What You Like is Not Always Good

Criticism and Fiction by William Dean Howells serves to ask readers to really consider and analyze a literary work instead of labeling it good because they like it. It seems as though our logic of good and bad isn't always applied to literary works like it should be. In our lives, if a person likes alcohol to excess and is an alcoholic, it is still bad even though it feels good. Howells states, "Their taste has been perverted by their false criticism, which is based upon personal preference, and not upon principle; which instructs a man to think that what he likes is good, instead of teaching him first to distinguish what is good before he likes it" (Howell 1). Howell believes Jane Austen was the last author to have a mastery of this art. Her writings were good because she treated the matter she wrote about with entire truthfulness. Her principles, not personal preference, are evidenced in the book. This is what Howell believes distinguishes her writings from those of bad writers. Anthony Trollope followed Jane Austen's suit, except his instinct was to much for his ideal. He believed the civic relations and a bourgeois soul were equivalent to life, however his literary works expressed beauty in life. 


Fiction is a declining literary sector because it had become based upon fads and not the authors beliefs and principles. Vampire books have become very widely written, not because writers like vampires, but because it is a popular topic and will sell a lot of books. Fiction is "continued debasement as an art" (Howell 1), due to this developing economic standard. Jane Austen's book is popular because it encompasses not only romance which is a popular sector, but also because Austen really placed her beliefs in the book and when we read her books we can take a little piece of the Jane's principle pie.