The Washington bee., 1891-10-17
THE AMAToRY NOVEL.
Caustic Analysis of Current Literature
of This Glass,


Caustic Analysis of Current Literature
of This Class.
In its simplest state the amatory novel
is sufficiently debiEtating and pernicious,
but in its popular complications it be-
comes intolerable, observes Elizabeth
Deering Hanscom in the Boston Journal.
The ever new old theme of the love of
one man for one woman has largely lost
its power to please the satiated appetite
Of the novel reading public.
In the old fashioned love story we were
introduced in the first chapter to the
hero, in the second chapter to the hero.
inc, and then, through three volumes he
pursued her, with an eye single to her
capture, until they both disappeared in
a cloud of bridal finery just above the
word finis. But now the course of fic.
ttious love runs less smoothly. Love is
no longer the simple, steady emotion; it
fiickers and wavers. is transferred from
one object to another; at times dies out
and again blazes into sudden fury. The
ease and rapidity with which the charac-
ters fall In love is equaled only by their
agility In extricating themselves from
the dilemma. At the close they attempt
to persuade themselves and the readers
that they have found resting place, and
the wedding bells essential to the COM
pletion of every popular novel are forth
with rung.
The idleness of this style of writing
must at times be apparent to even the
most superficial. If there were anything
new under the sun, the chance of its
being discovered by the writers of anna
tory novels was long ago abandoned.
Yet still they go on, heaping agony upon
agony, intensifying emotions, increasing
complications, until the fundamental
theme is wrested out of all harmony and
magnifed out of all proportions with the
remainder of life. It becomes morbid,
unnatural, fungus growth, devouring
parasite. From one learn all.
There lis story, at present much read,
In which man, passionately devoted to
his wife, after her death finds letter in
which she suggest his marrying young
girl whom they ha re known. In an in
different fashion he accepts the sugges-
ton, and in the course of few months
asks the girl to become his second wife.
Although she loves nim and has confded
the fact to his dying wife, she refuses.
Thereupon the man becomes madly in
love, but as soon as he has won her con.
sent to the marriage finds that the affair
begins to pail. Is this love? Is this lifei
Is this the ideal or the reality that we
wish to place before our young people?
There prevails a theory that, as long
as book does not deal with certain pro.
scribed relations, it is "moral." The
lover of ethics as they are, not as they are
thought to be, has difficulty in accepting
this theory; in fact he usually rejects it
outright, but in general it passes. The
interest of many of the modern amatory
novels consists in allowing the char
acters to tread as near as possible to the
hairbreadth division which the dear pub.
lie has had between the realms of the
moral and the immoral. If at times they
SEEM to pass over the boundary, the ex.
element is intensified, and, provided
only that they are finally proven to have
stayed safely on their own side, the book
is considered eminently proper.
In many of the stories freely read and
openly discussed by young people in
sheltered homes there is an insidious SEN
sualism. compared with which the open
animality of the early English novels is
innocuous. We can remove the must
that is thrown at us in handfuls; it is a
different matter to cleanse ourselves from
the poison that we breathe.
Even if TIE amatory novel does no
worse, it lowers the ideals and subordi-
mates the spiritual to the material This
is what life tends to do for most of us;
we need all the strength we can gain to
fight the inevitable downward trend of
thought. No wise man ignores the value
Of the ideal in letters as well as in life,
and if the amatory novel tended toward
the increase or the elevation of
this element its existence would at
once be justified. But augment
ing, as it does, the natural dissatisfac-
tion with life, without offering means
Improvement; eNaggerating, as it does,
one emotion and emphasizing its sensu-
Gus manifestation; affording, as it does,
the staple literary diet of most young