It was not until well along in the nineteenth century that any one
attempted to define the short-story. The three quotations given here
are among the best things that have been spoken on this subject.
"The right novella is never a novel cropped back from the size of a
tree to a bush, or the branch of a tree stuck into the ground and made
to serve for a bush. It is another species, destined by the agencies at
work in the realm of unconsciousness to be brought into being of its
own kind, and not of another,"—W.D. Howells, _North American Review_,
173:429.
"A true short-story is something other and something more than a mere
story which is short. A true short-story differs from the novel chiefly
in its essential unity of impression. In a far more exact and precise
use of the word, a short-story has unity as a novel cannot have it…. A
short-story deals with a single character, a single event, a single
emotion, or the series of emotions called forth by a single
situation.—Brander Matthews, _The Philosophy of the Short-Story_.
"The aim of a short-story is to produce a single narrative effect with
the greatest economy of means that is consistent with the utmost
emphasis."—Clayton Hamilton, _Materials and Methods of Fiction_.
The short-story must always have a compact unity and a direct
simplicity. In such stories as Björnson's _The Father_ and Maupassant's
_The Piece of String_ this simplicity is equal to that of the anecdote,
but in no case can an anecdote possess the dramatic possibilities of
these simple short-stories; for a short-story must always have that
tensity of emotion that comes only in the crucial tests of life.
The short-story does not demand the consistency in treatment of the
long story, for there are not so many elements to marshal and direct
properly, but the short-story must be original and varied in its
themes, cleverly constructed, and lighted through and through with the
glow of vivid imaginings. A single incident in daily life is caught as
in a snap-shot exposure and held before the reader in such a manner
that the impression of the whole is derived largely from suggestion.
The single incident may be the turning-point in life history, as in
_The Man Who Was_; it may be a mental surrender of habits fixed
seemingly in indelible colors in the soul and a sudden, inflexible
decision to be a man, as in the case of _Markheim;_ or it may be a
gradual realization of the value of spiritual gifts, as Björnson has
concisely presented it in his little story _The Father_.
The aim of the short-story is always to present a cross-section of life
in such a vivid manner that the importance of the incident becomes
universal. Some short-stories are told with the definite end in view of
telling a story for the sake of exploiting a plot. _The Cask of
Amontillado_ is all action in comparison with _The Masque of the Red
Death. The Gold-Bug_ sets for itself the task of solving a puzzle and
possesses action from first to last. Other stories teach a moral.
_Ethan Brand_ deals with the unpardonable sin, and _The Great Stone
Face_ is our classic story in the field of ideals and their
development. Hawthorne, above all writers, is most interested in
ethical laws and moral development. Still other stories aim to portray
character. Miss Jewett and Mrs. Freeman veraciously picture the
faded-put womanhood in New England; Henry James and Björnson turn the
x-rays of psychology and sociology on their characters; Stevenson
follows with the precision of the tick of a watch the steps in
Markheim's mental evolution.
The types of the short-story are as varied as life itself. Addison,
Lamb, Irving, Warner, and many others have used the story in their
sketches and essays with wonderful effect. _The Legend of Sleepy
Hollow_ is as impressive as any of Scott's tales. The allegory in _The
Great Stone Face_ loses little or nothing when compared with Bunyan's
_Pilgrim's Progress_. No better type of detective story has been
written than the two short-stories, _The Murders in the Rue Morgue_ and
_The Purloined Letter_. Every emotion is subject to the call of the
short-story. Humor with its expansive free air is not so well adapted
to the short-story as is pathos. There is a sadness in the stories of
Dickens, Garland, Page, Mrs. Freeman, Miss Jewett, Maupassant, Poe, and
many others that runs the whole gamut from pleasing tenderness in _A
Child's Dream of a Star_ to unutterable horror in _The Fall of the
House of Usher_.
The short-story is stripped of all the incongruities that led Fielding,
Scott, and Dickens far afield. All its parts harmonize in the simplest
manner to give unity and "totality" of impression through strict unity
of form. It is a concentrated piece of life snatched from the ordinary
and uneventful round of living and steeped in fancy until it becomes
the acme of literary art.