chapter four
The Novel as Mirror of National Character
A political novel invariably reveals the attitude of its author toward the national groups from which its characters come. Often the author may seek to draw a national portrait by describing political behavior which he believes is peculiarly characteristic of Spaniards or Greeks or Englishmen. Two novels which thus portray the Russians are Under Western Eyes and The Possessed. The reader may work with a body of novels which do not deliberately attempt to delineate national character, and yet he will still arrive at some conception of national behavior patterns. He can do this by assessing the subjects treated. If most of the novels deal with underground activities, coups d’état, or revolutions, he is justified in assuming that this is a people which takes its politics seriously, and emotionally. If most of the novels concern parliamentary give and take, clever use of rules, strategic marches and countermarches, he has a right to conclude that this national group has achieved some degree of political sophistication. In dealing with the American novel one has to draw conclusions in this way. There is a great deal of close attention to tactical and strategic moves, but there is not too much scrutiny of larger behavior patterns. The appraiser must use whatever materials seem capable of giving insight: detailed discussion which is precisely in point, a recurrent basic situation, or a group of themes whose frequency of appearance is a good indication of their importance and relevance.
Enough American and English novels are included here to justify drawing some conclusions. Some of the other national literatures discussed, however, are represented by relatively few books. Since they constitute a small sample, one can draw only tentative conclusions. But almost all these novels are by very talented writers whose work is considered representative of the best in this genre within their national literatures. They are novels which offer skilled portrayals of life by artists entitled to a hearing on their own merits. In order to extract as much from the novel as possible in this area, comments on nations have been accepted from foreigners where they seem valid.
GREAT BRITAIN: A SELF-PORTRAIT
Peaceful Change in the Political Realm
The English political novel presents a people whose political processes have operated in a well-defined manner with progressively decreasing violence. England had its Wars of the Roses and its Cavaliers and Roundheads, but with the exception of the Jacobite Rebellion of 1746, resort to arms as a means of domestic change has been in the discard for the past two hundred years of English history. The Peterloo Massacre, the Chartist Riots, and the struggle against the Lords all involved bloodshed, but this form of conflict has largely subsided. The novel reflects this pattern. It is one of change within a framework of relative stability. The Right wing and the Left are the two poles between which the political ions flow. The names of the poles may vary, as may some of the elements in their chemical composition, but their function remains the same. The Tory is always the opponent of change or the advocate of slow and minimal change; the Whig, Liberal, Fabian, or Labourite is the champion of more rapid and extensive change. The extreme radical appears occasionally, the revolutionary infrequently. Almost all the English novels in this study show this basic alignment. Even when the liberals are represented by Mrs. Ward’s Venturists and the conservatives by Disraeli’s Young Englanders or Wells’s New Tories, this is the essential political structure. George Eliot’s Felix Holt and Harold Transóme, both Radicals, are set off against the Debarry family headed by Parson Jack and Sir Maximus Debarry. Meredith’s Nevil Beauchamp is another young Radical in conflict with his uncle Everard Romfrey, who calls himself a Whig but is an aristocratic reactionary. Except for Disraeli, James, and Conrad, the authors of these novels tend to present the case of the liberal or progressive. But no matter what the point of view or time, the main characters tend to range themselves on one of these two sides.
Conrad’s The Secret Agent departs from the common liberal-conservative alignment by dealing with the dangerous lunatic fringe of English political life—the revolutionary terrorists. But Verloc, the novel’s main character, and Yundt, one of the most violent members of the circle, are not native Englishmen. In using these characters, Conrad views the same political virtues the other novelists treat by contrasting them with violence. When the embassy secretary orders Verloc to blow up the Greenwich Observatory, he tells him that the English must be shocked into repressive action. “This country,” he says, “is absurd with its sentimental regard for individual liberty.” The Professor, “The Perfect Anarchist,” attempts to goad Police Inspector Heat into seizing him when they meet in an alley. Heat knows that if he does so the Professor will blow both of them up by pressing the detonator in his pocket. Undoubtedly this fact crosses his mind, but his answer is typical: “If I were to lay my hand on you now I would be no better than yourself.”
The Englishman’s often unemotional approach to politics also appears in the novels. In The New Machiavelli, Dick Remington, enthusiastic about Socialism and “the working-man,” is one of a group of students who invite Chris Robinson, “the Ambassador of the Workers,” to Cambridge to talk to them. But when Robinson speaks, they are disappointed at the excess of emotion and deficiency of content. When the Englishman does allow emotion to surge into his politics, it may be mixed with religion. It was said of Hamer Shawcross, in Fame Is the Spur, that “his platform manner was that of a revivalist parson.” Chester Nimmo has somewhat the same style in Prisoner of Grace. A former Wesleyan lay-preacher, he advocates pacifism at one point in his career. His wife Nina comments:
to a man like Chester, whose politics were mixed up with religion and whose religion was always getting into his politics, this was the situation which he was accustomed to handle. It did not prevent his religion from being “true” that he knew how to “use” it.
Both these politicians are liberals, and perhaps this is merely another means of separating the two great groups. The university man, who has had some advantages, may look upon emotionalism as bad form; the working man, for whom grade school and the church often constitute his only sources of formal education, is conditioned to respond to the stimuli he has known in one of these institutions: the emotional approach of the revivalist parson or the lay preacher.