The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes
(1907–21).
Volume XIII. The Victorian Age, Part One.
XIV. George Meredith, Samuel Butler, George Gissing.
§ 20. Structure and style.
In structure,
Gissing looks back to the age of the three-volume novel; he uses at times,
but
impatiently
and not well, the old contrived plot, with melodramatic contretemps which
results
from hidden
wills, renounced legacies, forced coincidence and the like; his more characteristic
work takes
the form of studies, rather than tales, of the fates of two or three groups,
related by
marriage,
cousinship or occupation. Each section is dealt with in turn methodically
and
exhaustively;
but, partly through the consequent breaks in the narration and partly through
the
occasional
analytic stagnation, there is some loss of organic continuity; the form
is impressed
from without,
and too little shaped by forces within, the narrative; the characters are
hedged
about
by this absolute exclusion of vagrancy; poles apart from this method stands
such a book
as Dostöevsky’s
Brothers Karamazov, where the tale affects us like a continuous swirling
stream.
Gissing’s dialogue is apt to be bookish, and, though admirably representative
of
character,
it often fails to create illusion; there is an exception in his natural
unforced pathos. In
style,
though he is rather consciously literary, he is one of the few novelists
who add to the
worth
of words by the care with which they are used, and his best writing has
a rare rhythmical
grace
and variety. He was an eager student of the rhythm of classical verse as
well as of the
prose
of Landor and the poetry of Tennyson; in the later novels, his prose, always
pure and
finely
chosen, breaks into arresting and felicitous phrase, more often of pungent
than of
imaginative
quality.
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