Modern Morality

In the early days of this blog, I would have made at least three posts out of three books. These days, I’m inclined to make just one post out of Hardy, Galsworthy, and Joyce.

Hardy

Let’s begin with Tess of the D’Urbervilles. I don’t know exactly what I expected from a book that I had heard characterized as “shocking”; maybe I thought it would be graphic in its depiction of sex or violence. It was not graphic, and, not being a Victorian, I didn’t find it shocking, either. Tragic and heartbreaking, yes. Surprising or offensive (are these the two main definitions of “shocking”?), no. Tess is seduced by a man who uses a very dirty trick, and then she despises him and tries to start a new life in a place where people don’t know she’s not a virgin. Is this shocking? The book itself describes the situation as one that “happens to girls.” Surely every proper Victorian had – I don't know – cousins who went astray. Then Tess suffers the hypocritical judgment of a man who otherwise seems like a very decent fellow; I imagine most women have found themselves victim to the male's double standard. So, again, it just looks like honest storytelling to me. I sympathized with and admired Tess until the end (I won’t give it away), and I’m really not sure why even Victorian ladies had such trouble with it.

Perhaps more shocking than the question of sexual morals, though, was Hardy’s anti-Christian, anti-Theist stance. But how offensive could this really have been? Tess’s Christianity is ill informed and syncretistically infused with folk legends. Sure. Such things happen in rural areas. The clergymen in her area are mostly hypocrites and nonbelievers. I’ve known several of these myself, and surely the most sincere Victorian believers were familiar with such, as well. I don’t see how they could have taken that part of the atmosphere of the book as an attack on all Christianity. I’m sad for Hardy that he couldn’t believe. It seems to me that he wanted to and just couldn’t. His books, including this one, don’t come across to me as personal accusations of stupidity and hypocrisy on the part of all Christians but as the honest observations of a struggling man. His narration denies the existence of a God who makes sense of Tess’s life, a God who cares for her. But he doesn’t want to tear down the social fabric. He doesn’t ask for a change in the Constitution or the disestablishment of the Anglican Church. He shows no scorn for the believer. I’m sure it helps that I approach the book from a perspective different from that of Victorians: I live after the modern age and in a country with no established church. But, really, why were they shocked?

Before I move on with my thoughts on modern morality in my recent reading, I have to say that I don’t believe I’ve ever read more beautifully poetic descriptions of rural life than those Hardy provides in Tess. A sample:

Thus, during this October month of wonderful afternoons they roved along the meads by creeping paths which followed the brinks of trickling tributary brooks, hopping across by little wooden bridges to the other side, and back again. They were never out of the sound of some purling weir, whose buzz accompanied their own murmuring, while the beams of the sun, almost as horizontal as the mead itself, formed a pollen of radiance over the landscape.

Yes, it is very hard to believe sometimes that God cares for girls like Tess. But I hope that Hardy, in stolen moments, thought that perhaps a God could have made that pastoral landscape and empowered that beautiful language.

Galsworthy

Right after finishing Tess, I read Silver Spoon, the fifth entry in John Galsworthy’s nine-part Forsyte Saga. Partly because the story was so similar to Tess, which I had just found so moving, and partly because I had enjoyed book 4, The White Monkey, so much last year, this book was a bit disappointing. Again, the story revolves around a young woman, Marjorie Ferrar, who has had a premarital affair. But, unlike Tess, Marjorie has no shame about it, no regrets. Galsworthy, calling the situation “modern morality,” literally puts this new morality on trial. An acquaintance, Fleur Mont, writes to a friend that Marjorie “hasn’t a moral about her,” and Marjorie takes Fleur to court for libel, where Fleur’s only defense is to show that what she said is totally true. The jury finds in Fleur’s favor, but Fleur loses in the court of Society. Right or wrong, says Galsworthy, this is where we are: our culture is a spoiled baby, tossing food around with a silver spoon and delighting in the mess while our only consequence lies in being told by an indulgent nurse that we’re naughty. (Actually, why was I disappointed? That all sounds pretty interesting!)

Joyce

I’ve read that some people think James Joyce spoke “the last word” on human sexuality in Ulysses. All I can say is that those critics and readers must not know very many words about human sexuality; I think much more can be spoken. In any case, I expected more “modern morality” in Finnegans Wake, but I didn’t find it. In fact, I didn’t find much that I could understand at all. I knew that the book ended with the line “A way a lone a last a loved a long the,” a string of words that strikes me as both interestingly cryptic and extremely beautiful. So I knew that the adventure would be loopy, but I didn’t know it would be quite as crazy as it has turned out to be. I had immense trouble getting through just the first day’s portion. I told myself decades ago that one day I would read this “hardest of all books to read.” So I don’t want to give up.

But in reading more about the book, I found that most readers don’t just sit down and take it in in a few days. Most take years. So, new plan. I’m going to divide Finnegans Wake up over not only the remaining five years of my current ten-year reading plan but also the ten years of my next decade-long schedule (most of which is already set). I don’t know what I’ll get out of the experience, but, assuming I live that long, I will finish reading this book!