Garry Gillard > writing > lectures > 229 > 07
H229 Narrative Fiction 1
Lecture 7 1995
This lecture will be based on a response to the texts for the week, William Godwin's Caleb Williams, Vijay Mishra's reading of it in his chapter of The Gothic Sublime, the Introduction to the Penguin edition by Maurice Hindle (1988), other writing by William Godwin in the Penguin edition, the Prefaces of 1794 and 1832, and 'Of history and romance'—and also on a relationship between this text and others in the course. Then I shall sketch its relationship to critical ideas that we have been developing in the progress of the course: other genres: the picaresque and the Gothic; notions of (formal) realism in the novel, and of the relevant narrative situation, or point of view; the thematisation of such figures as pursuit, and finally some thoughts about writing as such. However, I think all this will be not as sequential as this list suggests, and I may at any point be dealing with two or three of these elements at the same time.
I might start with my own first response to the book. My first reaction was to the appallingly Latinate style, because of which I decided at the outset I would never forgive William Godwin for writing the book and Vijay Mishra for making me read it. (You can now blame me!) Here's a typical example from the second page of the novel. Any of you who know about the tests that educationists apply to instructional prose will be led to reflect that Godwin would fail.
'I had considerable aversion to the boisterous gaiety of the village gallants, and contrived to satisfy my love of praise with an unfrequent apparition at their amusements.' 1
Actually, as an example of this ponderous writing style I could quote the statement from the very first page where the eponymous narrator attempts to justify the existence of his manuscript, and thus kill the bird with the two stones, as I want to make a couple of points about this later. He writes,
'I am incited to the penning of these memoirs only by a desire to divert my mind from the deplorableness of my situation, and a faint idea that posterity may be either means be induced to render me a justice which my contemporaries refuse. My story will, at least, appear to have that consistency which is seldom attendant but upon truth.' 2
Presumably this use of the long word in preference to the short is a result of a Classical education and a prejudice that goes back to the overwhelming success of the Latin-speakers invasion of 1066. You will perhaps have noted two things about this statement of intention: first the conventional appeal to posterity for justice, and secondly, and more characteristically of this book, that if a story appears to be truthful it is more likely to be so. This idea recurs at more than one of the trial scenes in the book, and I draw it your attention as something to reflect on, as it is not clear to me at least why Godwin should have believed this to be the case. I may get back to this later on.
After I got over my initial reaction what I felt was the incredibly pompous style that Godwin has his narrator employ, I began to think about what kind of book we were dealing with here, and I remembered a paper I'd read only recently in Studies in the Novel about The Outsider, the novel by Albert Camus which some of you may encounter next semester, and this writer was suggesting, scandalously, I thought, that The Outsider existed for one reason only, as a polemic against capital punishment. And it occurred to me to think of Caleb Williams in this context as a polemic against imprisonment, and more generally against man's inhumanity to man. That is, I thought an adequate reading might be constructed around the central idea of this being a roman à thèse, a 'thesis novel,' a novel with an idea to present, or one which foregrounds its ideological elements. That is, it is a didactic novel, a novel which sets out to teach. We might think, as examples, of Nausea: La nausée, La peste: The Plague, or, in English writing, of: Animal Farm, 1984, or The Time Machine, perhaps.
