The comet. (Johnson City, Tenn.) 1884-1916, 1892-07-14
rIln AMAroRY NOVEL.
Caustic Analysis of Current Literature
of This Class.

W hA az
In its simplest state the amatory novel
Is sufficiently facilitating and pornicious,
but IN its popular complications it be-.
comes intolerable, observes ElizaNath
Deeriug Hanscomi in the Boston Jou1ai
The ever new old theme of the love O!
one man for one woman has largely lost
its power to please tie 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 throu h three volumes he
pursued her, with an eye single to her
capture, until they both disappeared in
a cloud of bridal incry just above the
word fms. But now the course of ic-
titious love run less smoothly. Love is
no louger the simple, steady emotion; it
flickers and wavers, is transferred from
o le 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 extrlcating themselves from
the dilemma. AT the close they attempt
to persuade themselves and the readers
that they have found a 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 writer's 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
magnihed out of all proportions with the
remainder of life. 1t becomes morbid,
unnatural, afungus growth, a devouring
p rasite. From one learn all.
There is a story, at present much read,
in which a man, passionately devoted to
his wife, after her death finds a letter in
Which she suggests his marrying a young
girl whom they have known. In an in
different fashion he accepts the sugges-
ton, and in the course of a few months
asks the girl to become his second wife.
Although she loves him and has confided
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 lover Is this life?
Is this the ideal or the reality that we
wish to place before u young people?
There pre~ails a theory that, as long
as a 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 il
sheltered homes there is an insidious sen
sualism, compared with which the oper
animality of the early English novels il
i%nnocuous. We can remove the mus
that is thrown at us in handfuls; it is
different matter to cleanse ourselves from
the poison that we breathe.
Even if TIE amatory novel does M
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 tx
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 o
Q this element its existence would al
ono be justified. But augment
ing, as it does, the natural dissatisfac
ton with life, without offering a mean
Improvement exaggerating, as it does
one emotion and emphasizing its sensu
GUS manifestation; affording, as 1t does
the staple literary diet of most younJ
people, n may reasonably challenge it
right to continuance.