorne«s, Melville«s, and Poe«s short stories, are based on a lack of intentionality. This means that a power external to the character will trigger off events. This relationship between subject and aim produces a particular perspective of experience: man is always at the mercy of superior or uncontrollable forces.

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Apart from the inclusions of place, which sometimes supports the characters« actions and sometimes thwarts their projects, we are led to consider each episode as complete because each thematic nucleus is constructed cyclically, in such a way that there is a repetition of some initial elements at the end. The scene in “The Luck of Roaring Camp” when Kentuck decides to visit the baby may serve as an example. After presenting Kentuck«s hesitation and his shyness in the presence of the baby and his midwife (a role performed by Stumpy), he repeats the same words he had uttered when he first saw the child: “There was a pause - an embarrassing one- Stumpy still holding the door. Then Kentuck had recourse to his finger, which he held up to Stumpy. `Rastled with it, - the d—-d little cuss´ he said, and retired.” (Harte, 1966: 15). Temporal indicators also separate the narrative cycles. “The next day”, “On the long summer days”, “It was a warm night”, “toward morning”. These are usually neutral indicators of the passing of time but in these fabulas they acquire special significance. Time is only made to pass after an action has been completed. They indicate that danger has been overcome or that another peril looms large. Contact among the actors is interrupted when the night comes and their relationships have been clarified by the previous episode; the next day will be full of new expectations. This structure reflects the kind of life early American settlers lead: survival was obviously the main goal. Each day lived meant a victory, or, to express it in narratological terms: the third stage, or the result, was successful. Therefore, a short time span constitutes a complete narrative cycle per se. These narrative cycles are formed by a nucleus of high intensity in which something punctual has been achieved. “The Outcasts of Poker Flat” is an example. Each day represents a narrative cycle where dangers have to be overcome and relationships between the actors have to be re-shaped. The events of one day stand separately from the events of the following day. Each narrative cycle contains a tiny scene which quotes the words of one or two characters. This inclusion of several narrative cycles represents a novelty after the work of previous short story writers. The short story writer has learnt that he can expand the limits of an apparently reduced time span by creating the illusion that much has happened. The reader will be left with the impression that he has had unrestricted access to the eventful lives of a number of characters. In the previous chapter we said that in order to create the illusion of expansion and of depth, short stories were built around a double fabula (added to a double narrative

157 MARêA JESÚS HERNÁEZ LERENA cycle), and both at fabula level and text level a disruption of our sense of chronological time was carried out. Harte«s new method, accumulation, also allows concentration: several courses of action refer to one common element.

These are the narrative cycles of “Tennessee’s Partner”:

1st NARRATIVE CYCLE 1. Tennessee’s Partner leaves home because he wants to marry. 2. He finds a woman. 3. He marries her and returns home. (Each cycle is separated by an allusion to an aspect of nature) 2nd NARRATIVE CYCLE 1. Tennessee flirts with his Partner’s wife. 2. They escape together. 3. Tennessee returns home without her. 3rd NARRATIVE CYCLE 1. Tennessee becomes a highway man. 2. He is pursued by a party of men. 3. He is finally caught. 4th NARRATIVE CYCLE 1. Tennessee is judged. 2. His Partner defends him in the trial. 3. Tennessee is hanged. 5th NARRATIVE CYCLE 1. Tennessee’s Partner wants to bury Tennessee. 2. He takes his body and buries it. 3. He returns home having done his duty. 6th NARRATIVE CYCLE 1. Tennessee’s Partner falls ill. 2. He goes away on his horse. 3. He meets Tennessee again, who has returned home.

All the cycles are parallel in the sense that all of them describe a process in which one of the characters leaves and he returns, always performing different actions. In “The Outcasts of Poker Flat” the action which connects the cycles is the act of hiding some fact in order to avoid suffering. This process gradually assumes greater importance in the life of the actors:

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1. Mr. Oakhurst, the gambler, hides his disgust at the situation, while the others don’t. 2. He conceals the fact that Uncle Bill has made away with their horses so as not to show this wickedness to “the innocent” and the girl. 3. The Duchess does not tell the girls about her profession. 4. Mother Shipton starves so that her food can go to the girl, and does not even wake up the others to tell them she’s dying. 5. The Duchess refuses to tell the girl that they were going to die soon. 6. Oakhurst does not tell the Duchess and the girl he will kill himself so that they can die peacefully. All narrative cycles, like those of “The Luck of Roaring Camp”, have in common a progressive process of improvement, which in “The Luck” meant regeneration and in “Tennessee’s Partner” meant faithfulness. As occurred in the short stories analysed in chapter two, the relationships among the narrative cycles become the main source of significance.

1.1.1. Links between the stages Another type of relationship which reinforces the bonds between the two cycles is the “double result” of the fabula. In the previous chapter, we said that fabulas were based on the concealment of crucial information. In contrast, in Bret Harte’s short stories we know every event and its cause from the very beginning, and the identity of the actors is also disclosed from the start. In spite of this, Harte«s narratives have the same effect as previous fabulas: we do not fully understand the scope of the events until the very end of the narrative. This is so because only at the end do we realize that the aim -the characters« aspiration- has changed in the course of the fabula, and this different aim makes us see characters in a different light. Apparently, the result of Harte«s fabulas is unsuccessful: death, inability to survive. But this result was related to the aim of survival. Once the aim of survival is replaced by the aspiration to form a decent society, we start to wonder if the real result of the fabula is unsuccessful, because, after all, the characters did fulfil this latter aspiration. The reader has to separate two levels of meaning in the narrative: the chronological order of events, and the consequences of those events. The first level comes to an end with death, the second level shows that life continues: once men abide by Christian laws, death is only a passage to eternal life. Let«s consider this interpretation in more detail.

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Although the child called “Luck” in “The luck of Roaring Camp” and the actors who perform the role of parents are not able to survive the flood, the aim established in the second narrative cycle, that of overcoming selfishness and bad habits, still applies. That makes the result of the second narrative cycle invalid and irrelevant since the real aim, an offer of kindness and love, and not that of survival, is achieved. Kentuck«s last words show the irrelevance of what is happening to him at that moment -he is about to die- because he thinks that what happened to him since the child arrived is more important. In the following scene people from other settlements come near Kentuck, who keeps a firmly hold of the child«s dead body:

As they bent over the strangely assorted pair, they saw that the child was cold and pulseless. “He is dead”, said one. Kentuck opened his eyes. “Dead?” he repeated feebly. “Yes, my man, and you are dying too.” A smile lit the eyes of the expiring Kentuck. “Dying”, he repeated’ “ he’s a-taking me with him. Tell the boys I’ve got The Luck with me now.” (Harte, 1966: 21).

Although this final result seems to be the logical end of a process of deterioration, Kentuck is unaffected by this process. He shows contempt for “physical” death. For him it does not represent a defeat, but it means that his life is transcendent. It is a victory over nature, and its significance lies in the fact that the result possesses a degree of intentionality, it is deliberate sought by the character. The same happens in “The Outcasts of Poker Flat”, the two women´s death entails renewed life. Once the Duchess dies, a new Duchess is born: when people look at her, they think she is a member of their society, that she had been a decent woman. The values brought about by the aim of the second narrative cycle remain unchanged: they relate to each other as equals, and these values can be perceived even by outsiders: when they find their corpses, they are moved by the purity of their faces. This is reflected in the text as follows:

And when pitying fingers brushed the snow from their wan faces, you could have scarcely have told from the equal peace that dwelt upon them which was she that had sinned. Even the law of Poker Flat recognize this, and turned away, leaving them still locked in each other’s arms. (Harte, 1966: 251)

Moral values make survival and self-interest secondary. This is the reason why we said that although these fabulas do not hide information, we still need to reorganize the narrative cycles in an order of relevance so that we can fully understand the text.

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1.1.2. The actors In order to reorganize the stages of the narrative cycles, we need to ascertain the degree of intentionality involved, that is, we have to identify the actor«s function within the fabula. Previous short stories were characterized by a lack of intentionality in the first narrative cycles and by a result also unconnected to the actor«s willpower. The individual had very little influence on the course of events. But Harte«s fabulas differ from that model because the second narrative cycle is intentional, it is created by the character. If we have reorganize the contents of the fabula of “The Luck of Roaring Camp” according to a criterion of relevance, we have this: 1. Aim: to achieve a total physical and moral regeneration of the “uncivilized” people in Roaring Camp. 2. Realization: it is achieved progressively by offering presents to the child, by their clean habits, by giving up swearing, and by a sudden regard for flowers and other elements of nature. 3. Result: the renewal of the actors’ morality has been so thorough that the most powerful attack to their lives does not destroy this spirit. According to this scheme, we cannot say that the result of the second narrative cycle is arbitrary (accidental death), since the actors take an active role in an action that is presented ultimately as the only relevant one in the fabula. Once we have balanced the narrative cycles, we realize that actors are more powerful than circumstances. The power of the fabula (that quality or agent which either facilitates or blocks the achievement of the aim) is not nature, because it does not prevent the achievement of the actor«s aim. Nature is an opponent, and the power lies in the innate virtues of the actors. There is a contrast between these two different types of fabulas, in the earlier ones the result exceeded the expectations of the actors. For the first time the fabulas represent a model of action where the will of man has influence upon his own life. Nature, which represents that which man cannot control, does not thwart the processes of improvement in these fabulas (the flood or the snowfall) 38. Its superior power does not impress us as the final or the most important result. The result is brought about by actors, not by a power beyond them.

38. We consider that the result of the second narrative cycle, death, does not modify the process of improvement produced after the choice of a subjective aim: self-improvement.

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1.1.3. The Actantial Structure The stages of the narrative cycle are organized in such a way as to allow the identity of several actors to be changed suddenly due to an unexpected factor. This new identity appears as definite in the final test of the result. In “The Luck of Roaring Camp”, Kentuck sticks to the child without losing faith. In “Tennessee’s Partner”, the subject remains loyal to Tennessee even after death. In “The Outcasts of Poker Flat” the people from the village recognize goodness in the outcasts when they have died. The structure of the fabulas analysed in the second chapter revolved around the reversal of identity or around the surprising disclosure of an event. The final awareness of Harte«s fabulas is not related to our discovery of hidden information -the text reflects all the events of the fabula in their order- but to a our reconsideration of what has been taking place. In this process we will relate the events of the time span of the fabula to a much longer temporal sequence: the indefinite and infinite time after death. Actors in earlier fabulas were placed in situations they could not wholly understand. These situations were not necessarily related to the uncanny, but to the deceptive conditions in which information was given. Their originality derived from a very modern perspective on the artificiality of language and the manipulation of reality. The relationship of the actor with the events is different now, the actor«s task is not to understand or to interpret correctly, but to cope with a situation for which he is not prepared. This is the most relevant issue concerning the period in American history which Harte wishes to portray: man coping with new conditions. The actors are specified, therefore, according to the value of competence, which is highlighted in contrast with the predominant aspect which specified actors in the previous fabulas, that of truth value. The case in which a complete actantial group is false cannot be found in Harte’s short stories, but was very common in previous fabulas. All actors in Harte«s fabulas are characterized by an apparent lack of competence in performing their required roles. The text will exploit the way in which they develop new traits in order to fulfil their tasks. A bunch of lawless men who live amongst duels over gamecards, heavy drinking and swearing become fathers, midwives and mothers, nannies, teachers and members of a choir. In another instance, a simpleton becomes a lawyer and a priest: he attempts to defend his friend in a court trial, and then tries to offer him a dignified burial. A gambler and a prostitute become a kind married couple, and an old prostitute becomes a competent teacher in “The Outcasts of Poker Flat”.

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In these fabulas each actor possesses traits which are opposed to those they seemed to have at the start. Another innovation is that we can speak of actants for the first time, that is, of a number of actors who behave similarly. Only in “Benito Cereno” and in “Young Goodman Brown” could we find actantial groups, but they were not given much textual relevance. Harte«s stories include more actors than previous narratives, and these actors are made to perform the same function. The first stage of the fabula creates a situation that brings actors together. Birth makes the components of a group of individualistic men behave as if they were one man, and this is the argument which opens “The Luck of Roaring Camp” is opened:

There was commotion in Roaring Camp. It could not have been a fight, for in 1850 that was not novel enough to have called together the entire settlement. The ditches and claims were not only deserted, but “Tuttle«s grocery” had contributed its gamblers, who, it will be remembered, calmly continued their game the day that French Pete and Kanaka Joe shot each other to death over the bar in the front room. The whole camp was collected before a rude cabin on the outer edge of the clearing. (Harte, 1966: 12)

After this there are several references to the identical behaviour of all the inhabitants in the camp: “The door closed on the extempore surgeon and midwife, and Roaring Camp sat down outside, smoked its pipe, and awaited the issue.” In this example, as in “[t]he camp rose to its feet as one man”, an entire crowd behaves as a father who is eagerly waiting for the birth of his child, there being just one actant. Mieke Bal defines the term as follows:

An actant is a class of actors that shares a certain characteristic quality. That shared characteristic is related to the teleology of the fabula as a whole. An actant is therefore a class of actors whose members have an identical relation to the aspect of telos which constitutes the principle of the fabula.” (p. 26)

Kentuck, Stumpy, Cokney Simmons, and all those actors that are not given a name, can be considered as one actant since they share the same aim: to create a better world for the child. Everyone will develop a particular attitude which represents an improvement on his previous life, virtue will replace a sinful past. The same can be applied to “The Outcasts of Poker Flat”, and to “Tennessee’s Partner”, although in this short story the actants belong to the group of opponents, those that chase Tennessee, take him to court, hang him and attend the burial. These opponents are not described as individuals, but as a group.

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There are two kind of actants in each short story, those who abide by the law and those who do not. The protagonists will have nothing to interpret or to decipher; instead they will try to adjust to social convention. In “The Luck of Roaring Camp” we find just one actant, the male community of Roaring Camp, there are no opponents but nature itself. The fabula of these three stories does not develop the relationships between these two actantial groups, “heroes versus enemies”, but between the components of the main group. The opponents are mere initiators of the actions or they are an audience. As a result, we observe that these stories do not elaborate on the connections a novelist would surely concentrate on: the intercourse between subject, helpers, and opponents. This is due to the fact that in Harte«s stories either all the actors behave as one actant or that the opponents are not given any characteristic trait and remain anonymous. The following are the conclusions which may be reached after having identified fabula structure in Harte«s narratives and having compared it to the previous group of short stories. They refer to concepts such as the narrative cycle, the double result, the redefinition of the events and of the actors respectively: 1. In order to produce the effect of continuity, the writer includes a number of narrative cycles which accumulate in our memory and give us the impression that we have been witnessing action for a long time. The temporal bounds of the story are expanded as a result. The reader designs a narrative cycle with the help of different textual markers. Descriptions of nature, for example, invite us to consider every event as an autonomous nucleus of emotional intensity which embodies the actor«s adjustment to each new situation. The text conveys a very minute concept of narrative cycle which has to be accommodated into our expectations of fabula progression. 2. These fabulas are similar to the ones in the previous group of stories with regards to the aim. This aim undergoes a change, it is external or objective at the beginning and it progressively becomes internal or subjective. This shift in perspective provides the narrative with a sense of development. As in previous fabulas, the third stage or the result, exceeds the the actors« expectations and acquires an unexpected dimension for the reader. The first aim of survival (physical survival) calls for a moral or ethical reconsideration of the actors« action. However, the sense of closure is achieved differently. Not only one, but two results are presented, one is positive and the other one is negative. The reader can make a choice and his selection provides the text with closure, also the reader is

164 SHORT STORY WORLD: THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY AMERICAN MASTERS aware that in fact there are two stories, not one. In previous stories, the reader learned at the end that only one storyline was authentic, once essential information was disclosed, he was able to dismiss his previous interpretation of events. The reader of Harte«s stories arranges the stages of the fabula according to relevance criteria. Thematic saliency will replace a mere chronological design of sequences. Survival appears as the first aim and death as the last result, but death does not imply frustration or failure: something has happened between those two points of the fabula which invalidates the importance of death. 3. What matters is not what happens in reality, in a world of facts, but what happens in the character«s mind. As in modern literature, more importance is given to what the characters think than to what they do. In view of this, the concept of event provided by narratology has to be redefined. The notion of event does not necessarily involve a change or alteration in the fictional world, an event may also be a perception. This notion allows a more free handling of time at the level of the story since the individual«s subjectivity may be the only source of events. In the previous chapter we observed how the fabulas were based on the non-existence of events (“Mr. Higginbotham’s Catastrophe”), there was no contact or a faulty contact between the individual and the world (“The Piazza”). The narrative was an exploration of character, his environment often remained unchanged. This aspect is again manifested at the level of the fabula, as in “The Luck of Roaring Camp”, where external happenings do not influence the actors, or at the level of the text, as in “Tennessee’s Partner”. In this case, the text indicates which events are important by devoting large amounts of information to apparently trivial incidents. We will examine how the text “redefines” events in another section. 4. Truth value is no longer relevant to specify the relationships between the characters, but the category of competence. Actors in previous fabulas were built on the grounds of the contrast to be/ to appear. Harter«s fabulas revolve around the contrast to be/to become. Actors do not have to deal with false appearances, but to cope with the difficulty of living in uncivilised country. An unexpected turn of events will make them reconsider what their life should be like. The actantial structure is based on the contrast between the real identity of actors, they are fugitives, gamblers, prostitutes, murderers, and the kind of tasks they will have to perform: nursing, singing, teaching. They are constructed on the contrast between what they are and what they do. There is in these fabulas a greater amount of actors. Rather than focusing on a single individual, the stories present a single external stimulus to which all actor react. Former fabulas showed how the individual assimilated his reality.

