Moral Poison in Modern Fiction
Page 8
VIII
WHAT, THEN, IS THIS NEW LOVE? IT IS SEX-CONFLICT.
The most obvious, and the most sincere, form of self-expression restson pure emotion—a natural and healthy impulse. The right thus toexpress oneself belongs, as we acknowledge to-day, to women no lessthan men.
But, largely misled by their over-insistence upon the physical in humannature, too many modern thinkers confuse fierce excitement with deepemotion. Also seeing, and wisely exalting, the glory of youth's dream,they sanction, and even advise, thoughtless haste and action on everyimpulse.
It is now taught, not only that physical passion stands for, or rather_is_, the Love of which it forms only a part; but that the fire ofsudden desire is the only true, or natural, expression of love itself.
Such a view has been, again and again, formally stated with quiteserious, honest intent by our leading novelists. It is assumed,without argument or justification, in most second-rate popular fiction;thereby reaching and poisoning the very readers least qualified toresist evil influence and, as we have shown, particularly ill-equippedto-day.
For Mr. Cannan's Matilda love is a "kiss of the lips, a surrender tothe flood of perilous feeling, a tampering with forces that might ormight not sweep you to ruin; a matter of fancy, dalliance, and risk."His Cora, the "natural light of love," "kissed" her lover's "eyes, hislips, his ears, and bit the tip of his nose until it was bruised andswollen."
He may well ask: "Does any man want any woman, or any woman any man?Are these wild flashes more than things of a moment? . . . Is not everywoman any man's woman? Is not every man any woman's man? Why property?Why impossible pledges? Why pretend so much that is obviously false?Why build upon a lie and call it sacred? . . . Why do men and women livehideously together? . . . Why, and why again?"
With a cynic's frankness Mr. W. L. George answers why:
"Men may have us," said his Victoria, "as breeders and housekeepers,but the mistress is the root of all." This is not, as one mightsuppose, a confession of sin; for "Love is outside marriage, becauselove's too big to stay inside . . . don't you see that of itself itcarries the one sanctity that may exist between men and women? That itcannot be bound because it is as light airs, imponderable; so fiercethat all things it touches it burns, so sweet that whosoever has drunkshall ever more be thirsty."
_Because a man soon tires of such burning sweetness, he must satisfyhis thirst elsewhere._
Woman, indeed, he is annoyed to find, is still unable to "understandlove in its neurotic moods; she cannot yet understand that a greaterintensity might creep into passion if one _knew_ it to be transient,that one might love more urgently, with greater fierceness, if one_knew_ that soon the body, temple of that love, would fade, wither,die, then decay . . . that haste to live made living more intense."
WHAT, THEN, IS THIS LOVE. IT IS A SEX-CONFLICT; wherein the man "hasto make war, to conquer." The woman begs him "to hurt her, to set hisimprint upon her"; even when "about to conquer" she must wear "theslave look." This is precisely the woman he also finds, more crudelyphrased, in the "mean streets": "If yer lives alone nothing 'appens. . . stuck in the mud like. But when yer've got a 'usband, things 'aswot they calls zest . . . if 'e do come 'ome . . . p'r'aps 'e'll giveyer one in the mouf. Variety, that's wot it is, variety. . . . He maylift his elbow a bit and all that, but anyhow 'e's a man." If he does_not_ come home, love means "waking up in the middle of the night andrunning about the room like a crazy thing because she'd dreamed he waswith some other girl." In the afternoon it meant "feeling all soft andswoony just because he helped you into the 'bus by the elbow."
More thoughtful or intelligent young ladies come "to think there's nosuch thing as a pure-minded girl." Marriage is "merely evidence thatthe girl has held out" and "only a dodge for getting rid of being inlove."
Mr. Hugh Walpole once very sensibly remarked that "people don't wantto know what a young ass thinks about life if he can't tell a story."Perhaps, if such muddled ideas were only expressed by these solemn andvery intellectual young men (who, however, can "tell a story"), wemight be disposed to leave the matter in their hands and trust to timefor their enlightening.
But, unfortunately, the same false "new love" is about us everywhere.It is a commonplace to boys and girls, and has crept into the greatmajority of second-rate, easily read, novels published to-day.
What does it really mean? How has it come about?
In the first place, the new thinkers have done precisely what theyare always protesting against. They confuse "marriage" with the legalcontract. A great part of their abuse, half their plea for the greatersincerity of free love, has no standing against spiritual marriage,founded on true love.
Nevertheless the argument against _permanency_ remains. The demand forcontinual new adventure in emotion (set out to condone both intimacywithout marriage or disloyalty to marriage) does rest on somethingwhich has the appearance of truth and reason.
The fiery, swooning passion of mere bodily impulse _does not last_.But even physical passion, the sex-urge, means more than that. Ournew teachers ignore what all experience has proved and sciencetaught—that _every_ physical impulse—whether to eat or drink, workor play—demands restraint for its fruition. The value of self-controlis no less of the body than the soul.
