Quantities of Qualities: Nominal Style and the Novel

Quantities of Qualities:utsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA Nominal Style and the Novel c a r e y Mc In t o s h One of the most important of general indexes of style is the degree to which the language of a given passage entrusts meaning to nouns or verbs. In a nominal prose style, nouns and noun phrases predominate; what counts is not action, which is so far as possible diluted or hidden or masked, but relation­ ships between things or qualities. Nominal sentences rely on being verbs and stative verbs; they express meaning in terms of static conditions variously arranged and distributed. An energetic “verbal” style is, for the literary critic, easier to talk about and appreciate, in part because its energy is likely to break through the literal sense into metaphor, as in the second clause of this sentence. The best writing handbooks of our time attack nominal con­ structions. Many of the “Bad Sentences” that Sheridan Baker corrects in the fifth chapter of The Practical Stylist use a nominal syntax, and George Orwell’s translation of a verse from Ecclesiastes into “Gobbledygook” makes painfully obvious the miserable weakness of some pseudo-scientific modern nominal styles.1 Nothing in the nature of things decrees, however, that nominal styles must always be flabby, vague, and colorless. They are a large family of styles, characterized by many degrees and kinds of nominalness; in skillful hands they may perform necessary functions and achieve effects—some of them quite beautiful—that would be destroyed by the use of strong, active verbs. I 139 140 / vutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA c a r e y m c in t o s h utsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA shall confine myself in this essay to a few variants of nominal prose that play a role in a few novels, b eginning with Clarissa. The first variant may b e d efined in lexical as well as grammatical terms b ecause it leans heavily on a small numb er of ab stractions d erived from the social environment of the court, “honor,” “favor,” “service,” “interest”; I shall call this kind of nomi­ nal style “courtly-genteel.” In the early volumes of Clarissa, courtly-genteel prose adds a certain presumptive dignity to venal middle-class maneuverings within the Harlowe family. In later volumes of the same novel, Clarissa uses a more complicated nominal style to express more complicated feelings and states of mind. Henry Fielding puts courtly-genteel phrases in the mouths of his wicked aristocrats, but in a different context some of the same construc­ tions embody true politeness, and signal a new stage of maturity in Tom Jones. Later novelists turn nominal prose to their own purposes, all of which have something to do with politeness, pedantry, or self-consciousness. One of the aims of nominal prose in the eighteenth century was to rise above the coarseness and vulgarity of market-place lanaguage, as if on the premise that abstractness and passivity contribute to true refinement of style. I think it could be shown that eighteenth-century prose in general is more nominal than Elizabethan prose. Clarissa’s letters, however, aspire to some­ thing higher than the norm of clarity and correctness established by (for example) Joseph Addison, whose celebrated “middle style” is not designed for ceremony but for “ease.” Clarissa, by contrast, is set up—rather painfully at times—as “an Exemplar to her Sex,” as a model of true elegance; her language transcends simple correctness; it is a medium for the extraordinary “Delicacy of Sentiments” by which she excels her peers.2 And yet it never rises to the loftiest heights of the “high style”; by design as well as by incapacity, it falls short of the authentic splendors that we expect in the language of heroism or prophecy. Clarissa is recounting the history of her family’s quarrel with the rake Love­ lace. James and Arabella Harlowe have insulted Lovelace, who makes sure that Clarissa knows he has swallowed the affront for her sake. “I was sorry for the merit this gave him in his own opinion with me,” writes Clarissa (I, 23). She could have said, “I regretted that he believed . . .” “I was sorry” is more nominal than “I regretted...