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The novel developed both in quantity and quality during the period between the wars in England. The novel between 1939 and 1964 contains the vitality and vigour worthy of a major genre. It has been urged that the novel declined in scale since then. No writer since then has the moral urgency of a Conrad, the verbal gifts and wit of a Joyce, the vitality and all - consuming obsession of a Lawrence.
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| War Novel |
Graham Greene (1904-1991) is one of the most distinguished novelists of the period. Born in 1904, he was a convert to the Roman Catholic Church. His reputation as an outstanding novelist of the period was firmly established with the publication of his novel: The Power and the Glory (1940). He unifies his various interests under a single outlook and expresses them in a prose style that is almost startling in its starkness. He satirises the evils of twentieth century urban civilisation but he does not preach. His other novels are : The Man Within (1929), Rumour at Nightfall (1931); It's a Battlefield (1934); England Made me (1935); A Gun for Sale (1936); The Confidential Agent (1936); The Ministry of Fear (1943); The Heart of the Matter (1948); The End of the Affair (1951); The Quiet American (1956): Our Man in Havana (1958): A Burnt-out Case (1961).
Greene is unquestionably a major novelist of this century, in style and content, "among the few, the very few, of our great living novelists". The contest of good and evil rages throughout his novels. In all his novels is the ceaseless struggle for grace that frees men of the bondage of sin. He is a competent craftsman whose plots are cleverly but unconventionally unfolded.
Joyce Cary (1888-1957) is the most original novelist of his generation. His best work is to be found in two trilogies, the first of which comprises Herself Surprised (1941), To be a Pilgrim (1942) and The Horse's Mouth (1944). In Gulley Jimson, the hero of the last novel, Cary embodies his conception of genius and of the significance of art. Politics inspired his second trilogy - Prisoner of Grace (1952), Except the World (1953), and Not Honour More (1955). Unlike most English novelists of this period, Cary was seriously concerned with the meaning behind experience: His novels are characterised by excellent characterisation, poetic vision and exuberance but sometimes his novels are shapeless. He seems to lose control of the story by the very intensity with which he becomes involved in the happenings.
Evelyn Waugh (1903) - satiric and serious novelist published Scott-King's Mode Europe (1949) and The Loved One (1948), which established his fame as a novelist. His other novels are Decline and Fall (1928), Black Mischief (1932), A Handful of Dust (1934), Scope (1937), Put out more Flags (1942). As a humourist he avoids the moral purpose intrinsic to Meredith's and Molier's view.
G. P. Snow (1905-1980) was a major literary figure of the period. He wrote a number of novels: Strangers and Brothers (1940), The Light and the Dark, Time of Hope (1950), The Masters (1951), The New Men (1954), Hone Coming (1956), The Conscience of the Rich (1958), The Affair (1960), Corridors of Power (1964). He is a traditional novelist who follows in technique and manner the average Victorian novels. Snow avoids the impressionism and symbolism of Joyce, Virginia Woolf, Lawrence and Conrad and in so doing returns the novel to a direct representation of moral, social and political issues.
George Orwell (1903-1950) was the conscience of his generation His fame as a writer rests on his two books: Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty Four (1949). Animal Farm (1945) represents Orwell's disillusionment with Russian communism. It is called a 'fairy tale' but it is a political allegory. The central situation depicting the revolt of the animals against the farmer, the introduction of a Communal State and its betrayal by the power-greedy intellectuals was interpreted as an attack on Stalinism. His Nineteen Eighty Four is a more devastating satire and is often compared with Huxley's Ape and Essence. It gives a monstrous picture of a regimented world of the future ruthlessly controlled by the Inner Party in its lust for power, as the last vestiges of human freedom and dignity have been totally obliterated. The gentler manner of Animal Farm gives way to a grim denunciation of the whole trend of modern society. Until the publication of Animal Farm, Orwell was best known as a novelist in the tradition of George Gissing. In a series of documentary novels such as A Clergyman's Daughter (1935), Keep the Aspidistra Flying (1936), The Road to Wigan Pier (1937) and Coming up for Air (1939), he depicted the emptiness and squalor of life among the working classes. William Golding in Lord of the Flies (1954) is concerned with moral aimlessness. In Leslie Allen Paul's autobiography, Angry Young Men (1951), iconoclasm is the dominant note. The central figures and anti-heroes, disgusted youngman who find the whole world reprehensible.