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This first approach to the fabula creates certain expectations as to how the text will deal with some of the main issues of the fabula: the inclusion of several narrative cycles, the treatment of characters, and the ways the author will guide us in our interpretation. We foresee that this cumulative method requires a different use of focalization and narration from the one used previously, since the author needs a narrative strategy that enables him to offer information about a great deal of events. All the narrative cycles we have described cannot be expressed in the text at length. Therefore the presence of an omniscient narrator is necessary to handle this eventful diegetic level, a narrator who can sum up, omit, and organize the temporal sequences appropriately. The chronological order of the fabula will be maintained since the actors are not engaged in their own imaginings but in changing an external reality. Time is not the power or the opponent in the fabula, and therefore will not be the origin of problems. Besides, the chronological order of the fabula is followed in the text because the reader will be compelled to search for an order of the elements which is set in contrast with the “then and then” sequence. When dealing with the amount of information devoted to events in previous short stories, we explained that the reader did not need much information because the story concentrated on a situation which “swallowed” the character immediately. The short story could suppress detailed information about the individual as the individual did not develop his own “self” but untypical traits which were unexpected for the reader. Harte’s short stories reflect that very same pattern. The actor develops characteristics which do not belong to him logically. However, Harte«s stories are situation-oriented to a greater extent than the previous stories, and due to this predominance of events, not so much information will be aimed at the characters. In earlier short stories the omission of information served the purposes of thematic compression and of suspense. Harte«s fabulas include a relatively big amount of characters, but the limited space allotted by the short story implies that they will not be characterized at length. Harte«s method is to include certain allusions which are conspicuous enough for the reader to remember. Each actor is made to react in a distinct, clear, or surprising way to a situation, and this behaviour becomes typical of his attitude. Only this reaction of the character will be shown. Harte designs the situations in such a way that a single sentence uttered by a character immediately catalogues him. If earlier stories attempted to undermine the omniscience of the narrator by proving him fallible or unreliable, Harte will again turn to a narrative agent with

166 SHORT STORY WORLD: THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY AMERICAN MASTERS superior knowledge. We will discuss the implications of his technique in the section devoted to focalization and narration.

1.1.4. A definition of short story Although Bret Harte’s short stories present a different fabula structure, we observe that the fundamentals of the short story remain valid for all the short stories analysed so far. We have said that the fabula presents a frame (that of the first narrative cycle) in which a second narrative cycle is embedded, and this cycle invalidates the first one by rejecting its influence or by pointing to its limitations. The change embedded in the second narrative cycle, which remains unchanged in spite of the result, constitutes the moral of the story in the particular case of Harte. As a rule, the fulfilment of the second narrative cycle makes the narrative diverge from the values established at the starting point. The result of the first narrative cycle, which acts as a frame for the story, is annulled or modified by subsequent embedded process:

Frame: SURVIVAL...... DEATH Embedded process: change of aim

Actors take on a different identity, they are “renamed” in the process, and their initial frame of referentiality is abandoned as other traits are manifested. The short story tends to create some expectations which will eventually be frustrated, and this process can be described as the “re-orientation” by the unexpected. A re-arrangement of elements is produced. At the beginning some assumptions are thought to be true, credible, “safe”. Then, these initial assumptions are proved to be unacceptable, either because they are too shallow to reflect the truth, as in “The Outcasts of Poker Flat” or because they are wrong, as in “Tennessee’s Partner”. The knowledge we bring with us cannot fully grasp a reality as it is ultimately presented in the short story. We have to learn to perceive differently. The effect that these stories have on the reader can be compared to the figures of speech: tropes bring back conspicuousness to language, they show the relationships between man and reality in a new light. The reader is forced to stop and think again about a long-established belief or conclusion. In the short story we participate in a similar process, we are compelled to discard customary ways of thinking about reality or story. This

167 MARêA JESÚS HERNÁEZ LERENA generalization can be applied to all texts since Poe, although each narrative has made use of different methods to reach this common pattern.

1.1.5. Definition of new concepts The double result and the redefinition of events offer possibilities of studying how very often in the short story the text literally denies the events of the fabula, giving relevance to other kind of events that are opposed to those of the fabula the reader has abstracted. It is necessary to find another term which accounts for this kind of strategy. In order to do this, we must differentiate the “abstracted fabula” and the “reorganized fabula”. The former can be applied to narratives which deal with the same events. For example, a child raised by a male community, or a narrative in which a group of outcasts discover love and friendship in a hostile environment. But the reorganized fabula is only related to a particular literary text. It accounts for the events that form part of the dynamics of the text itself. It differs from the abstracted fabula in the kind of relationships between the narrative cycles and between the events. Thus, we believe that the following concepts may be useful for a better application of the narratological method: 1. Event: It was previously defined as the cause (an incident or a process) that changes the initial situation of the fabula. Now it is defined as a particular mental relationship (perceptual, emotional, imaginary, psychological) between the subject and the object. It can also produce changes in the fabula. 2. Double narrative cycle: there are at least two narrative cycles in all short stories, being the relationships between their stages the source of the significance of the narrative. 3. Double fabula: it is possible to be confronted with two fabulas, being impossible for the reader to ascertain which of these two fabulas the text adheres to, although both of them are included. 4. Abstracted fabula: it can be common to several texts. It has the same connotations as the notion of “fabula” as it is conceived by Mieke Bal. 5. Reorganized fabula: it belongs exclusively to one literary text. This category is the result of a process in which the narrative cycles, their stages, and components are ordered and classified according to their bearing on the text.

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2. Rhythm

The previous chapter devoted a separate section to the handling of time in the short story. However, in Harte«s short stories time does not play such an important role either in the fabula or in the text. Previous fabulas presented deceptive temporal frames or provoked in the reader a problematic reconstruction of the chronological order by omitting information or by offering false information. Those short stories depended on a disrupted linearity: several temporal segments were placed together and thus produced a meaning which could not have been obtained if the narrative had abided by the rational order. A progressive textual specification of time sequences served as a strategy to handle long spans of time. Stories opened in a temporal indefiniteness and came to an end by pinning down one particular issue which clarified the story. Texts were strongly focused from the very beginning: the subject appeared to be the victim of a pre-ordained plot whose result had been arranged beforehand. The passing of time made the character more intensely aware of his own position in this plot. This sense of acceleration was marked textually by the frequency of temporal references. In Harte«s narratives place substitutes time in the text as a sign of fabula movement. It is place the element of the fabula that appears progressively specified. It appears ultimately as the power that triggers off the events and points to their relevance in the fabula. In “The Luck of Roaring Camp” the actors´ death always goes together with the presence of nature, either to anticipate it by means of description or to cause the final catastrophe. Nature is also established in the text as responsible for the survival of the child. The increasing allusions to nature in “The Outcasts of Poker Flat” create an oppressive atmosphere, however hard the actors try to engage their minds in other matters. The menacing presence of snow is more and more difficult to ignore, as it is, for example, the beating of the heart in Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart”. What troubles characters is not time but place. In all the cases nature closes down on the events of the fabula by transcending them, since it appears eternal in contrast with the fugacious lives of the men that struggle against its power. Nature is presented in the text by means of a pause, and this sudden deceleration makes it conspicuous in the face of the massive use

169 MARêA JESÚS HERNÁEZ LERENA of summary in the text. The descriptions of nature are the only instances where the time of the fabula is not made to advance; they are the only static points which interrupt the rapid flux of time, and therefore, the reader turns to them for commentary on the characters’ actions. In these sudden pauses of progression in the story conclusions are drawn, the course of events temporarily come to a halt, and the narrator explains the consequence of events. Place substitutes time as a sign of fabula movement, and a different kind of suspense is created. The chronological order of events is not altered, the reader does not have to wait in order to understand. There is continuous accumulation of information, not of selection. The knowledge acquired in a certain temporal sequence will not be ascribed to another temporal sequence, as happened in previous stories. Information is dosed evenly: we are presented with all the information that is produced at the moment that is produced, with the exception of “The Outcasts of Poker Flat “, whose aim is the concealment of information. Suspense is produced differently, instead of gradual tension, there is a gradual relaxation. Firstly because the processes of improvement consist of the character’s adaptation to a situation and, secondly, because there are several anticipations that reveal the result. As a consequence, we will be only interested in how things happen, and not in what happens before the end, a demand that the textual process of accumulation satisfies. The vision of the fabula that the text presents is not so much psychological as situational or episodic. Characters are made dependant on location, which is the element with the power to change them, the power to which they must react: their lives are shaped by the conditions of nature, either by its nurturing role or by its devastating force. Previous narratives depended on the tricks of time: time is ever-changing, a destabilizing force. As a consequence, reality keeps changing, truth can never remain the same: those narratives presented values which the character could never be certain of. In contrast, Harte presents place as a certainty which can never be shaken off, its presence is constant and tangible, and it is equally perceived by all the characters. Harte’s short stories manifest this certainty at the end, they acknowledge the existence of an element that, in spite of being unmanageable, is predictable and it impresses characters because of its visible immensity. The flood and the snow storm are predicted by at least one character in “The Luck of Roaring Camp” and in “The outcasts of Poker Flat”. They know what is going to happen.

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These short stories also differ considerably from the previous ones in that summary predominates and scenes are almost absent. Each narrative cycle is reflected in the text by means of summary with occasional inlaid sentences uttered by the characters. These sentences seldom form a proper dialogue. The narrator is in sole charge of the text, and he only lets people speak when a sentence sums up the attitude of all the members of the actantial group. Also when the characters« opinion is in contrast with a more modern and civilized society of which the narrator is a representative. The following paragraph may serve as an example:

The next day Cherokee Sal had such rude sepulture as Roaring Camp afforded. After her body had been committed to the hillside, there was a formal meeting of the camp to discuss what should be done with her infant. A resolution to adopt it was unanimous and enthusiastic. But an animated discussion in regard of the manner and feasibility of providing for its wants at once sprang up. It was remarkable that the argument partook of none of those fierce personalities with which discussions were usually conducted at Roaring Camp. Tipton proposed that they should send the child to Red Dog, -a distance of forty miles-, where female attention could be procured. But the unlucky suggestion met with fierce and unanimous opposition. It was evident that no plan which entailed parting from the new acquisition would for a moment be entertained. “Besides”, said Tom Ryder, “them fellows at Red Dog would swap it, and ring in somebody else on us”. A disbelief in the honesty of other camps prevailed at Roaring Camp, as in other places. (Harte, 1966: 15)

There is no contrast here between summary and scene; most paragraphs are constructed like the previous one: there is a great deal of summarizing plus occasional interventions of the actors. This rhythmic organization in which the scene appears reduced to a sentence forcefully derives from the inclusion of so many narrative cycles, which calls for a method of characterization which operates on quick impressions rather than on full portraits. When we read these narratives, we may wonder if they fit into our concept of short story, since they are made up of an accumulation of anecdotes. Our notion of character or characterization may also be at odds with these barely outlined figures. The narrator seems to be the only entity within the narrative who justifies the inclusion of certain events and the omission of others. His purpose seems to be the description of a whole society which his urban readers would find picturesque. Because of the narrator’s existence as a separate perspective from that of the characters, his own reasoning directs the narrative towards one issue to which all

171 MARêA JESÚS HERNÁEZ LERENA the anecdotes point. He deals with “the regeneration of certain type of characters” not with characters individually, and then what acquires relevance is the type of situations recorded rather than exhaustive characterization. The narrator deals with a topic and not with characters, and that is why the text is constructed by an accumulation of facts organized thematically. Since ideas and not psychologies are important, there is no need to give a detailed account of the particular lives. Unlike Irving, Harte is able to make every anecdote relevant to the story: only by recording them is the world of the early settlers completely described. Besides, Harte«s short stories adhere to the time of the fabula, unlike Irving«s. These anecdotes are also necessary because characters are described through action, not through description, which would mean a pause in fabula time. Characters are shaped by the relationship between what they are doing now and what they used to do. Rhythm echoes one of the main characteristics of the fabula: people are named after their actions. No matter what their name was before they arrived at the camp: they will be renamed in a more adjusted way. There is a distrust of what convention has established in favour or more alert definitions of the self that may change according to different circumstances. In “Tennessee’s Partner” characters are christened again by what they actually do. Scenes are also different from the ones we usually find in novels. In novels we may follow the words of the characters as they speak to other characters. The scene gives us clues about their personalities and intentions. In these short stories all these manifestations of character are considerably abridged. We are just made to feel their presence, even if we do not know their name, their appearance, or their opinions. Nevertheless, they seize the reader’s mind with the same impression of reality as a novel might achieve, because the short story does not aim at completeness but at an atmospheric effect. Situations must be made real and plausible even if they last only a minute. From the point of view of the effect on the reader, we can say that the characters of a novel are identical to those of a short story, but that does not mean that they are constructed in the same way. In the short story we are not concerned about as many aspects of the characters as we are in the novel. This is one of the “discoveries” of the short story: a character is made credible just through a word or sentence. In the short story we are willing to accept as scenes parts of the text that would not be consider to be a proper scene in a novel, because we have to do without a load of information (without even realizing it): a single sentence uttered by a character in a discussion, for example, makes us imagine not only the kind of person he is, but the likely

172 SHORT STORY WORLD: THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY AMERICAN MASTERS reactions of other characters. Tom Ryder«s intervention in the previous passage, for example, illustrates an attitude shared by the other characters in that situation. No one continues the conversation after he has spoken, but that does not disturb our impression that we are witnessing a scene. We must bear in mind that in these short stories the particular relationships between the characters are not so important for the writer as the leading idea of the story. Due to this unconventional treatment, the scene is defined as a textual arrangement in which the main source of information is the narrator. Harte makes use of the visualizing power of words to make the reader believe that we are seeing something at the same moment it is happening. Also at the same pace, although there may be just summary and a two-sentence dialogue. The trick is to make the reader think he has seen everything by saying very little. Gestures are important. For example, the expression on Mother Shipton’s face when she realizes how innocent the young couple are, the Duchess’s embarrassment at being considered a decent woman, also Uncle Billy’s ironic remarks in “The Outcasts of Poker Flat”. Once an opinion is expressed, the reader knows how the other characters will react. Nothing more needs to be said. Speaking now in more general terms, the scene in the short story carries special significance. They are made to occupy a strategic or symbolic position: their location in the text and in the phase of the fabula contribute greatly to highlight the meaning of the narrative. The scenes form the core of the short story. In previous examples, the scene was always related to the same phases of the fabula, and it was taken for a symbolic summary of fabula development. It contained the relevant information needed to decode the text. “Ligeia” or “The Piazza” are two examples. The scenes signal the points of relevance of the short story, and they do not primarily serve to define character or to create suspense. They can be used for these purposes as well, but only secondarily. In “The Luck of Roaring Camp” the only scene deals with the christening of the child. That scene marks the main change in the fabula: for the first time in their lives, the inhabitants of Roaring Camp prefer religion and honesty to humour. The other events are a consequence of their decision. It is at that moment when they realize that they do not want the child to be like them. The main idea of the story is contained in that scene, after this, the particular details about the characters’ efforts to achieve the aim are expressed by means of summary. We said previously that the short story was based on a contradiction or a paradox: the rules of the (fictional) world at the beginning of the narrative are replaced by other rules that involve a shift in perspective. This reversal of values can be compared to

173 MARêA JESÚS HERNÁEZ LERENA the “rechristening” of characters so typical of Harte´s stories. In “Tennessee’s Partner” the only long scenes feature Tennessee’s Partner. His appearance in the trial, for example, does not serve mainly to define the character, since he has already been defined, or to reproduce extensively the comic nature of the situation, although the situation may be amusing. That scene contains the paradox at the heart of this short story. The scene of the trial proves that the name that Tennessee«s Partner was given by his neighbours is totally inadequate. This name was supposed to contain the essence of his personality: Tennessee«s Partner was just an attachment of Tennessee, he did not have an identity of his own. However, this scene shows Tennessee’s Partner as the only differentiated and active character in the group. He tries to help his Partner, and in order to do that, he has to face a hostile audience. He tries to make a speech and he offers all his money, risking his life in doing so. He is the only character who proves to be courageous and generous. The others, even Tennessee, do not seem to possess a trait that makes them different from the rest. In those scenes not even Tennessee appears as an individual, he joins the actantial group and his role is mainly passive. In the second scene, Tennessee’s Partner has to bury his friend, something nobody else knows how to do or cares about. However, it is Tennessee«s Partner again that takes a decision, he decides to do his best in the burial in contrast to an undifferentiated audience who just listens to him and goes away. These two scenes deal with those moments in which the rules of the village are invalidated: they believed that the name they give to people defined them once and for all. They believed that Tennessee«s Partner did not have a separate existence from Tennessee. However, the reader learns in these scenes how, in fact, Tennessee’s Partner is the only independent man in the whole community. The fabula of “The Outcasts of Poker Flat” also revolves around the topic of sacrifice. Characters initially complain about everything, they curse and are nasty to each other. Then we see that their main sign of regeneration is precisely not to tell others what they are thinking. When they are snowed in, they decide not to say anything which may spoilt their recently built democracy. One of the characters knows of their tragic fate, but he refuses to let them now, he wants the others to be hopeful until the very end. Suspense is created because the author does not inform the reader that a character keeps a secret. When this happens, the story slows down, and we can sense this different pace in contrast to the previous accounting of the incidents. Thus, to a greater extent than in the novel, rhythmical pattern is a useful tool to ascertain in the short story what Mieke Bal calls “the vision of the fabula.

