These I shall try to deal with in what seems to be
their logical order; illuminating examples of any of them are not
wanting. I do not suggest that if I were criticizing Vanity Fair I
should think twice about this aspect of it; to do so would be very
futile criticism of such a book, such a store of life. But then I am
not considering it as Vanity Fair, I am considering it as a dominant
case of pictorial fiction; and here is the characteristic danger of
the method, and a danger which all who practise the method are not
likely to encounter and over-ride with the genius of Thackeray. And
even Thackeray--he chose to encounter it once again, it is true, in
Pendennis, but only once and no more, and after that he took his own
precautions, and evidently found that he could move the more freely
for doing so.
But to revert yet again for a moment to Bovary--which seemed on
scrutiny to be more of a picture than a drama--I think it is clear how
Flaubert avoided the necessity of installing himself avowedly as the
narrator, in the sight of the reader. I mentioned how he constantly
blends his acuter vision with that of Emma, so that the weakness of
her gift of experience is helped out; and the help is mutual, for on
the other hand her vision is always active as far as it goes, and
Flaubert's intervention is so unobtrusive that her point of view seems
to govern the story more than it does really.
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