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Naturalizing the Fantastic:Narrative Technique in the Novelsof
Charles Williams
KATHLEEN SPENCER
To understand the language of a text is to reeognize the world
to which it refers.Jonathan Culler, Structuralist Poetics
The basic convention which governs the novel, according to
JonathanCuller, is "our expectation that the novel will produce a
world." The novelrepresents "the semiotic process at its fullest
scope: the creation and orga-nization of signs not simply in order
to produce meaning but in order toproduce a human world charged
with meaning"(189). Though no singlephrase can adequately describe
the novels of Charles Williams, "a humanworld charged with meaning"
comes remarkably close, provided that theworld Williams believed
in, the world he produces in his novels, is notexclusively human.
Intermixed with the human is a generous measure ofthe superhuman.
For Williams, it is precisely this intermixtureor coin-herence, to
use his term for itof nature and supernature that creates
themeaning of his world.
His belief in the interpenetration of these two realms, the
natural and thesupernatural, helps to explain the characteristic
shape of Williams's novels.His works, like those of his friends C.
S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien, arecommonly called fantasies, but
unlike theirs Williams's are not set in separ-ate magical realms
with special laws of their own, but in contemporaryLondon and the
surrounding countryside.' Lewis's and Tolkien's storiesconcern
kings and queens, heroes and great fighters, talking animals,
andother fabulous creatures. In Narnia and Middle-earth, wizards
are fearedbut are recognized as part of the natural order of
things; magic is under-
Extrapolation, Vol. 28, No. I, 1987 by The Kent State University
Press
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Naturalizing the Fantastic
stood as a rare gift, but no less common than any other kind of
genius orgreat power.
Williams, on the other hand, fills his London stories with
ordinarymiddle-class people: secretaries, publisher's assistants,
students, junior edi-tors, wives, daughters, and maiden aunts,
along with the occasional doctor,lawyer, teacher, or artist. The
majority of these characters, far from believ-ing in magic or the
supernatural, have never even thought seriously aboutthemuntil the
Stone of Suleiman begins transporting people throughspace, until
the Archetypal Beasts materialize to menace the countryside,until
the original Tarot deck creates a magical and deadly blizzard,
until aliving woman's spirit roams the city ofthe dead while a dead
woman meetsher living husband on a London street. Faced with
circumstances that seemimpossible, the characters must learn to
accept the reality of their experi-ences to meet successfully the
challenge of events. Nor can they lightlyrefuse or fail this
challenge, for at stake are not just their own fates, butoften the
fates of many other people, if not of all of civilization.
The characters are not the only ones who must accept the reality
ofthemarvelous occurrences. To experience the text fully, readers
also must be-lieve in the events being narrated, at least as long
as they are reading. Bychoosing to set his supernatural tales in
perfectly mundane and realisticsurroundingsby choosing, that is,
the genre of the fantastic rather than offantasyWilliams has
created some special technical problems of inducingbelief in his
readers. An examination of those problems and how Williamshas
approached them yields considerable insight into the way the
fantasticoperates and what its potential powers might be.
Williams's novels all belong to the fantastic genre. But whose
"fantas-tic"? Alas, "fantastic" is one of those protean literary
words that meanssomething different in the hands of almost every
critic who uses it. Else-where I have discussed the more popular
models ofthe fantastic (TzvetanTodorov's, Rosemary Jackson's, and
Eric Rabkin's) and explained why Ifind them inappropriate to my
purposes;^ here I will restrict myself to theobservation that the
most precise and functional model of the fantastic isthat proposed
by Polish critic Andrzej Zgorzelski.
The fantastic, Zgorzelski states, "consists in the breaching
ofthe internallaws which are initially assumed in the text to
govern the fictional world"(298). All texts begin with meta-textual
information about the genre towhich they belong: though not always
in a single phrase, like the "Onceupon a time" of the fairy tale,
they nonetheless and unmistakably signaltheir nature in the opening
pages. In the case of the fantastic, the initialsignals indicate a
fictive world based on objective reality, what Zgorzelskicalls "a
mimetic world model." However, the entrance of the fantastic
ele-ment breaches this model and changes it into a different world,
one follow-ing different laws. The genre of the fantastic, then,
consists of those texts
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Kathleen Spencer
which "build their fictional world as a textual confrontation of
two modelsof reality" (298).
