The Craft of Fiction Read online

  V

  And next of the different methods by which the form of a novel iscreated--these must be watched in a very different kind of book fromTolstoy's. For a sight of the large and general masses in which anovel takes shape, War and Peace seemed to promise more than another;but something a great deal more finely controlled is to be looked for,when it is a question of following the novelist's hand while it isactually at work. Not indeed that anybody's hand is more delicate thanTolstoy's at certain moments and for certain effects, and a critic isbound to come back to him again in connection with these. But we haveseen how, in dealing with his book, one is continually distracted bythe question of its subject; the uncertainty of Tolstoy's intention isalways getting between the reader and the detail of his method. What Inow want, therefore, will be a book in which the subject is absolutelyfixed and determined, so that it may be possible to consider themanner of its treatment with undivided attention. It is not so easy tofind as might be supposed; or rather it might be difficult to find,but for the fact that immediately in a critic's path, always ready tohand and unavoidable, there lies one book of exactly the sort I seek,Flaubert's Madame Bovary. Whatever this book may be or may not be,after much re-reading, it remains perpetually the novel of all novelswhich the criticism of fiction cannot overlook; as soon as ever wespeak of the principles of the art, we must be prepared to engage withFlaubert.

  This is an accepted necessity among critics, and no doubt there isevery reason why it should be so. The art of Flaubert gives at anyrate a perfectly definite standard; there is no mistaking ormis-reading it. He is not of those who present many aspects, offeringthe support of one or other to different critical doctrines; Flauberthas only one word to say, and it is impossible to find more than asingle meaning in it. He establishes accordingly a point in the sphereof criticism, a point which is convenient to us all; we can refer toit at any time, in the full assurance that its position is the same ineverybody's view; he provides the critic with a motionless pole. Andfor my particular purpose, just now, there is no such book as hisBovary; for it is a novel in which the subject stands firm and clear,without the least shade of ambiguity to break the line which boundsit. The story of its treatment may be traced without missing a singlelink.

  It is copiously commented upon, as we know, in the published lettersof its author, through the long years in which phrase was being addedto phrase; and it is curious indeed to listen to him day by day, andto listen in vain for any hint of trouble or embarrassment in thematter of his subject. He was capable of hating and reviling hisunfortunate story, and of talking about it with a kind of exasperatedspite, as though it had somehow got possession of him unfairly and heowed it a grudge for having crossed his mind. That is strange enough,but that is quite a different affair; his personal resentment of theintrusion of such a book upon him had nothing to do with thedifficulty he found in writing it. His classic agonies were caused byno unruliness in the story he had to tell; his imagined book wasrooted in his thought, and never left its place by a hair's breadth.Year after year he worked upon his subject without finding anything init, apparently, to disturb or distract him in his continuous effort totreat it, to write it out to his satisfaction. This was the onlydifficulty; there was no question of struggling with a subject that hehad not entirely mastered, one that broke out with unforeseen demands;Bovary never needed to be held down with one hand while it was writtenwith the other. Many a novelist, making a further and fulleracquaintance with his subject as he proceeds, discovering more in itto reckon with than he had expected, has to meet the double strain, itwould seem. But Flaubert kept his book in a marvellous state ofquiescence during the writing of it; through all the torment which itcost him there was no hour when it presented a new or uncertain lookto him. He might hate his subject, but it never disappointed ordisconcerted him.

  In Bovary, accordingly, the methods of the art are thrown into clearrelief. The story stands obediently before the author, with all itsdevelopments and illustrations, the characters defined, the smallincidents disposed in order. His sole thought is how to present thestory, how to tell it in a way that will give the effect he desires, howto show the little collection of facts so that they may announce themeaning he sees in them. I speak of his "telling" the story, but ofcourse he has no idea of doing that and no more; the art of fiction doesnot begin until the novelist thinks of his story as a matter to be_shown_, to be so exhibited that it will tell itself. To hand over tothe reader the facts of the story merely as so much information--this isno more than to state the "argument" of the book, the groundwork uponwhich the novelist proceeds to create. The book is not a row of facts,it is a single image; the facts have no validity in themselves, they arenothing until they have been used. It is not the simple art ofnarrative, but the comprehensive art of fiction that I am considering;and in fiction there can be no appeal to any authority outside the bookitself. Narrative--like the tales of Defoe, for example--must lookelsewhere for support; Defoe produced it by the assertion of thehistoric truthfulness of his stories. But in a novel, strictly socalled, attestation of this kind is, of course, quite irrelevant; thething has to _look_ true, and that is all. It is not made to look trueby simple statement.

