Perhaps the most inane thing ever put forth in the name of literature is
the so-called domestic novel, an indigestible, culinary sort of product,
that might be named the doughnut of fiction. The usual apology for it is
that it depicts family life with fidelity. Its characters are supposed
to act and talk as people act and talk at home and in society. I trust
this is a libel, but, for the sake of the argument, suppose they do. Was
ever produced so insipid a result?
The characteristics which are prominent, when we think of our recent
fiction, are a wholly unidealized view of human society, which has got
the name of realism; a delight in representing the worst phases of social
life; an extreme analysis of persons and motives; the sacrifice of action
to psychological study; the substitution of studies of character for
anything like a story; a notion that it is not artistic, and that it is
untrue to nature, to bring any novel to a definite consummation, and
especially to end it happily; and a despondent tone about society,
politics, and the whole drift of modern life. Judged by our fiction, we
are in an irredeemably bad way.
The vulgar realism in pictorial art, which holds ugliness and beauty in
equal esteem; or against aestheticism gone to seed in languid
affectations; or against the enthusiasm of a social life which wreaks its
religion on the color of a vestment, or sighs out its divine soul over an
ancient pewter mug.
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