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According to Bal: “The attention paid to the various elements gives us a picture of the vision of the fabula, which is being communicated to the reader.” (p. 69). Rhythm carries more weight in the short story than in the novel for another reason, in the short story a more extreme distortion of temporal sequences is carried out -especially if the time span of the fabula is long-, because the writer has less space than in the novel, and therefore rhythmical patterns stand out more clearly than in the novel. These patterns always offer clues to interpretation in the short story whereas it is not necessarily so in the novel, where scenes may serve more varied literary purposes such as offering a more complete portrait of the imaginary world, making the reader watch the character closely, or just making the reader a witness to a different world for a longer time. Rhythm in Harte«s short stories gives us a vision of the fabula, but it is also in correspondence with the characters« outlook on life. It contributes both to our abstraction of subject-matter (Bal«s suggestion) and to our approach to the character«s view. Let´s consider “Tennessee’s Partner”. The following is a list of the events of the fabula, which may expectations as to which parts will be given extensive treatment:

1. Tennessee’s Partner left his village to get a wife. 2. The chosen woman reacts favourably. 3. They get married and come back. 4. Tennessee flirts with Tennessee’s Partner’s wife. 5. She accepts him. 6. They escape together. 7. Tennessee returns to the village without Tennessee’s Partner’s wife 8. Tennessee«s Partner warmly welcomes Tennessee. 9. Tennessee commits robbery. 10. He is pursued and finally caught. 11. He is taken to court. 12. Tennessee’s Partner interrupts the trial to speak in favour of his friend. 13. In spite of Tennnessee«s Partner efforts, Tennessee is condemned. 14. Tennessee is hanged. 15. Tennessee’s Partner claims the body and buries it. 16. Tennessee’s Partner gets ill and dies. 17. Tennesee«s Partner meets his friend again, when he imagines that Tennessee is coming home drunk again.

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Of all these events, we would expect to be told thoroughly about events from 1 to 8 since they offer multiple possibilities for comedy, vengeance, renewed friendship, etc. And we are bound to consider the other events, -Tennessee becoming an outlaw and coming to a sticky end-, as the moral or the conclusion to the story. However the text briefly accounts for those events and stops momentarily on 10, 12 and 15. The text eliminates many elements in the fabula as irrelevant: the woman as a character, the rest of the village against Tennessee, the very actions of Tennessee. In fact, the text pays more attention to those events which we do not consider dramatic. The narrator himself makes a comment in order to explain this unexpected treatment of the story. After the marriage episode, he comments:

I am aware that something more might be made of this episode, but I prefer to tell it as it was current at Sandy Bar, -in the gulches and bar-rooms, - where all sentiment was modified by a strong sense of humor. (Harte, 1966: 32)

This is related to the “rule” established at the beginning of the fabula: that humour is the most important element for the people in Sandy Bar, any other interpretation of events, however tragic these events may be, would be considered ridiculous. The narrator explains that he has chosen the same rhythm for the story, since it reflects the characters« philosophy. These characters re-define the events, they give relevance to things that other societies would dismiss as unimportant. The text would do the same, it will re- define events and order them in a different hierarchy. Events that conventionally are thought to be the climax of any story: marriage, revenge, confronted friendship, pursuit, etc., take up just one sentence in this story. This is a way to define characters by showing their indifference towards the values common to most civilized societies. Characters will not be affected by these processes sanctioned as important in any other context. Events 12 and 15 are dealt with by means of two scenes (event 10 is contained by a scene of six sentences). The text places emphasis on the moments when Tennessee«s passivity is shown and Tennessee’s Partner goes to great lengths to help him. By omitting many parts, the text highlights the fact that Tennessee’s Partner keeps facing adversity. We never see Tennessee and Tennessee«s Partner speaking to each other. Not even in the trial. It is deeds and not words that show their enduring friendship, the scenes only focus on those situations in which

176 SHORT STORY WORLD: THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY AMERICAN MASTERS friendship is brought to the foreground. This use of narration seems to be derived from the initial norm or rule in the fabula -very frequent in Harte«s stories-, that words are not essential in life and identity is produced only through action. The text also echoes the characters« philosophy when it allows extensive treatment of the humorous situations in the trial and the burial. In “The Luck of Roaring Camp” a similar process is followed. Not much attention is paid to the death of the mother and the child, which supports our conclusion that death is unimportant. The end of the abstracted fabula, death, is not the same end of the re-organized fabula, eternal life. Rhythm in these short stories allows the reader to grasp the vision of the fabula. Perhaps more easily than in the novel, where rhythmic patterns may appear to be more difficult to trace and they may not be as closely related to the re-organized fabula as they are in shorter texts. These are some of the conclusions we have reached in our analysis: 1. Time is not an important principle in the fabula, and textual rhythm does not depend on it in the way it did in previous stories. In Harte«s narratives place substitutes time as a sign of fabula progression. The reader acquires a gradual knowledge of the fictional world, that is, he understand what is happening at the same time as the story unfolds. Previous narratives released important information only at the end. 2. As a consequence of the previous characteristic, chronological order remains undistorted and it is only mentioned on very few occasions. Rather than generating an increasing tension, as was typical of previous narratives, these stories allow the reader to relax, because the second narrative cycle already presents the means through which characters will be able to face difficulties. Both actors and readers are able to identify the aim halfway through the narrative, unlike the stories analysed in the previous chapter. Besides, the character«s revelation will be positive, it will be related to a process of improvement, whereas in previous stories the character becomes aware of a process of deterioration. In Harte«s short stories awareness involves a possibility to reform. However in stories such as “Benito Cereno”, “Bartleby”, “The Fall of the House of Usher”, the character has to face a reality hard to digest and the past cannot be amended easily. 3. Summary predominates over the rest of components of rhythm: scene, slow-down, ellipsis, etc. Its purpose is to account for a number of narrative cycles and for a number of actors, whose traits are given in few sentences. It also includes the narrator«s comments on humankind. The text rushes through a

177 MARêA JESÚS HERNÁEZ LERENA period of several years (“Tennessee’s Partner”), a year (“The Luck of Roaring Camp”), or several weeks (“The Outcasts of Poker flat “) only occasionally coming to a halt to present what the characters say. This massive use of summary is typical of the oral tale. In the short stories where scenes are not reduced, as in “Tennessee’s Partner “, the scene does not only aim at comic effect, but at presenting the paradox implicit in the narrative. The reader can find in it the clues to interpret the narrative. In previous short stories the scene was longer; there were normally two scenes which appeared closely connected: they represented the same phase in each narrative cycle with a different significance. The scene was important in previous fabulas for another reason: the narrator did not interfere to guide the reader. Thus, the reader«s knowledge was not superior to the character«s. This strategy was crucial for those short stories since they were based on the concealment of information. Nevertheless, both groups of stories share one characteristic: the ending is always presented by means of a scene dealing with a particular moment of the fabula. The author does not include any summary of the future to come, which leaves the story open to a variety of interpretations. By leaving things unexplained, the story remains with us, we keep wondering what the point of the story is.

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3. Characterization

Harte’s short stories represent an advance on previous short story strategies concerning the textual manifestation of character. The following analysis has been divided into brief sub-sections to provide scheduled explanation of the different aspects. Should comparison with previous conclusions be necessary, the task is simplified by having the concepts presented separately. Our aim is to be able to observe the extent to which the two groups of short stories, on the one hand, those of Irving, Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville, and on the other, those of Harte, share a common background and to what extent they are different. This theme will be dealt with in the following order: 1. Characters and situation: a) How the past and future of the imaginary world is presented (in the case that the past is only briefly alluded to). b) Which are the textual methods of description. 2. Treatment of the actants. 3. Reader/character relationships. 4. The problem of characterization.

3.1. Characters and situation

We have observed that characters in the short story experience a single change, and that the span of the text covers this change. This specific choice causes the text to be articulated between two opposed semantic fields: the characters develop another “self” which is unrelated to their first explicit traits. This can be said of both groups of stories, however, Harte introduces alterations in the ways characters are handled. In the first group of short stories, the character´s “maturation” was a slow process and very often it was presented only at the end: it was the reader«s task to collect all the information and make the necessary adjustments. In contrast, Harte«s stories present the change in the characters« attitude at the beginning, almost no time is devoted to deal with a past in which the characters were different. Characters are introduced to the reader almost at the same moment as they are changing. The question arises as to how to present a character about whom the reader knows almost nothing in a way that the change is noticed. The reader has to be

179 MARêA JESÚS HERNÁEZ LERENA confronted with two different set of traits, since the source of irony and amusement in the story depends on their contrast. The previous set of values is presented through allusion rather than full description. However brief these allusions may be, our image of the character does not appear to be incomplete, their graphic nature makes the reader imagine a character and a context. Any change in this picture becomes immediately apparent. “The Luck of Roaring Camp” opens with an event presented in one sentence that creates at the same time characterization and situation: “There was a commotion in Roaring Camp”, then, this commotion is followed by an allusion related to an actantial group which shares one common attitude:

The ditches and claims were not only deserted, but “Tuttle’s groceries” had contributed its gamblers, who, it will be remembered, calmly continued their game the day that French Pete and Kanaka Joe shot each other to death over the bar in the front room” (Harte, 1966: 11)

This strategy of characterization seeks to achieve distinctness. A distinctive feature of the character or characters is presented; no matter if this single feature is not accompanied by more information. We do not expect completeness in the short story, we just demand well-defined characters, characters whom we consider real, characters who make a situation real and appealing. This does not necessarily mean that characters will only possess “exaggerated” traits in order for us to remember them well, but that they are constructed around one trait. Very frequently, we do not even have to remember them, because it is the situation of which the form part the most important element in our understanding. The text creates a hierarchy in which situation is more relevant than character. This is how “The Outcasts of Poker Flat” begins:

AS MR. JOHN OAKHURST, gambler, stepped into the main street of Poker Flat on the morning of 23d of November, 1850, he was conscious of a change in its moral atmosphere since the preceding night. Two or three men, conversing earnestly together, ceased as he approached, and exchanged significant glances. (Harte, 1966: 241)

The text does not focus on the character after this introduction, although we expect to know more about Oakhurst, since we intuit he will be the protagonist of the story. The text proceeds by giving more information but about that particular situation. The passage continues:

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In point of fact, Poker Flat was “after somebody”. It had lately suffered the loss of several thousand dollars, two valuable horses, and a prominent citizen. It was experiencing a spasm of virtuous reaction, quite as lawless and ungovernable as any of the acts that had provoked it.

Later on the we will learn of “coolly philosophical nature” of Oakhurst, but before getting to know that, the reader has already created an image of the inhabitants of Poker Flat, and above all, of the situation that triggers off action. In the short story, characterization does not operate on a blank, it describes character through situation, and the character«s particular stance is what matters, regardless of everything else. That is the reason why the only thing we know about many of the characters is how they react to a specific situation. We are not interested in biography. In this short story, somebody comments:” `It’s agin justice«, said Jim Wheeler, `to let this yer young man from Roaring Camp -an entire stranger- carry away our money’.” In “The Luck of Roaring Camp” we watch somebody’s reaction to a mother’s pain: “Sandy Tipton thought it was `rough on Sal’, and, in the contemplation of her condition, for a moment rose superior to the fact that he had an ace and two bowers in his sleeve.”(Harte, 1966: 11-12) First situation, and then reaction, not personality and then situation. In the previous section we said that the rhythmic pattern of the text mirrors the characters’ way of thinking. In the same way, characterization also reproduces the kind of contact between the characters, where spontaneity predominates over depth. Both individual actors and actantial groups are characterized in the same way, with the only difference that the actants are not characterized by repetition. Actants are, for example, the group that chase Tennessee, the hypocritical inhabitants of Poker Flat, or the whole community in Roaring Camp. The main actors are described according to this scheme: 1) Presentation of an unusual situation. Characters respond to this situation following instinct. 2) Presentation of a series of situations in which characters show a different reaction from that presented at the start. The reader witnesses these changes. In “The Outcasts of Poker Flat”, Oakhurst first appears as a realistic man, the Duchess appears as hysterical and vain, Mother Shipton as a bad-tempered stubborn woman, and Uncle Billy as a sly drunkard; all this in one paragraph (Harte, 1966: 242-243).

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Then, the Duchess appears gradually as attentive, kind, helpful and brave, and the same applies to Mother Shipton. Uncle Billy, on the contrary, turns out to be a heartless thief, and Oakhurst remains the same despite being confronted by the same hardships. As a result, there is a “belated” description, that is, the text provides a description of the character long after the reader has constructed an image of him. It also means that conventional description -which implies a pause in fabula time- does not primarily serve the purpose of characterization, but any other purpose of the plot, such as comedy, contrast, and so on. In “Tennessee’s Partner”, the protagonist is described in the middle of the story, after he has been the subject of several narrative cycles. This description is placed at the moment when he enters the room where the trial is taking place. The description is not gratuitous, but necessary; at that moment all the audience’s eyes are set on him, and the description explains the kind of feelings awoken in the audience 39:

For he was not, certainly, an imposing figure. Short and stout, with a square face, sunburned into a preternatural redness, clad in a loose duck “jumper” and trousers streaked and splashed with red soil, his aspect under any circumstances would have been quaint, and was now even ridiculous. (Harte, 1966: 34)

The description continues for a while after this quotation. What describes characters is the anecdote. This is a new strategy: the anecdote as a means of description, in other words, narration as description. In all the cases, there have been several narrative cycles in which the image of the character has been formed. What the text presents is fundamentally the character’s verbal or non-verbal reaction to a concrete circumstance. The following excerpt has been taken from “Tennessee’s Partner”. Tennessee is pursued because he has become a highway man. Before the actual confrontation between Tennessee and the party of men who chase him, a new character appears, and he is simply described as “a small man on a grey horse”:

39. We must remember that the actors« contempt for anything other than action is their main trait. And that the narrator uses this trait as the method to tell his story. The context of this passage is the only context in which a pause in the course of events would be justified, because this description is presented when the other actors are looking at Tennessee«s Partner, it is not included ex tempore by the narrator.

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“What have you got there?- I call,” said Tennessee quietly “Two bowers and an ace” said the stranger as quietly, showing two revolvers and a bowie- knife. “That takes me” returned Tennessee; and, with this gambler’s epigram, he threw away his useless pistol and rode back with his captor”(Harte, p. 33)

If a vivid situation is created, the reader does not ask for more information. This situation points up how a confrontation is resolved, not physical appearance or psychology. So the reader does not notice that the characters’ faces are blank, or that they do not possess a name. The reader is made to observe the scene as in real life, where identities and motives remain unexplained. In this instance, the attention of the reader is fixed on just one point, one line of development. The novel may deal with more aspects, it is not enclosed by this restricted view. The short story benefits from this method in the sense that the fictional world needs not be presented discursively. Characters are not so important here, what matters is the situation, a leading idea, as we said before, and that is why some of the actors appear only once, and even the protagonists may be absent from the story for a relatively long time.

3.2. The actants

Harte arranges the actors into actantial groups. In previous short stories the actor or actors other than the protagonists became symbolic figures who embodied the subject’s obsessions (“Ligeia”, “Young Goodman Brown”, “The Piazza”) or caricatures (“Mrs. Bullfrog” “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”, “Bartleby”). We could also find the case where an actor in the fabula did not become a character in the text, since the text described him as an object (“The Tell-tale Heart”). As these secondary actors were presented in the text as abstractions, they were not given the same “reality” as the subject, they seemed to belong to a different dimension of existence. This was due to the excessive concentration on only one character. However, Harte’s secondary actors are presented by the same method of characterization as the one used for the protagonists, so the reader could place them in the same reality. For the first time more than one character is animated. And this is how Harte does it: - By means of an external focalizer (a narrator-focalizer) who can handle all characters from his superior position. Once narration is freed from the limited view-point of intra-homodiegetic narration, the detached narrator can provide reliable information on group behaviour by means of explicit generalizations, anecdotes, and occasional dialogue.

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- A whole community shares the same viewpoint. Since the same experiences are shared by every actor, the writer needs only to present a single reaction, and the reader knows that this reaction is typical of the group. In previous narratives it was necessary to follow closely the thoughts of a character, since his experiences where uncommon, different from the others. - Finally the question remains to be answered about how characters are clearly distinct in the reader«s mind: they make very brief appearances and their reactions seem to be common to a very numerous actantial unit, sometimes an entire community. Referentiality is essential. Each character is given a different role within a well-known structure, usually that of the family. Thanks to this strategy we are able to remember the characters, because we relate them to activities related to our everyday life. In “The Luck of Roaring Camp” two men behave as the father and the mother of the child. This is not explicitly stated, but they are shown performing certain functions. Stumpy provides the milk, makes decisions on furniture, intuits disaster (the flood). The image of Stumpy acting like a mother is so shocking that we never forget him. Kentuck is the first man who shows paternal feelings. In his own clumsy ways he shows how moved he is by the birth of the baby. He worries about him, keeps guard, and assumes the risky tasks (he tries to save the child). We relate him to the figure of the father. The other men who bring presents and speak about the child represent the other members of that huge family. They always react in the same way according to their assigned roles. The same can be said of “The Outcasts of Poker Flat” where a group of misfits who did not have anything to do with each other and who had never had a family instantly become a family group. Oakhurst and The Duchess become husband and wife, Mother Shipton, becomes an affectionate grandmother and the young couple of lovers become their children -the girl is even called “the kid” by everyone. They will behave accordingly in every situation encountered. “Tennessee’s Partner” also resembles another social hierarchy, that of male societies where there are heroes and idiots. Thus, it is possible for the characters to be transformed into distinct images even when the reader, in fact, barely knows them. They are instantly made recognizable through their relation with familiar contexts. Their attitude is easily visualized by the reader because the characters« thoughts do not interfere. Once one trait of the character is made to stand out, our credibility is assured. However, before this, the situation has to be appealing. Then, referentiality is exploited to the full.

