CHAPTER 1 Realism and the Novel Form‘nvolving a break with the old-fishioned romances; but neither they nor their contemporaries provide us with the kind of characterisation of the new genre that we need; indeed they did not even canonise the changed nature of their fiction by a ‘change in nomenclature—our usage of the term ‘novel’ was not fully established until the end of the eighteenth century. \ With the help of ther larger perspective the historians of the novel have been able to do much more to determine the idio- syneratic features of the new form. Briefly, they have seen ‘realism’ as the defining characteristic which diffzrentiates the work of the early cighteenth-century novelists fom previous fiction. With their picture—that of weiter otherwive diferent but alike in this quality of ‘realism’—one’s initial rexervati ‘must surely be that the term itself needs further explanation, ‘only because to use it without qualification as a defining charse- teristic ofthe novel might otherwise carry the invidious sugges- tion that all previous writers and literary forms pursued the ‘unreal. ‘The main critical astociations of the term ‘realism’ are with the French school of Realists. “Réalisme’ was apparently first used as an aesthetic description in 1835 to denote the ‘vérité humaine’ of Rembrandt as opposed to the ‘idéalité poétique’ ‘of neo-classical painting; it was later consecrated asa specifically literary term by the foundation in 1836 of Réalisns, a journal edited by Duranty.! Unfortunately much of the usefulness of the word was soon lost in the bitter controversies over the ‘low’ subjects and allegedly immoral tendencies of Flaubert and his successors. As result, ‘realism’ came to be used primarily as the antonym of lealism’, and this sense, which is actually a refection of the position taken by the enemies of the French Realist, has in fact coloured much critical and historical writing about the novel. ‘The prehistory of the form has commonly been envisaged as a ‘matter of tracing the continuity between al earliefiction which portrayed low life: the story ofthe Ephesian matron is realistic" cause it shows that sexual appetite is stronger than wifely, sorrow; and the fabliau or the picaresque tale are “realistic” because economic or carnal motives are given pride of place their presentation of human behaviour. By the sme implicit 5 Su Bernard Weinberg, Fh Ram: ita Raion 109-18 Lendo, ‘amp ite REALISM AND THE NOVEL Fon mise, the English eighteenth-century novelists, together with Furedire, Sarron and Lesage in France, are netic a a eventual climax ofthis tradiaon: the ‘realism’ ofthe novels of Dein Rihardion and Fielding i clay acted withthe fact that Moll Flanders is a thief Pamela & hypocrite, and Tore Jones 2 fornicator. ‘This use of ‘realism’, however, has the grave defect ofobscur) ing what is probably te mes original feature ofthe novel frm, I.the novel were realistic merely because it saw life Rom i scamy side, it would only be an inverted romance; but in fat i aurely attempts to portray all the vatites of human exper nce, and not merely than sulted Wo one parte Kees, perspective: the novel's realism docs not reside in the kind cr Hg present but in he way prea This, of course, is very dlote to the position ofthe French Reality themselves, who anertd that if thee novels tended to differ from the mote Aatering pictures of humanity preseated by many established ethical, Socal, and literary codes it wat merely because they were the product of a more dspasionate and scientific scrutiny of life than had ever been stempted oS of the new genre to Become critcally aware offs ios aoa methods the French Rel soul have drawn tenon an {ssue which the novel raises more sharply then any other Ie form—the problem ofthe correspondence between the licen, work and the reality which it imitates: This ewentaly Epistemologcal problem, and it therefore seems Uikly thay oe ‘ature ofthe novel's realism, whether inthe eatly eighteenth century ot ltr, can bet be clanfed by the help otic fexionally concerned with the analysis of concep the ehicc sophes. I By a paradox that will surprise only the neophyte, the term ‘realism’ in philosophy is most strictly applied toa view of realty diametrically opposed to that of common usage-to the view held by the scholastic Realist of the Middle Ages that its universals, classes or abstractions, and not the particular, com, rete objects of sense-perception, which are the true ‘realities, +‘This, at fist sight, appears unhelpful, since in the novel, more than in any other genre, general truths only exist post res; but the very unfamiliarity of the point of view of scholastic