The Sun.
London, England, 1863-12-21 00:00:00

THE CRIMINAL NOVEL,

The principle that holds good in political economy holds
equally good in literature—that the demand creates the sup-
ply. The author, therefore—or more frequently the
authoress—of the criminal nuvel is perhaps not answerable
for more than half the evil that springs from the perform-
ance. He knows what his readers require, and supplies
them with the article, which may be said, in a comprehen-
sive sense, to be made to order. Almost every one professes
to condemn the criminal novel as unfit for general perusal,
though for his or her own private reading it is supposed to
be innoxious. "It does me no harm," thinks the mature
matron, " though it is certainly unfit to be placed in the
hands of young persons." But what the mamma reads the
daughter also will read, so that the romantic poison, if
poison it be, finds its way all through the household, as well
as into the mistress's boudoir; for Miss tells her maid, who
tells the cook—end all pent over the forbidden page by
stealth.

The novelist would find no market, who should present
the supporters of circulating libraries with a fiction in
three volumes not seasoned with the proper ingredients.
What is wanted is excitement, no matter how produced.
Life is becoming tame; the current of English society—on
the surface, at least—runs smoothly, and if it were not for
the activity of burglars and pickpockets, our sympathies
would actually stagnate. Occasionally a murderer comes
to our relief, and the whole British public thrills with a
pleasing horror. While the criminal is undetected, every-
body appears on the look-out. If we enter a tavern or a
coffee-house, if we are boxed up in an omnibus or in a rail-
way ca-riage, we may elbow him there, with his garrotting
cord or his clasped knife in his pocket. At the breakfast
table, nothing else is talked of. If justice takes its due
course, and avenges the shedding of innocent blood, a
momentary shock is felt by the whole nation, after which
the sensation dies gradually away, leaving the popular
mind in a state of eager craving for another. To lilt
up the interval, the criminal novelist offers his services'
which are generally quite in harmony with the inci-
dents of our social experience. Nothing in fiction "takes"
like a well-planned murder ; the reader being let
into the secret, becomes a sort of accomplice before the fact
—sees the victim led towards the wood, tho ruin, or the
pool ; hears the stab, the rush of blood, or the plunge of the
corpse into the water. If the deed be perpetrated for money
it still creates a powerful twittering of the nerves; but if
for revenge, or through the jealousy of love, the reader al-
most Lecomes one with the heroic assassin, anal dreads hie
detection, as if he or she were to suffer with him. By reficc.
tive and artistic skill, the suspense is protracted through
volume after volume, with hair-breadtlt escape 3, alternat-
ing with moments of tranquillity and remorse, or with
generous sacrifices, or acts of daring designed to awaken
admiration in female bosoms; until at length, in the com-
plication of incidents, the chaos cf sentiments and motives,
the succession of enjoyments and sufferings, or the pressure
upon the assa:sin of wrongs unconnected with his guilt,
which, on the mind of the reader, operate like expiations,
it become matter of doubt whether we ought to desire escape
or punishment. _ _ _

Our feelings are, however, moat commonly interested in
the fate of some gentle sinner, who early in life makes a
mistake which colours her destiny, and qualifies her to be-
come the heroine of a criminal novel. This mistake is gene-
rally a marriage, contracted through rashness, through
passion, through vanity, through pique, through craving
for opulence, with an individual whom she does not love.
in real life no one, while sowing this fatal seed, can by any
exertion of sagacity foresee what fruit it will bear. We
need not apply any epithet to the woman who takes the
step. She feels her proper appellation stamped upon her
heart in characters of fire, and shudders and sickens as
often in secret she reads over the agonising inscription.
Some who have cdvauced thus far in the path of iniquity
stop short there, and expiate, by a life of wretchedness, the
error of their youth. With these the novelist has nothing
to do. To figure in fiction, a woman must efface her first
offence by a second,—by elopement, by adultery, by
bigamy, or at times even by assassination. Of course
the novelist does nut defend these acts of his
heroine; does not say in so many words that what
she does is right ; he only clothes her with all sorts of vir-
tues and graces, except one ; gives her taste, fancy, kindness
to equals, compassion for inferiors, and, above all. beauty,
accompanied by every conceivable fascination. Sometimes,
indeed, by way of variety, like Aurora Floyd, she takes
to the horsewhip, or, with her own fair hands, like Lady
Audley, pushes an intrusive husband down a well, or like
Ellen Middleton an innocent young girl into a river; but
then it is only in self-defence, and to cut the Gordian knot
of difficulties, which seem otherwise insur mountable.
As for the readers, it may be said that they will tolerate
anything provided it be sufficiently disguised, or even if the
novelist pretend that it is disguised. We all know that there
is no sophistry like that of the heart, which nearly always
possesses the power to excuse what it loves. Accordingly,
the most grave and virtuous ladies are generally able to de-
fend their passions for prurient descriptions, which they
maintain are not only harmless, but instructive, because they
afford a picture of life, such as it is. They might be told, if
it were worth while, that in this great scheme of things,
called life, there are many nooks and recesses into which
the eye of a chaste woman should not pry. It is certain,

however, that the nearer approach made by novelists to
such nooks and recesses, the greater is the delight of their
readers, who hang fascinated over those gulfs of sin which
they are permitted thus to enter, at least in imagination.
If questioned on this point, they will take refuge in affected
bluntness of perception, they do not, they say, understand
what certain passages mean, nor can they quite discern
the drift of insinuations which, nevertheless, heighten the
interest they take in the story. It must confessed that
there are men, as well as women, too readily interested by
those female novelists who tread habitually on the verge of
forbidden ground, and undertake to unveil the mysteries of
the feminine nature. The administration of the novel-
reading public is no longer excited by apt representations
of character, and by a series of dramatic incidents and
situations. What is now sought is a disclosure of the
subtle notions end fluctuations of the female heart.
These arc, it may be admitted, an important subject of
study. But in the case before us, it is not the general
system of sentiments, emotions, passions, that are
anatomised and depicted, but only such as are closely
allied with vice and crime. A woman with a pure heart
and unsoiled name creates no interest whatever in the
reader, unless through some probable combination of events
she is threatened with the loss of what makes her estimable.
No reader feels much solicitude about tracing the arduous
process by which the soul sometimes works off its stains
and pollutions, and emerges from darkness into light. If
such an aim were kept in view by the writers of fiction,

they would be accused of converting a novel into a refor-
matory. What the readers prefer to doat over is the much
sadder process by which innocence is undermined; by
which ail the fine qualities of mind and heart are Mighted;
by which features once soft and lovely are rendered hard ;
by which the eye that once drooped with modesty is in-
vested with a confident stare in one word, by which beauty
itself is made loathsome through its association with Vice.
No doubt, the treatment of such a theme r=aybe reconciled
with the loftiest purpose which can regulate the creations
of literature. Tragedy in its IliSst sublime development
is based on crime. But the mind, when it has waded
through its horrors, is conscious of no deterioration, of
no inroad of effeminacy, of no inclination to swerve from
the right path to the wrong. It is, on the contrary,
nerved and strengthened to virtue, No irgenieu9 reader