Other novels with important exhibition or interpretation of the family group are Utopia, Amelia, The Vicar of Wakefield, Pride and Prejudice, and The Mill on the Floss.

The Community. Aside from the common types of rural village and city quarter, the novel may picture the social groups of the prison, hospital, barracks, camp, factory, business house, etc.

Compare the studies of a great business house-its esprit de corps, discipline, ranking of members, etc. · in Soll und Haben and Dombey and Son. Contrast the romantic view of a cathedral community in Notre Dame de Paris with the realistic view in Barchester Towers. Hospital life appears in La Débâcle, under military conditions, in time of war; and in I Promessi Sposi, under municipal conditions, in time of pestilence.

Social Caste. The very term caste denotes a group that is defined by its relations to other groups. In the processes by which a class emerges from the general social composition, or is reabsorbed in it, in the comedy or tragedy of class rivalry, and in the movements of an individual from class to class, the novel of manners, and the novel of social psychology find a rich field.

Fielding warns the novelist that "a true knowledge of the world is gained only by conversation, and the manners of every rank must be seen in order to be known." (Tom Jones, XIV, I.) He finds that many English writers fail in describing the upper classes, because of ignorance of the subject — a criticism frequently made of Dickens. In recent realism, a similar failure is often apparent in the picture of the lower classes. To one who is an actual member of a given trade or profession, familiar in daily life with its labor, traditions, language, and ideals, the descriptions of it in the novel often seem curiously unreal.

Nationality and Race. The unity of a national group may be considered in its physical, linguistic, industrial, or religious aspects, as well as in the purely political. A comprehensive view of any great nation must include some

picture of different races. One of the largest social subjects in the novel is the composition of empire, whether conceived in a semi-scientific spirit, or exhibited as a moral unity, its elements fused together, perhaps in a period of special stress, by

"The prayer of many a race and creed, and clime.”

Note the types of fiction listed in the appendix, for examples of different treatment of this subject. Among series of novels in which nationality is an important theme, are the Waverley Novels, the Comédie Humaine, and Galdós' Episodios Nacionales the 'epic of modern Spain.'

Cycle of Civilization. Common interests in religion, commerce, diplomacy, science, or general cultural conditions, may fashion a considerable number of separate political units into a larger whole, full of dramatic interest and problematic quality. In all such extensive groups there are discordant elements, and abundant material for artistic contrast and shading.

In modern European civilization, Russia and Turkey are not completely assimilated to the dominant tone of society; and the entrance of the Orient into the sisterhood of western nations offers an interesting spectacle. The gypsy, the Jew, the negro, and the Indian have given picturesque material to many novels.

IIO. Social Life. The relation of the mere organization of society to its rich variety of mental and moral life, might be compared with the relation of artistic structure to style, or the relation of anatomy to the personality of the body.

Domestic Life. A study of this subject may include the ideals of privacy and hospitality, the emotional harmony of the family, the attachment to home for its own sake, etc. Interpretation often takes the form of a contrast of the domestic ideal with the ideal of other types

of social life, as in The Cloister and The Hearth, and Middlemarch; or with the ideal of individual life, as in Pilgrim's Progress. In both Silas Marner and Robinson Crusoe there is a detailed picture of domestic life without marriage.

Industrial Life. Agricultural labor has been a subject in the novel from the beginning, though the early treatment was usually idealized in a high degree. The difference between the rural industry in Daphnis and Chloe and in La Terre is conspicuous, whether viewed from the social or the artistic point of view.

Early romance gives a picture of life in which labor in general has a very subordinate place. Modern realism has explored the world of humble labor, has sympathized with its weariness and suffering, and not rarely has found in it the most essential elements of human experience.

Deloney's Jack of Newbury may be mentioned as an Elizabethan fiction which gives both an extensive and an intensive study of a special industrial class - the weavers of England. In the eighteenth century there was a sturdy revolt against the artificiality of pastoral imagination, and an increasing sense of the value of real labor as an artistic subject. It is interesting to note, in the field of epic poetry, that the hero of Thomson's Castle of Indolence is no romantic representative of chivalry, but a modern Knight of Arts and Industry.

Political Life. Satire on contemporary political conditions, and plans for an ideal political life, are common in the fiction of the Renaissance. In the main, the novelist has been a liberal in politics, in both his dream and his practical attitude. Recent realism has given attention to the routine of political life, to its corruption, its relations Often the descriptions considerable personal

on

to religion, and to general society. of the novelist are based experience.

...

The romanticists were allied with the political reforms of their time, and Victor Hugo's famous statement is a representative one: "Le romantisme, tant de fois mal défini, n'est. . . . que le libéralisme en littérature.. La liberté dans l'art, la liberté dans la société, voila le double but auquel doivent tendre d'un même pas tous les esprits conséquents et logiques." (Preface to Hernani, 1830.) Hugo himself, and several Russian novelists of the last century, suffered some form of political punishment for the expression of a liberal political creed.

Religious Life. This subject may be considered from an ecclesiastical, historical, ethical, or artistic point of view. In its deeper aspects, it is often associated with the individual rather than with social groups. The novelist has usually been a champion of human nature, of a secular ideal, as contrasted with any narrow type of religious ideal. (Compare Section 132.)

Since the Renaissance, the novelist has had constantly before him the spectacle of a divided Christendom, a subdivided protestantism, an academic or æsthetic classical paganism, and, environing all, the superstition or irreligion of untutored human nature, whether in the Indian or the diplomat. In the last century, the development of a new type of scientific agnosticism, and the conscious separation of the ethical element in religion from its historical and supernatural associations, have offered comparatively new themes to the novel.

Hawthorne's interest in Puritanism is ethical rather than purely religious. - Mrs. Radcliffe's Italian, and The Castle of Otranto, represent the artistic introduction of Catholic life, characteristic of the romantic movement. In Rob Roy, it is the historical and dramatic interest that mainly appeals to Scott. Compare the attitude toward Catholic faith in Manzoni, Newman, and Fogazzaro. The struggle of medieval religion with the modern secular spirit, in a country where the former is particularly strong, is studied in La Espuma, Doña Perfecta, Pepita Jiménez, and La Fé.

Cultural Life in General. The novel gives one a more extensive picture of social culture than any other form of art. Its medium of expression, language, and its chief structural form, dialogue, must always suggest some special type of cultural life. Art, travel, and education are among the social phenomena which distinguish one state of culture from another. Each of these subjects is a major theme in one or another kind of fiction. The interpretation of culture by the novelist often has a touch of irony, for the imagination sees manners in their relative values, in which there is always a suggestion of comedy.

III. Historical Period. — Every novel is historical, in so far as it pictures the life characteristic of a particular period. In a narrower sense, a novel is historical when the author lays conscious stress upon such life, even if it belongs to his own time. Spielhagen defines the historical novel in a third and more common sense, as one portraying a time "auf welche dieses Licht [der Erinnerung der jetzigen Generation] nicht mehr vollkräftig fällt.”1

A given period may be selected for genuine historical purposes, or for the sake of its ethical, sociological, or artistic value. If it is chosen simply as an artistic background, the novel cannot be considered truly historical. In Gothic romance, the middle ages are often selected because of their picturesque quality and their remoteness from the prose of contemporary life. The first centuries of the Christian church made a definite religious appeal to Newman; in Ebers' Homo Sum, their interest is partly historical, partly artistic.

Even in the true historical novel, the material is not all equally characteristic of the period. Some of the details are usually fully historical; others are typically historical; 1 Technik des Romans; Das Gebiet des Romans.