Show VT i twi r f tt n self education through ae medium yf S prepared articles by prominent instructors f ry 7 ay ay 7 w afe ethics of fiction ANNE FITZHUGH III difficult moral situations the rapid growth 0 our WITH modern habit ot self analysis arose the moril dilemma as a motive in fiction replacing or complicating the old motives of love intrigue and adventure this in its turn has developed BO rapidly that from a robust obvious dilemma like that of rochester and jane in jane eyre it haa already become in the hands of many writers beyond the recognition of the ordinary mind even mrs wards eleanor would a hundred years ago have spared herself most of her spiritual the case between her and lucy would bavo been a plain case of take who can or eleanor would have made a noble and immediate sacrifice of her claims living happy ever atter in the consciousness of well doing or else dying of a broken heart without any preliminary pains of self struggle but tha of this treatment of an ancient situation Is a very different thing from the decadent of certain boaks instance the column where the dilemma la EO vague that the everyday reader merely concludes that the young married pair were hard put to it for something to make themselves wretched about the two elements one of which nearly always constitutes the difficulty la the moral situation arc first the necessity tor deceit either in word or in a course of action second the necessity of a decision between fearful self sacrifice and the ruin of another generally all that Is needed Is n little of that wisdom of which margaret deland Is our chief apostle the wisdom that we call common sense in most novels the lack of this quality on the part of personages caught in moral complications Is cither irritating or laughable according as the author has or has not succeeded in gaining our sir gilbert parker who built up a hopeless complication 0 situations in tho night of way sympathy wo feel that they know they are in a story and must keep up the plot else they would surely speak the word or do the simple thing that would untangle the intricacies that arc making them miserable or bringing tho innocent to ruin from such it la restful to turn to a book in which the situation would lie considered equally difficult in real life out of many jane field Is ft good example the yielding to the temptation was to her despairing mother love made diabolically easy by the lawyers mistake in assuming her to be her slater of choso whoso death ho was ignorant sho meant t take from the only the sum that was rightfully duo her even the most self conscious integrity might tremble at the power and plausibility of her temptation she yields yet in a life of falsehood she shrinks from a lie and constantly risks nil by refusing to utter one harval oua is the consistency of this ol 01 woman rigid unlovely yet a glowing alro of maternal passion in the end her conscience triumphs the conscience which though as the atory says all her traditions wera purely orthodox made of her a fetich worshiper in a time of trouble and when her daughter falls drives her to church to propitiate a terrifying deity when her tortured brain gives way as she makes confession of her sin cannot help the gentle human wish that she might first have realized the happiness of the child for whom she believed ehe had forfeited salvation A very different but also extremely interesting book choso whoso motive is maternal passion in excess Is airs keltha crime bo appealing Is the equation of tho woman who finally ellla her adored child that there la danger of tho readers condemnation of weakening under the influence of his sympathy or was it calma since for self defense Is allowed by all Is it permissible to kill the helpless in his own defense this 18 mrs problem in the story of mrs keith and real baa eho made the presentment of t A hopeless of difficult ia found in gilbert barkers book the right of any yet even in this abo goodlan knot method would have been the right thing and fil u would befit have followed the tous and sensible course to go ome avow himself let everybody involved take the consequences include ing a divorce foi his wife who had married again and then return to marry bis rosalie the distress to his wife would have been temporary and surely the innocent Ilo salle should not have had all the suffering put upon her but that Is the way the person who sacrifices bieselt generally at the same time otters up another victim and one who deserves to be shielded quite aa much as the one tor whom the sacrifice Is made mrs deland takes this for a text in sally a wholesome short etory tor people in whose natures the quality ot renunciation is out of drawing in A tale of two cities dickens suggests no question as to whether sydney carton had a right to give up his life for his do we then belong to ourselves or are wo responsible to god for our bodies as well as our souls cartons act was suicide and does any causo justify suicide certainly no cause could justify sel degradation such as Is illustrated in the means by which william blacks yolande proposed to cure her mother of the habit of eating opium here we have an extreme case of the perversion of self sacrifice but it does not require extreme basea to work grave injury to the moral vision of young or unthinking