MORAL POISON
IN MODERN FICTION
MORAL POISON
IN
MODERN FICTION
BY
R. BRIMLEY JOHNSON
AUTHOR OF
"SOME CONTEMPORARY NOVELISTS," ETC.
[Illustration]
LONDON
A. M. PHILPOT, LTD.
69 GREAT RUSSELL STREET, W.C.1
CONTENTS
PAGE
I. "LIKE THE REST OF THEIR YOUNG WORLD" 7
II. THEN CAME THE WAR! 12
III. WHILE THEY LIVED VIOLENTLY, YOUTH ALSO THOUGHT
HARD 17
IV. WHAT, THEN, WERE THE NEW MORAL PROBLEMS? WHAT
WAS THE FRANK OUTLOOK, RAISED AND LARGELY ACCEPTED,
BEFORE THE WAR? 21
V. THE "SPADE" IDEAL IN FICTION 24
VI. NOVELS OF "GAY LIFE" ARE, QUITE OBVIOUSLY, STRONG
MORAL INTOXICANTS 33
VII. WHAT DO THE NEW WRITERS AND THINKERS TO-DAY TEACH?
HOW DO THEY INTERPRET LIFE AND LOVE? 39
VIII. WHAT IS THIS LOVE? IT IS SEX-CONFLICT 53
IX. WHO _IS_ THE IDEAL MISTRESS? 64
X. HERE ARE TWO PICTURES OF FREE LOVE 72
XI. HAVE WE ALREADY FORGOTTEN THE NATURAL LOYALTY OF
YOUTH? HOW ARE WE PAYING OUR DEBT TO THEM? 79
FOREWORD
I have not systematically searched modern fiction to illustrate or
support the arguments of this book. Every novel quoted, or even
mentioned, has come before me in the day's work, as a reviewer. It is
scarcely necessary to add that no personal reflection upon any writer
has even crossed my mind. I am not here concerned with the cause or
motive of literature, but with its effect.
R. B. J.
I
"THEY STRUGGLED ALONG LIKE THE REST OF THEIR YOUNG WORLD, THE EYE FOR
THE EYE, THE TOOTH FOR THE TOOTH, LUST AND LOVING ALIKE ONLY IN RETURN
FOR LOVING AND LUST."
It is a grim enough charge against our generation. Dare we pronounce it
untrue? Upon what theories of private morality are the young now fed?
Morals are, obviously, influenced in most cases by example and the
atmosphere of the home; but are not these themselves mainly produced,
whether consciously or not, by the teaching and tone of these who
profess to think? In these latter days most thought reaches us through
fiction, most emotion through drama.
_Without hesitation, I would maintain that an immense number of novels
now being written contain much deadly poison._
Let me not be misunderstood. I have no wish to draw down the
blinds again upon vital questions of sex, to bring out once more
the comfortable "wraps" of Victorian days, to uphold reserve if not
silence, or shut the door upon open talk. Nor would I say to youth: "We
are older and _therefore_ we know; believe us, things were far better
and happier in our time."
Such a reproach were neither wise nor true. Human nature, like all
forms of life, always grows and improves (in a long view), steps on
towards the Ideal. But to-day we must face the sharp arrest of all
normal progress, the actual throw-back to savagery, caused by the
war: which came, as a moral influence, upon minds unsettled by the
Revolution of Ideas that had set in before 1914.
Revolution may, and in fact does, largely express itself by
exaggeration, but it is not Anarchy. The ideas then first revealed
were due to a natural and healthy awakening among advanced thinkers.
Winds blew upon our comfortable complacencies. The moral assumptions
we had accepted, and refused to discuss, were boldly questioned. The
Sex-Revolt had begun.
And rightly. Many reforms were badly needed in the legal applications
of morality; the ideal of purity had stiffened into conventions
that chained the mind and stifled the heart. There was a taint of
insincerity over the realities of life: the false gods of narrow-minded
respectability, breeding secret sin.
Wider knowledge; the sifting of old ideas and the questioning of fixed
thought, can harm none. On the whole, moreover, protest was made in
earnest, with a due sense of responsibility. It was not, as to-day,
wildly shouted on the housetops; without reflection, undigested; in a
riot of burning words.
There were, of course, wild statements made in bitter anger; foolish
experiments attempted; in some quarters, merely a new cant and
upside-down convention upheld to replace the old. But, on the whole,
still only among the few. In all probability, under normal conditions,
the needed frank discussion and honest thought would have sifted the
true from the false, before the temporary confusion had inflamed
popular imagination, and uprooted, without reforming, the habits and
thought of daily life.
Looking back, I think, one can fairly summarize the position then
arrived at by advanced thinkers, that was beginning to be generally
discussed:
That there is nothing inherently evil in the human body, to
be hidden up, and if possible ignored; particularly, that the
instincts of sex are natural and healthy, a vital part of pure
love.
That women are moved by physical "desires" equally with
men, though more habituated to restraint; wherefore the old
one-sided tolerance towards men, "who cannot help themselves,"
is utterly false and, combined with the conventional innocence
of women, creates morbid barriers between the sexes, whereby
"the woman pays."
That these truths should be known and faced by both sexes
_before_, not after, marriage; with all the consequences they
involve and the dangers they should enable us to avoid: the
risks of a "sheltered" youth and the real meaning of purity,
true and false passion or love, marriage wrecked by ignorance,
divorce, the unmarried mother, birth control, the position of
the prostitute, etc.
