XVIII

In these pages I have tried to disengage the various elements of the

craft, one from another, and to look at them separately; and this has

involved much rude simplification of matters that are by no means

simple. I have chosen a novel for the sake of some particular aspect,

and I have disregarded all else in it; I could but seek for the book

which seemed to display that aspect most plainly, and keep it in view

from that one angle for illustration of my theme. And the result is,

no doubt, that while some tentative classification of the ways of a

novelist has been possible, the question that now arises, at the point

I have reached, must be left almost untouched. It is the question that

confronts a writer when he has possessed himself of his subject and

determined the point of view from which it is to be approached. How is

its development to be handled? Granted that the instruments of the

craft, dramatic and pictorial and so forth, are such as they have been

described, which of them is the appropriate one for this or that stage

in the progress of the story to be told? The point of view gives only

a general indication, deciding the look that the story is to wear as a

whole; but whether the action is to run scenically, or to be treated

on broader lines, or both--in short, the matter of the treatment in

detail is still unsettled, though the main look and attitude of the

book has been fixed by its subject.

My analysis of the making of a few novels would have to be pushed very

much further before it would be possible to reach more than one or two

conclusions in this connection. In the handling of his book a novelist

must have some working theory, I suppose, to guide him--some theory of

the relative uses and values of the different means at his disposal;

and yet, when it is discovered how one writer tends perpetually

towards one mode of procedure, another to another, it hardly seems

that between them they have arrived at much certainty. Each employs

the manner that is most congenial to him; nobody, it may be, gives us

the material for elaborating the hierarchy of values that now we need,

if this argument is to be extended. We have picked out the modes of

rendering a story and have seen how they differ from each other; but

we are not nearly in a position to give a reasoned account of their

conjunction, how each is properly used in the place where its peculiar

strength is required, how the course of a story demands one here,

another there, as it proceeds to its culmination. I can imagine that

by examining and comparing in detail the workmanship of many novels by

many hands a critic might arrive at a number of inductions in regard

to the relative properties of the scene, the incident dramatized, the

incident pictured, the panoramic impression and the rest; there is

scope for a large enquiry, the results of which are greatly needed by

a critic of fiction, not to speak of the writers of it. The few books

that I have tried to take to pieces and to re-construct are not

enough--or at least it would be necessary to deal with them more

searchingly. But such slight generalizations as I have chanced upon by

the way may as well be re-stated here, before I finish.

And first of the dramatic incident, the scene, properly so

called--this comes first in importance, beyond doubt. A novelist

instinctively sees the chief turns and phases of his story expressed

in the form of a thing acted, where narrative ceases and a direct

light falls upon his people and their doings. It must be so, for this

is the sharpest effect within his range; and the story must naturally

have the benefit of it, wherever the emphasis is to fall most

strongly. To the scene, therefore, all other effects will appear to be

subordinated in general; and the placing of the scenes of the story

will be the prime concern. But precisely because it has this high

value it will need to be used prudently. If it is wasted it loses

force, and if it is weakened the climax--of the story, of a particular

turn in the story--has no better resource to turn to instead. And so

it is essential to recognize its limitations and to note the purposes

which it does _not_ well serve; since it is by using it for these that

it is depreciated.

In the scene, it is clear, there can be no foreshortening of time or

space; I mean that as it appears to the eye of the reader, it displays

the whole of the time and space it occupies. It cannot cover more of

either than it actually renders. And therefore it is, for its length,

expensive in the matter of time and space; an oblique narrative will

give the effect of further distances and longer periods with much

greater economy. A few phrases, casting backwards over an incident,

will yield the sense of its mere dimensions, where the dramatized

scene might cover many pages. Its salience is another matter; but it

has to be remembered that though the scene acts vividly, it acts

slowly, in relation to its length. I am supposing that it stands alone

and unsupported, and must accordingly make its effect from the

beginning, must prepare as well as achieve; and evidently in that case

a burden is thrown upon it for which it is not specially equipped. At

any moment there may be reasons for forcing it to bear the

burden--other considerations may preponderate; but nevertheless a

scene which is not in some way prepared in advance is a scene which in

point of fact is wasting a portion of its strength. It is

accomplishing expensively what might have been accomplished for less.

That is the disability of the dramatic scene; and I imagine the

novelist taking thought to ensure that he shall press upon it as

little as possible. As far as may be he will use the scene for the

purpose which it fulfils supremely--to clinch a matter already

pending, to demonstrate a result, to crown an effect half-made by

other means. In that way he has all the help of its strength without

taxing its weakness. He secures its salient relief, and by saving it

from the necessity of doing all the work he enables it to act swiftly

and sharply. And then the scene exhibits its value without drawback;

it becomes a power in a story that is entirely satisfying, and a thing

of beauty that holds the mind of the reader like nothing else. It has

often seemed that novelists in general are over-shy of availing

themselves of this opportunity. They squander the scene; they are

always ready to break into dialogue, into dramatic presentation, and

often when there is nothing definitely to be gained by it; but they

neglect the fully wrought and unified scene, amply drawn out and

placed where it gathers many issues together, showing their outcome.

Such a scene, in which every part of it is active, advancing the

story, and yet in which there is no forced effort, attempting a task

not proper to it, is a rare pleasure to see in a book. One immediately

thinks of Bovary, and how the dramatic scenes mark and affirm the

structural lines of that story.

