An unmistakable flavor of effeminacy hangs about the novel, however
heroic its content. Even in the gaudy tales of a Rex Beach, with their
bold projections of the Freudian dreams of go-getters, ice-wagon
drivers, Ku Kluxers, Rotary Club presidents and other such carnivora,
there is a subtle something that suggests water-color painting,
lip-sticks and bon-bons. Well, why not? When the novel, in the form
that we know to-day, arose in Spain toward the end of the sixteenth
century, it was aimed very frankly at the emerging women of the
Castilian seraglios—women who were gradually emancipating themselves
from the _Küche-Kinder-Kirche_ darkness of the later Middle Ages, but
had not yet come to anything even remotely approaching the worldly
experience and intellectual curiosity of men. They could now read and
they liked to practice the art, but the grand literature of the time
was too profound for them, and too somber. So literary confectioners
undertook stuff that would be more to their taste, and the modern novel
was born. A single plot served most of these confectioners; it became
and remains one of the conventions of the form. Man and maid meet,
love, and proceed to kiss—but the rest must wait. The buss remains
chaste through long and harrowing chapters; not until the very last
scene do fate and Holy Church license anything more. This plot, as I
say, still serves, and Arnold Bennett is authority for the doctrine
that it is the safest known. Its appeal is patently to the feminine
fancy, not to the masculine. Women like to be wooed endlessly before
they loose their girdles and are wooed no more. But a man, when he
finds a damsel to his taste, is eager to get through the preliminary
hocus-pocus as soon as possible.
That women are still the chief readers of novels is known to every book
clerk: Joseph Hergesheimer, a little while back, was bemoaning the
fact as a curse to his craft. What is less often noted is that women
themselves, as they have gradually become fully literate, have forced
their way to the front as makers of the stuff they feed on, and that
they show signs of ousting the men, soon or late, from the business.
Save in the department of lyrical verse, which demands no organization
of ideas but only fluency of feeling, they have nowhere else done
serious work in literature. There is no epic poem of any solid value
by a woman, dead or alive; and no drama, whether comedy or tragedy;
and no work of metaphysical speculation; and no history; and no basic
document in any other realm of thought. In criticism, whether of works
of art or of the ideas underlying them, few women have ever got beyond
the _Schwärmerei_ of Madame de Staël’s “L’Allemagne.” In the essay,
the most competent woman barely surpasses the average Fleet Street
_causerie_ hack or Harvard professor. But in the novel the ladies have
stood on a level with even the most accomplished men since the day
of Jane Austen, and not only in Anglo-Saxondom, but also everywhere
else—save perhaps in Russia. To-day it would be difficult to think of
a contemporary German novelist of sounder dignity than Clara Viebig,
Helene Böhlau or Ricarda Huch, or a Scandinavian novelist clearly
above Selma Lagerlöf, or an Italian above Mathilda Serao, or, for that
matter, more than two or three living Englishmen above May Sinclair,
or more than two Americans equal to Willa Cather. Not only are women
writing novels quite as good as those written by men—setting aside, of
course, a few miraculous pieces by such fellows as Joseph Conrad: most
of them not really novels at all, but metaphysical sonatas disguised
as romances—; they are actually surpassing men in their experimental
development of the novel form. I do not believe that either Evelyn
Scott’s “The Narrow House” or May Sinclair’s “Life and Death of Harriet
Frean” has the depth and beam of, say, Dreiser’s “Jennie Gerhardt” or
Arnold Bennett’s “Old Wives’ Tale,” but it is certainly to be argued
plausibly that both books show a far greater venturesomeness and a
far finer virtuosity in the novel form—that both seek to free that
form from artificialities which Dreiser and Bennett seem to be almost
unaware of. When men exhibit any discontent with those artificialities
it usually takes the shape of a vain and uncouth revolt against the
whole inner spirit of the novel—that is, against the characteristics
which make it what it is. Their lusher imagination tempts them to try
to convert it into something that it isn’t—for example, an epic, a
political document, or a philosophical work. This fact explains, in
one direction, such dialectical parables as Dreiser’s “The ‘Genius,’”
H. G. Wells’ “Joan and Peter” and Upton Sinclair’s “King Coal,” and,
in a quite different direction, such rhapsodies as Cabell’s “Jurgen,”
Meredith’s “The Shaving of Shagpat” and Jacob Wassermann’s “The World’s
Illusion.” These things are novels only in the very limited sense
that Beethoven’s “Vittoria” and Goldmarck’s “Ländliche Hochzeit” are
symphonies. Their chief purpose is not that of prose fiction; it is
either that of argumentation or that of poetry. The women novelists,
with very few exceptions, are far more careful to remain within the
legitimate bounds of the form; they do not often abandon representation
to exhort or exult. Miss Cather’s “My Antonia” shows a great deal
of originality in its method; the story it tells is certainly not a
conventional one, nor is it told in a conventional way. But it remains
a novel none the less, and as clearly so, in fact, as “The Ordeal of
Richard Feverel” or “Robinson Crusoe.”
