EMPHASIS IN NARRATIVE
The features of any object that we contemplate may with intelligent
judgment be divided into two classes, according as they are inherently
essential, or else merely contributory, to the existence of that
object as an individual entity. If any one of its inherently essential
features should be altered, that object would cease to be itself
and would become another object; but if any or all of its merely
contributory features should be changed, the object would still retain
its individuality, however much its aspect might be altered. And in
general it may be said that we do not understand an object until we
are able to set intelligently in one group or the other every feature
it presents to our attention.
In contemplating natural objects, it is often difficult to distinguish
those features which are merely contributory from those which are
inherently essential; but it ought not to be difficult to do so in
contemplating a work of art. For it is possible for the artist--in
fact it is incumbent upon him--to help the observer to distinguish
clearly between the essential and the contributory details of the
object he has fabricated. By employing certain technical expedients in
exhibiting his work, the artist is able to communicate to the observer
his own intelligent distinction between its more important, and its
less important, features. He does this by casting emphasis upon the
necessary details and gathering out of emphasis the subsidiary ones.
The importance of the principle of emphasis is recognized in all the
arts; for it is only by an application of this principle that the
artist can gather and group in the background the subsidiary elements
of his work, while he flings into vivid relief those elements that
embody the essence of the thing he has to say. The halo with which the
Byzantine mosaicists surrounded the faces of their saints, the glory
of golden light that gleams about the figure of Christ in heaven in
Tintoretto's decorations, the blank bright walls of the Doge's palace
undermined by darkling and shadowy arcades, the refrain of a Provencal
song, the sharp shadow under the visor of Verrocchio's equestrian
statue, the thought-provoking chiaroscuro of Rembrandt's figure
paintings--these expedients are all designed to attract attention to
the essential elements of a whole of many parts. By technical devices
such as these, emphasis must be given to the central truth of a work
of art in order that the observer may not look instead at the mere
accidents of its investiture. Where many elements are gathered
together for the purpose of representing an idea, some of them must
be more important than the others because they are to a greater extent
imbued with it inherently; and the artist will fail of his purpose
unless he indicates clearly which elements are essential and which are
merely subsidiary.
Scarcely any other work of art, excepting a Gothic cathedral or a
theatrical performance, is made of elements more multifarious than
those of a fictitious narrative. The details of a novel are so many
and so various that the author needs at all times a nice understanding
and a careful application of the principle of emphasis. It is
therefore advisable that the present chapter should be devoted to the
enumeration and illustration of the different technical devices which
are employed by artists in narrative to cast the needed emphasis on
the essential features of their stories.
First of all, it is obviously easy to emphasize by position. In any
narrative, or section of a narrative, that is designed to be read in
a single sitting, the last moments are of necessity emphatic because
they are the last. When the reader lays the narrative aside, he
remembers most vividly the last thing that has been presented to his
attention; and if he thinks back to the earlier portions of the story,
he must do so by thinking through the concluding passage. Therefore,
it is necessary in the short-story, and advisable in the chapters of a
novel, to reserve for the ultimate position one of the most inherently
important features of the narrative; for surely it is bad art to
waste the natural emphasis of position by casting it upon a subsidiary
feature.
The importance of this simple expedient will readily be recognized if
the student will gather together a hundred short-stories written by
acknowledged masters and examine the last paragraph of each. Consider
for a moment the final sentences of "Markheim," which we have already
quoted in another connection:--
"He confronted the maid upon the threshold with something like a
smile.
"'You had better go for the police,' said he: 'I have killed your
master.'"
The entire story is summed up in the concluding phrase; and the final
sentence rings ever after in the reader's memory.
Here, to cite a new example, is the conclusion of Poe's "The Masque of
the Red Death":--
"And now was acknowledged the presence of the Red Death. He had come
like a thief in the night. And one by one dropped the revellers in the
blood-bedewed halls of their revel, and died each in the despairing
posture of his fall. And the life of the ebony clock went out with
that of the last of the gay. And the flames of the tripods expired.
And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion
over all."
The sense of absolute ruin which we derive from this impressive
paragraph is, to a considerable extent, due to the emphasis it gains
from its finality. The effect would unquestionably be subtracted from,
if another paragraph should be appended and should steal away its
importance of position.
In order to derive the utmost emphasis from the terminal position,
the great artist Guy de Maupassant, in his short-stories, developed a
periodicity of structure by means of which he reserved the solution
of the narrative, whenever possible, until the final sentences. This
periodic structure is employed, for example, in his well-known story
of "The Necklace" ("_La Parure_"). It deals with a poor woman who
loses a diamond necklace that she has borrowed from a rich friend in
order to wear at a ball. She buys another exactly like it and returns
this in its place. For ten years she and her husband labor day
and night to pay off the debts they have incurred to purchase the
substituted jewels. After the debts are all paid, the woman tells her
friend of what had happened. Then follows this last sentence of the
story:--
"'Oh, my poor Mathilde. But mine were false. At most they were worth
five hundred francs!'"
Next to the last position, the most emphatic place in a brief
narrative, or section of a narrative, is of course the first. The
mind of the reader receives with an especial vividness whatever is
presented to it at the outset. For this reason it is necessary in the
short-story, and advisable in the chapters of a novel, to begin with
material that not only is inherently essential but also strikes
the key-note of the narrative that is to follow. Edgar Allan Poe is
especially artistic in applying this principle of emphasis by initial
position. We have already quoted, in another connection, the solemn
opening of "The Fall of the House of Usher," with its suggestion of
immitigable gloom of setting as the dominant note of the narrative. In
"The Cask of Amontillado," wherein the thing to be emphasized is
the element of action, Poe begins with this sentence: "The thousand
injuries of Fortunato I had borne as I best could; but when he
ventured upon insult, I vowed revenge": and we know already that the
story is to set forth a signal act of vengeance. In "The Tell-Tale
Heart," which is a study of murderous madness, and deals primarily
with the element of character, the author opens thus:--
"True!--nervous--very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am;
but why _will_ you say that I am mad? The disease had sharpened my
senses--not destroyed--not dulled them. Above all was the sense of
hearing acute. I heard all things in the heaven and in the earth. I
heard many things in hell. How, then, am I mad? Hearken! and observe
how healthily--how calmly I can tell you the whole story."
In general it may be said that any pause in a narrative emphasizes
by position whatever immediately precedes it, and also (though to a
considerably less extent) whatever immediately follows it. For this
reason many masters of the short-story, like Daudet and de Maupassant,
construct their narratives in sections, in order to multiply the
number of terminal and initial positions. Asterisks strung across the
page not only make the reader aware of the completion of an integral
portion of the story, but also focus his attention emphatically on the
last thing that has been said before the interruption. The employment
of _points de suspension_--a mark of punctuation consisting of a
series of successive dots ...--which is so frequent with French
authors, is a device which is used to interrupt a sentence solely for
the sake of emphasis by pause.
The instances which we have selected to illustrate the expedient
of emphasizing by position have been chosen for convenience from
short-stories; but the same principle may be applied with similar
success in constructing the chapters of a novel. Certain great but
inartistic novelists, like Sir Walter Scott, show themselves to be
singularly obtuse to the advantage of placing emphatic material in
an emphatic position. Scott is almost always careless of his chapter
endings: he allows the sections of his narrative to drift and
straggle, instead of rounding them to an emphatic close. But more
artistic novelists, like Victor Hugo for example, never fail to take
advantage of the terminal position. Consider the close of Book XI,
Chapter II, of "Notre Dame de Paris." The gypsy-girl, Esmeralda, has
been hanged in the Place de Greve. The hunchback, Quasimodo, has flung
the archdeacon, Claude Frollo, from the tower-top of Notre Dame. This
paragraph then brings the chapter to an end:--
"Quasimodo then raised his eye to the gypsy, whose body he saw,
depending from the gibbet, shudder afar under her white robe with the
last tremblings of death-agony; then he lowered it to the archdeacon,
stretched out at the foot of the tower and no longer having human
form; and he said with a sob that made his deep chest heave: 'Oh! all
that I have loved!'"
A chapter ending may be artistically planned either (as in the
foregoing instance) to sum up with absolute finality the narrative
accomplishment of the chapter, or else, by vaguely foreshadowing the
subsequent progress of the story, to lure the reader to proceed.
The elder Dumas possessed in a remarkable degree the faculty of
so terminating one chapter as to allure the reader to an immediate
commencement of the next. He did this most frequently by introducing
a new thread of narrative in a phrase of the concluding sentence, and
thereby exciting the reader's curiosity to follow up the thread.
The expedient of emphasis by terminal and by initial position cannot,
of course, be applied without reservation to an entire novel. The
last chapter of a novel with a complicated plot is often of necessity
devoted to tying or untying minor knots in the straggling threads of
the general network. Therefore, the most emphatic place in an extended
narrative is not at the very end, but rather at the close of the
chapter which sets forth the culmination. Also, although many great
novels, like "The Scarlet Letter," have begun at an emphatic moment
in the plot, many others have opened slowly and have presented no
important material until the narrative was well under way. "The
Talisman" of Scott, "The Spy" of Fenimore Cooper, and many another
early nineteenth-century romance, began with a solitary horseman whom
the reader was forced to follow for several pages before anything
whatever happened. Latterly, however, novelists have learned from
writers of short-stories the art of opening emphatically with material
important to the plot.
Another means of emphasis in narrative is by proportion. More time and
more attention should be given to essential scenes than to matters
of subsidiary interest. The most important characters should be given
most to say and do; and the amount of attention devoted to the others
should be proportioned to their importance in the action. Becky Sharp
stands out sharply from the half a hundred other characters in "Vanity
Fair," because more time is devoted to her than to any of the others.
Similarly, in "Emma" and "Pride and Prejudice," as we have noted in
the preceding chapter, the heroine is in each case emphasized by the
fact that she is set forth from a more intimate point of view than
the minor people in the story. It is wise, for the sake of emphasis
by proportion, to draw the major characters more completely and more
carefully than the minor; and much may therefore be said, on this
ground, in defense of Dickens' habit of drawing humanly only the
leading characters in his novels and merely sketching in caricature
the subsidiary actors.