If it is not so to be seen—as a 'novel of ideas'—then perhaps it would be useful to see it as utilising a plot of R. S. Crane's third type: the plot of thought. 'There are [according to Crane] plots of actions, plots of character, and plots of thought … according as one or another of the three causal ingredients is employed as the synthesizing principle'—the three causal ingredients being those elements: action, character, and thought. Each of them is involved in all of the plots of 'any novel or drama not constructed on didactic principles,' but one will tend, Crane suggests, to predominate. So that in the third type of plot, the 'plot of thought:' 'the principle is a completed process of change in the thought of the protagonist and consequently in his feelings, conditioned and directed by character and action' (and Crane's example is Walter Pater's Marius the Epicurean). 3
My feeling was that Caleb Williams did not exist for its own sake but for the sake of a lesson which Godwin was having us read. This was partly because of my initial reaction to the style, which I felt was not sufficiently in the service of a 'narrative of fictitious adventure,' but sounded more like an essay or sermon. And it was partly also because of the frequent occurrence in the text of what Horst Ruthrof used to call 'stated ideas,' that is, the simple insertion into the text, through the mouth or pen of a character, of ideas which would be capable of statement in works of different kind, such as the essays and sermons I've mentioned. This is a novel in which characters can be found to say things like this: 'Such is the state of mankind that innocence, when involved in circumstances of suspicion, can scarcely ever make out a demonstration of its purity; and guilt can often make us feel an insurmountable reluctance to the pronouncing it guilt.' That's Mr Collins, from page 320.And here is Mr Falkland, from page 182: 'I am sure that things will never be as they ought, till honour and not law be the dictator of mankind, till vice be taught to shrink before the resistless might of inborn dignity, and not before the cold formality of statutes.'You should particularly note that quotation, of course, because it is the only reference (that I have been able to find) in the body of the novel to its title, and arguably tends to state the central argument of the work. Caleb Williams himself, as narrator, is given to rather more Romantic or Gothic modes of expression than these, but in this context you might like to consider the passage on page 264 where he sums up his situation. It is not an unmixed passage of stated ideas because it is embedded in a summary of the action of the novel, but it is so clearly influenced by a philosophical position derived from Rousseau that it is worth drawing attention to. 'Here let me pause,' Caleb writes, 'for a moment to bring before the reader … the nature of my situation. I was born free: I was born healthy, vigorous, and active, complete in all the lineaments and members of a human body. I was not born indeed to the possession of hereditary wealth; but I had a better inheritance, an enterprising mind, an inquisitive spirit, a liberal ambition. In a word, I accepted my lot with willingness and content …'He goes on at some length in this important passage, writing, among other things: 'I was ignorant of the power which the institutions of society give to one man over others; I had fallen unwarily into the hands of a person who held it as his fondest wish to oppress and destroy me.'This conveniently brings together the three 'Cranian' elements of the plot—action: oppressing and destroying; character: one man who is ignorant and another who is obsessed with the idea of destroying him; and thought: the idea of the power which the institutions of society give to one man over others.
Well, so much for first impressions. I want to get on now to some other considerations, but I want firstly to go back to the beginning of this course and to our primary structure of narrative action: the picaresque.
The most 'picaresque' episodes in Caleb Williams are in Book 3 Chapter 7, pages 255-262, which contains what might arguably 'picaresque' style travelling and adventures. Caleb Williams might have been seen as a pícaro in respect of this section, as he is not nobly born, he is an outcast engaged with criminals, he is living by his wits, he is writing his own life story, and he is telling it in an episodic manner. Maurice Hindle argues, however, that Caleb is not a pícaro, simply because of the fact that he is capable of learning, so that the book does not inhabit the mainstream of the picaresque genre, but rather that of Crane's 'plot of thought.' But we might still look, for example, at page 262, where we are summarily told that '… I proceeded on my journey, and, after a thousand alarms, precautions, and circuitous deviations from the direct path, arrived safely in London.'And in the spirit of intertextuality which I invoked last week, I find it fascinating to note that Gusman [sic] d'Alfarache is mentioned on page 268, and also on 273, as the hero of stories retold by Caleb.
Another initially superficial connexion of intertextuality might be made between this novel and Tom Jones in respect of the trials which are represented in the later novel. You will remember that on pages 73-77 Tyrrel has Hawkins's son brought to trial under the Black Act—young Hawkins having broken down the fences which Tyrrel had put up to prevent him from enjoying his previous traditional access to the road to town. Then there is Falkland's first trial on suspicion of Tyrrel's murder (pages 103-6): he is discharged, it is suggested by Collins, mainly because of effects of his discourse, his speech in his defence. Shortly afterwards '"… both Hawkins and his son were tried, condemned, and afterwards executed …'"—for the murder of Tyrrel (page 108). Then comes the trial of the peasant for murder, heard by Falkland himself. It is as a result of his observations of Falkland's reactions to the evidence that Caleb becomes convinced that he was the murderer of Tyrrel (pages 131-136). Caleb himself is brought before Forester to trial for the first time on a trumped-up charge of theft (pages 170-182). It is at his second appearance before a magistrate (pages 284-6) that he decides to inform on his master, but is ignored, mainly because of the difference in their status. As the magistrate says, ''There would be a speedy end to all order and good government, if fellows that trample upon ranks and distinctions in this atrocious sort were upon any consideration suffered to get off.'Caleb never sounds more like his creator, perhaps, than in his reaction: 'And this at last was the justice of mankind! … Six thousand a year shall protect a man from accusation; and the validity of an impeachment shall be superseded, because the author of it is a servant!' 'I saw my whole species [he goes on] as ready, in one mode or other, to be made the instruments of the tyrant.Finally (page 327), Caleb accuses Falkland to the chief magistrate and at the end of this, Falkland's second trial, he confesses, in effect, to the murder of Tyrrel.
