premise: What is a novel? A novel is a marketable commodity, of the class collectively termed luxuries, as not contributing directly to the support of life or the maintenance of health. The novel, therefore, is an intellectual artistic luxury in that it can be of no use to a man when he is at work, but may conduce to peace of mind and delectation during his hours of idleness. Probably, no one denies that the first object of the novel is to amuse and interest the reader. But it is often said that the novel should instruct as well as afford amusement, and the novel-with-a-purpose is the realisation of this idea. The purpose-novel, then, proposes to serve two masters, besides procuring a reasonable amount of bread and butter for its writer and publisher, it proposes to escape from my definition of the novel in general and make itself an intellectual moral lesson instead of an intellectual artistic luxury. It constitutes a violation of the unwritten contract tacitly existing between writer and reader. A man buys what purports to be a work of fiction, a romance, a novel, a story of adventure, pays his money, takes his book home, prepares to enjoy it at his ease, and discovers that he has paid a dollar for somebodys views on socialism, religion, or the divorce laws.
hypothesis: According to the author, a writer should write a novel with the sole purpose of amusement