It is sometimes possible, in special cases, to emphasize ironically
by inverse proportion. An author may deliberately devote several
successive pages to dwelling on subsidiary matters, only to emphasize
sharply a sudden paragraph or sentence in which he turns to the one
thing that really counts. But this ironical expedient is, of
course, less frequently serviceable than that of emphasis by direct
proportion.
Undoubtedly the easiest means of inculcating a detail of narrative
is to repeat it again and again. Emphasis by iteration is a favorite
device of Dickens. The reader is never allowed to forget the
catch-phrase of Micawber or the moral look of Pecksniff. In many
cases, to be sure, the reader wishes that he might escape the
constantly recurrent repetition; but Dickens occasionally applies the
expedient with subtle emotional effect. In "A Tale of Two Cities,"
for example, the repeated references to echoing footsteps and to the
knitting of Madame Defarge contribute a great deal to the sense of
imminent catastrophe.
Certain modern authors have developed a phase of emphasis by iteration
which is similar to the employment of the _leit-motiv_ in the
music-dramas of Richard Wagner. In the Wagnerian operas a certain
musical theme is devoted to each of the characters, and is woven into
the score whenever the character appears. Similarly, in the later
plays of Henrik Ibsen, certain phrases are repeated frequently,
to indicate the recurrence of certain dramatic moods. Thus, in
"Rosmersholm," reference is made to the weird symbol of "white
horses," whenever the mood of the momentary scene foreshadows the
double suicide which is to terminate the play. Students of "Hedda
Gabler" need not be reminded of the emphasis flung by iteration on the
phrases, "Vine-leaves in his hair," "Fancy that, Hedda!" "Wavy-haired
Thea," "The one cock on the fowl-roost," and "People don't do such
things!" The same device may be employed just as effectively in
the short-story and the novel. A single instance will suffice for
illustration. Notice, in examining the impressive talk of the old
lama in Mr. Kipling's "Kim," how much emphasis is derived from the
continual recurrence of certain phrases, like the "Search for the
River," "the justice of the Wheel," "to acquire merit," and so forth.
A narrative expedient scarcely distinguishable in effect from simple
iteration is the device of parallelism of structure. For example, in
Hawthorne's story of "The White Old Maid," the first scene and the
last, although they are separated in time by many, many years, take
place in the same spacious chamber, with the moonbeams falling in the
same way through two deep and narrow windows, while waving curtains
produce the same ghostly semblance of expression on a face that is
dead.
Emphasis in narrative is also attained by antithesis,--an expedient
employed in every art. In most stories it is well so to select the
characters that they will set each other off by contrast. In the great
duel scene of the "Master of Ballantrae," from which a selection has
been quoted in a previous chapter, the phlegmatic calm of Mr. Henry
is contrasted sharply with the mercurial hot-headedness of the Master;
and each character stands forth more vividly because of its opposition
to the other. Of the two women who are loved by Tito Melema, the
one, Tessa, is simple and childish, the other, Romola, complex and
intellectual. The most interesting stories present a constant contrast
of mutually foiling personalities; and whenever characters of varied
views and opposing aims come nobly to the grapple in a struggle that
vitally concerns them, the tensity of the situation will be augmented
if the difference between the characters is marked. This expedient
is therefore of especial importance in the drama. Othello seems more
poignantly emotional in the presence of the coldly intellectual Iago.
In "The School for Scandal," Charles and Joseph Surface are much
more effective together than either of them would be alone. The
whole-hearted and happy-go-lucky recklessness of the one sets off the
smooth and smug dissimulation of the other; the first gives light
to the play, and the second shade. Hamlet's wit is sharpened by
the garrulous obtuseness of Polonius; the sad world-wisdom of Paula
Tanqueray is accentuated by the innocence of Ellean. Similarly, to
return to the novel for examples, we need only instance the contrast
in mind between Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, the contrast in mood
between Claude Frollo and Ph[oe]bus de Chateaupers, the contrast in
ideals between Daniel Deronda and Gwendolen Grandcourt.
The expedient of antithesis is also employed effectively in the
balance of scene against scene. The absolute desolation which
terminates "The Masque of the Red Death" is preceded by "a masked ball
of the most unusual magnificence." In Scott's "Kenilworth," we pass
from the superb festivities which Leicester institutes in honor of
Queen Elizabeth, to the lonely prison where Amy Robsart, his discarded
wife, is languishing. Victor Hugo is, in modern fiction, the greatest
master of antithesis of mood between scene and scene. His most
emphatic effects are attained, like those of Gothic architecture, by a
juxtaposition of the grotesque and the sublime. Often, to be sure, he
overworks the antithetic; and entire sections of his narrative move
like the walking-beam of a ferry-boat, tilting now to this side, now
to that. But in spite of his excess in employing this device, his
practice should be studied carefully; for at his best he illustrates
more convincingly than any other author the effectiveness of emphasis
by contrast.
The subtlest way of employing this expedient is to present an
antithesis of mood within a single scene. Dame Quickly's account of
Falstaff's death touches at once the heights of humor and the depths
of pathos. At the close of "Mrs. Bathurst," the tragic narrative
is interrupted by the passage of a picnic-party singing a light
love-song. Shylock, in his great dialogue with Tubal, is at the same
moment plunged in melancholy over the defection of his daughter
and flushed with triumph because he has Antonio at last within his
clutches. Each emotion seems more potent because it is contrasted with
the other. In Mr. Kipling's "'Love-o'-Women,'" the tragic effect is
enhanced by the fact that the tale is told by the humorous Mulvaney.
Thus:--
"'An' now?' she sez, lookin' at him; an' the red paint stud lone on
the white av her face like a bull's-eye on a target.
"He lifted up his eyes, slow an' very slow, an' he looked at her long
an' very long, an' he tuk his spache betune his teeth wid a wrench
that shuk him.
"'I'm dyin', Aigypt--dyin',' he says; ay, those were his words, for I
remimber the name he called her. He was turnin' the death-color,
but his eyes niver rowled. They were set--set on her. Widout word or
warnin' she opened her arms full stretch, an' 'Here!' she sez. (Oh,
fwhat a golden mericle av a voice ut was.) 'Die here,' she sez; an'
Love-o'-Women dhropped forward, an' she hild him up, for she was a
fine big woman."
Another rhetorical expedient from which emphasis may be derived is,
of course, the use of climax. The materials of a short-story, or of a
chapter of narrative, should in nearly every case be assembled in an
ascending order of importance,--each incident carrying the interest
to a higher level than that of the preceding. The same is true of the
structure of a novel from the outset to the moment of the culmination;
but of course it is rarely possible in the _denouement_ to carry
the interest any higher than the level it attained at the point of
greatest complication. Climacteric progressiveness of structure is
effectively exhibited in Mr. Henry James' tale of mystery and
terror, "The Turn of the Screw." The author on horror's head horrors
accumulates, in a steadily ascending scale. But, on the other hand,
many stories have been marred by the introduction of a very striking
scene too early in the structure, after which there has succeeded of
necessity an appreciable diminution in the interest. The reason why
sequels to great novels have rarely been successful is that it has
been impossible for the author in the second volume to sustain a
climacteric rise of interest from the level where he left off in the
first.
A means of emphasis less technical and more psychological than those
which have been hitherto discussed is that which owes its origin to
surprise. Whatever hits the reader unexpectedly will hit him hard. He
will be most impressed by that for which he has been least prepared.
Chapter XXXII of "Vanity Fair" passes in Brussels during the battle of
Waterloo. The reader is kept in the city with the women of the story
while the men are fighting on the field a dozen miles away. All day a
distant cannonading rumbles on the ear. At nightfall the noise stops
suddenly. Then, at the end of the chapter, the reader is told:--
"No more firing was heard at Brussels--the pursuit rolled miles away.
Darkness came down on the field and city: and Amelia was praying for
George, who was lying on his face, dead, with a bullet through his
heart."
This statement of George Osborne's death is emphasized in several ways
at once. It is made emphatic by position, since it is placed at the
very end of a long chapter; by inverse proportion, since it is set
forth in a single phrase after many pages that have been devoted to
less important matters; but most of all by the startle of surprise
with which it strikes the reader. Likewise, the last sentence of
de Maupassant's "The Necklace," quoted earlier in this chapter, is
emphatic by surprise as well as by position; and the same is true of
the clever and unexpected close of H. C. Bunner's "A Sisterly Scheme,"
in many ways a little masterpiece of art.
In tales of mystery, the interest is maintained chiefly by the deft
manipulation of surprise; but even in novels wherein the aim to
mystify is very far from being the primary purpose of the author, it
is often wise to keep a secret from the reader for the sake of the
emphasis by surprise which may be derived at the moment of revelation.
In "Our Mutual Friend" the reader is led for a long time to suppose
that the character of Mr. Boffin is changing for the worse; and his
interest is stimulated keenly when he discovers ultimately that the
apparent degeneration has been only a pretense.
In the drama this expedient must be used with great delicacy, because
a sudden and startling shock of surprise is likely to scatter the
attention of the spectators and flurry them out of a true conception
of the scene. The reader of a novel, when he discovers with surprise
that he has been skilfully deceived through several pages, may pause
to reconstruct his conception of the narrative, and may even re-read
the entire passage through which the secret has been withheld from
him. But in the theater, the spectators cannot stop the play while
they reconstruct in retrospect their judgment of a situation; and
therefore, in the drama, a moment of surprise should be carefully led
up to by anticipatory suggestion. Before Lady Macbeth is disclosed
walking in her sleep, her doctor and her waiting-gentlewoman are sent
on to tell the audience of her "slumbery agitation." This is excellent
art in the theater; but it would be bad art in the pages of a novel.
In a story written to be read, surprise is most effective when it is
complete.
