Direction of the Modern Novel

I wish Mr. Lukacs would offer more specific examples of books that illustrate what he's saying here, but I like where he's going with this description. I think it's accurate as far as it goes. What say you?

"In the nineteenth century novel, the other type of necessarily inadequate relations between soul and reality became the more important one: the inadequacy that is due to the soul's being wider and larger than the destinies which life has to offer it. The decisive structural difference is that here we are not dealing with an abstract a priori condition on the face of life, a condition which seeks to realize itself in action and therefore provokes conflicts with the outside world which make up the story of the novel; but rather a purely interior reality which is full of content and more or less complete in itself enters into competition with the reality of the outside world, leads a rich and animated life of its own and, with spontaneous self-confidence, regards itself as the only true reality, the essence of the world: and the failure of every attempt to realize this equality [between interior soul and outside world] is the subject of the work....
...Whereas abstract idealism [i.e. the epic form of the novel from Cervantes onwards?] in order to exist at all, had to translate itself into action, had to enter into conflict with the outside world, here the possibility of escape [from an alien world] does not seem excluded from the start. A life which is capable of producing all its content out of itself [norms, values, accomplishments, etc.] can be rounded and perfect even if it never enters into contact with the alien reality outside. Whereas, therefore, an excessive, totally uninhibited activity toward the outside world was characteristic of the psychological structure of abstract idealism, here the tendency is rather towards passivity, a tendency to avoid outside conflicts and struggles rather than engage in them, a tendency to deal inside the soul with everything that concerns the soul." - From Georg Lukacs, Theory of the Novel


Note: This description really reminds me of Kafka whose "passivity" - as far the the narrative goes - if that's the right word - is produced by a constant bumping up against an alien, outside world whose logic and customary demands are totally at odds with what the individual requires for sustenance.