A Psychological Counter-Current in Recent Fiction — Themes and Context

The Case of Gilbert Parker: From Romance to Interiority

Howells credits Parker with popularizing decadent romanticism, but insists that his latest novel, The Right of Way, succeeds because its 'prevalent effect is psychologistic.' The protagonist Charley Steele is described as 'unpromising material'—a man of pure intellect—yet the novel treats him as 'somehow master of his fate,' a departure from the determinism Howells associates with mere event-driven fiction. He contrasts this with the 'intellectual squalor' of Parker's earlier work, suggesting that even a flawed author can produce something vital when he turns inward.

Chesnutt and the Universal Implication of Psychologism

In Charles W. Chesnutt's The House Behind the Cedars, Howells identifies a 'psychologism of that universal implication'—a treatment of racial identity that transcends personal psychology to address systemic injustice. He praises the novel's art despite its 'tendenciousness,' noting that Chesnutt presents the case 'with great power.' The essay's language here is notably direct: Howells calls the book 'a portent of the sort of negro equality against which no series of hangings and burnings will finally avail,' grounding his literary analysis in a stark social observation.

Von Suttner's Pacifist Novel and the Limits of Influence

Howells devotes the longest section to Bertha von Suttner's Lay Down Your Arms, a novel of 'rankest tendenciousness' that he nonetheless ranks above any other war novel he knows, excepting War and Peace. He summarizes its plot—a woman loses two husbands to successive European wars—but emphasizes the 'intense passion of grief' and the 'truth and impartiality' of characterization. Yet he doubts its impact on Anglo-American readers, remarking dryly that Americans are 'still apparently in love with fighting' and that real change may require the pacification of the Philippines and South Africa.

Howells's essay is less a systematic theory than a critic's intervention in a live debate. Readers should note his method: he uses each novel to test a hypothesis about literary evolution, but he never claims to have proven it. The value lies in the specific observations—Parker's shift from squalor to grace, Chesnutt's universal implication, von Suttner's grief—and in the way Howells's own voice modulates from analytical to polemical. This is criticism as conversation, not verdict.

I remember missing a train once because I couldn’t put down a novel that seemed to think alongside me rather than at me, much like Howells describes that quiet turn inward. It reminds me of the unhurried companionship in A Jolly Fellowship — Background and Themes, where friendship itself becomes a kind of moral weather, felt rather than narrated.