awareness-it might be said that our present definition of a serious
The word reality is an honorific word and the future historian
book is one which holds before us some image of society to consider
will naturally try to discover our notion of its pejorative opposite,
and condemn. What is the situation of the dispossessed Oklahoma
appearance, mere appearance. He will find it in our feeling about
farmer and whose fault it is, what situation the Jew finds himself in,
the internal; whenever we detect evidences of style and thought we
what it means to be a Negro, how one gets a bell for Adano, what is
suspect that reality is being a little betrayed, that "mere subjectivity"
the advertising business really like, what it means to be insane and
is creeping in. There follows from this our feeling about complicahow society takes care of you or fails to do so-these are the matters tion, modulation, personal idiosyncrasy, and about social forms, both
which are believed to be most fertile for the novelist, and certainly
the great and the small.
they are the subjects most favored by our reading class.
Having gone so far, our historian is then likely to discover a
The public is probably not deceived about the quality of most of
puzzling contradiction. For we claim that the great advantage of
these books. If the question of quality is brought up, the answer is
reality is its hard, bedrock, concrete quality, yet everything we say
likely to be: no, they are not great, they are not imaginative, they are
about it tends toward the abstract and it almost seems that what we
not "literature." But there is an unexpressed addendum: and perwant to find in reality is abstraction itself. Thus we believe that one haps they are all the better for not being imaginative, for not being
of the unpleasant bedrock facts is social class, but we become exliterature-they are not literature, they are reality, and in a time like
tremely impatient if ever we are told that social class is indeed so
this what we need is reality in large doses.
real that it produces actual differences of personality. The very
When, generations from now, the historian of our times underpeople who talk most about class and its evils think that Fitzgerald takes to describe the assumptions of our culture, he will surely diswas bedazzled and Hemingway right. Or again, it might be obcover that the word reality is of central importance in his underserved that in the degree that we speak in praise of the "individual"
standing of us. He will observe that for some of our philosophers
we have contrived that our literature should have no individuals in
the meaning of the word was a good deal in doubt, but that for our
it-no people, that is, who are shaped by our liking for the interestpolitical writers, for many of our literary critics, and for most of ing and memorable and special and precious.
our reading public, the word did not open discussion but, rather,
Here, then, is our generalization: that in proportion as we have
closed it. Reality, as conceived by us, 1s whatever is external and
committed ourselves to our particular idea of reality we have lost
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THE LIBERAL IMAGINATION
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Manners, Morals, and the Novel
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our interest in manners. For the novel this is a definitive condition
mere abstraction, one more example of our public idea of ourselves
because it is inescapably true that in the novel manners make men.
and our national life. John Steinbeck is generally praised both for
It does not matter in what sense the word manners is taken-it is
his reality and his warmheartedness, but in The Wayward Bus the
equally true of the sense which so much interested Proust or of the
lower-class characters receive a doctrinaire affection in proportion to
sense which interested Dickens, or, indeed, of the sense which inthe suffering and sexuality which define their existence, while the terested Homer. The Duchesse de Guermantes unable to delay deill-observed middle-class characters are made to submit not only to parture for the dinner party to receive properly from her friend
moral judgment but to the withdrawal of all fellow-feeling, being
Swann the news that he is dying but able to delay to change the
mocked for their very misfortunes and almost for their susceptibility
black slippers her husband objects to; Mr. Pickwick and Sam
to death. Only a little thought or even less feeling is required to
Weller; Priam and Achilles-they exist by reason of their observed
perceive that the basis of his creation is the coldest response to abmanners.
stract ideas.
