FullReads

Hence arises our heartfelt gratitude toward such novels as deal with “vital” themes, with the questions we average-novel-readers confront or make talk about in those happier hours of our existence wherein we are not reduced to reading. Thus, a tale, for example, dealing either with “feminism” or “white slavery” as the handiest makeshift of spinsterdom–or with the divorce habit and plutocratic iniquity in general, or with the probable benefits of converting clergymen to Christianity, or with how much more than she knows a desirable mother will tell her children–finds the book’s tentative explorer, just now, amply equipped with prejudices, whether acquired by second thought or second hand, concerning the book’s topic. As endurability goes, reading the book rises forthwith almost to the level of an afternoon-call where there is gossip about the neighbors and Germany’s future. We average-novel-readers may not, in either case, agree with the opinions advanced; but at least our prejudices are aroused, and we are interested.

And these “vital” themes awake our prejudices at the cost of a minimum–if not always, as when Miss Corelli guides us, with a positively negligible–tasking of our mental faculties. For such exemption we average-novel-readers cannot but be properly grateful. Nay, more than this: provided the novelist contrive to rouse our prejudices, it matters with us not at all whether afterward they be soothed or harrowed. To implicate our prejudices somehow, to raise in us a partizanship in the tale’s progress, is our sole request. Whether this consummation be brought about through an arraignment of some social condition which we personally either advocate or reprehend–the attitude weighs little–or whether this interest be purchased with placidly driveling preachments of generally “uplifting” tendencies–vaguely titillating that vague intention which exists in us all of becoming immaculate as soon as it is perfectly convenient–the personal prejudices of us average-novel-readers are not lightly lulled again to sleep.

In fact, the jealousy of any human prejudice against hinted encroachment may safely be depended upon to spur us through an astonishing number of pages–for all that it has of late been complained among us, with some show of extenuation, that our original intent in beginning certain of the recent “vital” novels was to kill time, rather than eternity. And so, we average-novel-readers plod on jealously to the end, whether we advance (to cite examples already somewhat of yesterday) under the leadership of Mr. Upton Sinclair aspersing the integrity of modern sausages and millionaires, or of Mr. Hall Caine saying about Roman Catholics what ordinary people would hesitate to impute to their relatives by marriage–or whether we be more suavely allured onward by Mrs. Florence Barclay, or Mr. Sydnor Harrison, with ingenuous indorsements of the New Testament and the inherent womanliness of women.

The “vital” theme, then, let it be repeated, has two inestimable advantages which should commend it to all novelists: first, it spares us average-novel-readers any preliminary orientation, and thereby mitigates the mental exertion of reading; and secondly, it appeals to our prejudices, which we naturally prefer to exercise, and are accustomed to exercise, rather than our mental or idealistic faculties. The novelist who conscientiously bears these two facts in mind is reasonably sure of his reward, not merely in pecuniary form, but in those higher fields wherein he harvests his chosen public’s honest gratitude and affection.

For we average-novel-readers are quite frequently reduced by circumstances to self-entrustment to the resources of the novelist, as to those of the dentist. Our latter-day conditions, as we cannot but recognize, necessitate the employment of both artists upon occasion. And with both, we average-novel-readers, we average people, are most grateful when they make the process of resorting to them as easy and unirritating as may be possible.

V

So much for the plea of us average-novel-readers; and our plea, we think, is rational. We are “in the market” for a specified article; and human ingenuity, co-operating with human nature, will inevitably insure the manufacture of that article as long as any general demand for it endures.