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3.3. Reader/character relationships

We need to remember that the character, as an intra-homodiegetic narrator, was in charge of characterization in previous narratives. Thus, the information was in most cases explicit and unreliable. As a result, the reader experienced the contradictions involved in direct definition and in other types of textual indicators of character, such as action or speech (Rimmon-Kenan, p. 60). But these short stories are manipulated by an extra-heterodiegetic narrator; only in the case of “The Outcasts of Poker Flat” the narrator is extra- homodiegetic. Events and characters are seen from a reliable external viewpoint and the reader actually sees the character, not what the character is seeing. The narrating agent becomes more independent from the characters, and does not even have to follow them at all times. In previous narratives the reader identified with the characters. Now they are seen from the outside, since there is almost no focalization of non-perceptible objects. Rather than an attempt at disentangling the meaning of the world that surrounds the character, the reader is made to stand separately from him, and from that distant perspective, perceive the comedy or the irony of the situation. Characters, as it occurred in Irving’s narratives, are filtered through the narrator: he has the power to let them speak or keep them silent. The character/reader distance becomes greater. In previous stories, the reader had to face the same obstacles to interpretation as the character. Now, he is placed at a distance and has a wider view; he shares the same unrestricted knowledge as the narrator. An exception is “The Luck of Roaring Camp”, where Oakhurst and the narrator know more than the rest of the characters and the reader. The narrator’s strong mediation is also obvious when he sets characters in contrast to a more contemporary world. The narrator assumes that the reader is curious to know how the early American settlers lived, and that this period of history is full of picturesque anecdotes. The reader is made to compare the values of that society with the values of a more advanced society to which he belongs.

3.4. The problem of characterization

In the second chapter we noted that character description heavily depended on the character himself, and that this method involved certain problems of

185 MARêA JESÚS HERNÁEZ LERENA interpretation. The problem of characterization comes to the fore in Harte’s short stories as well. At the level of the fabula, Harte’s short stories deal with the creation of personality. The inhabitants of Roaring Camp are given the opportunity to look after a person who does not have a personality yet, a baby, and they want him to be different from them. In “The Outcasts of Poker Flat”, all the members of the group have to hold their instincts not to disturb the happiness of a young couple who have no experience of life. These misfits have to improvise a personality for themselves, and once they have achieved this impersonation, they struggle to make the young couple blind to the cruelty of life. This means that characters do not only depend on referentiality, but also on counter-referentiality. There are two opposed semantic fields, as in previous stories, but they are arranged differently in Harte«s stories. In previous narratives the protagonist discovered that the other characters were extremely different from what he thought; referentiality was deceptive, and the result was disillusionment. However, Harte«s characters consciously undertake the task of moving from one frame of referentiality into another. The result is improvement, which even the disastrous outcome of the story cannot disturb. If characters realize they have been wrong, this does not occur at the end of the fabula, but at the beginning, where amendment is still possible. Harte«s fabulas show all necessary information, previous fabulas withheld essential information; therefore, Harte«s fabulas include an omniscient narrator who accounts for everything. In previous narratives focalization was restricted to an individual who only relied on his impressions of the others. His thoughts were mere hypotheses. Harte«s short stories quickly show the reader what characters are really like. “Tennessee’s Partner” deals with this “christening anew”. Re-naming implies reconstructing the image of other people in one’s mind through synthesis. In this process, deformation is unavoidable. In this story, the narrator himself draws our attention to the ways in which the image of a character is built up, which is similar to the way we interpret people in “real” life: “That he had ever existed as a separate and distinct individuality we only learned later. It seems that in 1.853 he left Poker Flat […]” (Harte, 1966: 31). We may wonder why there is in the short story such strong emphasis on characterization. Perhaps because it is the most difficult problem that the short story has to solve, that of making the characters achieve full existence in a few pages. The short story often becomes self-reflexive, as is usual for many writers for whom the very notion of fiction is considered problematic.

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4. Deviations from the chronological order The linearity of the fabula is seldom disturbed in the story because these fabulas do not deal with the actors’ subjective interpretation of time. The responsibility for narration lies with an extra-heterodiegetic narrator, not with a narrator who is a diegetic character and could tell the events “backwards” by means of a subjective retroversion. It is worth mentioning, however, that the few anachronies registered, retroversions and anticipations, have a very different function from those of previous short stories. In the first place, retroversions lose their importance because none of the characters is given the possibility of telling their own story and so re-interpreting the events, as occurred in previous short stories. Secondly because characterization presents the characters during the process of change, and past processes or events are not included in the text. The only indicators of the characters’ past are few brief allusions, somewhat “restricted” retroversions in comparison with the retroversions of previous texts which covered most of the time span. The subjective retroversion in some cases overlapped the time of the primary fabula. The function of retroversion is, as in “The Outcasts of Poker Flat”, merely referential; its purpose to introduce a new character 40. In other cases, as in “The Luck of Roaring Camp”, retroversion is a means of providing the characters with a past. This is done in both cases by external retroversions, and in both cases the retroversion deals with an event which enables the reader to predict the character’s possibilities in the future. The analepses function as definitory of the character. They are punctual but complete because the reader has the impression that events have been recalled in their totality (Bal p. 61-62). They stand for the whole past. These one-paragraph retroversions refer to a complete anecdote in which the role of the character is ascertained. In “The Luck of Roaring Camp” the only retroversion narrates a case of usual behaviour on the part of characters. In “The Outcast of Poker Flat” the course and outcome of a card game shows briefly the one trait of the “innocent” in Sandy Bar. These retroversions, despite being brief, have far-reaching consequences because they present the contrast between the different sets of traits which is the origin of the events that are going to take place. In “The Luck” there is a contrast between the past fights and shots and the present whispers. In “The Outcasts” the trait of the new

40. This retroversion stands apart graphically from the text, which indicates a lack of integration within the line of development. It is also an unnecessary pause, which is what Harte precisely tries to avoid in his narratives.

187 MARêA JESÚS HERNÁEZ LERENA character stands out against the prevailing irritating mood of the members in the group. The use of anticipations -almost absent in previous narratives- acquires great importance as the source of a tension that highlights the contradictions between the logical consequences of the events of the fabula and the meaning attached to those events in the text. All the short stories use anticipations, whether they are announcements, as in “The Luck of Roaring Camp” where the tragic destiny of community is anticipated just before the outcome, or hints, such as those provided in the descriptions of nature in “Tennessee’s Partner”. Anticipations play the most important role in “The Outcasts of Poker Flat” since its fabula deals with fate, and more particularly with Oakhurst’s foresight. He is the only one who senses their fate beforehand on all occasions. First, he feels the “Sabbath lull” in the air, the phoney religion of those that hate him. Then, he realizes their unfortunate situation, lack of food and bad climatic conditions, and finally, he is aware of the exact day on which they are going to die, that day he chooses to commit suicide. The lyrics of the song he sings one night sum up all their destinies: “I’m proud to live in the service of the Lord, And I’m bound to die in his army.”(Harte, 1966: 248) The text is given unity by the repetition of these hints. By means of an extradiegetic narrator who yields focalization exclusively to Oakhurst, but that confers focalization at the end on the two remaining women, a final touch of irony is given to the text. Only at the end does the reader realize that the most important premonition Oakhurst had, that they were going to day on a certain day, has been withheld from the reader. The reader himself has not been able to guess it, we are surprised when we realize Oakhurst is not going to appear again. The anticipations highlight that what matters is not the end, but how the characters go through the events or are changed by them. With the fate of the character in view, which is always an early death, the reader’s impression of the final events is intensified. After the presentation of the information, the reader assumes that the nature of the processes in the text may be at odds with those of the fabula. For example, the process of deterioration of the fabula (plight or death) may be presented as a way of improvement in the text: successful fulfilment. Roaring Camp is finally saved spiritually, Tennessee’s Partner proves his individuality when his friend dies, his own death bringing them together again. Also, the ordeal the outcasts have to face make them happy and friendly for the first time, and their death offers indisputable proof of their serenity and purity. The function of anticipation is to point to the clash between two different interpretations and that the final anticipated outcome, death, does not put an end to the story.

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5. Focalization and narration

Three aspects will be dealt with concerning the kind of focalization and narrating agents in these texts. First, how the use of extra-diegetic narrators is necessary for an adjusted treatment of fabula structure. Second, how the reader responds to the use of overt narrators. And third, the ideology and the aesthetic effects derived from the predominant manifestation of external focalization. 1. Due to the inclusion in the fabula of a great deal of narrative cycles belonging to several characters, focalization cannot be restricted either spatially or temporally, but unrestricted focalization is made necessary, either heterodiegetic or homodiegetic. Narrators are extra-heterodiegetic except in “Tennessee’s Partner”, where the role of the narrator is performed by an eyewitness. But even in this case, there is a breach of this convention, since there is information in the last narrative cycle which the homodiegetic narrator could not possibly know. This emphasizes the fact that information is always provided by a narrator that is outside the story even if it may appear otherwise. Characterization aims at the presentation of events, not at the characters’ perceptions, and it is not restricted to the perceptions of a character. There is no need, then, for internal focalization. Character’s focalizations are presented by means of speech -not thoughts- because the narrative is based on external conditions. We must remember that these fabulas are based on the actors’ contradiction “to be/to cope with”, not “to be/to appear”, therefore the character«s intentions are not questioned, once they are presented in the text, there is no need to revise them. The unreliability involved in intradiegetic narration is out of the question in these narratives: the author needs to immediately define characters once and for all, he does not demand from the reader any kind of re-examination. Besides, in other cases, as in “The Outcasts of Poker Flat” or “Tennessee’s Partner”, none of the protagonists could have become intra-homodiegetic narrators: all of them die and the text continues to provide information after their disappearance. An extradiegetic narrator is needed to show how these deaths are interpreted by the actantial group. This does not mean that these fabulas could not have been expressed in the text by means of intra-homodiegetic narration, but that fabula structure, type of

189 MARêA JESÚS HERNÁEZ LERENA characterization, and the customary space restriction of the short story, together with the alliance narrator-reader, make extra-heterodiegetic narration the best textual means to express the underlying idea that reality can be understood and that people«s lives always have a clear purpose. 2. We will deal now with another factor that explains the choice of a particular type of narrator. Harte intended to present not only a particular imaginary world, but he also wanted his reader to be amazed at the differences between his world -a well-established society- and the world of the story, where people were at the mercy of the dangers of the wilderness. In order to do that, an extradiegetic narrator is necessary, a narrator, who, detached from the historical period he deals with, can place himself on the side of the reader and share the values the reader is familiar with. The narrator must be overt too, since he is representative of an ideological position from which he is able to provide an interpretation of the characters. His position towards the story is made perceptible through his commentary on the life the early settlers led. Rimmon-Kenan defines the ideological facet of focalization as “the norms of the text”, that is, “a general system of viewing the world conceptually, in accordance with which the events and characters of the story are evaluated” (p. 81). These texts present every sign of overt narration: First, interpretation. The narrator interprets constantly the events of the fabula to such an extent that it is very usual to find a paragraph devoted to the characters and then a paragraph explaining the significance of those events. Second, judgement. The narrator forgives the outcasts and criticizes the characters who do not accept them in “The Outcasts of Poker Flat”. Third, comment. Examples of commentary on the narration have been provided above. The narrator takes for granted that both the reader and himself share a common world which enables them to appreciate the peculiarities of the world of the story. The narrator fills in the gaps when he thinks that the reader will not be able to understand some aspect of these rough societies. The irony of the text originates in the inclusion of two frames of reference. We must bear in mind that Harte wrote for an appointed audience, his contemporary countrymen, who were eager to taste the old days of the life on the western frontier. So the real author and the real reader, so to say, knew each other, and the narrator pretends that he speaks directly to the reader, as if they shared the same dimension of reality.

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This narrative method reminds us of Irving’s narratives, in which the narrator was dramatized in the text. It may be considered a regression to the oral tale. Poe, Hawthorne, Melville, had progressively yielded focalization to the character, and once narrators were less overt, the narrative became more complex. On the other hand, the figure of the overt narrator in Harte«s stories is useful for justifying the inclusion or omission of information. It contributes to preserve the concept of the short story; in spite of the fugacious presentation of a great deal of anecdotes and characters, we consider the narrator«s leading idea to be valid, we trust his authority to organize the story in correspondence to his thesis. In addition to this, the text becomes complex by means of other strategies, such as the participation of the reader in the text. In “Tennessee’s Partner”, the reader is “obliged” to place himself in the same position as the narrator, who acts as an onlooker who does not do anything to change the events. This narrator reflects the position of the reader in the text, who is not able to understand the real personality of Tennessee’s Partner until the very end At no moment do the reader«s opinions differ from the narrator«s. At the beginning, the reader contemplates Tennessee’s Partner as a character lacking personality because he does not react to his friend«s betrayal. The reader is made to laugh at him every time he appears either in the trial or at the burial, and he has the same image of him as the narrator has, that of a short pathetic figure wiping his sweating face with an old handkerchief. The only thing the narrator does is to watch the events without taking part in them, the very same position in which the reader is placed in any text. In “The Outcasts of Poker Flat” the text includes the reader in the text in a different way: he is made to take part in the game that takes place in the fabula. Internal focalization is given to Oakhurst, who is the only character who foresees what is going to happen, and the one who first discovers what has happened: Uncle Billy’s mean trick, Mother Simson’s plan. But Oakhurst keeps this information to himself so that his friends can live their last few days happily. The reader knows what Oakhurst is doing, and can, therefore, value the acts of the other characters and of Oakhurst in accordance with this information. However, shortly before the end of the narrative Oakhurst disappears and does not come back as he promised. We have to read on, and then rely on the account of the other characters that come from the village to know what has happened. Oakhurst has tricked the reader in the same way that he tricked the two innocent characters of the group. His thoughts have been withheld from the

191 MARêA JESÚS HERNÁEZ LERENA reader as they were previously withheld from the rest of the characters, especially the Innocent and the Child. He leaves the hut (and the text) promising to return presently, which he does not do. The reader can only imagine that something is wrong but he does not know what. 3. The fact that focalization is never restricted engages the reader in another activity different from that of previous narratives. The reader is on a superior level in which he can appreciate the irony and comedy of the situations presented. He is given all the necessary information to reach conclusions whose validity is never questioned. The reader does not feel any contradiction between what is explicitly said or implicitly inferred from the text. Even when there is a character-focalizer as in “The Outcasts of Poker Flat”, this character is the one that knows more about all the other characters, he even foresees with great accuracy what is going to happen. In previous short stories focalization was bound to the character that knew least. But even in this case, the necessity for a more powerful omniscience is created, a “superior” focalizer, someone who knows more than the cleverest character of the story. Besides, Oakhurst dies, and the extradiegetic narrator has to account for all the events that would remain unaccounted for without his presence. The fact that a single conscience could master characters and events was questioned in previous short stories, but in Harte’s short stories absolute omniscience is made possible and necessary. It is this moment of mastery over experience that Harte reflects in his short stories. It is parallel to the act of remembering: from a secure present we think we have people, events, and places under our command. Overlapping focalization disappears in these short stories, that is, the omniscient narrator does not interfere in the focalizations of the character. Although character-focalization is rare, when it does occur, it is undisturbed by an added interpretation of the narrator. On the other hand, the use of external focalization which focuses mainly on perceptible objects provides these narratives with a dramatic and visual design that previous narratives did not possess. We mean dramatic in the sense that the reader actually sees the characters interacting (something very unusual in previous short stories), and visual in the sense that we only see external manifestations of character are given, actions, movements, attitudes and words. The perspective is restricted to that of physical distance. The reader only sees what happens as an spectator.

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Descriptions are short and accurate, there is no time to pay attention to a character that has already been defined. The author provides just one image of the character for the reader, thus it will still remain in him after the narrative has been finished. A recurrent feature of the short story concerning focalization is the importance of the first paragraph, and Harte provides a very useful illustration. The reader must be able to identify in the first paragraph who is speaking and what his standpoint is. General statements, even when they are referred to the fictional world, are not effective in the short story, although very common in the novel. There are no descriptions dealing exclusively with objects, since this does not introduce a temporal sequence. We must not be given only “the focalized” at the beginning, but also a clear impression of who is looking, from where and when 41. In “The Luck of Roaring Camp” we know it is the omniscient narrator speaking but he momentarily pretends to be an onlooker who cannot hear everything well, he places himself in the same position as an attentive reader. In “Tennessee’s Partner” we know that someone acquainted with Tennessee«s Partner tells the story of how this character got his name. In “The Outcasts of Poker Flat” we have immediate access to the thoughts of the protagonist who, before the first sentence is finished, finds himself in a sticky situation. A specific standpoint is presented at once, which involves the reader in a situation that would take up plenty of space if it was introduced gradually. Due to this method, an instant grip on the reader is achieved.

