Form: PURPOSE A TEACHING

         PURPOSE A TEACHING
        As a general principle, any lesson a novelist wishes to teach us is all the story, itself and the fortunes of its characters. In the hands of a writer of any skill, the effects may be tremendous, literature the novel undoubtedly commands the most powerful and wide spread popular influence. ‘Oliver Twist’ is the best example of the abuses of the workhouse system and the poor low in general.
       Charles Reade’s ‘It’s, Never Too Late to Mend and Hard Cash’ respectively laid bare the dreadful conditions in prisons and lunatic asylums. Among famous American examples are Harriet Bacher Stowe’s anti- slavery novel ‘Uncle Tom’s cabin.       In more recent times there have been few memorable works with so specific a ‘’purpose’’, but the novel has firmly established itself as the most effective medium for social criticism and diagnosis, and by its agency such authors as John Galsworthy and H. G. Wells have exercised an enorinous influence on contemporary thought like the cinematograph and the Radio, it began as an entertainment and grew into a powerful social force.

      It would be absurd to look for a philosophy of life in a novel with no literary merit, which has no depth of interest and is written with no purpose beyond providing amusement for the idle hour. Such a novel fails to appeal because it is not fresh and serious enough. Whatever is expressed in it does not have sufficient truth and power which may be worthy of consideration. But the great novelists have been thinkers of life as well as keen observers of it. Their novels are power packed with their knowledge of character, their insight into motive and passion, their illuminative treatment of the ending facts and their ripe wisdom.