An Estimate of the Value and Influence of Works of Fiction in Modern Times

by Thomas Hill Green

  24. To be what he is, the novelist must be a man with large powers ofsympathetic observation. He must have an eye for the "humanities" whichunderlie the estranging barriers of social demarcation, and in relationto which the influence of those barriers can alone be rightlyappreciated. We have already spoken of that acquiescence in the dominionof circumstance, to which we are all too ready to give way, and whichexclusive novel-reading tends to foster. The circumstances, however,whose rule we recognise, are apt to be merely our own or those of ourclass. We are blind to other "idola" than those of our own cave; we donot understand that the feelings which betray us into "indiscretions"may, when differently modified by a different situation, lead others togame-stealing or trade-outrages. From this narrowness of view thenovelist may do much to deliver us. The variations of feeling andaction with those of circumstance, and the essential human identitywhich these variations cannot touch, are his special province. He showsus that crime does not always imply sin, that a social heresy may be theassertion of a native right, that an offence which leads to conventionaloutlawry may be merely the rebellion of a generous nature againstconventional tyranny. Thus, if he does not do everything, he does much.Though he cannot reveal to us the inner side of life, he at least givesa more adequate conception of its surface. Though he cannot raise us toa point of view from which circumstances appear subordinate to spirituallaws, he yet saves us from being blinded, if not from being influenced,by the circumstances of our own position. Though he cannot show theprisoners the way of escape from their earthly confinement, yet bybreaking down the partitions between the cells he enables them tocombine their strength for a better arrangement of the prison-house. Themost wounding social wrongs more often arise from ignorance than frommalice, from acquiescence in the opinion of a class rather than fromdeliberate selfishness. The master cannot enter into the feelings of theservant, nor the servant into those of his master. The master cannotunderstand how any good quality can lead one to "forget his station"; tothe servant the spirit of management in the master seems mere"driving." This is only a sample of what is going on all society over.The relation between the higher and lower classes becomes irritating,and therefore injurious, not from any conscious unfairness on eitherside, but simply from the want of a common understanding; while at thesame time every class suffers within its own limits from the prevalenceof habits and ideas, under the authority of class-convention, whichcould not long maintain themselves if once placed in the light ofgeneral opinion. Against this twofold oppression, the novel, from itsfirst establishment as a substantive branch of literature, has madevigorous war. From Defoe to Kingsley its history boasts of a noble armyof social reformers; yet the work which these writers have achieved hashad little to do with the morals--commonly valueless, if not false andsentimental--which they have severally believed themselves to convey.Defoe's notion of a moral seems to have been the vulgar one that vicemust be palpably punished and virtue rewarded; he recommends his "MollFlanders" to the reader on the ground that "there is not a wicked actionin any part of it but is first or last rendered unhappy and[22]unfortunate." The moral of Fielding's novels, if moral it can be called,is simply the importance of that prudence which his heroes might havedispensed with, but for the wildness of their animal license. Yet bothDefoe and Fielding had a real lesson to teach mankind. The thieves andharlots whom Defoe prides himself on punishing, but whose adventures hedescribes with the minuteness of affection, are what we ourselves mighthave been; and in their histories we hear, if not the "music," yet the"harsh and grating cry" of suffering humanity. Fielding's merit is ofthe same kind; but the sympathies which he excites are more general, ashis scenes are more varied, than those of Defoe. His coarseness iseverywhere redeemed by a genuine feeling for the contumelious buffets towhich weakness is exposed. He has the practical insight of Dickens andThackeray, without their infusion of sentiment. He does not moraliseover the contrast between the rich man's law and the poor man's, overthe "indifference" of rural justice, over the lying and adultery offashionable life. He simply makes us see the facts, which are everywhereunder our eyes, but too close to us for discernment. He shows societywhere its sores lie, appealing from the judgment of the diseased classitself to that public intelligence which, in spite of the cynic's sneeron the task of "producing an honesty from the combined action ofknaves," has really power to over-ride private selfishness. The samesermon has found many preachers since, the unconscious missionariesbeing perhaps the greatest. Scott was a Tory of the purest water. Hismind was busy with the revival of a pseudo-feudalism: no thought ofreforming abuses probably ever entered it. Yet his genial human insightmade him a reformer against his will. He who makes man better known toman takes the first steps toward healing the wounds which man inflictson man. The permanent value of Scott's novels lies in his pictures ofthe Scotch peasantry. He popularised the work which the Lake poets hadbegun, of re-opening the primary springs of human passion. "Love he hadfound in huts where poor men lie," and he announced the discovery;teaching the "world" of English gentry what for a century and a halfthey had seemed to forget, that the human soul, in its strength no lessthan in its weakness, is independent of the accessories of fortune. Heleft no equals, but the combined force of his successors has beenconstantly growing in practical effect. They have probably done morethan the journalists to produce that improvement in the organisation ofmodern life which leads to the notion that, because social grievancesare less obvious, they have ceased to exist. The novelist catches thecry of suffering before it has obtained the strength, or generalrecognition, which are pre-supposed when the newspaper becomes itsmouthpiece. The miseries of the marriage-market had been told byThackeray, with almost wearisome iteration, many years before they foundutterance in the columns of the "Times."