So true is this, indeed, so creative is the novelist's awareness of
Two novelists of the older sort had a prevision of our present situmanners, that we may say that it is a function of his love. It is some ation. In Henry James's The Princess Casamassima there is a scene
sort of love that Fielding has for Squire Western that allows him to
in which the heroine is told about the existence of a conspiratorial
note the great, gross details which bring the insensitive sentient man
group of revolutionaries pledged to the destruction of all existing
into existence for us. If that is true, we are forced to certain conclusociety. She has for some time been drawn by a desire for social sions about our literature and about the particular definition of
responsibility; she has wanted to help "the people," she has longed
reality which has shaped it. The reality we admire tells us that the
to discover just such a group as she now hears about, and she exobservation of manners is trivial and even malicious, that there are claims in joy, "Then it's real, it's solid!" We are intended to hear the
things much more imPortant for the novel to consider. As a conse
Princess's glad cry with the knowledge that she is a woman who
quence our social sympathies have indeed broadened, but in propordespises herself, "that in the darkest hour of her life she sold herself tion as they have done so we have lost something of our power of
for a title and a fortune. She regards her doing so as such a terrible
love, for our novels can never create characters who truly exist. We
piece of frivolity that she can never for the rest of her days be serious
make public demands for love, for we know that broad social feeling
enough to make up for it." She seeks out poverty, suffering, sacrifice,
should be infused with warmth, and we receive a kind of public
and death because she believes that these things alone are real; she
product which we try to believe is not cold potatoes. The reviewers
comes to believe that art is contemptible; she withdraws her awareof Helen Howe's novel of a few years ago, We Happy Few, thought ness and love from the one person of her acquaintance who most dethat its satiric first part, an excellent comment on the manners of a serves them, and she increasingly scorns whatever suggests variety
small but significant segment of society, was ill-natured and unsatisaud modulation, and is more and more dissatisfied with the hufactory, but they approved the second part, which is the record of the manity of the present in her longing for the more perfect humanity
heroine's self-accusing effort to come into communication with the
of the future.
It is one of the great points that the novel makes that
great soul of America. Yet it should have been clear that the satire
with each passionate step that she takes toward what she calls the
had its source in a kind of affection, in a real community of feeling,
real, the solid, she in fact moves further away from the life-giving
and told the truth, while the second part, said to be so "warm," was
reality.
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THE LIBERAL IMAGINATION
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Manners, Morals, and the Novel
207
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In E. M. Forster's The Longest /ourney there is a young man
tion of the dangers of the moral life itself. Perhaps at no other time
named Stephen Wonham who, although a gentleman born, has been
has the enterprise of moral realism ever been so much needed, for
carelessly brought up and has no real notion of the responsibilities
at no other time have so many people committed themselves to moral
of his class. He has a friend, a country laborer, a shepherd, and on
righteousness. We have the books that point out the bad conditions,
two occasions he outrages the feelings of certain intelligent, liberal,
that praise us for taking progressive attitudes. We have no books that
democratic people in the book by his treatment of this friend. Once,
raise questions in our minds not only about conditions but about ourwhen the shepherd reneges on a bargain, Stephen quarrels with him selves, that lead us to refine our motives and ask what might lie
and knocks him down; and in the matter of the loan of a few shilbehind our good impulses.
lings he insists that the money be paid back to the last farthing. The
There is nothing so very terrible in discovering that something
intelligent, liberal, democratic people know that this is not the way
does lie behind. Nor does it need a Freud to make the discovery.
to act to the poor. But Stephen cannot think of the shepherd as the
Here is a publicity release sent out by one of our oldest and most
poor nor, although he is a country laborer, as an object of research
respectable publishing houses. Under the heading "What Makes
by J. L. and Barbara Hammond; he is rather a reciprocating subject
Books Sell?" it reads, "Blank & Company reports that the current
in a relationship of affection-as we say, a friend-and therefore
interest in horror stories has attracted a great number of readers to
liable to anger and required to pay his debts. But this view is held
John Dash's novel ... because of its depiction of Nazi brutality.
to be deficient in intelligence, liberalism, and democracy.
Critics and readers alike have commented on the stark realism of
In these two incidents we have the premonition of our present
Dash's handling of the torture scenes in the book. The publishers
cultural and social situation, the passionate self-reproachful addiction
originally envisaged a woman's market because of the love story,
to a "strong" reality which must limit its purview to maintain its
now find men reading the book because of the other angle." This
strength, the replacement by abstraction of natural, direct human
does not suggest a more than usual depravity in the male reader, for
feeling. It is worth noting, by the way, how clear is the line by which
"the other angle" has always had a fascination, no doubt a bad one,
the two novels descend from Don Quixote-how their young heroes
even for those who would not themselves commit or actually witness
come into life with large preconceived ideas and are knocked about
an act of torture. I cite the extreme example only to suggest that
in consequence; how both are concerned with the problem of appearsomething may indeed lie behind our sober intelligent interest in ance and reality, The Longest /ourney quite explicitly, The Princess
moral politics. In this instance the pleasure in the cruelty is protected
Casamassima by indirection; how both evoke the question of the
and licensed by moral indignation. In other instances moral indignanature of reality by contriving a meeting and conflict of diverse social tion, which has been said to be the favorite emotion of the middle
classes and take scrupulous note of the differences of manners. Both
class, may be in itself an exquisite pleasure. To understand this does
have as their leading characters people who are specifically and pasnot invalidate moral indignation but only sets up the condition on sionately concerned with social injustice and both agree in saying
which it ought to be entertained, only says when it is legitimate and
that to act against social injustice is right and noble but that to choose
when not.
