"The novelist must ground his work in faithful study of human nature"
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Goldwin Smith, a Victorian historian and critic, frames the novel as an art that earns its authority not through ornament or scheme but through disciplined attention to how people actually think, feel, and act. To be faithful in studying human nature is to observe without sentimentality or cynicism, to recognize mixed motives, self-deceptions, sudden generosities, and the stubborn patterns of habit. Characters must seem to live beyond the page; their choices should issue from a coherent inner life rather than from the author’s need to push a plot forward.
The prescription reflects the 19th-century turn toward realism, when writers like George Eliot and Tolstoy tried to show the moral and psychological texture of ordinary life. Smith’s background in history also matters. A historian traces causes through motives and institutions; he expects evidence for claims about why people do what they do. Applied to fiction, that ethic demands verisimilitude: details, plausible desires, and consequences that follow from character.
Faithfulness is not mere transcription of surface facts. It requires imaginative sympathy, the effort to enter minds unlike one’s own, and the patience to depict contradiction. A faithful study will show how generosity can coexist with pride, how love can be entangled with vanity, how fear and hope can intermingle in a single decision. The novelist does not preach from above; the novelist lets human nature speak, and trusts readers to recognize themselves.
Smith’s injunction also restrains ideological fiction. Stories built to illustrate a thesis often flatten people into mouthpieces. Grounding the work in human nature keeps the writer honest, because the messy truth of persons resists tidy designs. Even experimental forms benefit from this grounding. Styles may shift, structures may fracture, but a novel breathes when its people feel true.
The aim is both aesthetic and ethical: to create narratives that endure because they capture how life is actually lived, and to develop in readers a sharper, more humane understanding of others and of themselves.
The prescription reflects the 19th-century turn toward realism, when writers like George Eliot and Tolstoy tried to show the moral and psychological texture of ordinary life. Smith’s background in history also matters. A historian traces causes through motives and institutions; he expects evidence for claims about why people do what they do. Applied to fiction, that ethic demands verisimilitude: details, plausible desires, and consequences that follow from character.
Faithfulness is not mere transcription of surface facts. It requires imaginative sympathy, the effort to enter minds unlike one’s own, and the patience to depict contradiction. A faithful study will show how generosity can coexist with pride, how love can be entangled with vanity, how fear and hope can intermingle in a single decision. The novelist does not preach from above; the novelist lets human nature speak, and trusts readers to recognize themselves.
Smith’s injunction also restrains ideological fiction. Stories built to illustrate a thesis often flatten people into mouthpieces. Grounding the work in human nature keeps the writer honest, because the messy truth of persons resists tidy designs. Even experimental forms benefit from this grounding. Styles may shift, structures may fracture, but a novel breathes when its people feel true.
The aim is both aesthetic and ethical: to create narratives that endure because they capture how life is actually lived, and to develop in readers a sharper, more humane understanding of others and of themselves.
Quote Details
| Topic | Writing |
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