Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 14.djvu/780

* NOVEL. 664 NOVEL. up by giving a list of his imitators or of those But the psychological novel liaidlj- became aware writers who discovered new romantic themes. He is in Thomas Hardy's woodland scenes as much as in Stevenson's Master of liallantrae. He de- picted the showy virtues, vices, and scenes in his outer plot, but beneatli there was always careful observation of common life. Throw oil llie outer covering, and you liave the realistic novel. This was done by several writers, as ISusan Ferrier, of itself before the middle of the nineteenth cen- ttrry. Hawthorne comes to the fore. Alilve in liis longer and shorter tales, as The Scarlet Letter and The LI real Stone Face ( ISoO), he probes the conscience. Kmily Bronte's Wulheriiiy Heiyhts (1848) is an intense lyric. Likewise in t'harU)tte Bronie's Jane Fyre (1847) and ViUette (IS.'i.'J) what holds one spellbound is the spiritual life John Gait, and D. JI. AXoir, who wrote capital externalized in incident. Here, too, the work of sketches of Scotch manners. Throw out the his- torical setting, and you have once more the novel of contemporary manners. The transition is well marked by the work of Bulwer-Lytton. Likewise Charles Kingsley romanced the sea and ancient hist<nv {Wcsltrard llo! and Bijpatia) and dealt with the social conditions of his own time ( Yeast and Alton Loeke). But the immediate vogue of romance and history had already been checked. Elizabeth Gaskell, best known as the author of Cranford, has .significance. In her liuth (1853) slie employed for unifying the plot an ethical fornuila which may be styled the doctrine (if the act and its conse(piences. But the memorable date in the history of the psycliological novel is 1859. In that year appeared (ieorge Kliol's Adam licde and George ileredith's Ordeal of Hiehard Feverel. In her tirst long storv George In France, Balzac was insisting, in theory and in Eliot kept in harmony the inner and the outer practice, that the novel should be a document based upon experience and observation. Balzac's vast Comcdie huniaiiie, aiming to represent every phase of French life, worked mightily in Eng- land, and gave fiction everywhere an encyclopedic character. In England the novel returned to the humors of society with I'ickicick (1830-37). In this novel of great scope ( for it contains more than 350 characters) appear the London cock- life; and each added to the interest of the other, t'ertainly after The Mill on the Floss (18ti0), incident was no longer able to sustain the jihi- losophy. And yet Romola (1863) and Middle- mareh (1871-72) are her most relentless studies in moral decay. All her novels are constructed on some variant of the doctrine of the deed and its con.sequenCes. George ilercdith selects a sniall group of characters in a clearly defined neys. Having discovered London. Dickens went situation — as in The Egoist (1879) and Diana on to illustrate it in all its phases, and to in- (1S85) — and then studies minutely their be- clude in his canvas much from the provinces, havior. His view is less comprehensive than until he had created caricature types rtmning George Eliot's, but his analysis is more subtle, into the thousands. Thackeray wrote Vanity Recent Phases. In 1003, for the time being, Fair (1847-48). Instead of a Little Nell, he psychology seemed to have run its course in Eng- took as heroine Becky Shar]), and made her ad- lish fiction. True, some of the charaiteristics ventures the medium for depicting the ways of of Henry .James connect him with ilereditli; l>ut the middle class. This novel was followed by Pendennis, The Newcotnes, Esmond, The Virnin- ians, and The Adientures of Philip. All possess exquisite humor and irony. In their somewhat loose structure they lean to the epic. But the method of procedure is dramatic. No other James is master of several manners. The best contemporary work in ])sycliolog' is represented by Paul Bourget, at the head of a French group. From the older psychology sprang the philnsopliic novel. The psychologists had their ethical for- mula, but it was not all-iniportant. The phi- novelist has ever come near Thackeray in making losophers thrust to the front determinism, an his characters develop from page to page; witness ethical theory whereby conduct is made to dejieiid both Becky Sliarj) and Kawdoii Crawley. wholly upon heredity and envirimment; man is At this time George Borrow was writing his no longer a free moral agent. On this theory eccentric gypsy novels, Larenr/ro (1851) and was planned the entire scries of Emile Zola Romany h'l/e ( 1857 ), and Cliarles Reade was win- (q.v.), called Les RoKi/on-Mnciiuart (1871-93). ning popularity. The way in which Keade and Tliomas Hardy now stands for the very best type Dickens put together the novel of social satire of the newer realism. The philosophical novel was very displeasing to Anthony Trollope, who belongs rather to the past, and its place has been accused them of creating vices in the upper and taken largely by the novel of a more distinct pur- niiddle classes merely to attack them. His ideal Jiose. often called the ]n-obleni novel, for it aims of a novel Trollope presented in the Chronicles of at the solution of some social problem. Such, JJarsetshire (1853-(>7). comiirisiiig The Ward<n, for exainjde, is Hardy's ./»(/c //ir 06.sri/rc (18!)5|. liarchester Towers, Doctor Thome, Framley Par- This kind of novel is in jiart an inheritance from sonatje. The Small House at .Mlinyton. and The Last Chronicle of liarset. In this imaginary shire, he describes the elergj' and their friends with a pleasing humor, running now and then into farce. Trollope brings his characters di- Dickens and in part a natural development from (jcorge Eliot. It iliscnsses, by turn, creeds, he- redity, class distinctions, agrarian conditions, labor and capital, municipal government, tene- ment house reform, the enfranchisement of rectly before the reader and lets them play out woman, the failure of marriage, the grounds for the drama. No one ever forgets characters like Septimus Harding, Mrs. Proudie, and Arch- deacon Grantley. The PsvciioiOfiicAi, Novel. Corresponding with the -ier|uence of incident there is a sequence of thonjiht and emotion. Lay the stress on incident and you have thi' rnmance nr the novel of man- ners; lay it on the inner life and yon have the psychological novel. Since Defoe, the novel had divorce, etc. The last three topics on the list have been favorites with many woman novelists. To this kind of fiction dignity has been given by three writers, artists as well as thinkers, each belonijinsr to a ditTerent eouiitry and each pos- sessing his own methods: Tolstoy in Russia, li.jiirnson in Scandinavia, and Mrs. Humphry Ward in England. Other novelists, though equipped with ideas. to an extent swung between these two methods, liave depicted contemporary manners with a less