[This
is an adapted version of an assignment written for a course on the
nineteenth-century novel]
Joseph
Conrad’s ‘Preface’ to The Nigger of the
Narcissus (2001 [1897]) sets out a number of aesthetic aims. As a quasi-manifesto it builds on earlier
contributions to the discussion of the place of fiction within wider artistic
currents and whether artistic objectives should include an overtly moral
purpose, most notably by Walter Pater, Walter Besant and Henry James. Significantly when the ‘Preface’ was
republished in Harper’s Weekly in
1905, it was under the title ‘The Art of Fiction’ (Watt, 1974, p.102), a title
previously used by both Besant (1884) and James (1884). Conrad shares with Besant the starting point
that fiction is an art, like painting, sculpture and music. Where they differ is that Besant sees a major
purpose of the novel being to instil empathy in the reader, making it a
civilising force, and he sets up a criterion of artistic quality for the novel
based on its moral orientation (Besant, 2001 [1884], p.67). Like E. S Dallas, who considers that the
‘moral force’ of a novel is brought out by the use of examples rather than in
an overtly didactic manner (Dallas, 2001 [1866], p58), Conrad places less
emphasis than Besant on a moral purpose in art; rather for him it is primarily
an attempt ‘to render the highest kind of justice to the visible’ (Conrad, 2001
[1897], p.118). Unlike the scientist or
thinker, the artist is concerned with ‘delight’, ‘wonder’ and a ‘sense of
mystery’, and the work appeals ‘to our sense of pity, and beauty, and pain’
and, importantly, to a sense of ‘fellowship’ (Conrad, 2001, p.119). James also is close to Conrad’s position in downplaying
the novel’s moral purpose, and argues that the only obligation is to be
‘interesting’ and supply ‘a personal impression of life’ (James, 2001 [1884], p.73). In the process, any ethical dimension would
be demonstrated by showing rather than telling, leaving the reader to interpret
moral situations, rather than the author using the novel as a vehicle for an
explicitly improving purpose.
Included
in Conrad’s argument is the claim that ‘Fiction – if it all aspires to be art –
appeals to temperament’, which he characterises as ‘the secret spring of
responsive emotions’. (Conrad, 2001, p.119)
Temperament draws people together in recognising shared experiences,
perceptions and emotions, linking the author’s own temperament to those of readers’
‘innumerable temperaments’; in so doing it ‘creates the moral, the emotional
atmosphere of the place and time.’ (ibid., p.119) A speech by Madame Merle in The Portrait of a Lady appears to chime
with Conrad’s notion of temperament:
‘There’s no such thing as an isolated man or woman; we’re each of us
made up of some cluster of appurtenances.
What shall we call our “self”?
Where does it begin? Where does
it end?’ (James, 2009 [1881], p.207). George
Eliot perhaps has a similar viewpoint, but with more emphasis on morality than
James; she sees the treatment of her characters as involving fair dealing, summed
up by the term ‘social sympathies’ that she uses in her 1856 review ‘The
Natural history of German Life’ (Eliot, 2001, p.30). Unfortunately Conrad’s terms are not defined,
and the reader is left with a vague notion of how they might fit together as a strategy
for communication by author to readers of an emotional atmosphere. In Conrad’s defence, Watt argues that the
‘Preface’ cannot be considered a coherent theoretical analysis because Conrad
did not actually have a theory, but that he was aware of the critical tradition
in which he stood (Watt, ibid. p.103).
For
Conrad, the goal of the novelist is to bring the world (the ‘visible universe’)
to life, thereby causing readers to come together in recognising their shared
experiences. He wants to make the reader
see (2001, p.120, italics in
original), to which end the writer should choose words to ensure that plot and
atmosphere are 'experienced' by the reader.
Unlike Eliot and James, Conrad feels that a narrator should not obstruct
the reader's experience. Aesthetics are
vital to experience for Conrad, and he refers to ‘the shape and ring of
sentences’ (2001, p.119), emphasising formal structure and its ability to
create resonance within the reader.
