Two Principles in Recent American Fiction

I.

NOT very long ago, — some twentyfive or thirty years, — there reached our fiction a creative movement that must be identified as a wave of what is known in the art of the world as the Feminine Principle. But what are three essential characteristics of the Feminine Principle wherever and whenever it may have made its appearance as a living influence in a living literature ? They are Refinement, Delicacy, Grace. Usually, and markedly in the case now to be considered, it will put forth three other characteristics, closely akin to the foregoing and strictly deducible from them : Smallness, Rarity, Tact.

Each of these two groups of characteristics applies to the Feminine Principle in determining the material it shall choose no less than the methods it shall employ upon the material it may have chosen. Thus, whenever a writer has passed under its control, and, being so controlled, begins to look over human life for the particular portion of truth that he shall lay hold upon as the peculiar property of his art, he invariably selects the things that have been subdued by refinement, the things that have been moulded by delicacy, the things that invite by grace, the things that secrete some essence of the rare, the things that exhibit the faultless circumspection toward all the demeanors of the world that make up the supremely feminine quality of tact. And when, having chosen any or all of these things, he thereupon looks within himself for some particular method to which they shall be mated during transformation from the loose materials of life to the constructive materials of his art, he invariably and most reasonably selects the method that answers to them as their natural counterpart: that is, to things refined he will apply only a method of refinement, to things delicate a method of delicacy ; he will treat with grace the things that are graceful, he will invest things minute with their due minuteness ; what is rare he will not despoil of its rarity, in what is tactful he will preserve the fitting tact. The Feminine Principle, then, is twofold in its operation and significance : it is a law of selection, it is a law of treatment. Like the real Woman it is, if it once be allowed to have its will, it must have its way.

Having thus reached our literature as a tidal wave might reach the coast of our country, it proceeded to spread abroad this law of choice and this law of method. It brought certain American novelists and short-story writers of that day under its domination, and they, being thus dominated, at once began to lay sympathetic fingers on certain refined fibres of our civilization, and to weave therefrom astonishingly refined fabrics ; they sought the coverts where some of the more delicate elements of our national life escaped the lidless eye of publicity, and paid their delicate tributes to these ; on the clumsy canvases of our tumultuous democracy they watched to see where some solitary being or group of beings described lines of living grace, and with grace they detached these and transferred them to the enduring canvases of letters ; they found themselves impelled to look for the minute things of our humanity, and having gathered these, to polish them, carve them, compose them into minute structures with minutest elaboration ; they were inexorably driven across wide fields of the obvious in order to reach some strip of territory that would yield the rare ; and while doing all things else, they never omitted from the scope of their explorations those priceless veins of gold from which human nature perpetually adorns itself for the mere comity of living.

When this law of selection and this law of method had been rigorously enforced for some years, the result declared itself in a body of American novels and short stories, — quite definite, quite new, quite unlike anything we had produced before, and to us of quite inestimable value. In the main and for a while the world of critics and the world of readers were surprised, were delighted, were grateful, — though perhaps never grateful enough. Here, beyond question, was a literature of the imagination that embodied certain fixed, indispensable elements of our common humanity ; here was a literature that embodied certain fresh and characteristic elements of our New World ways ; and here, whether concerning itself about the one or about the other, here was a literature that held itself fast, and that held us fast, to those primary standards of good taste, good thought, and good breeding which we can no more afford to do without in our novels than we can afford to do without them in our lives.

But for the reason that the work of the Feminine Principle is always definite in any art, and was very definite here, it was of necessity so far partial, so far inadequate and disappointing, when viewed as a full portrayal of American civilization ; and very soon, therefore, this department of our fiction began to encounter, and more and more to provoke, that temper of dissatisfaction with which the human spirit must in the end regard every expression of itself that is not complete. Any complete expression of itself in any art the human spirit can of course never and nowhere have. The very law of its own existence is the law of constant growth and change, so that what is most true of it to-day will be most false tomorrow. But though doomed never to attain anything like complete expression, it is none the less doomed forever to strive toward it; and thus its entire history throughout the centuries behind us is a long restless passage from one art to another art, and within each art from one phase of that art to another phase of that art, — always disappointed of entire selfrealization, yet always hoping for the full peace of the millennial ages.