An even more interesting form of emphasis in narrative is emphasis
by suspense. Wilkie Collins is accredited with having said that the
secret of holding the attention of one's readers lay in the ability to
do three things: "Make 'em laugh; make 'em weep; make 'em wait." Still
abide these three; and the greatest is the last. The ability to
make the reader wait, through many pages and at times through many
chapters, is a very valuable asset of the writer of fiction; but
this ability is applied to best advantage when it is exercised within
certain limitations. In the first place, there is no use in making the
reader wait unless he is first given an inkling of what he is to wait
for. The reader should be tantalized; he should be made to long for
the fruit that is just beyond his grasp; and he should not be left in
ignorance as to the nature of the fruit, lest he should long for it
half-heartedly. A vague sense of "something evermore about to be" is
not as interesting to the reader as a vivid sense of the imminence
of some particular occurrence that he wishes ardently to witness. The
expedient of suspense is most effective when either of two things and
only two, both of which the reader has imagined in advance, is just
about to happen, and the reader, desirous of the one and apprehensive
of the other, is kept waiting while the balance trembles. In the
second place, there is seldom any use in making the reader wait
unless he is given in the end the thing he has been waiting for. A
short-story may occasionally set forth a suspense which is never to be
satisfied. Frank R. Stockton's famous tale, "The Lady or the Tiger?",
ends with a question which neither the reader nor the author is able
to answer; and Bayard Taylor's fascinating short-story, "Who Was
She?", never reveals the alluring secret of the heroine's identity.
But in an extended story an unsatisfied suspense is often less
emphatic than no suspense at all, because the reader in the end feels
cheated by the author who has made him wait for nothing. There are, of
course, exceptions to this statement. In "The Marble Faun," Hawthorne
is undoubtedly right in never revealing the shape of Donatello's ears,
even though the reader continually expects the revelation; but, in
the same novel, it is difficult to see what, if anything, is gained by
making the reader wait in vain for the truth about the shadowy past of
Miriam.
Emphasis in narrative may also be attained by imitative movement.
Whatever is imagined to have happened quickly should be narrated
quickly, in few words and in rapid rhythm; and whatever is imagined
to have happened slowly should be narrated in a more leisurely
manner,--sometimes in a greater number of words than are absolutely
necessitated by the sense alone,--the words being arranged,
furthermore, in a rhythm of appreciable sluggishness. In "Markheim,"
the dealer is murdered in a single sudden sentence: "The long,
skewerlike dagger flashed and fell." But, later on in the story,
it takes the hero a whole paragraph, containing no less than three
hundred words, to mount the four-and-twenty steps to the first floor
of the house. In the following passage from "The Masque of the Red
Death," notice how much of the effect is due to imitative movement in
the narrative:--
"But from a certain nameless awe with which the mad assumptions of
the mummer had inspired the whole party, there were found none who put
forth hand to seize him; so that, unimpeded, he passed within a yard
of the Prince's person; and, while the vast assembly, as if with one
impulse, shrank from the centers of the rooms to the walls, he made
his way uninterruptedly, but with the same solemn and measured step
which had distinguished him from the first, through the blue chamber
to the purple--through the purple to the green--through the green to
the orange--through this again to the white--and even thence to the
violet, ere a decided movement had been made to arrest him. It was
then, however, that the Prince Prospero, maddening with rage and the
shame of his own momentary cowardice, rushed hurriedly through the six
chambers, while none followed him on account of a deadly terror that
had seized upon all." The specter and the Prince pass successively
through the same series of rooms; but it takes the former fifty-one
words to cover the distance, whereas it takes the latter only six.
In every story that is artistically fashioned, the methods of emphasis
enumerated in this chapter will be found to be continually applied.
Its essential features will be rendered prominent by position
(terminal or initial), by proportion (direct or inverse), by iteration
or parallelism, by antithesis, by climax, by surprise, by suspense,
by imitative movement, or by a combination of any or all of these.
The necessity of emphasis is ever present; the means of emphasis are
simple; and any writer of narrative who knows his art will endeavor to
employ them always to the best advantage.
CHAPTER IX
THE EPIC, THE DRAMA, AND THE NOVEL
Throughout the present volume, the word _fiction_ has been used with a
very broad significance, to include every type of literary composition
whose purpose is to embody certain truths of human life in a series
of imagined facts. The reason for this has been that the same general
artistic methods, with very slight and obvious modifications, are
applicable to every sort of narrative which sets forth imagined people
in a series of imagined acts. Nearly all of the technical principles
which have been outlined in the six preceding chapters apply not only
to the novel and the short-story, but likewise to the epic and the
lesser narrative in verse, and also (though with certain evident
limitations) to the drama. The materials and methods of fiction may be
studied in the works of Homer, Shakespeare, and even Browning, as well
as in the works of Balzac, Turgenieff, and Mr. Kipling. The nature of
narrative is necessarily the same, whatever be its mood or its medium.
The methods of constructing plots, of delineating characters, of
employing settings, do not differ appreciably whether a narrative be
written in verse or in prose; and in either case the same selection of
point of view and variety of emphasis are possible. Therefore, in this
volume, no attempt has hitherto been made to distinguish one type of
fictitious narrative from another.
Such a distinction, if it be attempted at all, should be made only
on the broadest and most general lines. First of all, it should be
admitted that, in an inquiry concerned solely with the methods of
fiction, no technical distinction is possible between the narrative
that is written in verse and the narrative that is written in prose.
The two differ in the mood of their materials and the medium through
which they are expressed; but they do not differ distinctly in
methods of construction. As far as plot and characters and setting are
concerned, Sir Walter Scott went to work in the Waverley Novels, which
are written in prose, just as he had gone to work in "Marmion" and
"The Lady of the Lake," which are written in verse. In his verse he
said things with the better art, in his prose he had more things to
say; but in each case his central purpose was the same: and nothing
can be gained from a critical dictum that "Ivanhoe" is fiction and
that "Marmion" is not. In the history of every nation, fiction has
been written earliest in verse and only afterwards in prose. What we
loosely call the novel was developed late in literature, at a time
after prose had supplanted verse as the natural medium for narrative.
Therefore, and therefore only, have we come to regard the novel as a
type of prose literature. For there is no inherent reason why a novel
may not be written in verse. There is a sense in which Mrs. Browning's
"Aurora Leigh," Owen Meredith's "Lucile," and Coventry Patmore's "The
Angel in the House," to mention works of very different quality and
caliber, may be regarded more properly as novels than as poems. The
story of "Maud" inspired Tennyson to poetic utterance, and he told the
tale in a series of exquisite lyrics; but the same story might have
been used by a different author as the basis for a novel in prose. The
subject of "Evangeline" was suggested to Longfellow by Hawthorne; and
if the great prose poet had written the story himself, it would not
have differed essentially in material or in structural method from the
narrative as we know it through the medium of the verse romancer. M.
Francois Coppee has composed admirable short-stories in verse as
well as in prose. "The Strike of the Iron-Workers" ("_La Greve des
Forgerons_"), which is written in rhymed Alexandrines, does not
differ markedly in narrative method from "The Substitute" ("_Le
Remplacant_"), which is written in prose. To be sure, the former is a
poem and the latter is not; but only a very narrow-minded critic would
call the latter a short-story without applying the same term also to
the former. Therefore, the question whether a certain fictitious
tale should be told in verse or in prose has no place in a general
discussion of the materials and methods of fiction. It is a matter
of expression merely, and must be decided in each case by the
temperamental attitude of the author toward his subject-matter.
Eliminating, therefore, as unprofitable any attempt at a critical
distinction between fiction that is written in verse and fiction
that is written in prose, we may yet derive a certain profit from a
distinction along broad and general lines between three leading moods
of fiction,--the epic, the dramatic, and what (lacking a more precise
term) we may call the novelistic. Certain materials of fiction are
inherently epic, or dramatic, or novelistic, as the case may be. Also,
an author, according to his mental attitude toward life and toward
the subject-matter of his fictions, may cast his stories either in
the epic, the dramatic, or the novelistic mood. In order to understand
this distinction, we must examine the nature of the epic and the
drama, and then study the novel in comparison with these two elder
types of fiction.
The great epics of the world, whether, as in the case of the Norse
sagas and possibly of the Homeric poems, they have been a gradual and
undeliberate aggregation of traditional ballads, or else, as in the
case of the "AEneid" and "Paradise Lost," they have been the deliberate
production of a single conscious artist, have attained their chief
significance from the fact that they have summed up within themselves
the entire contribution to human progress of a certain race, a certain
nation, a certain organized religion. The glory that was Greece is
epitomized and sung forever in the "Iliad,"--the grandeur that was
Rome, in the "AEneid." All that the Middle Ages gave the world is
gathered and expressed in the "Divine Comedy" of Dante: all of
medieval history, science, philosophy, scholarship, poetry, religion
may be reconstructed from a right reading and entire understanding of
this single monumental poem. If you would know Portugal in her
great age of discovery and conquest and national expansion, read the
"Lusiads" of Camoens. If you would know Christianity militant against
the embattled legions of the Saracens, read the "Jerusalem Liberated"
of Tasso. If you would know what the Puritan religion once meant to
the greatest minds of England, read the "Paradise Lost" of Milton.
The great epics have attained this resumptive and historical
significance only by exhibiting as subject-matter a vast and communal
struggle, in which an entire race, an entire nation, an entire
organized religion has been concerned,--a struggle imagined as so vast
that it has shaken heaven as well as earth and called to conflict not
only men but also gods. The epic has dealt always with a struggle,
at once human and divine, to establish a great communal cause. This
cause, in the "AEneid," is the founding of Rome; in the "Jerusalem
Liberated" it is the recovery of the Holy Sepulchre; in the "Faerie
Queene" it is the triumph of the virtues over the vices; in the
"Lusiads" it is the discovery and conquest of the Indies; in the
"Divine Comedy" it is the salvation of the human soul. Whatever
nations, whatever races, whatever gods oppose the founding of Rome or
the liberation of Jerusalem must be conquered, because in either case
the epic cause is righteous and predestined to prevail.
