Moral Poison in Modern Fiction

by R. Brimley Johnson

  VII

  WHAT DO THE "NEW" WRITERS AND THINKERS TO-DAY ACTUALLY TEACH? HOW DOTHEY INTERPRET LIFE AND LOVE?

  We have, so far, considered rather the effects of "new" moralitythan the morality itself; and, to some extent, dwelt more upon thecharacteristics 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 mainorigin in over-emphasis and a determination to reform by destruction.

  A violent, but not altogether unjustified, reaction against our oldmoral rules and formulæ, which laid undue stress on "appearances," hasled to a passionate declaration that the first right and duty of everyman or woman is to express himself or herself at all costs. The onesin now held unpardonable is hypocrisy, or the insincere moulding ofoneself by rule; falling in line, accepting any authority or tradition,any form of self-sacrifice. There is great confusion here between goodand evil. We have already more than once explained that we of the olderdays frankly admit our mistake. We did conform over-much, fixed ourideals in a groove, and—with too anxious love—sought to guide anddirect youth, rather than help and stimulate them to be their bestselves.

  But, if we laid too great stress on restraint, control, sacrifice, andmere orderliness; the new thinkers have, here again, missed the truthby their fiery haste. As the clear-sighted heroine of a recent novelhas remarked, "It was a great and fine act to let yourself go—only noone said precisely where you went to."

  Their Self is not a complete purposeful human being, of strongcharacter and sustained courage, clear faith, and reasonable hope:certainly not of any charity whatsoever. _The ego they would exalt isa mere riot of moods._ They snatch at a moment's joy, utter a moment'semotion, act on a moment's thought. There is no idea of "finding"oneself _before_ expressing oneself. Every passing fancy, feverishexcitement, 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 tempestuousdemands on life are based on anger against parental preachments and ona curious lack of self-confidence. Seeing the glory of youth's capacityfor enthusiasm, they seem always afraid that it will fade and dieunless encouraged perpetually to explode. They will not tolerate anyidea of growth and strength through self-control, any appeal to thehigher, deeper Self, built up on loving service and kindness to one'sfellow-men.

  No theory of life ever produced such weak, formless, and utterlymiserable human beings. _They quickly cease to have any self toexpress._ Swayed in a thousand contrary directions by every idlemood, they become more absolutely slaves to chance encounter anda thoughtless word than one would have supposed possible to anintelligent man or woman, with any pride in self or any standardof honour. It should be obvious that such a perpetual series ofunconsidered experiments in emotion must wear out all independentthought, 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 thatprofound tragedy kills her lonely soul by a perpetual struggle tosnatch happiness for herself. Originally a strong woman, she goes on"blundering worse and worse," until "there she stood, nearly fortyyears old, her lover, her sister, her farm, her home, her good name,all lost."

  A novel in which we can, however, clearly detect confusion betweenlove and the quick, vicious, response to every sensuous impression,is _The Sleeping Fire_ of W. E. B. Henderson, described by its authoras a tale of "the urge in woman . . . where the flesh, crying like aninfant for food, is yet held back by scruples of a spirit that bows tocircumstance, from fastening on the breast of personal choice."

  Here "the woman," Viva Barrington, is, again and again, described as "ahuman soul, innately decent and fine"; and yet she "suddenly kindled"at any man's mere touch. The young guardsman whom "considerablepractice 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 beforethe last supper dance; "a real live kiss, mind you, where she gives asgood as she gets. None of your stolen pecks."

  As this "splendid specimen of the vigorous young male smoothed backher 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 livecoal of shame from head to foot she raised herself slightly upwardstowards him, and with closed eyes and utter abandon, passionatelyreturned the pressure of his lips."

  This "pure" woman, already a mother, is fired by a "vulgar wager," avain boy wanting to kiss her "for the mere enjoyment of the contact,"in the conservatory, heated by champagne and the dance. There is noattempt to suggest real feeling, the passionate awakening that _may_come after a foolish marriage; when the "right man" stirs unknowndepths, beating down "fears, doubts, self-distrusts." She crumples upat 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'sunclean, through and through. I never used to attract that type. Andnow apparently I do. The 'sleeping fire' . . . he sees it in me andtries to feed it. He sickens me! Oh, I'm frightened. Suppose one daythat type _ceased_ to sicken me. I've seen the demi-monde at thetables. Their faces haunt me. _They_ began with the sleeping fire, andmen fed it and fed it till it became a furnace . . . for me, it's beenlike summer lightning so far . . . only summer lightning. Look after me,help me, lest it ever be forked lightning . . . the lightning that canstrike and destroy."

  So she appeals to the husband she had originally accepted as "acrutch," and who had looked upon her as "furniture." Fortunately—forthe children, because he has "changed, broadened in outlook andunderstanding"—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 sensualfrom the first; pulled out of the mire by luck, human kindness, anda 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." Herhusband, we notice, hoped to guard his daughter "_against her mother'stendency_."

