Should Novels Be Realistic?

On Jane Austen and Dr. Johnson

Before I properly begin this post, a couple of housekeeping announcements. After a subscriber very generously switched to a paid subscription, I have now decided to put some of my content behind the paywall. I began this substack out of a need to get my ideas out there and an enthusiasm to share them with you all, so most of my content will always remain free. However, I do want to provide people with the option of upgrading, especially because earning through some of my posts allows me to justify making more free content for you all in the little spare time I have! More specifically, if you become a paid subscriber, you will be able to access a longer version of my Christian film club posts. As well as that, you will have access to extra Jane Austen content once a month. With this being said, the first film club post will be out next week!

Now that’s all out of the way, let me get to the topic of today’s post. As you’re reading this, my final YouTube video for 2023 has just come out. It’s about whether Jane Austen is a ‘realist’ writer or not, and in it I make the case that while her characters are realistic in the sense of being ‘life-like’, her novels are ultimately defined by being ‘comedies’ more than by being examples of ‘social realism’ in fiction. I think this is because Austen is portraying the world not just as it is, but as it should be. Like Alasdair Macintyre remarks in After Virtue, she writes comedies and not tragedies because she is a Christian, and the Christian story is one in which good and hope triumph over evil at the end. So, in Austen’s novels we do find ill-intentioned characters, but the main characters, the heroine and hero, always find happiness, and grow in virtue. This may not be exactly realistic - sometimes in real life ‘bad’ things happen to ‘good’ people - but it is necessary to have a ‘comic’ vision to retain hope in a better world to come.

As I was forming my thoughts for this video, I happened to start reading some essays from Samuel Johnson’s periodical The Rambler (1750-52), which Jane Austen herself read and admired. The essay in question is in issue n.4, and is titled ‘On Modern Romances, Or Novels’. At the time, the term ‘novel’ was still new, and often had negative connotations as ‘trashy’ literature. Johnson is setting out to explain what is different about contemporary novels (contemporary to him, 18th century novels to us!) from earlier literature like epic and medieval chivalric romances. Novels cannot rely on the conventions of epic and Arthurian myth, where conflict can be resolved by the intervention of a god or goddess or great hero. Rather, they ‘exhibit life in its true state’, including the ‘passions and qualities which are really to be found in conversing with mankind’. But here is the catch: in ‘the romances formerly written’, the characters were so difficult to relate to, Johnson says, that there was little danger of readers attempting to imitate them, for good or for evil. In novels, on the other hand, the characters are so life-like, that ‘the knowledge of vice and virtue’ can be conveyed more effectively even than through ‘axioms and definitions’. In other words, novels are more effective vehicles for moral instruction than rules. Johnson thinks that young people are especially likely to read novels, and will therefore absorb moral principles from whatever it is they happen to read.

But does this mean that characters should be portrayed in the most realistic way possible? Not exactly, says Johnson. Yes, characters in novels should be believable, so that readers can relate to and learn from them. However, for Johnson this does not mean that characters should be morally ambiguous. ‘Good’ characters can have flaws, and ‘bad’ characters moments of redemption, but it must remain clear whether they are overall good or bad. Most importantly, Johnson thinks that there is nothing wrong with presenting a character who shows the highest level of virtue achievable by man:

I cannot discover why there should not be exhibited the most perfect idea of virtue, of virtue not angelical, nor above probability, for what we cannot credit we shall never imitate, but the highest and purest that humanity can reach.

What he is describing is an idealised version of reality, but one that is, in theory, nonetheless achievable. He is advocating for realism in fiction, but a realism that is not in conflict with idealism. Like Austen, Johnson was a fervent Christian, and firmly believed that God’s project for humanity’s salvation will - indeed, already has - triumphed over vice. Showing reality as it is, but also hinting at how it should be, then, is a writer’s way of espousing that Christian vision. As Johnson concludes in this essay, novels can ‘teach us what we may hope’. I can’t help thinking of Jane Austen’s most maligned heroine, Fanny Price from Mansfield Park, when Johnson describes this ‘perfect idea of virtue’ that is yet reachable enough to as to still be, in a sense, realistic. For all that modern readers dislike Fanny for being ‘too good’, she is in fact an example of what we can hope to achieve: not perfect, but always willing to follow her moral intuitions, which have a strong faith as their basis. Fanny Price, then, is the perfect Johnsonian heroine, both realistic, and idealistic. It is to me a great cultural loss that we no longer seem to be able to appreciate such characters. We should all read more Dr. Johnson, and train our literary tastes accordingly.