CHAPTER V
THE INSTRUCTIVE GROUP
The Instructive Group is composed of those narratives whose chief purpose is to inform the reader of certain conditions and problems of which he ought to take intelligent account. The writer may offer a solution, as in the moral story; or a theory, as in the pedagogical narrative; or he may simply present the picture, as in a realistic sketch, and leave knowledge to bring reform by the sheer natural law by which daylight scatters the evils of darkness.
I. The Moral Story
Distinguished from symbolic-didactic group
The moral story must not be confused with the fable, parable, or allegory. It is like them in that its chief purpose is to teach, but it differs from them in not being figurative or symbolic. It is always particular and professedly literal. Its boast is that it sticks close to facts—the facts of "life," people's needs, if not their history. In other words, though fictitious, it pretends to be entirely worth while because of the concrete lesson it teaches. It sets out to show you the evil consequences of some vice or folly or the good result of a pious act.
The critics have never had a very cordial word for this type of narrative: the usual smugness of it is offensive. Many old legends are moral tales. The "Gesta Romanorum" was largely meant to instruct in pious ways. Boccaccio, even, cares for ethical effect, when he writes such stories as "Griselda." A modern reader is entirely out of patience with the complacent self-righteousness of Gualtieri. Chaucer's easy and captivating style and his true pathos and appreciation of dramatic moments can not altogether keep down our irritation at an egregious monster parading under the guise of a beneficent lord and a loving husband. Our irritation, of course, is really directed not toward Chaucer or Boccaccio, but toward the Middle Ages, that could take such a character as this and feel no umbrage—no shadowing of the brute over man.
Hawthorne
There have been a number of examples of moral tales in modern literature. Hawthorne's "Ambitious Guest" is one. "Lady Eleanor's Mantle" is another, though it is also a legend; for a moral narrative, just as an occasional narrative, may be of any type the author chooses. "Murad the Unlucky" by Maria Edgeworth is the Oriental wonder tale turned didactic. What makes this or that a story with a moral is the author's obvious concern about the lesson he means to teach. His narrative is nothing in itself: it is what it is because of the author's purpose. Stowe Doubtless the most widely influential moral story ever written is "Uncle Tom's Cabin." It is a striking example of how much more powerful is concrete narrative than abstract argument. The Americans were ready for the sermon, but they never would have listened to it from the pages of a controversial tract. A story, they took to their heads and their hearts. It is the fate of moral narratives of this sort, however, to be for the time only; and seldom do any rise to the plane of real literature. "Rasselas" has endured partly because of the fame of its great author, and partly because of its high and true pessimism. Readers naturally like pessimism, and when it is of this good, philosophic sort, they feel justified in their taste. Johnson and Voltaire The theme is Johnson's favorite topic—the vanity of human wishes, the futility of the quest for happiness. Voltaire's "Candide," which came out in France two weeks before "Rasselas," is on the same topic with practically the same moral. But Voltaire was an agnostic and a cynic, while Johnson was a most conventional pietist. Addison and Steele as well as Johnson included didactic stories in their periodicals. Tolstoy, Cervantes Count Tolstoy, in his desire to help his countrymen, has written many parables, allegories, and moral tales. They are read by foreigners because of the pictures of Russian life. So are Cervantes's "Novelas Ejemplares" read for their fresh and spritely character-pictures of Andalusia. They are instructive moral tales, as their name indicates and as their author very definitely asserted. So idiomatic, spirited, and graceful are they that, though the oldest stories of their class in Spanish literature, they are without successful rivals.
An exercise in this kind of narrative surely will not hurt you, and you may get some benefit from it, even if the chance reader should not like your preaching. Try, however, to make the story interesting in itself and to have the moral seem to grow naturally out of the action, rather than the action out of the moral. Avoid platitudes, and reveal the customs and manners of your people so faithfully that the student of social science might use your narrative for data.