The Literary Sense — Inside the Classic

Theatrical Self-Consciousness

Throughout the excerpts, characters repeatedly observe themselves as if from outside. The heroine of 'The Unfaithful Lover' 'knew exactly how a tryst is conducted in the pages of the standard poets.' This meta-awareness is a recurring pattern: in another story, a character named Dick lies awake at three in the morning, 'gazing open-eyed into the darkness,' and mentally replays his own past decisions with theatrical self-accusation ('You beast, you brute, you hound!'). Nesbit often signals these moments with a shrug or a sigh, as when Dick 'shrugged his shoulders' before speaking. The narrative voice itself adopts a knowing, almost clinical tone, describing how 'the glow of conscious nobility had lasted a long while—nearly a week.' This framing suggests that the characters are not merely acting but are aware of their own performances, yet remain trapped within them.

Contrasts Between Setting and Sentiment

Nesbit repeatedly juxtaposes romantic expectations with drab urban settings. The lover in the first story wishes for 'May and the orchard, instead of January and the dingy, dusty waiting-room.' Her dress is 'brown, her jacket black, and her hat was home-trimmed'—a far cry from the 'white gown and green scarf' she imagines. Similarly, Dick recalls meeting Harriet Harcourt 'at a fancy-ball, and she wore the white-and-black dress of a Beardsley lady,' a deliberately artistic image that contrasts with the later, more sordid emotional entanglements. The collection's settings—Cannon Street Station, Highbury New Park, a sitting-room in Essex Court—are consistently ordinary, even banal, underscoring the gap between the characters' literary fantasies and their actual lives. This tension is not merely decorative; it drives the plot, as characters make decisions based on how a scene 'should' look rather than on genuine feeling.

The Cost of Noble Gestures

Several stories in the excerpts hinge on a character's decision to perform a self-sacrificing act that later reveals hidden selfishness. In 'The Unfaithful Lover,' Dick chooses to offer his friend Tom a job in Edinburgh rather than London, telling himself that 'both lovers would work better if they were not near enough to waste each other's time.' Yet he later admits, in the dark of night, that he 'wanted him out of the way.' The narrative traces the arc of this rationalization: the initial 'impulse to be, for once, really noble,' the 'glow of conscious nobility,' and then the slow, painful recognition of self-deception. Nesbit does not moralize; instead, she presents the thought process with precise detail, allowing the reader to see how easily altruism can mask ambition. The pattern recurs across stories, suggesting that the 'literary sense' is not just about aesthetics but about the stories people tell themselves to justify their choices.

Readers approaching The Literary Sense should attend to Nesbit's narrative voice, which often undercuts the characters' own perceptions. The stories reward attention to small gestures—a shrug, a sigh, a kiss described as 'studied brotherliness'—that reveal more than the characters intend. The collection is less about plot than about the gap between intention and action, and the ways in which self-awareness can itself become a form of blindness.

E. Nesbit’s people keep checking their own scripts, startled when life won’t follow the margins. I’ve carried that ache for years, and it surfaced again in a quiet stranger—Jane Oglander—Reading Companion, where pretending softens into something braver. The two volumes sit apart on my shelf, but they share a knowing, sidelong glance. Jane Oglander — Reading Companion keeps that company well.