A Manual of the Art of Fiction. Clayton Meeker Hamilton
AND ROMANCE
Two Methods of Exhibiting the Truth––Every Mind Either Realistic or Romantic––Marion Crawford’s Faulty Distinction––A Second Unsatisfactory Distinction––A Third Unsatisfactory Distinction––Bliss Perry’s Negative Definition––The True Distinction One of Method, Not of Material––Scientific Discovery and Artistic Expression––The Testimony of Hawthorne––A Philosophic Formula––Induction and Deduction––The Inductive Method of the Realist––The Deductive Method of the Romantic––Realism, Like Inductive Science, a Strictly Modern Product––Advantages of Realism––Advantages of Romance––The Confinement of Realism––The Freedom of Romance––Neither Method Better Than the Other––Abuses of Realism––Abuses of Romance.
Two Methods of Exhibiting the Truth.––Although all writers of fiction who take their work seriously and do it honestly are at one in their purpose––namely, to embody certain truths of human life in a series of imagined facts––they diverge into two contrasted groups according to their manner of accomplishing this purpose,––their method of exhibiting the truth. Consequently we find in practice two contrasted schools of novelists, which we distinguish by the titles Realistic and Romantic.
Every Mind Either Realistic or Romantic.––The distinction between realism and romance is fundamental and deep-seated; for every man, whether consciously or not, is either a romantic or a realist in the dominant habit of his thought. The reader who is a realist by nature will prefer George Eliot to Scott; the reader who is romantic will rather read Victor Hugo than Flaubert; and neither taste is better than the other. Each reader’s 26 preference is born with his brain, and has its origin in his customary processes of thinking. In view of this fact, it seems strange that no adequate definition has ever yet been made of the difference between realism and romance.[2] Various superficial explanations have been offered, it is true; but none of them has been scientific and satisfactory.
Marion Crawford’s Faulty Distinction.––One of the most common of these superficial explanations is the one which has been phrased by the late F. Marion Crawford in his little book upon “The Novel: What It Is”:––“The realist proposes to show men what they are; the romantist (sic) tries to show men what they should be.” The trouble with this distinction is that it utterly fails to distinguish. Surely all novelists, whether realistic or romantic, try to show men what they are––what else can be their reason for embodying in imagined facts the truths of human life? Victor Hugo, the romantic, in “Les Misérables,” endeavors just as honestly and earnestly to show men what they are as does Flaubert, the realist, in “Madame Bovary.” And on the other hand, Thackeray, the realist, in characters like Henry Esmond and Colonel Newcome, shows men what they should be just as thoroughly as the romantic Scott. Indeed, it is hardly possible to conceive how any novelist, whether romantic or realistic, could devise a means of showing the one thing without at the same time showing the other also. Every important fiction-writer, no matter to which of the two schools he happens to belong, strives to accomplish, in a single effort of creation, both of the purposes noted by Marion Crawford. He may be realistic or romantic in his way of showing men what they are; realistic or romantic in his way of showing 27 them what they should be: the difference lies, not in which of the two he tries to show, but in the way he tries to show it.
A Second Unsatisfactory Distinction.––Again, we have been told that, in their stories, the romantics dwell mainly upon the element of action, while the realists are interested chiefly in the element of character. But this explanation fails many times to fit the facts: for the great romantic characters, like Leather-Stocking, Don Quixote, Monte Cristo, Claude Frollo, are just as vividly drawn as the great characters of realism; and the great events of realistic novels, like Rawdon Crawley’s discovery of his wife with Lord Steyne, or Adam Bede’s fight with Arthur Donnithorne, are just as thrilling as the resounding actions of romance. Furthermore, if we should accept this explanation, we should find ourselves unable to classify as either realistic or romantic the very large body of novels in which neither element––of action or of character––shows any marked preponderance over the other. Henry James, in his genial essay on “The Art of Fiction,” has cast a vivid light on this objection. “There is an old-fashioned distinction,” he says, “between the novel of character and the novel of incident which must have cost many a smile to the intending fabulist who was keen about his work. … What is character but the determination of incident? What is incident but the illustration of character? … It is an incident for a woman to stand up with her hand resting on a table and look out at you in a certain way; or if it be not an incident I think it will be hard to say what it is. At the same time it is an expression of character.”
A Third Unsatisfactory Distinction.––We have been told also that the realists paint the manners of their own place and time, while the romantics deal with more 28 remote materials. But this distinction, likewise, often fails to hold. No stories were ever more essentially romantic than Stevenson’s “New Arabian Nights,” which depict details of London and Parisian life at the time when the author wrote them; and no novel is more essentially realistic than “Romola,” which carries us back through many centuries to a medieval city far away. Thackeray, the realist, in “Henry Esmond,” and its sequel “The Virginians,” departed further from his own time and place than Hawthorne, the romantic, in “The House of the Seven Gables”; and while the realistic Meredith frequently fares abroad in his stories, especially to Italy, the romantic Barrie looks upon life almost always from his own little window in Thrums.
Bliss Perry’s Negative Definition.––In his interesting and suggestive “Study of Prose Fiction,” Professor Bliss Perry has devoted a chapter to realism and another to romance; but he has not succeeded in defining either term. He has, to be sure, essayed a negative definition of realism:––“Realistic fiction is that which does not shrink from the commonplace or from the unpleasant in its effort to depict things as they are, life as it is.” But we have seen that the effort of all fiction, whether realistic or romantic, is to depict life as it really (though not necessarily as it actually) is. Does not “The Brushwood Boy,” although it suggests the super-actual, set forth a common truth of the most intimate human relationship, which every lover recognizes as real? Every great writer of fiction tries, in his own romantic or realistic way, to “draw the Thing as he sees It for the God of Things as They Are.” We must therefore focus our attention mainly on the earlier phrases of Professor Perry’s definition. He states that realistic fiction does not shrink from the commonplace. That depends. The realism of Jules and Edmond de Goncourt does not, to 29 be sure; but most assuredly the realism of George Meredith does. You will find far less shrinking from the commonplace in many passages of the romantic Fenimore Cooper than in the pages of George Meredith. Whether or not realistic fiction shrinks from the unpleasant depends also on the particular nature of the realist. Zola’s realism certainly does not; Jane Austen’s decidedly does. You will find far less shrinking from the unpleasant, of one sort, in Poe, of another sort, in Catulle Mendès––both of them romantics––than in the novels of Jane Austen. What is the use, then, of Professor Perry’s definition of realism, since it remains open to so many exceptions? And in his chapter on romance the critic does not even attempt to formulate a definition.
The True Distinction One of Method, Not of Material.––We have now examined several of the current explanations of the difference between romance and realism and have found that each is wanting. The trouble with all of them seems to be that they attempt to find a basis for distinguishing between the two schools of fiction in the subject-matter, or materials, of the novelist. Does not the real distinction lie rather in the novelist’s attitude of mind toward his materials, whatever those materials may be? Surely there is no such thing inherently as a realistic subject or a romantic subject. The very same subject may be treated realistically by one novelist and romantically by another. George Eliot would have built a realistic novel on the theme of “The