Moral Poison in Modern Fiction

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  MORAL POISON IN MODERN FICTION

  MORAL POISON IN MODERN FICTION

  BY

  R. BRIMLEY JOHNSON

  AUTHOR OF "SOME CONTEMPORARY NOVELISTS," ETC.

 

  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 orsupport the arguments of this book. Every novel quoted, or evenmentioned, has come before me in the day's work, as a reviewer. It isscarcely necessary to add that no personal reflection upon any writerhas even crossed my mind. I am not here concerned with the cause ormotive of literature, but with its effect.

  R. B. J.

  I

  "THEY STRUGGLED ALONG LIKE THE REST OF THEIR YOUNG WORLD, THE EYE FORTHE EYE, THE TOOTH FOR THE TOOTH, LUST AND LOVING ALIKE ONLY IN RETURNFOR LOVING AND LUST."

  It is a grim enough charge against our generation. Dare we pronounce ituntrue? Upon what theories of private morality are the young now fed?

  Morals are, obviously, influenced in most cases by example and theatmosphere of the home; but are not these themselves mainly produced,whether consciously or not, by the teaching and tone of these whoprofess to think? In these latter days most thought reaches us throughfiction, most emotion through drama.

  _Without hesitation, I would maintain that an immense number of novelsnow being written contain much deadly poison._

  Let me not be misunderstood. I have no wish to draw down theblinds again upon vital questions of sex, to bring out once morethe comfortable "wraps" of Victorian days, to uphold reserve if notsilence, or shut the door upon open talk. Nor would I say to youth: "Weare older and _therefore_ we know; believe us, things were far betterand happier in our time."

  Such a reproach were neither wise nor true. Human nature, like allforms of life, always grows and improves (in a long view), steps ontowards the Ideal. But to-day we must face the sharp arrest of allnormal progress, the actual throw-back to savagery, caused by thewar: which came, as a moral influence, upon minds unsettled by theRevolution of Ideas that had set in before 1914.

  Revolution may, and in fact does, largely express itself byexaggeration, but it is not Anarchy. The ideas then first revealedwere due to a natural and healthy awakening among advanced thinkers.Winds blew upon our comfortable complacencies. The moral assumptionswe had accepted, and refused to discuss, were boldly questioned. TheSex-Revolt had begun.

  And rightly. Many reforms were badly needed in the legal applicationsof morality; the ideal of purity had stiffened into conventionsthat chained the mind and stifled the heart. There was a taint ofinsincerity over the realities of life: the false gods of narrow-mindedrespectability, breeding secret sin.

  Wider knowledge; the sifting of old ideas and the questioning of fixedthought, can harm none. On the whole, moreover, protest was made inearnest, with a due sense of responsibility. It was not, as to-day,wildly shouted on the housetops; without reflection, undigested; in ariot of burning words.

  There were, of course, wild statements made in bitter anger; foolishexperiments attempted; in some quarters, merely a new cant andupside-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 thetrue from the false, before the temporary confusion had inflamedpopular imagination, and uprooted, without reforming, the habits andthought of daily life.

  Looking back, I think, one can fairly summarize the position thenarrived at by advanced thinkers, that was beginning to be generallydiscussed:

  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 ratherhurried upon us, often crudely expressed and applied; we knew that eachgeneration must seek its own light, and add something to inheritedwisdom. We saw children cramped and losing _themselves_ in theirfathers' fetters; we saw injustice, misery, and wasted lives; many amarriage that proved a prison or a doll's house. We learned honestlyto face, almost for the first time, the terrible abuse of sex behinddrawn blinds that, seeming an integral part of civilization, was eatingaway the very heart of humanity and condemning, with grim cynicism, thecomplacency of the old code.