Society and the Novel

IT is a world of relations and reactions, and a nation’s literature is less self-contained than it used to be. The United States and Great Britain have much in common, and perhaps in the art of fiction their differences are more in stress than in kind. Yet increasingly fiction tends to be representative, to concern itself with many strata of society rather than with the few; and so, while we are becoming more conscious of fiction as an art , it is more than ever ‘a mirror of changing moral standards.’

Naturally there is some difference of opinion about this, and I may confess that I am one of those who think that recent changes have been exaggerated; or, at least, that they are less widely spread than is sometimes supposed. In his recently published book on ’Georgian’ literature Mr. Frank Swinnerton reminded us that in the eighties there was something that was described as the revolt of youth, and we know that in the nineties parents and guardians received many and severe shocks.

Of course, life and literature react on one another, but their changes are far from coincident; one would say, for instance, that during the last half century the changes in the novel have been accelerated in comparison with the life it is supposed to depict. Perhaps opinion on this depends a good deal on the point of view. Mine is that of one who has reviewed English novels for nearly forty years. I was brought up on Dickens and Thackeray, enjoyed the vogue of Meredith and Hardy, read Henry James and Conrad before they were the fashion. Possibly this might be taken as disqualification for sympathetic treatment of their successors, but even reviewers are capable of progress with the community they serve. There is question of place as well as of time. My particular experience is of the provincial town and its suburbs. We are accustomed to speak with a respect tinged with irony of the London scene and particularly of the coteries of Bloomsbury and Chelsea. These are great purveyors of fiction and they do much to set the fashion, to establish the tone. Many novelists come from a comparatively small section of society.

And so we come to one of the most remarkable features of English fiction — I cannot say how far it is common to American. This is that both in freedom of expression and in standards of conduct the novelists are far more ‘advanced’ than the great majority of their readers. Putting aside the devotees of the popular shocker and the like, novel readers are generally middleclass, urban and suburban; it is well to remember that the London suburbs are about as ‘provincial’ as those of other towns. And the blameless ladies of the suburb, like novel readers generally, accept in fiction conditions of society which are extremely unlike those to which they are accustomed. In the suburb it is customary to stick to husband or wife, to retain belief, more or less defined, in right and wrong and the promptings of conscience, even to recognize the obligation to do good works.

But now the sophisticated novel is finding its way into quiet homes and we may dispute over its effect. Women may be a little scared by it, but they do not like to parade what may be antiquated notions. You can hardly make interesting novels out of unruffled lives, and certainly men and women do change and desert. In real life the desertions may involve treachery and cruelty, but it is the function of the novelist to make every case the exceptional one. And so the sinners — as they used to be called — receive their justification, and the adventures of the philanderer are interpreted as spiritual activity. He can idealize himself into a being of such variety, such possibilities, that no woman can be conceived as a perpetual mate for him. And so the approach is made to promiscuity.

Of course we are not nowadays so illiberal as to condemn incompatibilities to perpetual union. Divorce is inevitable on occasion and may be beneficent. But it implies failure, and if the man and woman are of fine material it is tragic failure. Writers and readers of a generation or two ago were curiously limited in their scope, and there is no question of a return to their conditions. But is there not some justice in the complaint that the moral interest in fiction is declining? The sensational, the emotional, are there, but in so many cases the issue is determined by impulse rather than by character and conscience. Whatever may be the fashions that guide conduct, we shall hardly arrive at the happy condition of those who, as Wordsworth says in the ‘Ode to Duty,’

In a state of perfected sympathies we might dispense with moral law or take it as a sense of proportion; but, though art may be a stern moral censor to the artist, it is not the whole of life, and some of us may yet find use in conscience, the appeal to our deepest and best. It may seem a childish objection, but one finds so often that the characters in novels are not good enough — they are not good enough to be interesting. Of course there are many and admirable exceptions, and one is sometimes baffled by work that evokes, inextricably, admiration and dislike.

