THE COURIER
FICTION NEEDS DISINFECTING.
THERE is a class of fiction and it is a very popular class
generally or always written by women, that deals with the
relations of tho sexes, and usually holds man up as a consum
mate brute or an imbecile. The claim is made that these novels are
needed to present the truth in a "fetching" manner, and thus give
the people the arguments for the overthrow of existing social organ
ization. The Saturday Review, London, looks upon this literature
as inimical to moral health. We quote:
"There was a time when we looked for women to summon the
good apothecary and the ounce of civet to deodorize tho air of fic
tion; but is it not now time for man to call for the permanganate to
disinfect it? Indeed, tho ladies always missionaries, one way or
another have set out to wash the soiled domestic linen in public,
with a boldness astonishing and entertaining to gentlemen who see
themselves prodded in the soiled-clothes basket, as was Falstaff
prodded, not only iu the hallway, but on the doorstep, and in tho
streets; until, to read some novel namable to tho feeblest memory,
men have come to see that in their new crusade of morbidness and
euggestiveness called so these missionary ladies say Helling the
truth about the sexes they are to be sent to the wash-house with
the general domestic linen; and all this in tho name of 'telling the
truth.'
"There is the same lack of proportion in the minds of these ladies
in the use of 'painful incidents' as there is in the construction of
their novels, and in both classes it has the same origin. It is this
very lack of 'sizing things up,' of giving them their proper relations,
which is at the bottom of the crusade against man. Zola's detailed,
impacted, measured realism, or naturalism, is infinitely preferable to
the suggestiveness of novels written in the splash of unhealthy sen
sationalism to set the world right. To be sure, it is an old game to
shoulder off on some missionary scheme emotionalism broken loose.
It is no wonder that in this fat civilization of England there should be
surplus emotion; but that it should be taken seriously because it in
spires a feverish story with a moral is a sweet satire on our noble
selves. The real truth is, this craze for writing and reading treat
ises on the sexes, with accompanying commination services against
man as he is, has it origin in ennui. Do these ladies write in the
belief that there is nothing beautiful but decay? Let us reason to
gether. Fiction is an art, or at least it is of the art of literature.
The real end of art is beauty; the employment of it is, no matter
what we say, the highest kind of amusement if we write good
things and noble things, so much the better. But these Deborahs
write of man decayed, and of woman who sorrows really come from
ennui. Presumably they want to write a fine and a beautiful thing;
therefore they are perhaps unconsciously prophets of decay,
"They write for a purpose? To reconquer a lost paradise and re
construct the shattered harmony of creation? Amiable and large
design! And so wo get discussions of problems, and pronounce
ments about which there is nothing new at all, neither in reason,
nor in incident, nor in character. And because it is an age of cheap
bookmaking, and the air is full of noises regarding the rise of women
and the fall of man and his remaking, we are apt to think there is a
a great to do in the world. There were George Eliots and Eliza
beth Barrett Brownings once, who looked at life in the same old
sane fashion, who 6aw, or tried to see, it while, who were able to
leave the band-box, to see the wide life and weigh it Because here
is an unhappy marriage and there is an infidelity, or there, again,
people who are trying to get more out of life than there is in it, and
who cannot see that the readjustment of man is no guarantee of
happiness we have the sick air of the boudoir and the irritability
of overstrained emotion. Why should fiction, why should an art be
tamed into a sermon for the conventicle? Let us have the essay on
on Regenerated Man and Crushed Women, but leave us some ro
mance where romanco ought to be found. Photography is detail
and it is not truth, it is not even an impression, it is a sudden arrest
of a phase, a single incident; real art goes to one central thing,,
selects and rejects from Nature, has the large, wise, balanced
outlook, and does not generalize for the world on the single fact, out
of focus, through photography. The gloom, tho pessimism, tho
morbidness, of these 'feminine novels' is neither more nor less than
narrowness of view and disproportion. We hear so much about tho
unbappiness of women and the bad ess of men; but, after all, each
of us ib one of this naughty thing called the World and Society, and
and do we find among our friends such gloom of life, such discon
tent save among ladios who are tho slaves of nerves? Monotony is
an evil on one hand, but too much life, too much sojial and emotion
al excitement, is an evil on tho other. But why should motony, or
boredom, or hstsria send laJies to tho pen? To be the pioneers in
tho readjustment of social conditions? Very good; but why should
they not bo pamphleteers? Why should they tako a nice art and
turn it into a desk for jeremiads and social doctrine? Purpose?
The end of fiction is the telling of a story. That is the central
thing. Much more of the objective outlook and much less intros
pection is needed in the novel .of 'the eternal feminine.' For what is
without ourselves, and the story of that without, is more important
than any theory of our own, illustrated by photography, the insi
dious enemy of Art.
"It is to our hope and comfort that there is more health than sick
ness in our fiction, after all. We have many pure romanticists, who
tell a story and tell it forcibly well, and carry us out of the heat and
ennui of this crowded life. Problems? but problems are the curse
of these days of too much self-ananysis problems and cleverness.
So many people are clever now; it has no merit. To say a deep
thing is much better than to say a clever thing, and to preserve the
romance of life is as important as to keep the commandments. And
therein lies the virtue of the romanticist. His stock in trade,
though warfare and adventure be his high-roads is hope, courage,
the pride of nice, the indomitableness of the great, the inconsequence
of the little and the cowardly. A country is safe whose lower middle-class
is romantic, even sentimental. And in spite of vogues and
fashions of a season, the bulk of England read healthy romance
Scott, Dumas, Victor Uugo, Stevenson, Hardy and 'those others.' It
would seem as if, after all, we are to be saved in the end by the
Philistine."
VANITY OF VANITIES.
He wrote his name
On the sands of famo
And dreamed 'twould perish never;
But time's gray wave
Those shores did lave,
And the name was gono forever.
With tender smile
She bound awhile
Young love in a fetter of flowers;
But e'en as she dreamed
He was true as he seemed.
He had flown to rosier bowers.
Now youth and maid
In the churchyard laid,
Know neither of love nor glory;
But many a youth
Ard maid, in sooth,
Tell over and over the story.
5 s -1
Uj
Highest of all in Leavening Power. Latest U. S. Gov't Report
$m2
-A .
ABSOLUTELY PURE
X
X
V
