The development of the English novel.

It is not easy to say exactly what a novel is. It is, of course, prose fiction, but not at all pieces of prose fiction can be reasonably classed as novels where do we draw the line between adventures tales, fantasies, romances, science fiction, and novels? It is difficult to decide, but it is agreed that in the novel proper we are concerned with people who are related to some sort of society in a fairy realistic fashion, and a novel is a prose narrative that offers the readers imaginary characters and events set I some particular and recognizable society.

The novel was a comparatively late arrival in English literature; Italy, Spain and France produced novels long before England did. The Elizabethans, for example, found it easy to tell a story in a dramatic form for the stage, but could not manage prose fiction. But once English literature really got hold of the novel, in the 18^th century, it became famous for its fiction and influenced writers in many different countries. from the middle of the 18^th century onward, more and more English novels were written and read. Excellent English novels have been published continually during the last 200 years, but some are better than others.

We might say that English fiction reached its highest level in three separate periods – roughly 17401770; 1840-1890; and 1905-1930. It is during these years especially that we find English novelists of genius producing acknowledged masterpieces.

The 17401770 group of English novelist consists of Samuel Richardson, Henry Fielding, Lawrence Sterne and Tobias Smollet.

After Samuel Richardson, a retired printer, was commissioned to do a book of letters which readers could use as samples in their correspondence, he contrived a novel in the form of letters, all about a virtuous serving girl, Pamela. Pamela, a young girl, serves at Lady B.’s After her death, Pamela suffers the chases of her son. But Pamela repulses his pursuits and finds strength to resist the temptations. She refuses his presents, doesn’t believe his promises. “I am honest though poor” – writes she. Then Mr. B. saw that there was no way to seduce Pamela, he revises his feelings, understands that his infatuation for Pamela is in love, makes proposal to which the girl gives her hearty consent. “Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded” – this is the title of the novel.

The top of Richardson’s realism is his novel “Clarissa, or the History of a young Lady, etc.” In the History of the English literature it is the first tragic novel. The conflict in the novel is based upon the collision of honest and proud Clarissa with the evil, incarnated not only in the image of Lovelace, but in the whole society surrounding her.

Having trusted in Lovelace she became a victim of his selfishness, pride and conceit. He commits violence upon her. With this cruelty Lovelace commits revenge to Clarissa’s family for their not having given consent to their marriage. But his feelings to Clarissa are very complicated. He understands that he loves her and wants to marry her. But Clarissa rejects him. The sufferings that she had through, undermined her health, and she dies. Lovelace, falling pangs of conscience, leaves for Italy where he gets killed on a duel with Clarissa’s cousin.

Clarissa preserves her independence till the end, and physically broken, she wins the moral victory over Lovelace.

This novel was also written in letter form, that became the range not only in England but all-over the continent. This narrative-in-letters method is entirely unreal, at least as Richardson used it: his characters would be spending twelve hours a day writing letters. However, it has the great advantage, which the author made use of very artfully, of giving in turn everybody’s point of view, thoughts, feelings, hopes and fears. The sentimentality of these novels is not entirely to our taste today, but Richardson’s reputation in his own time was tremendous, and he undoubtedly had a great deal of influence on the development of victim.

Henry Fielding was a very different type of man, who detested Richardson and all his works. Fielding came from an old landed family, lived riotously, and then took to writing to earn a living. His masterpiece is “Tom Jones”, which appeared in eighteen books and is both a panorama of eighteenth century life and the expression, unusual in a novel, of a powerful masculine intellect, quick to observe all the ironies, absurdities and hypocrites of social life. “Tom Jones” is the top of realistic novel of Enlightenment in England. Represented in the novel the social picture if true and many-sided. The scene is laid in the countryside and towns, estates and inns, fairs and taverns, prisons and dwellings of the poor. Fielding depicted people of different social layers: gentry, bourgeoisie, clergymen, paupers, court officials.

A few words should be said about the “Gothic novel” or “Gothic romance”, known also in the history of literature as “le roman noir” or “the tale of terror”. Its representatives were Volpole, Radcliff Beckford and others.

The most prominent representative of the Gothic novel is undoubtedly Horace Walpole, the author of “Castle of Otranto”. The novel was issued anonymously in a limited edition.

In the preface signed by the fictitious translator B. Marshall, it is stated that the work is a translation from the Italian of the medieval Italian chronologist Onufrio Muralto at Otranto.

The events related in the book are supposed to have occurred in the 12^th or the 13^th century. Manfred, prince of Otranto, is the grandson of a usurper of the realm, who had poisoned Alfonso, the rightful ruler. It had been prophesied that the line of the usurper should continue to reign until the rightful owner had grown too large to inhabit the castle and as long as male issue at the usurper remained to enjoy it. When the story begins, Manfred is about to marry his only son to beautiful Isabella, but on the eve the wedding his son is mysteriously killed. Terrified lest he should be left without male descendants, Manfred determines to divorce his wife and marry Isabella himself. Isabella escapes with the assistance of Theodore a young peasant, bearing a singular resemblance to the portrait of Alfonso and already under suspicion of some connection with the death of Mansfred’s son, Theodore is imprisoned, but is released by Matilda, Mansfred’s daughter. Mansfred, suspicious of a love affair between Theodore and Isabella, and learning that Theodore and a lady from the castle are together by night at Alfonso’s grave, hurries there and stabs the lady only to find out that he has killed his, daughter Matilda. The supernatural element now brings the story to an end. The ghost of Alfonso in accordance with the prophecy has grown too big for the Edifice, and throws it down, and the terror forces, Manfred to reveal the usurpation. Theodore turns out to be the heir of Alfonso and the rightful prince, and marries Isabella.

Up to that time, English readers had been used to finding in their novels a reasonable and instructive picture of ordinary English life and manners. In the castle of Otranto everything was new and unusual, and outside the scope of normal life.