  And yet the novelist must state, must tell, must narrate--what elsecan he do? His book is a series of assertions, nothing more. It is so,obviously, and the difference between the art of Defoe and the art ofFlaubert is only in their different method of placing theirstatements. Defoe takes a directer way, Flaubert a more roundabout;but the deviations open to Flaubert are innumerable, and by hismethod, by his various methods, we mean his manner of choosing hispath. Having chosen he follows it, certainly, by means of a plainnarrative; he relates a succession of facts, whether he is describingthe appearance of Emma, or one of her moods, or something that shedid. But this common necessity of statement, at the bottom of it all,is assumed at the beginning; and in criticizing fiction we may proceedas though a novelist could really deal immediately with appearances.We may talk of the picture or the drama that he creates, we mayplainly say that he avoids mere statement altogether, because at thelevel of fiction the whole interest is in another region; we aresimply concerned with the method by which he selects the informationhe offers. A writer like Flaubert--or like any novelist whose worksupports criticism at all--is so far from telling a story as it mightbe told in an official report, that we cease to regard him asreporting in any sense. He is making an effect and an impression, bysome more or less skilful method. Contemplating his finished work wecan distinguish the method, perhaps define it, notice how it changesfrom time to time, and account for the novelist's choice of it.

  There is plenty of diversity of method in Madame Bovary, though thestory is so simple. What does it amount to, that story? CharlesBovary, a simple and slow-witted young country doctor, makes a prudentmarriage, and has the fortune to lose his tiresome and elderly wifeafter no long time. Then he falls in love with the daughter of aneighbouring farmer, a pretty and fanciful young woman, who marrieshim. She is deeply bored by existence in a small market town, finds alover, wearies of him and finds another, gets wildly into debt,poisons herself and dies. After her death Bovary discovers the proofof her infidelity, but his slow brain is too much bewildered by sorrowand worry, by life generally, to feel another pang very distinctly. Hesoon dies himself. That is all the story, given as an "argument," andso summarized it tells us nothing of Flaubert's subject. There mightbe many subjects in such an anecdote, many different points of viewfrom which the commonplace facts might make a book. The way in whichthey are presented will entirely depend on the particular subject thatFlaubert sees in them; until this is apparent the method cannot becriticized.

  But the method can be watched; and immediately it is to be noted thatFlaubert handles his material quite differently from point to point.Sometimes he seems to be describing what he has seen himself, placesand people he has known, conversations he may have overheard; I do notmean that he is literally retailing an experience of his own, but thathe wr
ites as though he were. His description, in that case, touchesonly such matters as you or I might have perceived for ourselves, ifwe had happened to be on the spot at the moment. His object is toplace the scene before us, so that we may take it in like a picturegradually unrolled or a drama enacted. But then again the methodpresently changes. There comes a juncture at which, for some reason,it is necessary for us to know more than we could have made out bysimply looking and listening. Flaubert, the author of the story, mustintervene with his superior knowledge. Perhaps it is something in thepast of the people who have been moving and talking on the scene; youcannot rightly understand this incident or this talk, the authorimplies, unless you know--what I now proceed to tell you. And so, fora new light on the drama, the author recalls certain circumstancesthat we should otherwise have missed. Or it may be that he--whonaturally knows everything, even the inmost, unexpressed thought ofthe characters--wishes us to share the mind of Bovary or of Emma, notto wait only on their words or actions; and so he goes below thesurface, enters their consciousness, and describes the train ofsentiment that passes there.

