FAMILY LIFE IN MODERN WRITING

By P. R. Krishnaswami, M.A.

ALL literature means to hold up the mirror to nature, and must reflect the problems of family life which is the basis of social organization. It may be thought that the world is now witnessing the disruption of the family, but this also is bound to be imaged in literature which is truly related to life. No literature worth the name is committed absolutely to stand by and defend, either youth or age. Truth of delineation is its aim and the reader must be left to make his own deductions. The artist’s judgment is still important, for if the impression created on the reader is not properly balanced, sympathy may be roused in the wrong way. I saw a Hindi picture some years ago purporting to expose the iniquity of a young woman being compelled to marry an old man. But the chief character behaved with such want of restraint that she roused dislike as for a graceless rebel rather than sympathy for a sufferer.

Modern writing may be said to date from the 16th century, and Shakespeare himself serves to illustrate modernity. Modern writing has the essential quality of adventure, which is the courage to recognise new social trends which escape the understanding of most people.

Conflict of some kind is indispensable to all literary portrayal, it provides the growth of action, without which there can be no story; Conflict in family life may arise in different ways, but a frequent form is that between youth and age, between children and parents. Disparity in age leads to conflict between man and wife also. It is a feature of the tragedy of Othello, though it is not its entire feature. Stephen Philips develops an old Italian story in his Paolo and Francesca, on the basis of the recognised principle, “youth goes with youth” a sentence which becomes the burden of the play. The old; ugly, Giovanni Malatesta is to marry Francesca as a reward for his military service. His handsome younger brother Paolo goes to fetch the bride and these fall in love with each other. The affair is discovered and the young people are put to death. The old husband, and the young wife, ready to run away from him, were familiar types of character in classic comedy and they were continued in English drama and specially in the work of the Restoration dramatists. Sheridan did not fail to utilize this conflict in creating Sir Peter and Lady Teazle in his School for Scandal.

In the second scene of the play, Sir Peter soliloquises:

When an old bachelor marries a young wife, what is he to expect? ’Tis now six months since Lady Teazle made me the happiest of men–and I have been the most miserable dog ever since!

When a married woman flees from her husband in favour of a lover it is regarded as a clear case of sin which must be expiated in repentance. This happens to the elder daughter of Sir Thomas, Bertram in Jane Austen’s novel, Mansfield Park. Queen Guinevere in King Arthur’s story proves unfaithful to her husband whom she thinks, in Tennyson’s words: High, self-contained and passionless.

She expiates her sin by retiring to a nunnery. In her story also, Lancelot, the youthful knight, figures as Arthur’s messenger to fetch his bride. The complication in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night begins when Lady Olivia falls in love with Duke Orsino’s messenger, who was Viola in man’s clothes. Orsino himself tells Viola:

O, then unfold the passion of my love,

Surprise her with discourse of my dear faith:

It shall become thee well to act my woes;

She will attend it better in thy youth

Than in a nuncio of more grave aspect.

In rousing Othello’s suspicions against Desdemona, Iago imparts plausibility to his arguments by referring to Cassio’s parts as a go-between of the lovers. Iago means to elicit a positive statement from Otheilo when he asks him:

I did not think he had been acquainted with her.

Othello replies quickly:

O, yes, and went between us oft very oft.

In the writings of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the woman who fell from the marriage bond was brought to book sooner or later. Misery and suffering invariably awaited her. Mrs. Henry Wood earned extraordinary popularity for her novel East Lynne because the sympathy elicited for the erring Lady Isabella Carlyle was unknown in previous fiction. Once Mrs. Wood showed the way, such sympathy was bound to grow in later fiction. Ibsen initiated the freedom movement for woman by his play The Doll’s House, in which the wife leaves the husband’s house as soon as she discovers that she enjoys no freedom of conduct except in conformity to the narrowest moral conventions. The desertion here is significant because the woman has no lover, but goes away, acting on a principle. In his Wife of Sir Isaac Harman, Wells creates a woman, who out of disgust for the sordid motives of her husband, decides to leave him. It is however not easy for a woman to set up independent living, and Lady Harman is put to shift from one experiment to another. The second Mrs. Dombey in the novel by Dickens deserts her husband in a situation which make us feel sympathetic towards her. In Thackeray’s Newcomes Lady Clara Pulleyn flees from her husband in circumstances which wholly draw our sympathy to her. Hardy has passed deliberate judgment on the erring woman in his Tess of the D’Urbervilles whom he calls a pure woman in the title page, even though we learn that she loses her maidenhood before her marriage. Numerous novelists of the present day have depicted with sympathy both men and women deviating from the marriage bond. Somerset Maugham has sketched in Cakes and Ale a married woman commits lapses merely as a gesture of making herself agreeable to men-friends.

