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Some Characteristic Features of Literary Modernism After discussing the various reasons which have made the novel the most popular literary form today, let us consider the main characteristics of the modern novel.They have also tried to avoid all that militates against plausibility, as Thackeray's unwise technique of addressing in his own person, and confessing that it is all a story.He is 'realistic' in the wider sense, and tries to include within the limits of the novel almost everything--the mixed, average human nature--and not merely one-sided view of it. Tolstoy's War and Peace and George Eliot's Middle March had proved that the texture of the novel can be made as supple and various as life itself.They have introduced into the novel subtle points of view, reserved and refined characters, and intangible delicacies, of motive which had never been attempted before by any English novelist.?

Some Characteristic Features of Literary Modernism
After discussing the various reasons which have made the novel the most popular literary form today, let us consider the main characteristics of the modern novel.
 In the first place, we can say that it is realistic as opposed to idealistic.
The ‘realistic’ writer is one who thinks that truth to observed facts—facts about the outer world, or facts about his own feelings—is the great thing, while the ‘idealistic’ writer wants rather to create a pleasant and edifying picture. The modern novelist is ‘realistic’ in this sense and not in the sense of an elaborate documentation of fact, dealing often with the rather more sordid side of contemporary life, as we find in the novels of Zola. He is ‘realistic’ in the wider sense, and tries to include within the limits of the novel almost everything—the mixed, average human nature—and not merely one-sided view of it. Tolstoy’s War and Peace and George Eliot’s Middle March had proved that the texture of the novel can be made as supple and various as life itself. The modern novelists have continued this experiment still further, and are trying to make the novel more elegant and flexible. Under the influence of Flaubert and Turgeniev, some modern novelists like Henry James have taken great interest in refining the construction of the novel so that there will be nothing superfluous, no phrase, paragraph, or sentence which will not contribute to the total effect. They have also tried to avoid all that militates against plausibility, as Thackeray’s unwise technique of addressing in his own person, and confessing that it is all a story. They have introduced into the novel subtle points of view, reserved and refined characters, and intangible delicacies, of motive which had never been attempted before by any English novelist.