It should finally be remarked that Aphra forestalls one more innovation of the next century, by introducing slight descriptions of scenery; and that here, as always, she arrested her readers’ attention by plunging straight into the story.
Two other professional women of that generation deserve mention: Mrs. Manley (1672-1724), author of the scurrilous New Atalantis, and Mrs. Heywood (or Haywood) (1693-1756), editor of the Female Spectator. Both were employed by their betters for the secret promotion of vile libels—the former political, the latter literary; and both wrote novels of some vigour, but deservedly forgotten: although the latest, and best, of Mrs. Manley’s were written after Pamela, and bear striking witness to the influence of Richardson.
A few more years bring us to the true birth of the modern novel; when Sarah Fielding (1710-1768), whose David Simple, in an unfortunate attempt to combine sentiment with the picaresque, revealed some of her brother’s humour and the decided influence of Richardson. And though The Female Quixote of Charlotte Lennox (1720-1804) has been pronounced “more absurd than any of the romances which it was designed to ridicule,” Macaulay himself allows it “great merit, when considered as a wild satirical harlequinade”; and it remains an early, if not the first, example of conscious revolt against the artificial tyrannies of “Romance,” of which the evil influences on the art of fiction were soon to be triumphantly abolished for ever by a sister-authoress.
THE FIRST WOMAN NOVELIST
(Fanny Burney, 1752-1840)
It is, to-day, a commonplace of criticism that the novel proper, though partially forestalled in subject and treatment by Defoe, began with Richardson’s Pamela in 1740. The main qualities which distinguish this work from our earlier “romances” were the attempt to copy, or reproduce, real life; and the choice of middle-class society for dramatis personæ. It is difficult for us to realise how long the prejudice against “middle-class” characters held sway; but no doubt Christopher North reflected the sentiments of the majority in 1829 when he represented the “Shepherd” declaring it to be his “profound conviction that the strength o’ human nature lies either in the highest or lowest estate of life. Characters in books should either be kings, and princes, and nobles, and on a level with them, like heroes; or peasants, shepherds, farmers, and the like, includin’ a’ orders amaist o’ our ain working population. The intermediate class—that is, leddies and gentlemen in general—are no worth the Muse’s while; for their life is made up chiefly o’ mainners,—mainners,—mainners;—you canna see the human creters for their claes; and should ane o’ them commit suicide in despair, in lookin’ on the dead body, you are mair taen up wi’ its dress than its decease.” The “romance” only condescended below Prince or Peer for the exhibition of the Criminal. It aimed at exaggeration in every detail for dramatic effect. It recognised no limit to the resources of wealth, the beauty of virtue, the splendour of heroism, or the corruption of villainy. It permitted the supernatural. Fielding clearly considers it necessary to apologise for the vulgarity of mere “human nature”:
“The provision, then, which we have here made, is no other than Human Nature: nor do I fear that any sensible reader, though most luxurious in his taste, will start, cavil, or be offended because I have named but one article. The tortoise, as the alderman of Bristol, well learned in eating, knows by much experience, besides the delicious calipash and calipee, contains many different kinds of food; nor can the learned reader be ignorant, that in human nature, though here collected under one general name, is such prodigious variety, that a cook will have sooner gone through all the several species of animal and vegetable food in the world, than an author will be able to exhaust so extensive a subject.
“An objection may perhaps be apprehended from the more delicate, that this dish is too vulgar and common; for what else is the subject of all the romances, novels, plays, and poems, with which the stalls abound? Many exquisite viands might be rejected by the epicure, if it was sufficient cause for his contemning of them as common and vulgar, that something was to be found in the most paltry alleys under the same name. In reality, true nature is as difficult to be met with in authors, as the Bayonne ham, or Bologna sausage, is to be found in the shops.
“But the whole, to continue the metaphor, consists in the cooking of the author; for, as Mr. Pope tells us,—
‘True wit is nature to advantage dress’d;
What oft was thought, but ne’er so well express’d.’
“The same animal which hath the honour to have some part of his flesh eaten at the table of a duke, may perhaps be degraded in another part, and some of his limbs gibbetted, as it were, in the vilest stall in town. Where then lies the difference between the food of the nobleman and the porter, if both are at dinner on the same ox or calf, but in the seasoning, the dressing, the garnishing, and the setting forth? Hence the one provokes and incites the most languid appetite, and the other turns and palls that which is the sharpest and keenest.