It is the fever-bred passion, born of stimulated sex-consciousness,that must snatch at every chance for expression and demands constantchange. This, indeed, does weary and satiate the spirit, weaken bodilyvigour, and destroy manhood. Bid us look for, welcome, and artificiallydevelop every first faint stirring of the sex-urge, and you make usslaves indeed. If you consider less fundamental desires and pleasuresof the body, you will admit at once that feverish, uncontrolled,and constant straining to put out all your strength at once, canproduce no kind of good sportsman. Who more rigorously disciplineshimself than the athlete? The power to be passionate, to express thelove of the flesh, dies before it has ever been really attained,for those who always at once yield to mere craving. Their "deeplysensual associations" are "always robbed of mystery and delight whenlong-balked attraction comes to a tardy blooming."
And as Scott told us long ago, "It is no small aggravation of thisjaded and uncomfortable state of mind, that the voluptuary cannotrenounce the pursuits with which he is satiated, but must continue, forhis character's sake, or from the mere force of habit, to take all thetoil, fatigue, and danger of the chase, while he has so little realinterest in the termination."
That is, they quickly lose the very pleasures which were their objectand their excuse.
_I have known, or read of, no more miserable and weak human beings thanmany of the men and women in modern fiction._
Does it then follow that spiritual love, a true union of souls, forwhich we claim a higher and a more lasting happiness, is a thing apart,wherein the physical must be kept under, put aside; or, if concededto our common weakness (the penalty of our earthly existence), shouldbe calmly and occasionally indulged, only under official licence,in secret as a shameful deed? Certainly _not_. The pure know farmore of passion than the loose. But, as other bodily pleasure, i.e.,self-expression, gains strength and depth by taking responsibility foritself, "ordering" itself; so, above all, does our strongest, and mostultimate, physical need.
It is the true passion, naturally found in comradeship and love,spontaneously constant and controlled, which will complete man'svitality, deepen and strengthen, while it steadies, physique.Spiritually the one expresses itself by _taking_, the other achievesitself by _giving_.
The biggest adventure in life, the deepest and truest feelings do,actually, involve that emotional abandon, or complete self-forgetting,which modernists exalt. But the giving away of one's whole self,that is, expressing one's whole self in passionate service, is _not_achieved by sudden, untested intimacy. It can only come, or grow,for those who seek understanding of each other, suffer the firstmystery—(stirring the wonder dreams of youth)—to unfold and revealitself in steady, controlled devotion to the vision of romance. Then,and
only then (soon or late, as the individual self prompts), he shalldare, _because he knows_.
In other words, the physical passion, in which to-day men find the_birth_ of love, belongs in nature to maturity and completion, when manhas gained the courage to be himself and express himself. It is theharvest of pure romance, only possible to those who have earned fullknowledge of themselves and of each other.
The humdrum pictures of insincere marriage, with which fiction iscrowded to-day, come from mistakes or spiritual failure to be one'sbest self, _not_ from constancy and faith. The need to perpetuallyrevive intense emotion with a new mistress can never be felt in a truemarriage. It _is_ inevitable for so-called "free" love, the bitterestslavery of man.
For wedded love—that is, the permanent union of body and soul—thereis ever a new and wonderful adventure, the deepening mystery of thecloser bond. And the highest happiness, which is _intense_ emotion, hasthe gravest responsibilities, demanding the greatest courage and hope.As Mr. Middleton Murray has written in _The Things We Are_: "The takingof a wife or the taking of a friend is an eternal act; if it be less,it is a treachery, a degradation."
It is true, certainly, that the _nature_ of love and passion maychange with time and the comradeship of daily life; but the change isnot a weakening, not even a lowering of the pulse. Its ardour doesnot diminish but conquers life more completely. It is, actually, theconstant and faithful heart, which has most strength to bear with, orto ennoble, the deadening trivialities of existence (that no freelover can escape), to make small things great; which finds most courageto face Fate.
The deadening influence of constant "experiments" in passion ("walkinground and round the thing you want, gloating over it with your eyes");the bitter tragedy of a life that is "one long series of eagerconquests turned to listless ones," has been dramatically exposed, withunflinching realism, by Miss Olive Mary Salter in her _God's Wages_;which also reveals "that love beyond self which is human companionship."
For Anne Verity, we read, "marriage" had been "the finger-post toDeath." In "making man her own she made him stale. . . . There was noend to those upon whom she had lived and left them to pay the bill."Always "life must be savoured anew by fresh interests, hashed upaspects of the same old facts served up over and over again to one'seasily deceived palate." It was "her vanity that must be ministeredto afresh, its staleness and satiation relieved by the sacrifice ofsomeone else's young virility."
She found that "love doesn't stay with this generation, it touches usand flies again. . . . It's this awful quality of inconstancy in me, asif my heart had got a hole in it. . . . We've lost the art of lookingon at anybody but ourselves."
But, at long last, when a man explained to her: "I want you to love mymind, that lives, instead of my body, that will die," she awoke.
She learnt then, that "the right man, or the right woman for the matterof that, isn't ever ready made. It needs effort of the most intensekind to fit a man perfectly into a woman's life, a woman perfectly intoa man's."
_Wherefore, "Love, real love, is the consummation of great effort,neither more nor less."_