Essay and narrative

At the beginning of Book 9 of Tom Jones, as with the beginning of every Book, Fielding has an introductory chapter which outlines the purposes of the form in which he is writing--which he calls history, and we call the novel. Like many of those introductory chapters, this one is also filled with (what we are usually too quick to call "self-reflexive") meditation on the function of the introductory chapters. He concludes they are more like essays appended to the history, and have a function of deterrence: they keep out the base readers and imitative writers of any foolish written thing, "monstrous Romances," the production of which this history here will only further encourage (428 of the Penguin edition, from which I'll cite). That is, the essay form itself accomplishes this deterrence: Fielding compares its function to that of the learned epigraphs before each of Addison and Steele's Spectators:

I question not but the ingenious author of the Spectator was principally induced to prefix Greek and Latin mottos to every paper, from the same consideration of guarding against the pursuit of those scribblers, who having no talents of a writer but what is taught by the writing-master, are yet nowise afraid nor ashamed to assume the same titles with the greatest genius, than their good brother in the fable was of braying in the lion's skin.

By the device therefore of his motto, it became impracticable for any man to presume to imitate the Spectators, without understanding at least one sentence in the learned languages. In the same manner I have now secured myself from the imitation of those who are utterly incapable of any degree of reflection, and whose learning is not equal to an essay (428-9).

However, Fielding then admits he cannot actually keep away the imitators of this sort of "self-reflexive" (again, an inadequate word) essay:

I would not be here understood to insinuate, that the greatest merit of such historical productions can ever lie in these introductory chapters; but, in fact, those parts which contain mere narrative only, afford much more encouragement to the pen of an imitator, than those which are composed of observation and reflection (429).

So the imitators of this essayistic form will surely be less. The essay still, then, serves its differentiating and deterring purpose:

To invent good stories, and to tell them well, are possibly very rare talents, and yet I have observed few persons who have scrupled to aim at both: and if we examine the romances and novels with which the world abounds, I think we may fairly conclude, that most of the authors would not have attempted to show their teeth (if the expression may be allowed me) in any other way of writing; nor could indeed have strung together a dozen sentences on any other subject whatever (429).

The last sentence here reveals why: the essay is not just a form, but something that requires skill to write and comprehend. It shows learning, and someone who can do this is probably more likely to be able to invent good stories and tell them well. Fielding isn't saying this entirely literally (it doesn't entirely follow from the logic of the sentences), but the associations are no doubt there, and I think they are important.

For if we take them seriously, we get the following assertion: the essay is a form which has a certain set of compositional requirements which are not foreign to the requirements of a narrative. For Fielding, this is construed in the following way: a narrative is well constructed and composed if it can be told in such a way that it can also bear argument, and not just remain the direct presentation of events. In short, a narrative is only a good narrative if it is told from the third person--thus we enter the famous Fielding-Richardson debate. But what we bring to bear on this, if we look at this passage on the essay, is not just the same old material. What we see is that for Fielding, narrative in the third person shows its superiority because it is going to sustain something like "a degree of reflection" along with the presentation of the events (I quote from above). This is what we mean when we say that it is not just the "direct presentation of events." Clarissa, of course, gains this reflection by deepening its first-person qualities: it presents an event in multiple ways, before it sustains any significant argument alongside them. Whether this is better or not is not the issue (I'm not taking sides). Indeed, if the goal is reflection in itself alongside the presentation of events, which seems to boil down to just a distance from pure mimesis, Richardson has as much claim to this as Fielding. Whether the first-person narrative or the third-person is more mimetic is at bottom up for grabs, because the first-person just expresses its fidelity to events in terms that are different than those of the third-person: put simply, in the first-person, this fidelity is to the form of the events, how they appear or what they appear as, while the third is to the dynamism of the actions, the way they unfold. (I might add a note here: certainly Fielding's experience in drama may make him think he is more distant from the imitation of events, but for this precise reason I think we can say that it is, in its own way, also precisely this imitation: the dramatic, which is often what lies behind the classic third-person narrative, is mimetic through and through, or is only seemingly different because it imitates less the content of the events than their qualities in time. Though the time of the narrative is more often mimetically based in the first-person narrative, especially of the epistolary kind, this does not mean that ultimately, and as many structuralists were somewhat willing to affirm, mimesis is more foreign to the third-person narrative, as it is expressed merely on a different plane: that of "significance." We're getting into complicated territory, so I'll just stick with what I said above and move on for now.)

As I said, for us what is less important is whether more reflection is actually gained by the presentation of the events (the story) in the third-person. What is significant to me is that the way Fielding is able to assert this is by saying that first, the presentation is more reflective because it mashalls the compositional requirements of the essay, and then that these requirements promote reflective writing and, when suitably embodied in a finished product, reflective reading. This no doubt says something about the essay--particularly that amazing species of writing that is the 18th century essay. I think we can also find this regard for the essay lies underneath Fielding's famous declaration (in the same Book and chapter, 431) that the particular type of skill that the novelist needs is one in conversation--when this is understood of course in the 18th-century sense, i.e. closer to its etymological roots, meaning conversing with things in the world, experiencing, associating (making associations), and gaining familarity with them. There is more to be said about these particular connections between the essay and the requirements of novelistic narrative. Most notably, there is the fact that all this means these requirements are not, for Fielding, requirements of skill anymore but of experience, which are very different--the first being a quality making visible abstract entitlement, the second being a sum of particulars which can be enumerated, or to which (in the 18th century essay in particular) one can testify. But for now, I'll just stop here.