British short fiction is generally ignored by
critics, even though several historians of the form have suggested that the
development of the short story in America in the early 19th century owes much
to generic forms predominant in England in the 18th century. For example, both Henry Seidel Canby and Fred
Lewis Pattee in their early 20th-century histories of the short story suggest
that Washington Irving's success was due as much to his use of 18th-century
English essay conventions as it was to his use of folklore material. Pattee even goes so far as to say that it is
precisely at the point in Irving's work "where in him the Addisonian
Arctic current was cut across by the Gulf Stream of romanticism that there was
born the American short story, a new genre, something distinctively and
unquestionably our own in the world of literature."
However, regardless of this debt the
19th-century short story may owe to English literature of the 18th century,
little has been done to establish the generic characteristics of English short
fiction during that period and to make clear the distinctive nature of those
few short fictions of the period that seem to serve as harbingers of the
blossoming of the short story yet to come.
The most familiar pre-19th-century English
short narrative is Daniel Defoe's "A True Relation of the Apparition of
One Mrs. Veal" (1706). In an era
that saw the development of the new realism and the rise of the novel that
dominated English fiction throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, this short
piece clearly indicates the separation between two basic forms of
fiction--narratives presented "as if" the events actually took place
and narratives presented as inventions or mental projections. "A True Relation" confronts the
issue of "fact" versus "fiction" so emphatically that it
can serve as a model for discussion of how short fiction begins to deal with
this combination of conventions.
At first, the piece was considered a
simple fabrication created by Defoe to advance the sale of a popular
theological work, Charles Drelincourt's On Death; and in fact the
"True Relation" was often appended to Drelincourt's work. From this point of view, Defoe's story can be
seen as a variant of the typical 18th-century narrative written to illustrate a
moral. Edward W. Pitcher has discussed the conventions of this "marriage
of realism to didacticism," pointing out how important it was for such
narratives in The Spectator to establish the credentials of the teller
and assure the reader that the events described actually took place.
However, the story has most often been
discussed as an early example of the kind of realistic conventions Defoe used
to help establish the novel as a viable narrative form. In the late 19th
century, Charles Stephens called "A True Relation" an illustration of
Defoe's typical fictional technique, the main merit of which, Stephens said, is
"in direct proportion to the intrinsic merit of a plain statement of
fact." Such has become the standard view of the piece. For example, Edward Wagenknecht, in his Cavalcade
of the English Novel, says with its use of "testimony skillfully
adduced, verisimilitude, corroborative and irrelevant detail, minute
particularity," the story "offers in miniature virtually all Defoe's
salient qualities, thus affording an excellent introduction to the study of his
technique." From this point of view, the story becomes interesting as an
exercise in verisimilitude, a footnote to the methods of the origins of the
realistic novel.
In addition to being cited as an early example
of the old moral tale and the new narrative of verisimilitude, "A True
Relation" has also been called an example of the gothic mode that began to
dominate English short fiction at the turn of the century. From this perspective, the piece is worth
considering for the manner in which it presents the kind of ghostly apparition
that before the 18th century might well have been accepted in folklore stories
as an article of belief. Thus, the story
attempts to validate what did not need to be validated before. As David Punter
notes, this is the typical structural tension of gothic fiction. On the one hand, because it rejects realism's
view of the world, it makes use of metaphoric and symbolic techniques, but on
the other hand because it does not wish to be regarded as mere fantasy, it
needs to establish its validity within the work itself, thus giving rise to
increasingly complex verification techniques.
Defoe tries to retain the antirealist significance of the old romance form within a culture in which the spiritual significance of the old legends, ballads, and folk-tales was no longer tenable. Modes of validation, such as the common 19th-century convention of presenting an eye-witness account, dominate the story. The eye-witness account, which the dramatized "author" can claim is "truth" because he is presenting it just as he received it, is complicated in "Mrs. Veal" because the piece includes both oral and written modes of discourse.
Defoe tries to retain the antirealist significance of the old romance form within a culture in which the spiritual significance of the old legends, ballads, and folk-tales was no longer tenable. Modes of validation, such as the common 19th-century convention of presenting an eye-witness account, dominate the story. The eye-witness account, which the dramatized "author" can claim is "truth" because he is presenting it just as he received it, is complicated in "Mrs. Veal" because the piece includes both oral and written modes of discourse.