41. For the importance of the beginning in the short story, see Clark Blaise (1993: 158-162)

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III. 2. Frame Narration in the Short Story: Mark Twain

For the first time in our corpus we find narratives that include the hypodiegetic level. The significance of the text will be based on the relationship between two levels: the diegetic level, in which the narrator himself is engaged, and the hypodiegetic level, which consists of a story told by a character belonging to the diegetic level. My opinion is that the use of an embedded fabula does not respond -as it may do in other types of narratives- to the intention of incorporating a great deal of characters or events, or of explaining the primary fabula, or even of provoking a more complex interpretation of events. Instead, the embedded fabula fits short story demands perfectly, because it present two frames that are related to each other through paradox. Thus, the reader has to reorganize the relevance of this double “set of norms” in a different way from the one which is expressed as evident by the narrator or by the characters. Bal (p. 144) and Rimmon-Kenan (p. 92) consider that the two most common relationships between the primary story and the embedded text are explicative and thematic. In the first case, the embedded story explains the primary story. In the second case, the embedded story resembles the primary story by similarity or opposition. The genre short story -in which many connections between the elements of the fabula are left unexplained- is more likely to favour the second type of relationship, where “the explanation is usually left to the reader, or merely hinted at, in the fabula.” (Bal, p. 144). We will analyse three short stories by Mark Twain: “The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County”, “A True Story”, and “Jim Blaine and His Grandfather’s Ram”. All of them express Twain’s concept of the “story” 42. This notion of story includes common generic features to the ones we have discussed so far, and it defines the short story as something different from the mere anecdote. Twain’s attachment to the oral tradition creates new strategies of focalization and a different narration structure. He handles common ideas with new methods. As in previous short stories, the first outstanding feature in “The Jumping Frog” is the attempt to conceal one of the narrative cycles of the text. (See

42. See Twain´s “How to Tell a Story” in Kaplan (1967: 182-187)

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“Bartleby” or “The Fall of the House of Usher”). This narrative cycle belongs to the diegetic level, in which the narrator first looks for someone and then listens to a story. Since the narrator presents himself as an extra-diegetic narrator who aims at telling someone else’s story, we do not consider his present concerns as belonging to the diegetic level. We do not realize it is a proper fabula until the very end where we are given the conclusion -he is tricked- which makes us suspect that there are other first stages in this very same level that could lead us to construct a complete narrative cycle that is different from the story of the owner of the prodigious frog (the hypodiegetic level). We are, actually, in front of a mise en abyme structure, where the hypodiegetic level is a reduplication of the diegetic, and the phases of the fabula become double and have resonance over each other. These are the stages of the three fabulas in “The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County”:

1. The narrator (who we eventually regard as also a character with his own story) is sent on an errand. He has to find a man and obtain information about somebody else. 2. He finds the man and he tells him the story. 2a. Embedded fabula: 1. A man is obsessed by betting on everything. 2. A stranger comes into the town and Smiley (the bettor) bets his frog will outjump any frog. 3. The stranger deceives Smiley: he manipulates his frog and tricks him. 3. The narrator realizes that he has been tricked by his friend: he has been manipulated into listening to that unending story.

Both stages of possibility, realization, and result resemble each other, in both someone is eventually fooled. Both stories are parallel because they are about cheating. To this, another narrative agent may be added, that of the teller of the story, Simmon Wheeler, who would start a narrative cycle intermingled within these two:

1. He wants to tell someone’s story. 2. While he is telling the story he is interrupted. 3. He cannot complete his story.

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The three characters fail in their attainment of their aim: the first character cannot prevent someone telling him a long story, the second character cannot continue telling his story, and the third character cannot defeat his opponent. They are characterized by a lack of competence, the first as listener (or reader), the second as narrator, and the third as character. These are the two narrative cycles placed at different narration levels in “Jim Blaine and his Grandfather’s Ram”:

(First level) 1. The narrator wants to hear the story of a ram, but this is only possible if the storyteller is “moderately drunk”. 2. He eventually finds the storyteller in the right conditions to tell his story. 3. He is not told the story he wanted to hear. 1. Somebody starts telling a story about his grandfather’s ram. 2. He gets entangled with other people and never seems to get back to the story the narrator was interested in. (Second level:) 2a. Embedded story: Jim Blaine produces a rambling account of characters and events. 3. He falls asleep and does not finish his narration

The realization stage of the primary fabula corresponds to the embedded fabula. In stage three of the embedded fabula, the narrator realizes that he has been tricked. “A True Story”

1. The narrator wants to know the reason why a black servant of his is so peculiar. 2. Realization: the servant answers him by means of telling a story (the embedded fabula): 2.a. Possibility: she wants to find her younger child. Realization: Many years later, after the Civil War, her son is released, and sets off to find her. Result: she meets him again. 3. Result: the narrator -and the reader- find the answer to the question which opened the story.

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The primary and the embedded fabula have the same relationship of opposition in the three cases: “The Jumping Frog”: 1. the narrator does not want to be a listener, 2. the character wants to tell a story. “Jim Blaine”: 1. the narrator wants to listen to a story, 2. the character would not tell it. “A true story”: 1. the narrator trusts appearances (he thinks that his coloured servant has not suffered in life) 2. the servant offers him the truth.

Our aim now is to find where -within this repeated structure- the contradiction between “the two set of norms” can be found. We will have to identify the means the text uses to produce two different sources of interpretation 43. The paradox lies in the validity or lack of validity of the diegetic and hypodiegietic levels, in other words, in the competence or lack of competence attributed to the narrator and to the teller of the story: first and second narrator. On the first level, the narrator presents the story as uninteresting, he is even forced to listen to it: “Simon Wheeler backed me into a corner and blockaded me with his chair, and then sat down and reeled off the monotonous narrative which follows this paragraph.” (Twain, 1967: 81). The narrator’s lack of appreciation will be in contrast with the reader’s attitude, who becomes a listener as well, but an eager listener. When in “Jim Blaine” the narrator realizes he has been tricked, the reader realizes that the narrator has not understood the fun of the story: he has been listening to many amusing stories and he has not noticed how funny they were. The narrator cannot fully grasp the scope of what he has been offered: not just anecdote, but a particular vision of storytelling. This is a constant feature of the fabula of in short stories, the result exceeds the importance of the aim. The figure of the narrator is devalued so that the importance of the role of the reader is highlighted. The reader is presented as the only participant in the communication, the only listener who can “save” the story by fully grasping its implications. We could say that due to this strategy, the narrator, that is, the listener included in the diegetic level, “is defeated” by the reader, since the reader is

43. We have to remember that one of the conclusions we have reached through the analysis of our corpus of short stories is that every short story initially presented a set of norms (either on the extra- diegetic or on the diegetic level), and then these initial values were expanded or invalidated by a second set of norms, by a second interpretation.

198 SHORT STORY WORLD: THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY AMERICAN MASTERS given a wider scope of interpretation than his. The narrator is also defeated as well by the teller (Simon Wheeler), whose account of the events is the one that the reader considers valid. Although the narrator of the hypodiegetic level has not been able to complete his story, he has satisfied the reader, who claims to be a better listener than the narrator himself. The conclusions are different for the narrator and for the reader, the norms established by the former appear to be too shallow to understand the worth of the characters. The reader’s response depends on the realization of this inadequacy, which makes him side with the character of the diegetic level, since the narrator proves to be unreliable. This is why at least two frames are needed in these narratives, to place each set of norms at different levels. Another kind of relationship between the mirror-text and the primary text should therefore be added to the above-mentioned conclusions, that in which the mirror-text undermines the validity of the higher level of the narrative. The narrator in these short stories occupies the same place as the reader of any story, that of listener, of the addressee of a message. Due to the narrator«s inability to “understand” the second story, the reader occupies his place in the narrative as an attentive teller who grasps the meaning. This can clearly be seen in “A true Story” where the narrator believes his servant has never had to surmount difficulties. The servant does not openly reject this as false, but the account of her story highlights the narrator«s erroneous assumption. Her fist sentence is: “Has I had any trouble? Misto C—-, I´s gwyne to tell you, den I leave it to you” (p. 106), and her last sentence is “Oh no, Misto C—-, I hain’t had no trouble. An’ no joy!” (Twain, 1967: 110). The short story usually challenges the reader by eventually saying: “I leave it to you”. This defiance is addressed here to the narrator and the reader alike, both are listeners of the servant’s story. The reader has the responsibility to discover the injustice in the first assumptions. Twain’s short stories question the traditionally superior stance of the narrator -either extra or intradiegetic- by making him inadequate in comparison with the wisdom of other characters, whose focalization is long and uninterrupted for the first time. We mean by “characters” any character who is not the first narrator. This strategy strengthens the relationship reader/character. These secondary narrators are only entrusted with the task of telling a story, not with the task of interpreting the story for the reader, which is exactly the role of the traditional narrator. A gap in interpretation is produced, that of the narrator

199 MARêA JESÚS HERNÁEZ LERENA examining, measuring, considering. This gap must be filled by the reader. Reading the text implies the questioning of such issues as the role of the character, the narrator, and the reader in any story. The theoretical problems of narration are reflected in fabula structure. Previous texts explicitly established the necessity of an extradiegetic narrator for a complete account and interpretation of events: Harte«s short stories are an example, but we may also remember Hawthorne’s “Mr. Higginbotham’s Catastrophe”. The narrator in Twain’s short stories disappears because he is not competent enough: the final conclusion is handed over to the reader. Twain’s textual strategies depart from previous narrative conventions. They claim the absolute predominance of the character over the narrator. This is translated into the text by a rejection of external focalization in favour of internal focalization. Character- focalizations are continuous and undisturbed by any intervention aimed at explaining temporal order or causal connections. This means that the character«s train of thought and language are preserved. The character is in sole charge for most of the story even if that fact apparently produces a sprawling or repetitious speech. It is also the first time that, within our corpus of stories, we observe that the short story tendency to challenge the reader to find an interpretation is made explicit in the text. This is illustrated by the character’s order: “ I leave it to you”. The short story appears as a narrative form in which the reader must consciously make an effort to decipher some issues that have been muffled. The setting in which the second narration of “A True Story” occurs hints at the importance of the character in contrast with the narrator. At the beginning of the embedded text: “Aunt Rachel was sitting respectfully below our level, on the steps, because she was our servant, and coloured.” (Twain: 1967: 106). But when she is telling her story: “Aunt Rachel had gradually risen, while she warmed to her subject, and now she towered above us, black against the stars.”(Twain, 1967: 107). In previous short stories we encountered two frames within the diegetic level, one breaking through the limits imposed by the other, these usually corresponded to two different narrative cycles 44. Now, these two narrative cycles are placed on different levels of narration. Their connection is not that of explanation of plot, but of comparison between the two frames. Another relationship may be added to those listed by Rimmon-Kenan and Bal: the mirror-text expresses the inadequacy of the primary text. As a result, the temporal span of the narrative is expanded, because the narrator of the hypodiegetic level may produce a

44. Frame has been previously defined as an interpretation of the events of the fabula.

200 SHORT STORY WORLD: THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY AMERICAN MASTERS summary of a long span of time, while it preserves its impression caused by present tense since the first narrator is listening. Other aspects worth mentioning are deviation, characterization, and rejection of the events. They have already been mentioned when describing other short stories, however, now they are related to new textual devices. The concept of deviation means that the reader’s codification of the short story brings about some conclusions that are in contrast with the values manifestly expressed in the text. There text demands from the reader an understanding of the story which is in sharp contrast with the story´s “face value”. In Harte’s short stories we observed a textual predominance of events over any other element of the fabula. However, it was the characters’ traits, or the value they conferred on the events, which made the text significant. According to these values the fabula was reorganized differently. In Twain’s short stories, we face a similar process, a list of events is the only thing the text explicitly includes, but their significance is not related to the events themselves, to a course of action, but to the storyteller«s attitude. The idea that “events” are not important in themselves is handled by Twain from a different viewpoint. This is emphasized by the fact that there is no conclusion to those events, the yarn can go on forever, like the stories that multiply in “The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” or in “Jim Blaine’s Grandfather’s Ram”. Those events are worthy only in respect to the way they are narrated, only in respect to the storyteller. Anything narrated by him would have the same relevance. This conclusion diverts attention from the mere anecdote to characterization, from the events to the character narrating them. Characterization does not consist of direct definition, it can be found in the character’s particular account of the events. This vision of the story is related to Twain’s (1967: 183) theory that the “humorous American story” does not end with surprise, in contrast to the witty and comic stories. This surprise he calls the “nub” or “the snapper”. He proposes to conceal this surprise, in such a way that it will not be placed at the end. He explains this strategy with the expression “slurring the nub”. This device, together with the particular use of the narration levels, are methods to provide the short story with a different organization from that of the tale or the anecdote, which follow a fixed uncomplicated pattern with a conclusion or result placed at the very end. A diversion from conventional plot organization is sought. Twain claimed that a story could not be told for the sake of the last turn, something which separates his short narratives from the mere funny story.

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If the conventional line of development is not followed, the reader is made to pay attention to issues beyond the events, to the particular of the character towards randomness. All the explicit information in the text -provided by the first narrator- points to the bad quality of the story and to a boring and uninteresting storyteller. However this produces a stronger counter-effect, since the narrator«s distrust is not shared by the reader. The apparent irrelevance of some of the events presented prove to be essential in the outcome of the story. Aunt Rachel’s story proves not to be wandering at all when we discover that the sentence she repeats over and over turns out to be the key to the final recognition. The seeming disorder becomes order in “The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” as well, because Simon Wheeler achieves a significant and thematic oriented approach to the core of the story. From big to small -concerning the animals-, from success to failure. Another important thing to note is that, in spite of the fact that internal focalization contributed to characterization, this is only achieved by monologue. There is still no dialogue in the short story, no character confrontation in dialogue form. With this return to the oral story, in contrast to what may be thought, Twain achieved very complex narratives: unrestricted internal focalization, presentation of two frames in different narration levels, and a more subtle and demanding type of characterization. The command for silence, as in the oral tale, is present in all the short stories: the character asks the listeners to be quiet. But what produces a stronger grip on the reader is how demanding these short stories are: the reader has to spot some inadequacy and work on the discordant elements to “rewrite” the text. In order for the reader to do that, the author must have trusted him completely.

202 IV. Sarah Orne Jewett’s Short Stories

1. Short Story fabula and the reader

Sarah Orne Jewett’s short stories produce an initial confusion in the reader because they are apparently plot-free, that is, fabula processes are difficult to pin down. The reader does not identify the narrative cycle as he reads, and this lack of indications makes him alert. These short stories consist of an uninterrupted dialogue between two characters, which is not symbolical, as was the case in Melville’s, Hawthorne’s, and Poe’s short stories. Dialogue in Sarah Orne Jewett«s stories is neither an allegorical exposition of the ideas that the characters represent, nor a dialogue that serves clearly the purpose of characterization. Harte, for example, used one-sentence interventions aimed at endowing the character with one trait that remained unaltered throughout the narrative. Dialogue now does not even correspond to a sequence of events, and it does not clearly point to a change produced in the characters because there seems to be no conflict between them. In a novel we accept more easily this kind of long and rambling introductory dialogues because we have the certainty that there will be plenty of occasions for the development of events and relationships between the characters. But this kind of beginning in the short story disconcerts us; we are continually demanding to know what is the “point” of the narrative so that we are able to understand the relationships between the characters, which have been left unexplained in a great extent 45. We want to know what the story is about and what can be expected, since there is no action or conflict in view.

45. By “point” we mean a justification for the information provided (O´Faolain, 1974: 197).

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We demand from the text a “plot”, a sign of change or progression. These “conventional” signs which mark the development of narrative are the phases of the fabula in narratology analysis: possibility (something is foreseen), realization (something happens), and result (something has been changed). These signals are called in conventional terms: exposition, initiating/rising/ falling action, and denouement 46. In “The Only Rose” we find the details of a house in the morning light, the insignificant housework tasks of Mrs. Bickford, and her conversation about everyday details with a neighbour of hers. In “Miss Tempy’s Watchers” two women chat intimately about a mutual friend who has just passed away. The two ladies in “Aunt Cynthy Dallett” complain about the lack of importance people give to Christmas time. In “The Town Poor” the subject of conversation is local climate and living conditions. There is no narrative cycle that can be immediately abstracted while we get engaged in the course of the conversation, but this does not mean that it does not exist. Since conversation goes on placidly without an added explanatory perspective, relevance is left unmarked, and it is not easy to disentangle a leading idea from the everyday experiences in the world of these characters. I have just mentioned the search for an “idea”. This is related to an aspect which we will come back to later on: the kind of response these texts provoke in the reader as compared to that of other narratives. This textual organization brings about a search for ideas, for a frame of mind that embodies the characters, not for events. The short story is used primarily as an exposition of views, not as an account of events. These are the stages, which, abstracted from the text, can be inserted into each of the fabula stages:

“The Town P oor”:

1. Mrs. Trimble and Miss Wright have gone out or a walk, and they decide to visit the Bray sisters, who live isolated from the village. 2. During their visit they have the chance to learn of the plight of the sisters. 3. On their way back home they plan to forget about past trivial preoccupations to restore the sisters to a more comfortable situation.

46. See Preminger (1974: 624-625)

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“Aunt Cynthy Dallett”

1. Possibility: to see Aunt Cynthy. (She is getting very old and lives far up in the mountains). 2. Abby and an acquaintance of hers, Mrs. Hand, make the visit possible. 3. Result: After the conversation, it is decided that Abby, Cynthy«s niece, will live in Aunt Cynthy’s house from then on.

“The Only Rose”

1. Mrs. Bickford is planning a visit to the cemetery and is arranging the flowers. 2. She has to decide which one of her late three husbands must have a rose added to the bunch. 3. The decision is unconsciously made by a dear nephew of hers.

“Miss Tempy’s Watchers”

1. Two ladies have to watch over the body of their dead friend for a whole night. 2. They maintain a conversation on several subjects. 3. They fall asleep for a while and the night passes.

