The School and the Press are the only additions to the time-honored objects, because of their more recent emergence into the light. The erection of the School into a public institution, together with the subsidence of the Church into the sphere of private life, marks indeed a radical change in viewpoint,—advancing from the assumption that the State must insure the religion of its citizens, let them be educated how they might (except that for a long time they had no choice but to take their secular learning from the hands of the clergy) to the realization that if those responsible for the general welfare would provide for a general diffusion of enlightenment, the religious sentiment might safely be trusted to those whom it concerned, namely, the individuals themselves. In regard to all these institutions the old, sharply defined contrast between guilty, satirized protagonist and indicting, satirical antagonist has disappeared. In its place is a decided tendency toward the fellow-member, fellow-citizen, fellow-sinner attitude, which at least has the advantage always held by the empiric knowledge of the insider over the deductive inference of the outsider.
In the social field the most notable alteration is in the satire of woman. From the time of the Greek Simonides and the Hebrew epigrammatists, feminine foibles have been alluring game for masculine-made arrows. The shrew, the gossip, the blue-stocking, the interfering stepmother, the intriguing wife, the extravagant daughter, the lady of fashion, have been detected with unerring clarity of vision and pursued with accomplished skill. They have also been taken for granted. It was not until the modern inquiry into cause and effect was instituted that the feminine failure was viewed as an effect of which society was largely the cause, by withholding opportunity on one hand, and on the other encouraging the very ignorance and inanity it affected to despise. This discovery led logically to the shifting of the satire from effect back to cause, and the addition of another item to the list wherein the concerted action of the social group is held accountable for any malign influence on its members.
This probing into causes is even more sweepingly operative in the larger society of mankind and the body politic. The study of economics and sociology inevitably has switched the old partisan antagonism into a new opposition based more consciously on theories of government,—still partisan, to be sure, but less on personal and more on philosophical grounds. The new element this brings into political satire is the effort to create a public sense of shame for official incompetence, since in a democracy (and such, in some form or other, is almost every modern State) the blame for this incompetence rests ultimately on the public. Modern critics may echo Isaiah’s scornful complaint of state officialdom,—“The ancient and the honorable man, he is the head; and the prophet that teacheth lies, he is the tail,”—but their remedy would lie not in increased reliance on a theocracy but in a more adequate popular referendum. John Barton concludes his impassioned tirade against mill-owners and capitalists with the argument,—[440]
“Don’t think to come over me with th’ old tale, that the rich know nothing of the trials of the poor; I say, if they don’t know, they ought to know. We’re their slaves as long as we can work; we pile up their fortunes with the sweat of our brows, and yet we are to live as separate as Dives and Lazarus, with a great gulf betwixt us: but I know who was best off then.”
On another occasion he adds this explanation,—[441]
“What we all feel sharpest is the want of inclination to try and help the evils which come like blights at times over the manufacturing places, while we see the masters can stop work and not suffer.”
To this serious and personal grief Meredith responds, as it were, in his more impersonal and ironic manner. Diana represents the view from a position of equality, and the satire of one’s own class:[442]
“And charity is haunted, like everything we do. Only I say with my whole strength—yes, I am sure, in spite of the men professing that they are practical, the rich will not move without a goad. I have and hold—you shall hunger and covet, until you are strong enough to force my hand;—that’s the speech of the wealthy. And they are Christians. In name. Well, I thank heaven I’m at war with myself.’”
Kingsley is spurred by the subject to a bitter sarcasm:[443]
“The finest of us are animals, after all, and live by eating and sleeping, and, taken as animals, not so badly off, either—unless we happen to be Dorsetshire laborers—or Spitalfield weavers—or colliery children—or marching soldiers—or, I am afraid, one half of English souls this day.”