"A True Relation" therefore
looks backward to the most traditional form of short narrative--the fable
presented to teach a moral lesson--and forward to the realistic story presented
for its own sake as an account of an actual event. To see it as the first kind of story is to
see it as being motivated primarily by the metaphoric significance of the moral
lesson in order to convince the reader of its spiritual truth. To see it as the second kind is to see it
motivated by metonymic detail for the purpose of convincing the reader of its
truth to physical reality. What makes
"A True Relation" historically interesting is that it foregrounds
this duality so emphatically.
The case is made even more engaging by the discovery that "A True
Relation" is not fiction at all, at least not in the sense that the events
are a fabrication, but rather a piece of journalism. Whether the actual event
of the apparition appearing to Mrs. Bargrave took place is unsure, but we do
know that Defoe interviewed a woman named Bargrave who supposedly was paid a
visit by her friend Mrs. Veal after her death.
With this information, the fact/fictionality issue takes on another
dimension and raises new issues.
The short preface to the story insists
that the "relation" is "matter of fact, and attended with such
circumstances as may induce any reasonable man to believe it." Indeed the basic issue here that separates
the story from earlier accounts of the supernatural is that it appeals to a
conviction governed by reason rather than a belief governed by superstition. The
eyewitness, Mrs. Bargrave, tells the story to a neighbor woman, who then tells
it to a kinsman, who then tells it to a justice of the peace, who writes it
down and sends it to a friend in London.
The narrative is thus filtered from the
eyewitness through two speakers and then two different writers who create and
transmit the manuscript. We are not told
whether the friend in London is the one who submits it to print or not. Both the neighbor woman "teller"
and the justice of the peace "writer" are attested to as intelligent
and discerning people, who present the story as being in the same words that
the neighbor woman had from Mrs. Bargrave's own mouth, "as near as may
be," and that Mrs. Bargrave had no reason to invent the story, being a
woman of honesty, virtue, and piety. The writer of the preface then insists
that the "use" to which we should put the "relation" is a conventional
moral one; that is, that there is life to come and a just God who will mete out
rewards and retribution; therefore, we should live in such a way that may be
pleasing to God.
Although Defoe did not invent the
ghostly encounter, he did invent the oral narrator, the neighbor woman who
supplies us with more information than about the encounter itself; and it is
this additional information that creates a context for the central event which
makes the issue of fact or fiction in the piece more interesting than simply
the fact or fiction of the apparition itself.
For example, the narrator tells
us that Mrs. Bargrave and Mrs. Veal are not only childhood friends, but that
they both had unkind fathers and that Mrs. Veal considers Mrs. Bargrave her
only friend in the world.
In addition, we are told that Mrs.
Bargrave has a wicked husband from whom she suffers and that Mrs. Veal is under
the care of a brother because she is given to fits that make her deviate
"from her discourses very abruptly to some impertinence." Because this information is not central to
the basic issue either of the truth of the story or the moral lesson, we may
take these details as either thematically "free" motifs, that is,
irrelevant except in terms of verisimilitude, or we may take them to be
thematically "bound" motifs, that is, relevant to the structure and
meaning of the story in a way that previous critics have ignored.
The nature of discourse is of course the
central subject of the story, not only in the conversation or discourse in
which Mrs. Veal engages with Mrs. Bargrave, but also in the contextual frame
story. In the actual encounter, Mrs.
Veal has Mrs. Bargrave run and fetch two kinds of discourse--first the copy of
Drelincourt's On Death, which they have read and discussed before, and
then some verses that Mrs. Bargrave has copied down in her own hand from Friendship
in Perfection. Mrs. Veal's own discourse is about discourse, for first she
talks about Drelincourt's book to comfort Mrs. Bargrave that her current
affliction under her wicked husband shall be removed from her in Heaven, and
then she talks about the writings of the "primitive Christians"
which, unlike the "frothy, vain discourse" of the current age, was
for edification. At this point there is
an abrupt shift from "heavenly" discourse to legal discourse--a
letter that Mrs. Veal wants Mrs. Bargrave to write to her brother, telling him
that she wishes certain rings and a purse of gold to be left to acquaintances. Mrs. Bargrave takes this shift to be a sign
of one of Mrs. Veal's fits coming on, for it indicates an abrupt transition
from the main train of the discourse to "an impertinence."
The "relation" of the actual visit and the discourse of Mrs.