The lack of relevance that the actual events have in our comprehension of the text is highlighted when we abstract the fabula processes. With the previous abstractions we can observe that the pattern of happenings of these short stories is not rendered, that we need other patterns which account for the text more completely. The text is built around a superposition of other events on the ones already mentioned. We will call this strategy “the added fabula” to which we will be referring later on. We must note as well that the greater the deviation between the two fabulas, the more complex the text becomes. Thus, in “The Town Poor” little is to be added to the events, except for the transcendence that a single visit has in the characters’lives. But in “Aunt Cynthy Dallett”, the decision to visit Abby’s aunt is a consequence of Abby’s realization that she is not free and independent any more. The second stage of the fabula is therefore, not the achievement of the first possibility, but the failure of Abby’s aspirations. And the result is not success, as it would appear in the fabula, because Abby’s decision has not been actually hers, but her neighbour’s and her aunty’s. What appears to be an achievement confirmed by others -even by Abby herself- must be described in the “added fabula” as failure and loss.

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In the added fabula the visit is not the event, but the inevitability of major change: Abby has to sacrifice her previous life. Thanks to the added fabula, we can attribute the role of protagonist to one of the characters, but this character is not Aunt Cynthy, as we had thought at the beginning. If the fabula presents the ageing of the aunt as the possibility stage, in the added fabula, and due to the deviation that the text accomplishes, the possibility is that of the ageing of Abby herself, the realization is Abby giving up his tiny house and her life in the village, and the conclusion is that Abby needs help. The reader can feel the contradictory thoughts and emotions that stand for each character. All of them agree to consider the advantages of the decision, however the success of the visit is only deceptive, however much everyone applauds, since we feel compelled to record it in our “added fabula” as Abby’s defeat. This contradiction is not made explicit in the text, the narrator never expresses this idea openly -except for one clue. But on re-reading the story we discover that only Abby’s life was at stake, that Abby herself is only partially aware of this fact, and that thinking others old and lonely, she has suddenly found herself in the same situation. In “The Only Rose” the arrangement of the flowers brings about the revision of the past, and the decision of the rose comes as a revelation for the protagonist, who sees the truth of her life displayed clearly in her mind for the first time. The fabula aim of “Miss Tempy’s Watchers”, watching beside the body of a deceased friend, is transformed into the desire for a new kind of friendship between two women who had found their relationship impossible under other circumstances. To make this possible, a reconsideration of the past is needed, which is accomplished in the second stage of the added fabula, and the result is successful, although this remains unmarked in the fabula. A better rendering of the added fabula of these short stories could probably be elaborated, but what interests us now is to analyse how the text is not so much based on a pattern of events, but on the characters’ attribution of values to an event, such as a visit or a decision. According to this, Sarah Orne Jewett’s short stories follow the line of previous short stories where a certain diversion of the events of the fabula was achieved in search for other concepts which give the text its unity. Events in Jewett´s stories seem to be “out of focus”: there is a lack of events in the stages where we would expect to find them. In “The town Poor”, for example, instead of the result of the fabula, there seems to be a possibility: that misery might be eradicated from the lives of two characters. The result is not a solution but a sudden awareness. There are no events, just a change in attitude

206 SHORT STORY WORLD: THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY AMERICAN MASTERS that makes them possible. In “Aunt Cynthy Dallett” only the decision to move away is presented, not the events that this change would produce in her life. In “Miss Tempy’s Watchers” the friendship of the two ladies is not definitely established, the fabula only includes their acts of humiliation. It is precisely in “The Only Rose” where this case is more conspicuous: the text includes the span of time in the character’s life in which there seem to be no events -old age-; the events that shaped Mrs. Bickford’s life happened a long time ago. It is her change of attitude towards them that constitutes the only event of the fabula. The reader’s search for a “different relevance” is felt necessary because of the nearly plotless nature of the narrative cycles and also because the text apparently seems to refuse to guide the reader. The reader has only partial access to “the secret life” of the characters, since he is provided only with what the characters say and only very rarely with what they think, by means of character-bound focalization through words of the narrator. What is more important, the narrator does not provide any conventional mark which would make clear where the exposition, middle, and end can be found in the text. We said that we could not identify this design by means of the events, since beginning, middle and end are not arranged according to our customary expectations. The narrator does not contribute with his perspective, which would explain the characters´ intentions once and for all. If in “Aunt Cynthy Dallett” the narrator had presented action by means of a sentence such as this one: “Abby wanted to visit her aunt because she felt remorse that she had not seen her for a long time” or if the narrator had remarked at a certain moment of the narrative: “Miss Abby realized at that moment that her own kindness was leading her to abandon her house in order to live with her intolerant aunt”, the essence of the story, which lets the reader interpret for himself, would have disappeared, and the text would have been deprived of its complexity. This narrative strategy reflects the idea that experience can be shared only to a limited extent, and it lets the reader grasp this idea by himself. This short story teaches us how to interpret since the narrator does not do it for us. It is the reader who has to locate the position of the “emotional peaks” within the course of the narrative. The reader’s response in the short story is not aimed at the outcome but at a private solution. Besides, since the events are not filtered through the narrator«s perspective, but through the characters´, they somehow lose their quality of “events”, they become attitude. There is an approach to the character rather than to the event, the event is minimal, and usually only one.

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Because focalization relies on the characters, events seem to be “disorganized”, they happen unattended by a sanctioned version of “story”. Due to this apparent neglect, there is in these stories a quality of realism that in itself justifies the selection of a temporal span which is not crowded with events. This choice does not satisfy our customary demand to be presented only with dramatic or eventful stages in the characters« life. To become witness to the unspectacular or the trivial responds to a more realistic approach to experience, where impasses cannot be elided and events cannot be summarized in one sentence, but appear to be a collection of details. The clues that guide the reader to find the “emotional peaks” are provided precisely by the scarce focalizations of non-perceptible objects presented in the text. In “Aunt Cynthy Dallett”, for example, there are two character-bound focalizations that express the two main issues of the narrative: ageing and the different consequences that old age have for the two characters: Aunty Cynthy thinks: “I declare, she’s getting along in years”(Jewett, 1954: 317). And the narrator comments on Abby«s feelings after she has taken the decision to live with her aunt for the rest of her life: “Though the thought of her own little home gave a hard tug at his heart” (p. 319). The first statement expresses the sincerity and cruelty of Cynthy«s thought, which she never actually utters and it would be out of place in the nice conversation the three women maintain. The second statement points to Abby’s awareness. It shows without overstatement the painful experience that Abby has to go through because of her decision, but this feeling is also absent from the conversation. Another example of this strategy of non-intervention of the narrator can be found in the descriptions. The narrator does not dare to intrude to offer a picture of the characters until one of the characters notices some change in others. Then, the character«s attention is drawn to some detail of appearance and the reader has then some chance of receiving some information. The reader has to do without important details until this occasion arrives. Aunt Cynthy Dallett is described only when the two ladies arrive at her house, and then, they carefully look at her while she waits to open the fence, they had not seen one another for a long time. The order of presentation of information is the same as the order in which the characters experience their life. This particular line of development is the one that prevails in the text, and may be slightly different from the order of the fabula, because the fabula is an abstraction, a rearrangement, a classification. The text never parts from one centre of gravity that the reader has to find.

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Up to now we have commented on what has been included and left out of the story. Now we will try to describe how suspense is created in stories with these characteristics. The fabula is a pattern of events that responds to the reader’s demand for unity or purpose. We have mentioned how our sense of unity is frustrated, because the author blurs or omits the signals of the arrangement of the incidents. There is no recognizable beginning, but there is not recognizable “middle” either, since the narrator does not render the climax of the action visible even when this is not made translucent in the conversation. But of all phases, the most seriously altered in the short story is that of the end. According to Aristotle, the end is “that which itself naturally follows some other thing, either by necessity, or as a rule, but has nothing following it” (in Preminger, 1974: 623). All the short stories by Sarah Orne Jewett are characterized by leaving out what “must follow”. The restricted temporal span of the fabula does not include the future events that may be occasioned by the change presented. In “The Town Poor” the text is finished before the change can occur, which emphasizes the static character of the short story: the reader departs from the text with the image of the loneliness and poverty of the Bray sisters. We are only shown the pang of guilt which causes the unexpected witnessing of an ordeal. Action does not come yet, only that which causes it is shown. In a novel we would have been shown the difficulties the Bray sisters had to encounter when they were left unprovided for, their recovery from illness, the reaction of the inhabitants of the village, the two neighbours’ attitude, etc. Similarly, in “Miss Tempy’s Watchers” we are not shown the lady’s good deeds, her moment of death, or the lives other characters led after she died. Instead, we sense how Tempy«s generosity affects her two friends deep inside. Their awareness of this loss takes up, however, only a very little portion of the text. A sudden awareness is enough to make a short story solid and engaging, and in order to flesh it out within a particular fictional world, the writer has to assemble his materials in a way that everything is made dependent on that. In “Aunt Cynthy Dallett” the decision is made quickly and never subject to reconsideration. The reader is not offered testimony of how Abby and her aunt will live after Abby has moved in, and what will eventually be the result of the decision. However, this restricted experience proves to be fruitful for the reader because he has been provided with enough information to be able to imagine how things will be like in the future. Thanks to this “emptiness of words” surrounding the episode, the reader endows it with a projection and a transcendence which is surely achieved differently in the novel, where events need not remain unhinged from a larger experience.

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Another aspect that deserves analysis is the kind of suspense created if we take into account that there is a lack of fabula indicators in these texts. It is also the case here that the reader intuits that the fabula is almost non-existent. Although the pattern of events, as we defined the fabula, is somewhat “diluted”, it does not shatter our impression of being engaged in a narrative text and it does not even diminish the sense of suspense.

If viewed in terms of the psychological and emotional response of the audience or the reader, plot has referred to impression, sense of unity, to purpose, or to some similar response. In terms of the latter view of plot, any of many of the different elements may constitute the controlled affective quality of a work; it is essentially in terms of witness rather than creation that the critics of the contemporary Chicago school have attempted to broaden greatly the concept of plot. (Preminger, 1974: 623)

Preminger«s latter allusion to the kind of engagement in which the reader gets involved is the one that describes the short stories by Sarah Orne Jewett. The reader’s sense of suspense is governed by his witnessing characters speak during an uninterrupted period of time. Suspense is created by an appeal similar to the stream of consciousness. The reader looks for signs of the vision of the fabula, rather than for fabula signs, and in this sense the kind of suspense created is that of “thematic incertitude”. This suspense is especially acute in those short stories where there is not even conflict, as in “Miss Tempy’s Watcher’s”. The reader looks for an arrangement of ideas that leaves out the temporal sequence of the event series. We may say it is static or thematic because the aim of this search is the achievement of “a purpose” lying behind character manifestation. The reader regards the text as a narrative in which meaning is being disclosed progressively, rather than consisting of events happening orderly. It is very frequent that the text favours the identification of an object with the main issue of the short story. This is done mainly by repetition. An object of the fabula is related to certain characteristics concerning either the attitude of the character or her past, and eventually, it becomes a symbol that sums up a set of ideas 47. In “The Only Rose” the three bunches of flowers represent Mrs. Bickford’s three husbands, they are a symbol of certain periods of her past. When they are dead, she can reconsider their virtues and failures, she can look at them serenely,

47. This strategy will be used by many short story writers in the twentieth century. See Eudora Welty’s “Lily Daw and the Three Ladies” or Truman Capote´s “The Diamond Guitar”.

210 SHORT STORY WORLD: THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY AMERICAN MASTERS as she gazes at her three bunches of flowers. Once her husbands have been objectified, they can be analysed and accommodated to her present impulses. In “The Town Poor” the only chair of the room comes to symbolize the two sisters’ miserable life, their own inability to face the world. In “Aunt Cynthy Dallett” the two houses represent the niece and the aunt, when the niece loses her own house, she loses control over her life as well. The text keeps us waiting until we get hold of that precious sense of purpose. Nothing is said explicitly in the text about it, and that makes us expect something, a cause, a clue that has to be revealed in the text sooner or later. Cues are given in the text so that we can recognize this moment as explicative of the cause that has been veiled and the reason why it has remained so. They key to decode Sarah Orne Jewett’s short story is always provided by a moment of silence, by a pause in the dialogue. Silence is used as a sign, the moment in which the characters cannot speak because the situation overwhelms their verbal capacities. At this moment the reader experiences his greatest degree of involvement with the represented world, the closest contact with the characters. Although information is absent, he can decode the particular development of each character, the kind of thoughts they are entertaining. It is also the moment in which the position of the reader is made conspicuous, since he is aware that he has found “the point”. And it is produced in the text only when the reader has been provided with a clue. In “Aunt Cynthy Dallett”, this silence is produced when Abby asks her aunt to come to live with her:

There was a terrible silence in the room, and Miss Pendexter felt her heart begin to beat very fast. She did not dare to look at her aunt first. Presently the silence was broken. Aunt Cynthia had been gazing out of the window, and she turned towards them a little paler and older than before, and smiling sadly” (Jewett, 1954: 318).

The reader imagines at that moment what each of the three characters is thinking, and what issue is at stake. In “Miss Tempy’s Watchers” the silence comes after the account of an episode of Miss Tempy’s generosity. After this, both ladies stop talking and the reader guesses at different interpretations of the two characters of the very same fact. In “The Town Poor” the silence comes after the visit to the Bray sisters, the characters’ realization of their own trivial concerns is unaccounted for in the text. At this moment of silence, an emotion is transmitted, the pang of guilt, of admiration, the anxiety of decision, a sudden awareness. And so the short story’s

211 MARêA JESÚS HERNÁEZ LERENA task is to transmit a single emotion in believable terms. To make this possible there must be a past and a future for the characters. But as it is almost impossible to include all the events in a very long stretch of the characters’ lives, we are offered, instead, the views of those characters about the events. This strategy frees these narratives from a close rendering of time. For example, in “The Only Rose” the character has time at her disposal because she only uses memory time. In our section devoted to conclusions in previous chapters, we often said that the short story offers the reader a relatively large amount of information that refers to several semantic fields, and that this variety of information is progressively restricted to a single idea associated with the main source of significance in the text. We have seen how this method was recurrent in Poe’s short stories. However, Sarah Orne Jewett’s short stories approach this point of confluence imperceptibly since dialogue seems to be unarranged by an entity responsible for relevance and coherence. In Poe«s stories, narration was retrospective and the events and temporal sequences presented were arranged by an extradiegetic narrator. The basis of the short story is a punctual approach to a situation, or to a few events or characters, the ending is always about to happen. The objective of the novel is achieved on a larger scale, the reader knows that he has a long way to go. The short story’s restricted dimensions enable the writer to focus on any object, however limited or trivial. The short story claims the value of what could be considered unimportant in terms of action. A single change of a character, however minute, is considered as a development, there is no need to include actions of broader scope -as it was considered necessary in the nineteenth-century novel. In connection with this, the short story contributed to make the narrative universe more embracing, less selective, and to elevate to the category of literary what could otherwise have been considered as inappropriate for narrative purposes 48. In the short story, the reader’s activity of decoding a text -that due to reasons already stated appears somewhat mysterious- is given primary importance. The reader becomes self-conscious of his role of searcher for meaning, trying to complete with his own conclusions what remains unsaid or briefly stated. Therefore, the short story, besides offering the reader the opportunity of being immersed in another world, is a challenge for him, a challenge to his own powers of imagination and interpretation.

48. This does not mean that novels do not include “small” episodes such as visits, on the contrary. Only that in the short story they are given primal importance. It is not only a matter of inclusion, but of concentration.

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The short story does not only ask the reader to identify with characters and project his own feelings on them. The reader can consider himself to be a character within a narrative cycle of his own, in which he must perform a task: in the first place, he is made alert, and he is given the possibilities. Secondly, he understands, gets hold of the idea, -this is at the same time the realization stage for the character-, and thirdly, he may eventually reach a conclusion or may be able to grasp a contradiction. Sarah Orne Jewett’s short stories are not based mainly, however, on contradictions, but on a lack of explanations. And so it demands from the reader not a reorganization of narrative elements -this was what the reader had to do in previous short stories-, but an addition. Besides the “reorganized fabula”, we must speak about the “added fabula”. We described the short story as a narrative in which the object of representation is single, but the way of representing it is double (a twofold perspective). In previous short stories these two perspectives were included in the text by various means, already discussed at length. In these short stories, the second perspective must be provided by the reader. There is still a double fabula, only that not all the elements are included in the text. As a result, Sarah Orne Jewett narratives are already reaching the “summit” of a genre that had been slowly and carefully constructed by her predecessors. A genre which had been progressively eliminating elements from the conventional narrative until it was possible for a writer to write her story relying on the reader alone to bring them back at will. Initially, there was a double narrative cycle extended over the time span of the fabula, also two characters representing two narrative cycles with different aims provided the text with two different interpretations. These are the short stories which belong to the first group of short story writers discussed in this book. Then, Harte created narratives in which the two narrative cycles were at odds with each other. The reader had to ascertain which of these two cycles was more relevant for his understanding of the text. Then, one of these perspectives disappeared from the level of the fabula by including one of the narrative cycles within the extradiegetic level. Mark Twain«s stories did this. Finally this second interpretation was entirely taken out of the text and handed to the reader. Sarah Orne Jewett had achieved to give poetic intensity to the everyday life of her unassuming women.

