Unknown's avatar

Separation and single parenting: the tribulations of Henry Lawson’s wife

by


Image 20170403 19452 d5qf1n
Henry Lawson in 1915.
State Library of New South Wales, CC BY

Kerrie Davies, UNSW

Henry Lawson is one of Australia’s best-known poets. His married life, documented in Kerrie Davies’ newly published A Wife’s Heart: the untold story of Bertha and Henry Lawson, was tumultuous. Bertha and Henry were married in 1896 and had two children, Bartha and Jim. In an April 1903 affidavit, discussed in the following edited extract, Bertha alleged that Henry was habitually drunk and cruel. They received judicial separation on June 4 of the same year. The Conversation

Written from Bertha’s lodging, 397½ Dowling Street, Moore Park, dated Monday, 15 June 1903:

Harry,

Your letter has just come.

Your papers are not here. I looked for them before. There are also a good many of my private letters and papers missing, and I thought they may be amongst your things. Re the children. I will not consent to let them go. Not through any paltry feelings of revenge, but as a matter of duty. You see, you left me, with these two little children. I was turned into the world, with 1/6 and not a shelter or food for them. I had to pawn my wedding ring to pay for a room. And then had to leave the little children shut up in the room, while I sought for work. And when I got work to do I had to leave them all day, rush home to give them their meals. And back to work again. And mind you, I was suffering torture all the time with toothache, and had to tramp the cold wet streets all day, knowing unless I earnt some money that day the children would go hungry to bed. (I was a fortnight working before Robertson gave Miss [Rose] Scott that money.) I had no money to pay a dentist. (I wrote to you at P.A. Hospital telling you, you were forcing me to place the children in the Benevolent Asylum and you took no notice of the letter.) I went to the Dental Hospital and had a tooth extracted. They have broken part of the jaw bone. And I go into hospital on Wednesday and go under an operation to have the dead bone removed. The children will be well looked after. While I am away I have to pay a pound where they are going. So I trust you will endeavour to send Mr Henderson some more again this week. You know my condition and I am certainly not fit at the present moment to struggle for a living.

As far as the case goes, the sooner it is over the better. You alone have forced this step. God alone knows how often I have forgiven you and how hard I struggled for you. And how have you treated me. Harry there is no power on the earth will ever reunite us. You are dead to me as far as affection goes. The suffering I have been through lately has killed any thought of feeling I may have had for you.

When you have proved yourself a better man and not a low drunkard you shall see your children as often as you like. Until then, I will not let you see them. They have nearly forgotten the home scenes when you were drinking – and I will not let them see you drinking again. I train them to have the same love for you as they have for me. And if baby’s prayers are heard in heaven, you should surely be different, to what you have been. They will have to decide the right and wrong between us, when they are old enough to understand. I think you are very cruel to make the statements you do about me. You know Harry as well I do they are absolutely false. Why don’t you be a man. And if you want to talk to people of your troubles, tell them drink is the sole cause. Do not shield yourself behind a woman. Mr Henderson cannot influence me one way or another, nor any one else. You had your chance to sign a mutual separation and you would not do it. I dread the court case and publicity more than you do. Still I will not draw back again. And I only wish it was settled and over today. I am so weary of struggling against pain and sorrow that I do not give a tinker’s curse for anything – or anybody.

Bertha.


UQP

*

Facts drift like the pollen on Dowling Street the day I visit. The terraces are rusted and dusted by the constant traffic driving past. One of them is undergoing renovation; through an open door you can see new floorboards, a glossy fireplace and rickety steps to the second floor.

Outside number 397, two plane trees have grown as tall as the terrace, and the balcony has been walled in with glass. Next door, the crucial fraction – 397½ – is written on the window above the door.

The terrace Bertha brought the children to is now painted an undercoat pink, with a green corrugated-iron balcony, windowed-in like its neighbour. Plants entwine the security bars, and large council garbage bins blight the entrance. Upstairs the tree branches are reflected in the windowpanes. It was from inside here, beyond today’s sky-blue front door, that Bertha wrote an angry letter to Henry about having to pawn her wedding ring and leave the children shut up in her room while she looked for work. She warned of more proceedings, perhaps to continue to full dissolution of marriage.

