Sometimes terror is
used nowadays, as Bulwer Lytton used it, to serve a moral
purpose. Oscar Wilde's _Picture of Dorian Gray_ is intended to
show that sin must ultimately affect the soul; and the Sorrows of
Satan, in Miss Corelli's novel, are caused by the wickedness of
the world. But apart from any ulterior motive there is still a
desire for the unusual, there is still pleasure to be found in a
thrill, and so long as this human instinct endures devices will
be found for satisfying it. Of the making of tales of terror
there is no end; and almost every novelist of note has, at one
time or another, tried his hand at the art. Early in his career
Arnold Bennett fashioned a novelette, _Hugo_, which may be read
as a modernised version of the Gothic romance. Instead of
subterranean vaults in a deserted abbey, we have the strong rooms
of an enterprising Sloane Street emporium. The coffin, containing
an image of the heroine, is buried not in a mouldering chapel,
but in a suburban cemetery. The lovely but harassed heroine has
fallen, indeed, from her high estate, for Camilla earns her
living as a milliner. There are, it is true, no sonnets and no
sunsets, but the excitement of the plot, which is partially
unfolded by means of a phonographic record, renders them
superfluous.
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