A History of English Prose Fiction Part 18

But although a novelist may accomplish great results by such devotion to a philanthrophic object, he can hardly avoid injury to the artistic effect and permanent value of his work. Many pa.s.sages in d.i.c.kens'

novels which have had a great influence in the cause of reform, cannot fail, in the future, when the evil exposed is no longer felt, to be a drag on the works which contain them.

Charles Kingsley described the grievances of mechanics in "Alton Locke," a work in which the artistic elements are much subordinated to the didactic. A more powerful novel of purpose is Mrs. Gaskell's "Mary Barton," which enlists the sympathies of the reader very strongly with the trials of the manufacturing cla.s.ses. Not of more literary excellence, but dealing with a subject of far wider interest than that of "Mary Barton," was the "Uncle Tom's Cabin" of Mrs. Stowe. This work is a wonderful example of the capacities of fiction for moving the public mind. Before its publication, great numbers of ordinarily humane people had a general, ill defined horror of slavery. It was felt to be a barbarous inst.i.tution, a blot on American civilization. But to most people it was a distant abuse, with which they seldom or never came in contact, and of which they only heard the evil effects in a general way. But with the publication of "Uncle Tom's Cabin" the whole Northern public were brought face to face with the question of slavery. Here were individuals, made real and interesting by the power of the novelist, subjected to tyranny and suffering from which every generous nature recoiled. Slavery then a.s.sumed a new and more personal aspect, and thousands who were indifferent to the rights of the negroes in general felt a sympathy with the fate of Uncle Tom which easily extended to the sufferings of the whole race. But the extraordinary reputation and circulation given to "Uncle Tom's Cabin" by the world-wide interest in its subject, could not be sustained when public interest in that subject declined; and the volume which at one time occupied the attention of the whole civilized world, fell into comparative obscurity when its mission was accomplished.

IX.

Works of fiction occupied with purely imaginary or supernatural subjects have been comparatively rare. While Byron, Sh.e.l.ley and his wife were living at the Lake of Geneva, a rainy week kept them indoors, and all three occupied themselves with reading or inventing ghost stories. Mrs. Sh.e.l.ley, who was the daughter of G.o.dwin the novelist, and who inherited his intensity of imagination, reproduced the impressions then made upon her mind in the remarkable but disagreeable romance of "Frankenstein." The story is related by a young student, who creates a monstrous being from materials gathered in the tomb and the dissecting-room. When the creature is made complete with bones, muscles, and skin, it acquires life and commits atrocious crimes. It murders a friend of the student, strangles his bride, and finally comes to an end in the Northern seas. While some parts of the story are written with considerable power, the general effect is exceedingly unpleasant. Bulwer Lytton's "Zanoni," a peculiarly fanciful work, unfolds the mysteries of the Rosicrucians. In "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland," the freaks and vagaries of the imagination in sleep are vividly traced. The curious mixture of the actual and the unreal, the merging of wholly different ideas in one conception, so frequent in dreams, are described with extraordinary skill and delicacy. The childlike simplicity of Alice's mind is charmingly maintained, and the exquisite vein of humor which runs through the whole book makes it one of the most delightful as well as one of the most remarkable of fictions.

X.

In an article published in _The Ninteenth Century_, Mr. Anthony Trollope expressed his views on the good and evil influences exerted by works of fiction, and he has repeated very much the same opinions in his interesting book on Thackeray.[212] "However poor your matter may be," he says, "however near you may come to that 'foolishest of existing mortals,' as Carlyle presumes some unfortunate novelist to be, still, if there be those who read your works, they will undoubtedly be more or less influenced by what they find there. And it is because the novelist amuses that he is thus influential. The sermon too often has no such effect, because it is applied with the declared intention of having it. The palpable and overt dose the child rejects; but that which is cunningly insinuated by the aid of jam or honey is accepted unconsciously, and goes on its curative mission. So it is with the novel. It is taken because of its jam and honey. But, unlike the honest, simple jam and honey of the household cupboard, it is never unmixed with physic. There will be the dose within it, either curative or poisonous. The girl will be taught modesty or immodesty, truth or falsehood; the lad will be taught honor or dishonor, simplicity or affectation. Without the lesson the amus.e.m.e.nt will not be there. There are novels which certainly teach nothing; but then neither can they amuse any one. I should be said to insist absurdly on the power of my own confraternity if I were to declare that the bulk of the young people in the upper and middle cla.s.ses receive their moral teaching chiefly from the novels they read. Mothers would no doubt think of their own sweet teaching: fathers of the examples which they set: and schoolmasters of the influence of their instructions. Happy is the country that has such mothers, fathers, schoolmasters! But the novelist creeps in closer than the schoolmaster, closer than the father, closer almost than the mother. He is the chosen guide, the tutor whom the young pupil chooses for herself. She retires with him, suspecting no lesson, safe against rebuke, throwing herself head and heart into the narration as she can hardly do into her task-work; and there she is taught how she shall learn to love; how she shall receive the lover when he comes; how far she should advance to meet the joy; why she should be reticent, and not throw herself at once into this new delight. It is the same with the young man, though he would be more p.r.o.ne even than she to reject the suspicion of such tutorship. But he, too, will there learn either to speak the truth, or to lie; and will receive from his novel lessons either of real manliness, or of that affected apishness and tailor-begotten demeanor which too many professors of the craft give out as their dearest precepts."

