Cozzens does not use his novels as a forum for his personal views, so they do not contain broad statements on social issues. Cozzens tries, above all, to draw a realistic picture of life, whatever his subject might be. Thus, the social issues in a particular novel are simply those that happen to be present in the situation Cozzens has chosen to explore. Since he often, as in By Love Possessed, writes about professional men, in this case lawyers, his social concerns are centered around the examination of upper-class values and around the relationship between the man and his work. Arthur Winner, the main character in By Love Possessed, sees himself as a man of reason, and he sees reason as a supreme quality, as life's only necessity. Yet Winner, in choosing to cover for Noah Tuttle, comes to realize that a decision based totally on...