to act so does not settle all moral problems but on the contrary gen
But, the answer comes, however important it may be for moral
erates new ones of an especially difficult sort.
realism to raise questions in our minds about our motives, is it not
I have elsewhere given the name of moral realism to the percep-
at best a matter of secondary importance? Is it not of the first im-
208
THE LIBERAL IMAGINATION
Manners, Morals, and the Novel
209
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portance that we be given a direct and immediate report on the
corruption, the most ironic and tragic that man knows, that we
reality that is daily being brought to dreadful birth? The novels that
stand in need of the moral realism which is the product of the free
have done this have effected much practical good, bringing to conplay of the moral imagination.
sciousness the latent feelings of many people, making it harder for
For our time the most effective agent of the moral imagination has
them to be unaware or indifferent, creating an atmosphere in which
been the novel of the last two hundred years. It was never, either
injustice finds it harder to thrive. To speak of moral realism is all
aesthetically or morally, a perfect form and its faults and failures can
very well. But it is an elaborate, even fancy, phrase and it is to be
be quickly enumerated. But its greatness and its practical usefulness
suspected of having the intention of sophisticating the simple reality
lay in its unremitting work of involving the reader himself in the
that is easily to be conceived. Life presses us so hard, time is so short,
moral life, inviting him to put his own motives under examination,
the suffering of the world is so huge, simple, unendurable-anything
suggesting that reality is not as his conventional education has led
that complicates our moral fervor in dealing with reality as we imhim to see it. It taught us, as no other genre ever did, the extent of mediately see it and wish to drive headlong upon it must be regarded
human variety and the value of this variety. It was the literary form
with some impatience.
to which the emotions of understanding and forgiveness were in
True enough: and therefore any defense of what I have called
digenous, as if by the definition of the form its
elf. At the moment
moral realism must be made not in the name of some highRown
its impulse does not seem strong, for there never was a time when
fineness of feeling but in the name of simple social practicality. And
the virtues of its greatness were so likely to be thought of as weakthere is indeed a simple social fact to which moral realism has a nesses. Yet there never was a lime when its particular activity was
simple practical relevance, but it is a fact very difficult for us nowso much needed, was of so much practical, political, and social use adays to perceive. It is that the moral passions are even more willful
-so much so that if its impulse does not respond to the need, we
and imperious and impatient than the self-seeking passions. All hisshall have reason to be sad not only over a waning form of art but tory is at one in telling us that their tendency is to be not only
also over our waning freedom.
liberating but also restrictive.
It is probable that at this time we are about to make great changes
in our social system. The world is ripe for such changes and if they
are not made in the direction of greater social liberality, the direction
forward, they will almost of necessity be made in the direction backward, of a terrible social niggardliness. We all know which of those directions we want. But it is not enough to want it, not even enough
to work for it-we must want it and work for it with intelligence.
Which means that we must be aware of the dangers which lie in
our most generous wishes. Some paradox of our nature leads us,
when once we have made our fellow men the objects of our enlightened interest, to go on to make them the objects of our pity, then of our wisdom, ultimately of our coercion. It is to prevent this
The Kinsey Report
2II
--------------·--·--·-·---------·---·---·---·
an almost universal involvement in the sexual life and therefore
much variety of conduct. This was taken for granted in any comedy
The Kinse
that Aristophanes put on the stage.
y Report
There is a further diagnostic significance to be found in the fact
that our society makes this effort of self-enlightenment through the
agency of science. Sexual conduct is inextricably involved wi�h morality, and hitherto it has been dealt with by those representatives of our cultural imagination which are, by their nature and tradition,
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