Realism at Jeast serves to draw attention to a characteristic of the hovel which is analogous to the changed philosophical meaning of “realism? today: the novel arose in the modern period, S period "whose general intellectual orientation was most decisively separated from its classical and mediaeval heritage by its rejection—or at least its attempted rejection—of uni- ‘Modern realism, of courte, begins from the position that truth ‘can be discovered by the individual through his senses: it has {ts origins in Descartes and Locke, and received its frst full for- mulation by Thomas Reid in the middle of the eighteenth cen- ‘tury? But the view that the external world is real, and that our senses give us a true report of it, obviously docs not in itself throw much light on literary realism; since almost everyone, in all ages, has in one way or another been forced wo some such ‘conclusion about the external world by his own experience, Titerature has always been to some extent exposed to the same epistemological naiveté, Further, the distinctive tenets of realist ‘epistemology, and the controversies associated with them, are for the most part much too specialised in nature to have much Dearing on literature. What is important to the novel in philo- (ere ‘realism is much less specific; it is rather the general ‘ehper of realist thought, the metbods of investigation it has ted and the hinds of probleme it has raed. he general agro ppc eal Bs ben cea, “otdional ane igavating ts method has been the stad Pipa of ipeiens by the individual nvesignor, tho, deal a les, ee from the body of past sasumptions hd ‘radiional belles and ithas given a pecular importance tosemantc, othe problem af the nature ofthe correspondence Between words and reality. All of these eatre of pilosophieal eal have. analogis to disinetwe features of the novel form, analogies whch draw attention 10 the characteristic Lind’ of comespondence between if and erature. which has obtained in prow fiction since the novels of Defoe and Richardson. * See Ro, The ef Unive (Oxkrd, 1092), p18. “See sh2"Harn, Rel (Cambridge Ste» 12 @) ‘The greatness of Descartes was primarily one of method, of the thoroughness of his determination to accept nothing’ on aun trust; and his Discourse on Method (1637) and his Meditations did “2x suit of truth is conceived of as a wholly individual matter, logic- ‘much to bring about the modern assumption whereby the al aehip “ly independent of the tradition of past thought, and ined as inate likely to be arrived at by a departure from it “The novel i the form of literature which most fully reflects shi avis an Tanoaingsonetatin on Previous Be Shy ohms had reflected the general tendency oftheir cultures to ies contri to wadonal prac the major oath the plow of clasical and renaissance epic, for example, were eee ccathiney or able, and ihe ments ofthe ators treatment were judged largely according to a view of Hterary Ge ccorum derived from the accepted models in the gem. Thi {iesranytradionaliom wae fst and most filly challenged by the novel, whose primary criterion was truth to individual expert= tnce- individual experience which i always unique and there- fore new, The novel is thus the logical ltrary vehide of j culture which, inthe last few centyrjs, has set an unprecedented Value on originality, on the novel; and it is therefore well named. "This emphasis on the new accounts for some of the critical difficulties which the novel is widely agreed to present. When wwe judge a work in another genre, a recognition ofits iterary models often important and sometimes essential; our evalua- depends to a large extent on our analysis of the author's Skill in handling the appropriate formal conventions. On the other hand, it is surely very damaging for a novel to be in any Sense an imitation of another literary work: and the reison for this seems to be that since the novelis’s primary task is to con- ‘vey the impression of fidelity to human experience, attetion to any pre-established formal conventions can only endarger his success. What is often felt as the formlessness of the novel, a Compared, say, with tragedy or the ode, probably follows from. this: the poverty of the novel's formal conventions would seem, to be the price it must pay for its realism. But the absence of formal conventions in the novel is unim= portant compared to its rejection of traditional plots. Plot, of 13 &‘rue Rise oF THE NOVEL cours, isnot a simple matter, and the degree ofits originality or thc never easy fo determing; never & broad fand necessarily summary comparison between the novel previous literary forms reveals an important difference: Defoe land