Andrew's Wiki
Diana Crossways

Formal Considerations

• Theory of Realism: A digression early in the book explains what he wants for Realism
  • Should be allied with philosophy, which is just a way to see Truth (he DOES capitalize it)
    • “Art is doomed to extinction” if philosophy doesn’t reach it
    • Philosophy only can make mankind “credible and acceptable”
  • Can’t exaggerate: no idealizing or demonizing (ie, don’t give us some empty “perfect quiet wife”)
    • Can’t have the “rose pink or dirty drab” because it’s not realistic
    • When you idealize something, “nature” will make the exact opposite bubble up, despite your best effort (so that the result of making everyone wonderful is having awful people and actions)
  • Must be honest: “the summary of actual Life”
  • Must be “historical”

• Attitude towards Public
  • Ridicules public efforts at the literary (ie, their diaries and letters)
  • Speaks with horror about the burgeoning audience of readers (see 13-7) who will be “idiotized” by fiction if it doesn’t follow his own remedies

• Style
  • Circuitous syntax
  • Reliance upon contemporary slang makes it dated and hard to understand now
  • Otherwise uses extremely formal vocab (“diarial,” “progenitorial”)
  • Narrator has nearly impossible omniscience (how can he read everyone’s diaries?)
  • Gratuitous, irrelevant detail; doesn’t add anything to our understanding of plot, theme, or character (Woolf was right!)

• Nice quote:

• When he “retracts” a particularly flowery phrase he throws out, he compares “citizen prose” with “princely poetic” (38), showing how he’s against trying to make prose something it’s not