  FOOTNOTE:

  [22] "Or" in Green's text.

  C. A CREATOR OF PUBLIC SENTIMENT

  25. It may indeed be truly said that, after all, human selfishness ismuch the same as it ever was; that luxury still drowns sympathy; thatriches and poverty have still their old estranging influence. The novel,as has been shown, cannot give a new birth to the spirit, or initiatethe effort to transcend the separations of place and circumstance; butit is no small thing that it should remove the barriers of ignorance andantipathy which would otherwise render the effort unavailing. It atleast brings man nearer to his neighbor, and enables each class to seeitself as others see it. And from the fusion of opinions and sympathiesthus produced, a general sentiment is elicited, to which oppression ofany kind, whether of one class by another, or of individuals by thetyranny of sectarian custom, seldom appeals in vain.

  D. A LEVELLER OF INTELLECTS

  26. The novelist is a leveller also in another sense than that of whichwe have already spoken. He helps to level intellects as well assituations. He supplies a kind of literary food which the weakestnatures can assimilate as well as the strongest, and by the consumptionof which the former sort lose much of their weakness and the lattermuch of their strength. While minds of the lower order acquire fromnovel-reading a cultivation which they previously lacked, the higherseem proportionately to sink. They lose that aspiring pride which arisesfrom the sense of walking in intellect on the necks of a subject crowd;they no longer feel the bracing influence of living solely among thehighest forms of art; they become conformed insensibly, to the generalopinion which the new literature of the people creates. A similar changeis going on in every department of man's activity. The history ofthought in its artistic form is parallel to its history in its othermanifestations. The spirit descends, that it may rise again; itpenetrates more and more widely into matter, that it may make the worldmore completely its own. Political life seems no longer attractive, nowthat political ideas and power are disseminated among the mass, and thereason is recognised as belonging not to a ruling caste merely, but toall. A statesman in a political society resting on a substratum ofslavery, and admitting no limits to the province of government, was avery different person from the modern servant of "a nation
ofshopkeepers," whose best work is to save the pockets of the poor. Itwould seem as if man lost his nobleness when he ceased to govern, and asif the equal rule of all was equivalent to the rule of none. Yet wehold fast to the faith that the "cultivation of the masses," which hasfor the present superseded the development of the individual, will inits maturity produce some higher type even of individual manhood thanany which the old world has known. We may rest on the same faith intracing the history of literature. In the novel we must admit that thecreative faculty has taken a lower form than it held in the epic and thetragedy. But since in this form it acts on more extensive material andreaches more men, we may well believe that this temporary declension ispreparatory to some higher development, when the poet shall idealiselife without making abstraction of any of its elements, and when thesecret of existence, which he now speaks to the inward ear of a few, maybe proclaimed on the house-tops to the common intelligence of mankind.

  APPENDIX

  A. AN APPRECIATION OF GREEN'S ESSAY

  It is interesting to see how the leading ideas in his [Green's] mindgoverned the treatment of an apparently alien material in his last pieceof academic work, the essay on novels, which gained the Chancellor'sprize in 1862. The essay has also the additional interest of beingalmost the only record of his views on art and its relation to life. Thefundamental conception upon which it is based is one with which we havealready met. The world in its truth is a unity, governed by a singlelaw, animated by an undivided life, a whole in every part. But to humanapprehension it is fragmentary and mechanical, a chaos of elements ofwhich each is external to the other and all are external to our minds,and in which chance tempered by familiarity seems to be the only law. Toexceptional men, or at exceptional crises in life, in the moments ofintense insight or emotion which philosophy calls knowledge and religionfaith, the weight of custom falls away, the truth breaks through theveil, and the most trivial object or accident comes to reflect initself the whole system of nature or the whole providence of God. Atsuch moments man realises that in order to live he must die, that inorder to be free he must obey, and that only by surrendering his fanciedindependence can he enter into the divine unity. To this liberation ofthe self from its own bondage art contributes its share. The poeticgenius, like the speculative and the religious, penetrates themonotonous disorder of everyday life, and lays bare "the impassionedexpression" which is there for those who can read it. The dramatist, forinstance, with whom the novelist is here compared, shows us someelemental force of humanity, stripped of the accidents of time andplace, working itself out in free conflict with other forces, andfinally breaking itself against the eternal fact that no man can gainthe world without first losing himself. It is this catastrophe whichmakes the real tragedy of life; it is this which the tragic poet has theeye to see and the words to portray; and in proportion as we can followhim in imagination, we come away from the spectacle with our own heartsbroken and purged, but strengthened to face the fact and obey the law.The novelist does with inferior means, and for minds at a lower level,what the dramatist may do for a mind at its highest. He idealises enoughto make us feel pleasure or pain, not enough to make us forgetourselves. He excites curiosity or suspense, not awe or hope. If thenovel ends well, it flatters our complacency with the feeling that theworld as it is is not such a bad place after all; if it ends badly, itstrengthens the indolent conviction that aimless misery is the law ofthe universe. There are however two ways in which novels may be of realservice and value. If they cannot teach men how to live, they may,through the wide range of their subjects, enable those who have alreadyfound a principle of life to give it a freer application than theirlimited circumstances would otherwise allow; the "fictitious experience"may "give expansion to the personal," while the personal gives realityto the fictitious, and thus may be mitigated that "sacrifice of theindividual to society" which the modern division of labor tends to bringabout. And secondly, by appealing to such various classes andcapacities, and exhibiting the identity of human nature under suchvarious circumstances, novels supply a vehicle through which the forceof public opinion may work, fusing differences, breaking downprejudices, and checking the "despotism of situations." The essayconcludes characteristically with the refusal to believe that democracyis necessarily unpoetic. As "we hold fast to the faith that the'cultivation of the masses,' which has for the present superseded thedevelopment of the individual, will in its maturity produce some highertype of individual manhood than any which the old world has known," so,though in the novel "the creative faculty has taken a lower form than itheld in the epic and the tragedy," "we may well believe that thistemporary declension is preparatory to some higher development, when thepoet shall idealise life without making abstraction of any of itselements, and when the secret of existence, which he now speaks to theinward ear of a few, may be proclaimed on the housetops to the commonintelligence of mankind."