Truth, the ventilation of morality, the honest consideration
of problems which may at any moment take us unawares, should
not defile the heart or suggest evil thought. Real knowledge
strengthens the will; and we must look at sin, see it clearly,
if we can ever hope to conquer it.
If some of us felt that these, in a sense "new," truths were rather
hurried upon us, often crudely expressed and applied; we knew that each
generation must seek its own light, and add something to inherited
wisdom. We saw children cramped and losing _themselves_ in their
fathers' fetters; we saw injustice, misery, and wasted lives; many a
marriage that proved a prison or a doll's house. We learned honestly
to face, almost for the first time, the terrible abuse of sex behind
drawn blinds that, seeming an integral part of civilization, was eating
away the very heart of humanity and condemning, with grim cynicism, the
complacency of the old code.
II
THEN CAME THE WAR!
—Which meant that thousands of boys and girls were suddenly snatched
away from their homes and parents, flung out into the heat of life,
under conditions of abnormal, and wholly vile, excitement. They had to
act and think for themselves without guidance, training, or experience:
to face problems almost entirely new to young and old alike.
Practically, there were no safeguards.
It was not that men rebelled against and defied the established
traditions: these simply did not apply to life as it burst upon our
sons and daughters. Normal existence was wiped out by a flash of
lightning. The old duties, habits, manners, responsibilities, were
rudely cast aside: for what seemed, and perhaps was, a higher call. The
whole of life was revised in a few hours; and it is no exaggeration to
say that none knew their way about the new world.
Only a clear understanding of what war really meant for us, can reveal
the special problems of to-day in their relation to the permanent,
which are the only real, emotions and instincts of human nature.
To a large extent, the mental and moral growth of all young men
was abruptly stopped short. Those who have come back, physically
fit, are—in all the essentials of character—five years younger
than by the calendar, though more "fixed" in their few ideas. Many
are further hampered and—in a sense—abnormal; maimed, diseased,
or nerve-shattered; definitely unbalanced in some way; only half
themselves, liable to sudden loss, or defiance, of self-control.
For five years they were not men, but screws in a vast evil machine.
They had, indeed, experience of death; none of life. They had,
practically, no responsibility towards, or for, themselves; no sense
of duty before them except obedience; no aim beyond a standardized
efficiency. They lost every influence of home, neighbourliness,
citizenship, and above all the refinement and sanctity of love. To live
for the moment became their Ideal; in a vision of noble patriotism and
sublime self-sacrifice. It was not for them to plan, look forward,
build up life and character for themselves.
This unnatural and irresponsible existence, moreover, was to be spent
among scenes of appalling savagery and the worst primitive passions.
"The place was rotten with dead; green clumsy legs
High-booted, sprawled and grovelled along the saps;
And trunks, face downward, in the sucking mud,
Wallowed like trodden sand-bags loosely filled;
And naked sodden buttocks, mats of hair,
Bulged, clotted heads slept in the plastering slime."
Only devils can serve the Devil of War; and _the supreme sacrifice our
sons made for us was the sacrifice of their humanity_.
To "do their bit," they put away themselves.
But this abnormal, unreal existence, these lives in the Flame of
Hate, hardened and coarsened by the day's work, positively _had_ to
discover some outlet; quick, sure ways to forget. Quite unused to the
normal "decencies," without experience in "ordering" themselves, the
sex-instinct became explosive, a sense-riot unrestrained. Remember,
that to men (and women, for that matter), hard working at high
pressure, leading a strained and feverish life, the sex-thirst springs
out. There is no drug for worn-out bodies and souls so easy and so
sweet-savoured, so prompt in its effects, for the moment so complete.
In those days few stopped to count the cost, face the consequences, or
note the weakening of the will. With death "round the corner," why stop
to think? Life was all snatching; action meant a shrewd blow, careless
of what, in ourselves or in another, we killed by the way.
And for girls and young women there was one Rule of Life—"give the men
a good time." I know the inspiring motive, however little conscious in
some, was a generous self-forgetting. To give is always ennobling, and
God forbid one should ever, by thought or word, belittle the selfless
heroism born in woman.
But then, our daughters had no chance to know and choose, no test
between real emotion and fevered desire—their own or another's.
Inheriting a beautiful home-womanliness, the flower of sheltered
innocence, they had to make and be themselves in the open of a new
world. Nobility shone out among us in those days, miracles beyond
belief of what woman can do and suffer for big, or small, men: a new
vision of the mothering of humanity that brought God to our side. Also,
alas, terrible shattering of English girlhood, ugly staining of the
pure in heart, feverish unrest, a fury of overdoing, a hard glitter of
cold joy. Always haste, never growth. Wherefore to-day our morality is
an ash-heap, which some weep over, others kick up.
_Dare we refuse to face the black awakening to disillusion?_
III
BECAUSE WHILE THEY LIVED VIOLENTLY, YOUTH ALSO THOUGHT HARD.
What was their "food for thought"? Largely away from, and independent
of, personal influence from the intimacies of home life; almost
entirely freed from authority even in daily conduct, and from the
restraints of an accepted moral code; they talked and read. All the
rebellions and revolts of before 1914 were conspicuously abroad.
