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The Writing of Fiction
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Artistic Objectivity: Make Weep, and Not Weep

The Writing of Fiction Edith Wharton
objectivity two-sided-imagination projection autobiography

Key Principle

The mark of the born novelist is the objective faculty — the power to feel a character fully and yet stand far enough away to relate it "to the whole stuff of life." The creative imagination is "two-sided": it penetrates other minds and stands "far enough aloof from them to see beyond." That aloof height is "proportioned to the artist's power of detaching one part of his imagination from the particular problem in which the rest is steeped."

From this follows the book's most quoted craft maxim: "The business of the artist is to make weep, and not to weep, to make laugh, and not to laugh." Emotion must be transmuted, not merely discharged.

Why This Matters

The created world must be "as solidly real as the world of experience ... but in a way entirely different": its characters are "visionary to him, and to the reader real." If the author loses this dual hold — if he collapses into his own feeling — "he will be the slave of his characters and not their master." A work of art "should be something projected, not reflected": the mind is the mirror, but the work is what the mirrored experience is turned into for "its full illumination." Mere reflection (transcription of one's own emotion) is not yet art.

Vision alone never suffices either: "each time the artist passes from dream to execution he will need to find the rules and formulas on the threshold" — which is Wharton's case for craft itself.

Good Examples

  • The magic transposition. Tolstoy's "Kreutzer Sonata" is about his own soul "yet as objective as Othello — the magic transposition has taken place."
  • Detachment as strength, not coldness. Wharton refutes the claim that Dostoievsky surpasses Tolstoy by being "more chaotic" — chaos is failed selection, not superior feeling; the higher aloofness is the greater art.

Counterpoints

  • The subjective/autobiographical book. Such a writer "lacks the power of getting far enough away from his story to view it as a whole," so his minor characters "remain the mere satellites of the principal personage ... and disappear when not lit up by their central luminary." Books like "Adolphe," "Dominique," and "Princesse de Clèves" are "not strictly a novel, since no objectively creative effort has gone to" them.
  • The author who weeps. Wharton is unmoved by Dickens's real tears over Little Nell — undischarged feeling on the page is not the same as feeling produced in the reader.

Key Quotes

"The business of the artist is to make weep, and not to weep, to make laugh, and not to laugh." — Edith Wharton, Chapter III: Constructing a Novel

"The work of art should be something projected, not reflected." — Edith Wharton, Chapter II: Telling a Short Story

Rules of Thumb

  • Feel your characters completely, then step back far enough to see them whole — be their master, not their slave.
  • Transmute emotion into effect; the goal is to make the reader weep, not to weep on the page.
  • If a story cannot survive being seen from outside the protagonist, it is closer to memoir than to a novel.
  • Project, don't reflect: the work is what experience is turned into, not a transcript of it.

Related References