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2. Fabula and story time in the Short Story

The time span of the fabula offers valuable clues to the vision of the fabula. According to Mieke Bal, fabulas have two types of duration: crisis or development, and this choice entails different conceptions of verisimilitude. The crisis “indicates a short span of time into which events have been compressed” (p. 38). And the development, “a longer period of time which shows a development” (p. 38). When trying to connect our short stories to either of these definitions we find that we must reject at least one clause in both sentences. These short stories do not “compress the events” and they do not usually show “a long period of time”. However, a satisfactory definition may be reached if we join both definitions: the fabula time of the short story is crisis, and it shows a development. Bal uses the tale of “Tom Thumb” as an example to illustrate the crisis, where “in three days the family’s life changes substantially, from desperate poverty to happy prosperity” (p. 38). There is a substantial change in Sarah Orne Jewett’s short stories, but it is not due to compression. “Aunt Cynthy Dallett” presents two mornings in the life of three women, and in them, the lives of two women change sharply. However, the only event presented is a decision. We do not have explicit access to all the consequences that this decision will have in the future, but the nature of the decision opens up the past and future of the two main characters. Therefore, the short span of time is not treated by means of compression of events, it is rather a matter of choice of one event, and of the scope of that event. The study of fabula and story time leads us to draw some conclusions on the special treatment of time in the short story, how it affects development in characterization and how past or future sequences are included in the text in spite of its restricted time span. The four short stories last no longer than two days, a couple of hours in “The Town Poor”, one night in “Miss Tempy’s Watchers”, and two mornings in “Aunt Cynthy Dallett” and “The Only Rose”. What is shown is the conversation maintained in these short periods. The reduction of the time span of the fabula comes together with an almost absent manipulation of time, either to make it quicker or slower than in the fabula. The four stories consist of a few scenes, whose number ranges from one to three. The time between the few scenes is not summarized, it is eliminated. This particular rendering of time “at its real pace” may disconcert the reader, there are no summaries, no ellipses that may omit those parts of the conversation

214 SHORT STORY WORLD: THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY AMERICAN MASTERS that seem unimportant 49. The effect on the reader is that he is turned into a witness, exclusively attached to the “present” of the characters, the reader never has “at his disposal all the temporal dimensions of the story” (Rimmon-Kenan, p. 78). This is the distinction between external and internal focalization. This strategy is in part a consequence of the type of narration selected. The narrator is not independent from the characters, and therefore, the temporal sequence does not follow his flashbacks and flashforwards in order to present the reader with a more complete view. This is the opposite strategy to the one used by Harte, for example, where the narrator«s omniscience was manifested as rhythmic variety. This lack of manipulation of the fabula which accounts for time “second by second” is reinforced by an equal absence of deviations from the chronological order, which is very surprising if we take into account that these short stories deal with the past. But the past is not included by means of anachronies, but by means of allusions and references on the part of the characters; they think about the past in the present. This faithful rendering of the chronological order is conspicuous, it is more usual to find breaches of a strict chronological linearity. The effect that Jewett«s method has on the reader can be summed up as follows: 1. The “clock of the narrative” resembles the passing of time in real life. The reader witnesses without noticeable pauses or summaries the flux of conversation, the gestures and small movements of the characters. This creates the illusion of expansion of a short period of time that is accounted for in full. 2. Besides, the exclusive use of the scene implies a vision of the narrative in which reproducing the flux of time is considered more important than artificially “pushing in” happenings so that the story appears to be more eventful. Attention is paid fundamentally to the characters« expression. The fabula can be defined exclusively in temporal terms: a short period of the character’s existence. Unity of pattern would be provided by the reader’s impression of eyewitnessing. This definition is somewhat simpler than narratology allows for the fabula, since we consider it is enough to present a temporal sequence to build up a story, and therefore,

49. The only short stories in which there are noticeable ellipses are “The Only Rose”, and, to a lesser extent, “Aunt Cynthy Dallett” because they consist of two and three scenes respectively. The text only deals with the conversations related to the main events of the fabula: the conversation that prepares the characters for the meeting with Aunt Cynthy and the conversation that prepares Mrs. Bickford for the decision.

215 MARêA JESÚS HERNÁEZ LERENA a fabula. The short story accomplishes a reduction of the narrative elements which, as novel readers, we tend to consider indispensable. These short stories rescue time for time’s sake rather than for the sake of what happens within it. Sarah Orne Jewett’s short stories deal with an hour, a day, a visit, a walk, where no moment is left out. They are very daring in the sense that there is no fear to focus on the apparently irrelevant. Doing so, they manage to give narrative interest to isolated details 50. 3. This strategy has a bearing on characterization: the character is not defined for the reader, the reader has to form an image of the character with the help of the few scattered clues. Since the character«s plight turns out to be more intense because it is somehow silenced in the text, the character remains for a long time in the reader«s memory, normally as an enigmatic image that displays more and more power on reconsideration. There are two main methods which contribute to the particular “effect of expansion” created in these short stories: the choice of the event and the use of the hypodiegetic level. The event that has been selected must include a reconsideration of past aspects of the character’s life and a glimpse into the character’s future. We will call this type of event a hinge event because it implies two temporal perspectives. Because of this, the event becomes a symbol of two perspectives that come into conflict and that expand backwards or forward, and whose point of convergence is the present time accounted for in the text. The event might be a decision, an act of remembrance, or an act of awareness. All of them have a dual nature, they bring about two screens on which the character’s past and future are projected, although they are “physically absent” from the text. “Miss Tempy’s Watchers” manages to account for the whole life of a woman who has just died by means of having other people remembering her and being imbued by her spirit. The night previous to the funeral stands between Tempy’s and the neighbour’s past and a future that is surmised different since the two neighbours have learned to appreciate each other. The awareness that the two ladies in “The Town Poor” experience is a consequence of a reconsideration of their past, which strikes them as painfully trivial and forces them to plan future actions. In fact, the events chosen for each

50. The scene is not used to convey the turning point of the fabula either, as it is common in other stories, where it is set into contrast with the summary, the pause, or the slow-down.

216 SHORT STORY WORLD: THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY AMERICAN MASTERS short story have a quality that is a mixture of the above mentioned events, remembrance, awareness, and decision. We may note that the three stand for different temporal sequences, past, present and future. Because of this, although there is one single event, it can be considered as an event full of potential. The two ladies’ process of change in “Aunt Cynthy Dallett” is very long, however, only that moment previous to the decision is included. If a decision has to be taken, they have to put in the balance their past and their future, which are presented by allusions. The sentence: “Once the taking of such liberty would have been very provoking to her” (Orne Jewett, 1954: 318), illustrates how development is created sporadically in the text by means of suggesting the attitude of both characters in the past: Abby restrained, her aunty imposing. We also imagine the consequences the decision would have in the future, once we have associated Abby’s image with the traits of sensibility, innocence, and endurance. The short story manages to find a “corner” in time where past life comes back, is put into question, and is subject to change. Another means to include other temporal sequences in the text is the use of a hypodiegetic level, disguised to a certain extent by an uninterrupted dialogue and by the incomplete nature of the recollected anecdotes. Bal, Rimmon-Kenan, and others study the relationships between the primary and the embedded text in terms of resemblance or opposition. The embedded texts in these short stories function primarily as retroversions or anticipations. The retroversions make the final decision possible, as in “The Only Rose” where the distance of the embedded texts hints at the relevance of the “different pasts” Mrs. Bickford lived. The last husband to be remembered turns out to be the most important for her, the one nearer her present, manifested in her nephew. The story of the broken toys and of the hard-working girl in “Miss Tempy’s Watchers” stand for Miss Tempy’s whole past and bring to the fore the attitude that Sarah Ann Binson and Miss Crowe have towards each other. Of the two embedded stories in “Aunt Cynthy Dallett”, one is an anticipation of the primary text and the other an anticipation of what the primary text does not contain. The story of the lady who unexpectedly receives a visit and spends several hours cooking while her friend is waiting deals with the same topic of the story: unexpected visits and their consequences. The story of the man who was very poor, but so methodical that when he died he left the exact money for the burial in his pocket, reflects Abby«s poverty. This apparently irrelevant anecdote hints at Cynthy«s imminent death and how her testament causes Abby to lose her independence. Both anecdotes turn out to be ironic, and both end in death, -the

217 MARêA JESÚS HERNÁEZ LERENA lady who was received the visit died after a few months. However, they are assumed by the characters of the primary text to be funny, even for Abby, who does not realize that the events of the two anecdotes bear more relation to her own life than she imagines. If previous embedded texts were used as a “sample” of the past which caused change, the embedded stories in “Aunt Cynthy Dallett” darken the character’s future, they are a remainder of what there is at the end.

218 V. Conclusions

These final pages which bring our analysis to a close will not be a list of conclusions, since these have already been presented at the beginning or at the end of each chapter, together with their relationship with previous or subsequent groups of short stories. However, we may bring some of these findings to light again in order to engage ourselves in a final consideration of the issues. Our findings will be examined in the following order: 1. Narrative strategies which are constant in all the short stories analysed. 2. Concepts which must be taken into account when dealing with the short story. 3. Reader«s response when confronted with short stories, and short story structural devices which provoke a problematical reading. 4. Definition of the short story. According to Eudora Welty (1977: 107-115), in fiction there is always a sacrifice. We can consider the development of the short story as a search for narrative methods which make up for this great sacrifice of the short story: context 51. These strategies are used to achieve expansion, continuity, and complexity, and all of them have a common feature: their binary nature. Each element of the fabula, each aspect of the story, and each textual technique finds a reflection, a twin.

51. Besides, we have noted how the short story left out many elements of the fabula: the lack of specific intention allowed the relationship between subject and aim to remain unexplained. The same could be said about the actantial links and the network formed by helpers and opponents, since they were completely eliminated. There was also an absence of non-functional events and the time outside the fabula was not presented in the text.

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The first group of short story writers, -Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville-, “invented” a double narrative cycle performed by the same or by two different characters, which provided the narrative with a dual frame of reference for interpretation. On the other hand, actors possessed a real and a hypothetical fabula, and even characters were given shape in the text by a twofold code of referentiality. Fabula progression was based on a change in the subject’s aim, which produced in the actor a shift in perspective and it allowed the reader to appreciate the story«s irony when the result of the fabula turned the character«s expectations upside down. Time references were made deceptive by a disruption of the chronological order: actors confused the time sequences and the narrators offered a false textual rendering of the linear temporal development. Bret Harte created the possibility of having a multiple narrative cycle. He included two results and obliged the reader to create his or her own fabula, where the elements of those narrative cycles could be organized according to the reader«s sense of relevance. After Harte, Mark Twain placed the two frames of reference on different levels of the text, the diegetic and hypodiegetic and, due to the obvious inadequacy of one of these two levels, Twain made it clear that the task of the reader when reading a short story was to grasp some inadequacy, to broaden one of the perspectives included in the text through contrast with the other one. In this motion from “bottom” to “top”, from fabula to textual narration, Sarah Orne Jewett occupies the highest position. She does not include a double code of interpretation in the text. Instead, she demands it from the reader. After reading a short story by her, the reader feels somewhat dissatisfied and, to a greater extent, challenged: there is more in it than what has been said. It is the reader who has to construct another fabula, in which the nature of the relationships between the characters is better adjusted. A fabula which unearths the narrow- minded logic of the text itself. These texts turn out to be very misleading, they either contradict their initial assumptions or they conceal basic information. After reading a novel, we may produce an abstraction of it in fabula terms. And when we consider these terms, we are aware that something is obviously lacking. It is the embodiment we miss, the concrete and especial terms with which each element of the fabula becomes “real”. With the abstraction we have taken the physicality of the imaginary world out of the text. When we carry out the same process in a short story, we realize that what is missing is not only the embodiment, but that there

220 SHORT STORY WORLD: THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY AMERICAN MASTERS is a contradiction or deviation from the logical and temporal events presented in the fabula. There has been in the reading of the short story a learning over logic. That is why so frequently in the short story the text seems to be at odds with a fabula in which we have classified narrative cycles as successful or unsuccessful. Those processes acquire a different meaning in the text: it is this second fabula we have to discover. There is always the possibility that the relationships between the elements of the fabula can be organized differently, not according to our own perception of reality, but according to the literary terms in which they have been expressed: the particular rendering which the text achieves. This is why, besides the “abstracted” fabula -the fabula of narratology- we have decided to find a term which accounts for this contradiction: the “reorganized fabula”. The fabula registers a pattern of events, the reorganized fabula describes the pattern these events are given in the text, which may depend on the characters« subjectivity or on the specific design of the text. The differences between the abstracted and the reorganized fabula imply that a deviation is carried out in the text. The only difference between the reorganized fabula and the “added fabula” is that in the added fabula the second frame of reference or set of norms is excluded from the text, whereas it is included in the former. Apart from these considerations, the concept of event in these short stories is defined as the perceptual or ideological relationship between the subject and an object. It is an attitude or standpoint. We have observed a lack of “events-change” in all short stories in favour of a total centring on the character’s assumptions and perceptions. The events in the text belong to past or future sequences which are not included in the particular time span selected for the short story. Hence the existence of some fabulas which consist of the non-existence of events -”Mr. Higginbotham’s Catastrophe”, “Young Goodman Brown”, “The Piazza Tale”- or fabulas which deal with the existence of a plot (a fabula) that the subject is not able to grasp: “Benito Cereno” and “Mrs. Bullfrog”. This emphasis on the absence of events can be appreciated even in Harte’s short stories, which are precisely based on the anecdote. However, these stories present a deviation from “event” in its pure sense in favour of characterization and moral issues. The short stories by Sarah Orne Jewett eliminate those stages of the protagonists’ life in which something happened. We are not offered those events, but a retrospective view of them. If there is any possibility of an outcome, it is

221 MARêA JESÚS HERNÁEZ LERENA again left out of the text. In this sense, she achieves the most complex concept of event, since she chooses only one event for her narratives, but carefully selects its scope: this event is single but, at the same time double, it is a “hinge event”: a decision, a recollection, an awareness. They imply two dimensions of time: past and present, or past and future. According to Shklovsky (1971: 278), the writer, when creating new methods for analysing reality, spends time examining them in his own work. He refers to Cervantes, Fielding, and Sterne and their new theories of the novel. In my opinion, short story writers were conscious that they were developing a new method to understand experience in narrative form, and that is the reason for the repeated appearance of those issues in their works. One of the reasons why the short story could not flourish in England in the nineteenth century was the fixity of a society and frame of mind reflected in the Victorian novel. Absence of society and institutions in America favoured more subversive methods (Bates, 1988: 23-41). The reader of short stories has to face two main problems. First the absence of signals which mark or interpret the development of the fabula, and second, textual deceptiveness. The first aspect is a consequence of the short story disengagement from the “traditional” components of the narrative. Short story fabula can be defined exclusively as a stretch of time. A sequence in time may be all that is necessary for events to coalesce into a short story, but it may not be enough to make a novel. The “why” between the events is left out in the short story. The novel relies on external actions to achieve connection, but the short story deliberately refuses to portray these “climaxes” of life and centres on a time sequence deprived of them. This time sequence is used as a “corner” in time from which all those events are recalled. Secondly, if there is in most short stories a false development, the reader’s activity in understanding the text is not linear, but retroactive. Sometimes a new piece of information is placed at the end of the text, forcing the reader to change his interpretation. Sometimes the narrator«s unreliability becomes obvious and the reader has to produce a different fabula from the one he was assuming up to that point. Sometimes the suspense is left unsolved and the reader has to choose between two possibilities. The inclusion of unexpectedness in these and many other cases serves the purpose of inciting the reader to subsequent reflection. The process of understanding does not finish when the short story has been read. The text needs to be reordered. Like chess pieces, we have to put events, processes, and actors in different positions from the one they are in the text.

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It seems that most nineteenth-century short story writers aimed at startling the reader, and they do it by placing possibility, and not result, at the end. The movement is from safety to doubt, from protection to exposure. Focalization and narration strategies reflect this development. Omniscience is considered by the first short story writers to be the only way to reach the truth: Irving, Hawthorne -although not in “Young Goodman Brown”-, Harte. But then, the extra-heterodiegetic narrator is considered to be ill-intended (the narrator of “Benito Cereno” presents the focalizations of the only character who is continually wrong). Mark Twain presents narrators unable to appreciate their own story, and eventually Sarah Orne Jewett arranges her short stories as plays where we can only know what the characters say. Together with this distrust of omniscience, there is a process of reduction of overtness, towards covertness of mediation. The direction is towards fidelity to individual experience regardless of any interpretative system included within the narrative. Besides, there is, from the very beginning, an extensive use of intra- homodiegetic narrators which made the fabula very difficult to ascertain due to their high degree of unreliability. This unreliability is often disguised by slighting the figure of the narrator, making him appear as intra-heterodiegetic or presenting him as authoritative, as in the case of “Bartleby”. The reader and the critic also learn that in the short story the components of rhythm are keys to meaning. The same components -the scene or the summary- are always related to the same phase of the fabula in the double narrative cycle. In the scene the main issues of the fabula are at stake. The scene is a riddle which contains the terms for the solution of the fabula. This highly symbolic arrangement was a drawback for the short story up to Harte, since the scene was too abstract. This is related to the generic notions which predominated in the early American writers from Poe to Melville: they thought that the short story was a narrative of symmetrical relationships, a “jack-in-the box” where the fancies of a unique subjectivity could find materialization. Jorge Luis Borges (1980: 237) refers to this feature when he says that the American literature is more capable of inventing than of observing or transcribing. However, the evolution of the short story also depends on other authors who are competent in assembling several consciences -the characters- within a consistent system of relationships and a realistic setting. This is the field which had been exclusive to the novel, but which the short story writer manages to

223 MARêA JESÚS HERNÁEZ LERENA successfully handle using a different method. These short story writers were Twain and Sarah Orne Jewett. With them, the short story becomes -not the development of a thesis- but a faithful rendering of character. The special use of rhythm also creates some effects connected with the reading of short stories, since the short story starts in temporal indefiniteness, where summary or slow down is possible, but moves towards a specific point in time. The short stories we have analysed usually end with a scene, where the intervention of the narrator is less possible and the reader’s time is developed at the same time as the characters’. The reader becomes an eyewitness in his final contact with the imaginary world. On the other hand, the reader has to imagine characters on the basis of one trait. The short story writer makes a situation visible, in it, the character completely comes to life. The reader does not notice the character’s anonymity on many occasions and he does not notice either the absence of descriptions of appearance or personality. This “discovery” of the short story has been discussed at length in our analysis. Now I will simply quote Bates’s (1988: 24) words concerning this aspect: “The full-length portrait, in full dress, with scenic background has become superfluous; now it is enough that we should know a woman by the shape of her hands”. During the course of our explanations, several definitions of the short story have been provided; we have reached these conclusions after confirming that the same principles have recurred throughout our corpus. The common basis of them all is that short story strategies are aimed at creating a conflict between a double code of interpretation. When Arthur Honeywell (1988: 239-250) analyses the plot in the modern novel, he concludes that, whereas in the eighteenth century plots revolved around clear beginnings and endings, and in the nineteenth century the plot depended on causal sequence, the modern novel achieves coherence through adjustments in perspective: a “maze of apparently unrelated facts” is finally apprehended and endowed with significance. A better insight into the motivations of people is what really matters. We can consider the short story as a forerunner of this modern concept. Carson McCullers uses part of her poem “The Mortgaged Heart” to introduce her book of short stories, poems, and essays entitled The Mortgaged Heart (1963). These lines sum up particularly well the main characteristics of the short story if we alter them slightly. We substitute the words “dead” and “lover” for the words “short story” and “readers”. Here is our version of the poem:

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The short story demands a double vision. A furthered zone, Ghostly decision of apportionment. For the short story can claim the reader’s senses, the mortgaged heart.