‘Seeing’ and ‘resonance’ are not, however, the same as an ‘appeal to
temperament’ which presupposes an emotional engagement. The artist, according to Conrad, should appeal
to the senses, thereby exposing the underlying truth, yet he talks only about
seeing externals, not the interior life of characters, and it is this
excavation of interiority that might be considered a prerequisite of an appeal
to temperament.
An
appeal to temperament, however loose the definition, is at the forefront of
Flaubert’s intentions in Madame Bovary. There is an attempt to ‘precipitate within
the reader an intense amalgam of emotional, mental and sensual reverberations’
(Brooks and Watson, 2001, p10). Running
counter to this aim, Madame Bovary
might be thought to please nobody because of the conjunction of a high literary
style and provincial subject matter – (ibid., p10). Those seeking a sophisticated literary
technique might be repelled by the sordid subject matter and banality, while
those content with low matter would probably be alienated by the style. Additionally, there is the danger of the pace
boring the reader (ibid., p12). There is
a self-conscious alienating effect at work in which Emma’s consciousness is not
probed and she remains enigmatic. For
Tony Tanner, fetishism mystifies the relationship between reader and character
by focusing attention on ancillary objects (p.405ff). Thus we see surfaces, but seldom delve deeply
into the depths of characters and their circumstances, and ultimately never
have a sense of Emma as an entire person.
Attention to detail helps the reader see
(in Conrad’s terms) Emma’s world, but it is a moot point whether the result
engenders empathy with her, or a kind of voyeurism.
Anyway,
responses vary according to a given reader’s temperament: temperament is not a
unitary quality, but will vary according to such factors as the reader’s class
position and gender. There is also a danger
in assuming that a reader will reach a single monolithic verdict on a novel as this
can change over the course of the narrative, and afterwards, upon reflection. While engaged with Madame Bovary, for example, one will perhaps consider Emma’s
actions as creating tragedy, whereas afterwards they might seem of less import,
as the uncomfortable question whether Madame
Bovary can be considered a tragedy or a farce suggests (Brooks and Watson,
p.45). Readers bring their own
expectations and preferences to the text, and this will influence whether they
see Emma as a tragic heroine or selfish and foolish. Significantly, Brooks and Watson do not think
that these questions are resolvable (ibid., p.46) because, by not taking a
moral stance, the novel is effectively a tabula
rasa upon which the reader projects his or her prejudices. Flaubert does not seek to guide the reader in
reaching a judgement (or indeed in not reaching one). That others did take the moral stance that he
did not is shown by his prosecution in January 1857, which sought to show that
the novel was ‘a seduction of the senses and of sentiment’. (ibid., p.46)
Running
through these discussions, including Conrad’s notion of bringing the world to
life, is an emphasis on psychological realism, how the texture of life is
evoked and reader identification obtained.
James talks of ‘the air of reality (solidity of specification)’ (quoted
in Correa, 2001, p.138). Correa
summarises this as a convincing impression of life, rather than a faithful
mirror of an unmediated external reality (ibid.). There can be more plausibility (Madame Bovary or The Portrait of a Lady, for example); or less, because of
coincidences and the inclusion of generic elements such as Gothic and melodrama,
(The Woman in White; see Pedlar,
2001, pp.48ff for a discussion of generic aspects of Collins’s novel). Either way, realism was seen to underwrite
the engagement between reader and text.
Its theoretical underpinnings assumed that it was possible to portray
individuals in sufficient breadth and depth to depict the social sympathies
that bound them to each other. Sensation
novels, seen as a hybrid ‘combining realism and romance, the exotic and the
everyday, the gothic and the domestic’ (Pykett, 2006, p.51), did not on the
surface lend themselves to this depiction of social sympathies. There was a moral dimension to the
distinction, because an assumption underlying the realist novel was that it
would provide guidance through example. The Woman in White undercuts this
assumption by showing that looser adherence to realism does not necessarily
entail that the resolution will not be a moral one, with appropriate deserts –
rewards and punishments – for the characters.
This is not an amoral universe.
It
is the evocation of an air of reality, locating the narrative within a ‘place
and time’, which will have an affective consequence for the reader. Roland Barthes talks of the ‘reality effect’,
objects included for no other purpose than to reinforce the tactility of the
world as it is presented (Levine, 2012, p.93).
