What’s interesting here is that we expect the style of
writing to change as time goes on. The Early Modern English of Shakespeare,
for example, is regarded by many as too dense to follow, and if you go back to
the Middle English of Chaucer, it becomes all but unfathomable even to well practiced
readers.
But The Turn of the
Screw was written in 1898, several decades after Dickens and the Brontës,
and yet their prose is clear and relatively simple. In fact, I’ve said before
that Charlotte Brontë’s style is the smoothest, silkiest prose I’ve ever read
and I skip through it.
The contemporary short stories of MR James are written in a
style not wholly dissimilar to that of his namesake, Henry, although it’s
definitely less dense. Maybe this is because MR was English and Henry American.
Maybe the different idioms of UK
and US English are responsible. But they both exhibit, to a modern reader, a
maddening tendency to write excessively long sentences replete with clauses –
often wholly unnecessary – couched in unfamiliar terms and thrown around like confetti in an unruly wind.
So what is it about these fin de siècle writers which makes
them feel the need to be so cumbersome? Is it something to do with the whole
fin de siècle ethos – the rise of cynicism, geopolitics, and a sense of
impending decadence?
I don’t know. All I can say is that I’m glad we got over it
and along came the likes of Nabokov and John Fowles. Reading them is as easy as
falling off a log, and I think I might confine myself to later 20th century
authors in future. I do intend to finish The
Turn of the Screw, though. I’m brave like that.
Hope this post wasn’t too cumbersome. Merely boring.
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