Choses Vues: Arnold Bennett and Impressionism

196 CHOSES VUES: ARNOLD BENNETT AND IMPRESSIONISM By Randall Craig (University of Wisconsin-Madison) The innovations in narrative technique and structure associated with the impressionism of James, Conrad, and Ford are not present in Arnold Bennett's fiction.1 Bennett neither abandons the authority of omniscient narration for the limited perspective of a Jamesian reflector, for the equivocal meditation of Conrad's Marlow, or for the unreliability of Ford's Dowell; nor does he sacrifice the continuity of chronological narrative in accordance with the principles of associational psychology defended by Ford. Yet his theory of fiction is informed by a concern with visual precision that reflects the impressionists' attention to the problem of perception. In The Author's Craft, Bennett defines the novel as "an impassioned vision of lire"*- and elucidates the principles of observation that invite comparison with the aesthetic canons and practice of the literary impressionists. This essay on the novel stresses three principles of accurate vision: the first pertains to the necessity of comprehensive but acute observation , particularly with regard to the minute details of common experience ; the second articulates the connection between the objective data of an environment and the subjective consciousness of the characters inhabiting it; the third recognizes the observer's impact upon the content and interpretation of the facts of empirical observation. These principles are roughly analogous to the three manifestations of impressionism described by Todd K. Bender: the first, to the emphasis on collecting raw impressions as the basis for scientific generalization recommended by Comte and practiced by Flaubert, Maupassant, and Zola; the second, to the epistemology educed by Hume and the British Empiricists and exploited by Sterne and the literary impressionists; and the third, to the shift in attention from the perceived object to the perceiving consciousness in the painting of the French Impressionists and the writing of Conrad and Ford.3 While Bennett's principles of perception are indebted to the theories of the impressionists, they are not translated into fictional experimentation with limited point of view, time shift, and parataxic style, which characterizes impressionistic writing. Bennett retains the realists' concern with a portrait of "the daily and hourly texture of existence" (AC. 6l), as opposed to the impressionists' effort to capture the mind in the process of seeing these things, and attempts to revitalize the moribund realistic tradition utilizing the insights of impressionism. He compares reading the novels of his day to living at the Royal Academy : And just as in that palace of sentimentality the damnable iteration of Sunshines after Rains, Evening Glows, Last Furrows, Guineveres, Ionian Weathers, Portraits of a Lady and of a Gentleman, and Baby's Tubs, drives the exhausted visitor in Piccadilly with a protest almost hysteric, so the eternal and tedious monotony of British fiction extorts at last a cry for mercy and a demand for some means of escape . 197 The realist must first adopt a new subject matter, as the French impressionistic painters and naturalistic writers had done. But beyond that, he must synthesize the philosophical assumptions of impressionism and the techniques of literary realism. A closer look at Bennett's theory of the novel, with examples from The Old Wives' Tale, will demonstrate his successful incorporation of the optics of fiction into the tradition of realism. Bennett announces the primary law of accurate vision to be a concentration on the specific, concrete details of everyday life, regardless of apparent triviality. He insists that "the one condition is that the observer must never lose sight of the fact that what he is trying to see is life, is the woman next door, is the man in the train - and not a concourse of abstractions" (AÇ_, 18).5 The ideal attitude is expressed in The Old Wives' Tale by the Frenchman Chirac, whose theory is "that whatever existed might be admitted and examined by serious persons interested in the study of human nature."" Fictional consideration of the seemingly Insignificant, such as railway travel, had been criticized before Bennett's time. John Ruskin denigrated "the common railroad-station novelist" who raises interest in "the vulgar reader for the vilest character, because the author describes carefully to his recognition the blotches, burrs and...