The first line needs no explanation. In the second, the key word is “apportionment”. We relate that word to the short story writer’s decision to leave out or to include. His task is to distribute, to “apportion” information between speech and silence, and to make silence speak. To make the absent available. The final sentence of the quotation up to the comma refers to the genre’s demand on the audience to complete, to imagine, to fill in detail a partially stated picture and to absorb the proper impression. Without the reader’s experiences the short story would not be possible. In this sense the short story’s “heart” is a “mortgaged heart” because its essence is “owned” by others, by the readers.

225

VI. References

1. Primary Sources

AUSTEN, Jane. 1972 (1813). Pride and Prejudice. Harmondsworth: Penguin BIERCE, Ambrose. 1952. The Collected Writings. New York: Citadel Press. BRAVO VILLASANTE, Carmen. (Selección y Traducción). 1986. Cuentos del romanticismo alemán. Estella: Salvat. CAPOTE, Truman. 1993. A Capote Reader. New York: Penguin. CHEKOV, Antón Pávlovich. 1981. Primeros relatos. Barcelona: Planeta. ______. 1982. La dama del perrito y otros cuentos. Barcelona: Ediciones Orbis. CHOPIN, Kate. 1976. The Awakening and Selected Stories. New York: Signet Classic. New American Library. CONRAD, Joseph. 1983. Tales of Unrest. Harmondsworth: Penguin. CORTÁZAR, Julio. 1982. La isla al mediodía y otros relatos. Estella: Biblioteca Básica Salvat. CRANE, Stephen. 1963. “The Blue Hotel”. In The Red Badge of Courage. London: Rinchard, no. 47. FORKNER, Ben and SAMWAY, Patrick. (Eds.). 1989. Stories of the Old South. New York: Penguin.

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FREEMAN, Mary Wilkins. 1890. “The Revolt of Mother’”. In Stern and Gross. 1975. Vol. 3: 180-196. HAMMETON, Sir J.A. (Ed.). The World’s Thousand Best Short Stories. London: The Educational Book Company Ltd. HARTE, Bret. 1966. Harte of the West. 17 Stories by Bret Harte. Hoopes, Ned. (Ed.). New York: Laurel-Leaf Library. HAWTHORNE, Nathaniel. 1937. The Complete Novels and Selected Tales of Nathaniel Hawthorne. Pearson, Norman Holmes. (Ed.). N.Y.: The Modern Library. ______. 1983 (1970). The Scarlet Letter and Selected Tales. Connolly, Thomas E. (Ed.). Harmmondsworth: Penguin. HEMINGWAY, Ernest. 1858 (1925). In Our time. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. ______. 1974 (1928). Men Without Women. Harmmondsworth: Penguin. HENRY, O. 1945 (1899). The Best Short Stories of O. Henry. Bennett A. Cerf and Van H. Cartmell (Eds.). New York: The Modern Library. IRVING, Washington. “Rip van Winkle” and “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”. In STERN, Milton R. and GROSS, Seymour L. 1975 (1962). American Literature Survey. Connecticut: The University of Connecticut. The Viking Portable Library. Vol. 2: 3-48. JEWETT, Sarah Orne. 1954 (1886). The Country of the Pointed Firs and Other Stories. New York: Doubleday Anchor Books. LONDON, Jack. 1900. “The White Silence”. In Stern and Gross. 1975. Vol.3: 395-405. MELVILLE, Herman. 1949. The Complete Stories of Herman Melville. LEYDA, Jay (Ed.). New York: Random House. POE, Edgar Allan. 1984. Selected Writings. Galloway, David. (Ed.). Harmmondsworth: Penguin. TWAIN, Mark. 1967 (1910). Great Short Works of Mark Twain. Kaplan, Justin. (Ed.). New York: Perennial Classic. Harper and Row. WELTY, Eudora. 1980. The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty. London: Penguin.

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BAL, Mieke. 1985. Narratology. Introduction to the Theory of Narrative. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. BAQUERO GOYANES, Mariano. 1967. ¿Qué es el cuento? Buenos Aires: Colección Esquemas, Editorial Columba. ______. 1975. Estructuras de la novela actual. Barcelona: Planeta. BARTHES, Roland (et al). 1982. Análisis estructural del relato. México: Premia Editora. BATES, H.E. 1988. The Modern Short Story from 1809 to 1953. London: Robert Hale. BLAISE, Clark. 1993. “To Begin, to Begin”. In How Stories Mean. Metcalf, John and Struthers, J.R. (Tim) (Eds). Don Mills, Ont.: The Porcupine«s Quill. 158-162. BONHEIM, Helmut. 1986 (1982). The Narrative Modes. Techniques of the Short Story. New Hampshire: D. S. Brewer BORGES, Jorge Luis, 1980, Nueva antología personal, Barcelona: Bruguera. BOWEN, Elizabeth. (Ed.). 1937. The Faber Book of Modern Short Stories. London: Faber and Faber. BRUSS, Elizabeth W. 1976. Autobiographical Acts: the Changing Situation of a Literary Genre. Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press. CHASE, Richard. 1986 (1950). The American Novel and its Tradition. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press. CHATMAN, Seymour. 1988. “Discourse: Nonnarrated Stories”. In Hoffman and Murphy. (Eds.) 367-379. COHAN, Steven and SHIRES, Linda M. 1988. Telling Stories. A Theoretical Analysis of Narrative Fiction. New York: Routledge. DICK, Philip K. 1995 (1977). “Cuento y novela de ciencia ficción”. In Zabala, Lauro. (Ed.). Teorías del cuento. Vol. I. México: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. Trans. Eduardo Murillo. 333-335. DUBROW, Heather. 1982. Genre. London: Methuen. EICHEMBAUM, B. 1970. “Sobre la teoría de la prosa”. In Todorov, T. (Ed.). 147-157.

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ETIEMBLE. Rene. 1977 (1974). Ensayos de literatura (verdaderamente general). Madrid: Taurus. FEIST, Peter H. 1989. Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919). Un sueño de armonía. Hamburg: Benedikt Taschen. FERGUSON, Suzanne C. 1988. “Defining the Short Story. Impressionism and Form”. In Hoffman and Murphy. (Eds.) 458- 471. FRIEDMAN, Norman, 1988, “ What Makes a Short Story Short?”. In Hoffman and Murphy. (Eds.) 153-169. GARLAND MANN, Susan. 1989. The Short Story Cycle. Connecticut: The Greenwood Press. GARRIDO GALLARDO, Miguel A. 1988. Teoría de los géneros literarios. Madrid: Lecturas. Arco/Libros. GENETTE, Gérard. 1972. Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method. Ithaca and New York: Cornell University Press. GONZALEZ SALVADOR, Ana. 1980. Continuidad de lo fantástico. Por una teoría de la literatura. Barcelona: Biblioteca de Ensayo. HANSON, Clare. (Ed.) 1989. Re-reading the Short Story. London: MacMillan Press. HERNADI, Paul. 1978. Teoría de los géneros literarios. Barcelona: Ensayos Antony Bosch. HOFFMAN, Michael and Murphy, Patrick. (Eds.) 1988. Essentials of the Theory of Fiction. Durham and London: Duke University Press. HOLUB, Robert. 1989 (1984). Reception Theory. A Critical Introduction. London and New York: Routledge. HONEYWELL, J. Arthur, 1988, “Plot in the Modern Novel”. In Hoffman and Murphy (Eds.) 239-250. ISER, Wolfgang. 1978 (1974). The Implied Reader. Patterns of Communication in Prose Fiction from Bunyan to Beckett. London: The Johns Hopkins University Press. ______. 1980, “Interaction Between Text and Reader”. In Suleiman and Crossman, (Eds.) 106-119.

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JAMES, Henry. 1984 (1884). “The Art of Fiction”. In Edel, Leon and Wilson, Mark. (Eds.) Henry James. Essays on Literature. American writers. English Writers. New York: The Library of America. 44-65. ______. 1984 (1888) “Guy de Maupassant”. In Edel and Wilson (Eds.) Henry James. French Writers. Other European Writers. The Prefaces to the New York Edition. New York: The Library of America. 521-561. McCULLERS, Carson. 1981 (1940). The Mortgaged Heart. Harmondsworth: Penguin. MILLER, D. A. 1981. Narrative and its Discontents: Problems of Closure in the Traditional Novel. Princeton: Princeton University Press. NEMEROV, Howard. 1963. “Composition and Fate in The Short Novel”. In Poetry and Fiction. N.J.: New Brunswick. 229-45. O’CONNOR, Frank. 1962. The Lonely Voice. London: MacMillan. O’FAOLAIN, Sean. 1974 (1951). The Short Story. Connecticut: The Devin Adair Company. ORTEGA y GASSET, José. 1966. Obras completas. Tomo III (1917-1928). Madrid: Revista de Occidente. PATTEE, Fred Lewis. 1975 (1923). The Development of the American Short Story. An Historical Survey. New York: Biblo and Tannen. PICKERING, Jean. 1989. “Time and the Short Story”. In Hanson, Clare (Ed.).45-64. POE, Edgar Allan. 1975 (1842). “Twice-Told Tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne, a Review”. In Stern and Gross (Eds.). 171-178. PREMINGER, Alex. (Ed.) 1974 (1965). Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics. London: Frank J. Warnke and O. B. Hardison, Jr. PROPP, Vladimir. 1977. Morfología del cuento. Madrid: Fundamentos. REID, Ian. 1977. The Short Story. The Critical Idiom. London: Methuen. RIMMON-KENAN, Shlomith. 1983. Narrative Fiction: Contemporary Poetics. New York: Methuen. ROWE, Joyce A., 1990, Equivocal Endings in Classic American Novels. The Scarlet Letter, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Ambassadors, The Great Gastby. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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SCHELLING, Friedrich. 1985. La relación del arte con la naturaleza. Madrid: Sarpe. SCHOLES, Robert and KELLOG, Robert. 1966. The Nature of the Narrative. Oxford: Oxford University Press. SCHORER, Mark. 1988. “Technique as Discovery”. In Hoffman and Murphy (Eds.) 102-114. SERRA, Edelweis. 1978. Tipología del cuento literario. Madrid: Colleción Goliárdica. Cupsa Editorial. SHAW, Valerie. 1983. The Short Story. A Critical Introduction. London: Longman. SHKLOVSKY, Victor. 1970. “La construcción de la `nouvelle´ y de la `novela´”. In Todorov (Ed.) 127-146. ______. 1971. Sobre la prosa literaria. (Reflexiones y análisis). Barcelona: Planeta. SPILLER, Robert E. (et al). 1974 (1946). Literary History of the United States. New York: MacMillan Publishing Co., Inc. SULEIMAN, Susan R. and CROSMAN, Inge. (Eds.) 1980. The Reader in the Text. Essays on Audience and Interpretation. Princeton: Princeton University Press. TODOROV, Tzvetan. (Ed.) 1970. Teoría de la literatura de los formalistas rusos. Buenos Aires: Ediciones signos. ______. 1967. Literatura y significación. Barcelona: Planeta. ______. 1982. Introducción a la literatura fantástica. Barcelona, Buenos Aires: Serie Crítica Analítica. TWAIN, Mark. 1967 (1894). “How to Tell a Story: The Humorous Story. An American Development. Its Difference from Comic and Witty Stories”. In Kaplan, Justin (Ed.) 182-188. WELTY, Eudora. 1977 (1942). The Eye of the Story. Selected Essays and Reviews. London: Virago.

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3. Recommended bibliography

BAILEY, Tom. (Ed.). 2000. On Writing Short Stories. New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press. BAYLEY, John. 1988. The Short Story: From Henry James to Elizabeth Bowen. Sussex: The Harvester Press. BEACHCROFT, T. O. 1968. The Modest Art: A Survey of the Short Story in English. Oxford: Oxford University Press. BROMBERT, Victor. 1980. “Opening Signals in a Narrative”. Literary History, XL, 489-502. BROWN, Julie. (Ed.) 1995. American Women Short Story Writers: A Collection of Critical Essays. New York & London: Garland Publishing. CHARTERS, Ann. 1999. The Story and Its Writer: An Introduction to Short Fiction. Boston & New York: University of Connecticut. CORTÁZAR, Julio. 1983 (1963). “Some Aspects of the Short Story”. In Review of Contemporary Fiction, III, 27-33. CURRENT-GARCêA, Eugene and PATRICK, Walton R. (Eds.) 1961. What Is the Short Story? Illinois: Scott, Foresman and Company. DUBROW, Heather. 1982. Genre. London and New York: Methuen. DUNN, Maggie and MORRIS, Ann. 1995. The Composite Novel: The Short Story Cycle in Transition. New York: Twayne Publishers. EICHEMBAUM, Boris M. 1970 (1919). “O. Henry and the Theory of the Short Story”. In Matejka and Pomorska. (Eds.) 227-270. FORD, Jon and FORD, Marjorie. A Web of Stories: An Introduction to Short Fiction. New Jersey: Prentice Hall. FRÖHLICHER, Peter; GÜNTERT, Georges. (Eds.) 1997. Teoría e interpretación del cuento. Berlín: Editorial Científica Europea. HANSON, Clare. (Ed.) 1989. Re-reading the Short Story. London: MacMillan Press. HEAD, Dominic. 1992. The Modernist Short Story: A Study in Theory and Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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HERNÁEZ LERENA, María Jesús. 1998. Exploración de un género literario: los relatos breves de Alice Munro. Logroño: Servicio de Publicaciones de la Universidad de La Rioja. GORDIMER, Nadine. 1968. “The International Symposium on the Short Story”. In Kenyon Review, XXX. 457-463. INGRAM, Forrest L. 1971. Representative Short Story Cycles of the Twentieth Century: Studies in a Literary Genre. The Hague: Mouton. KAYLOR, Noel Harold Jr. 1997. Creative and Critical Approaches to the Short Story. Lewiston: The Edwin Mellen Press. KERMODE, Frank. 1968 (1966). The Sense of an Ending: Studies in the Theory of Fiction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. LOHAFER, Susan. 1983. Coming to Terms with the Short Story. Baton Rouge & London: Louisiana State University Press. LOHAFER, Susan and CLAREY, Jo Ellyn (Eds.) 1989. Short Story Theory at a Crossroads. Baton Rouge and London: Louisiana University Press. LOUNSBERRY, Barbara (et al). (Eds.). 1998. The Tales We Tell: Perspectives on the Short Story. Westport: Greenwood Press. MAGILL, F. N. 1981. Critical Survey of Short Fiction. London: Methuen. MANN, Susan Garland. 1989. The Short Story Cycle: A Genre Companion and Reference Guide. Connecticut: The Greenwood Press. MATEJKA, Ladislav and POMORSKA, Krystyna (Eds.). Readings in Russian Poetics. Formalist and Structuralist Views. Michigan: The University of Michigan. MAY, Charles E. 1994. The New Short Story Theories. Athens: Ohio University Press. ______. 1995. The Short Story: The Reality of Artifice. New York: Twayne. METCALF, John and STRUTHERS, Tim J.R. (Eds.) How Stories Mean. Don Mills, Ontario: The Porcupine«s Quill. PACHECO, Carlos; BARRERA LINARES, Luis. (Eds.) 1993. Del cuento y sus alrededores. Caracas: Monte Ávila Latinoamericana. RUEDA, Ana. 1992. Relatos desde el vacío. Madrid: Orígenes.

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SMITH, Barbara Hernstein. 1980. “Narrative Versions: Narrative Theories”. In Critical Enquiry, 7: 213-236. STERNBERG, Meir. 1976. “Temporal Ordering, Modes of Expositional Distribution, and Three Models of Rethorical Control in the Narrative Text”. In Poetics and Theory of Literature, 2: 295-316. Studies in Short Fiction. Special Short Story Theory Number. 33: 4, Fall 1996. Newberry College, South Carolina. Style. The Short Story: Theory and Practice, 27, 3, Fall 1993. Northern Illinois University. USPENSKI, Boris. 1983 (1973). A Poetics of Composition. Berkeley: University of California Press. ZABALA, Lauro. (Ed.). 1995 (1993). Teorías del cuento I y II. México: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México.

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