Psychological novel

In literary terms, a psychological novel is a genre of fiction that delves into the mind of its characters. The narrative form focuses on a character's thoughts, feelings, memories, dreams, and desires. The character's internal mental processes are more important to the story than external events. The unconventional form uses the techniques of interior monologue, flashbacks, and stream of consciousness.

Psychological novels stretch back to the seventeenth century. The genre is associated with two key literary movements: psychological realism in the nineteenth century and modernism in the twentieth century.

From the 1700s to the twenty-first century, many authors have crafted psychological novels. The genre has also branched into subgenres that have given rise to several well-known books and authors. The most well known in the genre are Gustave Flaubert, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, George Eliot, Henry James, James Joyce, William Faulkner, and Virginia Woolf.

Background

Psychological novels explore the complexity of characters through their mental processes and emotions. Usually, authors in other genres describe their characters from the outside before revealing the inner workings of their personalities. However, authors of psychological novels draw their characters from the inside out.

The psychological novel is written in prose, ordinary language lacking meter or rhyme. The genre emphasizes characterization over action and plot. In telling a story, the form does not merely relate what happened, but digs deeper to understand why it happened.

A story in this form may not relate its events in chronological order. Instead, the action may be described through the lens of the character's thoughts, memories, or reveries. A character's inward self may be affected by external events, or may cause external events.

Psychological novels burrow into a character's consciousness, separating the deliberate aspects of the mind from automatic responses. They strive to peel back the awareness of the conscious mind to expose the hidden unconscious.

The genre utilizes three main narrative techniques. Interior monologue is an unuttered monologue inside the character's mind, also called inner voice or internal speech. It allows the reader to overhear the character's thoughts. The technique may be accompanied by the qualifiers "he thought" or "she thought," or it may be presented as unspoken material directly from a character's consciousness.

A flashback is an interruption in a story's chronology of events that demonstrates what happened to a character in the past. The flashback offers background information or additional context to help readers understand the character's motivation. Flashbacks can appear in the form of memories, photographs, or letters.

Stream of consciousness is a type of interior monologue. The radical technique provides a direct line to a character's thought process, believed to occur on a preconscious level of cognitive activity. Thoughts, memories, sensations, and dreams flow freely on the page. They may not adhere to traditional sentence structure, grammar, or syntax. However, without the conventions of structure, the text can be difficult for some readers to understand.

Overview

The psychological novel can be traced to several influences. The genre likely took cues from Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra's classic novel Don Quixote, published in two volumes in 1605 and 1615. The novel explored the flawed mind-set of a man who believed himself to be a chivalrous hero.

The first psychological novel was The Princess of Cleves by French author Madame de Lafayette in 1678. The book examines the inner workings of its main character, Madame de Chartes.

During the eighteenth century, the genre grew out of epistolary novels, which told stories through the narrative of letters or other documents written by its characters. In 1740, English writer Samuel Richardson's Pamela related the story of a young woman's determination to protect her virtue through her letters. The popular book inspired another genre that aided the evolution of the psychological novel. Sentimental novels conveyed stories full of emotion, eager to pull on readers' heartstrings.

The psychological novel came into its own in the nineteenth century as interest grew in the obscure parts of the mind. This gave way to psychological realism, a literary movement in which authors examined the mind-sets of their characters to explain their actions.

Psychological novels explore how the unconscious mind could hide a character's unbridled passions and basic instincts. Romance novels from the period accentuated the conflict between reason and desire. French author Gustave Flaubert's heralded novel Madame Bovary, published in 1857, is the prime example of a psychological novel. The novel tells the story of Emma Bovary, a bored doctor's wife who recklessly gives into adultery and overindulgence, through her interior monologue.

Another key figure was Russian writer Fyodor Dostoyevsky. His classic 1867 novel, Crime and Punishment, follows student Radion Raskolnikov, who is driven to commit murder out of poverty. The book examines Raskolnikov's efforts to justify his crime, which explains his motivation to readers.

English novelist George Eliot was praised for the psychological realism depicted in her novels. Her books, including The Mill on the Floss (1860), Silas Marner(1861), and Middlemarch (1862), are notable not only for their profound narration but also for their ability to appeal to the mind-set of readers.

American author Henry James explored the psychological themes surrounding complex social situations in his novels, including hidden desires and complicated family relationships. His best-known works, such as The Portrait of a Lady (1881), The Turn of the Screw (1898), and The Ambassadors (1903), feature characters unaware of their repressed feelings.

In the twentieth century, the rise of the psychological novel coincided with the teachings of psychologist Sigmund Freud. His psychoanalyst theories spurred new interest in the workings of the mind. At the same time, the modernism movement was underway in literature. Modernism embraced new ways of seeing the world, and the introspective nature of the psychological novel fit right in.

During this time of experimentation, Irish novelist James Joyce developed stream of consciousness. Through free-flowing narration, Joyce explored the happenings of the mind in his groundbreaking novels. Ulysses, published in 1922, describes the experience of three Dubliners as they go about their day. Finnegan's Wake (1939) relates the dreaming state of a slumbering man.

American writers William Faulkner and Virginia Woolf embraced the unconventional form of the psychological novel. Faulkner included the stream of consciousness technique in 1929's The Sound and the Fury, which chronicles the ruin of a Southern family. Woolf employs a series of interior monologues in The Waves (1931) to tell the story of six characters from childhood to adulthood.

The psychological thriller subgenre rose to popularity in the early twenty-first century, with authors combining stream of consciousness and inner monologues with suspense. The subgenre also employs the unreliable narrator, prompting the reader to question the narrator's stream of consciousness and perception. Author Gillian Flynn has become recognized as a master of the psychological thriller. Her debut, Sharp Objects (2006), follows a woman’s report on a serial killer. Flynn's best-known book, Gone Girl (2012), looks at the disappearance of a woman through the eyes of both her and her husband. Other contemporary authors writing in this genre have included Stephen King, Alex Michaelides, and Paula Hawkins.

The psychological novel allows authors to work outside the traditional storytelling structure and get inside the minds of their characters. The genre broke ground in developing the complexity of characters. By exploring the emotions of their characters, authors can connect with readers on a more intimate level.

Bibliography

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