This universal, this eternal, this perfectly natural temper of dissatisfaction, having turned upon the operations of the Feminine Principle in our fiction and upon the works it had produced, began to discredit them for what they were never meant to be, to upbraid them for the lack of what they could not possibly contain. Refinement, it objected, is a good quality as far as it goes ; but if you left out of American fiction everything that was not refined, you left out most of the things of value that were truly American. Delicacy, — yes ; but there was something better than delicacy, — Strength. Grace, — true ; yet of how little value are things graceful, in the United States, as compared with a thousand and one that are clumsy or misshapen, but that are vital ! The little things of our human nature and of our national society, — are they to be preferred to the large things ? As for the rare, give us rather the daily bread of the indispensable. And regarding the matter of tact, — that ceaseless state ol being on guard, of holding one’s self in and holding one’s self back, and of seeing that not a drop overflows the artistic banks, — have done with it and away with it! Let us try for a while the literary virtues and the literary materials of less self-consciousness, of larger selfabandonment, and thus impart to our fiction the free, the uncaring, the tremendous fling and swing that are the very genius of our time and spirit.

Dropping for a moment the subject of this plea and of this reaction, and returning to the further consideration of the work of the Feminine Principle, the writer is of the opinion that it wrought for American literature at least one service to be universally acknowledged as of the highest value. Out of those same characteristics, — out of all that delicacy, that refinement, that grace, that minute and patient and loving toil over little things, that sense of rarity and that sense of tact, —out of all these things valued as standards and as ends, the Feminine Principle became for us, as a nation of imaginative writers, the beneficent Mother of Good Prose.

Before it began its work, the literature of our fiction was well - nigh barren of names that stood accepted both at home and abroad as those of masters of style. There was Irving, there was Hawthorne, there was Poe : who, with the assurance that his claim would everywhere pass unchallenged, could add to these a fourth? More significant still, there prevailed no universal either conscious or unconscious recognition of style as an attainment vitally inseparable from the writing of any acceptable American short story or any acceptable American novel. Now, on the contrary, it is not too much to say that whether or not any new master of style has been produced by this movement, there is absolutely no abiding-place in the literature of our country for an author of indifferent prose. All the most successful writers of our day, whether viewed together as a generation, or viewed apart as the adherents of especial schools, have at least this in common : that they have carried their work to its high and uniform plane of excellence mainly by reason of the high and uniform excellence of their workmanship. And if there is anywhere in this land any youthful aspirant who may be tripping it joyously, carelessly, from afar toward our national Temple of Letters, let him understand in advance that if he will not consent to learn first of all things the sacred use of language as masterfully as a painter learns the sacred use of brush and pigment, or a sculptor the sacred use of chisel and marble, or a violinist the sacred use of strings, there will be no possible entrance, no possible audience, for him. He may, indeed, be listened to on the outside of the walls by many loiterers, merely for what he has to say and for the caprice or amusement of the hour ; but he will not be greatly respected even by these, and very soon he will most surely be forgotten.

There can be no doubt that this great change, this widespread development among us of the purely artistic appreciation of literature in its form and finish, has been directly and indirectly the work of the Feminine Principle ; and while, therefore, some may choose to decry the substance of the whole movement on account of its polishing and adornment of the little things of life, — little ideas, little emotions, little states of mind and shades of feeling, climaxes and dénouements, little comedies and tragedies played quite through or not quite played through by little men and women on the little stages of little playhouses, — it is but fair, it is but reasonable, to remember that this same Age of the Carved Cherry-Stones brought in the taste and the patience to do so much with so little, and to do it with such high art ; introduced into the literature of our impatient Western world of to-day the conscientiousness of the Oriental and of the mediaeval craftsman, firing us to finish the work behind the altar as the work before the altar, the point of deepest shadow as the point of highest light; in a word, established among us the reign — may it be long and prosperous ! — the reign and the national era of adequate prose. However wisely or unwisely, therefore, the scoffer may repudiate the material embodied in this department of our fiction, he will at least not deny that it is well written. It is a shapely, highly wrought drinking - cup, although to one the cup may be empty, although another may not care for its wine. Or if the historian of our literature should hereafter come severely to regard it as but a thin moss which served rather to hide the deep rocks of American character, still he will never be able to deny that the moss was a natural, a living verdure, and that it grew thriftily and fitly wherever it was planted.

II.

