THE MODERN NOVEL

Evening Post, Volume CXVII, Issue 23, 27 January 1934, Page 18

THE MODERN NOVEL

A DEAN'S STRICTURES

Dr. Alington,. Dean of Durham, recently defended the Victorian eraUnd the institution of . marriage and attacked the modern "intellectual" -novel; He was giving, at Durham University, the annual lecture .on "itappiuess and Success,. .for which'provision was made by the late Sir Alfred Fripp, Previous lecturers have been Mr. Baldwin and Lord Baden-Pow.ell. .'

D/- Alingtori said he considered the Victorian age was right in its belief that happiness and success wore'desirable and attainable things, though jt might have taken too. vulgar a view, of both of them and been too easily satisfied with its attempts to' reach them. Remarking that they could, not acquiesce in the claim that happiness and success were: both matters very much alike, he said that to' do so'would be to fall into the lamentable' view of human life which permeated, most Of the modern' "intellectual" novels. They delighted in. showing a man as a • vicitim of circumstances, and, however brilliant their portrayal o£ those circumstances might be, and often was, the total result was devitalising in the extreme. He, did not expect a. novel to be a theological treatise. It might be doubted whether. 'Robert Elsmere' would arouse , ■widespread interest today, but it was surely, not too much, to ask. that the problem it raised should occasionally be considered in the light of .what Christianity 'had. taught the world. ' ' ' ~. "We do not expect.the^modern novelist *to accept the Christian doctrine of marriage,l' said Dr.: Alington. "If he did, his output' would be lla'mentably, restricted, but' he; has" presumably not entirely outgrown 'the, teachings of the.Catechism, that.,it-.is bur duty to treat other.people'as wew'ouia have "them, treat' us, and; it .would be refreshing to find some'such consideration occasionally present in the 'minds of his distracted heroes arid heroine's. We do not'expect him to be respectful to"offlcial.religion, though he need not load the dice against it; but wo do'deplore' those continual pictures of supposedly ordinary people' who. appear never to have heard of several of the Ten Commandments, and assume .that there ■is■ no such thing as the Divine law of conduct. They have driven some of the most respectable >of us to detective stories where, if "one.is not on the side of the angels, one is at least on the side of the police." ,