[This is an
adapted version of an assignment written for a course on the nineteenth-century
novel]
In his essay ‘The
Art of Fiction’, Walter Besant (2001 [1884]) argues that the novel is a fine art,
on the same technical level as other arts such as poetry, music, painting and
sculpture, though in some respects superior in that its subject matter is the
whole of humanity. He argues that the
novel instils in the reader empathy for others, and is therefore a civilising
force. As part of his argument, Besant sets
up a criterion of artistic quality for the novel based on its moral
orientation: the novel ‘almost always’ begins with a moral purpose, to the
extent that this could be characterised as ‘practically a law of English
fiction’ (2001, p.67).
It follows that
where a novel does not begin with a moral purpose, it conveys a sense of
‘debasement’ to the reader, in which case the author cannot be considered an
artist. However, Besant discounts didacticism,
in the form of the old-fashioned ‘preaching novel’ propagandising on behalf of
a theological perspective. As well as
the moral imperative, the novel can also be characterised in terms of
craftsmanship: poor style distracts from the artistic effect, but this has to
be balanced so that style does not predominate to the detriment of the
fictional world, style being subject to transitory fashions. An understanding of these laws, as Besant
considered them, would improve the quality of many of the inferior novels that
were so common.
Besant’s talk
sparked a debate on the function of the novel, with a number of contributions. Foremost among these was Henry James’s article
with the same title (2001b [1884]). He
does not see the novel having a moral purpose, and considers Besant’s recipe
for the novel as an artistic product to be prescriptive. James argues that the novelist is free to
approach the task with complete freedom, the only obligation being that the
novel should be ‘interesting’ and ‘a personal impression of life’ (2001b, p73);
it is only the execution that should be subject to criticism (2001, p.78).
Delia Da Sousa Correa
interprets this as James claiming that he saw no place for moral aspects in fiction
(2001, p142). However, James was not arguing
for unengaged aestheticism: Amanda Claybaugh notes that the two novels James
wrote after this essay – The Bostonians
and Princess Casamassima – dealt with
social reform, thus having a moral dimension (2006, p.139). But Correa also notes that James’s emphasis
on creativity and imagination challenges both simplistic notions of reflective
realism and the novel as vehicle for moral values (2001, p.141).
Other writers
had views on the moral aspect of the novel.
Robert Louis Stevenson (2001 [1884], pp.93ff) argues that art cannot
compete with life and is only a pale imitation of it, supplying ‘phantom
reproductions of experience’ (2001, p96).
It extracts details from the broad sweep of life and makes something
‘typical’ of them. He therefore sees the
novel as more of an entertainment than having a higher purpose. Émile
Zola on the other hand finds a moral purpose in Naturalism, as Naturalists are ‘experimental
moralists’, showing ‘the mechanism of the useful and the useless’ for the
social good (Zola, 1893, p.31).
According to
James Eli Adams, Henry James credited Besant’s essay as the beginning of
criticism of the Victorian novel (2012, p.62).
However, Adams points out that this discounted previous critical debate
on the status of the novel, though much of the debate took place within reviews
(2012, p.62); George Eliot’s review ‘The Natural History of German Life’ is a case
in point (2001 [1856]); Claybaugh points out that Besant emphasises the novel’s
‘conscious moral purpose’ ‘in much the same terms as George Eliot did thirty
years before’ (2006, p.138). Eliot sees
her treatment of her characters in Middlemarch
(1994 [1872]), as involving issues of morality and fair dealing. These may be summed up by the term ‘social
sympathies’ that she uses in her 1856 review (2001, p.30). Without psychological depth, she argues, the
result is unrealistic, and lacks moral force.
James’s review
of Middlemarch (2001a [1873]) reaches
the paradoxical verdict that it is ‘at once one of the strongest and one of the
weakest of English novels,’ referring to the choice between a balanced whole
and ‘a mere chain of episodes’. He
concludes that it is ‘a treasure-house of details’ but ‘an indifferent whole’
(2001a, p.79). Eliot would surely have
considered that perceived weakness to be its strength. Middlemarch
is socially integrated, a web of mutual influences and balances, as indicated
by Eliot’s repeated use of the web metaphor.
Thus ‘Lydgate fell to spinning that web from his inward self … As for
Rosamond ... she too was spinning industriously at the mutual web’ (p346). The web is typical of Eliot’s ambiguous
approach to mutual influence, which can convey influence and sympathy yet also
be seen as a means of entrapment. The
latter is invariably due to personal weakness, and it is through social
interaction that character is expressed, and can change. Lydgate is disdainful of provincial life,
‘his conceit was of the arrogant sort’ (p149), but he thereby shows himself to
be one whose ‘distinguished mind is a little spotted with commonness’ (p.150).