Veal accounts for less than half the piece. The remainder deals with the
context. Thus, fully as much of the piece is about the telling of the story as
it is about the story itself. Therefore, it seems clear that the subject of the
story is not the "apparition" of Mrs. Veal, but the "relation"
of the apparition. First there is the
explicit question of the truth of Mrs. Bargrave's relation, which is questioned
by Mrs. Veal's brother, who insists that it is a "reflection." Although the meaning of this term is not
clear in the story, it seems to suggest the opposite of "true
relation," and therefore suggests the Lockean view that knowledge either
comes from sensation or from "reflection," that is, from the external
world or from the mind itself.
The narrator of the story is not content with
simply relating the event of the apparition; he spends much time both
justifying it and explaining it. For
example, Mrs. Veal's digression from her heavenly discourse to request the
bequeathing of certain items is accounted for by the narrator thus: "The
design of it appears to me to be only in order to make Mrs. Bargrave so to
demonstrate the truth of her appearance, as to satisfy the world of the reality
thereof as to what she had seen and heard...."
Moreover, the narrator does not believe
that Mrs. Bargrave could "hatch such an invention" in such a short
time, for she did not jumble the circumstances, nor did she have any interest
or thing to gain. The narrator ends her
relation by indicating that she has been much affected by the story and is
thoroughly convinced of its factual nature. As she points out, "why we
should dispute matter of fact because we cannot solve things of which we have
no certain demonstrative notions, seems strange to me. Mrs. Bargrave's
authority and sincerity alone would have been undoubted in any other
case."
"A True Relation" must be
taken in several different ways at once.
First of all, although it is presented as a moral tale, it is much more
detailed and specific than other "moral tales" or illustrative essays
of the early 18th century in which the sincerity of the teller alone was
sufficient to persuade the reader of the truth of the event. Furthermore, the event of the tale, which can
be taken as illustrative of the moral lesson of heavenly reward, is so
"extraordinary" and unusual because it involves accepting as truth
something that the reader's common sense and reason would deny. Thus, the story's truth does not depend on
reason, logic, and common sense, but rather on the specific detail of the
account itself. Mrs. Bargrave's ability
to specify what Mrs. Veal was wearing and to particularize the actual encounter
attests to its truth to the reader, just as her general sincerity attests to
its truth to the listener, the neighbor narrator.
It little matters, in terms of the
technique of the tale, whether the apparition actually appeared to Mrs.
Bargrave or not, nor does it matter that Defoe takes the incident from an
actual account by Mrs. Bargrave. What
does matter is the process by which the relation becomes a story. "A True Relation" becomes a story
through the dual means by which all accounts become stories--by being aware of
itself as "relation" rather than "event" and by being
unified or "held together" through repeated motifs that constitute
its theme, in this case the psychological theme of mental versus physical
events. This thematic content suggests
the basic dichotomy between events described as if they actually took place and
events presented as pure projections of the mind, that is, the dichotomy
between romance and realism. Whether an event actually took place or whether a
central character or narrator is "crazed" and has simply hallucinated
the event is one of the most common foregrounded concerns of short fiction in
the 19th century.
It is understandable why such a theme
would be more a concern in short fiction than in long fiction. The authority
for the event (for after all, short fiction usually presents "an
event" rather than an abstraction based on events) has been central to
short fiction since Boccaccio, the "truth" of whose tales was
predicated on the teller having heard them from someone else who attests to
their validity as having actually happened. Short fiction lies between the
romance convention of presenting marvelous events and the realistic convention of
presenting events as if they actually happened, even though the events
themselves depart from the ordinary course of things.
A story, to be a story, must be worth
the telling, says Thomas Hardy late in the 19th century. And the various justifications for what makes
a story worth telling has been a crucial issue in short fiction since tales
were worth telling because they had some "use" or because they
entertained by relating an event that broke up the ordinary course of things. "A True Relation of the Apparition of
One Mrs. Veal" raises all these issues in a particularly self-conscious
and foregrounded way and thus raises issues about the nature of discourse, the
modes of discourse, the uses of discourse, and the means of transmission of
discourse that dominate the short fiction form throughout the 19th
century.
What makes Defoe's piece a story is its
own foregrounded focus on itself as a "relation" of an event which
can be accounted for by the appeal both to the techniques of realism and the
thematics of romance, that is, by the presentation of an experience as being
both ambiguously actual event and a mental projection. This crucial ambiguity,
bound up in a tight thematic unity of interwoven motifs, characterizes the
stories of Hawthorne and Poe, commonly thought to mark the beginning of the
short story form.
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