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* * * * *
THE DOCTOR LOOKS
AT LITERATURE
PSYCHOLOGICAL STUDIES
OF LIFE AND LETTERS
BY
JOSEPH COLLINS
AUTHOR OF “THE WAY WITH THE NERVES,”
“MY ITALIAN YEAR,” “IDLING IN ITALY,” ETC.
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
COPYRIGHT, 1923,
BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
THE DOCTOR LOOKS AT LITERATURE. I
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
_In Memoriam_
PEARCE BAILEY
DEVOTED COLLEAGUE
LOYAL COADJUTOR
INDULGENT FRIEND
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The author wishes to express his thanks to the editors of the
_North American Review_, the _New York Times_ and the
_Literary Digest International Book Review_ for permission
to elaborate material used by them into certain chapters of this
volume.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I PSYCHOLOGY AND FICTION 15
II IRELAND'S LATEST LITERARY ANTINOMIAN: JAMES JOYCE 35
III FEODOR DOSTOIEVSKY: TRAGEDIST, PROPHET, AND PSYCHOLOGIST 61
IV DOROTHY RICHARDSON AND HER CENSOR 96
V MARCEL PROUST: MASTER PSYCHOLOGIST AND PILOT OF
THE “VRAIE VIE” 116
VI TWO LITERARY LADIES OF LONDON: KATHERINE MANSFIELD
AND REBECCA WEST 151
VII TWO LESSER LITERARY LADIES OF LONDON: STELLA BENSON
AND VIRGINIA WOOLF 181
VIII THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE DIARIST: W. N. T. BARBELLION 191
IX THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE DIARIST: HENRI-FRÉDÉRIC AMIEL 219
X GEORGES DUHAMEL: POET, PACIFIST, AND PHYSICIAN 237
XI EVEN YET IT CAN'T BE TOLD--THE WHOLE TRUTH
ABOUT D. H. LAWRENCE 256
XII THE JOY OF LIVING AND WRITING ABOUT IT: JOHN ST.
LOE STRACHEY 289
XIII THE KING OF GATH UNTO HIS SERVANT: MAGAZINE INSANITY 307
ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
JAMES JOYCE 37
FEODOR DOSTOIEVSKY 63
MARCEL PROUST IN 1890 119
A PAGE OF CORRECTED PROOF SHOWING MARCEL PROUST'S METHOD
OF REVISION 127
KATHERINE MANSFIELD 153
REBECCA WEST 173
Photograph by _Yevonde, London_
STELLA BENSON 183
HENRI-FRÉDÉRIC AMIEL 221
GEORGES DUHAMEL 239
From a Drawing by _Ivan Opffer_ in _THE BOOKMAN_
D. H. LAWRENCE 259
D. H. LAWRENCE 267
From a drawing by _Jan Juta_
J. ST. LOE STRACHEY 291
From a Drawing by _W. Rothenstein_
THE DOCTOR LOOKS
AT LITERATURE
THE DOCTOR LOOKS
AT LITERATURE
CHAPTER I
PSYCHOLOGY AND FICTION
Few words attract us like the word psychology. It has the call of the
unknown, the lure of the mysterious. It is used and heard so frequently
that it has come to have a definite connotation, but the individual
who is asked to say what it is finds it difficult either to be exact
or exhaustive. Psychologists themselves experience similar difficulty.
Psychology means the science of the soul, but we have no clearer
conception of the soul today than Aristotle had when he wrote his
treatise on it.
Professor Palmer states that William James once said that psychology
was “a nasty little subject,” and that “all one cares to know lies
outside.” Doubtless many who have far less knowledge of it have often
felt the same way. The present fate of psychology, or the science of
mental life, is to be handled either as a department of metaphysics, or
as subsidiary to so-called intelligence testing. The few remaining true
psychologists are the physiological psychologists and a small group
of behaviourists. In this country Woodworth, who takes the ground of
utilising the best in the arsenal of both the intro-spectionists and
the behaviourists, and calls the result “dynamic psychology,” leads the
former; and Watson the latter.
Psychology has no interest in the nature of the soul, its origin or
destiny, or in the reality of ideas. Nor does it concern itself with
explanation of mental phenomena in terms of forces which can neither
be experienced nor inferred from experience. It is concerned with the
facts of mental life and with describing, analysing, and classifying
them. When it has done this it hands the results over to the logician
who occupies himself with them from a purposeful rather than a causal
point of view; and he makes what he may of them, or he puts them at the
disposal of fellow scientists who use them to support conjectures or to
give foundation to theories.