A number of questions occur to me regarding all these trials. Why, do you think, there are so many, and why are they set out in such detail? An answer may be found in relation to the political context in which Godwin moved. What are the effects of the various speeches? And why does so much of the conduct of a given trial seem to depend on the mere appearance of the accused, as opposed to the importance of the facts of the case? At his first trial, for example, Caleb asserts with amazing naivety: 'It is in vain that circumstances are accumulated against me … I appeal to my looks—I appeal to every sentiment my tongue every uttered.'He appears to be suggesting that the court should disregard the evidence in favour of firstly what he looks like—presumably 'innocent,' and secondly the views that he is in the habit of expressing. Could such naivety have also been shared by William Godwin? There is some evidence in his letter to Joseph Gerrald that it was,as well as in the second, published ending of the novel, in which the formerly implacable and unfeeling Falkland is swayed simply by the rhetoric of clever Caleb: 'He saw my sincerity; he was penetrated with my grief and compunction. He rose from his seat, supported by the attendants, and—to my infinite astonishment—threw himself into my arms! "Williams," said he, "you have conquered." I see too late the greatness and elevation of your mind.'
I turn now to more profound thematisations, as suggested firstly by the mature reflections of Vijay Mishra in the 'lecture' for this week.
One of the problems with reading Vijay's book, as we do, only in selected chapters, is that we do not have the first chapter which presumably contains definitional material, including a definition of what he means not only by 'Gothic' but also by 'sublime'. However, I think it's gradually becoming clearer as we read this chapter, where he writes that it is a 'moment of irrationality [which is] constitutive of the experience of the sublime' (57), and in which he defines the sublime as 'the momentary loss of the law of reason and analysis.' (59) He quotes Caleb himself as giving something close to Kant's definition of the sublime, when he writes that 'Mr Falkland had always been to my imagination an object of wonder, and that which excites our wonder we scarcely suppose ourselves competent to analyse.'
The quotation that Maurice Hindle gives us in his Introduction from a contemporary of Godwin's I also find illuminating in this context. Hindle writes of the 'psychological thrill' experienced by people like Elizabeth Inchbald, who writes to Godwin that his second volume is 'sublimely horrible—captivatingly frightful (ix).' This may be hard for us to imagine experiencing now (it is at least for me) : but there you go. We've been concentrating so far on the Gothic as being mostly concerned with spatio-temporal aspects of the relevant novels, and these are not absent from Things As They Are. Consider, for example, Caleb's 'terrible imaginations' about incarceration, even before he is taken to prison for the first time. 'I seemed as if conducting to one of those fortresses, famed in the history of despotism [and also in Gothic writing], from which the wretched victim is never known to come forth alive; and when I entered my chamber, I felt as if I were entering a dungeon.'Consider also his choice of a place in Wales in which to rusticate: 'The face of nature around it was agreeably diversified, being partly wild and romantic, and partly rich and abundant in production.'
But there is also the potential emotional effect of the Gothic to be taken into account, and much of that effect, Vijay is arguing, may be understood as the invocation of the sublime, in the sense of giving the impression of something powerful which is not susceptible of rational explanation, which takes the participant outside of him or herself, into an ecstatic frame of mind, in the sense of the etymological origin—from the Greek ek-stasis: 'standing outside oneself.' So Meyer Abrams writes of Gothic novelists that '… their principal aim was to evoke chilling terror by exploiting mystery, cruelty …' [19] 'Terror [in fact] was the order of the day,' writes William Godwin in his 1795 Preface.
