t is not the simple art of
narrative, but the comprehensive art of fiction that I am considering;
and in fiction there can be no appeal to any authority outside the book
itself. Narrative--like the tales of Defoe, for example--must look
elsewhere for support; Defoe produced it by the assertion of the
historic truthfulness of his stories. But in a novel, strictly so
called, attestation of this kind is, of course, quite irrelevant; the
thing has to _look_ true, and that is all. It is not made to look true
by simple statement.

And yet the novelist must state, must tell, must narrate--what else
can he do? His book is a series of assertions, nothing more. It is so,
obviously, and the difference between the art of Defoe and the art of
Flaubert is only in their different method of placing their
statements. Defoe takes a directer way, Flaubert a more roundabout;
but the deviations open to Flaubert are innumerable, and by his
method, by his various methods, we mean his manner of choosing his
path. Having chosen he follows it, certainly, by means of a plain
narrative; he relates a succession of facts, whether he is describing
the appearance of Emma, or one of her moods, or something that she
did. But this common necessity of statement, at the bottom of it all,
is assumed at the beginning; and in criticizing fiction we may proceed
as though a novelist could really deal immediately with appearances.
We may talk of the picture or the drama that he creates, we may
plainly say that he avoids mere statement altogether, because at the
level of fiction the whole interest is in another region; we are
simply concerned with the method by which he selects the information
he offers. A writer like Flaubert--or like any novelist whose work
supports criticism at all--is so far from telling a story as it might
be told in an official report, that we cease to regard him as
reporting in any sense. He is making an effect and an impression, by
some more or less skilful method. Contemplating his finished work we
can distinguish the method, perhaps define it, notice how it changes
from time to time, and account for the novelist's choice of it.

There is plenty of diversity of method in Madame Bovary, though the
story is so simple. What does it amount to, that story? Charles
Bovary, a simple and slow-witted young country doctor, makes a prudent
marriage, and has the fortune to lose his tiresome and elderly wife
after no long time. Then he falls in lov