Text: George F. Richardson, “Poe's Doctrine of Effect,” University of California Publications in Modern Philology, vol. XI, 1922, pp. 179-186

[page 179:]

Professor Sherman in his introduction to A Book of Short Stories quotes with approval from Poe:

Professor Sherman thinks “it is clear that Poe's prose tales, as well as his poems, were written after an exact determination of the total impression to be produced by them”(3) and that according to Poe's practice and precept, a short story is: A brief, original narrative, free from excrescence, of events cunningly arranged for the production of a single predetermined effect, . . . . If you will examine the stories in our collection . . . . you will be inclined to believe that the authors have generally acted upon Poe's assurance that the only unity with which the artist need to concern himself is the unity of effect.(4)

Yet in the second section of his introduction Professor Sherman in dealing with Stevenson's dictum that there are three ways and three ways only, of writing a story — “You may take a plot and fit characters to it, or you may take a character [page 180:] and choose incidents and situations to develop it, or lastly . . . . you may take a certain atmosphere and get actions and persons to realize and express it” — admits that it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to determine which of the three elements receives the predominant emphasis — that it is impossible in many cases to tell what the author set out to express. He says of Barrie ‘s “Courting of T’nowhead's Bell” that “one is at a loss to declare whether the author set out with a desire to ‘express’ Thrums, or to illustrate the characters of two Scotch lovers, or to realize the humorous possibilities of a series of odd situations.”(5) Yet it would appear, from what our critic has said before, that above all Barrie should have set out to produce a single unified effect upon the heart, the intellect, or (more generally) the soul of the reader. What effect? The effect that the life of Thrums produced upon Barrie; the effect that the quaint personalities produced upon him; or simply the general humorous effect of a series of odd situations? The fact that Barrie may have had three purposes in mind and that each of these purposes may be stated as an effect would make it appear that he perhaps was striving after no one particular effect, but that he was endeavoring to give pleasure through the production of a complex of effects. This pleasure itself is an effect, which is heightened by being given to us in an organic unity or a close approach to organic unity — a thing common to all good works of art of whatever description.

Of many a good story it is practically impossible to affirm truthfully that, aside from this pleasure that springs from the harmonius combination of a number of effects within an organic whole, the story has a single unifying effect. What is the single unifying effect of “The Lady or the Tiger?” for instance. We are given first a humorous treatment of character and situation, so that the effect may be said to be humorous; then we pass to a situation of tragic possibilities, and to expository unfoldment of those tragic possibilities; and at the end we are suddenly left in a baffling dilemma, which it appears that [page 181:] the writer was carefully steering us into. The effect of bewilderment and exasperation which that dilemma produces is the major effect of the story, the ultimate effect, the effect that Stockton set out to produce, but it is not a unifying effect, because it does not appear until the very end. A unifying effect should not be led up to; it should, as in “The Fall of the House of Usher,” everywhere appear. What is the unifying effect of Poe's “The Gold Bug”? — this story, by the way, appears to me vastly overrated, because it separates naturally into two very distinct parts, as a well unified story should not; because the character drawing and the conversational elements are not particularly excellent; because the plot is sadly lamed by one or two gross absurdities and proves in the end to be in the main a sort of much ado about little in that a deal of the thrillingly mysterious performances turn out mere hocus pocus of practical joking ; and because one effect of the whole is that of anticlimax, since the narrative disappears into a labored exposition of the involved cryptogram — what is the unifying effect of “Will o’ the Mill”? Professor Sherman discerns that the effect Stevenson aimed at “is the charm of a tranquilly contemplative and reflective soul.”(6) But I hesitate to say as much. Personally, I get a variety of effects from that story, not one of which I should consider the only chief effect for which the story was written; and I am not sure that it was not composed partly for the purpose of censuring the “tranquilly contemplative and reflective soul.” To me the story is as bewildering as life itself, and that bewilderment constitutes one of its charms. But did Stevenson say to himself when he began the story, “Lo, I will produce a tale that shall bewilder the reader with the bewilderment that comes from over-contemplation of life?” Rather, I prefer to think, Stevenson, like many another good workman, builded better than he knew.