It is universally admitted that when we want to get a true picture of
human life: behaviour, manners, customs, aspirations, indulgences,
vices, virtues, it is to the novelist and historian that we turn, not
to the psychologist or the physiologist. The novelists gather materials
more abundantly than the psychologists, who for the most part have a
parsimonious outfit in anything but morbid psychology. Psychologists
are the most indolent of scientists in collecting and ordering
materials, James and Stanley Hall being outstanding exceptions.
Fiction writers should not attempt to carry over the results of
psychological inquiries as the warp and woof of their work. They
should study psychology to sharpen and discipline their wits, but
after that the sooner they forget it the better. The best thing that
fiction writers can do is to depict the problematic in life in all
its intensity and perplexity, and put it up to the psychologists as a
challenge.
In the fifty years that psychology has had its claims as a science
begrudgingly allowed, there have arisen many different schools, the
most important of which are: (1) Those that claim that psychology is
the science of mental states, mental processes, mental contents, mental
functions. They are the “Functionalists.” There is an alternative to
the consciousness psychology--the psychology of habit--touched on
its edges by Professor Dewey in “Habit and Conduct.” And (2) those
that claim the true subject matter of psychology is not mind or
consciousness, but behaviour. They refuse to occupy themselves with
“consciousness,” and for introspection they substitute experiment and
observation of behaviour. Their theoretical goal is the prediction and
control of behaviour. They are the “Behaviourists.” The literature
infused with interest in psychological problems--fiction, criticism,
and to a small extent social economics--has little connection with
the older psychology based on subjectivities, except as it takes over
the vagaries of technique and terminology of the psychoanalysts. The
literature of greatest merit seems to avail itself most profitably of
definite psychological materials when it turns to the behaviourist
type. Indeed, it is with this school that the novelist most closely
allies himself. Or it was, until the “New Psychology” seduced him.
This last school claims that consciousness and all it implies is
a barren field for the psychologist to till. If he is to gather a
crop that will be an earnest of his effort, he must turn to the
unconscious, which we have with us so conspicuously eight hours out
of every twenty-four that even the most benighted recognise it, and
which is inconspicuously with us always, looking out for our self- and
species-preservation, conditioning our ends, and shaping our destinies.
The New Psychology, which is by no means synonymous with the teachings
of Dr. Sigmund Freud of Vienna, regards the human mind as an intricate
and complex mechanism which has gradually evolved through the ages
to suit the needs of its possessor. The adaptation has, however, not
been perfect, and the imperfections reveal themselves in frequent,
startling, and embarrassing lapses from the kind of mind which would
best enable its possessor to adjust himself to the conditions and
demands of modern civilisation. It recognises that it deals with a
mind which sometimes insists upon behaving like a savage, but which is
nevertheless the main engine of the human machinery, human personality,
from which society expects and exacts behaviour consistent with the
ideals of advanced civilisation. The practical psychologist realises
that he has to cope with this wayward mind, and if he is to be of
service in effecting a reconciliation between it and the requirements
of civilisation, he cannot ignore it, spank it, or coerce it by calling
it bad names. He must understand it first; then he may train it. The
trouble with the New Psychology, whether it is “New Thought” or one of
the mutually antagonistic schools of psychoanalysis, is that it almost
inevitably runs off into what James terms “bitch-philosophy.”
Through this tangled web of vagaries there is a thin thread of
work that is not only fiction, but literature; and this is usually
characterised by obvious parade of psychological technique.
Just as civilised man's body has been evolved gradually from more
primitive species and has changed through the various stages of
evolution to meet the changing conditions of the environment and
necessities, so has his mind. In this advance and transformation
the body has not lost the fundamental functions necessary for the
preservation of the physical being. Neither has the mind. But both
the body and the mind, or the physical and psychical planes of the
individual, have been slowly developed by environment and life in such
a way that these fundamental functions and instincts have been brought
more and more into harmony with the changing demands of life. This
process, outwardly in man's circumstances and his acts, inwardly in his
ability to shape one and perform the other, constitutes civilisation.
It is doubtful if the instincts are quite as definite as some of our
professors, McDougall and his followers, claim, and they lack utility
when used as a basis for social interpretation either in essays or
fiction.
