GROWTH OF THE EROTIC NOVEL.

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume XLIX, Issue 12634, 23 October 1905, Page 8

GROWTH OF THE EROTIC NOVEL.

Are w© getting back to the licentiousness of morals and manners which characterised the epoch of the Restoration? It would seem so, from an article which •appears in the " Monthly Review " from tho pen of a professional critic, whose duties seem to be chiefly in the examination of works of fiction. One of 87 selected novels published within the kst three years and a half, and enjoying a considerable vogue, he finds that " 17 adopt the attitude of sneering at matrimony as a thing ' played out'; 11 raise upon a pinnacle (imaginary co-respon-dents in imaginary divorce cases; 22 practically advocate that married men shall be allowed to keep mistresses openly ; seven hold up to ridicule the woman AVho is faithful to her husband ; and 23 describe seduction as openly as it can be described in a book that is not to be ostracised by the bookstalls." Thus " bad begins, but worse remains behind) ; for books of this kind—or, at any naite, the worst of them —emanate —from whom is it to be supposed ? From female writers! An Aphra Behn is no longer an isolated phenomenon among novelsists; she is the type of a large class, and this, unhappily, at a time when everybody has learned to read, but when only a few take the trouble to discriminate between an. impure and a pure work of fiction. That women should be engaged in poisoning the springs_of our social and domestic life, in polluting the minds of young people of their own sex, and in breaking down those barriers between right and wrong which it is their sacred duty, and should be one of their proudest privileges, to guard and defend, is surely one 'of the most alarming signs of the time. And the consequences of this betrayal of their trust must recoil ; upon themselves with deadly power and-terrible effect; for with the demoralisation of the sex will come its "deposition from his 'high place, as an examplar of the virtues which keep society sweet and wholesome, and the degradation of women to the level of the hetairae in ancient Greece, or to that of the harlots who flaunted their vices witlh shameless ostentation in the courts of Louis XIV. of France and of Charles 11. of England.