The Novel's Deadliest Friend

by Neith Boyce

THE NOVEL'S DEADLIEST FRIEND

About a century has passed since woman's fondness began to spoil the English novel. Up to Fielding's day, it appears, some good fortune preserved the lusty youth of Fiction from woman's blighting eye; or perhaps the simple appetite of youth made a defence, as the roast of beef and the flagon of ale protected Tom Jones from the blandishments of the strange lady in the inn. But this protection likewise was only temporary; and Fielding, Thackeray said in tears, was the last novelist in England "that dared to paint a man." Thackeray went away from an interview with his editor, with that remark, to write into Pendennis those paragraphs which preserve the hero's virtue—and ever since masculine heroes have been made to fit feminine ideals. Woman never has liked the Tom Jones type of hero—the conquering, destroying, self-indulgent young animal. She likes splendour and dash, but still demands that the hero shall represent somehow the idea of self-sacrifice, of mortification of the flesh, and, above all, of constancy. It was Thackeray, again, who said that woman would forgive Nero all his other sins if only he had been a good family man. And this fits in with what Count Tolstoy has said recently, that woman is less noble, less self-sacrificing, than man, since man will sacrifice his family for an idea, while woman won't. It seems, then, to be fairly well established that the heights of self-sacrifice are beyond woman. And in imposing her lower ideals upon the novel she has done the harm that male novelists still deplore. As she has prevented the hero of the novel from soaring to the lonely peaks which she can't reach herself, so also she forbids him to ramp through the pleasant meadows, witlessly enjoying himself. She condemns him to stern probation and as many labours as Hercules had, and all to what end? That he may kneel at her feet for his reward. The modern novel simply flatters woman's egregious vanity. But what to do about it? How to prevent woman reading and buying books? As long as she does so the manful efforts of the novelist to uphold his art must come to naught.

It used to be thought and said not many years ago that the young person caused the trouble; but the higher education has practically eliminated her, and yet the novel is as badly off as before. Indeed, in France, where the young person was never terrifying, the novel has been debased all the same by the influence of woman, who, educated, intelligent and married, is all the more pernicious. Count Tolstoy points out the damnatory evidence in contemporary French literature that "in France everything centres in women, and women have complete control of life;" in particular, Maupassant, "the man of greatest talent in these days," is "depraved and centres all his fiction in women." Women, Tolstoy explains, besides their lack of moral qualities, are also mentally deficient. They "cling to old absurdities." It cannot be denied that they do—romance, for example. It must be admitted, too, that they will not sacrifice their own ideas of what makes an interesting story or a proper hero. Self-sacrificing man writes to please them. Hence, woman drags the novel down.

Mr. Howells more than intimated in his recent article on historical romances that women are mainly responsible for the recent "welter of overwhelming romance" in Anglo-Saxendom. Women—that is, and golf. Golf leads to muscular ideals among women, and muscular ideals lead to romance, to the "spilth of blood" and "the horrid din of the swashbuckler swashing on his buckler." Mr. Howells said that women, especially with us, are the "repository of such refinement as we have attained," but also that "their tastes and manners have been coarsened by sharing the rude sports and boyish games of men." However, women are not as bad as their influence; very few of them, probably, really enjoy athletics as much as they pretend, Mr. Howells thought, and very few probably are fond of novels of adventure. Yet athletics have flourished and novels of adventure superabound, because women do not know what they want, or won't say.

Not content, however, with the harm she can do by simply buying and reading novels, woman has insisted on writing them. Having set the pace for romantic novels, she has tried to write romance. But the Evening Post and the editor of a literary weekly are agreed that woman cannot do the "genuinely romantic novel—the novel of incident." She does a base imitation of it simply "to please the popular taste and sell her books," but the real thing is beyond her. This is pointed out by the editor of the literary weekly, who says: "Let the men attend to the novel of fight and fury, and the women to the delineation of domestic virtues and faults. We shall get a sounder literature thus than we shall if the women attempt to enter into the fighting nature of man, which they never understand and for which they have no sympathy."

This is, no doubt, sound advice; but has not the critic made a mistake in saying that woman's forte lies in the delineation of character? Are not most great critics agreed that to delineate character, even domestic virtues and faults, is the office of the highest type of novel, while the novel of incident, of fight and fury, is of a distinctly inferior sort? There is some illogicality here. Woman seems to be getting some credit that does not belong to her.

Another thing she is responsible for is the "American boom" in books, which so astonishes English readers and rouses the envy of avaricious English authors, according, at least, to the London Daily Telegraph. Why do American books boom so enormously? How does it happen that the successful American novel sells three hundred thousand copies when the English, if very successful, sells fifty thousand? The Daily Telegraph answers wisely, because of the enormous population the American publisher has to deal with—a feminine population, for American men do not read. But is it a good thing—for them or for the novel—that American wives and daughters should absorb three hundred thousand copies of some romance? The author who has written a really good, unpopular thing thinks not, and the critic agrees with him. No, it is impossible to be an artist and please three hundred thousand women. There is something gross in these figures; the refined intelligence shrinks from the idea of such a crowd. By taking the novel in such quantities woman has brought it down to the level of the bargain-counter. Can true art be bought below cost?

The worst is, there is no hope for the future. More women are buying and reading every year. Neith Boyce.