As a result of this, the characters in the great epics are memorable
mainly because of the part that they play in advancing or retarding
the victory of the vast and social cause which is the subject of the
story. Their virtues and their faults are communal and representative:
they are not adjudged as individuals, apart from the conflict in which
they figure: and, as a consequence, they are rarely interesting in
their individual traits. It is in rendering the more intimate and
personal phases of human character that epic literature shows itself,
when compared with the modern novel, inefficient. The epic author
exhibits little sympathy for any individual who struggles against
the cause that is to be established. AEneas' dallying with Dido and
subsequent desertion of her is of little interest to Virgil on the
ground of individual personality: what interests him mainly is that
so long as AEneas lingers with the Carthaginian queen, the founding
of Rome is being retarded, and that when at last AEneas leaves her,
he does so to advance the epic cause. Therefore Virgil regards the
desertion of Dido as an act of heroic virtue on the part of the man
who sails away to found a nation. A modern novelist, however (and this
is the main point to be considered in this connection), would conceive
the whole matter more personally. He would be far less interested at
the moment in the ultimate founding of Rome than he would be in the
misery of the deserted woman; and instead of considering AEneas as a
model of heroic virtue, would adjudge him as personally base. From
this we see that the novelistic attitude toward character is much more
intimate than the epic attitude. The wrath of Achilles is significant
to Homer, not so much because it is an exhibition of individual
personality as because it is a factor in jeopardizing the victory
of the Greeks. Considered as types of individual character, most of
Homer's heroes are mere boys. It is the cause for which they fight
that gives them dignity: embattled Greece must repossess the beauty
which a lesser race has reft away from it. Even Helen herself is
merely an idea to be fought for; she is not, as a woman, interesting
humanly. It is only in infrequent passages, such as the scene of
parting between Andromache and Hector, that the ancient epics
reveal the intimate attitude toward character to which we have grown
accustomed in the modern novel.
Because the epic authors have been interested always in communal
conflict rather than in individual personality, they have seldom made
any use of the element of love,--the most intimate and personal of all
emotions. There is no love in Homer, and scarcely any love in Virgil
and in Milton. Tasso, to be sure, uses a love motive as the basis for
each of the three leading strands of his story; but because of this,
his epic, though gaining in modernity and charm, loses something of
the communal immensity--the impersonal dignity--of the "Iliad" and the
"AEneid." On the other hand, novelistic authors, since they have been
interested mainly in the revelation of intimate phases of individual
personality, have seized upon the element of love as the leading
motive of their stories. And this is one of the main differences, on
the side of content, between epic and novelistic fiction.
Certain great works of fiction stand upon the borderland between the
epic and the novel. "Don Quixote" is, for instance, such a work. It is
epic in that it sums up and expresses the entire contribution of
Spain to the progress of humanity. It is resumptive of the nation
that produced it: all phases of Spanish life and character, ideals and
temperament, are epitomized within it. But, on the other hand, it is
novelistic in the emphasis it casts on individual personality,--the
intimacy with which it focuses the interest not so much upon a nation
as upon a man.
The epic, in the ancient sense, is dead to-day. Facility of
intercommunication between the nations has made us all citizens of
the world; and an increased sense of the relativity of national and
religious ideals has made us catholic of other systems than our own.
Consequently we have lost belief in a communal conflict so absolutely
just and necessary as to call to battle powers not only human but
divine. Also, since the French Revolution, we have grown to set the
one above the many, and to believe that, of right, society exists for
the sake of the individual rather than the individual for the sake of
society. Therefore the novel, which deals with individual personality
in and for itself, is more attuned to modern life than the epic, which
presents the individual mainly in relation to a communal cause which
he strives to advance or to retard.
The epic note, however, survives in certain momentous modern novels.
"Uncle Tom's Cabin," for example, is less important merely as a novel
than as the epic of the great cause of abolition. Underlying many of
the works of Erckmann-Chatrian is an epic purpose to advance the cause
of universal peace by a depiction of the horrors of war. Balzac had
in mind the resumptive phase of epic composition when he planned his
"Human Comedy" (choosing his title in evident imitation of that of
Dante's poem), and started out to sum up all phases of human life in a
single monumental series of narratives. So also the late Frank Norris
had an epic idea in his imagination when he planned a trilogy of
novels (which unhappily he died before completing) to exhibit what the
great wheat industry means to the modern world.
In the broad and social sense, the epic is undeniably a greater type
of fiction than the novel, because it is more resumptive of life in
the large, and looks upon humanity with a vaster sweep of vision; but
in the deep and personal sense, the novel is the greater, because it
is more capable of an intimate study of individual emotion. And it is
possible, as we have seen, that modern fiction should be at once epic
and novelistic in content and in mood,--epic in resuming all aspects
of a certain phase of life and in exhibiting a social struggle, and
novelistic in casting emphasis upon personal details of character and
in depicting intimate emotions. Probably no other author has succeeded
better than Emile Zola in combining the epic and the novelistic moods
of fiction; and the novels in the Rougon-Macquart series are at once
communal and personal in their significance.
It is somewhat simpler to trace a distinction both in content and in
mood between novelistic and dramatic fiction, because the latter is
produced under special conditions which impose definite limitations
upon the author. A drama is, in essence, a story devised to be
presented by actors on a stage before an audience. The dramatist,
therefore, works ever under the sway of three influences to which the
novelist is not submitted:--namely, the temperament of the actors by
whom his plays are to be performed, the physical conditions of the
theater in which they are to be produced, and the psychologic nature
of the audience before which they are to be presented. The combined
force of these three external influences upon the dramatist accounts
for all of the essential differences between the drama and the novel.
First of all, because of the influence of his actors, the dramatist
is obliged to draw character through action, and to eliminate from his
work almost every other means of characterization. He must therefore
select from life such moments as are active rather than passive. His
characters must constantly be doing something; they may not pause for
careful contemplation. Consequently the novelist has a wider range of
subject than the dramatist, because he is able to consider life more
calmly, and to concern himself, if need be, with thoughts and feelings
that do not translate themselves into action. In depicting objective
events in which the element of action is paramount, the drama is more
immediate and vivid; but the novel may depict subjective events which
are quite beyond the presentation of actors in a theater. Furthermore,
since he is not obliged to think of actors, the novelist has a
greater freedom in creating characters than the dramatist. The great
characters of the drama have been devised by playwrights who have
already attained command of the theater of their place and time, and
who therefore have fashioned their parts to fit the individual actors
they have found ready to perform them. Consequently they have endowed
their characters with the physical, and even to some extent the
mental, characteristics of certain actual actors. M. Rostand's Cyrano
de Bergerac is not merely Cyrano, but also M. Constant Coquelin;
M. Sardou's La Tosca is not merely La Tosca, but also Mme. Sarah
Bernhardt; Moliere's Celimene is not merely Celimene, but also Mlle.
Moliere; Shakespeare's Hamlet is not merely Hamlet, but also Richard
Burbage. In working thus with one eye upon the actual, the dramatist
is extremely likely to be betrayed into untruthfulness. In the last
scene of "Hamlet," the Queen says of the Prince, "He's fat and scant
of breath." This line was of course occasioned by the fact that
Richard Burbage was corpulent during the season of 1602. But the
eternal truth is that Prince Hamlet is a slender man; and Shakespeare
has here been forced to belie the truth in order to subserve the fact.
On the other hand, the dramatist is undoubtedly aided in his great aim
of creating characters by holding in mind certain actual people who
have been selected to represent them; and what the novelist gains
in range and freedom of characterization, he is likely to lose in
concreteness of delineation.
Secondly, the form and structure of the drama in any age is imposed
upon the dramatist by the size and shape and physical appointments of
the theater he is writing for. Plays must be built in one way to fit
the theater of Dionysius, in another way to fit the Globe upon the
Bankside, in still another way to fit the modern electric-lighted
stage behind a picture-frame proscenium. The dramatist, in
constructing his story, is hedged in by a multitude of physical
restrictions, of which he must make a special study in order to
force them to contribute to the presentation of his truth instead of
detracting from it. In this regard, again, the novelist works with
greater freedom. Seldom is his labor subjected to merely physical
restrictions from without. Sometimes, to be sure, certain arbitrary
conditions of the trade of publishing have exercised an influence
over the structure of the novel. In England, early in the nineteenth
century, it was easier to sell a three-volume novel than a tale of
lesser compass; and many a story of the time had to be pieced out
beyond its natural and truthful length in order to meet the demands of
the public and the publishers. But such a case, in the history of
the novel, is exceptional. In general, the novelist may build as he
chooses. He may tell a tale, long or short, happening in few places or
in many; and is not, like the dramatist, confined in place to no more
than four or five different settings, and in time to the two hours'
traffic of the stage. The novel, therefore, is far more serviceable
than the drama as a medium for exhibiting the gradual growth of
character,--the development of personality under influences extending
over long periods of time and exerted in many different places.
Thirdly, the very content of the drama is determined by the fact
that a play must be devised to interest a multitude rather than an
individual. The novelist writes for a reader sitting alone in his
library: whether ten such readers or a hundred thousand ultimately
read a book, the author speaks to each of them apart from all
the others. But the dramatist must plan his story to interest
simultaneously a multitude of heterogeneous observers. The drama,
therefore, must be richer in popular appeal; but the novel may be
subtler in appealing to the one instead of to the many. Since the
novelist addresses himself to a single person only, or to a limitless
succession of single persons, he may choose the sort of reader he will
write for; but the dramatist must please the many, and is therefore at
the mercy of the multitude. He writes less freely than the novelist,
since he cannot pick his auditors. His themes, his thoughts, and his
emotions are restricted by the limits of popular appreciation.
This important condition is potent in determining the proper content
of dramatic fiction. For it has been found in practice that the
only thing that will keenly interest a crowd is a struggle between
character and character. Speaking empirically, the late Ferdinand
Brunetiere, in his preface to "_Annales du Theatre et de la Musique_"
for 1893, stated that the drama has dealt always with a struggle
between human wills; and his statement, formulated in the
catch-phrase, "No struggle, no drama," has since become a commonplace
of dramatic criticism. The reason for this is simply that characters
are interesting to a crowd mainly in those crises of emotion that
bring them to the grapple. A single individual, like the reader of
a novel, may be interested intellectually in those gentle influences
beneath which a character unfolds itself as mildly as a blowing rose;
but to the gathered multitude a character does not appeal except
in moments of contention. Hence the drama, to interest at all, must
present its characters in some struggle of the wills,--whether it be
merely flippant, as in the case of Benedick and Beatrice, or gentle,
as in that of Viola and Orsino, or terrible, with Macbeth, or piteous,
with Lear. The drama, therefore, is akin to the epic, in that it must
represent a struggle; but it is more akin to the novel, in that
it deals with human character in its individual, rather than its
communal, aspects. But in range of representing characters, the drama
is more restricted than the novel; for though the novelist is at
liberty to exhibit a struggle of individual human wills whenever he
may choose to do so, he is not, like the dramatist, prohibited from
representing anything else. In covering this special province, the
drama is undeniably more vivid and emphatic; but many momentous phases
of human experience are not contentious but contemplative; and these
the novel may reveal serenely, without employment of the sound and
fury of the drama.
