Hetty Sorrel finally commits is the inevitable result of a lifetime of selfishness, vanity, and unwillingness to accept responsibility; and the reaction of Dinah to the tragedy of Hetty's life is the result of a lifetime of vastly different motives. In Romola, each day of Tito Melema's life is a stage in his moral degradation-an inevitable stage, the bitter lesson of which Romola tenderly points out in her talk with Lillo at the end of the book:

"It is only a poor sort of happiness that could ever come by caring very much about our own narrow pleasures. We can only have the highest happiness, and this sort of happiness often brings so much pain with it that we can only tell it from pain by its being what we would choose before everything else, because our souls see it is good. There are so many things wrong and difficult in the world that no man can be great .. unless he gives up thinking much about pleasure or rewards, and gets strength to endure what is hard and painful.' . . . Romola paused for a moment. She had taken Lillo's cheek between her hands, and his young eyes were meeting hers. 'There was a man to whom I was very near so that I could see a great deal of his life, who made almost every one fond of him, for he was young, and clever, and beautiful, and his manners to all were gentle and kind. I believe, when I first knew him, he never thought of anything cruel or base. But because he tried to slip away from everything that was unpleasant, and cared for nothing else so much as his own safety he came at last to commit some of the basest deeds-such as make men infamous. He denied his father, and left him to misery; he betrayed every trust that was reposed in him that he might keep himself safe and get rich and prosperous. Yet calamity overtook him.'

In fact it is the reactions of characters at a crisis in the story that best enable us to judge their motives. Many authors are true and unerring in their choice of such reactions; others falter and become inconsistent at the psychological moment. In The Mill on the Floss, George Eliot knew better than to make Aunt Glegg turn Maggie Tul

Judging the characterization by the reactions of the characters

liver off at the time of her humiliation; in Silas Marner, she knew well that Nancy would not leave Godfrey after sixteen years of life with him even though he confessed his past weakness. In Jane Eyre, we feel it natural for Jane to leave Rochester when she learns his tragic secret. In Henry Esmond, we expect Beatrix to react to her cousin's love as she does. And in The Rise of Silas Lapham, we expect the heroic refusal of Silas to stoop to dishonor even at the price of his fortune. Such reactions are illuminating; they reveal at a flash the whole worth of a character. On the other hand, some authors make their characters do and say things at a crisis merely to satisfy the exigencies of the plot. There is a good deal of unnatural hardheartedness in Dickens that all too obviously "points a moral and adorns a tale." In some of Thomas Hardy's novels we feel that the characters occasionally act as they do in order to satisfy the author's pessimism. A study of the motives and reactions of characters in a novel is, therefore, essential for an estimate of the author's power of drawing character.

WHAT TO CONSIDER IN STUDYING SETTING

The setting of any story is its background of time and place. Setting varies in its impor- Kinds of

tance.

setting

Sometimes it is merely scenic, that is, it merely helps us to visualize the scene of the action. Such a set- Scenic setting ting is usually revealed by casual description and is not of great importance in the study of the story.

Sometimes it tries to portray the peculiarities of life in a special part of the world, such as the tropical forests of Brazil, or the fishing settlements of Brittany, Strongly localor the frozen forests of Canada. Such a ized setting setting exercises a great charm over people who are interested in that scene. Numbers of people read stories just because

they happen to be about Cape Cod, or the French Revolution, or the gold rush to the Yukon, even when the plot and characters are conventional and commonplace.

Some stories have an essential setting, that is, they could not be laid elsewhere because in them plot and characters The essential depend for their very existence on the element setting of time and place. Poe's short story The Fall of the House of Usher could not well take place elsewhere. Ivanhoe is essentially a story of early Norman and Saxon England. The background of the ocean is necessary to Pierre Loti's An Iceland Fisherman. The house itself is an important part of The House of the Seven Gables, and a New England Puritan community is the best possible setting for The Scarlet Letter.