No undue conclusion should be drawn from all this as to the passing of the Feminine Principle ; fortunately, it still remains an active tendency in one part of our fiction. But the contention here put forth is that, as respects the choice and the handling of material, this principle has for the time ceased to be the governing influence to which the mind of the nation once looked most curiously and expectantly for the further development of American letters. Some thirty years ago it entered upon its solitary course. It has described its path, it has closed its orbit. It may continue to traverse this curve, it may describe again and again this beautiful orbit, but the eye refuses to follow it with the same zest of discovery or with the same accession of fascinating knowledge.

Meantime, a novelty has made its appearance among us, and the curiosity, the enthusiasm, and the faith of the nation stand ready to be transferred to it. This stranger, this new favorite, approaches us under the guise of what is known in the art of the world as the Masculine Principle.

Before any attempt can be made to trace this obscure presence and as yet most dubious influence in our recent fiction, it will be well to state as clearly as brevity will permit what are three essential characteristics of the Masculine Principle, and what are the three relations any one of which it may sustain to the Feminine.

These characteristics are Virility as opposed to Refinement, Strength as opposed to Delicacy, Massiveness as opposed to Grace. Usually during the course of its operations three other qualities become disengaged, closely akin to those just mentioned and strictly deducible from them: Largeness as opposed to Smallness, Obviousness as opposed to Rarity, Primary or Instinctive Action as opposed to Tact, which is always Secondary or Premeditated Action: and all these things are true of this principle whether it be regarded as a law determining the choice of material, or as a law determining the choice of method. Thus, whenever and wherever a writer in any age or civilization has been brought under the sway of the Masculine Principle, whether by virtue of his own temperament, or by race or environment, or by any or all of these combined, and being thus swayed looks out upon life for the things wherefrom he shall fabricate his peculiar creations, always and primarily he chooses the Virile,. — those life-holding, life-giving forces of the universe which scatter abroad and perpetuate the forms of leadership and of mastery ; the Strong, — those types that represent both the dynamic builders and the static pillars by whose hands are fashioned and on whose shoulders rest the foundations and roofs of things ; the Massive, — the bulk and weight of which, not the fibre and shape, are the properties he demands and must consider ; the Large, — in the survey and grasp of which the imagination may realize at once the triumph of its capabilities and the pathos of its limitations ; the Obvious, — those outer and inner elements of experience that beleaguer sadly our common lot, or that attend as a gay pageant upon the issues of our destiny ; the Instinctive, — those primitive impulses, actions, passions, that lie always close to the beating of the heart and the action of the muscles. Having chosen any or all of these things for his materials, as regards his methods he will need only to match worthily kind with kind.

Such, then, being the main characteristics of the Masculine Principle, what are the three relations any one of which it may possibly hold to the Feminine ? First, it may make its appearance in any literature — for let the illustration be narrowed to literature — before the Feminine, and be followed by the Feminine as a reaction pledged to accomplish what it did not; secondly, it may make its appearance after the Feminine, becoming itself, in this case, the reaction pledged to accomplish what the Feminine did not; or thirdly, it may make its appearance at the same time as the Feminine, and the two may either work against each other as enemies, or work with each other as friends.

The last situation is most seldom realized. Most rare, most happy the land, happy the people, in which it has been witnessed. To one race alone on our planet has it been given to celebrate the ideal nuptials of this mighty pair, and afterwards to dwell surrounded by the offspring of their perfectly blended powers, — the Greeks. In Greek art alone, in its sculpture, in its literature, virility and refinement achieved and maintained a perfect balance. There strength was made to gain by reason of delicacy, and delicacy to be founded on strength. There the massive could be graceful, and the graceful could be massive. There the obvious was so ennobled that it became the rare, and the rare was revealed in lineaments so essential to the human soul that it was hailed as the obvious. There the smallest things of life were so justly valued that they grew large to the eye and heart, and the largest things — even the divinest images of the imagination — were brought down to the plane of the little and became the every-day treasures of the humble. There instinct and tact, all the primary elements of life and all the secondary elements of culture, — the low earth of humanity and the high heaven of thought, — were presented each in its due relation, as naturally as the ground in a landscape stretches itself under the sky, or the sky stretches itself above the ground.