Because the crucial aspect ofthe definition is that both models
of realitybe contained within the text itself, Zgorzelski does not
include in the fantas-tic those texts based on a unified but
nonrealistic world modelfantasyand fairy tales on the one hand or
science fiction on the other. While thenonrealistic worlds of fairy
tales and science fiction do, of course, challengethe reality of
the readers, the confrontation does not occur within the textbut
only when readers disengage from it, when they stop reading. In
thefantastic, however, since both world models are contained in the
text itself,it is during the reading that readers experience the
confrontation.
Zgorzelski identifies two primary markers ofthe fantastic. The
first in-volves the tone or focus ofthe narrative itself: the
emphasis is on provokingthe readers' sense of wonder, the
unexpected, the unknown. They mustnever be allowed to forget the
strangeness ofthe fantastic occurrences tak-ing place. At the same
time, the author must find a way of justifying ormaking credible
the improbable events or characters of the story. Theproper
response from the reader faced with such occurrences is: "This
can-not be happeningbut it is!"
By contrast, science-fiction writers, who construct a text built
on a uni-fied non-mimetic world model, direct their efforts "not
towards makingthis world probable, but towards making it ordinary;
not towards justify-ing the appearance of improbable events,
characters or elements of thesetting but rather towards making it
appear normal, everyday-like withinthe suggested laws of the given
reality" (299; emphasis added). The readersof science fiction,
faced with what appears to be a breach in the laws ofthetextual
world, assume merely that they have not fully understood thoselaws
and that the event, when explained, will turn out to be entirely
natural.The readers ofthe fantastic, on the other hand, must accept
that the remark-able occurrences are actually happening (they must,
as Todorov points out,interpret the events literally, rather than
reading either "poetically" or "al-legorically" [321]), but they
should never come to regard those events asnormal or ordinary.
In sustaining this sense of the extraordinary, the reader is
guided by thereactions of the characters and/ or the narrator:
these reactions are the sec-ond of Zgorzelski's markers ofthe
fantastic. Naturally the characters andnarrator are all aware of
the laws of their own world, the initially estab-lished mimetic
world model, so that when the laws of their world arebreached by
the fantastic, they respond with astonishment, disbelief,
awe,terror j^ust as the reader does in sharing their experience.
The text itself,therefore, testifies repeatedly and in multiple
ways that a breach has indeedoccurred.
From this general description ofthe genre, other textual
elements ofthe64
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Naturalizing the Fantastic
fantastic tale follow. In the beginning, the ordinary
conventions of realismapply. The world of the text refers to a
recognizable world, full of realisticobjects, customs, and
institutions. The characters are, for the most part,not real
historical personages but are realistica blend of
generalizedcharacteristics appropriate to their periods, classes,
occupations, and ages,combined with individualizing traits. The
events described must fall withincertain parameters of probability,
given the personalities ofthe charactersand their situations; above
all, events must obey the natural laws of thereaders' physical
world.
The intrusion of the fantastic modifies some of these
conventions andadds others. The fantastic element must represent a
genuine breach in thenatural laws ofthe mimetic world model; that
is, it must actually be what itappears to benot a hallucination,
not a dream, not the result of a trickedor overstimulated
imagination. The characters or narrator or both mustrecognize the
occurrence as a violation of the natural laws of their world.