We have already seen that setting influences character; it is obvious that it also influences plot. Cranford is quite Influence of as much a story of Cranford the place as of its setting on plot people; Treasure Island has to take place on a treasure island; A Tale of Two Cities has to take place in London and Paris during the French Revolution; The Cloister and the Hearth is necessarily a romance of the Middle Ages, and Tommy in Sentimental Tommy could not have lived anywhere except in Thrums. In most stories setting plays a part in the development of both plot and character. Very few stories could have taken place anywhere at any time. Setting may be revealed in various ways. The most common method is by description.

It is customary for an author to describe the scene of the whole story. Sir Walter Scott seldom lets such an Setting revealed opportunity go by without an elaborate deby description scription. Other examples of description to reveal setting are the famous picture of the Doone valley in Lorna Doone; the short but adequate description of Raveloe in Silas Marner:

"orchards looking lazy with neglected plenty; the large church in the wide churchyard, which men gazed at lounging at their own doors in service time; the purple-faced farmers jogging along the lanes or turning in at the Rainbow; homesteads where men supped heavily and slept in the light of the evening hearth, and where women seemed to be laying up a stock of linen for the life to come";

and the charming scenes in the garden in The House of the Seven Gables:

a "green play-place of flickering light," where "the bees came and plunged into the squash blossoms," so that "Clifford heard their sunny buzzing murmur in the heart of the great yellow blossoms,' and "looked about him with a joyful sense of warmth, and blue sky and green grass, and of God's free air in the whole height from earth to heaven."

Setting may also be revealed by the use of dialect in the dialogue. Thus we have Scotch dialect in The Little Minister, Sentimental Tommy, and Bob, Son Setting revealed of Battle; negro dialect in Thomas Nelson by dialogue Page's stories of the South; and the New England twang of Silas Lapham and his wife.

Frequently, too, local characters and local customs are emphasized for the purpose of bringing out the setting. Sentimental Tommy is rich in such instances. Setting revealed No novel of pronounced local color can get acters and by local charalong without its local customs, prejudices, customs allusions, and characters. Joseph C. Lincoln's popular stories of Cape Cod life are also familiar examples.

A common device in historical novels is to introduce historical scenes, characters, and costumes into the story. For this reason we have scenes revolving Setting revealed about the battle of Waterloo in Vanity Fair; by historical background the grand progresses of Queen Elizabeth in Kenilworth; the storming of the Bastille in A Tale of Two Cities, and the interchange of courtesies between Saladin

and Richard the Lion Hearted in The Talisman. For this reason historical characters often appear in a novel though they have no connection with its plot. Thus we have Dick Steele in Henry Esmond; Spenser and Raleigh in Westward Ho!; and a constant procession of historical figures through the pages of Scott. For this reason, too, Scott describes in detail the costumes of his characters, descriptions which he loved to write, since he was an antiquarian as well as a novelist.

setting

Occasionally an author uses symbolism in his setting in order better to bring out the significance of the story. For The symbolical the young reader the best illustration of this is The House of the Seven Gables in which the house, the garden, the chickens, the yellowing branch of the elm tree, Alice's posies, the harpsichord-in fact most of the elements of the setting-have a certain symbolic significance. As symbolism is likely to become vague and confusing, however, it is difficult to use effectively.

atmosphere

Most authors have a good sense of the fitness of things in choosing certain scenes for certain events. As Stevenson Setting and says in his Gossip on Romance, "Some places speak distinctly. Certain dank gardens cry aloud for a murder; certain old houses demand to be haunted; certain coasts are set apart for shipwreck." We feel that a wild night and the Devil's Bowl are the proper time and place for Adam M'Adam to discover Red Wull's guilt in Bob, Son of Battle. It is not only appropriate but essential that Dunstan should steal Silas Marner's money on a cold, dark, wet night. The various scenes of David's adventures in Kidnapped are just the places for breathless flight and hushed hiding. As we have seen, Sir Walter Scott usually chooses for beginning his stories a place that at once appeals to the imagination. Few authors fail in this choice of appropriate setting; they use time and place and weather to heighten interest.