  These are the familiar resources of a story-teller, which everybodyuses as a matter of course. It is so natural to take advantage of themthat unless we purposely keep an eye upon the writer's devices,marking them off as he turns from one to another, we hardly notice thechange. He is telling a story in the ordinary way, the obvious andunconstrained. But in fact these variations represent differences ofmethod that are fundamental. If the story is to be _shown_ to us, thequestion of our relation to the story, how we are placed with regardto it, arises with the first word. Are we placed before a particularscene, an occasion, at a certain selected hour in the lives of thesepeople whose fortunes are to be followed? Or are we surveying theirlives from a height, participating in the privilege of thenovelist--sweeping their history with a wide range of vision andabsorbing a general effect? Here at once is a necessary alternative.Flaubert, as a matter of fact, gives us first a scene--the scene ofBovary's arrival at school, as a small boy; the incident of theparticular morning is rendered; and then he leaves that incident,summarizes the background of the boy's life, describes his parents,the conditions of his home, his later career as a student. It is theway in which nine novels out of ten begin--an opening scene, aretrospect, and a summary. And the spectator, the reader, is so wellused to it that he is conscious of no violent change in the point ofview; though what has happened is that from one moment to another hehas been caught up from a position straight in front of the action toa higher and a more commanding level, from which a stretch of time isto be seen outspread. This, then, is one distinction of method; and itis a tell-tale fact that even in this elementary matter ournomenclature is uncertain and ambiguous. How do we habituallydiscriminate between these absolutely diverse manners of presentingthe facts of a story? I scarcely know--it is as though we had noreceived expressions to mark the difference between blue and red. Butlet us assume, at any rate, that a "scenic" and a "panoramic"presentation of a story expresses an intelligible antithesis, strictlyand technically.

  There is our relation, again--ours, the reader's--with regard to theauthor. Flaubert is generally considered to be a very "impersonal"writer, one who keeps in the background and desires us to remainunaware of his presence; he places the story before us and suppressesany comment of his own. But this point has been over-laboured, Ishould say; it only means that Flaubert does not announce his opinionin so many words, and thence it has been argued that the opinions of areally artistic writer ought not to appear in his story at all. But ofcourse with every touch that he lays on his subject he must show whathe thinks of it; his subject, indeed, the book which he finds in hisselected fragment of life, is purely the representation of his view,his judgement, his opinion of it. The famous "impersonality" ofFlaubert and his kind lies only in the greater tact with which theyexpress their feelings--dramatizing them, embodying them in livingform, instead of stating them directly. It is not to this matter,Flaubert's opinion of Emma Bovary and her history--which indeed isunmistakable--that I refer in speaking of our relation to the writerof the book.

  It is a matter of method. Sometimes the author is talking with his ownvoice, sometimes he is talking _through_ one of the people in thebook--in this book for the most part Emma herself. Thus he describes alandscape, the trim country-side in which Emma's lot is cast, or theappearance and manners of her neighbours, or her own behaviour; and inso doing he is using his own language and his own standards ofappreciation; he is facing the reader in person, however careful hemay be to say nothing to deflect our attention from the thingdescribed. He is making a reproduction of something that is in his ownmind. And then later on he is using the eyes and the mind and thestandards of another; the landscape has now the colour that it wearsin Emma's view, the incident is caught in the aspect which it happensto turn towards her imagination. Flaubert himself has retreated, andit is Emma with whom we immediately deal. Take, for example, the twofigures of her lovers, Rodolphe and Leon, the florid country-gentlemanand the aspiring student; if Flaubert were to describe these men as_he_ sees them, apart from their significance to Emma, they would notoccupy him for long; to his mind, and to any critical mind, they areboth of them very small affairs. Their whole effect in the book is theeffect they produce upon the sensibility of a foolish and limitedlittle woman. Or again, take the incident of Emma's single incursioninto polite society, the ball at the great house which starts so manyof her romantic dreams; it is all presented in her terms, it appearsas it appeared to her. And occasionally the point of view is shiftedaway from her to somebody else, and we get a brief glimpse of what_she_ is in the eyes of her husband, her mother-in-law, her lover.