Paradoxically, however, to make the fantastic event convincing,
the au-thor must apply the same techniques of verisimilitude that
create the realis-tic elements of the text. Surely one of the
simplest and most effective ofsuch techniques is the detailed,
particularized description of objects andevents, the fantastic and
the realistic alike. This technique is a variation ofwhat Jonathan
Culler calls a "descriptive residue," items in a story that tellus
nothing about plot or character, whose only function in the text is
todenote concrete reality"trivial gestures, insignificant objects,
superflu-ous dialogue"to represent the simple thereness oHht world
(193). If suchdescriptions of ordinary objects are convincing in
the reality of the text'sworld, they will also convince readers
ofthe reality ofthe fantastic elementswhich intrude into that
world. The more specific and intimate the details ofappearance and
behavior given, the more convincing the fantastic occur-rence will
seem.
One of the aspects ofthe fantastic that contributes most
crucially to theverisimilitude of the genre may well be the initial
mimetic setting. If theworld is recognizable and acceptable and its
characters are realistic, readerscan enter the characters'
perceptions and experiences, thereby making anemotional commitment
to the text as verisimilar and committing energy tobelieving in it.
Even when the fantastic challenges the initial mimeticworld's
credibility, the characters experience the same doubts and
disloca-tions as do the readers. Consequently, though readers'
identification withthe world ofthe text has been disrupted,
identification with the charactersis not diminished; instead, it is
reinforced. Rather than rejecting the textaltogether, readers
experience that typical and paradoxical reaction to thefantastic:
this, readers think, cannot be happening, but it is.
Given this model, all seven of Charles Williams's novels are
quite clearlyfantastic.3 They begin with ordinary contemporary
places and eventsat a
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Kathleen Spencer
university dinner in honor of a returned explorer, in the
offices of a Londonpublisher, with two friends on a country ramble,
with a bickering middle-class family just before dinner, with the
discussion of a new play by anamateur theatrical group." Then, more
or less rapidly, each of these ordi-nary scenes opens up into a
series of increasingly astonishing and impossi-ble occurrences to
the surprise, excitement, bafflement, and occasional ter-ror of the
characters.
The question of most importance, then, concerns Williams's
techniquesfor encouraging reader sympathy for and identification
with these charac-ters, so that their responses and the fantastic
events to which they respondare believable. Primarily, he relies on
control of narrative point of view andnarratorial authoritythe
reliabiity of the source through which readerslearn of or
experience the fantastic. Williams's narrator is omniscient,
butseldom intrusive: he is free to enter into the minds of all the
characters atwill, but says very little (aside from the usual
reportorial functions) is hisown proper voice. But to have said
this is to have made only the broadest,most general of observations
about Williams's narrative technique. Inpractice, the variations
and gradations of narrative voice in these novels arequite subtle
and admirably suited to the rather delicate task at hand: lead-ing
readers by small, gradual steps into an acceptance (within the
text, atleast) of the fantastic events he has described.
As a rule, Williams introduces the fantastic element of his
stories onlygradually, in a way not initially committing the
narrator to a position on itstruthfulnessEprimarily, that is,
through dialogue.5 In War in Heaven, hisfirst published novel, the
Graal (or Grail) is discovered in an English coun-try church and
becomes the center of a struggle between some Satanists andan
opposing group. However, this is not the kind of story that the
bookinitially suggests it will tell. In fact, it begins like a
classic murder mystery:"The telephone bell was ringing wildly, but
without result, since there wasno one in the room but the corpse."*
From the murder scene (the offices of aLondon publisher), the story
spreads out, building a network of interre-lated characterstwo
young employees of the publisher, Lionel Rack-straw and Kenneth
Mornington; Rackstraw's wife and young son; Mor-nington's
priest-friend who introduces the clerk to the Archdeacon ofFardles;
the harried publisher himself, Stephen Persimmons, and his fa-ther,
Gregory, the former head ofthe firm and a student ofthe more
horri-ble branches ofthe occult who announces serenely to Stephen
that he is themurderer; and Sir Giles Tumulty, an associate of
Gregory's whose book onSacred Vessels has just reached proof stage
in Persimmons's firm.
Gregory Persimmons is a rather puzzling character. In the first
place, heviolates the conventions of detective fiction by casually
revealing himself asthe murderer in the early chapters ofthe book.