Since the mind of the multitude is more emotional than intellectual,
the dramatist, for his most effective moments, is obliged to set forth
action with emotion for its motive. But the novelist, in motivating
action, may be more considerate and intellectual, since his appeal is
made to the individual mind. In its psychologic processes, the crowd
is more commonplace and more traditional than is the individual. The
drama, therefore, is less serviceable than the novel as a vehicle for
conveying unaccustomed and advanced ideas of life. The crowd has no
speculation in its eyes: it is impatient of original thought, and of
any but inherited emotion: it evinces little favor for the original,
the questioning, the new. Therefore if an author holds ideas of
religion, or of politics, or of social law that are in advance of his
time, he will do better to embody them in a novel than in a drama;
because the former makes its appeal to the individual mind, which has
more patience for intellectual consideration.
Furthermore, the novelist need not, like the dramatist, subserve the
immediate necessity for popular appeal. The dramatic author, since
he plans his story for a heterogeneous multitude of people, must
incorporate in the same single work of art elements that will interest
all classes of mankind. But the novelistic author, since he is at
liberty to pick his auditors at will, may, if he choose, write only
for the best-developed minds. It is an element of Shakespeare's
greatness that his most momentous plays, like "Hamlet" and "Othello,"
are of interest to people who can neither read nor write, as well
as to people of educated sensibilities. But it is an evidence of Mr.
Meredith's greatness that his novels are caviare to the general. Mr.
Kipling's "They" is the greater story because it defends itself from
being understood by those it is not really for. In exhibiting the
subtler and more delicate phases of human experience, the novel far
transcends the drama. The drama, at its deepest, is more poignant; but
the novel, at its highest, is more exquisite.
The proper material for the drama is, as we have seen, a struggle
between individual human wills, motivated by emotion rather than by
intellect, and expressed in terms of objective action. In representing
such material, the drama is supreme. But the novel is wider in range;
for besides exhibiting (though less emphatically) this special aspect
of human life, it may embody many other and scarcely less important
phases of individual experience. Of late, an effort has been made to
break down the barrier between the novel and the drama: many stories,
which have been told first in the novelistic mood, have afterward been
reconstructed and retold for presentation in the theater. This attempt
has succeeded sometimes, but has more often failed. Yet it ought to be
very easy to distinguish a novel that may be dramatized from a novel
that may not. Certain scenes in novelistic literature, like the
duel in "The Master of Ballantrae," are essentially dramatic both in
content and in mood. Such scenes may be adapted with very little labor
to the uses of the theater. Certain novels, like "Jane Eyre," which
exhibit an emphatic struggle between individual human wills, are
inherently capable of theatric representment. But any novel in
which the main source of interest is not the clash of character on
character, in which the element of action is subordinate, or in which
the chief appeal is made to the individual (instead of the collective)
mind, is not capable of being dramatized successfully.
It is impossible to determine whether, at the present day, the novel
or the drama is the more effective medium for embodying the truths
of human life in a series of imagined facts. Dramatic fiction has the
greater depth, and novelistic fiction has the greater breadth. The
latter is more extensive, the former more intensive, in its artistry.
This much, however, may be decided definitely. The novel, at its
greatest, may require a vaster sweep of wisdom on the part of the
author; but the drama is technically more difficult, since the
dramatist, besides mastering all of the general methods of fiction
which he necessarily employs in common with the novelist, must labor
in conformity with a special set of conditions to which the novelist
is not submitted. Mr. Meredith may be a greater author than Mr. Arthur
Wing Pinero; but Mr. Pinero is of necessity more rigid in his mastery
of structure.
CHAPTER X
THE NOVEL, THE NOVELETTE, AND THE SHORT-STORY
Turning our attention from the epic and the drama, and confining it
to the general type of fiction which in the last chapter was loosely
named novelistic, we shall find it possible to distinguish somewhat
sharply, on the basis of both material and method, between three
several forms,--the novel, the novelette, and the short-story. The
French, who are more precise than we in their use of denotative terms,
are accustomed to divide their novelistic fiction into what they call
the _roman_, the _nouvelle_, and the _conte_. "Novel" and "novelette"
are just as serviceable terms as _roman_ and _nouvelle_; in fact,
since "novelette" is the diminutive of "novel," they express even more
clearly than their French equivalents the relation between the two
forms they designate. But it is greatly to be regretted that we do not
have in English a distinctive word that is the equivalent of _conte_.
Edgar Allan Poe used the word "tale" with similar meaning; but this
term is so indefinite and vague that it has been discarded by
later critics. It is customary at the present day to use the word
"short-story," which Professor Brander Matthews has suggested
spelling with a hyphen to indicate that it has a special and technical
significance.
The French apply the term _roman_ to extensive works like "Notre Dame
de Paris" and "Eugenie Grandet"; and they apply the term _nouvelle_
to works of briefer compass but similar method, like the "Colomba"
and the "Carmen" of Prosper Merimee. In English we may class as novels
works like "Kenilworth," "The Newcomes," "The Last of the Mohicans,"
"The Rise of Silas Lapham"; and we may class as novelettes works like
"Daisy Miller," "The Treasure of Franchard," "The Light that Failed."
The difference is merely that the novelette (or _nouvelle_) is a
work of less extent, and covers a smaller canvas, than the novel (or
_roman_). The distinction is quantitative but not qualitative. The
novelette deals with fewer characters and incidents than the novel;
it usually limits itself to a stricter economy of time and place; it
presents a less extensive view of life, with (most frequently) a
more intensive art. But these differences are not definite enough to
warrant its being considered a species distinct from the novel. Except
for the restrictions imposed by brevity of compass, the writer of
novelettes employs the same methods as the writer of novels; and,
furthermore, he sets forth similar materials.
More and more in recent years, the novel has tended to shorten to
the novelette. A stricter sense of art has led to the exclusion of
digressive and discursive passages; and the hurry and preoccupation of
contemporary readers has militated against the leisurely and rambling
habit of the authors of an earlier time. The lesson of excision
and condensation has been taught by writers as different in tone
as Merimee, Turgenieff, and Stevenson. "The three-volume novel is
extinct," as Mr. Kipling stated in the motto prefixed to the poem
called "The Three-Decker," in which, with a commingling of satire and
sentiment, he chanted its requiem. It was nearly always, in the matter
of structure, a slovenly form; and there is therefore little cause
for regret that the novelette seems destined to supplant it. For the
novelette accomplishes the same purpose as the novel, with necessarily
a more intensive emphasis of art, and with a tax considerably less
upon the time and attention of the reader.
But the _conte_, or short-story, differs from the novel and the
novelette not only quantitatively, but also qualitatively, not only
in length, but also in kind. In such _contes_ as "The Necklace" of de
Maupassant and "The Last Class" of Daudet, in such short-stories as
"Ligeia," "The Ambitious Guest," "Markheim," and "Without Benefit
of Clergy," the aim of the author is quite distinct from that of the
writer of novels and of novelettes. In material and in method, as
well as in extent, these stories represent a type that is noticeably
different.
The short-story, as well as the novel and the novelette, has always
existed. The parable of "The Prodigal Son," in the fifteenth chapter
of the Gospel according to Luke, is just as surely a short-story in
material and method as the books of "Ruth" and "Esther" are novelettes
in form. But the critical consciousness of the short-story as a
species of fiction distinct in purpose and in method from the novel
dates only from the nineteenth century. It was Edgar Allan Poe who
first designated and realized the short-story as a distinct form
of literary art. In the scholarly and thorough introduction to his
collection of "American Short Stories,"[3] Professor Charles Sears
Baldwin points out that Poe, more than any of his predecessors in
the art of fiction, felt narrative as structure. It was he who first
rejected from the tale everything that was, from the standpoint of
narrative form, extraneous, and made the narrative progress more
direct. The essential features of his structure were (to use Professor
Baldwin's words) harmonization, simplification, and gradation. He
stripped his stories of every least incongruity. What he taught by his
example was reduction to a straight predetermined course; and he made
clear to succeeding writers the necessity of striving for unity of
impression through strict unity of form.
[Footnote 3: A contribution to "The Wampum Library"; Longmans, Green &
Co., 1904.]
Poe was a critic as well as a teller of tales; and what he inculcated
by example he also stated by precept. In his now famous review of
Hawthorne's "Tales," published originally in _Graham's Magazine_ for
May, 1842, he thus outlined his theory of the species:--
"The ordinary novel is objectionable, from its length, for reasons
already stated in substance. As it cannot be read at one sitting,
it deprives itself, of course, of the immense force derivable from
_totality_. Worldly interests intervening during the pauses of
perusal, modify, annul, or counteract, in a greater or less degree,
the impressions of the book. But simple cessation in reading would,
of itself, be sufficient to destroy the true unity. In the brief
tale, however, the author is enabled to carry out the fulness of his
intention, be it what it may. During the hour of perusal the soul
of the reader is at the writer's control. There are no external or
extrinsic influences--resulting from weariness or interruption.
"A skilful literary artist has constructed a tale. If wise, he has
not fashioned his thoughts to accommodate his incidents; but having
conceived, with deliberate care, a certain unique or single _effect_
to be wrought out, he then invents such incidents--he then combines
such events as may best aid him in establishing this preconceived
effect. If his very initial sentence tend not to the out-bringing
of this effect, then he has failed in his first step. In the whole
composition there should be no word written, of which the tendency,
direct or indirect, is not to the one preestablished design. And by
such means, with such care and skill, a picture is at length painted
which leaves in the mind of him who contemplates it with a kindred
art, a sense of the fullest satisfaction. The idea of the tale has
been presented unblemished, because undisturbed; and this is an end
unattainable by the novel. Undue brevity is just as exceptionable here
as in the poem; but undue length is yet more to be avoided."