Outside the Greeks, no race has ever known what it is to celebrate a perfect union of the Masculine and Feminine Principles in its art. Without a doubt some races have always been preponderantly masculine in their genius, and their masterpieces have been widely and deeply stamped with the evidences of this bias; other races have as surely been rather feminine in their genius, with a prevalence of corresponding æsthetic expression. In yet others, whose history lies revealed as drawn unbrokenly across many centuries, these two mighty tendencies exhibit themselves on a vast scale of operation, as by turn succeeding each other, and as accomplishing, either alone or together, but a partial work.

Of this kind is the imperfect art history of our own Anglo-Saxon race; for be its limitations what they may, it has never proposed to itself any lesser end than to conquer and occupy the whole realm of mortal art for the heritage of its spirit, as it has resolved to win the entire earth for the measure of its strength. It has never thus far achieved such a triumph in any art but one, nor in the case of any man but one. On the throne of that universe which was Shakespeare’s mind these two august principles sat side by side as coequal sovereigns, entitled each to rule over half a realm, but consenting both to rule each half conjointly. His art came thus to include all that is most feminine in woman, all that is most masculine in man. For the first time in the literature of the Anglo-Saxon race, and possibly for the last, perfect virility and perfect refinement, strength and delicacy, massiveness and grace, things the vastest and things the most minute, things close to the common eye and things drawn for an instant into the remotest ether of human ken, the deepest bases of life and the loftiest insubstantial pinnacles of cloudlike fancy, — each of these old pairs of artistic opposites, which were lashed together in friendliness, but have so lived at variance, laid aside their enmity, and wrought each for the good of the other, and each for the good of all.

Shakespeare excepted, what man or woman can be named, in the imaginative literature of the race, whose genius has not been masculine rather than feminine, or feminine rather than masculine, and whose writings do not fall mainly on the one side or the other side of this line of vital classification ? Is it not true, likewise, of the definite movements or schools or ages in the history of our racial literature, that each represents the temporary supremacy of one of these principles rather than the other, or the clash and inadequate expression of both ?

III.

In the opinion of the writer, then, the peculiar state of American fiction at the present time is due to the fact that it is passing through one of those intervals which separate the departing supremacy of one principle from the approaching supremacy of the other.

During such intervals — such interregna of both critical authority and creative obedience — there are two phases of activity by which the change of dynasty is always effected. The first of these is a destructive work: it sums up those evidences of impatience, displeasure, and revolt — all the injustice and unkindness — with which the latest ruler is overturned and banished. The second is a constructive work : it sums up those signs and preparations of approval with which the coming sovereign is to be received. If our existing literary situation is closely analyzed, it will be found to comprise exactly these two components, these two phases of activity.

As to the first, reference has already been made to a general and ever growing temper of dissatisfaction with the operations of the Feminine Principle in our fiction and with the works it has produced. If we state in its most radical form the substance of the protest, we conceive it to be as follows : —

“You American novelists and shortstory writers, as the result of following the leadership of this principle, have succeeded in producing a literature of what kind? Of effeminacy, of decadence. Folin the main it is a literature of the overcivilized, the ultra - refined, the hyperfastidious ; of the fragile, the trivial, the rarefied, the bloodless. All your little comedies and tragedies, played through or not played through by little actors and actresses on the little stages of little playhouses, — what do they amount to in the end ? What kind of men are these, what kind of women ? Gather this entire body of your fiction into one library, and what adequate relation does it bear in its totality to the drama of the AngloSaxon race in its civilization of the New World ? Or what satisfying relation to the human soul, which more and more looks to literature for delight and guidance in its present, for wisdom and consolation as to its past, for the fresh wings of hope and faith on which to breast evermore its viewless future ?

“ And meantime what has become of the greater things of our land, of our race, of our humanity ? The greater actions and passions and ideals, the greater comedies and tragedies played by greater men and women on the greater stages of the greater playhouses of the imagination ? Henceforth, for a while, at least, we will work to embody these in the literature of our country, our race, our destiny.”

Such is the protest: he who has not heard it of late in some form, in many forms, has had no ear for the decisive voices of his time. But what is this protest, with its ingratitude, its unfairness, its forgetfulness of genuine services otherwise rendered, — what is this new cry but the old, old cry with which the human spirit has time and again turned away from the Feminine Principle, having tried it and found it wanting, and taken up the Masculine Principle which promises it completer self-liberation ?

