Thackeray's Narrative Technique

Abstract

TO ONE who would explore the range and variety of fictional technique, the Victorian novel presents an infinite resource. It shows us novelists in the exciting awareness of a new literary genre shaping under their hands,' aware of a vast new audience to whom they could appeal. They write often uninhibited by conscious theories of technique; they write with gusto and with what Edith Wharton once called the true mark of vocation in any art-abundance.2 Yet the exploration of the techniques of Victorian fiction has scarcely begun. Percy Lubbock, in The Craft of Fiction (1921), applied the single criterion of point of view to Victorian novelists (among others)-and found them wanting. E. M. Forster (Aspects of the Novel, 1927) and Lord David Cecil (Early Victorian Novelists, 1934) have advanced on a somewhat broader front, exploring aspects of characterization and plot, and the "range" of the major nineteenth-century novelists. What has hardly been attempted in any detail is a close and analytical study of the fictional techniques developed by individual authors. Fred W. Boege has considered Dickens' awareness of the advantages of a fixed point of view in fiction,3 and has found Dickens far more aware of the effectiveness of that device than had been supposed. Several studies have been made of the influence of serialization and monthly-parts publication on Victorian fiction,4 modes of publishing which frequently did force the novelist to consider closely the effect of different technical methods. But there is a host of similar critical studies which might profitably be made. They offer a way of access not only to the creative genius of the Victorian novelists, but also to a fresh and expanding view of the craft of fiction. The present article is based on a systematic survey of the narrative