Frank Norris:––“A Problem in Fiction,” in “The Responsibilities of the Novelist.”
Clayton Hamilton:––“On Telling the Truth,” in “The Art World” for September, 1917.
CHAPTER II
REALISM 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.