Such are the views of a close observer of human nature, whose works have had an exceedingly wide and an always excellent influence. While Mr. Trollope has probably exaggerated the educational power of the novel, it cannot be denied that this form of literature takes a considerable part in moulding the opinions and standards of the young.

The impressions of life derived from novels are almost as strong as those we receive from what is pa.s.sing in the world about us. If a work of fiction form a truthful reflection of nature, it must hold up to the reader's view examples of evil as well as examples of good; it must deal with depravity as well as with virtue. And, therefore, all that can be expected from the novelist is that he should endeavor to represent life as it is, with its due apportionment of beauty and of ugliness. And so much is demanded not only by the moralist, but by the critic. Many writers who have described the life of criminals, who have endeavored to make infamous careers attractive, and have pandered to the lower tastes of the reading public, would urge in their own defence: that they have nothing to do with morality; that their object is to produce a work of art; that no question of the good or evil effect of their writing should be allowed to trammel their imagination.

But the critic would rightly reply, that truth at least must be respected in a work of art; that the imagination must not be allowed the liberty of misrepresentation; and that the novelist in whose pages vice predominates, or is given an alluring aspect, is no more artistic than the writer of Sunday-school books. In judging the influence exerted by the great body of writers of fiction whose names have been mentioned in this chapter, I shall therefore proceed on the understanding that that novelist who writes almost exclusively of good people is not necessarily the one whose influence has been the best, nor that he who has drawn many weak or evil-doing characters has necessarily taught the worst lessons. The standard by which we must judge an author, as well from an artistic as from a moral point of view, must be founded on the recognition that both good and evil prevail in the world, and that whoever undertakes to give a picture of life must paint both the evil and the good in their true colors.

In commenting on the fiction of the eighteenth century, its prevailing coa.r.s.eness was reprehended. But this characteristic was objected to on the score of taste, but not at all on that of truth or morality. The novelist of that time would not have faithfully represented the society about him had he not allowed himself that license which universally prevailed. Nor could the coa.r.s.eness of the eighteenth-century writer be objected to on moral grounds. Morality is concerned with thoughts, not with expression. Whether we speak plainly the ideas in our mind, whether we communicate them by means of some, circ.u.mlocution, or whether we keep them wholly to ourselves, is a matter of fashion, not of morality.[213] Our great-grandmothers were not less chaste because they spoke of things regarding which we remain silent in a mixed society: they were simply less squeamish. Mrs. Behn in her day, and Fielding in his, described a licentious scene openly and honestly without a suspicion of evil.

But a great change has come over public taste, and I may even say over public morality, during the present century. Licentious conduct is no longer a venial offence; gross and immodest expressions are no longer allowed in respectable society. The improvement has certainly been great, although not as great as it seems. Out of our higher morality, out of our new and boasted refinement, has sprung a vice more ugly than coa.r.s.eness, more degrading than sensuality, and that vice is hypocrisy, which shelters all others behind its deceptive mask. Many a parent now winks at the hidden vice of a son, the exposure of which would fill him with shame and indignation. Thousands of young men feel that they can privately lead a life of dissipation, so long as they keep a respectable face to the world. It is not the vice that society punishes, it is the being found out. So when we think of our improved morality and refinement, we must temper our pride with the reflection that we may be simply more hypocritical, and not more virtuous than our ancestors. Still, the fact that licentiousness must now wear a mask of respectability, that social status is now greatly affected by moral worth, shows that a real advance has been made. This advance has left plainly marked traces on the fiction of our time, where, too, we shall find plentiful evidence of that hypocrisy which has become our besetting sin.

As we look back upon the list of the great authors who have written in the present century, it must be with a feeling of grat.i.tude for the benefits they have conferred. They have devoted their lives to the production of literary works, the beauty and excellence of which have incalculably elevated the public taste. They have held up ideals and n.o.ble conceptions which insensibly impart a dignity to life, and an encouragement to youthful aspiration. They have described so truthfully and sympathetically the character and aims of different cla.s.ses and different peoples, that whoever reads their works cannot but feel himself drawn nearer to great divisions of the human race, which he had hitherto regarded with an indifferent or a prejudiced eye. The novels of Scott, of d.i.c.kens, of Thackeray, of George Eliot, of Miss Austen, of Miss Ferrier, of very many others, have afforded to hundreds of thousands, young and old, a never failing source of healthful entertainment. Domestic life, as well in the cottage as the castle, has been cheered and enlivened by their presence. Their examples of heroism, of patience, of generosity, have excited the emulation of the young, while their pictures of selfishness and vice have stifled many an evil inclination and have given birth to many a good resolution.

