Table Of ContentBENNETT, WELLS AND CONRAD
BENNETT, WELLS
AND CONRAD
Narrative in Transition
Linda R. Anderson
Lecturer in English
University of Newcastle upon Tyne
M
MACMILLAN
© Linda R. Anderson 1988
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1988 978-0-333-31095-3
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First published 1988
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Anderson, Linda R.
Bennett, Wells and Conrad: narrative in transition.
I. Bennett, Arnold-Criticism and interpretation
2. Conrad, joseph-Criticism and interpretation
3. Wells, H. G.-Criticism and interpretation
I. Title
823' .912'09 PR6003.E6Z/
ISBN 978-1-349-19151-2 ISBN 978-1-349-19149-9 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-19149-9
For My Parents
Contents
Preface IX
PART I INTRODUCTION
1 Realism and Victorian Literary Culture 3
2 Realism and Narrative Form 23
PART II ARNOLD BENNETT
3 The Serious Business ofWriting 41
4 Anna of the Five Towns 63
5 The Old Wives' Tale 77
6 Clayhanger 95
PART III H. G. WELLS
7 The Modern Form of Adventure 103
8 Love and Mr Lewisham 131
9 Tono-Bungay 139
10 The History of Mr Polly 149
PART IV JOSEPH CONRAD
11 Craftsman and Seer 159
12 Heart of Darkness 176
13 Nostromo 191
Conclusion 208
Notes 211
Selected Bibliography 222
Index 228
VII
Preface
This book was begun as a response to the way critical
discussions of the novel have frequently used the famous quarrel
between Henry James and H. G. Wells to mark a decisive
break in our understanding of the novel form. If before the
quarrel the novel was a baggy monster, afterwards, taking up
James's position, it was definitely art. I was interested in the
way historical definitions of the novel were, by critical sleight of
hand, transformed into evaluative ones and how it was difficult
to think about Wells except from the other side of this critical
debate which saw him as simply wrong.
In this book I have attempted to recover a historical
dimension for that quarrel through an understanding of the
ideas of and the debates about fiction in the two decades from
1890 to 1910. I have focused on the work of three writers,
Arnold Bennett, H. G. Wells and Joseph Conrad, all of whom
began to write in the 1890s and whose major work, I believe,
was done between those dates. All three writers were having to
respond to a major re-definition of the idea of the novel and its
relationship to reality in the period and their novels, as well as
developing their specific imaginative visions, were engaged in
maintaining a difficult balance between the increasingly
polarised claims of society and art. Bennett, Wells and Conrad
were all very different writers and I have tried not to lose a
sense of the originality of each of their achievements. On the
other hand I am primarily concerned with their ideas about the
novel and the structures of their narratives as a response to the
historical situation which they shared.
Gordon Ray was the first to explore Wells's ideas about art
seriously. Since then Patrick Parrinder and Robert Philmus in
H. G. Wells's Literary Criticism have done much to extend our
knowledge. Ian Watt in his important book, Conrad in the
Nineteenth Century, has given us an absorbing account of Conrad's
relationship to the period whilst John Batchelor in The Edwardian
IX
Preface
X
Novelists has helped to make the placing of Conrad together
with other Edwardian writers less controversial. To all these I
owe a general intellectual debt.
My research for this book was initially funded by a Sir James
Knott Fellowship from the University of Newcastle upon Tyne.
I am also grateful to the Research Committee of the University
of Newcastle upon Tyne for funding which enabled me to visit
libraries in the later stages. Part of the chapter on H. G. Wells,
in a different form, has appeared in Modern Fiction Studies. I am
grateful to Glynis Williams for her efficient typing and to
Kathleen O'Rawe for her last minute help. A great many
friends and colleagues have helped me in writing this book,
generously sharing ideas with me. Cairns Craig, Kelsey
Thornton, Rima Handley and Diana Collecott all read parts of
it in draft and I am grateful for their perceptive comments. I
am indebted to Judie Newman for her judicious criticisms and
her general support. Sandy Anderson was a source of constant
encouragement and I am grateful to him for that and much
more.
The author and publishers wish to thank the following who
have kindly given permission for the use of copyright material:
the Literary Executors of the Estate of H. G. Wells and Little,
Brown and Co., for the extracts from H. G. Wells, Boon, An
Englishman Looks at the World and An Experiment in Autobiography.
Part I
Introduction
1 Realism and Victorian
Literary Culture
During the last two decades of the nineteenth century the term
'realism' was used in a fairly specific way. Applied almost
exclusively to French realist novelists and their English imitators
it denoted a kind of fiction which had marked out the sordid
and unsavoury aspects of life for attention and which dealt with
them in a detached, factual manner. 'Realism', it was noted in
1888, 'means nothing short of sheer beastliness .... In a word
it is dirt and horror pure and simple.'1 Emotive, denunciatory
vocabulary was an important element in the definition of
realism at this time, for the widespread agreement about what
realism meant went along with a general alarm about its
literary and moral consequences.
The second half of the nineteenth century had seen an
increasing invasion of English sensibilities by French realist
fiction and it is interesting to watch how critical hostility was
transferred from one writer to another as each succeeded in
shocking English audiences afresh. Zola was considered to be
the worst, however, and with the publication of the first English
translation of his novels in 1884 the controversy reached a
peak. Beside Zola, Balzac, who was acknowledged to be an
important originator of the realist method, could be praised for
his moderation:
In his most outspoken passages, the former (Balzac) maintains
a certain decent reserve, which the latter (Zola) and his
followers - those shameless purveyors of hideous garbage -
have set aside. . . . This new school has imagined the
impossible. Hyenas, delighting in carrion they have lost touch
with humanity; and the contrast between their corrupt
imaginations and the searching analysis of Balzac is as great
3