Their daughter, Barta, later wrote that her mother was sometimes overly dramatic. Bertha’s own mother lived in Sydney – surely that was an alternative to leaving them alone, or threatening to place them in the asylum? And what about her sister, Hilda?

But then conjecturing comes up against solid fact: You know my condition. Perhaps Bertha wasn’t thinking at all about anything except survival.

I will not draw back again.

*

Still the facts keep drifting. In April 1903, the same month she filed her affidavit alleging cruelty and drunkenness, Bertha had written to Henry on the 23rd, saying that unless he sent money she would be forced to place the children “in the Benevolent Asylum … I don’t care about myself, but I cannot see my children starve … I think it is most dreadfully cruel for any Mother, to have to part with her children let alone be placed in the position that I am in.” Initially it reads solely as financial but, having had two children, she must surely have suspected the significance of the missed periods, the swollen breasts, the heightened sense of smell that transforms the slightest scent into a stench. Or, perhaps, she tried to ignore them. There is no clear mention of a new baby in the letters until June.

The Benevolent Asylum’s admissions and discharge ledger is an album of life stories, like this one on Wednesday, April 5 1903: “Father Frederick sent to Gaol for four months for neglecting to support. Mother dead. Children committed by Newtown Police Court.” It’s fearful to look, then a relief to find that young Barta and Jim Lawson weren’t there then.

Statue of Lawson by George Lambert in the Royal Botanic Garden Sydney, dedicated in 1931.

In July, Bertha was clearer still: “I am forced to write to you. I do not think you realize my position. I will be laid up either the end of October or first week in November … There is the nurse to engage, and all my sewing to do, you know I have not any baby clothes.”

Counting nine months back to summer from her due date – it was February, and they were still living in Manly when the Critic article gossiped that Mrs Lawson and Henry were sighted holding hands as they strolled around the beach cliffs. She must have conceived during this brief reunion. Now she warned Henry: “I have to solely depend on you for an existance [sic]…I cannot walk far or stand long … You promised I should have every comfort. I am not asking you for that but for bare necessary’s”.

Bertha might have blanched at food, but put her upset tummy down to stress. Realising that she was with child could have finally driven her to the lawyers, to pin down an agreement for continual support. But there was no mention of pregnancy enhancing her vulnerability in the April affidavit.

The baby is coming. The father is not. What do you do? Do you to try to reconcile again for the baby’s sake? Or is it too late?

Too late.

*

Each word Bertha wrote feels like a clue: “I think considering what Dr Brennand told you and after all your promises, it is most cruel that I should suffer all that agony again. If it were not for the sake of Jim and Bertha, I should not go through with it.”

Did she mean that she would not go through with having the baby? Abortion was an open but illegal secret, especially in the bohemian world that Henry and Bertha inhabited. In a leather-bound report, Royal Commission on the Decline of the Birth-Rate and the Mortality of Infants in New South Wales, published in 1904, a witness told the commission he had treated 150 women suffering from “the effects of abortion” at his hospital. Hannah Thornburn had died only the previous year, three days after she had collapsed from a feverish infection.

Despite his prominent Macquarie Street practice, Bertha’s doctor, Henry Wolverine Brennand, was not one of the doctors, midwives, pharmacists, undertakers or religious witnesses who gave evidence to the royal commission that investigated the prevalence of abortion and contraceptive practices among women in New South Wales. These women and their midwives were, predictably, being blamed for the declining birth rate despite many being in Bertha’s position, where they were reluctantly increasing it.

Bertha wrote to Henry of her pregnancy: “it is not a very cheerful prospect to look forward to, knowing as you know well, I will very likely die.” She sounds like she is being dramatic again, but pregnancy complications were dramatic in 1903.

Bertha may have given birth with a midwife at home, or at Crown Street Women’s Hospital. Or she may have been helped by the Benevolent Society of New South Wales, which took in not only children but also destitute and single mothers at their “lying in” wards. On today’s flickering microfilm, those emotional lives are again compressed into crisp factlets, such as: “Single. Pregnant. Alleged father. Emergency. Married. Deserted.’”

The only thing certain is that Bertha and Henry’s last baby was stillborn sometime in late 1903. A nurse would have certified the stillbirth, and no other notification was required. This lack of birth or death registration was raised at the Royal Commission on the Decline of the Birth-Rate and the Mortality of Infants in New South Wales, because of its potential to conceal infanticide and midwifery negligence.