Above all, then and to-day, the novels (devoured for distraction) had
forced sex-problems upon the most thoughtless; demanded for all on
the threshold of life full licence for self-expression; analysed what
they called the soul in undigested detail; lingered over body-contact,
flushes and fires of the flesh; loudly proclaimed new Laws of Love.
The whole experience of mankind, our most sacred instincts, are flouted
with contempt. The conflicting claims, which none can avoid, between
young and old, have been flung off. The old distinctions between wrong
and right are categorically denied; all now demand an absolutely fresh
start based on universal knowledge of sin, absolute freedom for the
individual, frank discussion of physical intimacies, full rights to
the Egoist—"a commonplace promiscuity that masquerades as liberty,
as courageousness, as art. A slimy, glittering snail-track threaded
through all society."
And we have not, even yet, gone far enough! since, it is said,
"Conversation is over-sexed, the novel under-sexed, therefore untrue,
therefore insincere." By this creed, there is only one _real_ thing in
life—physical passion.
I do not suggest that contemporary thought is _all_ evil, unclean or
false. Many of our writers are serious, pure-minded men and women,
rightly indignant with old falsehoods, honestly seeking new light. Much
of their work, too, reveals both sincerity and truth, a finer instinct
for the ideal than the Victorians ever knew. Their courage is heroic,
their frankness most wise.
But they are, on the whole, prone to haste. They denounce often without
understanding; eager to knock down, without preparation to build up.
_There is a large body of new doctrine, or interpretation of life and
manhood, which is false, morbid, and poisonous in its effects._
Above all, the message has taken youth unprepared—just when (more than
ever before in the history of the world) they needed quiet patience for
complete understanding. _And_ it has, naturally, proved an attractive
instrument for cheap sensation-mongers to feed novelty and excitement,
in second-rate, widely read, novels. The appeal here is far more
dangerous, because it lacks thought or any sense of responsibility
in the writers. These insincere books, written for success to catch
the crowd, even when slightly more veiled in phrase, are far more
suggestive and unclean. They present conclusions without reasons,
gospels without faith. They partly create, and largely reflect, life as
it is for the moment. Taking evil for granted, they do devil's work.
Such are the prevailing influences of the day; very mixed, of grave
peril, that have already done much to prolong the crime of war.
But the following pages shall not be given to mere abuse, idle
complaints, or dogmatic assertion.
It is necessary, quite frankly, but with all possible _clear_
thinking, to examine and present the new moral teaching, to sift true
from false; to declare how much has come from more knowledge and
understanding, and how much from unreasoning anger, impatience of
control, the search for novelty and pride in revolt. Where, too, mere
dirt has stained the page.
IV
WHAT, THEN, WERE THE NEW MORAL PROBLEMS, WHAT WAS THE FRANK OUTLOOK,
RAISED AND ADOPTED BEFORE THE WAR?
What are their effects, for good and evil, upon modern literature?
We recognize the physical expression of love as itself no way impure
or unclean: but as a part of true passion. We know that sin means a
state of mind or emotion, a false conception of moral values; and that
virtue is not secured by legal sanction. We recognize, frankly, man's
weakness and the complexity of social life; wherefore the dangers and
temptations of ill-doing must be faced and understood.
Finally, we believe that _knowledge brings strength_; and, therefore,
these "difficult" questions cannot, and should not, be ignored in
conversation or in books: above all, not by those who, whether
intentionally or not, do influence thought by their power to create
character in fiction.
This awakening to a new view of Truth, however, has produced an
atmosphere in modern novels which—whatever the aim or intention of
modern novelists, leads to grave evil.
1. The determination to call a spade a spade, complete
frankness in words, too often ignores the relative importance
of things or deeds thus exposed. It tends, unavoidably, to
over-emphasize the physical, no less than our grandparents
exaggerated the romantic.
2. A recognition of the unmarried mother and the refusal to
boycott a whole class, produce detailed and frank pictures of
"gay life," in which the pleasures and even the moral conquests
are so brought into prominence as to convey the totally false
impression that such conditions are freer, and therefore
better, than prosaic domesticity.
3. The gospel of self-expression in emotion, itself a
fine ideal inspiring sincerity, is too often so violently
proclaimed as to ignore any consideration for others and the
"consequences" to oneself:—the inevitable weakening of the
will.
4. In particular, the glorification of burning passion which
(as a physical fact) cannot be continuous, is revealed to
justify the lie that, as the _nature_ of love changes or grows,
it also turns cold and dies. Therefore, they seek to show that
the noblest love does not last, that men and women alike need
constant change in emotion, that marriage is not a bond but
bondage.
Everywhere, they confound the abuses of truth with truth itself;
proclaim an ideal false simply because it has been degraded and
misunderstood. They condemn because we cannot attain.
Obviously, however, the novelists may still reply, "We are concerned
with life not with ideals. If these things be sin, we must write of
sin." That we all admit. The novel with any ambition towards truth dare
not ignore temptation or the failure to resist. It must reveal human
nature, no less at its worst than its best; face the struggle between
faith and disloyalty to oneself; picture life's cruel ironies and the
tyranny of fate.
_But that can never excuse doubt, or confusion between right and wrong,
exalting evil, or perversion of the truth._
V
THE "SPADE" IDEAL IN FICTION
This has been summarized once for all in his description of what Mr.
