CHAPTER II
THE REALISTIC
Realism in Victorian fiction, as we need only to be reminded,
means not strictly that which is, but liberally
that which might be. Its field is nominally the Actual
but it encroaches unhesitatingly on the domain of the
Probable, laps over into the Improbable, and barely halts
at the Impossible. These expansive habits make it not
incompatible with the Romantic, which indeed, in its soberer
aspects, is a constant factor in the English novel up
to and including this period.
Romanticism is reduced to a minimum by Maria Edgeworth, Jane Austen, Mrs. Gaskell, and Anthony Trollope,[1] but the majority of our novelists have not been thus content to present life in its everyday garb, neat and prosperous enough, it may be, but neutral, inane, diffuse, inconclusive. They have insisted in the name of decorum and dignity on the dress costume and company manners which in civilized society are a prerequisite to public appearance and conspicuous position. Life is still life and not an impostor, even when robed in its best with some artifice of color and ornament and some evidence of decisive purposefulness in mien and bearing.
- ↑ Perhaps pardon should be asked on behalf of the irresponsible Circumstance which allowed so large a preponderance in this matter to the sex notoriously romantic, flighty, ignorant of real life, and impatient of its prose and drudgery. As to the one man, Bryce remarks, in his Studies in Contemporary Biography, "But whoever does read Trollope in 1930 will gather from his pages better than from any others an impression of what everyday life was like in England in the 'middle Victorian' period."
