manners and the attitude toward manners of the literate, reading,
in vain to say what is wrong, when in despair we say that he has
responsible middle class of people who are ourselves. I specify that
read the books "out of context," then we are aware of the matter I
they be reading people because I shall draw my conclusions from the
have been asked to speak about tonight.
novels they read. The hypothesis I propose is that our attitude
What I understand by manners, then, is a culture's hum and buzz
toward manners is the expression of a particular conception of
of implication. I mean the whole evanescent context in which its
reality.
explicit statements are made. It is that part of a culture which is
All literature tends to be concerned with the question of reality-I
made up of half-uttered or unuttered or unutterable expressions of
mean quite simply the old opposition between reality and appearvalue. They are hinted at by small actions, sometimes by the arts of ance, between what really is and what merely seems. "Don't you
dress or decoration, sometimes by tone, gesture, emphasis, or rhythm,
see?" is the question we want to shout at Oedipus as he stands besometimes by the words that are used with a special frequency or a fore us and before fate in the pride of his rationalism. And at the
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end of Oedipus Rex he demonstrates in a particularly direct way
In any genre it may happen that the first great example contains
that he now sees what he did not see before. "Don't you see?" we
the whole potentiality of the genre. It has been said that all philosowant to shout again at Lear and Gloucester, the two deceived, selfphy is a footnote to Plato. It can be said that all prose fiction is a deceiving fathers: blindness again, resistance to the clear claims of
variation on the theme of Don Quixote. Cervantes sets for the novel
reality, the seduction by mere appearance. The same with Othello-the problem of appearance and reality: the shifting and conflict of reality is right under your stupid nose, how dare you be such a gull?
social classes becomes the field of the problem of knowledge, of how
So with Moliere's Orgon-my good man, my honest citizen, merely
we know and of how reliable our knowledge is, which at that very
look at Tartuffe and you will know what's what. So with Milton's
moment of history is vexing the philosophers and scientists. And
Eve-"Woman, watch out! Don't you see-anyone can see-that's a
the poverty of the Don suggests that the novel is born with the ap
snake!"
pearance of money as a social element-money, the great solvent of
The problem of reality is central, and in a special way, to the great
the solid fabric of the old society, the great generator of illusion. Or,
forefather of the novel, the great book of Cervantes, whose fourwhich is to say much the same thing, the novel is born in response to hundredth birthday was celebrated in 1947. There are two movesnobbery.
ments of thought in Don Quixote, two different and opposed no
Snobbery is not the same thing as pride of class. Pride of class may
tions of reality. One is the movement which leads toward saying
not please us but we must at least grant that it reflects a social functhat the world of ordinary practicality is reality in its fullness. It is tion. A man who exhibited class pride-in the day when it was
the reality of the present moment in all its powerful immediacy of
possible to do so-may have been puffed up about what he was,
hunger, cold, and pain, making the past and the future, and all
but this ultimately depended on what he did. Thus, aristocratic
ideas, of no account. When the conceptual, the ideal, and the fancipride was based ultimately on the ability to fight and administer. No ful come into conflict with this, bringing their notions of the past
pride is without fault, but pride of class may be thought of as today
and the future, then disaster results. For one thing, the ordinary
we think of pride of profession, toward which we are likely to be
proper ways of life are upset-the chained prisoners are understood
lenient.
to be good men and are released, the whore is taken for a lady.
Snobbery is pride in status without pride in function. And it is an
There is general confusion. As for the ideal, the conceptual, the
uneasy pride of status. It always asks, "Do I belong-do I really
fanciful, or romantic-whatever you want to call it-it fares even
belong? And does he belong? And if I am observed talking to him,
worse: it is shown to be ridiculous.
will it make me seem to belong or not to belong?" It is the peculiar
Thus one movement of the novel. But Cervantes changed horses
vice not of aristocratic societies which have their own appropriate
in midstream and found that he was riding Rosinante. Perhaps at
vices, but of bourgeois democratic societies. For us the legendary
first not quite consciously-although the new view is latent in the
strongholds of snobbery are the Hollywood studios, where two thouold from the very beginning-Cervantes begins to show that the sand dollars a week dare not talk to three hundred dollars a week
world of tangible reality is not the real reality after all. The real
for fear he be taken for nothing more than fifteen hundred dollars
reality is rather the wildly conceiv)ng, the madly fantasying mind of
a week. The dominant emotions of snobbery are uneasiness, selfthe Don: people change, practical reality changes, when they come consciousness, self-defensiveness, the sense that one is not quite real
into its presence.
but can in some way acquire reality.
