ience, the use of the realist-novel form can certainly make available (through varying emphasis) afunction of judgment in relation to the experience that it renders. Stated ideas, embedded in the text, could be expected tooccupy a central position in the 'judging' process. But then (in approaching these realist novels) certain implicit ideologicalassumptions - from which the stated ideas derive their authority - also need to be noted.An approach to the ideological concerns of realist fiction entails something akin to what Richard Hoggart has called 'reading forvalue'. He sees the aim as to find "what field of values is embodied, reflected or resisted, within the work ... what, in assumedmeanings or counter-meanings ... is in play".5 Such a reading moves us right into the centre of the critical debate about therelationship between ideology and literary form. For these 'values' are, after all, in a novel.There are two concepts of immediate importance here. The first has been articulated in the theoretical work of Etienne Balibarand Pierre Macherey.6 The literary text, they contend, presents ideological contradictions in the form of their resolution. Such aconcept enforces the view that the distinctive work of literature ... is not simply a contrived harmonization of the discordant ideological themes that echo in the text: rather, it consists in a 'prior' recasting of these themes in such a way that their final reconciliation becomes possible.7The second concept of importance is that stressed by Francis Mulhern, among others, when he points to the personalisation ofsocial contradiction as being one of the distinguishing features of realist fiction.8 Both these concepts - the possibility ofideological contradictions being presented in the form of their resolution and (as a corollary) the projection of contradictions byliterary personalisation - chart the road ahead.Before plunging along that road, one remembers a remark by Achebe th...