  Furthermore, whether the voice is that of the author or of hiscreature, there is a pictorial manner of treating the matter in handand there is also a dramatic. It may be that the impression--as in thecase of the marquis's ball--is chiefly given as a picture, thereflection of events in the mirror of somebody's receptiveconsciousness. The reader is not really looking _at_ the occasion inthe least, or only now and then; mainly he is watching the surge ofEmma's emotion, on which the episode acts with sharp intensity. Thething is "scenic," in the sense in which I used the word just now; weare concerned, that is to say, with a single and particular hour, weare taking no extended, general view of Emma's experience. But thoughit is thus a _scene_, it is not dramatically rendered; if you took thedialogue, what there is of it, together with the actual thingsdescribed, the people and the dresses and the dances and thebanquets--took these and placed them on the stage, for a theatricalperformance, the peculiar effect of the occasion in the book wouldtotally vanish. Nothing could be more definite, more objective, thanthe scene is in the book; but there it is all bathed in the climate ofEmma's mood, and it is to the nature of this climate that our interestis called for the moment. The lords and ladies are remote, Emma'senvying and wondering excitement fills the whole of the foreground.The scene is pictorially treated.

  But then look on to the incident of the _comices agricoles_, thecattle-show at Yonville, with the crowd in the market-place, theprize-giving and the speech-making. This scene, like the other, isrendered on the whole (but Flaubert's method is always a little mixed,for reasons to be noted presently) from Emma's point of view; she sitsbeside Rodolphe, while he makes his advances to her under cover of thecouncillor's eloquence, and she looks out upon the assembly--and asshe sees it, so the throng and the glare are imparted to the reader.But remark that on this occasion the facts of the scene are well tothe fore; Emma's mood counts for very little, and we get a direct viewof the things on which her eyes casually rest. We hear thecouncillor's rhetorical periods, Rodolphe's tender speeches, Emma'sreplies, with the rumour of the crowd breaking through from time totime. It is a scene which might be put upon the stage, quiteconceivably, without any loss of the main impression it is made toconvey in the book--an impression of ironic contrast, of the bustleand jostle round the oration of the pompous dignitary, of thecommonplace little r
omance that is being broached unobserved. Toreceive the force of the contrast the reader has only to see and hear,to be present while the hour passes; and the author places him thereaccordingly, in front of the visible and audible facts of the case,and leaves it to these to tell the story. It is a scene treateddramatically.

  This is a difference of method that constantly catches a critic's eyein reading a novel. Is the author writing, at a given moment, with hisattention upon the incidents of his tale, or is he regarding primarilythe form and colour they assume in somebody's thought? He will doboth, it is probable, in the course of his book, on the same page,perhaps, or even in the same sentence; nothing compels him to foregothe advantage of either method, if his story can profit in turn fromboth. Now and then, indeed, we shall find a writer deliberatelyconfining himself to one method only, treating his whole book with arigid consistency, and this for the sake of some particular aspect ofhis theme which an unmixed manner is best fitted to reveal. Butgenerally a novelist retains his liberty to draw upon any of hisresources as he chooses, now this one and now that, using drama wheredrama gives him all he needs, using pictorial description where theturn of the story demands it. The only law that binds him throughout,whatever course he is pursuing, is the need to be consistent on_some_ plan, to follow the principle he has adopted; and of course itis one of the first of his precepts, as with every artist in any kind,to allow himself no more latitude than he requires. A critic, then,looks for the principle on which a novelist's methods are mingled andvaried--looks for it, as usual, in the novelist's subject, and marksits application as the subject is developed.