  We have a precisely similar situation in _The Mother of All Living_by Mr. Keable. An emotional, but high-minded woman, whose husbandwas not aggressively incompatible, is here suddenly stirred to thedepths—practically at first sight—by a cynical, handsome man of theworld. There is absolutely no attempt whatever to even suggest anynatural affinity in mind or tastes between the two; no urge except theunexplained, and inexplicable, mystery of the spark that fires sex. Theabandon to which this unnatural awakening leads up belongs to quite adifferent type of woman; and when, at the eleventh hour, she repents inmelodrama, we have still a third personality, no way like the girl herhusband 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 Queenof Scots—too "big" for one lover. Both writers chose to forget, orto ignore, that love has no meaning, unless one's _whole_ self isexpressed.

  Mr. Temple Thurston, again, in _The Green Bough_, seems resolutelydetermined to uphold Pope's dictum that "every woman is at heart arake."

  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 theworld . . . it had _all been false_ that modesty which their mother hadtaught them."

  She, at any rate withou
t modesty, sought and found love. So finea thing this that she took it, without hesitation, from a marriedman, who had told her how much he loved his wife. "It happened—in afortnight."

  Of her sisters, reproaching her, she declares "Jane thinks herselfa true woman just because she's clung to modesty and chastity and afierce reserve; but these things are only of true value when they'reneeded, and what man has needed them of us? _Who cares at all whetherwe'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 notreally ashamed of me. You're _envious, jealous, and you're stung withspite_. Calling me a servant girl or a woman of the streets only feedsyour spite, it doesn't satisfy your heart. _You'd give all you know tohave what I have._ . . . I'm going to have a child. . . . It's not asin. 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 hasneeded 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 bea 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 theworld who understands the truth about women." This is his reading oftruth!

  It had been "the one night of her lover's life"; but he went back tothat "wonderful woman," his wife, who had "as big a heart as all thisstretch of acres and that breadth of sea." To Mary, he wrote, "I blamemyself utterly and I blame myself alone. . . . So many another womanwould have reckoned the cost before she knew the full account. You saidnothing. _You are wonderful, Mary_, and if any woman deserves to escapethe 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 afather to her child. . . . If this was a man, then men were nothing towomen. Two nights of burning passion he had been with her and for thosemoments they had been inseparably one. But now he had gone as thoughthe whole world divided them. . . . With that letter he had cancelledall 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 ourtwo nights on the cliffs, did you find me complicated or difficultof understanding? I showed, as well as gave you myself, and thisis how you have treated that revelation. . . . _Why do you hint aboutshame to me? Did you think I shared what you call your weakness? Didyou think for those moments that, as you say of yourself, I forgotor lost restraint?_ . . . You would not believe me if I told you thatall 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 anddifficulty of bringing children into a competitive world. . . . Butstarve one of these women . . . deny to her the first function whichjustifies her existence . . . and you will find her behave as Ibehaved. . . . I had no shame then. I loved. Loving no longer, I stillnow have no shame because, and believe me it is not in anger, we have nocause to meet again."

  On the other hand, Miss E. M. Delafield's _Humbug_ reveals withstartling clearness the falseness of self-seeking in passion.Her argument is the more convincing because her heroine, LilyStellenthorpe, has the best of reasons for adopting the new ideal, thestrongest possible temptation to follow a false light. Her sensitiveand vital nature had been cramped from birth by "a good woman'scapacity for the falsification of moral values." Her father literallydrove her along the same demoralizing groove. Love and respect fortheir honest, but kind, goodness almost compel insincerity and thecomplete self-annihilation. Under such influences, she acquires a_good_ husband. He, alas, dictates her conscience, assumes that sosweet a woman will conform to type. It seems almost a brutal sin forher to act, think, or even feel, for herself. Steadily she grows morehidden, secret, and hypocritical.

  This careful preparation for modern self-passion is admirably drawn. Wecan scarcely deny that any sudden outburst of even cruel selfishness orrevolt 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, thatshe had been seeking for many years. Lily, however, does not snatchat happiness, flare out herself. She looks into herself, gettingherself—as it were—in order, before so fateful a choice.

  She thought first, _as she had been told by a sympatheticschoolmistress_, "What I need, what I must have, if I am ever tofulfil myself—is romance. I must learn not to be afraid of life. Someday, I shall love. Am I to pretend to myself that such a thing is outof the question because I am married?" Why not strike for freedom, andbegin life again? She "thought that the conflict lay, as so often,between sincerity and sentiment." Only sentiment made it "impossiblefor 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 moreexperiment with life, one more feverish attempt to find some falseimage of herself.

  "Was the freedom for which she looked to be based upon yet anotherartificial value? After all, why should she arrogate to herself theright of deciding what her greatest happiness was to be? . . . Thelong, long way round that it had been, to arrive at last at her ownconvictions, and cease to try and wrench them into line with those ofother people!"

  "The gift" of herself "had been made" to her husband. Her real self laywith him and with their coming child.

  So she conquered the final test, escaped "applying a general law to aparticular 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 oragainst a dogmatic rule that no woman may ever be justified in leavingher husband.

  What this thoroughly modern and sincere novel _does_ establish, is theequal folly, and almost greater moral danger, of the opposite dogma:that self-expression for its own sake, the mere putting a moment'sapparent happiness above all other claims or aims, without consideringthe future, or seeking to find one's real self, _is a false and evilideal_.

  _Miss Delafield gives the "new" morality a fair, and even an eloquent,hearing, chooses a case where all the circumstances seem combined forits support, and then exposes the fallacy of its reasoning._