Aspects of the Novel

Cobb. The description of her death would have been feeble and ladylike⁠—physical violence is quite beyond Miss Austen’s powers⁠—but the survivors would have reacted properly as soon as the corpse was carried away, they would have brought into view new sides of their character, and though Persuasion would have been spoiled as a book, we should know more than we do about Captain Wentworth and Anne. All the Jane Austen characters are ready for an extended life, for a life which the scheme of her books seldom requires them to lead, and that is why they lead their actual lives so satisfactorily. Let us return to Lady Bertram and the crucial sentence. See how subtly it modulates from her formula into an area where the formula does not work. “Lady Bertram did not think deeply.” Exactly: as per formula. “But guided by Sir Thomas she thought justly on all important points.” Sir Thomas’ guidance, which is part of the formula, remains, but it pushes her ladyship towards an independent and undesired morality. “She saw therefore in all its enormity what had happened.” This is the moral fortissimo⁠—very strong but carefully introduced. And then follows a most artful decrescendo, by means of negatives. “She neither endeavoured herself, nor required Fanny to advise her, to think little of guilt or infamy.” The formula is reappearing, because as a rule she does try to minimize trouble, and does require Fanny to advise her how to do this; indeed Fanny has done nothing else for the last ten years. The words, though they are negatived, remind us of this, her normal state is again in view, and she has in a single sentence been inflated into a round character and collapsed back into a flat one. How Jane Austen can write! In a few words she has extended Lady Bertram, and by so doing she has increased the probability of the elopements of Maria and Julia. I say probability because the elopements belong to the domain of violent physical action, and here, as already indicated, Jane Austen is feeble and ladylike. Except in her schoolgirl novels, she cannot stage a crash. Everything violent has to take place “off”⁠—Louisa’s accident and Marianne Dashwood’s putrid throat are the nearest exceptions⁠—and consequently all the comments on the elopement must be sincere and convincing, otherwise we should doubt whether it occurred. Lady Bertram helps us to believe that her daughters have run away, and they have to run away, or there would be no apotheosis for Fanny. It is a little point, and a little sentence, yet it shows us how delicately a great novelist can modulate into the round.

All through her works we find these characters, apparently so simple and flat, never needing reintroduction and yet never out of their depth⁠—Henry Tilney, Mr. Woodhouse, Charlotte Lucas. She may label her characters “Sense,” “Pride,” “Sensibility,” “Prejudice,” but they are not tethered to those qualities.

As for the round characters proper, they have already been defined by implication and no more need be said. All I need do is to give some examples of people in books who seem to me round so that the definition can be tested afterwards:

All the principal characters in War and Peace, all the Dostoevsky characters, and some of the Proust⁠—for example, the old family servant, the Duchess of Guermantes, M. de Charlus, and Saint Loup; Madame Bovary⁠—who, like Moll Flanders, has her book to herself, and can expand and secrete unchecked; some people in Thackeray⁠—for instance, Becky and Beatrix; some in Fielding⁠—Parson Adams, Tom Jones; and some in Charlotte Brontë, most particularly Lucy Snowe. (And many more⁠—this is not a catalogue.) The test of a round character is whether it is capable of surprising in a convincing way. If it never surprises, it is flat. If it does not convince, it is a flat pretending to be round. It has the incalculability of life about it⁠—life within the pages of a book. And by using it sometimes alone, more often in combination with the other kind, the novelist achieves his task of acclimatization and harmonizes the human race with the other aspects of his work.

ii. Now for the second device: the point of view from which the story may be told.

To some critics this is the fundamental device of novel-writing. “The whole intricate question of method, in the craft of fiction,” says Mr. Percy Lubbock, “I take to be governed by the question of the point of view⁠—the question of the relation in which the narrator stands to the story.” And his book The Craft of Fiction examines various points of view with genius and insight. The novelist, he says, can either describe the characters from outside, as an impartial or partial onlooker; or he can assume omniscience and describe them from within; or he can place himself in the position of one of them and affect to be in the dark as to the motives of the rest; or there are certain intermediate attitudes.

Those who follow him will lay a sure foundation for the aesthetics of fiction⁠—a foundation which I cannot for a moment promise. This is a ramshackly survey and for me the “whole intricate question of method” resolves itself not into formulae but into the power of the writer to bounce the reader into accepting what he says⁠—a power which Mr. Lubbock admits and admires, but locates at the edge of the problem instead of at the centre. I should put it plumb in the centre. Look how Dickens bounces us in Bleak House. Chapter I of Bleak House is omniscient. Dickens takes us into the Court of Chancery and rapidly explains all the people there. In Chapter II he is partially omniscient. We still use his eyes, but for some unexplained reason they begin to grow weak: he can explain Sir Leicester Dedlock to us, part of Lady Dedlock but not all, and nothing of Mr. Tulkinghorn. In Chapter III