Dr. Loeb's forced movements as a basis for a structure of interests
is far more plausible. It is the interplay of interests, rather than
of instincts, which is the clay our practical activities are pottered
from, and should be the reliable source of materials for literature.
Whenever fiction cuts itself down to instincts it becomes ephemeral as
literature.
The two fundamental and primitive instincts of all living organisms,
civilised man included, are the nutritional urge and the creative urge,
or the instinct of self-preservation and that of the preservation
of the species. To these there is added, even in the most primitive
savages, the herd instinct, which leads men to form groups or tribes,
to fight and labour for the preservation of them, and to conform to
certain standards or symbols of identification with the tribe. The
Freudians do not recognise the herd instinct as anything but sublimated
bi-sexuality, attributing the tendency to regard the opinion of
one's associates to the psychic censor, instead of to an instinct.
These three instincts are recognised in their commonest and most
normal expression today as the tendency to provide for oneself and
one's family; the tendency to marry and rear children under the best
conditions known; and the tendency to regard the opinion of one's
associates and to be a consistent member of the social order to which
one acknowledges adherence.
It is small wonder, then, that the realist and the romanticist, whose
arsenal consists of observation and imagination, find in narration of
dominancy and display of these instincts and tendencies the way to
the goal for which they strive: viz., interest of others, possibly
edification. Certain novelists, Mr. D. H. Lawrence for instance, pursue
discussion of the fundamental ones with such assiduity and vehemence
that the unsophisticated reader might well suspect that life was made
up of the display and vagaries of these essences of all living beings.
But without cant or piety it may be said there is such a thing as
higher life, spiritual life, and readers of psychoanalytic novels must
keep in mind the fact that the Freudian psychology denies the reality
of any such higher life, accounting for the evidences of it which are
unescapable in terms of “subliminations,” such as “taboos.” Though
these three instincts form the basis upon which the whole of man's
mental activity is built, they by no means form its boundary. At some
prehistoric period it is possible that they did, but during countless
ages man's mind has been subject to experiences which called for other
mental activity than the direct and primitive expression of these
urges, and he has had to use his mental machinery as best he could
to meet these demands. He had no choice. He could not scrap his old
machinery and supply his mind with a new equipment better fitted to do
the complex work civilisation demanded.
The result is that the working of these instincts on the experience
presented to the mind has brought about innumerable complications.
These are known in the New Psychology as mental complexes. They have
been to some modern novelists what the miraculous food given to Israel
in the Wilderness was--their sole nutriment. Complexes, or conflicts
resulting from adaptation of the primitive mental machinery to more
intricate and varied processes than those with which it was originally
intended to cope, determine much of man's mental life.
To understand the workings of a mind is like trying to unravel a
tangled skein of thread. The two main difficulties are: (1) That up to
this time our mental training, our perceptions, our consciousness, our
reason, have been exercised for the specific purpose of maintaining
ourselves in the world. They have not been concerned with helping us
to understand ourselves; (2) That there are parts of our minds whose
existence we do not recognise, either because we will not or because
we cannot, for the reason that they have come to be regarded as being
in conflict with other parts which we have long admitted as having
the first claim to recognition. In other words, not having known how
to adapt certain parts of our mental machinery to the newer purposes
for which we needed them, we have tried to suppress them or ignore
them. In doing so we have only deceived ourselves, because they are
still connected up with the main engine and influence all of the
latter's output, harmoniously or jarringly--sometimes to the extent of
interfering seriously with its working.
The work of the practical psychologist is to learn how to overcome
these two difficulties and to teach others how to use the knowledge.
This is the task novelists frequently set themselves, and some,
Willa Cather in “Paul's Case” and Booth Tarkington in “Alice Adams,”
accomplish it admirably. Like the teacher and the priest, they have
learned that surplus energy of the mind may be diverted from the
biologically necessary activities into other fields of useful and
elevating effort. They have learned that the second difficulty can be
best overcome by facing the truth about our minds, however unpleasant
and unflattering it may at first sight appear to be. Recognition
of the existence of the two primitive urges, the instincts of
self-preservation and of the preservation of the race, is the first
step toward appreciation of their reasonable limitations and the extent
to which they may be brought into harmony with the requirements of a
well-balanced life.