Bertha confirmed: “the little one that we lost was born and the sad time came of our parting. For sorrow had come to us, and difficulties.”

The sorrow.

A Wife’s Heart: The Untold Story of Bertha and Henry Lawson by Kerrie Davies is published by UQP. It will be launched in Sydney by Jane Caro at Berkelouw Books, Paddington, on Wednesday, April 5. Kerrie will also be appearing at the National Folk Festival on Friday, April 14.

Kerrie Davies, Lecturer, School of the Arts & Media, UNSW

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Unknown's avatar

In today’s anti-immigrant rhetoric, echoes of Virgil’s ‘Aeneid’

by


Image 20170319 6139 xlg6tn
Federico Barocci’s 1598 painting ‘Aeneas’ Flight from Troy.‘
Wikimedia Commons

Peter E. Knox, Case Western Reserve University

Boatloads of refugees put ashore in Italy after a wearying journey at sea; the city they adored, Troy, now a smoking ruin after 10 years of a desperate war; many loved ones dead from the conflict, with others lost along the way, victims of violence, storms or age. The Conversation

Put this way, the story of the “Aeneid,” Virgil’s epic masterpiece, has an inescapably contemporary ring. Today, in the wake of Middle Eastern wars, millions have fled the region, desperate for a new place to call home. Meanwhile, anti-immigrant politicians – Marine Le Pen, Geert Wilders and Donald Trump, to name a few – have jumped on the confusion and chaos, only to see their own fortunes rise.

In some ways, it’s not possible to read the same great poem twice. Time and circumstance will always reconfigure its meaning. As the United States bars its gates to newcomers, the “Aeneid” – usually thought of as a tale of epic heroism – reads now as a parable of exile, immigration and the self-defeating disaster of irrational prejudice.

‘All we ask is a modest resting place’

Virgil’s epic poem, written between 29 and 19 B.C., is the story of a band of men, women and children who survived the Greek siege of Troy (in modern-day Turkey) – when “Fate compelled the worlds of Europe and Asia to clash in war.” Aeneas, a man “made a refugee by fate,” leads them on their journey to Italy, where they’ve been promised a home.

The first half of the poem describes the group’s wanderings across the Mediterranean, the losses they suffered along the way and the weariness that, at times, leads some of them – Aeneas included – to think of abandoning the journey.

“How many reefs, how many sea-miles more must we cross! Heart-weary as we are,” cry the Trojan women in a moment of despair. But Aeneas and the Trojans do eventually reach Italy: They land at the mouth of the Tiber River, immigrants looking to join the people of this foreign land.

Latinus, the king of this country, has been given a sign by the gods to welcome the newcomers:

      Strangers will come, and come to be your sons 
      and their lifeblood will lift our name to the stars.

In other words, the gods proclaim that the arrival of new blood will be a good thing for society – a view held by many today.

After the Trojans arrive, they appeal to Latinus, describing their harrowing journey: 

                        Escaping that flood
    and sailing here over many barren seas, 
    now all we ask is a modest resting place 
    for our fathers’ gods, safe haven on your shores, 
    water and fresh air that’s free for all to breathe

Latinus recognizes that these are the newcomers foretold by the god and welcomes Aeneas “as ours.”

But Latinus’ open-door immigration policy soon meets resistance – a resistance that Virgil portrays as madness. Latinus pays a political price when his people, the Latins, turn against the immigrants, a development seen in many nations today, perhaps most notably in Angela Merkel’s Germany.

The thrall of racial hatred

How does an ancient poet depict the onset of madness?

In the “Aeneid,” the agent is Juno, queen of the Olympian gods. She has always hated the Trojans as much as she cherishes the Latins. Juno means to stir up war between them, so she sends one of the Furies, the goddesses of vengeance, to fill the mind of Latinus’ wife with thoughts of ethnic purity and sexual propriety.

These thoughts have consequences, because Latinus is now planning to marry their daughter to Aeneas – “a lying pirate,” as the queen starts to call him. Furthermore, she was supposed to marry a local prince named Turnus – his “blood kin,” as the queen reminds Latinus.

