Universal Sympathy and Naturalistic Approach in the Novels of Arnold Bennett

Abstract

Western literature has its roots in ancient Greek and Roman cultures, and was greatly enriched during the predominance of Christianity. As the Greek, Roman, and Christian constituents of Western culture all originated in an area inhabited by peoples who speak 'Latin' languages, the cultures and literatures of those peoples have often been referred to as 'Latin'. Whatever meaning it may have, the term 'Latin' connotes the origins of Western culture. The literature of almost every nation-state of the present Europe has in a sense been generated by this profound source of inspiration, the literature of France even more than that of England. Starting from the Middle Ages, and stretching into the present century, the link between English culture and 'Latin' has to a great extent been realized through the French. Bennett was one of those English writers who made life-long conscious efforts to transfuse French elements into English fiction. There is a class of novelist, rarer in England than in France, to whom the first principle in literary criticism is that this world is nothing but a spectacle which it is the novelist’s task to record with complete detachment, looking on but making no sound either of approval or of protest. It is obvious that H.G. Well’s purpose as a writer had never been to report human affairs dispassionately. He ranks as an active and impassioned participant and protestant, not an observer merely. Arnold Bennett's purpose was very different. His masters in the early stages of his develop-ment were the French novelists Maupassant, Flaubert, and Balzac, and his aim was to record life its delights, indigni¬ties, and distresses without conscious intrusion of his own personality between the record and the reader. Like his French masters, he was a copyist of life, and only indirectly (if at all) a commentator, an interpreter, or an apologist. The present paper discusses the universal sympathy and naturalistic approach in the novels of Arnold Bennett.