readers says sir howell the self sacrifice painted in most novels is nothing but psychical sul clde and Is as wholly immoral as the spectacle of a man fall ing upon a sword false and morbid in fiction is responsible for much false and morbid sentiment in real life on the other hand it could not have so permeated fiction had it not first existed widely in life fiction exaggerates it as a thing must be exaggerated by the emphasis of its selection exclusion of most of the modifying elements of real life but in the face of the spread of correct ethical principles it is fast assuming its true relation add proportion undoubtedly our public enlightenment has gone beyond the approval of such acts as that of awan the clergyman in the who by falsely acknowledging as ahls the signature which his cousin had forged took up an himself besides the lie the burden of the debt and the stigma of disobedience to the church many readers of the honorable peter stirling regarded his he told to save his fri endor rather his friends wife as the sole blot upon an ideal character the lie was an indulgence the temptation to which was great but he would have been a stronger man to havo resisted le docs what the self sacrificing novel hero usually doea puts his wisdom above the wisdom of god who however wo conceive him must be a god of truth and cannot require a he asa foundation for ultimate good starlings Stir lings words however at abo moment of crisis ask john and ho will say I 1 am the father of the child by bamo bomo persons as no he but an ingenious statement of fact to bo interpreted thus ask john and he will say 1 I am tho father of the child mr crawfords Craw fords corleone Corl cone has a moral situation at so dramatic and so probable that it deserves to be the pivot of a story rather than an incident the inviolacy of the confessional is turned by a murderer to his own advantage in such a way as to put under suspicion of the crime tho priest to whom he has confessed it and who is thereby left without means of proving his innocence the priest sees no allem ma in his situation nothing to be for ho docs not for a moment consider breaking the seal of the confessional fess ional as an alternative to silently accepting an ignominious death the great novelists of the early nineteenth century did not make an ethical situation the keynote of a story though they made subordinate use of such elements scotta notable exception Is the fair maid of perth of which he tella us ho conceived tho case of one constitutionally weak of nervo being supported by feelings of honor and jealousy up to a certain point and then suddenly giving way under circumstances to which the bravest heart could hardly refuse compassion in this conception scott was in advance of his time since then many stories have been built upon the idea that physical fear is not always proof of a cowardly soul and I 1 know nothing that shows more clearly than tho popular acceptance of this motive the great increase in our knowledge ot human nature and the consequent increase of and forbearance A dangerous doctrine still to be weed ed out of fiction is that a bad alfo can be atoned for toward its end by ono heroic act the woman who haa wrecked lives appears in lucli romances to alpa out the score against her when having experienced the hoi lowness of her mode of life she turns sick nurse or devotes her remaining years to work among the poor the fascinating debauchee with years of wasted or actively bad life behind him rescues his enemy or does something equally dramatic and the author strikes an attitude as if to as euro ua that his past is now clean what the novelist needs in dealing with moral what the beet novelists have already found ls first common bense and second a just standard of right and wrong thus equipped false or exaggerated beitl foont may be required la the actions of hla personages but bis presentment will chow these things in their true significance such writers are tho most valuable of moral teachers for thear audience la tho largest in tho world and they teach the truth so sub aly that it Is absorbed by the aa the pure air is drunk in by the skin j 1902 by lewis D ram j y w the ethics of fiction by ANNE fitzhugh riTZ HUGH MACLEAN IV the clergyman of romance literature and the BETWEEN church there la a mutual debt tho fact that the balance of obligation I 1 on th e ejde of tho church does not malts its portion ot the debt less real for despite much holding up of clergymen and their to ridicule indeed partly through that very means novelists have shown a zeal for tho welfare of the church even as la but too often the case when they are not themselves inside the fald the artistic mind that id the mind of every writer born for his work haa a natural disinclination toward form and convention it Is frequently deeply devotional without recognizing the necessity for the institutions of religion at the same time the artistic mind should by its very nature see more clearly than others into the heart of vital truth consequently it from one point of view the novelist Is in danger of undervaluing the religious life he should from another and a higher view be able to value it with peculiar justness the church fills an immense place in fiction so deep rooted and widespread Is its use that a body of