Bernanos, Greene, and the Novel Convention

Abstract

The philosophical prestige of literature in our era has brought divergent world views to seek expression through the novel. When it is authentic to its own form, however, the novel rigorously implies a world view of its own. Formal integrity in the novel requires recognition that it is not performed as a drama, but narrated; the narrator (or third person viewpoint character, a projection of the narrative function) must be limited to what he can plausibly know or observe. The effect is to create a self-subsistent single character to whom all else in the novel is referred. This radical individuality will emerge in a well-made novel and conflict with any nonindividualist world view meant to be expressed. Obvious major cases in point are the socialist and Catholic novels. In this essay the tensions between form and world view in the latter are explored as an approach to understanding what the novel cannot be, and what it is. Catholic novelists are likely to consider the novel a medium rather than a primary source of perception, and so have been understandably less concerned with formal purity than other modem writers. Some searching is necessary to find novels that are both wellmade and Catholic in intent. Georges Bernanos' Diary of a Country Priest and Graham Greene's The Heart of the Matter seem two of the best examples of the type, and a number of critics would agree that they are the respective masterpieces of the two writers.1 The Catholicism of both novels has always been understood to be problematical, though the discussion has usually considered ideas