Caroline Levine, discussing
Barthes, considers novelists to have valued the placement of objects within
their stories ‘as an integral part of lived experience’ that could help to
‘capture social relations’ (Levine, 2012, p.93). This may be the case, but one needs caution
in case apparently arbitrary objects have a greater function than merely to
provide ‘solidity of specification’.
Levine gives the detail of the broken barometer in Madam Bovary as an example of, for Barthes, such an innocuous
object. Its inclusion, though, is more complex than that: after the amputation
of Hippolyte’s leg, Charles asks Emma for a kiss. She rushes from the room, slamming the door,
at which the barometer falls and smashes.
Its destruction symbolises her feelings towards her husband, who has
destroyed her aspirations. Such elements
work on more than one level and the reader can be equally engaged whether taking
the surface details at face value or appreciating their deeper significance,
but contrary to Barthes’ conceptualisation they do not resist ‘serving a narrative
meaning’ (Levine, ibid.). They support
deeper connections between reader and text, often perhaps at a subconscious
level.
Dallas
is reluctant to accept a distinction between ‘the novel of character’ and plot-driven
novels (Dallas, 2001 [1866], pp.59-60), in which characters rule or are ruled
by circumstances respectively. Pedlar (2001,
p.60) distinguishes the two modes in terms of locus of control: free will
versus determinism. It is an artificial
distinction because, as Dallas continues, novelists mix the two (for example,
while Madame Bovary might be
categorised as a novel of character, Emma cannot be said to rule her situation,
and it is a novel noted for a lack of interiority one would expect in a novel
of ‘character’). This caveat aside, Madame Bovary and The Woman in White can be seen as exemplifying these contrasting
approaches. By not offering
opportunities for the reader to engage with the psychological depths of character,
The Woman in White, emphasising
sensation, might be considered to offer fewer opportunities for the reader to
empathise, and therefore to engage in an emotional response. Yet this does not appear to be the case, and
the perils of Laura and the villainies of Sir Percival and Count Fosco do
generate such an effect; after all, the term ‘sensation’ indicates that it is
designed to elicit an emotional response.
On the other hand, The Woman in
White’s series of shifting first-person point of views and interruptions in
narrative generate suspense, while precluding strong identification with any
one character; the ‘hero’ role, normally a point of identification, is here
divided between Walter, who disappears for the central section of the novel,
and Marian.
The Woman in White does not
capture the emotional atmosphere of a recognisable time and place in the way
that Madame Bovary does, given that
its world is so different, because of its plotting, from any that its readers
might have encountered; but within its sensationalist parameters it appeals to
the reader’s temperament as much as Madame
Bovary does. John Sutherland notes
that The Woman in White exploded on
its readership like a ‘bombshell’, generating ‘raw excitement’ (Sutherland,
1996, p.vii). Similarly, Jenny Bourne
Taylor refers to ‘panic’ generated by the sensation novel (Taylor, 2001, p.422). While Kate Flint refers to the developing
distinction in the later nineteenth century between fiction that was demanding
and that which was relaxing and escapist (Flint, 2012, p.16), a bifurcation
that grew into high and low culture, these cannot be demarcated in terms of
their appeal to temperament, or how well or badly they convey a sense of time
and place. The reader may suspend a
comparison with the real world in The
Woman in White, but both Madame
Bovary and The Woman in White
can, in different ways, be said to appeal to ‘the secret spring of responsive
emotions.’
References
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Reader, London, Routledge and The Open University.
Brooks,
M. and Watson, N. (2001) ‘Madame Bovary:
A Novel About Nothing’, in Walder, D. (ed.) The Nineteenth-Century Novel:
Identities, London, Routledge and The Open University.
Collins,
W. (1996 [1859-60]) The Woman in White,
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A Critical Reader, London, Routledge and The Open University.
Correa
(2001) ‘“The Art of Fiction”: Henry James as Critic’, in Walder, D. (ed.) The Nineteenth-Century Novel: Identities,
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