  And so with the devices that I distinguish as scenic andpanoramic--one watches continually to see how this alternation ismanaged, how the story is now overlooked from a height and now broughtimmediately to the level of the reader. Here again the need of thestory may sometimes seem to pull decisively in one direction or theother; and we get a book that is mainly a broad and general survey, ormainly a concatenation of particular scenes. But on the whole weexpect to find that the scene presently yields to some kind ofchronicle or summary, and that this in turn prepares the way and leadsinto the occasion that fulfils it. The placing of this occasion, atthe point where everything is ready for it, where it will thoroughlyilluminate a new face of the subject and advance the action by adefinite stage, is among the chief cares of the author, I take it, inplanning his book. A scene that is not really wanted, and that _does_nothing in particular--a scene that for lack of preparation fails tomake its effect--is a weakness in a story that one would suppose anovelist to be always guarding against. Anyhow there is no doubt thatthe scene holds the place of honour, that it is the readiest means ofstarting an interest and raising a question--we drop into a scene onthe first page and begin to speculate about the people concerned init: and that it recurs for a climax of any sort, the resolution of thequestion--and so the scene completes what it began. In Madame Bovarythe scenes are distributed and rendered with very rare skill; not onebut seems to have more and more to give with every fresh reading ofit. The ball, the _comices_, the evening at the theatre, Emma'sfateful interview with Leon in the Cathedral of Rouen, the remarkablesession of the priest and the apothecary at her deathbed--these formthe articulation of the book, the scheme of its structure. To the nextin order each stage of the story is steadily directed. By the time thescene is reached, nothing is wanting to its opportunity; the action isripe, the place is resonant; and then the incident takes up the story,conclusively establishes one aspect of it and opens the view towardsthe next. And the more rapid summary that succeeds, with its pausesfor a momentary sight of Emma's daily life and its setting, carriesthe book on once more to the climax that already begins to appear inthe distance.

  But the most obvious point of method is no doubt the difficultquestion of the centre of vision. With which of the characters, ifwith any of them, is the writer to identify himself, which is he to"go behind"? Which of these vessels of thought and feeling is he toreveal from within? I suppose his unwritten story to rise before him,its main lines settled, as something at first entirely objective, thewhole thing seen from without--the linked chain of incident, the menand women in their places. And it may be that the story can be kept inthis condition while it is written, and that the completed book willbe nothing but an account of things seen from the point of view of theauthor, standing outside the action, without any divulging ofanybody's thought. But this is rare; such restraint is burdensome,unless in a very compact and straightforward tale. Somewhere theauthor must break into the privacy of his characters and open theirminds to us. And again it is doubtless his purpose to shift the pointof view no more often than he need; and if the subject can becompletely rendered by showing it as it appears to a single one of thefigures in the book, then there is no reason to range further.Haphazard and unnecessary plunges into the inner life of thecharacters only confuse the effect, changing the focus withoutcompensating gain. But which _is_ the centre, which is the mind thatreally commands the subject? The answer is not always evident at once,nor does it seem to be always correctly divined in the novels that weread. But of course in plenty of stories there can be little doubt;there is somebody in the middle of the action who is clearly theperson to interpret it for us, and the action will accordingly befaced from his or her position. In Flaubert's Bovary there could be noquestion but that we must mainly use the eyes of Emma herself; themiddle of the subject is in her experience, not anywhere in theconcrete facts around her. And yet Flaubert finds it necessary, as Isaid, to look _at_ her occasionally, taking advantage of some othercentre for the time being; and why he does so a nearer inspection ofhis subject will soon show.

  Here we have, then, the elements of the novelist's method--essentiallyfew and simple, but infinite in their possibilities of fusion andcombination. They are arranged in a new design to suit every new themethat a writer takes in hand; we see them alternated, united, imposedone on another, this point of view blended with that, dramatic actiontreated pictorially, pictorial description rendered dramatically--andthese words I use throughout, it will be understood, in the specialsense that I have indicated. In well-fashioned work it is alwaysinteresting to discover how method tends to be laid upon method, sothat we get, as it were, layers and stratifications in the treatmentof a story. Some of these I shall try to distinguish, and the searchis useful, I think, for an understanding of the novelist himself. Forthough it is true that a man's method depends upon the particularstory he is engaged in telling, yet the story that occurs to him, thesubject he happens upon, will be that which asks for the kind oftreatment congenial to his hand; and so his method will be a part ofhimself, and will tell us about the quality of his imagination. Butthis by the way--my concern is only with the manner in which the thingis done; and having glanced at some of the features of that manner inFlaubert's Bovary, I may now seek the reason of them in a moreattentive handling of the book.