If, on the other hand, we consider the remaining phase of our transitional activity, that second component of our literary situation which is made up of pledges of allegiance to the new tendency, we shall come upon something more significant still; for we shall discover that these pledges already lie embodied in our latest fiction itself.

Entering upon this subject of our latest fiction as a whole, we shall readily note that it consists of a certain miscellaneous portion, which cannot be said to lie within any zone of tendency whatever ; and this, as foreign to the immediate purpose in hand, may be at once and finally disregarded. Then there is a second portion, which continues on and on under the leadership of the Feminine Principle ; and this is likewise to be set aside. But finally there is a third portion, which does lie within a definite zone of tendency, yet does not fall under the leadership of the Feminine Principle ; and it is this that we are now to study, as containing the germs of our future development, as exhibiting already the earliest buds of tendency.

At first glance, it is true, this third portion does not appear to reveal any prevalent characteristics or to be susceptible of classification. It has sprung up quite naturally and unconsciously in unrelated parts of the nation as independent centres ; it continues no artistic traditions; it has no common subject matter ; it has no common form ; it ranges in scope from a short story to a full-sized novel; in method it is either realistic or romantic ; while as to personal leadership, alas, it is like a flock of sheep without a shepherd, a school of pupils without a master.

Upon a second and closer inspection, however, this part of our fiction does reveal a group of characteristics that give it a certain sameness of kind and definiteness of boundary. For one thing, it has lost something of the refinement of the older work. Beyond a doubt it is less delicate, less graceful. Nor does it give such heed to little things, fondle them with such patience and loving toil in order to make sure that they shall each be exquisitely polished, exquisitely mounted. It is less strenuous in its quest of the rare, less imperious in demand for mere quality. Withal, it is not so finely mannered, either, so held in and held down, so self-mastered, nor, as respects its materials, so precise and unrelaxed in its mastery of these. Finally, and in consequence, it is not so well written, the prose of it is not so good prose.

What do all these things denote in common if not a distinct falling away from devotion to the Feminine Principle ? What but a disposition to value as of less than prime importance the canons and standards of the preceding craftsmen? As respects those canons and standards, therefore, this newest body of our fiction is marked by a set of purely negative characteristics : it shows simply a lettingdown, a lessening, in respect to every artistic virtue that they have been upholding and magnifying as supreme.

A final and yet closer inspection of this same part of our literature reveals a second group of characteristics, not negative at all, — rather, most positive ; and it is these that constitute its last differentia, its true distinction. For there is in it, first of all, more masculinity and also more passion; and being at once more masculine and more passionate, it is more virile. Then, again, it is resolutely working for strength,—for strength as a quality freshly to be cultivated and achieved in our literature, freshly to be enjoyed; a present need, an everlasting stand-by. Quite as surely, also, it is bent upon treating its subjects rather in the rough natural mass than in graceful detail ; bent upon getting truth, or beauty, or whatever else may be wanted, from them as a whole, instead of stretching each particular atom on a graceful rack of psychological confession, and bending the ear close to catch the last faint whispers of its excruciating and moribund self-consciousness. It is striking out boldly for larger things,—larger areas of adventure, larger spaces of history, with freer movements through both : it would have the wings of a bird in the air, and not the wings of a bird on a woman’s hat. It reveals a disposition to place its scenery, its companies of players, and the logic of its dramas, not in rare, pale, half - lighted, dimly beheld backgrounds, but nearer to the footlights of the obvious. And if, finally, it has any one characteristic more discernible than another, it is the movement away from the summits of life downward toward the bases of life ; from the heights of civilization to the primitive springs of action ; from the thin-aired regions of consciousness which are ruled over by Tact to the underworld of unconsciousness where are situated the mighty workshops, and where toils on forever the cyclopean youth, Instinct.

It is by no means an easy matter, of course, to trace even thus imperfectly the evidences of all these things in this portion of our newest literature ; but certainly they are there, recognizable as the earliest buds of development, as a common growth toward the common light of a single tendency; and it is because, in the opinion of the writer, they do thus exhibit themselves in this common guise and do possess this common character, that he has ventured to gather them together as the first embodied pledges of our allegiance to the Masculine Principle.

