re. I do not mean for a moment that the novelist is going to set up as
a teacher, as a sort of priest with a pen, who will make men and women
believe and do this and that. The novel is not a new sort of pulpit;
humanity is passing out of the phase when men _sit under_ preachers and
dogmatic influences. But the novelist is going to be the most potent of
artists, because he is going to present conduct, devise beautiful
conduct, discuss conduct analyse conduct, suggest conduct, illuminate it
through and through. He will not teach, but discuss, point out, plead,
and display. And this being my view you will be prepared for the demand
I am now about to make for an absolutely free hand for the novelist in
his choice of topic and incident and in his method of treatment; or
rather, if I may presume to speak for other novelists, I would say it is
not so much a demand we make as an intention we proclaim. We are going
to write, subject only to our limitations, about the whole of human
life. We are going to deal with political questions and religious
questions and social questions. We cannot present people unless we have
this free hand, this unrestricted field. What is the good of telling
stories about people's lives if one may not deal freely with the
religious beliefs and organisations that have controlled or failed to
control them? What is the good of pretending to write about love, and
the loyalties and treacheries and quarrels of men and women, if one must
not glance at those varieties of physical temperament and organic
quality, those deeply passionate needs and distresses from which half
the storms of human life are brewed? We mean to deal with all these
things, and it will need very much more than the disapproval of
provincial librarians, the hostility of a few influential people in
London, the scurrility of one paper, and the deep and obstinate silences
of another, to stop the incoming tide of aggressive novel-writing. We
are going to write about it all. We are going to write about business
and finance and politics and precedence and pretentiousness and decorum
and indecorum, until a thousand pretences and ten thousand impostures
shrivel in the cold, clear air of our elucidations. We are going to
write of wasted opportunities and latent beauties until a thousand new
ways of living open to men and women. We are going to appeal to the
young and the hopeful and the curious, against the established, the
dignified, and defensive.