fiction without the ecclesiastical clement Is hard to imagine the dramatic possibilities bili ties of the priesthood with its mo its obedience its inviolate confession have been developed in every conceivable direction to the unspeakable corruption attributed tri buted to this clergy in mediaeval media eval italian romance to the cunning and merciless fanaticism charged against it by eugene sue and his like baa BUC charlotte bronte whose ineffectual undersized ccrates curates eay her tame ceedee a conception of a priesthood truo to its vows of chastity obedience and poverty and exceeding its vows in voluntary self renunciation fiction as has often been said exaggerates what it deals with as a statue must bo exaggerated to appear of normal size we do not believe that all priests arc unselfish heroic and pure because they are thus represented today any more than we believe that all were degraded or cruelly fanatic because we find them so described in tho fiction of certain periods but it cannot be doubt ed that the change in novelists conception of the priesthood indicates a similar change in the standard of life and character of the priesthood as a whole As the ergy have contributed to the dramatic needs of fiction BO have the english clergy been interwoven the social and domestic life 0 english stories and as the priest was once portrayed as a jolly or a cunning bigot so there was an accepted idea of the anglican cleric no hypocrite he but an open free in the use of wine and strong language fond of bis ease and of fox hunting and acquit of his ministerial duties when be had raced through two brief sunday services and done all the baptizing marrying and burying that was thrust upon him the really contemptible temp tible variety of him was the domestic chaplain who groveled at the feet of the great and was thankful to retain his seat at the nob lemans table at whatever cost of self abasement when dissent was ripe for the novelist the dissenting parson was eagerly upon as an opportunity for a new type these three types have been gradually replaced by very different characterizations izat ions but one unfortunate order remains still an object of derision the ccrates curates cu rates how long will they continue to furnish story tellers with ineffectual undersized young men who fall hopelessly in love with tho highborn beauty of the parish and provide a toll tor the tall and virile hero through them charlotte bronte attained abo summit of her fame and hard as it la upon the ccrates curates cu rates it must be admitted that her portraits were not imaginary doubtless however she saw the originals as she saw most thugs with a passionate intensity that enlarged the characteristic upon which her vision fixed and minimized its modifying features bishops have been favored almost as much as ccrates curates have been dc which Is hopeful for the lesser order as are not all ccrates curates potential bishops there Is a goodly company of ideal bishops in fiction of whom tho dear and adorable bishop in les alser ablis Is chief and best among living writers hall calne nas given us in the a notable prelate though the heartbreaking pathos of bis etory makes it to read A ices satie and ad mirable creation la the young minister ekau in the same story a cleric or a morbid type fast passing out of fiction anthony Troll parsons are BO berous and go varied in their motives and that they form a little world in themselves of them be says 1 I trust that I 1 shall not be thought to ecoff at the pulpit though some may imagine that I 1 do not feel all the re that Is due to the cloth I 1 may question the infallibility of the teach era but I 1 hope that I 1 shall not abere fore be accused 0 doubt as to the i thing taught this app was rays standpoint ilis veneration tor toe thine taught made him hard upon insincerity in the teachers and as says of him be was not cynical but only necessarily severe in clerical snobs and in bis bold of the rev bute crawley the horse racing rector and othere when this la done with sympathy as Is preeminently pre eminently tha case with george eliot when there Is discrimination between vice and mere human weakness it 19 undoubtedly for the good not for the injury of religion thackeray himself bays though the words may be slightly different god forbid that any of mine should do harm to the church george eliot bad a calmer wider vision than tei bronte and a deeper vision than thackeray and TroI lope she saw in the ministry all manner of men and bore noble testimony to much that she saw in sach delineations as mr irwine in adam bede mr tryan in janeas Ja nets repentance and mr lyon in eells holt she has given us the of the sacred office as rabal rab fl priest clergyman methodist sister and independent parson and always with a marvelous impartial insight choso whoso heart has not ached with the commonplace heart of amos barton with his adjusted family and income a man whose nature it was not to be superlative in anything unless indeed ho was superlatively middling the quintessential extract of mediocrity and ached yet more with his exquisitely drawn wife in the dreary realism of her sorrows then there is dinah a sort of prophetic apotheosis of the salvation army gh 1 very different in ita delightful and kindly humor Is theaon tr asting in fells holt |