In his play, Getting Married, Shaw has collected all the iniquities of the existing marriage laws. Reginald who colludes with his wife for a mutual divorce states his position bluntly:

What would you do if you were fool enough to marry a woman thirty years younger than yourself, and then found that she didn’t care for you, and was in love with a young fellow with a face like a mushroom?

The conflict between parents and children is more significant of the opposition between age and youth than that between husband and wife. The conflict arises because the parent is apt to exercise authority even after the son has outlived that stage. Meredith’s novel The Ordeal of Richard Feverel brings out the futility and evil of the excessive control put on his son by a father. The disparity in age which causes sharp divergence of outlook is apt to be accentuated by other circumstances. English parents who go away to India for long years cannot return home and still feel easy with their grown up children. This is illustrated in the charming little play Alice-by-the Fire by James Barrie. The disappointment is all the keener to the pretty mother in the story who has looked forward eagerly to share the life of her children. A young man returning from the war is also apt to despise the wisdom of his stay-at-home parent, because he has missed his own thrilling experiences.

It is galling to the younger generation to be directed by the older one in the details of their conduct. Several matters precipitate a difference. A young man often dislikes to take up the profession of his parents’ choice. Colonel Newcome had to gulp many a disagreeable feeling before he could be reconciled to his son’s pursuit of art for his profession. The disastrous effect of the father’s compulsion in the son’s choice of his profession is seen in Samuel Butler’s novel, The Way of All Flesh. In his novel, A Man of Property, Galsworthy describes the divergent ways of living of the different members of the same family. When a son rebels against his father and is disinherited in consequence the calamity affects the parents more than the son himself. This is the new point of view made clear in modern writing. However erring the son may be, there is no consolation for a wealthy parent unless his wealth benefits his children and his children’s children. It is the instinct and pleasure of the parent to protect his children, but it is wrong to expect in return gratitude or obedience.

The dialogue between Sir Anthony Absolute and Captain Absolute in Sheridan’s play depicts with a touch of irony the intolerance of the older generation. The father importunes with his son:

I have heard you for some time with patience–I have been cool–quite cool: but take care–you know I am compliance itself–when I am not thwarted; no one more easily led–when I have my own way; but don’t put me in a frenzy.

After the son rejects coolly the father’s bidding to marry the girl of his choice, the father bursts out again:

So you will fly out–can’t you be cool like me? What the devil good can passion do?–passion is of no service, you impudent, insolent, overbearing reprobate! there you sneer again!–don’t provoke me!–but you rely on the mildness of my temper–you do, you dog!–you upon the meekness of my disposition!

A female counterpart to Sir Anthony occurs in Bernard Shaw’s Major Barbara. Lady Britomart tells her son Stephen:

My dear, you must marry soon. I don’t approve of the present fashion of philandering bachelors and late marriages; and I am trying to arrange something for you.

STEPHEN: It’s very good of you, mother: but perhaps I had better arrange that for myself.

LADY BRITOMART: Nonsense! you are much too young to begin matchmaking; you would be taken in by some pretty little nobody! Of course I don’t mean that you are not to be consulted: you know that as well as I do.

The bitterest conflict between youth and age occurs over the choosing of the marriage partner. Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream refers to the Athenian law that a girl who disobeys her father in the matter of marriage is punishable by death or by being sent to a nunnery. Shakespeare is known to remove from the stage usually the parents of his heroes and heroines. At any rate the great heroines are bereft of their protective mothers. The motherless Jessica finds her old father’s home intolerable and elopes with the young Lorenzo. Desdemona declares herself decidedly in favour of her husband when Brabantio takes up to the Venetian senate his accusation against General Othello. When the old whimsical King Lear calls for a declaration of affection from his daughters, intending the division of the kingdom to depend on such declaration, Cordelia persists in reserving part of her love for the husband she will marry.

The relation between parents and children has to be explained on a scientific basis. Parents who do not enjoy the confidence of their children not infrequently drive them into violent rebellion, as in Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park. Every succeeding generation must be wiser than the previous one and must be left to solve their own problems. Rules of conduct get solidified into social conventions which after some time, are apt to conflict with reality. As the older generation supports convention, the younger one rebels against it. In his poem Locksley Hall, Tennyson speaks for the young:

Cursed be the social wants that sin against the strength of youth!

Cursed be the social ties that warp us from the living truth!

Family chronicles have always been in vogue among the great novelists. How pathetically a heavy family tradition may react on a younger elation is illustrated in Dickens’s Dombey & Son. Marcia Davenport in recent years developed a vast family chronicle in her Valley of Decision. Different generations have different points of view. The progress of society is governed by the two principles of conservation and adventure. There is no need for anxiety about conservation, we therefore welcome adventure. Tennyson’s mariner spoke truly for the entire race of the old when he said:

Our sons inherit us; our looks are strange:

We should come like ghosts to trouble. *

* Courtesy of All-India Radio, Madras.

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