Two Novels

IT would be hard to think of a more impressive subject than the one Alice Tisdale Hobart has chosen for her new novel, Yang and Yin (Bobbs-Merrill, $2.50). It is in fact worthy of treatment by the greatest genius. To dream of the book that might be written on the Chinese revolution is, however, ungracious, because Yang and Yin is a novel of serious intention and considerable interest, though a little facile and sleek in style, especially in the first third. When I had read that the touch of Diana’s hand ‘swept Peter into a splendid excitement,’ and, a little later, came upon a ‘mysterious rushing together of man and woman,’ I was afraid I was in for a bad time. But before long the author was caught up by her story and almost forgot her style: many scenes of Chinese life had real beauty; there was genuine acuteness in the analysis of Eastern and Western modes and codes, and, at times, power in the dramatization of diverse philosophies of life. I only wondered whether a novel dealing with world issues ought not always to keep them in the foreground, using individual histories as illustration, instead of, as here, narrating an individual and imaginary history as the main story and leaving the world issues to be implied by the reader. No doubt the latter method is more likely to make a best seller: only the thoughtful reader misses the sense of universal values, and the grandeur and tragedy of an era of transition. However, the story of Peter and Diana is a moving one, and someone else will perhaps give us the full agony of China in revolution.

The story is that of Peter Fraser, an American doctor, who sacrifices himself to save the Chinese from their own traditions and superstitions. His struggle is complicated by his marriage to a woman who puts the welfare of her family above that of society. As in the earlier volumes of the series, River Supreme and Oil for the Lamps of China, the author skillfully conveys the look and feeling of a China that is passing, by contrasting the life of the mission posts and treaty ports with that of the rich and cultured Chinese and of the poor tradesmen and peasants. I found the portrayal of Scholar Sen and his son Sen Lo Shih most appealing, and the account of how the opium traffic affected the battle of ideas most instructive. The climax of the novel, in which Peter inoculates himself with a parasitic disease, may appear more dramatic than appropriate, for such an act opens questions of conduct that are only on second thought significant of the general theme. This theme, as the symbol of Yin and Yang suggests, is the conflict of two civilizations or cultures. Since, however, the symbol means the eternal dualism between the active and passive, the dynamic and static, it may be that Peter’s act represents the triumphant affirmation of the active principle. In the end, at any rate, the formalist Sen Lo Shih is won over to an enthusiastic participation in scientific research — the ground, we may suppose, on which the two modes of thought can meet in peace.

The same fiery, unflinching, absorbed devotion to causes that marked A Testament of Youth smoulders and at times flames in Honourable Estate, by Vera Brittain (Macmillan, $2.50). The latter, however, is not an autobiography, but a novel, in plot and characters wholly fictitious. In a Foreword, Miss Brittain almost pugnaciously tells what kind of novel it is. ‘I make no apology,’ she says, ‘for dealing with social theories and political beliefs. . . . I cannot share the outlook of that school of criticism which seeks to limit the novelist’s “legitimate” topics to personal relationships. . . .’

I suspect that what the school of criticism she mentions holds is that the novel as a branch of poetry is rightly concerned with instinctive associations rather than with propaganda. Her own novel shows quite clearly that whatever victory the two great causes of suffragism and pacifism won was won by changing the feelings of masses of people, rather than by inoculating them with ideas. Her error is that of the intellectual who supposes that, because he is moved by pure reason, most people are. For most people the personal relationships she speaks of are not based on political and social ideas but upon fashionable attitudes, or the world-old feelings of sympathy, charity, and justice, or their opposites. The limitation of her novel — so high-minded, eloquent, and moving — is that she supposes, for example, that the troubles of her characters are due to a collision of doctrines, when they are really due to incompatible temperaments or mere bad dispositions. The type of novel she objects to is therefore less ardent but perhaps more wise, because it recognizes that, while ideas certainly do move the few, the many are moved by instinct, imitation, fashion, and feeling. Believing profoundly in her theses, one can still believe that the novel is concerned, not with theses, but with the affections.

One can say all this and yet fall in love with her ardor for the right and good. This amounts to an ecstasy. It is only upon reflection that we realize that her progressive characters are people of one-track minds. The texture of scene and event is so close, the documentation so accurate, the fervor of the writing so strong, and the devotion to principle so honest, that we leave the book with a sense of beauty beheld and a feeling of sorrow that such intensity is so rare, whether in books or life. And, whatever limitations one may find in the purpose or method of her novel, they do not detract from the absorbing interest of the scenes dealing with militant suffragism, the war, the famine in Poland, or the no less exciting history of Ruth and Eugene Meury. I wish that Miss Brittain had seen fit to end her novel about a hundred pages earlier, or, to be specific, at page 514. By doing so she would have omitted the most perfunctory writing in the book and that which most leaves the reader with the sense of having been the object of special pleading.

R. M. GAY