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Money is the medium that, for good or bad, makes for a fluent
of fantasy, the support of the fantasies of love, freedom, charm,
society. It does not make for an equal society but for one in which
power, as in Madame Bovary, whose heroine is the sister, at a threethere is a constant shifting of classes, a frequent change in the percenturies' remove, of Don Quixote. The greatness of Great Expecta
sonnel of the dominant class. In a shifting society great emphasis is
tions begins in its title: modern society bases itself on great expecput on appearance-I am using the word now in the common meantations which, if ever they are realized, are found to exist by reason ing, as when people say that "a good appearance is very important in
of a sordid, hidden reality. The real thing is not the gentility of
getting a job." To appear to be established is one of the ways of be
Pip's life but the hulks and the murder and the rats and decay in
coming established. The old notion of the solid merchant who owns
the cellarage of the novel.
far more than he shows increasingly gives way to the ideal of signal
An English writer, recognizing the novel's central concern with
izing status
by appearance, by showing more than you have: status
snobbery, recently cried out half-ironically against it. "Who cares
in a democratic society is presumed to come not with power but
whether Pamela finally exasperates Mr. B. into marriage, whether
with the tokens of power. Hence the development of what Tocque
Mr. Elton is more or less than moderately genteel, whether it is sinville saw as a mark of democratic culture, what he called the "hyful for Pendennis nearly to kiss the porter's daughter, whether young pocrisy of luxury"-instead of the well-made peasant article and the
men from Boston can ever be as truly refined as middle-aged women
well-made middle-class article, we have the effort of all articles to
in Paris, whether the District Officer's fiancee ought to see so much
appear as the articles of the very wealthy.
of Dr. Aziz, whether Lady Chatterley ought to be made love to by
And a shifting society is bound to generate an interest in appearthe gamekeeper, even if he was an officer during the war? Who ance in the philosophical sense. When Shakespeare lightly touched
cares?"
on the matter that so largely preoccupies the novelist-that is, the
The novel, of course, tells us much more about life than this. It
movement from one class to another-and created Malvolio, he imtells us about the look and feel of things, how things are done and mediately involved the question of social standing with the problem
what things are worth and what they cost and what the odds are. If
of appearance and reality. Malvolio's daydreams of bettering his
the English novel in its special concern with class does not, as the
position present themselves to him as reality, and in revenge his
same writer says, explore the deeper layers of personality, then the
enemies conspire to convince him that he is literally mad and that
French novel in exploring these layers must start and end in class,
the world is not as he sees it. The predicament of the characters in
and the Russian novel, exploring the ultimate possibilities of spirit,
A Midsummer Night's Dream and of Christopher Sly seems to imdoes the same-every situation in Dostoevski, no matter how spiritply that the meeting of social extremes and the establishment of a ual, starts with a point of social pride and a certain number of
person of low class in the privileges of a high class always suggested
rubles. The great novelists knew that manners indicate the largest
to Shakespeare's mind some radical instability of the senses and the
intentions of men's souls as well as the smallest and they are perreason.
petually concerned to catch the meaning of every dim implicit hint.
The characteristic work of the novel is to record the illusion that
The novel, then, is a perpetual quest for reality, the field of its
snobbery generates and to try to penetrate to the truth which, as the
research being always the social world, the material of its analysis
novel assumes, lies hidden beneath all the false appearances. Money,
being always manners as the indication of the direction of man's
snobbery, the ideal of status, these become in themselves the objects
soul. When we understand this we can understand the pride of pro-
... .