From the very outset, the currency of Poe's short-stories was
international; and his concrete example in striving for totality of
impression exerted an immediate influence not only in America but even
more in France. But his abstract theory, which (for obvious reasons)
did not become so widely known, was not received into the general body
of critical thought until much later in the century. It remained for
Professor Brander Matthews, in his well-known essay on "The Philosophy
of the Short-story," printed originally in Lippincott's Magazine for
October, 1885,[4] to state explicitly what had lain implicit in the
passage of Poe's criticism already quoted, and to give a general
currency to the theory that the short-story differs from the novel
essentially,--and not merely in the matter of length. In the second
section of his essay, Professor Matthews stated:--
[Footnote 4: This paper, later included in "Pen and Ink," 1888, has
since been published by itself in a little volume: Longmans, Green &
Co., 1901.]
"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. Often, it may be noted by the way, the short-story fulfils
the three false unities of the French classic drama: it shows one
action, in one place, on one day. 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. Poe's paradox that a poem cannot
greatly exceed a hundred lines in length under penalty of ceasing to
be one poem and breaking into a string of poems, may serve to suggest
the precise difference between the short-story and the novel. The
short-story is the single effect, complete and self-contained, while
the novel is of necessity broken into a series of episodes. Thus the
short-story has, what the novel cannot have, the effect of 'totality,'
as Poe called it, the unity of impression.
"Of a truth, the short-story is not only not a chapter out of a novel,
or an incident or an episode extracted from a longer tale, but at its
best it impresses the reader with the belief that it would be spoiled
if it were made larger, or if it were incorporated into a more
elaborate work....
"In fact, it may be said that no one has ever succeeded as a writer of
short-stories who had not ingenuity, originality, and compression; and
that most of those who have succeeded in this line had also the touch
of fantasy."
On the basis of these theories, the present writer essayed a few
years ago to formulate within a single sentence a definition of the
short-story. Thus: _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._[5]
[Footnote 5: This definition was printed first in the _Bookman_ for
February, 1904, and later in the _Reader_ for February, 1906.]
Because of its succinctness, this sentence needs a little explanation.
A narrative effect necessarily involves the three elements of action,
characters, and setting. In aiming to produce a narrative effect, the
short-story, therefore, differs from the sketch, which may concern
itself with only one of these elements, without involving the other
two. The sketch most often deals with character or setting divested of
the element of action; but in the short-story something has to happen.
In this regard, the short-story is related more closely to the novel
than to the sketch. But although in the novel any two, or all three,
of the narrative elements may be so intimately interrelated that no
one of them stands out clearly from the others, it is almost always
customary in the short-story to cast a marked preponderance of
emphasis on one of the elements, to the subversion of the other two.
Short-stories, therefore, may be divided into three classes, according
as the effect which they purpose to produce is primarily an effect of
action, or of character, or of setting. "The Masque of the Red Death"
produces an effect of setting, "The Tell-Tale Heart" an effect of
character, and "The Cask of Amontillado" an effect of action. For the
sake of economy it is incumbent on the author to suggest at the outset
which of the three sorts of narrative effect the story is intended to
produce. The way in which Poe accomplished this in the three stories
just mentioned may be seen at once upon examination of the opening
paragraph of each. Having selected his effect, the author of a
short-story should confine his attention to producing that, and that
alone. He should stop at the very moment when his pre-established
design has been attained; and never during the progress of his
composition should he turn aside for the sake of a lesser effect
not absolutely inherent in his single narrative purpose. Stevenson
insisted on this focus of attention in a passage of a personal letter
addressed to Mr. Sidney Colvin:--
"Make another end to it? Ah, yes, but that's not the way I write;
the whole tale is implied; I never use an effect when I can help it,
unless it prepares the effects that are to follow; that's what a story
consists in. To make another end, that is to make the beginning all
wrong. The _denouement_ of a long story is nothing, it is just 'a full
close,' which you may approach and accomplish as you please--it is a
coda, not an essential member in the rhythm; but the body and end of
a short-story is bone of the bone and blood of the blood of the
beginning."
The phrase "single narrative effect," with all its implications,
should now be clear. The phrase "with the greatest economy of means"
implies that the writer of a short-story should tell his tale with
the fewest necessary number of characters and incidents, and should
project it in the narrowest possible range of place and time. If
he can get along with two characters, he should not use three. If a
single event will suffice for his effect, he should confine himself
to that. If his story can pass in one place at one time, he must not
disperse it over several times and places. But in striving always for
the greatest possible conciseness, he must not neglect the equally
important need of producing his effect "with the utmost emphasis." If
he can gain markedly in emphasis by violating the strictest possible
economy, he should do so; for, as Poe stated, undue brevity is
exceptionable, as well as undue length. Thus the parable of "The
Prodigal Son," which might be told with only two characters--the
father and the prodigal--gains sufficiently in emphasis by the
introduction of a third--the good son--to warrant this violation
of economy. The greatest structural problem of the writer of
short-stories is to strike just the proper balance between the effort
for economy of means--which tends to conciseness--and the effort for
the utmost emphasis--which tends to amplitude of treatment.
There can be no doubt that the short-story, thus rigidly defined,
exists as a distinct form of fiction,--a definite literary species
obeying laws of its own. Now and again before the nineteenth century,
it appeared unconsciously. Since Poe, it has grown conscious of
itself, and has been deliberately developed to perfection by later
masters, like Guy de Maupassant. But it must be admitted frankly that
brief tales have always existed, and still continue to exist, which
stand entirely outside the scope of this rigid and rather narrow
definition. Professor Baldwin, after a careful examination of the
hundred tales in Boccaccio's "Decameron," concluded that only two of
them were short-stories in the modern critical sense,[6] and that only
three others approached the totality of impression that depends on
conscious unity of form. If we should select at random a hundred brief
tales from the best contemporary magazines, we should find, of course,
that a larger proportion of them would fulfil the definition; but it
is almost certain that the majority of them would still be stories
that merely happen to be short, instead of true short-stories in
the modern critical sense. Yet these brief fictions, which are not
short-stories, and for which we have no name, are none the less
estimable in content, and sometimes present a wider view of life
than could be encompassed within the rigid limits of a technical
short-story. Hawthorne's tales stand higher in the history of
literature than Poe's, because they reveal a deeper insight into life,
even though the great New England dreamer often violates the
principle of economy of means, and constructs less firmly than the
mathematically-minded Poe. Washington Irving's brief tales, such as
"Rip Van Winkle" and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," which are not
short-stories in the technical sense of the term, are far more
valuable as representations of humanity than many a structural
masterpiece of Guy de Maupassant. "For my part," Irving wrote to one
of his friends, "I consider a story merely as a frame on which to
stretch the materials; it is the play of thought, and sentiment,
and language, the weaving in of characters, lightly yet expressively
delineated; the familiar and faithful exhibition of scenes in common
life; and the half-concealed vein of humor that is often playing
through the whole,--these are among what I aim at, and upon which I
felicitate myself in proportion as I think I succeed." There is much
to be said in favor of this meandering and leisurely method; and
authors too intent upon a merely technical accomplishment may lose
the genial breadth of outlook upon life which men like Irving have
so charmingly displayed. Let us admit, therefore, that the
story-which-is-merely-short is just as worthy of cultivation as the
technical short-story.
[Footnote 6: The second story of the second day, and the sixth story
of the ninth day. See "American Short Stories," p. 28.]
But if there exist many brief tales which are not short-stories, so
also there exist certain short-stories which are not brief. Mr. Henry
James' "The Turn of the Screw" is a short-story, in the technical
sense of the term, although it contains between two and three hundred
pages. Assuredly it is not a novelette. It aims to produce one
narrative effect, and only one; and it is difficult to imagine how
the full force of its cumulative mystery and terror could have been
created with greater economy of means. It is a long short-story.
Stevenson's "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde," which is conceived, and for the
most part executed, as a short-story, is longer than the same author's
"The Beach of Falesa," which is conceived and executed as a novelette.
Dr. Edward Everett Hale's famous short-story, "The Man Without a
Country," is long enough to be printed in a little volume by itself.
The point to be remembered, therefore, is that the two different types
of brief fiction are to be distinguished one from the other not by
comparative length but by structural method. The critic may formulate
the technical laws of the stricter type; but it must not be forgotten
that these laws do not apply (and there is no reason whatever that
they should) to those other estimable narratives which, though brief,
stand outside the definition of the short-story.
Bearing in mind this limitation of the subject, we may proceed to a
further study of the strict short-story type. In an admirable essay
on "The Short Story,"[7] Professor Bliss Perry has discussed at
length its requirements and restrictions. Admitting that writers of
short-stories usually cast a marked preponderance of emphasis on one
of the three elements of narrative, to the subversion of the
other two, Professor Perry calls attention to the fact that in the
short-story of character, "the characters must be unique, original
enough to catch the eye at once." The writer does not have sufficient
time at his disposal to reveal the full human significance of the
commonplace. "If his theme is character-development, then that
development must be hastened by striking experiences." Hence this
class of short-story, as compared with the novel, must set forth
characters more unusual and unexpected. But in the short-story of
action, on the other hand, the plot may be sufficient unto itself, and
the characters may be the merest lay figures. The heroine of "The
Lady or the Tiger," for example, is simply _a_ woman--not any woman in
particular; and the hero of "The Pit and the Pendulum" is simply _a_
man--not any man in particular. The situation itself is sufficient to
hold the reader's interest for the brief space of the story. Hence,
although, in the short-story of character, the leading actor is likely
to be strikingly individualized, the short-story of action may content
itself with entirely colorless characters, devoid of any personal
traits whatever. Professor Perry adds that in the class of short-story
which casts the main emphasis on setting, "both characters and action
may be almost without significance"; and he continues,--"If the author
can discover to us a new corner of the world, or sketch the familiar
scene to our heart's desire, or illumine one of the great human
occupations, as war, or commerce, or industry, he has it in his power,
through this means alone, to give us the fullest satisfaction."
