Materials not necessarily Abundant.
The argument that the world of reality must be like the world of fiction fails in another way. Real people are almost infinitely more numerous than the creations of novelists, therefore, if every immoral adventure in novels were drawn from life, it would only prove that the novelist had collected cases, as a medical student might collect cases of disease in a fairly healthy population. As a matter of fact, however, the novelist does not usually take his incidents from reality; he will often go to nature for his characters, and to invention for his situations. The material in real life that suggests the stories need not be very abundant. The cases of immorality found in the English newspapers alone would be more than enough to keep the principal French novelists at work all the year round.
Novelists a small Class.
Tempted by Money.
The Reader must be Excited.
Novelists acute Tradesmen.
The novelists themselves are a small class working under immense temptations. They live in Paris, where life is terribly expensive, rents enormous, habits luxurious. It is part of their business to see society, and that entails an expenditure above the ordinary gains of quiet unsensational literature. The temptation to gain more money is, in such a situation, almost irresistible. Money is to be earned by exciting the reader. Writers for the populace do this chiefly by murders; but murders are not so attractive to the richer and more refined classes as adventures of pleasure and sensuality. The novelist works for his public, and enjoys both a world-wide notoriety and a handsome income. The most successful novelists describe the pleasures of luxury and vice, and the excitement to be derived from their pursuit. They are simply acute tradesmen, like their publishers, who supply what is in demand.
Why People read Novels.
Dull Lives.
An English old Maid.