The need to even consider the morality of the novel surprised me at first, but it needs to be a consideration when you think about where the novel has come from – and even where it stands today.

“The novel as a form is usually seen to be moral if its readers consider freedom, individuality, democracy, privacy, social connection, tolerance, and hope to be morally good, but it is not considered moral if the highest values of a society are adherence to rules and traditional mores, the maintenance and hierarchal relationships, and absolute ideas of right wrong. Any society based on the later will find novels inherently immoral and subversive.” – Jane Smiley

And as you dig deeper, you see that there’s no way around the need to talk about morality and the novel:

“Morality is a perennial gray area in the novel – characters are always doing things in private that challenge the reader’s sense of what is appropriate.”

“All novels, because they move repeatedly between action and reflection, are simultaneously about private experience and public events.”

“The character may set out only to report his or her adventures, but because the novel always moves between action and reflection, soon enough he or she is bring to bear his or intentions, desires, regrets, fears, self-justifications, and other, more secret thoughts. If the character tries merely to report actions, they quickly become confusing because without feelings, actions don’t carry enough emotional weight to remain clear in the reader’s mind.”

So what happens when you combine action, reaction and secret thoughts? You get drama.

“What good is a confession if the character has nothing to confess? Without drama, a novel ceases to be entertaining and therefore loses its reason to exist.”


All quotes are from Jane Smiley’s 13 Ways of Looking at the Novel.


lara
My Story Writer
writing software
www.mywritingsoftware.com


Miss a post from the 13 Ways series? Find it here:
Kickoff: The 13 Ways of Looking at the Novel | The 13 Ways | I Hate Introductions | What is the Novel? | Who is the Novelist? | Origins: Where did the Novel Come From? | The Psychology of the Novel