  Readers of the essay who are also novel-readers will be inclined to saythat the writer was not much in sympathy with his subject; and hehimself, on getting the prize, remarks that "it is curious that I shouldhave been successful in an essay on novels, about which I know and carelittle, and should have failed in both my efforts in theology, for whichI care considerably." At the same time it is probably true, as he oncesaid, that he had read more novels than his friends gave him credit for,and it is certainly true that what his reading lacked in extent it madeup in intensity. As might be supposed, his taste in fiction was forforcible delineation and robust humor. The flavor of strong, healthyindividuality was what attracted him; for rarities, niceties, andabnormalities of mental organisation he cared nothing. He liked thingswhich he could take hold of with his mind, not things which merely gavehim sensations, pleasant or painful. Both in his deepest and hislightest moods he was absolutely simple and "above board," and thissimplicity made him keenly alive to the proximity of the sublime to theridiculous or the exquisite to the grotesque. Though he had little ofthe animal in him, and was never troubled by his appetites, he was quitefree from prudery. If obscenity moved him at all, it was to franklaughter or to grim contempt; he never dwelt upon it, either in the wayof enjoyment or loathing. "For rules of ascetic discipline," says afriend, "he had no need. The view of life suggested by so much of thebest French literature, that thinking men are generally in a practicaldilemma between the extremes of sensual excess and of spiritualexaltation, did not commend itself to him in the least." The only formsof art to which he was keenly susceptible were those of oratory andpoetry. He had no ear for music, though he seemed to get a certainexaltation from listening to it. In regard to painting and sculpture healways professed himself incompetent, but he was not without decidedtastes. On his first visit to the Continent he was more attracted byRembrandt, Holbein, and Duerer than by the Italians; "these men," hesaid, "grasped the idea of Christianity." Of Durer's four saints atMunich he writes, "I could contemplate them with interest for hours; hehas contrived to give St. John an almost perfect expression of 'divinephilosophy'." In later years when he went to Italy he spent a good dealof time in looking at early Italian pictures, and admitted that theywould soon have got a great hold upon him. But on the whole his attitudeto the arts (excluding those of language) was one of deferentialignorance. He had not himself any artistic gifts; he did not even writeverses. Yet to his friends, as one of them says, "he never representedthe prose of existence. With all his gravity, with all his firm grip onfact and material interests, he had the enthusiastic movement of theworld's poetry in him."--From the Memoir by R. L. Nettleship, Green's'Works,' Vol. 3, pp. xxx-xxxiii.

  B. HEGEL ON THE NOVEL

  Among the mongrel forms of epic should be included the half descriptive,half lyric poems which were popular among the English, dealing chieflywith nature, the seasons of the year, etc. There belong also to thisdivision numerous didactic poems in which a prosaic content is dressedup in poetic form, such as compendiums of physics, astronomy, andmedicine, and treatises on chess, fishing, hunting, and the conduct oflife. Poems of
this sort were most artfully elaborated by the laterGreeks, by the Romans, and, in modern times, especially by the French.Despite their general epic tone, they lend themselves readily to lyrictreatment.

  More poetical, but still without the characteristics necessary fordefinite classification, are romances and ballads. Being epic in contentbut lyric in treatment, these products of the Middle Ages and of moderntimes may be assigned to either class indifferently.

  The case of the novel, the modern popular epic, is very different. Herewe find the same wealth and variety of interests, circumstances,characters, and human relationships, the same world-background, and thesame handling of events, that characterize the true epic. But there islacking to it the primitive poetic state of the world, in which the trueepic took its rise. The novel, in the modern acceptation of the term,presupposes a prosaically ordered reality. But working from the basis ofthis reality, and moving within its own circle, the novel, both asregards picturesqueness of incident and as regards characters and theirfate, retrieves for poetry (so far as the above presupposition permits)her lost prerogatives.[23]