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fession that moved D. H. Lawrence to say, "Being a novelist, I coningly thickened since the nineteenth century. It has not, to be sure, sider myself superior to the saint, the scientist, the philosopher and
thickened so much as to permit our undergraduates to understand
the poet. The novel is the one bright book of life."
the characters of Balzac, to understand, that is, life in a crowded
Now the novel as I have described it has never really established
country where the competitive pressures are great, forcing intense
itself in America. Not that we have not had very great novels but
passions to express themselves fiercely and yet within the limitations
that the novel in America diverges from its classic intention, which,
set by a strong and complicated tradition of manners. Still, life here
as I have said, is the investigation of the problem of reality beginning
has become more complex and more pressing. And even so we do
in the social field. The fact is that American writers of genius have
not have the novel that touches significantly on society, on manners.
not turned their minds to society. Poe and Melville were quite apart
Whatever the virtues of Dreiser may be, he could not report the
from it; the reality they sought was only tangential to society. Hawsocial fact with the kind of accuracy it needs. Sinclair Lewis is thorne was acute when he insisted that he did not write novels but
shrewd, but no one, however charmed with him as a social satirist,
romances-he thus expressed his awareness of the lack of social
can believe that he does more than a limited job of social undertexture in his work. Howells never fulfilled himself because, alstanding. John Dos Passos sees much, sees it often in the great way though he saw the social subject clearly, he would never take it with
of Flaubert, but can never use social fact as more than either backfull seriousness. In America in the nineteenth century, Henry James drop or "condition." Of our novelists today perhaps only William
was alone in knowing that to scale the moral and aesthetic heights
Faulkner deals with society as the field of tragic reality and he has
in the novel one had to use the ladder of social observation.
the disadvantage of being limited to a provincial scene.
There is a famous passage in James's life of Hawthorne in which
It would seem that Americans have a kind of resistance to looking
James enumerates the things which are lacking to give the American
closely at society. They appear to believe that to touch accurately on
novel the thick social texture of the English novel-no state; barely
the matter of class, to take full note of snobbery, is somehow to
a specific national name; no sovereign; no court; no aristocracy; no
demean themselves. It is as if we felt that one cannot touch pitch
church; no clergy; no army; no diplomatic service; no country
without being defiled-which, of course, may possibly be the case.
gentlemen; no palaces; no castles; no manors; no old country
Americans will not deny that we have classes and snobbery, but they
houses; no parsonages; no thatched cottages; no ivied ruins; no
seem to hold it to be indelicate to take precise cognizance of these
cathedrals; no great universities; no public schools; no political sophenomena. Consider that Henry James is, among a large part of ciety; no sporting class-no Epsom, no Ascot! That is, no sufficiency
our reading public, still held to be at fault for noticing society as
of means for the display of a variety of manners, no opportunity for
much as he did. Consider the conversation that has, for some inthe novelist to do his job of searching out reality, not enough comteresting reason, become a part of our literary folklore. Scott Fitzplication of appearance to make the job interesting.
Another great gerald said to Ernest Hemingway, "The very rich are different from
American novelist of very different temperament had said much the
us." Hemingway replied, "Yes, they have more money." I have seen
same thing some decades before: James Fenimore Cooper found that
the exchange quoted many times and always with the intention of
American manners were too simple and dull to nourish the novelist.
suggesting that Fitzgerald was infatuated by wealth and had re
This is cogent but it does not explain the condition of the Americeived a salutary rebuke from his democratic friend. But the truth is can novel at the present moment. For life in America has increas-that after a certain point quantity of money does indeed change into
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quality of personality: in an important sense the very rich are differhard, gross, unpleasant. Involved in its meaning is the idea of power ent from us. So are the very powerful, the very gifted, the very poor.
conceived in a particular way. Some time ago I had occasion to re
Fitzgerald was right, and almost for that remark alone he must
mark how, in the critical estimates of Theodore Dreiser, it is always
surely have been received in Balzac's bosom in the heaven of
being said that Dreiser has many faults but that it cannot be denied
novelists.
that he has great power. No one ever says "a kind of power." Power
It is of course by no means true that the American reading class
is assumed to be always "brute" power, crude, ugly, and undishas no interest in society. Its interest fails only before society as it criminating, the way an elephant appears to be. It is seldom underused to be represented by the novel. And if we look at the comstood to be the way an elephant actually is, precise and discrimimercially successful serious novels of the last decade, we see that nating; or the way electricity is, swift and absolute and scarcely
almost all of them have been written from an intense social
embodied.
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