I have grave doubts not only as to whether the only unity with which the artist need greatly concern himself is the unity of effect, but as to whether unity of effect is necessary at all. [page 182:] And not only that, but even as to whether Poe himself considered it essential. What was Poe's notion of effect? We have already seen that he thought of it at least once as a thing of the heart or the intellect or (more generally) of the soul. Soul he perhaps considered a combination of the two. At any rate, it would appear that “effect” is not a mere emotional matter. Did he use the term in more than one sense, and as loosely as he used the term originality? In discussing Nathaniel Hawthorne he asserts in one and the same essay,

The fact is that, if Mr. Hawthorne were really original, he could not fail of making himself felt by the public. But the fact is, he is not original in any sense(7) Mr. Hawthorne's distinctive trait is invention, creation, imagination, originality — a trait which, in the literature of fiction, is positively worth all the rest. But the nature of the originality, so far as regards its manifestation in letters, is but imperfectly understood. The inventive or original mind as frequently displays itself in novelty of tone as in novelty of matter. Mr. Hawthorne is original in all points.(8)

But it seems from something that appears between these two excerpts that Poe may have been using originality in two different senses and did not take the trouble to keep from apparently contradicting himself.

There is a species of writing which, with some difficulty, may be admitted as a lower degree of what I have called the true original This kind of composition (which still appertains to a high order) is usually designated as “the natural.” It has little external resemblance, but strong internal affinity, to the true original, if, indeed, as I have suggested, it is not of this latter an inferior degree. It is best exemplified among English writers in Addison, Irving, and Hawthorne.(9)

A good deal of the critical work of Poe is probably hasty journalism. This is true, at least, of the two critiques in which his doctrine of effect is set forth — “The Philosophy of Composition,”(10) and “Nathaniel Hawthorne.’‘(11) In spite of the great parade of logic and philosophical discrimination in those [page 183:] two articles, there is considerable unsatisfying vagueness in the use of terms. He says, for instance, that the skilful literary artist, if wise, “has not fashioned his thoughts to accommodate his incidents,” but he has chosen an effect that is to be wrought out by incident or tone, or both. If the effect is chosen before the incidents and tone, “the idea of the tale has been presented unblemished, because undisturbed.”(12) What does he mean by “fashioning his thoughts to accommodate his incidents”? What does he mean by “the idea of the tale”? Does he mean the effect chosen or the theme? What is the difference between the thoughts that are not to be fashioned to accommodate the incidents and the idea of the tale — if by idea is meant the theme? Be it noted again that apparently an effect may be either an intellectual matter or an emotional matter, or both, according to Poe, and that therefore an idea may be an effect, and that therefore the rule of unity of effect may apply to essays — which may have no purpose but the presentation of ideas — as well as to tales. Yet he distinctly denies that Hawthorne, whose essay work he nevertheless commends, attempts effects in his essays.

Of the essays just named, I must be content to speak in brief. They are each and all beautiful [but beauty is not an effect?], without being characterized by the polish and adaptation so visible in the tales proper. A painter would at once note their leading and predominant feature, and style it repose. There is no attempt at effect [impression upon the heart or intellect?] All is quiet, thoughtful, subdued.(13)

So “repose” is not an effect? Why might not an author deliberately set out to produce an effect of quietness, thoughtfulness, tranquility — “repose”? Clearly Poe is not here using effect to signify merely impression, as he uses the term elsewhere. What he apparently has in mind is novelty of effect or vividness of effect. He is using the term as we use it when we say that such a one is obviously striving for effect, or that such a thing has been done solely for effect, using the term in a somewhat depreciatory sense. This surmise is borne out by Poe's remark [page 184:] later that “Herein our author differs materially from Lamb or Hunt or Hazlitt — who, with vivid originality of manner and expression, have less of the true novelty of thought than is generally supposed, and whose originality, at best, has an uneasy and meretricious quaintness, replete with startling effects unfounded in nature, and inducing trains of reflection which lead to no satisfactory result.”(14) Again a few pages farther on he presumably has somewhat the same use of the term in mind, though here he defends the tale produced purely for startling effect, possibly remembering that most of his own tales have that reason principally, or only, for being.