For Hindle, the Gothic is essentially caught by the depiction of Falkland as Gothic villain,and he quotes, from page 150, Falkland saying: "You little suspect the extent of my power … You might as well think of escaping from the power of the omnipresent God, as from mine!"
[And Caleb is shocked into sublime silence:] 'My whole soul revolted against the treatment I endured, and yet I could not utter a word. Why could not I speak the expostulations of my heart, or propose the compromise I meditated?'
This identification of the institutional power of the Squire Falkland with the power of God recurs, as in this passage from page 249: 'Did his power reach through all space, and his eye penetrate every concealment? Was he like that mysterious being, to protect us from whose fierce revenge mountains and hills, we are told, might fall on us in vain?' [But it is really God Win, of course, who is the jealous God of the fictional universe of Things As They Are.]
I think that possibly the best example of the expression of the sublime in Caleb Williams is to be found in the moment when Caleb expresses his reaction to his conviction that Falkland was the killer of Tyrrel.
'"This is the murderer [he writes]; the Hawkinses were innocent! I am sure of it! I will pledge my life for it! It is out! It is discovered! Guilty, upon my soul!"' [That's six exclamation marks in a row! And he continues thus.]
'While I thus proceeded with hasty steps along the most secret paths of the garden, and from time to time gave vent to the tumult of my thoughts in involuntary exclamations, I felt as if my animal system had undergone a total revolution. My blood boiled within me. I was conscious to a kind of rapture for which I could not account. I was solemn, yet full of rapid emotion, burning with indignation and energy. In the very tempest and hurricane of the passions, I seemed to enjoy the most soul-ravishing calm. I cannot better express the then state of my mind than by saying, I was never so perfectly alive as at that moment.'
In a Gothic evocation of Falkland late in the narrative, he is presented, not in the context of divine power, but rather of the opposite, but the effect he has on Caleb is again represented as sublime. 'The figure and appearance of Mr Falkland, his death-like weakness and decay, his more than mortal energy and rage, the words that he spoke, the motives that animated him, produced one compounded effect upon my mind that nothing of the same nature could ever parallel. The idea of his misery thrilled through my frame. How weak in comparison of it is [295] the imaginary hell, which the great enemy of mankind is represented as carrying every where about with him!'
And now for something completely different: narrative situation. Caleb Williams is a particularly interesting case, in that the author tells us that he made a change at an early stage from third to first persons. Why the change? He tells us in 1832 Preface that it was 'the best adapted … where the thing … was the analysis of the private and internal operations of the mind.' But is this always the case—if ever? And does it justify the limitations which the autobiographical framework imposes? It certainly does not work the other way around, in the sense that use of the first person necessarily implies the analysis of the private and internal operations of the mind—as we have seen in the early picaresque. And what is there to prevent the novelist from using an omniscient situation to represent whatever she wishes about her characters' internal carryings-on? As Godwin himself writes of 'the writer of romance' (by which we should understand 'the novelist'): 'He [sic] must be permitted, we should naturally suppose, to understand the character which is the creature of his [sic] own fancy.'And he or she can 'understand' that character to whatever depth is required, as we shall see later in this course. Perhaps the important point is not so much in the narrative situation as in the psychological interest which this novelist displays—as Godwin writes—in 'employing my metaphysical dissecting knife in tracing and laying bare the involutions of motive, and recording the gradually accumulating impulses which led the personages I had to describe primarily to adopt the particular way of proceeding in which they afterwards embarked.' Godwin's interest is in trying to set out what are the motives for his two central characters, and whereas on the one hand the intention is towards full disclosure at any given moment of the contents of Caleb's consciousness, on the other there is a desire to maintain a degree of mystery about the states of mind of Falkland, although they are revealed when the time comes.
Which brings me briefly to the topic of suspense. How is suspense created and maintained in Caleb Williams to obtain that 'psychological thrill' that may have been experienced by people like Elizabeth Inchbald? Whenever I bring up this topic I mention the subtitle of a book by David Rabkin. The book is called Narrative Suspense and its 'subtitle' is When Slim Turned Sideways. Need I tell you that there is no easy way to find out why the book has this subtitle (unless of course someone like me tells you): it keeps the reader in suspense until the last page, when it is finally revealed what happened 'When Slim Turned Sideways:' 'He Disappeared.' This is just a joke, of course, but a pleasant way to start thinking about how suspense works, in terms of rhetoric and structure. And in leaving the question of suspense in Caleb Williams with you—I'll leave both of you in suspense.