Much exertion of the laryngeal and respiratory muscles is wasted upon
a discussion of the differences between realistic novels and romantic
novels. As a matter of fact, every authentic novel is realistic in
its method, however fantastic it may be in its fable. The primary aim
of the novel, at all times and everywhere, is the representation of
human beings at their follies and villainies, and no other art form
clings to that aim so faithfully. It sets forth, not what might be
true, or what ought to be true, but what actually _is_ true. This is
obviously not the case with poetry. Poetry is the product of an effort
to invent a world appreciably better than the one we live in; its
essence is not the representation of the facts, but the deliberate
concealment and denial of the facts. As for the drama, it vacillates,
and if it touches the novel on one side it also touches the epic on the
other. But the novel is concerned solely with human nature as it is
practically revealed and with human experience as men actually know it.
If it departs from that representational fidelity ever so slightly, it
becomes to that extent a bad novel; if it departs violently it ceases
to be a novel at all. Cabell, who shows all the critical deficiencies
of a sound artist, is one who has spent a good deal of time questioning
the uses of realism. Yet it is a plain fact that his own stature as an
artist depends almost wholly upon his capacity for accurate observation
and realistic representation. The stories in “The Line of Love,” though
they may appear superficially to be excessively romantic, really owe
all of their charm to their pungent realism. The pleasure they give is
the pleasure of recognition; one somehow delights in seeing a mediæval
baron acting precisely like a New York stockbroker. As for “Jurgen,” it
is as realistic in manner as Zola’s “La Terre,” despite its grotesque
fable and its burden of political, theological and epistemological
ideas. No one not an idiot would mistake the dialogue between Jurgen
and Queen Guinevere’s father for romantic, in the sense that Kipling’s
“Mandalay” is romantic; it is actually as mordantly realistic as the
dialogue between Nora and Helmer in the last act of “A Doll’s House.”
It is my contention that women succeed in the novel—and that they
will succeed even more strikingly as they gradually throw off the
inhibitions that have hitherto cobwebbed their minds—simply because
they are better fitted for this realistic representation than
men—because they see the facts of life more sharply, and are less
distracted by moony dreams. Women seldom have the pathological
faculty vaguely called imagination. One doesn’t often hear of
them groaning over colossal bones in their sleep, as dogs do, or
constructing heavenly hierarchies or political Utopias, as men do.
Their concern is always with things of more objective substance—roofs,
meals, rent, clothes, the birth and upbringing of children. They are,
I believe, generally happier than men, if only because the demands
they make of life are more moderate and less romantic. The chief pain
that a man normally suffers in his progress through this vale is that
of disillusionment; the chief pain that a woman suffers is that of
parturition. There is enormous significance in the difference. The
first is artificial and self-inflicted; the second is natural and
unescapable. The psychological history of the differentiation I need
not go into here: its springs lie obviously in the greater physical
strength of man and his freedom from child-bearing, and in the larger
mobility and capacity for adventure that go therewith. A man dreams
of Utopias simply because he feels himself free to construct them; a
woman must keep house. In late years, to be sure, she has toyed with
the idea of escaping that necessity, but I shall not bore you with
arguments showing that she never will. So long as children are brought
into the world and made ready for the trenches, the sweat-shops and
the gallows by the laborious method ordained of God she will never be
quite as free to roam and dream as man is. It is only a small minority
of her sex who cherish a contrary expectation, and this minority,
though anatomically female, is spiritually male. Show me a woman who
has visions comparable, say, to those of Swedenborg, Woodrow Wilson,
Strindberg or Dr. Ghandi, and I’ll show you a woman who is a very
powerful anaphrodisiac.