It may be added here, par parenthèse, that the author who aims at the purely beautiful in a prose tale is laboring at a great disadvantage. For beauty can be better treated in the poem. Not so with terror, or passion, or horror, or a multitude of such other points. And here it will be seen how full of prejudice are the usual animadversions against those tales of effect, many fine examples of which were found in the earlier numbers of Blackwood. [Presumably he here refers to some specimens from the works of the School of Terror.] The impressions produced were wrought in a legitimate sphere of action, and constitued a legitimate although sometimes an exaggerated interest.(15)

Here is suggested the point of the whole matter. “When Poe was so confidently laying down the law that the story writer should first choose deliberately the effect to be produced and then model the whole in accordance therewith, he was laying down the law not for the writing of all kinds of tales, but for the writing of tales of effect, the kind of tale in which he himself so markedly excelled — that kind in which the writer has really nothing of importance to say, no series of incidents to relate that are significant because of their bearings upon the problems of life or their use as illustrations of life — that sort of tale of which “The Fall of the House of Usher” is a master representative. In short, Poe was formulating a law for a genre and giving the law universal application. [page 185:]

The very fact that Poe was so generally obedient to that law in producing his verse as well as his tales, as though it were the highest law, is ample ground for denying him the highest rank both as poet and story writer. Too, too often he has nothing to say, but he says that nothing exquisitely — in such a way as to produce the maximum of the effect aimed at, unless the reader is subtle enough or critically blasé enough to discern or feel the purely mechanical rationale of the whole. Too, too often he is a mere doer of “stunts,” akin to the “elocutionist” who used to entertain us by giving the effect of a grandiloquent oration to a mere repetition of the alphabet.

After all, the story is the thing, to paraphrase Shakespeare. The important thing for the story writer is to have an important purpose, and the more important the purpose the better. The aim to produce a feeling of horror, or sadness, or amusement, merely for its own sake, is not a very high aim, though often harmless and legitimate — even useful. A story that achieves such an effect consummately may be “great” in one sense — as “The Fall of the House of Usher” is great of its kind — but is great in another sense only if that kind of thing is greatly worth doing — that is, if it has profound significance as a revelation, illustration, or criticism of life. There are stories that do have such significance, but in by no means all of them is there unity of effect, or even unity of tone (if that is anything different), for which every word and turn of phrase must count, nor indeed any unity except possibly the unity of purpose — the intent to tell such things and only such things as will appear to the reader an organic whole of importance to him because of its thought value as well as emotional stimulus. The writer may fail of organic unity embracing the whole — as witness Hardy's “The Three Strangers” and Kipling's “The Man Who Was,” in which there is much that is hard to justify on logical grounds. Even in such cases we may say that the unity of purpose is evident in all except the excrescences; which are inartistic inasmuch as when the work is viewed as a whole with a due regard to the dominant purpose they are seen to be divagations and [page 186:] non-essential, however interesting they may be in themselves. If, however, the writer has achieved a worthy purpose greatly, he has written a great story, in the best sense of great.

The story is the thing. If a writer has a great story to tell, he may trust its greatness to atone for many defects in the artistry of telling and may count confidently upon it to produce a not unpleasing complex of effects, which may or may not be resolvable into a unit of effect — a thing to be desired, but not necessary.

[[Footnotes]]

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 179:]

1 Citations in this paper are to Sherman, S. P., A Book of Short Stories (New York, 1914), and to The Works of Edgar Allan Poe, with an introduction and memoir by Richard Henry Stoddard (New York, latest ed. 1884). 6 vols. References will be made to them respectively as Sherman and Poe.

2 Sherman, p. ix. Poe, VI, 117; V, 158.

3 Sherman, p. ix.

4 Sherman, pp. xi and xii

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 180:]

5 Sherman, p. xiv.

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 181:]

6 Sherman, p. xvi.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 182:]

7 Poe, VI, 105.

8 Poe, VI, 119 and 120.

9 Poe, VI, 108.

10 Poe, V.

11 Poe, VI.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 183:]

12 Poe, VI, 117.

13 Poe, VI, 113.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 184:]

14 Poe, VI, 114.

15 Poe, VI, 118.