Novel is alive. One can’t betray its refreshing brilliance in capturing the reader’s attention. Novel communicates with the reader insofar that he appreciates the enchanting artistry in it. A good novel leaves with the readers it’s impressions that can at times be titillating, but are otherwise very thought provoking. To define novel as a story that merely mirrors our day to day life can grab the attention of some novelists who would make it abundantly clear that they are apoplectic at that placid observation. According to them, a novel has more to offer than the day to day happenings that we are very much connected to, they talk about emotions that pervade their novels, they talk about morals, and they talk about taking chances with life to see if they can get away with it. They argue that only characters in novels can be heroic, only novels consummate in happiness. What does a novelist require other than the basic prerequisites of knowing the language? A novel has characters, a plot and a clever way of revealing the plot by saving it to the very end. Is it that simple? A good novel first defines the characters as they enter the scene, their tastes, their emotional capabilities, their likes, dislikes and makes a conscientious endeavor in capturing them in the province of their definitions. Some novelists have a plot in their mind, they design a way of revealing it at the end by cleverly leaving tracks for the reader throughout the novel, so if the reader after completing the novel chooses to back track the weaving adapted by the novelist, he must be able to find it with the knowledge of the ending. Although there are other basic fundamentals that make a novel, I would wish to deal with the two most important ones- characters and the plot, suffice to say that other factors compliment to the importance of these two, other factors delineate and make these two seem conspicuous at some times and rather inauspicious at other times.
Once the characters are defined in a novel, the novelist leaves the characters to play and he would refrain from tinkering with the play and the characters. Novelist gratifies himself sitting way above the stage of play, watching the characters play and occasionally pulling them back into the confines of the plot so as to do the deserved respect to the plot. There is a potential paradox in this spectacle. By sitting himself way above the stage of play, novelist denies himself a chance to read through the minds of the characters, he is not seeing through them, he is rather seeing only superficially which can prove all the more futile an experiment, very expensive experiment indeed. Novelist must get consumed by the character when one is delivering and get consumed by the other when he is retaliating for the former one. This is very delicate indeed and very few novelists who have stepped down into the quagmire of characters and their emotions have succeeded. Why so? because, a novelist gets carried away by the sheer abundance of emotional faculties displayed by the characters in his novel, he finds a character vaguely familiar to someone he knew and his like or dislike of this someone takes precedence over his character’s role in the realm of his novel. Also, if the novelist is dealing with the central character and has no choice but to refer to this character with an ‘I’, he is landing himself into deepest of troubles from where only the greatest of novelists returned to see the day of light. An ‘I’ can demand an attachment from the novelist that he cant deny for he is too self conscious when he is dealing with an ‘I’ in the novel and thereby this ‘I’ with its upper arm shadows his view of all the other characters, it obfuscates him of his plot and he in this blissful ignorance channels his frustrations and anger through ‘I’ into the novel, his pent up emotions find a vent to discharge and the novelist in this chaos and confusion spoils the stage of play with his momentary lapses of intellect. Once this is done, he experiences greater amount of friction in switching roles, he plays ‘I’ and lets the other characters come along as ‘I’ in the novel chooses to. He thus denies the other characters ‘want to voice out’.
Plot can be equally despicable in enticing the novelist to spoil the novel. Novelist has a plot in mind; he defines the characters and lets them on the stage of play. For some reason unfathomable to the novelist or if he is in a rush to complete the novel, he has to step down from his visionary seat into the novel, manipulate the characters and drive them towards the climax, where the plot is revealed. The absurdity in this endeavor for a novelist is to degrade his characters to capricious elements of the novel, because to drive them towards the climax, to hasten the pace is to tinker with the definitions given to these characters at the beginning of the novel.
Women novelists of today have proved themselves to be more versatile and more matured in dealing with the characters in their novels, but from the times of Shakespeare till the twentieth century there have been very few women novelists. Men back in the 16th century had nothing to worry about their self esteem insofar as to condemn women, as women were neither allowed education nor allowed to write. Situation has been more or less the same for women till the 19th century. Later, women like Jane Austen started to write, but this was no big deal for the men, because Jane Austen never left her house to go on long trips, researching on her books, she only wrote about people and their emotional capabilities. Now, in the recent times, men are beginning to show their frills, they are writing more about women and their supposed lack of versatility in writings. Men are addressing only half of the populations in their writings, leaving the other sex out of their addressing population, but their writings are but an abundance of accusations on women, they make women weak in their novels, they let women make mistakes, they make women responsible for hasty decisions. Men are in a state of disbelief, in an attempt to do justice to his sex, he is letting his emotions cloud his intellect, he is letting the ‘I’ speak in his novels and thereby loosing his grip on the novel, he is merely channeling his dubious anger through ‘I’. Women have outgrown men in this aspect, back in 16th century they were denied education, they were married at the age of 16 regardless of their want to marry, they were first cajoled, coaxed into marriage by their fathers for they were a burden and later beaten by their own fathers if they reuse to obey them. Back then, women mirrored the self esteem of men, thereby doubling their self esteem in their own eyes. This self aggrandizing nature of men started dissipating between the 19th and 20th century, when women got equal rights and a room to think, rather than just being mirrors of self esteem for men. Women only ceased to be mirrors now, they are not fighting the evils that they were put through, they are rather amusing themselves with this newly found freedom for thought. For men, their self esteem has diminished by half of its magnitude, since women ceased to exist for them. This thought of breaking even with women in the realm of intellect, judgment and gratitude is making men apoplectic, they are letting their emotions pile up and their writings could not have come at a better timing, on the verge of emotional exploding.
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