If this reasoning be true and this conclusion just, then we are fairly in a position to understand exactly what stage we have reached in our literary evolution. There is, first, a miscellaneous portion of our fiction that does not contain or indicate any tendency at all; there is a second portion that continues its development under the leadership of the Feminine Principle ; and there is a third portion that constitutes our first literature of reaction, as a rise of another movement, a Masculine School. From this point of view, likewise, we should he in a position to watch henceforth with clearer understanding the reciprocal behavior of these two old artistic antagonists, now encountering each other among us. Will the one wane apart, fade out, disappear ? Will the other wax, become omnipresent, omniprevalent ? Or will they, as sometimes happens, will they later on haply and happily blend ? Can it be possible that we are on the verge of one of those most wideminded, peaceful eras of the imagination, during which it is granted these two principles to dwell together in unity, and to bring forth their doubly endowed children ?

Whatever the future may reveal in this regard, one thing has been made very clear to us by our present and by our past: we have never, as a nation, been able to handle the Masculine Principle alone in fiction with the same success that we have handled the Feminine ; and never with so much success as our kindred across the sea. Our best novels, our best short stories, are in the main an expression of feminine rather than of masculine genius, and bear the marks of the one rather than the other. That is, our consummate and most valued works of prose imaginative art are such by reason of their refinement, their delicacy, their grace, their slightness of compass and texture, their fineness of quality, and their subtlety of insight joined to exquisitely poised reflection, rather than by the tremendous vigor, the colossal strength, the nobler massiveness, the simple bigness in everything, the more palpable truth, and the deeper instinctive energy, on all which rest both the earliest and the latest masterpieces of masculine English fiction.

Among American books there may be found, of course, some novels of undoubted masculinity ; but the question is, To how many such novels can we point as taking high rank in our literature to the glory of our art? In how many memorable instances have we solved the problem of being at once wholly masculine and thoroughly artistic ?

It may well be, therefore, that we are now about to be tested, as never in the past, for our ability to wield with entire success this mighty principle in its solitary exercise. If so, the latest output of our masculine fiction does not yet bring us the comforting assurance that we have become its masters. For the admission must in candor be made that, on the score of art pure and simple, this is below the level of the feminine literature that lies just behind it. Furthermore, there can be no question that sometimes, in seeking to be virile, this literature has merely become vulgar; in seeking strength, it has acquired rather violence and coarseness. On the other hand, a woeful day it will be for us when the grace of the work of our predecessors becomes the tender grace of a day that is dead.

If, then, it should strangely turn out that we as a nation prove ourselves but poor artists in the mastery of all those qualities that underlie the fiction of distinctive masculinity, there could be no happier issue imaginable out of our discomfiture than that we should thus be thrown back upon the qualities of the feminine, and should be made to reconcile and to blend the two principles.

For they are not irreconcilable. In life there is no antagonism between virility and refinement, between strength and delicacy, as any gentleman may know. There is none between them in art, as the greatest art of the world will bear witness. In truth, what better conclusion could await this brief paper on so vast a theme than the actual citation of a newest piece of literature in which they should be exhibited as inseparably inwrought with perfect balance and perfect harmony ? The specimen that the writer ventures to introduce for this purpose is not, indeed, American ; it would be invidious if it were. Nor is it prose ; an illustration in prose would be too spacious. But it is all the better for being poetry, and for being the work of an Englishman, since he, among all young living writers of the Anglo-Saxon race, is believed to represent, both in his poetry and in his prose, the utmost expression of the Masculine Principle, and to stand to us in the New World as the authoritative exponent of its living tendency. But in this his very latest, probably his noblest and most enduring poetic achievement, Mr. Kipling has gone farther than that: he has interfused the Masculine with the Feminine; he has achieved a triumph through them both and for them both.

A faithful analysis of his remarkable poem, Recessional, is needed to confirm this with the force of a demonstration. It is virile, — nothing that he ever wrote is more so ; yet is refined, — as little else that he has ever written is. It is strong, but it is equally delicate. It is massive as a whole ; it is in every line just as graceful. It is large enough to compass the scope of British empire; it creates this immensity by the use of a few small details. It may be instantly understood and felt by all men in its obviousness; yet it is so rare that he alone of all the millions of Englishmen could even think of writing it. The new, vast prayer of it rises to the Infinite ; but it rises from the ancient sacrifice of a contrite heart.

James Lane Allen.