WOMEN AND THE MODERN NOVEL

Timaru Herald, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 12894, 5 February 1906, Page 3

WOMEN AND THE MODERN NOVEL

(By a Woman.)

! In the November number of the "Book Monthly," an article on the modern novel by. Mr Hubert Bland, and a paragraph on the same subject by a West Country librarian, cannot fail to arrest the attention of women. The West Country, librarian's personal experience has led bun so the conclusion that "many successful stories owe their vogue to the way in which they reflect, the mind of the average reader"; women, he says, are the great novel readers, and they especially enjoy the gratification of seeing their image reflected " not merely in a glass dimly, but in a book." Mr.Hubert Bland has this to say: "The most striking characteristic of -the modern novel—the very latest novel—is its almosti entire freedom from the trammels of, I will not say propriety—though I would' eay | propriety if it were not that I desire to j be inoffensive—but conventionality. I constantly find passages in a novel that) [ I simply dare not quote in a review. . . One may now write in novels destined to circulate in families, of things which I one can only mention in the same families under penalty of prompt ejection from the house, with social ostracism to follow. Such is the freedom of the novel, considered as an art form, that the novelist may with perfect impunity portray what the artist who illustrates him dare not illustrate. That, when you come to think of it, is queer." Mr Hubert Bland declares that this growth of the liberty of unlicensed expression, began ten or fifteen years ago, and has developed more fully within the last five or sir years. There is scarcely any literary paper of note which does not, at intervals deplore the growth of this modern tendency; nevertheless, the rank weed continues to flourish to such an extent that, as has recently been computed, in eighty out of every hundred novels now published its poison is desseminated. Had the computation been made from novels written only by women, the figure would probably have been still nior-i direful. In this, as in a hundred other ills, women j are traitors to tlieir a sex. Suppose that, leaving cur eighty ques- ' ticnable novels on one side, we turn to the I twenty that- are blameless. U\;on these. it seems, we must feed cur imaginations. or starve: for to gloat over ihe "eighty is to confess ourselves voluntary victims of the improper novel habit, and tint we surely shrink from doing. "What of this blameless remnant?' Alas, -with one or two notable exceptions, the negative quality of stainlessness is their only claim to

distinction! Brilliancy, fire, illumination—thy are not there. We have asked for bread; we are offered a stone. And when we return to the eighty forbidden books, and examine them, we find that perhaps three-fourths have as little claim to literary distinction as our discarded temnant; in these we are offered a stone plus mud. That such books can find a market, be published, sold, and read, is marvellous—mud, in this present generation, appears to be a commodity of price. How comes it that so many educated women can read such trash? We know how to choose the materials for our garments or our fancy work, we do not know how to choose our books; ycJ w*» have handled books since our cJ.:! ..hk«.

All these eighty volumes, ..: wever, a;e not trash; there are among thcai works of talent, even of genius, of rare beauty, of illumination so brilliant as to dazxle the eyes and thrill the heart. We who love literature do homage to the power of these books; and yet we execrate them, because, robed thus as angels of light, they deceive the very elect. Intermingled with thtir beauty may be discerned the trail of sensuousness. Such books as these are widely read; they allure the lover of literature, they allure the lover of sensuousness. At last our finger is on the plague spot : literary perception alone will not cure us« of our malady: women must face ibo fact land tolerate it if they can) that tbey have allowed themselves to acquire a love of the sensuous in art. Evasion is howlevs: the books are before us. women wrote then, women read them.

There is no need for such a literature. In the years to conn we shall acquire immunity from this malady of ours. It is incredible that women can maintain sn attitude of callous indifference to the growth of unlicensed expression in modem fiction. The remedy lies with ourst-lve*. Let that "penalty of prompt ejection from the house, with social ostracism to follow " lie paid by the books that say ia silence what no one daTes to say aloud ; it. will shortly be discovered that upon them the fiat has been pronounced—so potent, no almighty in the feminine world—they are "out of fashion.*'