Of all the
characters’ in the book’s wide canvas, the one who most embodies a sense of
moral purpose is Dorothea, explicitly linked to St Theresa, but living at a
time when there is no practical scope for such a figure. In terms of a moral purpose, Dorothea is
shown to have limited effect, her aspirations generally ‘intangible and
abstract’, her ‘apparently unlimited potential for greatness’ (Nora Tomlinson 2001a,
p.246) limited by her situation. As a
counterpoint to Dorothea, Rosamond is shown to be aesthetically pleasing but
lacking her sister’s moral fibre. Eliot
attaches the word ‘heroine’ to Rosamond as an ironic label, as she possesses ‘a
great sense of being a romantic heroine, and playing the part prettily’ (p.297)
but significantly also uses it when describing the other woman in Lydgate’s
life, Laure, who stabbed her husband.
Neither matches up to the heroic and selfless aspirations of Dorothea
who, with Caleb Garth, forms a moral compass for the rest of the cast. At the same time Dorothea’s social
inexperience leads her to misjudge Casaubon’s merits and motives (as Lydgate
misjudges Rosamond’s in a different way).
A linking
element to the moral dimension of the characters is the world of work as
fulfilling both personally and for society.
Garth in particular sees work in moral terms, exemplifying Smilesian notions
of application and perseverance, with ‘Business’ as the highest calling,
irrespective of its rewards or risks.
Yet despite his apparent indifference he is rewarded, while Fred Vincy
is redeemed by his association with Mary Garth and her father. However, the hypocritical Bulstrode, who
gained his wealth by dubious means, has to endure opprobrium, the financially
imprudent and weak Lydgate faces ruin when his focus shifts from his medical
vocation to accommodating Rosamond’s extravagance, and the blackmailing Raffles
meets an unfortunate end. Ladislaw,
initially a dilettante, buckles down and eventually achieves political office, contrasting
with Mr. Brookes who, content to allow his tenants to live in poverty, is
unsuccessful in his parliamentary ambitions.
Middlemarch’s characters tend
to achieve deserts consonant with their virtues; apart ironically from the kindly
cleric Mr. Farebrother, who fails to win Mary’s hand (though he does have
professional success). In all these
strands Eliot ‘sought to explore the natural laws that determined human behaviour’
(Tomlinson, 2001b, p.272), characters inhabiting a world influenced profoundly
by the 1859 publication of Charles Darwin’s On
the Origin of Species.
Eliot and Besant
were not so far apart in their attitudes to the novel’s moral character. The major distinction between them was their
respective attitudes to the role of religion in formulating morals. Besant had emphasised ‘deep-seated religion’
as a force for the author that will ‘lend to his work, whether he will or not,
a moral purpose’ (Besant, 2000, p.67).
This was in contrast to Eliot’s secularism: ‘George Eliot, at least, had
discarded the primary religious and epistemological assumptions of her
inherited culture, including the convention that a single unitary theory of
reality could be established’ (George Levine, 2008, p.32). Not only did Eliot diverge from Besant’s emphasis
on religion as an essential component of a moral outlook, but she understood
that this had implications for the treatment of her characters. Without a religious underpinning, her
criterion for determining the value of actions had to be a humanist one that
gauged moral value solely in terms of an action’s effect on others. In contradistinction to James, Eliot and Besant
each emphasised the novel’s moral purpose, but from entirely different
perspectives.
References
Adams, J. E.
(2012) ‘A History of Criticism of the Victorian Novel’, in David, D (ed.) The Cambridge Companion to the Victorian
Novel, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
Besant, W. (2000
[1884]) The Art of Fiction, in Regan, S. R. (ed.) The Nineteenth-Century Novel: A Critical
Reader, London, Routledge and The Open University.
Claybaugh, A.
(2006) The Novel of Purpose: Literature
and Social Reform in the Anglo-American World, Ithaca, New York, Cornell
University Press.
Correa, D. S.
(2001) ‘The Art of Fiction: Henry James as Critic’, in Walder, D. (ed.) the Nineteenth-Century Novel: Identities,
London, Routledge and The Open University.
Darwin, C.
(1859) On the Origin of Species by Means
of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for
Life, London, John Murray.
Eliot, G. (2001
[1856]) ‘The Natural History of German Life’, in Regan, S. R. (ed.) The Nineteenth-Century Novel: A Critical
Reader, London, Routledge and The Open University.
Eliot, G. (1994
[1872]) Middlemarch, London, Penguin.
James H. (2001a
[1873]) ‘Middlemarch’, in Regan, S.
R. (ed.) The Nineteenth-Century Novel: A Critical Reader, London, Routledge and
The Open University.
James, H. (2001b
[1884]) ‘The Art of Fiction’, in Regan, S. R. (ed.) The Nineteenth-Century Novel: A Critical Reader, London, Routledge
and The Open University.
Levine, G. (2008)
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Stevenson, R. L.
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Tomlinson, N. (2001b)
‘Middlemarch as a novel of Vocation
and Experiment’, in Correa, D. S. (ed.) The
Nineteenth-Century Novel: Realisms, London, Routledge and The Open University.
Tomlinson, N.
(2001a) ‘Middlemarch: The Social and
Historical Context’, in Correa, D. S. (ed.) The Nineteenth-Century Novel:
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Zola, É. (1893) The Experimental Novel and Other Essays,
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