In the second place, he endshis confession by saying to himself,
cryptically: "The wizards were burned,66
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Naturalizing the Fantastic
they went to be burned, they hurried. Is there a need still?
Must the wizardbe an outcast like the saint? Or am I only tired? I
want another child. And Iwant the Graal" (28).
His final remark seems to be a particularly odd non sequitur,
but severalpages later, there is a kind of explanation. The
Archdeacon drops in at thepublisher's to leave a manuscript with
Mornington and is shown the proofsof Sir Giles's book as something
touching his professional, clerical con-cerns. The book includes
the following passage:
"It seems probable, therefore, . . . if we consider these
evidences, and the hy-pothetical scheme which has been adduced, not
altogether unreasonably, to ac-count for the facts which we havea
scheme which may be destroyed in thefuture by discovery of some
further fact, but till then may not unjustifiably beconsidered to
hold the fieldit seems probable that the reputed Graal may be sofar
definitely traced and its wanderings followed as to permit us to
say that itrests at present in the parish church of Fardles."
"Dear me!" the Archdeacon [of Fardles] said. . . . (36)
At that same moment across the hall, Gregory has just delivered
Sir Giles'sinstructions to delete this paragraph from the text, not
knowing it has cometo the attention of the last person in the world
he he would have wanted tosee it.
Williams's rhetorical strategy here is multilayered and quite
subtle. Onthe one hand, this passage is convincing and
authoritative in tone. It hasthat peculiar academic blend of
caution ("it seems probable," "hypotheticalscheme," "not
unjustifiably," "not altogether unreasonably," "the reputedGraal")
and confidence ("hold the field," "definitely traced," "it rests
atpresent"). On the other hand, this is not the authority ofthe
narrator but ofSir Giles, whose reliability has not been
established. A further notablecharacteristic ofthe passage is how
gradually it arrives at its point: the longsentence winds slowly
along, heavily dependent on passive contructions,interrupting
itself with qualifying adverbs, parenthetical observations,
andreduplicated phrases. It labors to come to the point in the
native tones ofscientific/academic discourse, taking all elements
into account, clutteringup the crucial observation with unnecessary
words and finally burying thepoint in a relative clause. All of
this works to diminish the impact of thepassage. But even though in
a relative clause, the key pharsethat theGraal "rests at present in
the parish church of Fardles"is stated quitesimply and ends the
sentence, with the result that it receives considerablerhetorical
emphasis. Out of this turgid and murky paragraph, the final
linebursts forth with startling clarity. No wonder the Archdeacon
exclaims" 'Dear me!' " Readers are inclined to share his
sensation.
Nevertheless, at this stage in the text, the fantastic is not
yet fact butmerely proposition, however vigorously presented. The
same thing is true
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Kathleen Spencer
in Williams's other novels. Many Dimensions opens with (again)
Sir GilesTumulty, his nephew, and a Persian prince discussing the
powers of theStone in the Crown of Suleiman, which sits on the desk
before them. How itis supposed to work is not particularly clear,
but from the conversationreaders gather that the Stone transports
people instantly to wherever theywish to go. That these three men
obviously believe the Stone can do thismakes it hard to dismiss,
especially since one ofthe three is Sir Giles, whomreaders ofthe
earlier volume remember as a scientific student ofthe
occult.However, there is no demonstration, no proof, ofthe Stone's
powers (yet);and when the Prince returns to his embassy, the
Persian ambassador, hissuperior, is gently sceptical. " 'I believe
that is has seemed to [Ali] that aman has been here and there in a
moment. But how, or whether indeed, thishas been I do not know, and
I do not desire to argue upon it with theEnglish ministers'" (16).
The ambassador's cool, balanced, courteousscepticism seems so much
more plausible than the fantastic tale of theStone that readers
immediately are inclined to identify with him. TheStone's powers
remain a curiously powerful but untested proposition.
In the next stage ofthe presentation ofthe fantastic, Williams
generallyallows the reader to enter the character's mind, to share
with her or him afantastic experience. There are two ways to convey
the thoughts of a char-acter, ways which are distinguishable but
often found together: the narra-tor's direct reports of those
thoughts and the technique called free indirectspeech, which
contains elements of both character and narrator.