W. L. George calls a "sincere" novel: "There would be as many scenes
in the bedroom as in the drawing-room, probably more, given that human
beings spend more time in the former than the latter apartment."
There is nothing sincere in that definition except its nasty flavour;
the lust it suggests. The actual effect, if not the intention, is a
quick shock to our natural instincts.
Any possible value it might appear to possess at first sight, as a
serious argument, has been lost by the insincere reason given. Mr.
George himself is far too good an artist not to know that _real_ life
is _not_ measured by length of hours. Crises are, nearly always, swift.
Too often, a character is lost or won in a moment; we grow old in a
night; gain the happiness of a lifetime by the right word. How many a
man is bound to "spend more time" over his ledger than beside his lady!
This weak reasoning gives the realists away. They are so set on the
letter of truth as to deny its spirit. Aiming at exact photographic
reproduction of life, they lose all sense of proportion and real
values, hiding the wood in the trees. Whether or not the material facts
be true, the reality is false, the proportions misplaced, the picture
out of focus.
In practice, moreover, they do select no less arbitrarily than the
romantic Victorians. In their view, "one can only get at most women's
minds through their bodies."
But Mr. George has only _expressed_ one reason for his contention; even
if _that_ be seriously intended. The argument really _means_ that,
often, if not always, the most vital moments of our life are spent in
the bedroom; a half-truth more dangerous and misleading than a lie.
What the word "bedroom" in this sentence honestly stands for is
obviously something quite real; but it does not reveal or test
character, and can never in any way complete a _true_ picture of life.
The accidents of expression are not truth itself.
In a recent drama of temperament called _Enter Madame_, the author's
mere instinct for stage-effects has, as it were by accident, provided
an illustration that proves our point. The hero of this spontaneous
and light-hearted drama is attracted by two women of whom one largely
appeals to his passions (though _not_ his lust); and the other appears
to possess what modernists would call the "tame" comforting qualities
of a "good" wife. He chooses passion in the end, following his love
_off the stage_, into a bedroom. In this scene we have the whole truth;
no added sincerity in the presentment, no shade of character the most
minute, would have been added by opening that door. The emotional
decision was the reality.
To the realist the play would probably seem a square fight between wife
and mistress—with the inevitable result!
But, in actual fact, almost every detail went to confound the new
morality. The passionate woman was the hero's wife, whom he had just
divorced—to achieve domesticity. She did _not_ exclusively depend upon
the physical appeal; though it was used to bring him back. They had a
thousand other, more subtle, points of sympathy and mutual attraction,
despite the exasperating petty irritations of life, which she would
not allow to wreck their love. On the other hand, it was not any fixed
aversion to marriage, any weakness in the bond itself, that caused her
rival's failure. She simply was not, when—as it were—put to the test,
his spiritual mate. For him, she was the wrong woman.
Most certainly this play was not inspired by any conscious theories on
life or art. A straightforward, workmanlike picture of everyday people;
its very lack of intention made it the more convincing. The author had
no axe to grind.
As in life, we saw that the best feelings of an ordinary decent sort of
man are expressed, as his ultimate happiness is secured, by 'putting
up with his wife's tantrums for love of her dear self.' That is, by
some kind of self-control about the small things of life for the sake
of the big; an instinctive knowledge of values or sense of proportion;
mutual accommodation, and self-expression in self-sacrifice. He would
not rush away from her for a change or new experience, to that placid
domesticity which, because he had missed it, he—for a moment—supposed
would prove ideal.
Nevertheless, it is absolutely clear that his decision does _not_
establish the superiority of passion-storms over carpet slippers.
He chose between two women, not between two modes of life: a matter
of temperament, and the man's individual, permanent feeling. Though
married, he had not—as he too hastily imagined—fallen "out of" love.
Life is distorted to-day by the orgy of crude passion in most
second-rate fiction, of which Mr. Evan Morgan's _Trial by Ordeal_ is an
extreme case. Unfortunately such novelists have the smart air of being
absolutely at home all over the world, without really knowing their way
about anywhere.
The leading lady of this brightly variegated human manure-heap is a
"vampire, like a sea-breeze, like the noise of a waterfall at night";
her familiar ally is a discreet "sort of lady dressmaker, whose sons,
numbering almost equally with her lovers, had forced her to take to
a genteel trade." It is a picture of life among "bolsters with the
temperaments of wood-lice; . . . among talented women, gifted women,
immoral women."
Here Miss Hazell O'Neill "netted a half-blind poet, whom she took out
and dusted on bright days and holidays." Him she ultimately left, as
part of her luggage, to a landlady in Jersey; and proceeded to "smash
a sculptor with his own statue."
Caught at last by "romance," falling in love with a man who
wondered—"would she be more trouble than she was worth"; this
determined young woman "leapt up and began undressing . . . plunged into
the water"; so that "the momentary glance he had of her naked beauty,
the excitement, overcame him."
The hero, in his "first affair" with "the daughter of a very
respectable God-fearing parson," carefully taught her the new ideals of
"free love, free conscience, free everything . . . hoping himself
to reap the fruit of his labours." Submitting, however, to the
"ceremonial" of marriage, he was caught in his own trap. She was
now "enlightened," and "dreading suddenly the binding nature of the
service," ran away, at the eleventh hour, with another man.