Such writers as these have expressed the best tendencies of the age.

And they have been able to do so because they themselves are among the best men and women of their time. But, unfortunately, as the nineteenth century has many evil characteristics, and as depraved and weak-minded persons are often endowed with some literary capacity, a great deal of poisonous matter has unavoidably come to the surface in English fiction. The writers who have prost.i.tuted their talents in pandering to the low tastes of their readers, have carefully avoided any such open representation of vice as was permissible in the last century. But they have hidden under an outward respectability of words the most immoral and degrading thoughts. They have recognized the fact that a not inconsiderable number of persons would be be glad to find in a work of fiction the same gross ideas which occupy their own minds. And thus a more dangerous, because a more insidious, species of literature has sprung up. The absence of parental censorship, the general freedom with which works of fiction are allowed to enter almost every household, permit these novels to fall into the hands of the youngest and most susceptible. The young girl or boy whose parents carefully put away the newspaper which contains an account of a divorce trial or a rape, is very possibly reading a novel of which the main interest lies in a detailed description of a seduction. It is not of the so-called "dime novels" or of the stories published in a police gazette to which reference is made, but to books issued by respectable publishers and often written by women. Of these novels, the subject is the unlawful gratification of the pa.s.sions. Bigamy, seduction, adultery, are the incidents on which the story turns, and an effort is always made by the novelist to give to the sinners as attractive and interesting an aspect as possible, and to hold up any respectable people who may appear in the book to the contempt and derision of the reader. Perhaps we would be wrong in blaming a writer for his or her vulgarity. This is a fault into which some authors fall unconsciously, and is a part of their nature which they cannot shake off. If Rhoda Broughton or "Ouida" were to cease being vulgar in print, they would be obliged to stop writing altogether, a public benefit which we can hardly expect them to confer.

But we have a right to severely call an author to task for representing vice in an attractive aspect, for condoning offences against morality, for depicting licentiousness as unattended by retributive consequences.

In so doing, a writer is false to art and to nature, as well as to morality.

Critics have done their utmost to discourage and expose this kind of literature. The pages of _The Spectator_, of _The Sat.u.r.day Review_, of _The Athenaeum_, of _The London Examiner_, of _The Nation_, are full of reviews which denounce in unmeasured terms the vulgarity and pruriency of much of the fiction of the present day. But their censure can have little practical effect. So long as a cla.s.s of corrupt readers exists, so long will evil-minded men and women find a sale for the low conceptions of their depraved minds. Parents alone, by supervising the reading of their children, can prevent the evil effects of immoral novels. Some may think that I have exaggerated the bad characteristics of modern fiction. A few examples of objectionable works will be found at the foot of this page,[214] an acquaintance with which will sustain my remarks.

The reader may possibly object that these are obscure names in literature, and that they represent writers whose works are ephemeral.

The names chosen are the most prominent in the cla.s.s to which they belong. Their obscurity is a redeeming feature of the society which can tolerate their existence. Although writers are able to find a sale for the most disgusting productions; although the critic is continually obliged, in reviewing current literature, to wade through the nastiest mire, it yet remains certain that public taste is not pleased with the vile. A limited circulation will be found for immoral novels among a depraved cla.s.s, but it is to be said, for the credit of the nineteenth century, that talents prost.i.tuted can never bring fame. The conceptions of a Goldsmith, a Scott, a d.i.c.kens, a Thackeray, a George Eliot, remain among the dearest possessions of all English-speaking people. But the unhealthy, unnatural, and hideous pictures given to the world by vicious men and women receive the same wages as the sin they portray.

[Footnote 212: In Mr. John Morley's edition of "English Men of Letters," chapter ix.]

[Footnote 213: See Macaulay on "The Comic Dramatists."]

[Footnote 214: See "Strathmore," and others, by "Ouida"; "Not Wisely, But Too Well," "Red as a Rose Is She," "Joan," by Rhoda Broughton; "Cherry Ripe," by Helen Mathers; "The Lovels of Arden," by Miss Braddon; "Under which Lord?" by Mrs E.L. Linton; "A Romance of the Nineteenth Century," by W.H. Mallock; "Children of Nature," by the Earl of Desart. A long list of very nasty books might easily be added, but these will be sufficient to ill.u.s.trate the bad tendencies of fiction, and to show how thoroughly female authors have kept pace in immodesty and indecency with their rivals of the less pretentious s.e.x.]

THE END.