What makes free indirect speech so important a device is the way
readersrespond to its combination of character and narrator. As Roy
Pascal ex-plains in his detailed study ofthe technique. The Dual
Voice, in free indirectspeech "the narrator, though preserving the
authorial mode throughoutand evading the 'dramatic'form of speech
or dialogue, yet places himself,when reporting the words or
thoughts of a character, directly into the expe-riential field
ofthe character, and adopts the latter's perspective in regardto
both time and place" (9).
An example might help to clarify this definition:
1. Direct speech: She hesitated and asked herself, "Is this
where I was yester-day? Then where is Henry? He was supposed to
meet me here."
2. Indirect speech: She hesitated and asked herself whether this
was where shehad been the day before, and if so, where Henry was,
since he was supposed tomeet her there.
3. Free indirect speech: She hesitated. Was this where she had
been yesterday?Then where was Henry? He was supposed to meet her
here.
Free indirect speech retains the authorial modethe past tense,
she insteadof /but it enters the character's experiential fieldthe
retained questionform, the use of here and yesterday rather than
there and the day before.68
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Naturalizing the Fantastic
More than this, while ordinary indirect speech tends to be
entirely dena-tured language, free indirect speech retains the
characteristic speech man-nerisms ofthe characterhabitual
vocabulary and sentence forms, recog-nizable patterns of expression
and turns of pbrase.
The most important result ofthe combination of character and
narratoris that it allows the narrator to report the character's
words and to com-ment on them at the same time, which is why Pascal
calls it a dual voice.This makes free indirect speech a particuiary
valuable device either forirony, when the narrator denies or
ridicules the character's words, or forsympathetic identification,
when the narratorial authority is used to vali-date the character's
response. Jane Austen, for example, employs free indi-rect speech
extensively for the first purpose, Williams generally for
thesecond, to reinforce readers' identification with a character in
the grip ofthe fantastic.
The effect in Williams's hands is subtle. Because he intertwines
free indi-rect speech with simple reporting of characters' thoughts
and feelings,readers tend not to notice consciously the narratorial
participation andvalidation, but they respond to it nevertheless.
The fantastic experiences socommunicated not only link readers
closely with the character involved butare also entirely persuasive
and compelling.
For example, consider how Williams uses free indirect speech in
an ex-tended passage from The Greater Trumps. The brackets added
identifythose portions ofthe passage that seem to be the narrator's
reports of Nan-cy's thoughts, generally characterized by a kind of
external view of her andher actions, marked by complete sentence
structuresa pronoun and averb. Added italics identify those
portions that seem to be Nancy's freeindirect speech, the long
passages of absolutes.
Nancy, with Henry's guidance, is about to try an experiment with
thespecial Tarot cards her father has inherited. As Henry knows,
though hehas not yet told his fianc6e, this is the true, original
pack and, hence, hasreal power in the world. The four suites, he
tells her (sceptres, swords, cups,and coins [or deniers])
correspond to the four elements (air, fire, water,earth). Giving
her the deniers, he tells her to shuffie the cards and think
of"earth, garden-mould, the stuff of the fields, and the dry dust
ofthe roads:the earth your fiowers grow in, the earth to which our
bodies are given, theearth which in one shape or another makes the
land as parted from thewaters" (46).
[She bent her mind to its task, a little vaguely at first, but
soon more definitely.She filled it with the thought of the garden,]
the earth that made it up, dry dustsometimes, sometimes rich
loamthe worms that crawled in it and roots oftheflowers thrusting
downno, not worms and rootsearth, deep thick earth.Great tree-roots
going deep into italong the roots her mind penetrated into it,along
the dividing, narrowing, dwindling roots, all the crannies and
corners
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Kathleen Spencer
filled with earth, rushing up into her shoulder-pits, her elbows
sticking out, littlebumps on those protracted roots. Mould clinging
together, falling apart; a spadesplitting it, almost as if thrust
into her thoughts, a spadeful of mould. Diggingholes, pits, mines,
tunnels, gravesno, those things were not earth. Gravesthebodies in
them being made one with the earth about them, so that at last
therewas no difference. Earth to earthshe herself earth; body,
shoulders, limbs,earth in her arms, in her hands.