Richardson are the fist great writers in our literature who {id not take their plots from mythology, history, legend or pre- vious literature. In this they differ from Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare and Milton, for instance, who, like the writers of Greece and Rome, habitually used traditional plots; and who did eo, in the last analysis, because they accepted the general premise of their times tha, since Nature is esentially complete nd unchanging, its records, whether scriptural, legendary oF historical, constitute a definitive repertoire of human experience. “This point of view continued to be expressed until the nine- teenth century; the opponents of Balzac, for example, used it to erie his preoccupation with contemporary and, in their view, ephemeral reality. But at the same time, from the Renaissance ‘onwards, there was a growing tendency for individual experi- fence to replace collective tradition as the ultimate arbiter of reality; and this transition would seem to constitute an import- fat pir of he general cultural background ofthese of the Tt is significant that the trend in favour of originality found its first powerful expression in England, and in the eighteenth century; the very word ‘original’ took on its modern meaning i this time, by 4 semantic Feversal which is a parallel to the Change in the meaning of ‘realism’. We have seen that, from the mediacval belie in the reality of universals, ‘realism’ had ‘ome to denote a belief in the individual apprehension of reality fhrough the senses: similarly the term ‘original’ which in the Middle Ages had meant ‘having existed from the first came to inean ‘underived, independent, frstchand’; and by the time that award Young ni pac maling Grete on Original ‘Compestion (1759) hailed Richardson as ‘a genius as well moral fs original’! the word could be used asa term of praise meaning novel or fresh in character or style’. ‘The novel's use of non-traditional plots isan early and prob- ably independent manifestation of this emphasis, When Defoe, + Wont (x7a) V1; se ao Max Scher, ene ct Sil du Wi (qdanchen 2 Leia pp on a Bane Man The Problem of iE Bert Cty geo PQ, SEV 159) 9708 4 REALISM AND THE NOVEL FORM for example, began to write fiction he took little notice of the dominant critical theory ofthe day, which still inclined towards, the use of traditional plots; instead, he merely allowed hhis nar- rative order to flow spontaneously from his own sense of what his protagonists might plausibly do next. Tn 20 doing Defoe initiated an important new tendency in fiction: his total sub- ‘ordination of the plot to the pattern of the autobiographical ‘memoir is as defiant an assertion of the primacy of individual experience in the novel as Descartes’s cegito ergo sum was in philosophy. "After Defoe, Richardson and Fielding in their very different ways continued what was to become the novel's usual practice, the ase of non-traditional plot, either wholly invented or based in part on a contemporary incident. It cannot be claimed that tither of them completely achieved that interpenetration cf plot, ‘character and emergent moral theme which is found in the highest examples of the art of the novel. But it must be remem bered that the task was not an easy one, particularly at a time ‘when the established literary outlet for the creative imagination, ‘in eliciting an individual pattern and a contemporary nificance from a plot that was not itself novel. ) ‘Much else besides the plot had to be changed in the tradition of fiction before the novel could embody the individual appre- hension of reality as freely as the method of Descartes and Locke allowed their thought to spring from the immediate facts of, consciousness. To begin with, the actors in the plot and the Scene of their actions had to be placed in a new literary per- Spective: the plot had to be acted out by particular people in farticular circumstances, rather than, as had been common in Rie pese by general Ruma type againet a background primar ily determined by the appropriate literary convention. ‘This literary change was analogous to the rejection of uni- versals and the emphasis on particulars which characterises Philosophic realism. Aristotle might have agreed with Locke's Primary assumption, that it was the senses which ‘at first let in Particular ideas, and furnish the empty cabinet’ of the mind.