This leads us to refer for a moment to a tremendous force which, in any
discussion of the working of the instincts, cannot be ignored. It is a
constant effort or tendency, lying behind all instincts, to attain and
maintain mental, emotional, and spiritual equilibrium. The tendency is
expressed by the interaction, usually automatic and unconscious, which
goes on between complexes and tends to establish the equilibrium. At
the same time the working of individual instincts tends to upset it.
Whenever the automatic process is suspended to any great degree, as by
the cutting off from the rest of the mind of one complex, the result
is a one-sided development which causes mental disturbances and often
eventually mental derangement. As the instincts and complexes incline
to war among themselves, there is a stabilising influence at work
tending to hold us in mental equilibrium and thus to keep us balanced
or sane. No one in the domain of letters has understood this force and
its potentialities like Dostoievsky. “The Possessed” is a chart of that
sea so subject to storm and agitation. The effort toward integration
is perhaps a true instinct, and rests on a sound physiological
basis, so well described by Sherrington. It furnishes a genuine theme
for description of life's activities, and well-wrought studies of
integration and disintegration take highest rank in fiction.
With all their prolixity, the Victorian novelists managed to depict
progress in one direction or another. This is more than can be said of
most modern novelists, who are exhausted when they have succeeded in
a single analysis, and commit the crass literary error of seeking to
explain, when all that the most acute psychologist could possibly do
would be to catch at a pattern, a direction, and an outcome, as mere
description--problem rather than explanation being the dramatic motive.
While the novelist's business is to see life and his aspiration is to
understand what he sees, many novelists of today are, by their work,
claiming to understand life in a sense that is not humanly possible.
Human conduct affords the best raw material for the novelist. If he
represents this in such a way that it seems to reflect life faithfully
he is an artist; but the psychological novelist goes further and feels
bound to account for what he represents. Ordinarily he accounts for
it in one of three ways: (1) by the inscrutability of Providence--as
many of the older novelists did; (2) by theories of his own; (3) by
the theories of those whose profession to understand life and conduct
he accepts. In short, he must have a philosophy of life. The mistake
many novelists are making is to confuse such a philosophy of life with
an explanation of mental processes and a formula for regulating them.
Neither philosophy nor psychology is an exact science. If a novelist
wishes to describe an operation for appendicitis or a death from a
gastric ulcer, he can easily get the data necessary for making the
description true to fact. But if he aspires to depict the conduct,
under stress, of a person who has for years been a prey to conflicting
fear and aspiration, or jealousy and remorse, or hatred and conscience,
what psychologist can give him a formula for the correct procedure?
Who can predict the reactions of his closest friend under unusual
conditions?
With our earnest realistic novelist ready to sit at the feet of science
and avail himself of its investigations--prepared, as Shaw would say,
to base his work on a genuinely scientific natural history--there is
danger of his basing it, too, upon psychology which is not “genuinely
scientific,” because its claims cannot be substantiated by experience.
While the novelist is in such a receptive state along comes a
scientist, hedged also with that special authority which physicians
possess in the eyes of many laymen, and offers the complete outfit of
knowledge and (as he assures the novelist) inductively derived theory
that the novelist has been sighing for. This is Freud. He or his
disciples can explain anything in the character and conduct line while
you wait. If you want to know why a given person is what he is, or why
he acts as he does, Freud can tell you. His outfit is not, ostensibly,
“metaphysical,” like much of the older psychology that our novelist
encountered in college days. It is human, concrete, and surprisingly
easy to understand. A child can grasp the main principles. Our novelist
tests out a few of them on life as he has known it and finds that they
seem to work. If he is not completely carried off his feet, he may
grin at some of the formulas as he might at a smutty joke, but his own
observations concerning the excessively mothered boy and his reading of
some of the great dramas of the world are to him sufficient evidence
of their soundness; and he bases the behaviour of his characters upon
them with the same assurance of their accuracy that he would have in
basing the account of a surgical operation and its results upon the
data supplied him by a surgeon who had successfully performed hundreds
of exactly similar operations and watched their after effects.
One of the rudimentary instincts of human nature is curiosity, an
urge to investigate the unknown, the mysterious. It is mystery that
constitutes romance. It is the unknown that makes romance of one's
future, fate, fortune, mind--at least that part of the mind which
we do not understand and which is always taking us by surprise and
playing us tricks. Curiosity is forced movement developed along the
lines of interest. It is quite likely to follow the line of least
resistance, and just now there is little resistance to sex curiosity.
