her (as in the
foregoing instance) to sum up with absolute finality the narrative
accomplishment of the chapter, or else, by vaguely foreshadowing the
subsequent progress of the story, to lure the reader to proceed. The
elder Dumas possessed in a remarkable degree the faculty of so
terminating one chapter as to allure the reader to an immediate
commencement of the next. He did this most frequently by introducing a
new thread of narrative in a phrase of the concluding sentence, and
thereby exciting the reader's curiosity to follow up the thread.
The expedient of emphasis by terminal and by initial position cannot,
of course, be applied without reservation to an entire novel. The last
chapter of a novel with a complicated plot is often of necessity
devoted to tying or untying minor knots in the straggling threads of
the general network. Therefore, the most emphatic place in an extended
narrative is not at the very end, but rather at the close of the
chapter which sets forth the culmination. Also, although many great
novels, like "The Scarlet Letter," have begun at an emphatic moment in
the plot, many others have opened slowly and have presented no
important material until the narrative was well under way. "The
Talisman" of Scott, "The Spy" of Fenimore Cooper, and many another
early nineteenth-century romance, began with a solitary horseman whom
the reader was forced to follow for several pages before anything
whatever happened. Latterly, however, novelists have learned from
writers of short-stories the art of opening emphatically with material
important to the plot.
=4. Emphasis by Direct Proportion.=--Another means of emphasis in
narrative is by proportion. More time and more attention should be
given to essential scenes than to matters of subsidiary interest. The
most important characters should be given most to say and do; and the
amount of attention devoted to the others should be proportioned to
their importance in the action. Becky Sharp stands out sharply from
the half a hundred other characters in "Vanity Fair," because more
time is devoted to her than to any of the others. Similarly, in "Emma"
and in "Pride and Prejudice," as we have noted in the preceding
chapter, the heroine is in each case emphasized by the fact that she
is set forth from a more intimate point of view than the minor people
in the story. It is wise, for the sake of emphasis by proportion, to
draw the major characters more completely and mor
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