Thus women, by their enforced preoccupation with the harsh facts of
life, are extremely well fitted to write novels, which must deal with
the facts or nothing. What they need for the practical business, in
addition, falls under two heads. First, they need enough sense of
social security to make them free to set down what they see. Secondly,
they need the modest technical skill, the formal mastery of words and
ideas, necessary to do it. The latter, I believe, they have had ever
since they learned to read and write, say three hundred years ago; it
comes to them more readily than to men, and is exercised with greater
ease. The former they are fast acquiring. In the days of Aphra Behn
and Ann Radcliffe it was almost as scandalous for a woman to put her
observations and notions into print as it was for her to show her
legs; even in the days of Jane Austen and Charlotte Brontë the thing
was regarded as decidedly unladylike. But now, within certain limits,
she is free to print whatever she pleases, and before long even those
surviving limits will be obliterated. If I live to the year 1950 I
expect to see a novel by a women that will describe a typical marriage
under Christianity, from the woman’s standpoint, as realistically as
it is treated from the man’s standpoint in Upton Sinclair’s “Love’s
Pilgrimage.” That novel, I venture to predict, will be a cuckoo. At
one stroke it will demolish superstitions that have prevailed in the
Western World since the fall of the Roman Empire. It will seem harsh,
but it will be true. And, being true, it will be a good novel. There
can be no good one that is not true.
What ailed the women novelists, until very recently, was a lingering
ladyism—a childish prudery inherited from their mothers. I believe
that it is being rapidly thrown off; indeed, one often sees a concrete
woman novelist shedding it. I give you two obvious examples: Zona Gale
and Willa Cather. Miss Gale started out by trying to put into novels
the conventional prettiness that is esteemed along the Main Streets
of her native Wisconsin. She had skill and did it well, and so she
won a good deal of popular success. But her work was intrinsically as
worthless as a treatise on international politics by the Hon. Warren
Gamaliel Harding or a tract on the duties of a soldier and a gentleman
by a state president of the American Legion. Then, of a sudden, for
some reason quite unknown to the deponent, she threw off all that
flabby artificiality, and began describing the people about her as
they really were. The result was a second success even more pronounced
than her first, and on a palpably higher level. The career of Miss
Cather has covered less ground, for she began far above Main Street.
What she tried to do at the start was to imitate the superficial
sophistication of Edith Wharton and Henry James—a deceptive thing,
apparently realistic in essence, but actually as conventional as table
manners or the professional buffooneries of a fashionable rector.
Miss Cather had extraordinary skill as a writer, and so her imitation
was scarcely to be distinguished from the original, but in the course
of time she began to be aware of its hollowness. Then she turned to
first-hand representation—to pictures of the people she actually
knew. There ensued a series of novels that rose step by step to the
very distinguished quality of “My Antonia.” That fine piece is a great
deal more than simply a good novel. It is a document in the history of
American literature. It proves, once and for all time, that accurate
representation is not, as the campus critics of Dreiser seem to think,
inimical to beauty. It proves, on the contrary, that the most careful
and penetrating representation is itself the source of a rare and
wonderful beauty. No romantic novel ever written in America, by man or
woman, is one-half so beautiful as “My Antonia.”
As I have said, the novel, in the United States as elsewhere,
still radiates an aroma of effeminacy, in the conventional sense.
Specifically, it deals too monotonously with the varieties of human
transactions which chiefly interest the unintelligent women who are
its chief patrons and the scarcely less intelligent women who, until
recently, were among its chief commercial manufacturers, to wit, the
transactions that revolve around the ensnarement of men by women—the
puerile tricks and conflicts of what is absurdly called romantic
love. But I believe that the women novelists, as they emerge into the
fullness of skill, will throw overboard all that old baggage, and leave
its toting to such male artisans as Chambers, Beach, Coningsby Dawson
and Emerson Hough, as they have already left the whole flag-waving and
“red-blooded” buncombe. True enough, the snaring of men will remain the
principal business of women in this world for many generations, but it
would be absurd to say that intelligent women, even to-day, view it
romantically—that is, as it is viewed by bad novelists. They see it
realistically, and they see it, not as an end in itself, but as a means
to other ends. It is, speaking generally, after she has got her man
that a woman begins to live. The novel of the future, I believe, will
show her thus living. It will depict the intricate complex of forces
that conditions her life and generates her ideas, and it will show,
against a background of actuality, her conduct in the eternal struggle
between her aspiration and her destiny. Women, as I have argued, are
not normally harassed by the grandiose and otiose visions that inflame
the gizzards of men, but they too discover inevitably that life is a
conflict, and that it is the harsh fate of _Homo sapiens_ to get the
worst of it. I should like to read a “Main Street” by an articulate
Carol Kennicott, or a “Titan” by one of Cowperwood’s mistresses, or
a “Cytherea” by a Fanny Randon—or a Savina Grove! It would be sweet
stuff, indeed.... And it will come.