Those who find fascination in the New Psychology today found the
old psychology of a quarter of a century ago a stupid bore. The old
psychology dealt exclusively with what is now called the “conscious
mind:” with analysing the concept of directed thought, with measuring
the processes of the mind which we harnessed, or believed we harnessed,
and drove subject to our wills to do our work. The old psychology was
academic, dry, as proper and conventional as the C Major scale, without
mystery, without thrills, and therefore without interest, except to the
psychologist.
The New Psychology is different. And this “difference” is exactly why
it has proved to be almost as effective bait to the feminine angler
after romance which may serve her as caviar to the prosaic diet of
every-day existence as are spiritualism and the many other cults and
new religions whose attraction and apparent potency are now explainable
by what we understand of this very psychology--or the science of the
mind. There is no reason to suppose that the current doctrines of
the subconscious will do more for civilisation or art than the older
doctrines of consciousness. The fact that they seize the popular fancy
and are espoused with enthusiasm is of no particular significance,
since the very same attitude was an accompaniment of the older
doctrines.
It would be difficult to exaggerate the prevalent interest in
psychology. I shall cite three indications of it: The pastor of one of
the large and influential churches in New York asked me a short time
ago if I would give a talk on Psychology before the Girls' Club of his
church. When I suggested that some other subject might be more fitting
and helpful, he replied that all the girls were reading books on
psychology, that he was sure none or few of them understood what they
read, and that he was convinced that their indulgence was unhealthy.
Should one go into any large general book-shop in New York or elsewhere
and survey the display, he will find that a conspicuous department
is devoted to “Books on Advanced Thinking,” and upon inquiry he will
find that it is the most popular department of the store. The most
uniform information that a psychiatrist elicits from the families of
youths whose minds have undergone dissolution is that for some time
previous to the onset of symptoms they displayed a great interest in
books on philosophy and psychology, and many of them had taken up
psychoanalysis, or whatever passes under that name; joined some League
of the Higher Illumination; or gone in for “mental fancy work” of some
kind.
Before taking up specific illustrations of psychology in modern
fiction, I wish to say to amateurs interested in the study of
psychology, that frank recognition of their own unconscious minds or
of the part of their instinctive life or memories which may have been
intentionally or automatically pushed out of consciousness, does not
call for digging into the unconscious through elaborate processes
of introspection or through invoking the symbolism of dreams. Even
were it done, the result would probably reveal nothing more startling
than would a faithful account of the undirected thoughts which float
uninvited through the mind during any idle hour. For most normal
persons such thoughts need neither to be proclaimed nor denied.
The involuntary effort toward equilibrium of a normal mind will
take adequate care of them. The study of such mental conditions and
processes in abnormal individuals, however, is often of great service
to the psychologist and facilitates understanding of the workings of
both the normal and the unbalanced mind.
I also desire to call attention to the value of an objective mental
attitude if one would conserve mental equilibrium and keep the working
mind at its highest point of health and productivity. One of the
greatest safeguards of mental equilibrium is the desire for objective
truth. This is an indication that the mind is seeking for harmony
between itself and the external world, and it has a biological basis
in the fact that such harmony between the organism and the external
world makes for security. The desire for objective truth is a straight
pathway between the ego-complex and the ideal of a rational unified
self. Parallel with this rational self there is an ethical self which
has freed itself from the complexes caused by the conflict between the
egoistic instincts and the external moral codes, and uses the rational
self to secure harmony of thought and action based on self-knowledge.
These two ideals may be pursued consciously and may be made the main
support of that complete and enlightened self-consciousness which is
essential for the most highly developed harmonious personality.
For a time it seemed to the casual observer that the New Psychology
was so steeped in pruriency that it could not be investigated without
armour and gas mask. Happily such belief is passing, and many now see
in it something more than the dominancy and vagaries of the libido,
which convention has insisted shall veil its face and which expediency
has suggested shall sit at the foot of the table rather than at the
head. It has awakened a new interest in the life of the spirit, which
is in part or in whole outside consciousness, and it has finally
challenged the statement of the father of modern psychology, Descartes:
“I think, therefore I am.”