Turnus, too, succumbs to racial hatred. At first he’s entirely nonchalant about the arrival of Aeneas and the Trojans. But driven mad by Juno’s accomplice, he turns to violence to drive them out and keep the king’s daughter out of the hands of “that Phrygian eunuch” (a castrated man).

A pointless war ensues between the Trojan refugees and the Latins who had initially welcomed them into their land.

In one scene, Aeneas’ son accidentally kills a pet deer, and the locals, assuming malicious intent, form a vigilante group to exact revenge. What motivates this assumption is the more deeply rooted fear of the Latin population: Acceptance of these immigrants will result in the loss of their native Latin identity.

The tensions at play – sexual fears, fear of violence, hateful rhetoric – are unfortunately being repeated today, whether it’s fear of immigrants’ rapes in Sweden or the growth of anti-Muslim organizations in the United States.

In Virgil’s telling, this fear can only be resolved by the act of a god. In the end, it is Jupiter, the king of the gods, who gives his divine guarantee that the Trojans will be assimilated: 

    Mingling in stock alone, the Trojans will subside. 
    And I will add the rites and the forms of worship, 
    And make them Latins all, who speak one Latin tongue.

But it’s easier for a god to imagine resolution than it is for mortals, and for Aeneas, resolution comes at a price. He kills Turnus at the end of the poem. But he loses something of his humanity in the process.

Peter E. Knox, Eric and Jane Nord Family Professor, Case Western Reserve University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Unknown's avatar

Not My Review: When Dimple Met Rishi, by Sandhya Menon

by

Unknown's avatar

Why you don’t need to write much to be the world’s bestselling author

by


Image 20170329 22789 yi2qf2

Shutterstock

James O’Sullivan, University of Sheffield

When we speak of bestsellers, we’re often referring to books that have sold fewer copies than one might think. By the estimation of award-winning author Donal Ryan, there are times when 300 sales might be enough to make a chart topper – the bestseller mantle tends to have more promotional than monetary value. Of course there are the literary blockbusters — titles like Harry Potter and The Da Vinci Code — books that ship hundreds of millions of copies. But combine the sales of JK Rowling and Dan Brown, even throw in John Grisham, and you’re still lagging behind the sales figures of the world’s true bestselling author — James Patterson. The Conversation

According to his publisher, Patterson has written no fewer than 114 New York Times bestsellers. His total bibliography is upwards of 150. He is, without doubt, one of the most prodigious literary figures that the world has ever seen.

Patterson’s success is unusual, in that he isn’t quite a household name; rather, he is a master of the airport novel, an author whose success has largely been achieved as a writer of commuter fiction. Patterson divides opinion: Stephen King describes his work as “terrible”, reviewers have deemed it “subliterate”; yet in 2015 he received the National Book Foundation’s Literarian Award for his philanthropic efforts in encouraging Americans to read.

Patterson’s prodigious output is accomplished through the use of collaborators: co-authors offered a chance to make their name under the tutelage of the world’s most commercially successful author. He is engagingly transparent about his process: co-authors work from a narrative framework provided by Patterson, who either then re-writes what they come up with or provides notes on bi-weekly drafts. The narrative frameworks he provides emerge from his understanding of the literary market, informed by his years of experience as an advertising executive. He has been described as a co-publisher, more of a brand than a writer. This is a distinction worth exploring, because it is Patterson’s name that looms largest on his covers.

Digital detectives

Using digital methods, if sufficient samples are available, the extent to which someone actively contributes to the actual words of a text can be tested. The field is called stylometry, and it has been previously used in author attribution studies involving popular figures like Harper Lee and JK Rowling.

A colleague and I applied stylometric methods to the work of Patterson in order to form an impression of how much he contributes to the writing of his books in terms of the actual words used. The results of the study show that, in each of the collaborative novels (we checked all where there was a relevant sample to test against – where the co-author had written individual texts), the dominant style is that of Patterson’s co-authors. This is quantitative evidence that, when collaborating with a junior party, Patterson’s contributions to the literary process are more concerned with plot than style. This isn’t a “gotcha!” moment: Patterson has always given the impression that he’s more about the plot. But it is confirmation that the world’s bestselling author may not principally be a writer.