Afterwards "she came back ill, very ill, and he left her to sink or
swim." Such is the chivalry of free love; that ultimately drove her to
become "a horrible, decadent, drug-maniac."
Of his "spiritual" union with another, we read: "Both were exhausted,
the _emotions of the soul_ had overpowered them, they fell fainting
against the cool grey stone, and there, like a burning picture of all
the romances there have been since the beginning of time, they leant in
the twilight."
By all means call a spade a spade; but do not imagine that all life is
spades. To insist upon bedroom scenes in fiction or drama, and all the
nakedness of phrase such a conception of art implies, does, and must,
often suggest the sly and coarse innuendo. It is the same with all
_excess_ of emphasis on physical detail. When Mr. D. H. Lawrence dwells
on the feverish symptoms (mainly skin-deep) of his lovers, describes
their breasts and loins, he is—actually—playing with the obscene.
The reticence we demand is not based on any pretence that our bodies
are unclean, on any conventional association between mere words and
thoughts.
A nude painting may be supremely, spiritually, beautiful: it may be
lewd: but it is not, as many would now declare, more real _because_ of
its nudity.
Can we _honestly_ say that the increasing undress on stage or in daily
life provokes more deep, true and sincere feeling, reveals more of
a girl's or a woman's real and best self? We know it does not. _It
distracts our thoughts from the woman herself_ to memories of purely
animal and gross experience, tempts us to lower depths. It matters
not, in the book or in the play, that innocence prevail. I have heard
men, for example, when the curtain fell at _The Sign of the Cross_,
chuckling over the public attack on a girl's body (though it failed),
with gay plans for vile conquests.
Obviously, there can be no fixed verbal rule. To say that no writer may
use certain words or describe certain actions and things; no playwright
may paint certain scenes; would be to "speak as a fool." Each case must
be determined by its inner spiritual truth.
In one sense our selection of phrase must be a matter of taste and
good feeling; in another, it comes from our artistic instinct. What I
maintain, and have tried to show, is that modern novels are, too often,
both poisonous _and_ untrue to life because their choice of words and,
indeed, their whole picture of life, is dominated by a false view:
that, if only your figures are naked they _must_ be true, that our
bodies cannot lie. _In angry revolt against the half-truths of the
past, they snatch at the other half and swear it is the whole._
Let the writer be sure that he cares only for truth; and loyalty to his
vision will give him the right, clean thoughts and words.
Let the reader trust to his own natural instincts. Almost certainly,
if a phrase or thought either shock or suggest the unclean, it is
itself—as then used—unclean, false to life and nature; _and_ also
bad art. If you are told that the first slight shock, prick of the
conscience, impulse to shrink away, is false hypocrisy, _do not believe
it_.
Nearly always the most inexperienced youth _feels straight_. Once
the poison is drunk and you have let yourself go with the injected
delirium, you will have lost the power to see and feel for yourself.
VI
NOVELS OF "GAY LIFE," WITH THE PROSTITUTE HEROINE, ARE, QUITE
OBVIOUSLY, STRONG MORAL INTOXICANTS.
One does not pronounce the subject forbidden. We know, and recognize,
that a man's mistress _may_ be a nobler woman than his wife, the love
between them more real; we know and recognize where mere passion may
lead; and we do not carelessly push beyond the pale, those whom a
hundred different circumstances—quite different degrees of moral
weakness or reckless defiance through special trouble—may have led to
live on man's desires. We do not dismiss them from thought, reading,
and conversation.
Nevertheless many novels now written use these most grave issues for
mere dramatic effect, or to confound morality; and, to these ends,
offer a falsely attractive picture of emotional adventure. In his
terrible _Bed of Roses_, on the other hand, Mr. W. L. George treats
his theme with the definite object of exposing the tragedy of a young
woman with no training, suddenly forced to earn her living; and of
expressing his righteous anger against the conditions of civilization.
Because, he declares, "a woman can scratch up a living but not a
future; and the only job she's really fit for is to be a man's keep,
legal or illegal, permanent or temporary." The narrative itself is
most emphatically not free from offence, but the motive is honest and
sincere.
Mr. Gilbert Cannan, again, with less earnest intention but still
legitimately, seems to have written _Pink Roses_ to illustrate the
demoralizing effects of the war on a quite decent, average young man,
who was "left out" of things—through a weak heart. He drifts into an
experiment of lust, but is not finally destroyed, because he recognized
from the first that he had only sought the adventure—to fill the blank
years.
The frail "Cora" of Mr. Snaith's _Sailor_ merely stands for temptation,
which no novelist can omit. The episode is not shirked, but it is
treated with all the traditional reticence, which puts it outside our
discussion here.
In these examples the motive may be acknowledged towards
justification; but such books as Mr. W. L. George's _Confessions of
Ursula Trent_ only respond to a morbid preference for melodramatic
atmosphere: they assume, and encourage, our interest in the unclean.
To heighten the effect, they are—almost inevitably—untrue. The
attractions and drama are exaggerated, giving a false glamour to the
gravest tragedy of human nature. There is here obvious adventure,
and far greater variety or colour than we can, most of us, reach in
ordinary respectable life. There is even some real liberty for the
individual (though far less than these superficial narratives suggest),
in dramatic contrast to the slaving drudgery and imprisoned minds—of
underpaid long hours of toil and drab unloving homes.