The religionist advises us to “Get right with God.” At least he is
bidding for integration of interests. The humanist in literature who
tries to get life going right with its memories is doing the same
thing. To be on good terms with memory is happiness; to be on bad terms
with it is tragedy. Both are fields for literary workmanship. The more
the individual works up his memories in contact with his experiences,
the more objective he becomes. On “Main Street” everybody remembers
everything about everybody else and thinking becomes objective, with
aspects no finer than the daily experiences of the thinkers. There is
no chance for romance and adventure because the memories of the few
who erred by embarking on adventurous ways are so vivid in the minds
of their neighbours, and so often rehearsed by them, as to inhibit the
venturesome. Instead of mental equilibrium between vital and struggling
interests, there is only inertia. This makes a good theme for a
sporadic novel, but it is not a basis for a school of novelists. Mr.
Lewis set himself a task that he could perform. On a level where life
is richer and memories are crowded out by sensational experiences the
task is harder.
It is a mistake to think that psychology is all introspection and
conjecture of the unconscious. Mental life in the broadest sense is
behaviour, instinctive and intelligent. Few have shown themselves
more competent to observe, estimate, and describe such behaviour than
the author of “Main Street.” That novel was a study of temperament, a
portrayal of environment, and an attempt to estimate their interaction
and to state the result. It was recognised by those who had encountered
or experienced the temperament and who had lived, voluntarily or
compulsorily, in the environment, to be a true cross-section of life
focussed beneath a microscopic lens, and anyone who examined it had
before him an accurate representation of the conscious experiences
of at least two individuals, and a suggestion of their unconscious
experiences as well. This permitted the reader, even suggested to
him, to compare them with his own sensations and ideas. Thus it was
that emotions, sentiments, and judgments were engendered which, given
expression, constituted something akin to public opinion. The result
was a beneficence to American literature, for the purpose of the writer
was known, and it was obvious to the knowing that he had accomplished
it.
In “Babbitt” Mr. Lewis set himself a much more limited task. The
picture is life in a Middle Western city of the U. S. A. It is as
accurate as if it had been reflected from a giant mirror or reproduced
from a photographic plate. George F. Babbitt is signalled by his fellow
townsmen as an enviable success from a financial and familiar point of
view. Nevertheless he grows more discontent with life as prosperity
overtakes him. The burden of his complaint is that he has never done a
single thing he wanted to in his whole life. It is hard to square his
words with his actions, but he convinces himself. So having run the
gamut of prosperity, paternity, applause, wine, women, and song--in his
case it is dance, not song--without appeasement, he finally gets it
vicariously through observing his son who not only knows what he wants
to do, but does it. He summarises what life has taught him in a few
words: “Don't be scared of the family. No, nor of all Zenith. Nor of
yourself, the way I've been. Go ahead, old man! The world is yours!”
Mr. Lewis' purpose was to describe the behaviour of a certain type of
man in a certain kind of city, of which the world is full. He gives the
former a definite heredity, an education with an amalgam of sentiment,
a vague belief that material success spells happiness, that vulgar
contact with one's fellows constitutes companionship, and that Pisgah
sights of life are to be had by gaining a social elevation just beyond
the one occupied. Then he thwarts his ambition to become a lawyer with
an incontrovertible outburst of sex and sentimentality, and all his
life he hears a bell tolling the echoes of his thwarted ambition. He
feels that he has been tricked by circumstance and environment, and
that display of chivalry to his wife and loyalty to his chum were
wasted. They were indeed, for they had been offered, like the prayers
of the hypocrites, in clubs and in corners of the street, and displayed
for his own glory.
Materialism was Babbitt's undoing. It destroyed the framework on which
man slings happiness and contentment, and which is called morality and
idealism. When that went he became a creature of Mr. Karel Capek's
creation. Mr. Babbitt, in common with countless benighted parents,
cherished a delusion. He believed that filial love, so-called, is
an integral part of an offspring's make-up. It is an artefact, an
acquisition, a convention: it is a thing like patriotism and creed.
One is born with a certain slant toward it and as soon as he becomes
a cognisant, sentient organism he realises that it is proper to
have it and to display it. In fact he is made to do so during his
formative years; thus it becomes second nature. And that is just what
it is--second nature. Parental love is first nature. If this were a
disquisition on love, instead of on novelists, I should contend that
there are two kinds of love: a parent's love for its child, especially
the mother's; and a believer's love for God. When Mr. Babbitt wallows
in the trough of the waves of emotion because he doesn't get the
affection and recognition from his children which is his due, he
alienates our sympathy and Mr. Lewis reveals the vulnerable tendon of
his own psychology.