Drama, then, gives the final stroke, it is the final stroke which it

is adapted to deliver; and picture is to be considered as subordinate,

preliminary and preparatory. This seems a plain inference, on the

whole, from all the books I have been concerned with, not Bovary only.

Picture, the general survey, with its command of time and space,

finds its opportunity where a long reach is more needed than sharp

visibility. It is entirely independent where drama is circumscribed.

It travels over periods and expanses, to and fro, pausing here,

driving off into the distance there, making no account of the bounds

of a particular occasion, but seeking its material wherever it

chooses. Its office is to pile up an accumulated impression that will

presently be completed by another agency, drama, which lacks what

picture possesses, possesses what it lacks. Something of this kind,

broadly speaking, is evidently their relation; and it is to be

expected that a novelist will hold them to their natural functions,

broadly speaking, in building his book. It is only a rough contrast,

of course, the first and main difference between them that strikes the

eye; comparing them more closely, one might find other divergences

that would set their relation in a new light. But closer comparison is

what I have not attempted; much more material would have to be

collected and studied before it could begin.

Of the art of picture there is more to be said, however. It has

appeared continually how the novelist is conscious of the thinness of

a mere pictorial report of things; for thin and flat must be the

reflection that we receive from the mind of another. There is a

constant effort throughout the course of fiction to counteract the

inherent weakness of this method of picture, the method that a

story-teller is bound to use and that indeed is peculiarly his; and

after tracing the successive stages of the struggle, in that which I

have taken to be their logical order, we may possibly draw the moral.

The upshot seems to be this--that the inherent weakness is to be

plainly admitted and recognized, and not only that, but asserted and

emphasized--and that then it ceases to be a weakness and actually

becomes a new kind of strength. Is not this the result that we have

seen? When you recall and picture an impression in words you give us,

listeners and readers, no more than a sight of things in a mirror, not

a direct view of them; but at the same time there is something of

which you do indeed give us a direct view, as we may say, and that is

the mirror, your mind itself. Of the mirror, then, you may make a

solid and defined and visible object; you may dramatize this thing at

least, this mind, if the things that appear in it must remain as

pictures only. And so by accepting and using what looked like a mere

disability in the method, you convert it into a powerful and valuable

arm, with a keen effect of its own.

That is how the story that is centred in somebody's consciousness,

passed through a fashioned and constituted mind--not poured straight

into the book from the mind of the author, which is a far-away matter,

vaguely divined, with no certain edge to it--takes its place as a

story dramatically pictured, and as a story, therefore, of stronger

stuff than a simple and undramatic report. Thus may be expressed the

reason which underlies the novelist's reluctance to _tell_ his story

and his desire to interpose another presence between himself and the

reader. It seems a good reason, good enough to be acted upon more

consistently than it is by the masters of the craft. For though their

reluctance has had a progressive history, though there are a few

principles in the art of fiction that have appeared to emerge and to

become established in the course of time, a reader of novels is left

at last amazed by the chaos in which the art is still pursued--frankly

let it be said. Different schools, debatable theories, principles

upheld by some and rejected by others--such disagreement would all be

right and natural, it would be the mark of vigour in the art and the

criticism of it. But no connected argument, no definition of terms, no

formulation of claims, not so much as any ground really cleared and

prepared for discussion--what is a novel-reader to make of such a

condition and how is he to keep his critical interest alive and alert?

The business of criticism in the matter of fiction seems clear, at any

rate. There is nothing more that can usefully be said about a novel

until we have fastened upon the question of its making and explored it

to some purpose. In all our talk about novels we are hampered and held

up by our unfamiliarity with what is called their technical aspect,

and that is consequently the aspect to confront. That Jane Austen was

an acute observer, that Dickens was a great humourist, that George

Eliot had a deep knowledge of provincial character, that our living

romancers are so full of life that they are neither to hold nor to

bind--we know, we have repeated, we have told each other a thousand

times; it is no wonder if attention flags when we hear it all again.

It is their books, as well as their talents and attainments, that we

aspire to see--their books, which we must recreate for ourselves if we

are ever to behold them. And in order to recreate them durably there

is the one obvious way--to study the craft, to follow the process, to

read constructively. The practice of this method appears to me at this

time of day, I confess, the only interest of the criticism of fiction.

It seems vain to expect that discourse upon novelists will contain

anything new for us until we have really and clearly and accurately

seen their books.

And after all it is impossible--that is certain; the book vanishes as

we lay hands on it. Every word we say of it, every phrase I have used

about a novel in these pages, is loose, approximate, a little more or

a little less than the truth. We cannot exactly hit the mark; or if we

do, we cannot be sure of it. I do not speak of the just judgement of

quality; as for that, any critic of any art is in the same

predicament; the value of a picture or a statue is as bodiless as that

of a book. But there are times when a critic of literature feels that

if only there were one single tangible and measurable fact about a

book--if it could be weighed like a statue, say, or measured like a

picture--it would be a support in a world of shadows. Such an

ingenuous confession, I think it must be admitted, goes to the root of

the matter--could we utter our sense of helplessness more candidly?

But still among the shadows there is a spark of light that tempts us,

there is a hint of the possibility that behind them, beyond them, we

may touch a region where the shadows become at least a little more

substantial. If that is so, it seems that our chance must lie in the

direction I have named. The author of the book was a craftsman, the

critic must overtake him at his work and see how the book was made.