The author's skillful manipulation of the action makes us live in the glow of a clearly perceived oneness of impression.
There are, of course, thousands of stories which secure this singleness of effect by a similar skill in the handling of situations and incidents. Among these many we need mention only a few whose unity is largely secured by plot-interest—Thomas Bailey Aldrich's Marjorie Daw, Maupassant's The Necklace, Poe's Murders in the Rue Morgue, Stockton's A Tale of Negative Gravity and The Lady or the Tiger, Kipling's Without Benefit of Clergy, Pushkin's The Shot, A. Conan Doyle's The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, and Jack London's A Day's Lodging.
Unified impression secured by setting
Perhaps the most significant critical comment on setting—the third important element in the story-weaving process that secures oneness of impression—is that frequently quoted conversation of Stevenson with Graham Balfour: 'You may,' said Stevenson, 'take a certain atmosphere and get action and persons to express it. I'll give you an example—The Merry Men. There I began with the feeling of one of those islands on the west coast of Scotland, and I gradually developed the story to express the sentiment with which the coast affected me.'
There is no sensitive reader who will not sympathize with this feeling and immediately understand how the atmosphere of a particular place will act upon inventive genius and become the exciting force for the production of a story. The squalid surroundings in the city slums, the gay glamour of a garishly-lighted casino, the unending stretch of desert waste, the dim twilight or the shrouded darkness of the pine forest, the bleakness of the beaches in midwinter, the sounding cataracts, haunting one like a passion—how rich in storied suggestiveness may be each of these to him who already has within him the instinct of story or romance.
How the mood of place may effect its influence is well expressed in the opening passages of John Galsworthy's Buttercup-Night, which sensitively analyzes the feelings for an unnamed bit of land in the 'West country' as the author experienced them one Sunday night of a by-gone early June.
'Why is it that in some places there is such a feeling of life being all one; not merely a long picture-show for human eyes, but a single breathing, glowing, growing thing, of which we are no more important a part than the swallows and magpies, the foals and sheep in the meadows, the sycamores and ash trees and flowers in the fields, the rocks and little bright streams, or even the long fleecy clouds and their soft-shouting drivers, the winds?
'True, we register these parts of being, and they—so far as we know—do not register us; yet it is impossible to feel, in such places as I speak of, the busy, dry, complacent sense of being all that matters, which in general we humans have so strongly.
'In these rare spots, that are always in the remote country, untouched by the advantages of civilization, one is conscious of an enwrapping web or mist of spirit, the glamorous and wistful wraith of all the vanished shapes that once dwelt there in such close comradeship.'
We can readily see, as we read Buttercup-Night, that it is the atmosphere of the place that subtly dictates the telling of the story, and at the end leaves the reader breathing this delicious June air and living within the charmed romance of this accumulated mass of magical yellow. What happens is interesting, but it is interesting largely because the incidents are fused and integrated with the hovering spirit of place and time—here as dominating in their charm as is the weird, mysterious Usher homestead in its gloom.
While such stories as Stevenson's Merry Men and Galsworthy's Buttercup-Night and Poe's The Fall of the House of Usher illustrate in a particularly striking way the dominant influence of setting, we recall scores upon scores of stories that have an added power because their authors have shown skill in the creation of a permeating and directing environment. Among the more famous of these stories are Sarah Orne Jewett's The Queen's Twin,[3] Israel Zangwill's They that Walk in Darkness, Prosper Mérimée's Mateo Falcone, Hardy's Wessex Tales, Lafcadio Hearn's Youma,[4] Jack London's Children of the Frost, John Fox's Christmas Eve on Lonesome, Edith Wyatt's In November,[5] and Mrs. Gerould's The Moth of Peace.[6]
Unified impression secured by theme
Another element of the story which we find interesting to discover and analyze is the author's dominant theme—what in the older days we might have unapologetically called the moral of the story. But along with the development of the technique of the short story, there came a school of critics and writers that shied terribly at this mention of the word moral; and such writers as Stevenson often seemed over-conscious of its lurking danger. In such consciousness, Stevenson wrote wonderful stories of adventure and mystery, such as Treasure Island and The Sire de Maletroit's Door. Yet the native instinct toward emphasis upon theme allowed him to write such powerful ethical stories as Markheim and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. But in these, as in most of the modern thematic stories, the ethical truth pervades rather than intrudes. It is so firmly woven into incident and character and surroundings and natural dramaturgy that its identity is not exposed to naked bareness, but combines with other elements to produce a perfect unity through harmony of tone and effect.
Among the recent Atlantic story-writers this harmonious linking is seen happily existent in the deft workmanship of Mrs. C. A. P. Comer and Anne Douglas Sedgwick. In each number of three notable trilogies which these gifted writers have contributed, there is an artistic treatment of three notable themes. In Mrs. Comer's Preliminaries, The Kinzer Portraits, and The Long Inheritance we find the author's implied comments on Engagement, Marriage, and Divorce. In Anne Douglas Sedgwick's unconnected floral trilogy—Hepaticas, Carnations, and Pansies—there is in turn reflected Miss Sedgwick's attitude toward three themes which are less concrete and which demand a longer phrasing. In the first there is the world-old story of a noble spirited woman's love and sacrifice and ardent wishings for her self-victimized son. In Carnations we have the story of a husband, Rupert Wilson, released from the bondage of an unfortunate infatuation and restored to the sanity of love. In Pansies we have a generous tribute to quiet sentiment, developed by a study in character contrasts—the simple-hearted woman, loving a simple garden, contrasted with the kindly disposed but worldly-environed Mrs. Lennard, fond of display and Dorothy Perkins effects, and laying a disproportioned stress upon the expensive and the modern.
In none of these six stories is there the slightest suggestion that the narrative has been conceived in the spirit of propaganda. It would be impossible to say even that it was the underlying theme which gave the initial conception to the narrative and directed its progress. Any one of these six stories I can fancy beginning in plot, or in character, or in setting. Plot, character, setting, and theme—all are here, but all are so happily combined that I feel no disproportionate emphasis, and hence no forcing of a technical element. I only know that, personally, when I think over these stories, I find the theme of each leaving its strong and lingering impression.
What is true regarding this effective combination of elements in these stories of Mrs. Comer's and Miss Sedgwick's is of course true of many of the Atlantic stories which I have been reading. Perhaps in the majority of the best there is such a thorough merging of all the elements that the final impression falls upon neither character nor plot nor setting nor theme. The author has had something worth while to relate, and he has related it in a simple and natural way—all unconscious of, or happily triumphant over, any studied technique in the art of narration. It has indeed been a conviction in the minds of some of the Atlantic editors that most persons, even though untrained in manipulating the story-maker's gear, have at least one experience—real or imagined—that is abundantly worth telling and worth writing. Unconsciously of course this artless narrator might throw into bold relief theme, character, setting, or plot. Or he might unconsciously merge these separate interests.
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