Coming to the central concern of the course now, I put to you the question of the mode of realism within which Caleb Williams functions. Do you think William Godwin employs a higher or lower degree of 'formal realism' than Henry Fielding in Tom Jones? Has much changed in the fifty years between the two novels? Does Things As They Are employ about the same degree of particularity with regard to the detail of the characterisation and the evocation of time and place? What is the effect on the realism-effect of the elevated Latinate style, the poor motivation of much of the action, and the number of coincidences that the plot relies on?
Taking up the last part of the question, I'll draw your attention to a few of the coincidences I've noticed—which I suspect are only a small proportion. Falkland appears, for example, at the very moment when Caleb opens the fateful trunk, which crops up reliably, when required, at regular intervals. This is on the occasion of the fire in the chimney.I suppose it is only to be expected that he would appear then, though, as it is tit for tat, Caleb having turned up in the early pages of the novel when Ferdinando was inspecting something mysterious in his trunk.On the earlier occasion Caleb tells us that he 'intended only to put anything in order that he might find out of place.'If Godwin's mind were more complex and his novel more subtle it might be interesting to speculate on the paradox and perhaps contradictions in possible meanings of Caleb, the character who stands for natural virtue, coming to tidy up Falkland, the character who stands for the artificial order of society, the character who is only too much in place and needs to be put out of it. You might like to consider how other aspects of the novel work in relation to this thematic situation: it often seems to me that the structuring of Godwin's narrative tends to support what he is ostensibly criticising. On the later occasion of 'discovery at the trunk' Caleb has been led thither by a more characteristic and less responsible Gothic motivation: 'my steps by some mysterious fatality were directed to the private apartment at the end of the library. Here, as I looked round [not worrying unduly about the whole building burning down], my eye was suddenly caught by the trunk mentioned in the first pages of my narrative.'That's a lot of coincidences one after another: the fire, the absence of Falkland and of Collins, the 'fatality' directing Caleb's steps, and so on. 'I know not what infatuation instantaneously seized me,' writes Caleb, obviously unaware of his creator's claims of 'employing [his] metaphysical dissecting knife in tracing and laying bare the involutions of motive.' The only motive truly apparent is that of bringing the two key characters once again into confrontation.
It has been claimed that Caleb is the 'first important detective in English fiction.' [32] But for a novel to be detective fiction, there must be a puzzle the solution of which takes up the greater part of the energy of the narrative, and all the pieces have to be discovered to fit. Consider then the central whodunnit question in this novel: who killed Tyrrel, why and with what. The novel is 337 pages long in the Penguin edition: the questions are posed on page 100, and answered on 141-2. Except for the question as to how the Hawkins father and son got involved. Godwin plants the evidence on them, but can't be bothered thinking of any kind of a reason. Once again he appeals to the Gothic, in Falkland's would-be explanation: 'Whence came the circumstantial evidence against him, the broken knife and the blood, I am unable to tell. I suppose, by some miraculous accident …' Another coincidence.
Then in pages 152-161 there are more coincidences: Caleb finds Forester by accident, and Falkland finds them together. 'Without the smallest notice, and as if he had dropped upon us from the clouds, Mr Falkland burst into the room.'In a sense he has dropped upon us from the clouds—as a deus ex machina—though not to tie up the plot, but to complicate it. On page 243 Caleb sees Falkland's carriage by coincidence. In pages 272-3 Gines by coincidence visits his brother who tells him about the Jew (Caleb in one of his many disguises), which leads to the discovery of Caleb. Laura Denison's father of page 304 knew the Malvesi of page 13. On page 317 Caleb meets Collins by chance. And so on. Add your own favourites.