Among the women novelists, Elizabeth Bowen (1899-1973) and Ivy Compton Burnett (1892-1969) are outstanding. Elizabeth Bowen wrote eight novels The Hotel, The Last September, Friends and Relations, To the North, The House in Paris, The Death of the Heart, The Heat of the Day, A World of Love. She is an intensely feminine novelist. She can create young girls realistically but cannot present developed adults. She believes in clarity of detail, precision of phrase and ironical expressions. Ivy Compton-Burnett is a more powerful writer. She shows a talent for depicting English middle-class family life. She wrote in the pre-war period Dolores, Brothers and Sisters, More Women than Men, etc. Her post-war novels include Parents and Children, Elders and Betters, Man Servent and Maid Servant, A House and its Head, Mother and Son, A Father and his Fate, etc. She focusses her imagination on the narrow field of family relationships and shows a subtle insight into human relationships and family psychology. She portrays the conflicts and antagonisms within the family group in a multi-dimensional dialogue. The story is entirely through conversation - there is no description. Her strength as a novelist lies in her artistry, her urge to achieve perfection of form in the chosen medium. Her plots are developed with subtle cunning; her spare, colourless prose is instinct with wit and humour.
Among the more notable contributions to contemporary English fiction in the nineteen fifties were the novels of Ivis Murdoch. Her first novel, Under the Net (1955) revealed powers of fancy and imagination that were further developed in Fight from the Enchanter (1956). Her other novels are The Sand Castle, The Bell, A Severed Head, An Unofficial Rose (1962). She accepts her position as cultivated intellectual and writes with engaging seriousness. Her novels have no plot of significant action and lack unity. They are a series of episodes cleverly strung together. However, they have flashes of brilliant wit. She has restored to fiction that romantic warmth which was lost under the influence of the social realists.
Angus Wilson, a writer of short stories made a considerable reputation as a novelist in the nineteen fifties. Through his novels he exposes the shams and evils of the society. He is a moralist and like George Eliot integrates the story with a moral theme and like Dickens draws caricatures and exaggerated types. His best known novels are Hemlock and After (1952), Anglo-Saxon Attitudes (1956) and The Middle Age of Mrs. Eliot (1958).
Samuel Beckett is a Irishmen made important contributions to the novel in the nineteen fifties. Samuel Beckett has a tragic vision of life. He showed French influence in a series of unusual novels - Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable, Murphy (1938) and Watt (1945) were his earlier works in English. Beckett is a metaphysical novelist who explores the condition of man and communicates the language of despair. The characters are all engaged in some kind of pilgrimage Molloy, a cripple searches fruitlessly for his daft moth: Malore, bedridden exists in a vacuum of boredom; the unidentified hero of The Unnamable symbolises the final hopelessness of Fallen Man and demonstrates the absurdity of the human condition. They are parts of a decaying civilisation. Beckett conveys, with frightening insistence the isolation of modern consciousness. He is however an Irishman with a mercurial wit and a cunning sense of humour.
Lawrence Durrell is also an Irishmen has written the Alexandria Quartet of novels - Instine (1957), Balthazar (1958), Mountolive (1959), Clea (1960) described as 'an investigation of modern love. He is acclaimed as successor to James Joyce and D. H. Lawrence. The Black Book written in 1938 anticipated the themes and attitudes of the Alexandria Quartet. Human personality for Durrell is multi-dimensional, comprising contradictions and ambiguities; love and hate manifest themselves simultaneously. Everything is ultimately true of everyone in the undivided stream of life. Durrell's prose in The Black Book is singularly rich and poetic in its orchestration of verbal effects ranging from the crude to the exotic. In the Alexandria Quartet, the author investigates love in its infinite variety. All four novels cover roughly the same events, but the angle of vision is constantly changing with the spectator. Love and power, tenderness and cruelty; blindness and understanding are the axes on which the story spins. Technically considered the quartet is too complicated. Durrell writes at times uncontrolledly; his style is overstrained; his narrative is often incoherent; it lacks the repose and ultimate simplicity of a great novel. Yet he is serious about his art. He has introduced vitality, imagination, eloquence and depth to the novel at a time when many English novelists are either effete and meticulous or boisterous amateurs.
Other novelists who have made distinguished service to the modern English novel include Kingsley Amis, John Wain, Nigel Denis, John Braine, Thomas Hinde, Anthony Powell, V. S. Pritchett, Anthony West, Henry Green and Cristopher Isherwood.