The Vision of Wells
I should like to set “M. M.’s” mind at rest about H. G. Wells, but I can’t quite understand what her objection to him really is. She seems to be in what the charming little old Victorian lady would have called “a state of mind.” Something about Wells annoys her; she hasn’t thought it out clearly, but she raps Wells wherever she can get at him, as a sort of personal revenge for her discomfort.
Suppose, for the sake of argument, that the passage she quotes from the hero really represents Wells’s feeling about the relations between the sexes. He believes that “under existing conditions” there is always danger of love between men and women unless the man has one sole woman intimate, and lets “a superficial friendship toward all other women veil impassable abysses of separation.” “M. M.” wisely admits the truth of that—in fact, it’s the most obvious of truisms. Then the hero—or Wells—goes on to say that this, to him, is an intolerable state of affairs. For this “M. M.” calls him “wicked,” and “Mr. M. M.” accuses him of not being busy enough, and of not working for a living.
I wonder if “M. M.” stopped to think exactly why the hero considers this an intolerable state of affairs. The statement means nothing more than that the man would like to have intimate friendships with more than one woman. He doesn’t say he wants to love more than one woman. Well, it is easily conceivable that a man of active mind and companionability would like to have some degree of intimacy with various women. There doesn’t seem to be anything wicked about that, and it’s possible that he should feel so even if he was “working for a living.” If we confine ourselves to one intimacy, we’re likely to lose the full relish of it before many years. The thought of that is certainly intolerable. A man who is close to a good many people is usually better fitted to appreciate his best friend. A woman novelist who has a conspicuously successful marriage put it well the other day. “If you go into a room where there is a bunch of violets,” she said, “you are charmed by the odor. If you stay in the room all the time, you forget about the odor—or it bores you. But if you are continually going out and coming in again, it greets you every time, and you learn to appreciate its subtleties.” Perhaps “M. M.” thinks that reason is begging the question. Well, take the other side. Any human being who is expanding has an insatiable desire for new experience, new knowledge. That is the healthiest instinct in mankind. Such a person would naturally fret at the inability to be intimate with a new acquaintance who interests him. That feeling would not be wicked; it would be right, by any sane standard.
Forgive the blatant obviousness of all this. But I’m bent on carrying through the discussion to the end. Granted, then, that our hero’s feeling is not intrinsically wicked—what then? He faces a dilemma. Either he must run the risk of a new love affair, or—and this, I think, escaped “M. M.”—present conditions must be changed. If he has a new love affair, he is at the least violating the Victorian lady’s conventional morality, which says that every man must love not more than one woman as long as that woman lives. We come then to an extremely vital problem. On the one hand, is conventional morality desirable? On the other, can present conditions be so changed as to eliminate the danger? The solution of that problem is of great importance to anyone interested in human beings. If it can’t be solved, it means that the man or woman must quench a right and healthy instinct along whichever line he or she chooses. And that’s a bit of pessimism which a warm-hearted man like H. G. Wells doesn’t want to accept without further investigation. That’s the reason he wrote The Passionate Friends. He is engaged in the noble endeavor to do something at least toward freeing the great spirit of mankind from the network in which it is enmeshed. The history of that struggle is the history of human progress.
Perhaps it isn’t necessary further to defend Mr. Wells for the sort of novels he writes. But I’d like to offer an illustration of the difference between Wells and the old-fashioned novelist. The old writer started with the conviction that certain laws and fundamental conditions were forever fixed, and must limit the destinies of his characters. He then works out his little story according to rules, and gets his effect by arousing in us pity for the misfortunes, hatred for the sins, and joy for the virtuous triumphs of his people. The tendency of the whole was to show us once more what the eternal verities were—and the result was highly “moral.” Every character was an object lesson. Wells, on the other hand, is not a preacher, but a scientist. He starts with the conviction that, through lack of impartial investigation, we don’t really know what the eternal verities are, or what power can be derived from them. His attitude is as far from the old writers’ as is Mme. Curie’s from the alchemists’. He attempts to free his mind from every prejudice. Then he begins his experiment, puts his characters in their retort under “controlled conditions,” and watches what happens. What his characters do corresponds to fact as well as his trained mind can make it. The result may be negative or positive—but at least it is true, and, like all truth, it is really valuable.
“M. M.” prejudges the case when she talks about denial, and building up character, and loyalty, and unselfishness. These things may demand her conclusion, and again they may not. At best they are means to an end. She may be right. But Wells is going ahead to find out. He isn’t arguing for anything. We may be denying something we ought to have; we may be building the wrong kind of character; we may be loyal to a false principle; we may be unselfish with evil result. But if we cease to becloud the issue, and watch carefully the experiment of Mr. Wells and his followers, we shall know more about it than we do.
And, for a general toning of her mind, I should like to ask “M. M.” to read The Death of Eve, by William Vaughn Moody, to pay particular attention to the majestic song of Eve in the garden, and after she has felt the tremendous impulse of that line—
Whoso denyeth aught, let him depart from here
to turn back to her words about denial, and see whether she still thinks denial is always synonymous with strength.