VII
This group then of novelists, sinking all individual differences, marks the progress of the method of realism over the romance. Scarcely one is conspicuous for achievement in the latter, while almost all of them did yeoman service in the former. In some cases—those of Disraeli and Bulwer—the transition is seen where their earlier and later work is contrasted; with a writer like Trollope, the newer method completely triumphs. Even in so confirmed a romance-maker as Wilkie Collins, to whom plot was everything and whose cunning of hand in this is notorious, there is a concession to the new ideal of Truth. He was touched by his time in the matter of naturalness of dialogue, though not of event. Wildly improbable and wooden as his themes may now seem, their manner is realistic, realism of speech, in fact, being an element in his effectivism. Even the author of "The Moonstone" is scotched by the spirit of the age, and in the preface to "Armsdale" declares for a greater freedom of theme—one of the first announcements of that desire for an extension of the subject-matter which was in the next generation to bring such a change.
It seems just to represent all these secondary novelists as subsidiary to Dickens, Thackeray and Eliot. Fascinating isolated figures like Borrow, who will always be cherished by the few, are perforce passed by. We are trying to keep both quality and influence in mind, with the desire to show the writers not by themselves alone but as part of a stream of tendency which has made the English Novel the distinct form it is to-day. Even a resounding genius, in this view, may have less meaning than an apparent plodder like Trollope, who, as time goes by, is seen more clearly to be one of the shaping forces in the development of a literary form.
CHAPTER XII
HARDY AND MEREDITH
We have seen in chapter seventh, how the influence of Balzac introduced to modern fiction that extension of subject and that preference for the external fact widely productive of change in the novel-making of the continent and of English-speaking lands. As the year 1830 was given significance by him, so, a generation later, the year 1870 was given significance by Zola. England, like other lands cultivating the Novel, felt the influence. Balzac brought to fiction a greater franchise of theme: Zola taught it to regard a human being—individual or collectively social—as primarily animal: that is, he explains action on this hypothesis. And as an inevitable consequence, realism passed to the so-called naturalism. Zola believed in this view as a theory and his practice, not always consistent with it, was sufficiently so in the famous Rougon-Macquart series of novels begun the year of the Franco-Prussian war, to establish it as a method, and a school of fiction. Naturalism, linking hands with l'art pour art—"a fine phrase is a moral action—there is no other morality in literature," cried Zola—became a banner-cry, with "the flesh is all" its chief article of belief. No study of the growth of English fiction can ignore this typical modern movement, however unpleasant it may be to follow it. The baser and more brutal phases of the Novel continental and insular look to this derivation. Zola's remarkable pronunciamento "The Experimental Novel," proves how honestly he espoused the doctrine of the realist, how blind he is to its partial view. His attempt to subject the art of fiction to the exact laws of science, is an illustration of the influence of scientific thought upon a mind not broadly cultured, though of unusual native quality. Realism of the modern kind—the kind for which Zola stands—is the result in a form of literature of the necessary intellectual unrest following on the abandonment of older religious ideals. Science had forced men to give up certain theological conceptions; death, immorality, God, Man,—these were all differently understood, and a period of readjustment, doubt and negation, of misery and despair, was the natural issue. Man, being naturally religious, was sure sooner or later to secure a new and more hopeful faith: it was a matter of spiritual self-preservation. But realism in letters, for the moment, before a new theory had been formulated, was a kind of pis aller by which literature could be produced and attention given to the tangible things of this earth, many of them not before thoroughly exploited; the things of the mind, of the Spirit, were certain to be exploited later, when a broader creed should come. The new romanticism and idealism of our day marks this return. Zola's theory is now seen to be wrong, and there has followed a violent reaction from the realistic tenets, even in Paris, its citadel. But for some years, it held tyrannous sway and its leader was a man of genius, his work distinctive, remarkable; at its best, great,—in spite of, rather than because of, his principles. It was in the later Trilogy of the cities that, using a broader formula, he came into full expression of what was in him; during the last years of his life he was moving, both as man and artist, in the right direction. Yet naturally it was novels like "Nana" and "L'Assomoir" that gave him his vogue; and their obsession with the fleshly gave them for the moment a strange distinction: for years their author was regarded as the founder of a school and its most formidable exponent. He wielded an influence that rarely falls to a maker of stories. And although realism in its extreme manifestations no longer holds exclusive sway, Zola's impulse is still at work in the modern Novel. Historically, his name will always be of interest.
I
Thomas Hardy is a realist in a sense true of no English novelist of anything like equal rank preceding him: his literary genealogy is French, for his "Jude The Obscure" has no English prototype, except the earlier work of George Moore, whose inspiration is even more definitely Paris. To study Hardy's development for a period of about twenty-five years from "Under the Greenwood Tree" to "Jude," is to review, as they are expressed in the work of one great English novelist, the literary ideals before and after Zola. Few will cavil at the inclusion in our study of a living author like Hardy. His work ranks with the most influential of our time; so much may be seen already. His writing of fiction, moreover, or at least of Novels, seems to be finished. And like Meredith, he is a man of genius and, strictly speaking, a finer artist than the elder author. For quality, then, and significance of accomplishment, Hardy may well be examined with the masters whose record is rounded out by death. He offers a fine example of the logic of modern realism, as it has been applied by a first-class mind to the art of fiction. In Meredith, on the contrary, is shown a sort of synthesis of the realistic and poetic-philosophic interpretation. Hardy is for this reason easier to understand and explain; Meredith refuses classification.
The elements of strength in Thomas Hardy can be made out clearly; they are not elusive. Wisely, he has chosen to do a very definite thing and, with rare perseverance and skill, he has done it. He selected as setting the south-western part of England—Wessex, is the ancient name he gave it—that embraces Somersetshire and contiguous counties, because he felt that the types of humanity and the view of life he wished to show could best be thrown out against the primitive background. Certain elemental truths about men and women, he believed, lost sight of in the kaleidoscopic attritions of the town, might there be clearly seen. The choice of locale was thus part of an attitude toward life. That attitude or view may be described fairly well as one of philosophic fatalism.
It has not the cold removedness of the stoic: it has pity in it, even love. But it is deeply sad, sometimes bitter. In Hardy's presentation of Nature (a remark applying to some extent to a younger novelist who shows his influence, Phillpotts), she is displayed as an ironic expression, with even malignant moods, of a supreme cosmic indifference to the petty fate of that animalcule, man. And this, in spite of a curious power she possesses of consoling him and of charming him by blandishments that cheat the loneliness of his soul. There is no purer example of tragedy in modern literature than Mr. Hardy's strongest, most mature stories. A mind deeply serious and honest, interprets the human case in this wise and conceives that the underlying pitilessness can most graphically be conveyed in a setting like that of Egdon Heath, where the great silent forces of Nature somberly interblend with the forces set in motion by the human will, both futile to produce happiness. Even the attempt to be virtuous fails in "Jude": as the attempt to be happy does in "Tess." That sardonic, final thought in the last-named book will not out of our ears: Fate had played its last little jest with poor Tess.