[Footnote 7: Published first in _The Atlantic Monthly_ for August,
1902, and since included, as Chapter XII, in "A Study of Prose
Fiction": Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1904.]
From the fact that the short-story does not keep the powers of
the reader long upon the stretch, Professor Perry deduces certain
opportunities afforded to short-story writers but denied to
novelists,--opportunities, namely, "for innocent didacticism,
for posing problems without answering them, for stating arbitrary
premises, for omitting unlovely details and, conversely, for making
beauty out of the horrible, and finally for poetic symbolism." Passing
on to a consideration of the demands which the short-story makes
upon the writer, he asserts that, at its best, "it calls for visual
imagination of a high order: the power to see the object; to penetrate
to its essential nature; to select the one characteristic trait by
which it may be represented." Furthermore, it demands a mastery of
style, "the verbal magic that recreates for us what the imagination
has seen." But, on the other hand, "to write a short-story requires no
sustained power of imagination"; "nor does the short-story demand of
its author essential sanity, breadth, and tolerance of view." Since he
deals only with fleeting phases of existence,--"not with wholes,
but with fragments,"--the writer of the short-story "need not be
consistent; he need not think things through." Hence, in spite of the
technical difficulties which beset the author of short-stories, his
work is, on human grounds, more easy than that of the novelist, who
must be sane and consistent, and must be able to sustain a prolonged
effort of interpretive imagination.
These points have been so fully covered and so admirably illustrated
by Professor Perry that they do not call for any further discussion
in this place. But perhaps something may be added concerning the
different equipments that are required by authors of novels and
authors of short-stories. Matthew Arnold, in a well-known sonnet,
spoke of Sophocles as a man "who saw life steadily and saw it whole";
and if we judge the novelist and the writer of short-stories by their
attitudes toward life, we may say that they divide this verse between
them. Balzac, George Eliot, and Mr. Meredith look at life in the
large; they try to "see it whole" and to reproduce the chaos of its
intricate relations: but Poe, de Maupassant, and Mr. Kipling aim
rather to "see steadily" a limited phase of life, to focus their
minds upon a single point of experience, and then to depict this
point briefly and strikingly. It follows that the novelist requires an
experience of life far more extensive than that which is required by
the writer of short-stories. The great novelists have all been men of
mature years and accumulated wisdom. But if an author knows one little
point of life profoundly, he may fashion a great short-story, even
though that one thing be the only thing he knows. Of life as it
is actually lived, of genuine humanity of character, of moral
responsibility in human intercourse, Edgar Allan Poe knew nothing; and
yet he was fully equipped to produce what remain until this day
the most perfect examples of the short-story in our language. It is
therefore not surprising that although the great novels of the world
have been written for the most part by men over forty years of age,
the great short-stories have been written by men in their twenties and
their thirties. Mr. Kipling wrote two or three short-stories which
are almost great when he was only seventeen. Steadiness of vision is
a quality of mind quite distinct from the ability to see things whole.
"Plain Tales from the Hills" are in many ways the better stories for
being the work of a lad of twenty: whatever Mr. Kipling saw at that
very early age he envisaged steadily and expressed with the glorious
triumphant strength of youth. But if at the same period he had
attempted a novel, the world undoubtedly would have found out how very
young he was. He would have been incapable of slicing a cross-section
clean through the vastitude of human life, of seeing it whole, and
of representing the appalling intricacy of its interrelations. On the
other hand, most of the mature men who have been wise enough to do
the latter, have shown themselves incapable of focusing their minds
steadily upon a single point of experience. Wholeness and steadiness
of vision--few are the men who, like Sophocles, have possessed them
both. The same author, therefore, has almost never been able to
write great short-stories and great novels. Scott wrote only one
short-story,--"Wandering Willie's Tale" in "Redgauntlet"; Dickens also
wrote only one that is worthy of being considered a masterpiece of
art,--"A Child's Dream of a Star"; and Thackeray, Cooper, George
Eliot, and Mr. Meredith have written none at all. On the other hand,
Poe could not possibly have written a novel; Guy de Maupassant shows
himself less masterly in his more extended works; and Mr. Kipling has
yet to prove that the novel is within his powers. Hawthorne is the
one most notable example of the man who, beginning as a writer of
short-stories, has developed in maturer years a mastery of the novel.
Unlike the short-story, the novel aims to produce a series of
effects,--a cumulative combination of the elements of narrative,--and
acknowledges no restriction to economy of means. It follows that
the novel, as a literary form, requires far less attention than the
short-story to minute details of art. Great novels may be written by
authors as careless as Scott, as lazy as Thackeray, or as cumbersome
as George Eliot; for if a novelist gives us a criticism of life which
is new and true, we forgive him if he fails in the nicer points of
structure and style. But without these nicer points, the short-story
is impossible. The economy of means that it demands can be conserved
only by rigid restriction of structure; and the necessary emphasis
can be produced only by perfection of style. The great masters of the
short-story, like Poe and Hawthorne, Daudet and de Maupassant, have
all been careful artists: they have not, like Thackeray, been slovenly
in structure; they have not, like Scott, been regardless of style. The
artistic instinct shows itself almost always at a very early age. If
a man is destined to be an artist, he usually exhibits a surprising
precocity of expression at a period when as yet he has very little to
express. This is another reason why the short-story, as opposed to the
novel, belongs to youth rather than to age. Though a young writer may
be obliged to acknowledge inferiority to his elders in maturity
of message, he may not infrequently transcend them in fineness of
technical accomplishment.
Another point that remains to be considered, before we relinquish this
general discussion in order to devote our attention more particularly
to a technical study of the structure of the short-story, is that,
although the novel may be either realistic or romantic in general
method, the short-story is almost of necessity obliged to be romantic.
In the brief space allotted to him, it is practically impossible for
the writer of short-stories to induce a general truth from particular
imagined facts imitated from actuality: it is far simpler to deduce
the imagined details of the story from a central thesis, held securely
in the author's mind and suggested to the reader at the outset. It is
a quicker process to think from the truth to facts than to think from
facts to the truth. Daudet and de Maupassant, who worked realistically
in their novels, worked romantically in their _contes_; and the great
short-stories of our own language have nearly all been written by
romantic authors, like Poe, Hawthorne, Stevenson, and Mr. Kipling.
CHAPTER XI
THE STRUCTURE OF THE SHORT-STORY
Since 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, it follows that, given any single narrative effect,--any
theme, in other words, for a short-story--there can be only one best
way to construct the story based upon it. A novel may be built in any
of a multitude of ways; and the selection of method depends more upon
the temperament and taste of the author than upon inherent logical
necessity. But in a short-story the problem of the author is primarily
structural; and structure is a matter of intellect instead of a matter
of temperament and taste. Now, the intellect differs from the taste in
being an absolute and general, rather than an individual and personal,
quality of mind. There is no disputing matters of taste, as the
Latin proverb justly says; but matters of intellect may be disputed
logically until a definite decision is arrived at. Hence, although
the planning of a novel must be left to the individual author, the
structure of a short-story may be considered as a matter impersonal
and absolute, like the working out of a geometrical proposition.
The initial problem of the writer of short-stories is to find out by
intellectual means the one best way of constructing the story that
he has to tell; and, in order to solve this problem, there are many
questions he must take up and decide. First of all, he must conserve
the need for economy of means by considering how many, or rather,
_how few_, characters are necessary to the narrative, how few distinct
events he can get along with, and how narrow is the compass of time
and place within which he may compact his material. He must next
consider all the available points of view from which to tell the given
story, and must decide which of them will best subserve his purpose.
Next, in deciding on his means of delineating characters, of
representing action, of employing setting, he must be guided always
by the endeavor to strike a just balance between (on the one hand) the
greatest economy of means and (on the other) the utmost emphasis.
And finally, to conserve the latter need, he must, in planning the
narrative step by step, be guided by the principle of emphasis in all
its phases.
The natural emphasis of the initial and the terminal position is,
in the short-story, a matter of prime importance. The opening of
a perfectly constructed tale fulfils two purposes, one of which is
intellectual and the other emotional. Intellectually, it indicates
clearly to the reader whether, in the narrative that follows,
the element of action, or of character, or of setting is to be
predominant,--in other words, which of the three sorts of narrative
effect the story is intended to produce. Emotionally, it strikes the
key-note and suggests the tone of the entire story. Edgar Allan Poe,
in his greatest tales, planned his openings infallibly to fulfil these
purposes. He began a story of setting with description; a story of
character with a remark made by, or made about, the leading actor; and
a story of action with a sentence pregnant with potential incident.
Furthermore, he conveyed in his very first sentence a subtle sense of
the emotional tone of the entire narrative.
In opening his short-stories, Hawthorne showed himself far inferior to
his great contemporary. Only unawares did he occasionally hit upon the
inevitable first sentence. Often he wasted time at the beginning by
writing an unnecessary introduction; and frequently he began upon
the wrong track, by suggesting character at the outset of a story of
action, or suggesting setting at the outset of a story of character.
The tale of "The Gentle Boy," for instance, which was one of the
first to attract attention to his genius, begins unnecessarily with an
historical essay of three pages; and it is not until the narrative is
well on its way that the reader is able to sense the one thing that it
is all about.
Mr. Rudyard Kipling, in his earlier stories, employed a method of
opening which is worthy of careful critical consideration. In "Plain
Tales from the Hills" and the several volumes that followed it within
the next few years, his habit was to begin with an expository essay,
filling the space of a paragraph or two, in which he stated the theme
of the story he was about to tell. "This is what the story is to deal
with," he would say succinctly: "Now listen to the tale itself." This
method is extremely advantageous on the score of economy. It gives
the reader at the outset an intellectual possession of the theme; and
knowing from the very beginning the effect designed to be produced,
he can follow with the greater economy of attention the narrative that
produces it. But, on the other hand, the method is inartistic, in that
it presents explicitly what might with greater subtlety be conveyed
implicitly, and subverts the mood of narrative by obtruding
exposition. In his later stories, Mr. Kipling has discarded for the
most part this convenient but too obvious expedient, and has revealed
his theme implicitly through the narrative tenor and emotional tone of
his initial sentences. That the latter method of opening is the more
artistic will be seen at once from a comparison of examples. This is
the beginning of "Thrown Away," an early story:--
"To rear a boy under what parents call the 'sheltered life system'
is, if the boy must go into the world and fend for himself, not wise.