At a superficial level, this tells us something about Patterson’s practices, how it is that he has managed to sustain such prolific output. But it also challenges notions of authorship — what is the significance of Patterson’s name on a dust-jacket? Is it mainly an endorsement, a valuable moniker which generates sales? Or is he properly seen as an author, just one who is attracted to the possibilities of narrative structure over those of language?

Patterson’s work might contain little to provoke the consideration of literary critics, but his restoration of the novel’s popular traditions — his approach to literary capitalism as both author and corporation, creator and trademark – gives us cause to query our own hierarchies relating to story and expression. After all, the novel’s 18th century beginnings are embedded in commercialism. Critics tend to value style over structure, yet the public are clearly drawn towards the latter. Is plot what makes an author, and style an artist?

All about story

The intention here is not to revive the tired debate between “high” and “low” art. Structure is rich in creative potential, and plot was essential to the novel long before movements like high modernism sought to subvert the popular by privileging style. At the same time, the role of the critic, and indeed, the reader, is to appreciate, interpret, and communicate that which is hidden in the nuances of artistic expression. One is unlikely to find an abundance of such nuances in a text that is all plot.

One could point to the film and music industries, where collaboration is the norm, in defence of Patterson’s approach. Most creative practices, certainly those that have been commodified, involve interaction with some form of producer or director. In the literary world, publishers and editors guide a manuscript before turning it into something tangible for dissemination. Patterson might be seen as a literary director, or even a producer, emulating the practices of contemporary ghostwriters or predecessors like Dumas, though this is something of an unfair comparison, considering Patterson’s 19th-century French counterpart was widely suspected of outright plagiarism, described as “only a myth”.

Patterson is all about story. He has turned the instruments of late capitalism to the task of commodifying storytelling. He is far from the first author to attempt such a commodification: King, Rowling, Stephenie Meyer and many other popular writers have privileged story over style. But Patterson is a curious figure among his peers, and our research suggests that “author” in its widely accepted sense isn’t always the most appropriate term for his role within the writing process.

James O’Sullivan, Digital Humanities Research Associate, University of Sheffield

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Unknown's avatar

Not My Review: On Pastoring, by H. B. Charles

by

The link below is to a book review of, ‘On Pastoring,’ by H. B. Charles.

For more visit:
https://www.9marks.org/review/book-review-on-pastoring-by-h-b-charles/

Unknown's avatar

Not My Review: Practicing the Power – Welcoming the Gifts of the Holy Spirit in Your Life, by Sam Storms

by

The link below is to a book review of ‘Practicing the Power – Welcoming the Gifts of the Holy Spirit in Your Life,’ by Sam Storms.

For more visit:
https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/book-review-practicing-power-sam-storms

Unknown's avatar

Productivity and Audiobooks

by

The link below is to an article that looks at what is driving the audiobook explosion.

For more visit:
https://qz.com/924075/audiobook-readers-obsessed-with-multitasking-are-driving-americas-biggest-new-reading-trend/

Unknown's avatar

Colin Dexter 1930-2017: Morse novels a clue to the depth of writer’s intellect

by


Image 20170323 3520 hiu569

Martin Pettitt, CC BY-SA

Sarah Olive, University of York

Colin Dexter’s death at the age of 86 has revived the debate about “serious” versus “genre” novelists. Newspaper tributes rightly referred to the creator of Inspector Morse as a “crime writer” – and so he was. But the sophistication of his novels, like those of John le Carre or Patrick O’Brien, mounts a strong argument for the proposition that pigeonholing their work simply as “detective” or “spy” or “historical” fiction is to diminish their value. The Conversation

Dexter’s writing draws frequently on literary and other arts – and it should be particularly valued for its complex and nuanced representations of the merits and pitfalls of education and high culture.

First published during the Thatcher years, Dexter’s novels speak with renewed force to my concerns about recent negative representations of intellect, education and the academy in media and society. In the past year alone, academics in the UK and US, for example, have been painted as threateningly left-wing, liberal (in the US), silly, idiotic, and irrational.

They’ve been accused of trampling on freedom of speech and, by the US education secretary Betsy de Vos, of brainwashing students – as well as epitomising self-righteousness and entitlement.

