Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- About this book
- Chapter 1 Why the novel matters
- Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote (1605, 1615)
- Chapter 2 Origins of the novel
- Laurence Sterne, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (1759–67)
- Chapter 3 Narrating the novel
- James Hogg, The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner (1824)
- Chapter 4 Character and the novel
- Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter (1850)
- Chapter 5 Plotting the novel
- Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary (1857)
- Chapter 6 Setting the novel
- Charles Dickens, Bleak House (1853)
- Chapter 7 Time and history
- Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse (1927)
- Chapter 8 Genre and subgenre
- Graham Greene, The Ministry of Fear (1943)
- Chapter 9 Novel and anti-novel
- Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49 (1966)
- Chapter 10 Novel, nation, community
- Salman Rushdie, Midnight's Children (1981)
- Chapter 11 Concluding
- Notes
- Glossary
- Further reading
- Index
- Cambridge Cultural Social Studies
Chapter 11 - Concluding
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- About this book
- Chapter 1 Why the novel matters
- Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote (1605, 1615)
- Chapter 2 Origins of the novel
- Laurence Sterne, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (1759–67)
- Chapter 3 Narrating the novel
- James Hogg, The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner (1824)
- Chapter 4 Character and the novel
- Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter (1850)
- Chapter 5 Plotting the novel
- Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary (1857)
- Chapter 6 Setting the novel
- Charles Dickens, Bleak House (1853)
- Chapter 7 Time and history
- Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse (1927)
- Chapter 8 Genre and subgenre
- Graham Greene, The Ministry of Fear (1943)
- Chapter 9 Novel and anti-novel
- Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49 (1966)
- Chapter 10 Novel, nation, community
- Salman Rushdie, Midnight's Children (1981)
- Chapter 11 Concluding
- Notes
- Glossary
- Further reading
- Index
- Cambridge Cultural Social Studies
Summary
Chapter XLIX: The conclusion, in which nothing is concluded
Samuel Johnson, Rasselas (1759)The anxiety, which in this state of their attachment must be the portion of Henry and Catherine, and of all who loved either, as to its final event, can hardly extend, I fear, to the bosom of my readers, who will see in the tell-tale compression of the pages before them, that we are hastening together to perfect felicity.
Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey (1817)The endings of novels are always bad, argued E. M. Forster, because everything needs to be satisfactorily wrapped up: “no wonder that nothing is heard but hammering and screwing.” It would be much more rewarding if novelists could simply persevere until they got too bored or confused to keep going. But whether we write six-page papers or six-hundred-page novels, all of us who write know how much an ending matters: this is where we are expected to provide clarity and revelation, to make readers feel that they have spent their time well in reading everything that has gone before. And it is because novelists know how much pressure we put on endings that so many of them joke about the high expectations we bring to their closing chapters. In Johnson's concluding chapter of Rasselas “nothing is concluded,” while Austen puts an end to the suspenseful delay of Northanger Abbey (will the lovers Henry and Catherine overcome parental opposition?
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- Information
- The Cambridge Introduction to the Novel , pp. 176 - 183Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010