There were springs, deep springs, cisterns and wells and rivers
of water downin the earth, water floating in rocky channels or
oozing through the earth itself;the earth covering, hampering,
stifling them, they bursting upwards through it.No, not waterearth.
[Her feet clung to it, were feeling it, were strangely draw-ing it
up into themselves, and more and more and higher and higher that
sensa-tion of unity with the stuff of her own foundation crept.
There were rocks, butshe was not a rocknot yet; something living,
like an impatient rush of water,was bubbling up within her, but she
felt it as an intrusion into the natural part ofher being. Her lips
were rough against each other;] her face must be stained andblack.
[She almost put up her wrist to brush the earth from her cheeknot
herhand, for that also was dirty; her fingers felt the grit. They
were, both hands,breaking and rubbing a lump of earth between them;
they were full and heapedwith earth that was slipping over them and
sliding between the fingers, and shewas trying to hold it innot to
let it escape.]
Nancy again becomes conscious that she is shuffling the cards,
or ratherthat the cards are shuffling themselves while her hands
try to keep up.
[A slight sound reached her]a curious continuous sound, yet
hardly a sound atall, a faint rustle. The cards were gritty, or her
hands were; or was it the persistentrubbing of her palms against
the edges of the cards? What was that rustlingnoise? It wasn't her
mere fancy, nor was it mere fancy that some substance wasslipping
between her fingers. [Below her hands and the cards she saw the
table,and some vague unusualness in it attracted her.] It was
blackwell, of course,but a dull heavy black, [and down to it from
her hands a kind of cloud wasfioating. It was from there that the
first sound came; it was something falling]it was earth, a curtain,
a rain of earth falling, falling, covering the part ofthetable
immediately below, making little sliding soundsearth, real black
earth.(46-48)
Some passages are easy to identify, especially when she comments
on orinterrupts her own thoughts {"no, not worms and rootsearth";
"no, notwaterearth") or when she speaks with characteristic turns
of phrase orwhen emphases are heard which seem to derive from a
speaking voice {"thecards were gritty").
Many of these attributions could easily be disputed by readers
who hearthe lines differently, and other lines (in regular type
above) are so perfectlypoised between the two voices that they are
impossible to attribute with anycertainty, but seem instead to
function as transitions between the morestrongly characterized
portions. The overall effect ofthe passage is totally
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Naturalizing the Fantastic
convincing: the final v/OTds"earth, real black earth"heard both
as Nan-cy's stunned realization and the narrator's assertion of the
simple, conclu-sive factemerge from the swirl of images and
sensations with compellingforce and demand assent to the actuality
of the incident just experiencedthrough Nancy.
The style of this passage, which is characteristic of
descriptions of thefantastic in all of Williams's novels, has best
been explained by GunnarUrang. The novels, he remarks, "are not
about the vision; they want to bethe vision" (80). Williams aims
not so much to describe these experiences asconsciously to recreate
them for the reader. Free indirect speech, particu-larly when
blended with direct reportage of thoughts, is an
economical,graceful, and effective way of allowing readers into
characters'minds whileretaining narrative authority and
control.
This scene from The Greater Trumps also demonstrates another
charac-teristic of Williams's fantastic novels: that while many of
the characters,always including the protagonist, have no awareness
of the supernaturalwhen the novel begins, others are already
students of the occult or arespiritual adepts of some kind. Since
all the novels begin when a humanbeing attempts to bend
supernatural forces to his own will, the camp oftheantagonists, by
definition, must include at least one occultist. However,one of tbe
qualities that makes Williams's novels unusual is that the
pro-tagonists are always guided and supported by a person who
understandsthe supernatural realm.