Dreaming spires

Dexter’s Oxford, which is the backdrop for Morse’s adventures, is the most enduring fictional representation of a UK university – perhaps any UK educational institution. It includes depictions of town as well as gown, and balances an idyllic surface by plumbing the murky depths of elitism and corruption.

In his own words, Dexter created Morse because of his perception that in 1970s British readers and viewers were “fed up” of American hard-boiled crime fiction – “people running up and down corridors” – and endless “car chases”, saying: “What we want is a bit more brains and a bit less brawn.” The actor Kevin Whately, who played Morse’s sergeant Robbie Lewis, has spoken of Dexter’s obsession with “alpha-brains” – the superior intellect with which he imbued his detective protagonist.

Morse never graduated from his Oxford undergraduate degree, but is ferociously agile at crosswords and passionate about opera. His uncertified intelligence in the novels is pivotal to his success as a detective – Morse has the knowledge and ability to match the Oxford dons and high-flying students he encounters (often finishing off quotations for them, to their surprise and chagrin). Meanwhile his outsider status allows him to investigate unhampered by the old boys’ network.

Although Dexter’s writing celebrates lively intellects and culture vultures, with or without the trappings of academic qualifications or wholly rarefied lifestyles, it also paints Morse as a bit of an intellectual snob himself, despite facing prejudice from the Oxford establishment that he failed to join when he dropped out of university. Dexter also slyly celebrates Lewis’s vast, up-to-date knowledge of popular culture, which invaluably complements his boss’s academic and cultural sophistication when it comes to solving puzzles.

Formative influences

Dexter’s ability to convincingly represent different perspectives on intellect and education arguably stems not just from his life experiences but, more importantly, his own attitudes towards them. Dexter grew up in the East Midlands and declared that his family owned only three books. He and his brother trained to be Classics and English teachers. As a result – and unlike Shakespeare, whom he conventionally termed “the greatest writer in English” – Dexter could certainly not be accused of having “small Latin and less Greek”. Meanwhile Dexter once described his brother as becoming a talented pianist and violist, with a penchant for Wagner – a trait instantly recognisable in Morse.

In a late 2015 interview with Susan Smith, a postgraduate researcher at the University of Birmingham, he paid tribute to his school English teacher – the aptly-named Mr Sharp – who made it his mission to guide the teenage Dexter through his “ignorance of English literature” and the entire canon of Thomas Hardy.

Dexter was particularly fond of the teaching tradition of learning passages of poetry and phrases from drama by heart. He used them consciously and unconsciously in writing and apparently penned them from memory, rather than searching for his allusions in books.

//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

He also emphasised the difficulty readers today face in getting Shakespeare’s historical references and believed that the sounds of Shakespearean lines could be more accessibly pleasurable and valuable than what they actually meant. If this was a veiled attack on test-driven education, it is an interesting one given Dexter’s work for the University of Oxford’s local exam board, a body which designed and awarded vocational qualifications. Meanwhile, the emphasis on the sound of words is poignant given that the onset of deafness was the impetus for this first career move away from teaching.

Killing off experts

The “death of the expert” has often been announced in recent months, and alongside it a more widespread anti-intellectualism bemoaned. Dexter’s whodunnits and their descendants are saturated not just with erudite characters with wide-ranging specialisms, high cultural works and events (opera, classical music, literary festivals). They also exhibit an everyday joy in mental exercise given Morse’s fondness for crosswords, anagrams, and arithmetic.

Indeed, his works constitute opportunities for readers’ and viewers’ mental puzzling, including spotting Dexter in his Hitchcock-style cameos as well as his mischievous deliberate errors and made up quotations. Their popularity, still airing in prime-time slots on various, commercial, free-to-air channels, after over half a century, goes someway towards counterbalancing moral panic about alleged social apathy – even hostility – to intellect, education and the academy.

Sarah Olive, Lecturer, English in Education, University of York

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Unknown's avatar

What is fiction good for in a post-truth world?

by


Image 20170320 9140 50hycz

Johanna Altmann / Shutterstock.com

Rafe McGregor, University of York

Ever since Plato equated poetry with falsehood in the fourth century BC, the value of fiction has been in doubt. No convincing case for its value has since been made, beyond the obvious pleasures experienced by readers and audiences. The Conversation

Today, fiction in the form of narratives – or, more simply, stories – permeates almost every aspect of our culture, from entertainment to law, medicine, and identity. We are also in the age of post-truth politics, where telling a demonstrably false story can be more compelling than telling the truth. Could overexposure to fiction account for the devaluation of truth that dominated the recent presidential elections, where both candidates lied and the most extravagant liar won?