The hopeless tragedy, the bitter knowledge, the utter weariness and the
slavery of the soul do not provide the novelist with dramatic material,
and are—to a large extent—left out of the picture. He slurs over,
or altogether ignores, the blunting of moral sense, the coarsening of
moral fibre, the lowering of all ideals: the gradual loss of power
over oneself, loss of will, loss of freedom, loss—even—of desire.
He may use the more obvious foulness and brutality as an occasion for
drama—naturally not wishing to be transparently unreal. The moral
tragedy is not _there_.
But by his own art standard, that demands the exact truth, he is
condemned; and he is guilty of just that falsehood which he set out
to expose and revile—of treating his characters as a _class apart_,
rather types than individuals. As the Victorians assumed, without
charity, they were always lower than the "respectable"; he almost
conveys the impression that they are necessarily higher—as careless,
and far more dangerous, an assumption.
We can perhaps see more clearly where this perverse attack upon
convention really leads from another example of fiction, frankly
designed to sell.
It is, indeed, hard to detect the serious object or thought behind such
books as _The Age of Consent_. The publisher claims "extraordinary
delicacy" for its treatment of a "difficult, perilous, and exciting
situation," which is "modern in the fullest sense." There is, we admit,
nothing coarse here in language or thought, a welcome exception to-day;
and the combination of essential purity, in a very real sense, with a
courageous acceptance of life, is revealed with real understanding of
morality and of our natural instincts.
In other words, Pamela is a true woman; with exceptional possession of
herself, heroic impulse and a clean mind; capable of sustained, genuine
self-sacrifice and self-restraint.
_But when we consider the tests by which her nature is revealed and
developed, the sordid vice in which she grew from girl to woman;
the whole impression is reversed._ Circumstances and atmosphere are
violently morbid and also quite abnormal. We have not only every
conceivable variety in the cruel and profit-sharing intrigues of lust
(with no sudden impulse to excuse, if not condone); but illustration
and discussion of the most extreme and vile form of criminal mania that
serves no purpose but to heighten the crude sensationalism.
The legal problem suggested by the title (a "practical" issue of
grave importance to public morality) is only used for the mechanism
of the plot; and spiritual purity is fertilized by manure. This, of
course, may be achieved by a strong nature: virtue does sometimes
triumph against long odds. But such books without doubt imply that the
surroundings of loathly sin _provide the most favourable soil_ for the
growth and strengthening of a girl's innocence to perfect womanhood.
Which is a lie.
_Can we finally hesitate to proclaim that too many novels, written
round "gay life," create moods and stimulate emotions, by which truth
and the Right are hidden or denied?_
VII
WHAT DO THE "NEW" WRITERS AND THINKERS TO-DAY ACTUALLY TEACH? HOW DO
THEY INTERPRET LIFE AND LOVE?
We have, so far, considered rather the effects of "new" morality
than the morality itself; and, to some extent, dwelt more upon the
characteristics of modern fiction than on the thought it expounds.
It is now necessary to examine the actual teaching, or interpretation,
of life and love.
The poison permeating literature and society seems to have its main
origin in over-emphasis and a determination to reform by destruction.
A violent, but not altogether unjustified, reaction against our old
moral rules and formulæ, which laid undue stress on "appearances," has
led to a passionate declaration that the first right and duty of every
man or woman is to express himself or herself at all costs. The one
sin now held unpardonable is hypocrisy, or the insincere moulding of
oneself by rule; falling in line, accepting any authority or tradition,
any form of self-sacrifice. There is great confusion here between good
and evil. We have already more than once explained that we of the older
days frankly admit our mistake. We did conform over-much, fixed our
ideals in a groove, and—with too anxious love—sought to guide and
direct youth, rather than help and stimulate them to be their best
selves.
But, if we laid too great stress on restraint, control, sacrifice, and
mere orderliness; the new thinkers have, here again, missed the truth
by their fiery haste. As the clear-sighted heroine of a recent novel
has remarked, "It was a great and fine act to let yourself go—only no
one said precisely where you went to."
Their Self is not a complete purposeful human being, of strong
character and sustained courage, clear faith, and reasonable hope:
certainly not of any charity whatsoever. _The ego they would exalt is
a mere riot of moods._ They snatch at a moment's joy, utter a moment's
emotion, act on a moment's thought. There is no idea of "finding"
oneself _before_ expressing oneself. Every passing fancy, feverish
excitement, sudden hate, is to be flung out upon a bewildered world;
above all to the confounding and wounding of steadier souls—the old,
the middle-aged, or any that bear another's burden. Such tempestuous
demands on life are based on anger against parental preachments and on
a curious lack of self-confidence. Seeing the glory of youth's capacity
for enthusiasm, they seem always afraid that it will fade and die
unless encouraged perpetually to explode. They will not tolerate any
idea of growth and strength through self-control, any appeal to the
higher, deeper Self, built up on loving service and kindness to one's
fellow-men.
No theory of life ever produced such weak, formless, and utterly
miserable human beings. _They quickly cease to have any self to
express._ Swayed in a thousand contrary directions by every idle
mood, they become more absolutely slaves to chance encounter and
a thoughtless word than one would have supposed possible to an
intelligent man or woman, with any pride in self or any standard
of honour. It should be obvious that such a perpetual series of
unconsidered experiments in emotion must wear out all independent
thought, all strength of will, all capacity for judgment.