Henry James said of certain novelists, including Turgenev and George Eliot: ‘We think of these writers primarily as great consciences and great minds. When we approach Balzac we seem to enter into a great temperament. ’ It might be said that a temperament is more to the point than a conscience when it comes to novel writing, but we want something of both. A sane and just philosophy is a good background for a novel. This world ‘ means intensely and means good,’ says Browning’s renegade monk, but in our thirst for sensation we seem ready to look upon it as a harumscarum affair heading for disaster. The great writer, sane and comprehensive, need not harass us with moral maxims, but he can see life steadily. Ibsen found it necessary to assure the world that he was a poet, an artist; but to be that in full measure made him a great moral influence.

A remarkable feature of English fiction is the propagandist novel, and during the last few years some notable specimens of it have been produced in the industrial North. They deal with social and political problems and it is obvious that these cannot be discussed apart from morals or conduct. Indeed, it is hardly fanciful to suggest that moral interest may return to fiction — of course, it has never entirely deserted it — through the propagandist novel. What validity can there be in its protests and revolts if these are not related to a sense of justice? We must not identify our artists with our preachers, but, though the greatest art is not usually associated with moral interests, we can hardly conceive a society in which the separation of literature from didacticism is absolute. FalstafF and Lear would shrink to unimportance in a world where conduct did not matter.

I write as a Lancashire man, and in the novels with a particular local significance two tendencies may be distinguished. In such books as Mr. Walter Greenwood’s Love on the Dole and Mr. Walter Brierley’s Means Test Man there is the protest against social conditions, the revolt against the constitution of society. On the other hand, Mr. T. Thompson’s novels, and notably his volume of sketches entitled Lancashire Mettle, lay stress on the gallantry and vitality of the struggling poor. Both kinds are admirable and they represent the happy tendency to break away from the limitations of convention and coterie. An outside observer of American fiction might suggest that it has pursued this tendency almost to excess. The drawing-room seems almost to have disappeared and a polish is given to the violent and raw. We are interested in a wider range of life than were our ancestors; and, as political and social power changes, the character of our fiction changes with it. Yet does not the desertion of the drawingroom imply some loss of spiritual issues between refined natures? Are we to acquiesce in the obliteration of Henry James by Mr. Dreiser?

Returning to English fiction, we may say that there exists a particular class, consciously emancipated from inhibitions and limitations, that has usurped too large a share in representation. It would impose on us the cocktail standard, the brothel, the latrine. We must be ready for sincerities and simplicities, but there seems to be now a great deal of what to the veteran is no better than bad taste. The world is not to be ruled entirely by respectable old gentlemen, but they have a place in it and the right to their opinions. Decency is a difficult subject; serious and distinguished writers cannot be controlled as schoolboys. We don’t want a censorship and we are all terribly afraid of being ranked among the prudish. A reputation for indecency is one of the best advertisements a book can have.

We must not complain that the attitude to the criminal has changed or is changing. A liberal humanity may see in him a fellow being out of luck, and the acceptance of this attitude is one of the gains of our generation. But this sympathy is apt sometimes to make confusion between right and wrong. The Ten Commandments are a little out of date, and the relations of morals to law are obscure. Law, indeed, becomes a grievance in some of its manifestations and it may be twisted to provoke the virtue of revolt. I think we miss the old moral background, and the criminal is apt to get an unfair advantage in entertainment value. An American author said lately that the five most brilliant criminal minds he knew were lawyers. One does not take very seriously the enormous circulation of trashy novels about crime and detection, but in the novel generally we do not look for heroism on the part of the hero. He may be a gangster or the worst type of business man. We read about him, we assimilate the society of which he is a part, and we idealize him into a free and bold spirit. On the other hand, changing characters, astray in the world, are put into the novel. Life and fiction react on one another, and perhaps, on the whole, we get the fiction we deserve. There is so much that is good, both in America and in England, that there can be no excuse for giving preference to the well-advertised ignoble.