That is, while some characters are shocked, baffled, or
terrified by theincredible events transpiringincluding the
character with whom readersmost closely identifyan unusual number
of characters have already ac-cepted the reality ofthe
supernatural, as does the narrator himself (in thiscase, readily
identifiable with the author, who believed quite genuinely inthe
supernatural). The result is that the degree of shock and horror is
ratherless than might be expected: the emphasis here is less on the
"fantastical-ness" of the fantastic than on the protagonist's
struggle, first, to accept thereality ofthe events, and second, to
act properly in responsefor the pro-tagonist must always act to
prevent a supernatural catastrophe on a sweep-ing scale. The
readers, then, are caught up in excitement, puzzlement, curi-osity,
exaltation, and suspense, but not exactly, nor primarily fear.'
How-ever afraid some of the characters may be (generally not the
protagonistafter the initial shock and disbelief), the narrator's
voice reassures readersthat the supernatural is as bound by law as
the natural world and that thoselaws can be discovered and used to
reestablish the breached boundariesbetween the two realms.
Having led up to it through gradual stages, the narrator finally
begins totell readers of the fantastic on his own full authority
and in richly textureddetail. The rhythm of these different modes
of presentationdirect dia-
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Kathleen Spencer
logue, unsupported by the narrator; the character's reported
thoughts andfeelings, sliding over into free indirect speech in
which the narrator vali-dates the character's responses; and full
narratorial presentationvariesfrom novel to novel in the series.
Shadows of Ecstasy, the first novel Wil-liams wrote, does not
introduce the fantastic at all, even in dialogue, untilthe fifth
chapter, some seventy pages into the book, and does not give
nar-ratorial confirmation until the eleventh chapter (out of
fourteen). By con-trast, his last novel. All Hallows'Eve, opens
with the consciousnessbothreported thoughts and actions, and free
indirect speechof a youngwoman named Lester Furnival who lives in
London at the end of WorldWar II: on the fifth page of the text,
she suddenly realizes that she is dead.Yet her consciousness
remains intact, and we enter into it periodically untilthe very end
of the novel. The ordinary "real" world and living charactersdo not
enter the story until the second chapter. Another peculiarity of
thisvolume is that from the very beginning the narrator commits
himself to theactuality of the fantastic events, telling things
about the occurrences thatthe characters do not knowunlike the
earlier novels when he leads up tothat stage gradually. It is as
if, at the end of his life, Williams had developeda new confidence
in his story, or his audience, or both.
The rhythm and pace of his presentation may vary from novel to
novel,but the goal does not. In all of his novels, more so than in
most examples ofthe fantastic, Williams is writing about events
which, despite the opinionsof his own culture to the contrary, he
believed to be possible. That is, it wasnot his own fictional
evocations of the supernatural in which he believedbut rather the
conception of the universe upon which his fictions werebased: a
universe where the supernatural is real, coinherent in the
naturalworld, and governed by laws allowing readers to comprehend
it. This beliefgoes a long way to explain the special quality of
Williams's novels, thekinds of stories he chooses to tell, the
heroes he selects, the assured, confi-dent tone of the narrative
and, above all, his choice of genrethe fantastic,which blends the
ordinary real world with incredible characters and events.
The fantastic genre can be used for many purposes besides the
one Wil-liams chose, which was, at least in part, to give his
audience a vivid expe-rience of the numinous world in which he
believed. Other nineteenth- andearly twentieth-century writers use
the genre for this same purpose, as asort of pleasant propaganda
for Spiritualism or Theosophy or magic.Some fantastic tales arejust
for the fun of a marvelous adventure or pro-vide the special
pleasures of the ghost story, the delightful frisson of
being(safely) scared witless. Other tales, like most of what Tobin
Siebers calls theRomantic Fantastic (a more precise term for the
works Todorov discussesunder the label of the fantastic) use the
genre more seriously to explore theproblems of subjectivity through
the device of unreliable narrators and the
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Naturalizing the Fantastic
unusual states of consciousnessmadness, frenzy, hallucination,
dreamwith which many Romantic artists were obsessed.