Miss Sheila Kaye Smith does not teach this ideal in _Joanna Godden_,
but she exposes it with her usual grim sincerity. The heroine of that
profound tragedy kills her lonely soul by a perpetual struggle to
snatch happiness for herself. Originally a strong woman, she goes on
"blundering worse and worse," until "there she stood, nearly forty
years old, her lover, her sister, her farm, her home, her good name,
all lost."
A novel in which we can, however, clearly detect confusion between
love and the quick, vicious, response to every sensuous impression,
is _The Sleeping Fire_ of W. E. B. Henderson, described by its author
as a tale of "the urge in woman . . . where the flesh, crying like an
infant for food, is yet held back by scruples of a spirit that bows to
circumstance, from fastening on the breast of personal choice."
Here "the woman," Viva Barrington, is, again and again, described as "a
human soul, innately decent and fine"; and yet she "suddenly kindled"
at any man's mere touch. The young guardsman whom "considerable
practice had enabled to use his fine eyes with much effect," declared
"she could be no end o' fun, if she'd only let herself go." In fact,
he took up a bet, "ten to one in quids," that he would kiss her before
the last supper dance; "a real live kiss, mind you, where she gives as
good as she gets. None of your stolen pecks."
As this "splendid specimen of the vigorous young male smoothed back
her hair, devouring her with his eyes . . . a delicious languor . . .
as of one yielding to an anæsthetic . . . was stealing over her.
Husband, children—everything of her outside life slipped away."
And at his kiss "primordial passion" awoke. "Feeling herself a live
coal of shame from head to foot she raised herself slightly upwards
towards him, and with closed eyes and utter abandon, passionately
returned the pressure of his lips."
This "pure" woman, already a mother, is fired by a "vulgar wager," a
vain boy wanting to kiss her "for the mere enjoyment of the contact,"
in the conservatory, heated by champagne and the dance. There is no
attempt to suggest real feeling, the passionate awakening that _may_
come after a foolish marriage; when the "right man" stirs unknown
depths, beating down "fears, doubts, self-distrusts." She crumples up
at the first chance shot.
No wonder that, after some months' experimenting among men, she grows
"afraid—afraid! . . . now I know I'm liable to—to kindle, suddenly,
inexplicably. . . . There's a man here—one of those to-night. He's
unclean, through and through. I never used to attract that type. And
now apparently I do. The 'sleeping fire' . . . he sees it in me and
tries to feed it. He sickens me! Oh, I'm frightened. Suppose one day
that type _ceased_ to sicken me. I've seen the demi-monde at the
tables. Their faces haunt me. _They_ began with the sleeping fire, and
men fed it and fed it till it became a furnace . . . for me, it's been
like summer lightning so far . . . only summer lightning. Look after me,
help me, lest it ever be forked lightning . . . the lightning that can
strike and destroy."
So she appeals to the husband she had originally accepted as "a
crutch," and who had looked upon her as "furniture." Fortunately—for
the children, because he has "changed, broadened in outlook and
understanding"—he is ready "to build afresh, stone by stone."
We admit that Mr. Henderson's moral is sound enough; he has, indeed,
found "the way of salvation." But he has _not_ drawn for us the
"innately decent and fine woman." Viva is weak and abnormally sensual
from the first; pulled out of the mire by luck, human kindness, and
a dim taste for "the things that are good, decent, and worth while";
_inherited from clean-living forebears_.
The danger for her was exceptional, not "that _natural_ yearning"
against which "_all women_ must be _eternally_ on their guard." Her
husband, we notice, hoped to guard his daughter "_against her mother's
tendency_."
We have a precisely similar situation in _The Mother of All Living_
by Mr. Keable. An emotional, but high-minded woman, whose husband
was not aggressively incompatible, is here suddenly stirred to the
depths—practically at first sight—by a cynical, handsome man of the
world. There is absolutely no attempt whatever to even suggest any
natural affinity in mind or tastes between the two; no urge except the
unexplained, and inexplicable, mystery of the spark that fires sex. The
abandon to which this unnatural awakening leads up belongs to quite a
different type of woman; and when, at the eleventh hour, she repents in
melodrama, we have still a third personality, no way like the girl her
husband wooed and won.
This is, perhaps, why Mr. Keable calls her _The Mother of all Living_,
Eve incarnate, the World-Woman. As Mr. Masefield draws Mary Queen
of Scots—too "big" for one lover. Both writers chose to forget, or
to ignore, that love has no meaning, unless one's _whole_ self is
expressed.
Mr. Temple Thurston, again, in _The Green Bough_, seems resolutely
determined to uphold Pope's dictum that "every woman is at heart a
rake."
Mary, indeed, is a woman "whom life had discarded and thrown aside";
whom, therefore, we are ready to judge leniently. It does _not_,
therefore, follow "How vast a degree of false modesty there is in the
world . . . it had _all been false_ that modesty which their mother had
taught them."
She, at any rate without modesty, sought and found love. So fine
a thing this that she took it, without hesitation, from a married
man, who had told her how much he loved his wife. "It happened—in a
fortnight."