Philosophers, critics, and artists have long attempted to offset the potential dangers of fiction by proposing various links between the experience of fiction and competing conceptions of truth. The tradition of defending fiction was founded by Aristotle and includes Horace, Sir Philip Sidney, Dr Johnson, and Matthew Arnold.

Since the contribution of Friedrich Schiller at the end of 18th century, the theory has been known as aesthetic education. Such theorists argue that art provides an indirect but integral education in ethics, a moral education by aesthetic means. Contemporary advocates include Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak and Martha Nussbaum. Of course, claims about the psychological and behavioural benefits of engaging with sophisticated and popular fictions vary wildly in strength.

What real, concrete value?
Thomas Bethge/Shutterstock.com

Empirical evidence

The question of whether the ubiquity of narratives has devalued truth or enhanced morality prompts a further question: what exactly happens to us when we read books or watch films? There is a paucity of empirical evidence in this field.

The most frequently-quoted study on the topic was published by psychologists Evan Kidd and Emanuele Castano in 2013. They conducted five different experiments on samples of between 72 and 356 participants, each of which was divided into two groups. One read short passages of literary fiction (understood as being complex or challenging) and the other short passages of nonfiction or popular fiction.

The results indicated that participants who had read the literary fiction performed significantly better on a theory of mind test – which measures the ability to understand the mental states of others, a precondition of empathy – than those who had read either nonfiction or popular fiction.

Sounds like it backs up the aesthetic education theory, right? But the limitations of the study have been widely acknowledged, and its validity in this case is also doubtful. Literary narratives are, like their theatrical and cinematic counterparts, designed to be experienced as a whole. We cannot assume that the benefits of the literary experience will simply be the sum of the experiences of its parts. The same objection applies to the failed attempts to replicate Kidd and Castano’s findings in 2016.

Does fictional violence engender real violence?
breakermaximus / Shutterstock.com

If the evidence for the effects of engaging with fiction is so limited in quantity and quality, it seems prudent to seek an answer from a comparable field in which there has been more research. The obvious example is the relation between video-game violence and aggression. Video-games are designed to entertain and may or may not cause aggression in players; fictions are designed for the same purpose and may devalue truth, enhance morality, or have no secondary effect at all.

In a multiple analysis published in 1998, Karen Dill and Jody Dill claimed that there was a link between exposure to video-game violence and aggression, but advised caution on the basis of the limited quantity and quality of studies published.

Then, in a multiple analysis published 25 years later, Malte Elson and Christopher Ferguson lamented both the continued lack of standardisation and the frequency with which academics and others made controversial claims that were not supported by the data. They found that the evidence for a causal link between video-games and aggression was at best inconclusive.

Given that the research in the video-game field has been extensive, and unearthed no answers, it is hardly surprising that so little is known about the effects of experiencing fiction.

Counterfactual value

Fiction is nonetheless valuable in at least one way: its falsehood. In representing undisguised untruth, fictions present what psychologists call counterfactual thinking and philosophers call possible worlds.

In watching Amazon’s The Man in the High Castle, we experience a representation of what a world in which Germany had created the atomic bomb before America would look and sound like. Aside from its entertainment value in engaging audiences on sensory, imaginative, and emotional levels, the series provides a detailed example of how an America run by right-wing extremists might have looked and might look like in the future. In doing so, it highlights the significance of avoiding that possible future.

The truth value of fiction is in the various ways in which it enlightens by deviating from the truth. Undisguised fictions will continue to be of value, no matter how many fictions presidential candidates disguise as facts.

Rafe McGregor, Associate Lecturer, University of York

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Unknown's avatar

Not My Review: On Liberty, by John Stuart Mill (1859)

by

The link below is to a book review of ‘On Liberty,’ by John Stuart Mill.

For more visit:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/apr/03/john-stuart-mill-on-liberty-100-best-nonfiction-books-review-robert-mccrum