A more fruitful topic to pursue in Caleb Williams, I believe is that of the function of writing. There are several levels at which I would like to deal with this. Firstly, at the level of what film critics call the 'diegesis', and what we might call the 'action' (we used to call it the 'plot'), it is amusing to read of Caleb trying to make a living by writing, especially when he tries his hand at picaresque narrative (pages 266-273). You have probably already noticed that writers often write about writers—it's what they know most about. And so you won't be surprised to find Pierre Glendinning turning his hand to this mode of earning a living, just as Herman Melville and William Godwin have done before. We may presume, I suppose, that we are learning from these pages something historically accurate about writing and publishing in the late eighteenth century. It is often said that reading novels is one of the better ways of learning history, an idea on which I believe another course in this Programme, H238 European Literature and Social Context, depends.
At another level, a writing-function is given as the original motivation for the existence of the novel. I have already quoted the narrator's stated reason for 'the penning of these memoirs.' And as the novel draws to a close, the purpose of writing it is now even more clear: 'I will unfold a tale! … I will tell a tale‑‑!' writes Caleb hysterically. 'These papers shall preserve the truth; they shall one day be published, and then the world shall do justice on us both. … With this engine, this little pen, I defeat all his machinations; I stab him in the very point he was most solicitous to defend!' He has written, he claims, 'a faithful narrative.' This is writing as power, as in Dangerous Liaisons, although here not also in a sexualised context.
At another level again, and considering the work as a whole, as one piece of writing, as Vijay does through much of his lecture, we are thinking firstly of the novel as William Godwin's 'hideous progeny' (his daughter's term for her first novel, you will recall; Godwin's term for his is 'this mighty trifle') in relation to the events of his life—and to what he himself made of it—the work, not the life; and secondly of the insertion of this particular narrative into the intertext firstly of the Gothic novel/romance and then into the whole context of the novel. Which I guess is a good moment for me to stop, having explained very little, but I hope having put some questions which it might be useful for you to consider in the next few days, the last one of which is, then: where does this piece of writing, Things As They Are, relate to the intertextual field that constitutes H229 Narrative Fiction I as a small subset of The Novel?
1 Godwin, William 1988 [1794], Things As They Are: or The Adventures of Caleb Williams, ed. with intro. by Maurice Hindle, Penguin: 6.
2 Godwin 1988: 5.
3 Crane, R. S. 1961 [1952], The concept of plot and the plot of Tom Jones, [originally in] Critics and Criticism: Ancient and Modern, University of Chicago Press, 1952; selections reprinted as 'The concept of plot,' in Robert Scholes, ed. Approaches to the Novel: Materials for a Poetics, Chandler, Scranton: 233-243; this quotation: 239.
4 Godwin 1988: 320.
5 Godwin 1988: 182.
6 Godwin 1988: 264.
Godwin 1988: 264.
Godwin 1988: 262.
Godwin 1988: 286.
Godwin 1988: 287.
Godwin 1988: 327-336.
Godwin 1988: 175.
Godwin 1988: 355-8.
Godwin 1988: 335.
15 Mishra, Vijay 1994, '8. William Godwin: Caleb Williams,' in H229 Narrative Fiction I: Study Guide and Course Materials, Murdoch University, Perth: 57, 59.
Godwin 1988: 307.
Godwin 1988: 157.
Godwin 1988: 299.
19 Abrams, M. H. 1971, A Glossary of Literary Terms, third edition, Holt, Rinehart & Winston, New York: 69.
Godwin 1988: 4.
21 Hindle, Introduction, in Godwin 1988: xviii.
Godwin 1988: 150.
Godwin 1988: 249.
Godwin 1988: 135.
Godwin 1988: 294-5.
Godwin 1988 [1832]: 351.
Godwin 1988: 272.
Godwin 1988: 137-8.
Godwin 1988: 9-10.
Godwin 1988: 9.
Godwin 1988: 137.
32 Ousby, Ian 1976, Bloodhounds of Heaven: The Detective in English Fiction from Godwin to Doyle, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass.: 20; so cited in Hindle 1988: x.
Godwin 1988: 141.
Godwin 1988: 155, emphasis added.
Godwin 1988: 325.
Godwin 1988: 326.
37 Preface to Fleetwood, 1832, as cited by Mishra 1994: 53.
Garry Gillard | New: 16 January, 2018 | Now: 20 December, 2018