Were I the dispenser of eugenic licenses to marry, I should insist that
everyone contemplating parenthood should have read the life history of
the spider, especially the female of the species, who is devoured by
her offspring. All novelists should study spiders first-hand. Filial
love, or the delusion of it, furnishes the material for some of the
finest ironies and deepest tragedies of life, and as Mr. Lewis adopts
it as a medium for characterisation quite free from the teaching of
the Freudians who would make it a fundamental instinct, the reader is
entitled to expect from him a more reasonable treatment of the subject.
Babbitt's tragedy in the failure of his children's affection is the
tragedy of millions of parents the world over. There is hardly a note
that would be more sure of wide appeal. But it cannot be explained by
the mere fact that, despite the Decalogue, no person of reason will
ever “honour” where honour is not merited. It is hard to pity Babbitt
because he could not commandeer the filial respect and honour which he
had failed to inspire. If this were all, the situation would be simple.
But, like countless other deluded parents, Babbitt believes that
merely by bringing children into the world he has staked out a claim
on their love, just as the child has a claim on the love of those who
brought him into the world. And in this belief lies the irony and the
tragedy: in the disparity between tradition and fact; between reason
and instinct. The tradition or convention that filial love corresponds
to parental love probably had its origin in the mind of the parent who
would have liked to supply the child with such reciprocal instinct--a
love that would transcend reason and survive when respect and honour
had failed--but nature has not kept pact with the parental wish. In
the realisation and acceptance of the truth lies the Gethsemane that
each parent must face who would mount to higher heights of parenthood
than the planes of instinct. Hence the universal appeal: the reason
why the reader sympathises with Babbitt even while condemning him.
He has forfeited the right to what he might have claimed--honour and
affection--to fall back upon more elemental rights which were a figment
of the imagination. Mr. Lewis' psychology would have struck a truer
note if he had differentiated more clearly between the universal parent
tragedy and Babbitt's own failure as a parent.
With the regeneration or civic orientation of Babbitt I am not
concerned--that is in the field of ethics. But, as a student of
literary art and craftsmanship, it seems to me the sawdust in Mr.
Lewis' last doll.
To depict the display of Babbitt's consciousness as Mr. Lewis has done
is to make a contribution to behaviourism, to make a psychological
chart of mental activity. One may call it realism if one likes, because
it narrates facts, but it is first and foremost a narrative of the
activities and operation of the human mind.
“Babbitt” may be construed as the American intelligence of Mr. Lewis'
generation turning on its taskmaster. All men who live by writing, and
have any regard for fine art and “belles lettres,” or any ideals for
which, in extremity, they might be willing to get out alone with no
support from cheering multitudes and do a little dying on barricades,
live and work with the Babbitt iron in their souls. Mr. Lewis probably
had his full dose of it. He had been an advertising copy-writer,
selling goods by his skill with a pen, to Babbitts, and for Babbitts.
He had been sub-editor for a time of one of those magazines which are
owned and published by Babbitts and tricked out and bedizened for a
“mass circulation” of Babbitts. He hated Babbitt. When he saw the
favourable opportunity he meant to turn Babbitt inside out and hold
him up to scorn. But Mr. Lewis is not savage enough, and his talent is
not swinging and extravagant enough, and he has not humour enough, to
make him a satirist. He is a photographic artist with an incomparable
capacity for the lingo of “one hundred per cent Americans.” As he
gets deeper and deeper into the odious and contemptible Babbitt,
he begins to be sorry for him, and at the end he is rather fond of
him--faithfully telling the facts about him all the while. He pities
Babbitt in Babbitt's sense of frustration by social environment and
circumstances, and admires him for telling his son not to let himself
be similarly frustrated.
To call such a book “an exceedingly clever satire” and its leading
character “an exceedingly clever caricature” is, it seems to me, to
confess unacquaintance with one's countrymen or unfamiliarity with
the conventional meaning of the words “satire” and “caricature.” Such
admission on the part of the distinguished educator and critic who has
recently applied these terms to it is most improbable.
If a photograph of a man is caricature and a phonographic record of his
internal and externalised speech constitutes satire, then “Babbitt” is
what the learned professor says it is.
