Where the quality of the satire is of this realistic order, the quantity must necessarily be restricted and more or less incidental rather than dominant; subdued, not rampant. For the true satirical humorist, seeing life steadily and whole, observes that while certain parts of it are unquestionably absurd, whether flauntingly or subtly so, these ludicrous shreds and patches, absolutely integral and ineradicable as they are, are nevertheless only a portion and not so large a one, of the stupendous whole.
Neither that astigmatic visualizer, the cynic, who regards life itself as a huge joke on its victims, nor that myopic spectator, the misanthrope, who conceives humanity as an unmitigated jest on creation, was a Victorian favorite. Both are blind to certain phenomena,—beauty, power, exquisite delicacy, tremendous strength,—which also exist, which even the pessimist grants to be compensatory, and which, when genuine, are utterly beyond the reach of any ridicule that pretends to sanity or justice. Such then,—humorously truthful and suitably proportioned,—is the general character of the satiric stratum which runs, widening and narrowing, through the great vein of Victorian fiction.
In the legitimate novel there are two main devices of revealing the ludicrous; the direct, whereby the author in his own reflections and comments points it out; and the dramatic, whereby he shows it by means of incident and character. The latter method is again subdivisible into two modes, by the use of the two contrasting types of actors, humorous and humorists. The first are allowed to betray themselves, their very unconsciousness adding to the piquancy of the situation. For this the favorite technical tool is the dramatic monologue. The second are the witty protagonists. They stand in loco scriptoris and express that detection of absurdity for which the humorless humorous furnish the occasion.[120]
When we consult our original list, we find the two extremes have been cut off, as Peacock and Butler belong entirely to the other department. The remaining eleven have produced about one hundred twenty novels in the stricter sense, not including short stories, tales, sketches, or burlesques. It must be noted that this restriction rules out some items important as literature, and in certain cases as satire,—Cranford, Pickwick, Peg Woffington, Scenes from Clerical Life.
Of the grand total, approximately one-quarter is eliminated as being essentially and thoroughly serious. Here again are found some notable names,—Last Days of Pompeii, Mary Barton, Henry Esmond, Tale of Two Cities, The Cloister and the Hearth, Jane Eyre, Hypatia. Three-fourths is a large majority, from which one might deduce that the novel of this period was prevailingly satirical. But the other extreme, those so strongly saturated as to deserve the name of satires, are far fewer than the unsatirical. Vanity Fair, Martin Chuzzlewit, The Egoist, possibly Barchester Towers, and Beauchamp’s Career, practically exhaust the list. This leaves about four score of novels in which the spirit of satire exists, manifesting itself showily, coyly, in wide range and diversity.
When an author uses the direct method for the conveyance of satirical ideas, he becomes for the nonce a didactic, though humor-flavored, philosopher. Over against the artistic liabilities incurred,—interruption of the narrative, intrusion of more or less irrelevant matter, may be placed the intellectual assets,—presentation of opinions and conclusions, and frank expression of personality.
Whether approved of or not, this discursive habit must be accepted as an old inheritance. From the beginning, the English novel has been a hybrid, the drama grafted on the treatise. Even the medieval mind, with its insatiable relish for the pageantry of life, had an uneasy feeling that the Merry Tale should not be entirely its own reward, and accordingly found for it a moral justification, whereby pleasure and profit were joined in a most complacent alliance. And ever since, the prevailing purpose has been not only to portray life but to exhibit this or that deduction about life.
In the eighteenth century this tendency took definite shape and substance, for then it became notably true that the division between narrative and essay was not coincident with a division between narrators and essayists. Swift, Addison, Defoe, Fielding, Sterne, were both. And it was their mantle and not that of romance writers, Gothic or Historical, that best fitted Victorian shoulders. Of the many testimonies to this, direct and indirect, the following from a characteristic Victorian pen may be cited as evidence:[121]
“The reader of a novel—who had doubtless taken the volume up simply for amusement, and who would probably lay it down did he suspect that instruction, like a snake-in-the-grass, like physic beneath the sugar, was to be imposed upon him—requires from his author chiefly this, that he shall be amused by a narrative in which elevated sentiment prevails, and gratified by being made to feel that the elevated sentiments described are exactly his own.”
He then goes on to show that this morality is best served by realism, in spite of the superior attractions of heroes and villains:[122]