Of her sisters, reproaching her, she declares "Jane thinks herself
a true woman just because she's clung to modesty and chastity and a
fierce reserve; but these things are only of true value when they're
needed, and what man has needed them of us? _Who cares at all whether
we've been chaste or pure?_ None but ourselves! And what made us care
_but those false values_ that make Jane's shame of me? . . . You're not
really ashamed of me. You're _envious, jealous, and you're stung with
spite_. Calling me a servant girl or a woman of the streets only feeds
your spite, it doesn't satisfy your heart. _You'd give all you know to
have what I have._ . . . I'm going to have a child. . . . It's not a
sin. It's not a shame. It's the most wonderful thing in the world."
_There is one unanswerable reply to that fearful charge—"What man has
needed chastity of us, who cares?"—a son's honouring of his mother,
the man's instinct to defend his wife, his sister, or his child._
False, or forced, "modesty" may degenerate into "spite"; but it will be
a sad day for human nature when all women are "jealous" of the "free!"
Mr. Thurston seems to claim, in this novel, to be "the one man in the
world who understands the truth about women." This is his reading of
truth!
It had been "the one night of her lover's life"; but he went back to
that "wonderful woman," his wife, who had "as big a heart as all this
stretch of acres and that breadth of sea." To Mary, he wrote, "I blame
myself utterly and I blame myself alone. . . . So many another woman
would have reckoned the cost before she knew the full account. You said
nothing. _You are wonderful, Mary_, and if any woman deserves to escape
the consequences of passion, it is you."
"God!" she cried, "was that the little mind her own had met with? . . .
She knew how in the deepest recesses of her soul there did not live a
father to her child. . . . If this was a man, then men were nothing to
women. Two nights of burning passion he had been with her and for those
moments they had been inseparably one. But now he had gone as though
the whole world divided them. . . . With that letter he had cancelled
all existence in the meaning of life. There was no meaning in him."
He was "the mere servant of Nature, whipped with passion to her purpose
. . . no father at all."
Wherefore _she tries to explain_ to him: "Women are not complicated.
It is only the laws that make us appear so. . . . That first of our
two nights on the cliffs, did you find me complicated or difficult
of understanding? I showed, as well as gave you myself, and this
is how you have treated that revelation. . . . _Why do you hint about
shame to me? Did you think I shared what you call your weakness? Did
you think for those moments that, as you say of yourself, I forgot
or lost restraint?_ . . . You would not believe me if I told you that
all women in their essence are the same. It is only with so many that
. . . the hollow dignity of social position, the chimera of good repute
. . . are more attractive and alluring than the pain and discomfort and
difficulty of bringing children into a competitive world. . . . But
starve one of these women . . . deny to her the first function which
justifies her existence . . . and you will find her behave as I
behaved. . . . I had no shame then. I loved. Loving no longer, I still
now have no shame because, and believe me it is not in anger, we have no
cause to meet again."
On the other hand, Miss E. M. Delafield's _Humbug_ reveals with
startling clearness the falseness of self-seeking in passion.
Her argument is the more convincing because her heroine, Lily
Stellenthorpe, has the best of reasons for adopting the new ideal, the
strongest possible temptation to follow a false light. Her sensitive
and vital nature had been cramped from birth by "a good woman's
capacity for the falsification of moral values." Her father literally
drove her along the same demoralizing groove. Love and respect for
their honest, but kind, goodness almost compel insincerity and the
complete self-annihilation. Under such influences, she acquires a
_good_ husband. He, alas, dictates her conscience, assumes that so
sweet a woman will conform to type. It seems almost a brutal sin for
her to act, think, or even feel, for herself. Steadily she grows more
hidden, secret, and hypocritical.
This careful preparation for modern self-passion is admirably drawn. We
can scarcely deny that any sudden outburst of even cruel selfishness or
revolt might be excused, if not absolutely justified, for _her_.
Inevitably the occasion comes. The expected lover appears, young,
ardent, understanding; all, it seems to her revived free impulse, that
she had been seeking for many years. Lily, however, does not snatch
at happiness, flare out herself. She looks into herself, getting
herself—as it were—in order, before so fateful a choice.
She thought first, _as she had been told by a sympathetic
schoolmistress_, "What I need, what I must have, if I am ever to
fulfil myself—is romance. I must learn not to be afraid of life. Some
day, I shall love. Am I to pretend to myself that such a thing is out
of the question because I am married?" Why not strike for freedom, and
begin life again? She "thought that the conflict lay, as so often,
between sincerity and sentiment." Only sentiment made it "impossible
for her to be ruthless" to her husband.
"_Then illumination came to her, searing and vivid._"
The lover was, after all, a mere "pretext," an opportunity for one more
experiment with life, one more feverish attempt to find some false
image of herself.
"Was the freedom for which she looked to be based upon yet another
artificial value? After all, why should she arrogate to herself the
right of deciding what her greatest happiness was to be? . . . The
long, long way round that it had been, to arrive at last at her own
convictions, and cease to try and wrench them into line with those of
other people!"
"The gift" of herself "had been made" to her husband. Her real self lay
with him and with their coming child.
So she conquered the final test, escaped "applying a general law to a
particular case—taking one's values ready-made—the old, old humbug."
As "the last comforting falsity fell from her she saw . . . the truth."
This was the truth _for her_. It is not offered as an argument for or
against a dogmatic rule that no woman may ever be justified in leaving
her husband.