There is a type of novel much in evidence at present called
psychological, which is reputed to depict some of the established
principles of psychology. It should be called the psychoanalytic
novel, and psychoanalysis is only a step-child of psychology. There
are hundreds of such novels. Some of them are considered at length
later. Here I shall mention only one; “The Things We Are,” by John
Middleton Murry. The story is of a young man, Boston by name, who has
been unfitted for the experiences of adult life by excess of maternal
love--the most familiar of all the Freudian themes. The narrative is
developed largely through description of successive states of mind
of the subject, with only the necessary thread of story carried by
recounting outward events. After the death of his mother, Boston finds
himself unable to take hold of life and dogged with a sense of the
futility of all things. He tries various kinds of uncongenial work as
cure for the sense that life is but a worthless experience, all of
which fail. Finally he retires to a suburban inn to live on his income,
and there, through the kindly human contact of the innkeeper and his
wife, he experiences the awakening of a latent artistic impulse for
expression and narration. He finds himself believing that he could
give years to becoming the patient chronicler of the suburb which has
provided him such beneficial retreat. Even his small peep at community
and family life gives Mr. Boston uplift and expansion, and makes more
significant the greatest of the Commandments. He sends for his one
London friend, a literary man, who brings with him the young woman to
whom he is practically engaged. The recently released libido of Mr.
Boston focusses and remains focussed upon her. He interests her and
finally wins her, and the long “inhibited” Mr. Boston finds himself
in “normal” love. The environment prepared him and “he effected a
transformation” on Felicia--in the language of the psychoanalyst.
The thesis of the story is that for this particular kind of neurotic
suffering, “suppression of the libido,” cure lies in “sublimation of
the libido,” best effected by art and love in this case, after work,
social service, and religion have been tried and failed.
The psychology of the sick soul is a science in itself, and is known
as psychotherapy. There are many sick souls in the world--far more
than is suspected. Very few, comparatively, of them are confined in
institutions or cloistered in religious retreats or universities. The
majority of them toil to gain their daily bread. They are the chief
consumers of cloudy stuff and mystic literature. The purveyors of the
latter owe it to them not to deceive them about psychoanalysis. As a
therapeutic measure it has not been very useful. The novelist should
be careful not to give it more potentiality for righteousness than it
possesses.
It is the history of panics, epidemics, revivals, and other emotional
episodes that they always recur. The present generation is fated to
be fed on novels embodying the Freudian theories of consciousness
and personality. Like certain bottles sent out from the pharmacist,
they should have a label “poison: to be used with care.” The contents
properly used may be beneficial, even life saving. They may do harm,
great harm. Freudianism will eventually go the way of all “isms,” but
meanwhile it would be kind of May Sinclair, Harvey J. O'Higgins _et al_
to warn their readers that their fiction is based on fiction. A man's
life may be determined for him by instincts which are beyond the power
of his reason to influence or direct, but it has not been proven. It is
hypothesis, and application of the doctrine is inimical to the system
of ethics to which we have conformed our conduct, or tried to conform
it, with indifferent success, for the past nineteen hundred years.
It is often said that man will never understand his mate. There
are many things he will never understand. One of them is why he is
attracted by spurious jewels when he can have the genuine for the same
price. Ten years ago, or thereabouts, a jewel of literature was cast
before the public and was scorned. I recall but one discerning critic
who estimated it justly, Mr. Harry Dounce. Yet “Bunker Bean” is one of
the few really meritorious American psychological novels of the present
generation. It is done with a lightness of touch worthy of Anthony
Hope at his best; with an insight of motives, impulses, aspirations,
and determinations equal to the creator of “Mr. Polly”; and with a
knowledge of child psychology that would be creditable to Professor
Watson.
There are few more vivid descriptions of the workings of the child mind
than that given by Mr. Harry Leon Wilson in the account of Bunker's
visit to “Granper” and “Grammer,” and the seduction of his early
childhood by the shell from the sea. Dickens never portrayed infantile
emotions and reactions with greater verisimilitude than Mr. Wilson when
knowledge of the two inevitables of life--birth and death--came, nearly
simultaneously, to Bunker's budding mind.
If journals whose purpose is to orient and guide unsophisticated
readers, and to illuminate the road that prospective readers must
travel, would give the “once over” to books when they are published
and the review ten years later, it would mark a great advance on the
present method. If such a plan were in operation at the present time
“Bunker Bean” would be a best seller and “If Winter Comes” would be
substituting in the coal famine.
Force or energy in a new form has come into fictional literature within
the past decade, and I propose to consider it as it is displayed in
the writings of those who are mostly responsible for it: James Joyce,
Dorothy Richardson, Marcel Proust, and to consider some of the younger
English novelists from the point of view of psychology.