Unless he be one in a thousand he has certainly to pass through many
unnecessary troubles; and may, possibly, come to extreme grief simply
from ignorance of the proper proportions of things.
"Let a puppy eat the soap in the bath-room or chew a newly blacked
boot. He chews and chuckles until, by and by, he finds out that
blacking and Old Brown Windsor made him very sick; so he argues that
soap and boots are not wholesome. Any old dog about the house will
soon show him the unwisdom of biting big dogs' ears. Being young, he
remembers and goes abroad, at six months, a well-mannered little beast
with a chastened appetite. If he had been kept away from boots, and
soap, and big dogs till he came to the trinity full-grown and with
developed teeth, consider how fearfully sick and thrashed he would be!
Apply that notion to the 'sheltered life,' and see how it works. It
does not sound pretty, but it is the better of two evils.
"There was a Boy once who had been brought up under the 'sheltered
life' theory; and the theory killed him dead...."
And so on. At this point, after the expository introduction, the
narrative proper begins. Consider now the opening of a later story,
"Without Benefit of Clergy." This is the first sentence:--"But if it
be a girl?" Notice how much has already been said and suggested in
this little question of six words. Surely the beginning of this story
is conducted with the better art.
But, in the structure of the short-story, the emphasis of the terminal
position is an even more important matter. In this regard again
Poe shows his artistry, in stopping at the very moment when he has
attained completely his pre-established design. His conclusions remain
to this day unsurpassed in the sense they give of absolute finality.
Hawthorne was far less firm in mastering the endings of his stories.
His personal predilection for pointing a moral to adorn his tale led
him frequently to append a passage of homiletic comment which was not
bone of the bone and blood of the blood of the narrative itself. In
the chapter on emphasis, we have already called attention to Guy
de Maupassant's device of periodic structure, by means of which the
solution of the story is withheld till the concluding sentences. This
exceedingly effective expedient, however, is applicable only in the
sort of story wherein the element of surprise is inherent in the
nature of the theme. In no other single feature of construction may
the work of the inexperienced author be so readily detected as in
the final passage of his story. Mr. Kipling's "Lispeth" (the first of
"Plain Tales from the Hills"), which was written at a very early age,
began perfectly [the first word is "She"] and proceeded well; but when
he approached his conclusion, the young author did not know where to
stop. His story really ended at the words, "And she never came
back"; for at that point his pre-established design had been entirely
effected. But instead of closing there, he appended four unnecessary
paragraphs, dealing with the subsequent life of his heroine,--all of
which was, to use his own familiar phrase, "another story." Poe and
de Maupassant would not have made this mistake; and neither would Mr.
Kipling after he had grown into mastery of artistic method.
In his very interesting paper on "The Philosophy of Composition,"
Edgar Allan Poe outlined step by step the intellectual processes
by which he developed the structure of "The Raven," and fashioned
a finished poem from a preconceived effect. It is greatly to be
regretted that he did not write a similar essay outlining in detail
the successive stages in the structure of one of his short-stories.
With his extraordinarily clear and analytic intellect, he fashioned
his plots with mathematical precision. So rigorously did he work that
in his best stories we feel that the removal of a sentence would be an
amputation. He succeeded absolutely in giving his narrative the utmost
emphasis with the greatest economy of means.
If we learn through and through how a single perfect story is
constructed, we shall have gone far toward understanding the technic
of story-building as a whole. Let us therefore analyze one of Poe's
short-stories,--following in the main the method which he himself
pursued in his analysis of "The Raven,"--in order to learn the
successive steps by which any excellent short-story may be developed
from its theme. Let us choose "Ligeia" for the subject of this study,
because it is very widely known, and because Poe himself considered it
the greatest of his tales. Let us see how, starting with the theme of
the story, Poe developed step by step the structure of his finished
fabric; and how, granted his pre-established design, the progress of
his plan was in every step inevitable.[8]
[Footnote 8: The analysis of "Ligeia" which follows was printed in the
_Reader_ for February, 1906. It is here resumed with a few revisions
of detail.]
The theme of "Ligeia" was evidently suggested by those lines from
Joseph Glanvill which, quoted as a motto for the story, are thrice
repeated during the course of the narrative:--
"And the will therein lieth, which dieth not. Who knoweth the
mysteries of the will, with its vigor? For God is but a great will,
pervading all things by nature of its intentness. Man doth not yield
himself to the angels, nor unto death utterly, save only through the
weakness of his feeble will."
Poe recognized, with the English moralist, that the human will is
strong and can conquer many of the ills that flesh is heir to. If it
were still stronger, it could do more mighty things; and if it were
_very much_ stronger, it is even conceivable that it might vanquish
death, its last and sternest foe. Now it was legitimate for the
purposes of fiction to imagine a character endowed with a will
strong enough to conquer death; and a striking narrative effect could
certainly be produced by setting forth this moral conquest. This,
then, became the purpose of the story: to exhibit a character with
a superhuman will, and to show how, by sheer force of volition, this
person conquered death.
Having thus decided on his theme, the writer of the story was first
forced to consider how many, or rather, _how few_, characters
were necessary to the narrative. One, at least, was obviously
essential,--the person with the superhuman will. For esthetic reasons
Poe made this character a woman, and called her Ligeia; but it is
evident that _structurally_ the story would have been the same if he
had made the character a man. The resultant narrative would have been
different in mood and tone; but it would not have been different in
structure. Given this central character, it was not perhaps evident at
first that another person was needed for the tale. But in all stories
which set forth an extraordinary being, it is necessary to introduce
an ordinary character to serve as a standard by which the unusual
capabilities of the central figure may be measured. Furthermore, in
stories which treat of the miraculous, it is necessary to have at
least one eye-witness to the extraordinary circumstances beside
the person primarily concerned in them. Hence another character was
absolutely needed in the tale. This second person, moreover, had to
be intimately associated with the heroine, for the two reasons already
considered. The most intimate relation imaginable was that of husband
and wife; he must therefore be the husband of Ligeia. Beside these
two people,--a woman of superhuman will, and her husband, a man of
ordinary powers,--no other character was necessary; and therefore Poe
did not (and _could not_, according to the laws of the short-story)
introduce another. The Lady of Tremaine, as we shall see later on, is
not, technically considered, a character.
The main outline of the story could now be plotted. Ligeia and her
husband must be exhibited to the reader; and then, in her husband's
presence, Ligeia must conquer death by the vigor of her will. But in
order to do this, she must first die. If she merely exerted her will
to ward off the attacks of death, the reader would not be convinced
that her recovery had been accomplished by other than ordinary means.
She must die, therefore, and must afterwards resurrect herself by a
powerful exertion of volition. The reader must be fully convinced that
she did really die; and therefore, before her resurrection, she must
be laid for some time in the grave. The story, then, divided itself
into two parts: the first, in which Ligeia was alive, terminated
with her death; and the second, in which she was dead, ended with her
resurrection.
Having thus arrived at the main outline of his plot, Poe was next
forced to decide on the point of view from which the story should be
told. Under the existing conditions, any one of three distinct points
of view may have seemed, at the first glance, available: that of
the chief character, that of the secondary character, and that of an
external omniscient personality. But only a little consideration was
necessary to show that only one of these three could successfully be
employed. Obviously, the story could not be narrated by Ligeia: for it
would be awkward to let an extraordinary woman discourse about her own
unusual qualities; and furthermore, she could hardly narrate a story
involving as one of its chief features her stay among the dead
without being expected to tell the secrets of her prison-house. It
was likewise impossible to tell the tale from the point of view of
an external omniscient personality. In order that the final and
miraculous incident might seem convincing, it had to be narrated not
impersonally but personally, not externally but by an eye-witness.
Therefore, the story must, of course, be told by the husband of
Ligeia.
At this point the main outline was completed. It then became necessary
for Poe to plan the two divisions of the story in detail. In the first
part, no action was necessary, and very little attention had to be
paid to setting. It was essential that all of the writer's stress
should be laid on the element of character; for the sole purpose of
this initial division of the story must be to produce upon the reader
an extremely emphatic impression of the extraordinary personality of
Ligeia. As soon as the reader could be sufficiently impressed with the
force of her character, she must be made to die; and the first part
of the story would be finished. But at this point Poe was obliged
to choose between the direct and the indirect means of delineating
character. Should Ligeia be depicted directly by her husband, or
indirectly, through her own speech? In other words, should this first
half of the story be a description or a conversation? The matter was
easy to decide. The method of conversation was unavailable; because
a dialogue between Ligeia and her husband would keep the attention of
the reader hovering from one to the other, whereas it was necessary
for the purpose of the tale to focus all of the attention on Ligeia.
She must, therefore, be depicted directly by her husband. Having
concluded that he must devote the entire first half of his story to
this description, Poe employed all his powers to make it adequate and
emphatic. The description must, of course, be largely subjective
and suggestive, and must be pervaded with a sense of something
unfathomable about the person described. In order that (reverting to
the language of Poe's own critical dictum) "his very initial sentence"
might "tend to the out-bringing of this effect," the author wrote, "I
cannot for my soul remember how, when, or even precisely where I first
became acquainted with the lady Ligeia": and the story was begun.
It was more difficult to handle the second division of the tale,
which was to deal with the period between Ligeia's death and her
resurrection. The main stress of the story now ceased to be laid on
the element of character. The element of action, furthermore, was
subsidiary in the second part of the tale, as it had been already in
the first. All that had to happen was the resurrection of Ligeia;
and this the reader had been forced by the very theme of the story to
foresee. The chief interest in the second part must therefore lie in
determining where and when and how this resurrection was accomplished.
A worthy setting must be found for the culminating event. Poe could
lose no time in preparing a place for his climax; and therefore he
was obliged, as soon as he had laid Ligeia in the grave, to begin an
elaborate description of the stage settings of his final scene. The
place must be wild and weird and arabesque. It must be worthy to
receive a resurrected mortal revisiting the glimpses of the moon. The
place was found, the time--midnight--decided upon: but the question
remained,--_how_ should Ligeia be resurrected?