Whatever the purpose to which the fantastic has been put, the
sort ofanalysis to which I have here subjected Williams's novels
can be a usefulapproach to any fantastic text. The pace at which
the narrative hints at andthen confirms the fantastic, the source
of that confirmation and its reliabil-ity, or whether the text ever
commits itself at all (as in Todorov's sense thatthe true fantastic
consists of those texts which refuse to commit themselvesto the
actuality of the events being described) can provide sensitive
clues tothe central concerns of the text and can suggest reasons
why the author haschosen the fantastic as the appropriate genre for
the tale.
Notes1. This is the model Lewis follows in his best-known
fantasies, his children's series. The
Chronicles ofNarnia. His later Ransom Trilogy looks more like
Williams's typical pattern,especially the third volume, That
Hideous Strength (1946); however, it is my convictionthat in That
Hideous Strength Lewis was modeling his work on the novels of his
recently-deceased friend, novels which he greatly admired.
2. In "The Urban Gothic in British Fantastic Fiction 1880-1930."
Diss., University of Cali-fornia, Los Angeles, 1986.
3. \nA Reader's Guide to Charles W/V/Zami (Starmont House,
1986), 1 argue that Williams'snovels are romances, but this is not
incompatible with identifying them also as fantastic.There is, in
fact, a close historical affinity between the two genres, which has
been recentlyobscured since two of the most significant
contemporary variants of the romancethewestern and the detective
storyhave abandoned the fantastic element. The situation maybe
further complicated because the most common contemporary form of
the fantastic is theGothic, which uses the supernatural to such
different ends than Williams that the readingprotocols for the one
do not really apply to the other.
4. Many Dimensions. Williams's second published novel, is a
partial exception to this, butnot so great a one as to violate the
necessary condition of the fantastic: the initial establish-ment of
the mimetic world.
5. There are two exceptions to this. The Place of the Lion and
All Hallows'Eve. However.thelatter is an exception to almost all of
the general observations about Williams's narrativetechniques. It
is not only his last novel, but, while the others were written
fairly closetogether and very rapidly, Alt Hallows'Eve is separated
by some eight years from its near-est predecessor. It is also his
most deliberately crafted novel, produced after his involve-ment
with the Inklings, who gave him the most detailed responses to his
work in progress hehad ever receivedEindeed, who were the first to
take his fiction seriously. As a resit of bothhis developing
technique and his developing theme. All Hallows'Eve differs
significantlyfrom the earlier pattern.
6. The citations in this paper will be to the most readily
available editions of Williams'snovels: the paperback editions by
Eerdmans.
7. This is what most clearly distinguishes Williams's novels
from the Gothic, in which thedominant emotional atmosphere is fear
and horror.
Works CitedCuller, Jonathan. Structuralist Poetics:
Structuralism, Linguistics, and the Study
of Literature. Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 1975.
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Kathleen Spencer
Pascal, Roy. The Dual Voice: Free Indirect Speech and Its
Functioning in theNineteenth-Century Novel. Manchester, England:
Manchester Univ. Press,1977.
Siebers, Tobin. The Romantic Fantastic. Ithaca: Cornell Univ.
Press, 1984.Todorov, Tzvetan. The Fantastic: A Structural Approach
to a Literary Genre.
1970. Trans. Richard Howard. Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press,
1975.Urang, Gunnar. Shadows of Heaven: Religion and Fantasy in the
Writings ofC. S.
Lewis, Charles Williams, and J. R. R. Tolkien. Philadelphia:
Pilgrim Press,1971.
Williams, Charles. All Hallows'Eve. New York: Avon Books, 1969..
Descent Into Hell. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1970.. The
Greater Trumps. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1976.. Many
Dimensions. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1970.. The Place of
the Lion. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1969.. Shadows of
Ecstasy. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1965.. War in Heaven.
Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1978.
Zgorzelski, Andrzej. "Is Science Fiction a Genre of Fantastic
Literature?" Science-Fiction Studies 19 (1979): 296-303.
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