* But he would have gone on to insist thatthe scrutiny of particu Tar cases was of litle value in itself the proper intellectual task Bin Cowen Hana Undertndng( 90), Bly ch. 2 2 15‘rue RISE OF THE NOVEL fof man was to rally against the meaningless flux of sensation, land achieve a knowledge of the universals which alone consti= tuted the ultimate and immutable reality. Its this generalising, emphasis which gives most Western thought until the seven- teenth century a strong enough family resemblance to outweigh all its other multifarious differences: similarly when in 1713 Berkeley's Philonous affirmed that ‘itis an universally received Tiaxim, that eorything which exits is particular’? he was stating the opposite modern tendency which im turn gives modern thought since Descartes a certain unity of outlook and method. Here, again, both the new trendsin philosophy and the related formal characteristics of the novel were contrary to the domin- ant literary outlook. For the critical tradition in the early eight- ‘eenth century was still governed by the strong classical prefer- ‘ence for the general and universal: the proper object of Fiterature emained qued semper quod ubigue 2b omnibus creditom est. Thi preference was particularly pronounced in the neo-Platonist Tendency, which had always been strong in the romance, and which was becoming of increasing importance in Literary dsm and aesthetics generally. Shaftesbury, for instance, in his ‘Essay onthe Freedom of Wit and Hour (1708), expressed the dis- taste of this school of thought for particularity in literature and art very emphatically: “The variety of Nature is such, as to dis- tinguish every thing she forms, by a peclir original character; which, ifstretly observed, will make the subject appear unlike to anything extant in the world besides. But this effect the ‘good poct and painter seck industriously to prevent. They hate Iminatenest, and are affraid of singulariy." He continued: ‘The ‘mere Face-Painter, indeed, has litle in common with the Poet; but, like the mere Historian, copies what he secs, and minutely traces every feature, and odd mark’; and concluded confidently that "Tis otherwise with men of invention and design’. ‘Despite Shaftesbury's engaging finality, however, a contrary aesthetic tendeney in favour of particularity soon began to assert itself, largely at a result of the application to literary problems of the psychological approach of Hobbes and Locke. Lord Kames was perhaps the most forthright early spokesman of this tendency. In his Elements of Criticism (1762) he declared "See Prin Ati Ble Ie 245 Be Ho 1 Sip la ee fa at Pllc, 3 (ere, Wore Lace and Jewcy Uhanot, i) He a) SRC sec 3 16 whe wood REALISM AND TIE NOVEL FORM tion for amusement; because itis only of particular odject| hat images ean be formed’;! and Kames went on to claim that Contrary to general opinion, Shakespeare's appeal layin the fact {hat “every article in his description is particular, a8 in nature’ Tn this matter, asin that of originality, Defoe and. oe] that ‘abstract or general terms have no good effect in any com- | establuhed the characterise itera direction of the novel form {ong before it could count on any support fom critical theory. Not al wil agree with Kames that ‘every article” in Shake~ Tpeur’s descriptions is particular; but pardcularity of descrip- Toahas always been considered typical ofthe narrative manner St'Rehison Cruse and Pancla, Richardson’s frst biographer, Ghdeea My Barbauld, descibed his genius in terms of an halogy which ‘has continually figured in the controversy Peowch neoclasial generality and realinie particulary. Sit ‘lata Reynolds, for temple, cxprened his neo-lasicalrtho- Jety'by pretering the "grt snd. general ideas” of Tallan $oiang othe slieral truth and.» = minute exactness inthe Buna ot nature modified by accident” of the Dutch school itreas the French Reality it will be remembered, had fol- Towed the “verte humaine’ of Rembrandy rather than the {Real pottque? of the clasteal chool. Mr. Barbauld accu sly indicated Richardson's positon inthis conflict when she trol that he had “the accutacy of nish of Dutch painter wots Sntent to produce effects by the patent labour & min dienes? Both he and Defoe in fact were heedles of Shaft En scom, and lite Rembrandt were content to be “mere flee painter and bistoran’. “Fi Concept of realise particularity in Wterature is ie somewhat to general tobe capable of concrete demonstation: (rin demonsraton ie pie the adore crdealaiy to some specie aspect of narrauve tecsnigue par Rt by exabihed Two suck aspects nugget themsdvs 33 ‘respect importance in the novel—charactersaton, aud pre- Sislon of acre the novel srl itnguhed fs pfs ey I, abso SHEERS. Wy sh ee ato Seat Bdge, “The Buckround and Deveop- smectite cif eft Tore of Ceneralty snd Parlay, PLA, © Sind ead ibd a cme sini ome couerpetary Fach reader, me Joseph Testy Joncas Reser Simple Spt Liman (Loon, 1859), BE THIS 7