-ness words as count nouns?
I came across this sentence in a book:
He was astonishingly humble, exhibited great charitableness and such a sweetness and meekness that he would often shed tears at a sad story.
It seems strange to me that the author treats charitableness as a mass noun, while sweetness is preceded with an indefinite article. Is this construction lawful/grammatical? What is this grammatical phenomenon called?
Solution 1:
Every word ending with -ness is a noun and can be used as such
- a native English suffix attached to adjectives and participles, forming abstract nouns denoting quality and state (and often, by extension, something exemplifying a quality or state): Source