The Presentation Op Morality in the Novels of Kingsley
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THE PRESENTATION OP MORALITY IN THE NOVELS OF KINGSLEY AMIS Michael Laine B.A., McGill University, 1956 B.A., University of Oxford, 1958 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS in the Department of English We accept this thesis as conforming to the required standard THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA April, 1962 In presenting this thesis in partial fulfilment of the requirements for an advanced degree at the University of British Columbia, I agree that the Library shall make it freely available for reference and study. I further agree that permission for extensive copying of this thesis for scholarly purposes may be granted by the Head of my Department or by his representatives. It is understood that copying or publication of this thesis for financial gain shall not be allowed without my written permission. Department of £ <h$)/iX. The University of British Columbia, Vancouver 8, Canada. Date CL /C /ICQ. ABSTRACT One thesis examines the novels of the young British writer, Kingsley Amis, and attempts to assess his contribution to the modern novel in terms of the moral code which he presents and in terms of his success in presenting it. Chapter One dissociates Amis from the myth of the "Angry Young Men" and shows that he himself will not be placed in any movement. The chapter goes on to discuss his position as a satirist and illustrates his requirement that satire have a moral basis. At this point certain parallels with the work of Fielding are discussed. The chapter shows how much the moral position depends upon seeing Amis's heroes as decent, and tentatively defines decency as it appears to him. Chapter Two shows how much the hero of each novel conforms to the definition of decency and examines his behaviour in order to establish the code that he actually follows. The development of the hero is discussed, as is the extent to which Amis allows him to exceed the limits of decency. The chapter concludes by suggesting that Amis cannot present any ultimate solution to the problem of how the decent man is to find a place in society and maintain loyalty to his code. Amis's increased understanding of the influence of love is discussed and the chapter iii suggests that any future development will be dependent upon the acknowledgement of this aspect of human relations. Chapter Three deals with the effectiveness of Amis's technique and argues that, although the comic technique aids in the presentation of the hero as 1'homme moyen sensuel. flat language and the repetition of certain devices distracts the reader from the complexities of the moral problems faced by Amis's heroes. Chapter Pour concludes the thesis by reassessing the moral position and the technique used in presenting it. It suggests that Amis has a tenable moral position, but that he does not succeed in presenting it to the reader in such a way that it can be seen to be of value as it applies to the way that men like his heroes can operate within their society. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT The writer wishes to express his appreciation to Dr. William Hall and Dr. Ian Ross for their suggestions during the preparation of this thesis. TABLE OF CONTENTS I Kingsley Amis: Decency and Morality 1 II The Hero and the Moral Code 19 III Amis's Technique: Its Effectiveness and Limitations 46 IV Conclusion 57 Footnotes 67 Bibliography 75 CHAPTER I Kingsley Amis: Decency and Morality For the last few years, the novels of Kingsley Amis have been accepted as representative of the work of certain young British writers, loosely described by an enthusiastic press as the "Angry Young Men." But the acceptance of the popular myth that Amis is a member of any literary movement or that the "Angry Young Men" can be considered as a homo• geneous literary movement will ultimately distract a reader from whatever individual contribution Amis has to make. Since Amis, more than any other of these writers, has attempted both to produce a consistent moral position and to illustrate the reactions of some young Englishmen to the world they are forced to live in, it is profitable to isolate and to inspect this moral position as it is pre• sented in his novels. Nevertheless, some background of the myth of the "Angry Young Men" is useful in order to place it in perspective. Kenneth Tynan, who seems to accept the myth as fact, describes the origin of the "Angry Young Men." Referring to the first performance of John Osborne's play, Look Back In Anger, he says: It all came to a head one May evening in 1956 at the Royal Court Theatre in Sloane Square. There had of 2 course been plenty of preliminary rumbles. A group of young British writers had recently published a series of picaresque novels featuring a new sort of hero — a lower class intellectual with a ribald sense of humour, a robust taste for beer and sex and an attitude of villainous irreverence towards the established order.1 Tynan suggests that the purposes of these "young British writers" are largely negative and that they represent a generation which has nothing to fight for. He sees them as subject to apathy, derisive detachment or a rage impelled by the consciousness that their society has no equipment to prevent the chaos that imperils it. In this he feels that the "Angry Young Men" typify the spirit of their age: Somebody, in short, had to say that many young Britons were fed up; that to be young, so far from being very heaven, was in some ways very hell.2 Writers such as Kingsley Amis and John Wain, whose works fit roughly into the general description of the literature of the "Angry Young Men," have been compared to satirists and social critics like Evelyn Waugh and Aldous Huxley, but one critic who makes the comparison feels that the younger writers are decidedly inferior, in that they "do not write well" and in that "They don't shape the myth of their generation."^ Critics seem to have accepted an easy grouping of these writers and have carelessly failed to concern themselves primarily with the literature. Such misleading criticism has been reinforced by the publication of Declaration, a collection of essays by those writers who 3 are regarded by the public as typical of the group. But the editor of Declaration makes no claim for unity, and points out that the writers represented in the collection do not belong to a homogeneous movement: "Declaration." he says, "is a collection of separate positions."^ Similarly, Kenneth Allsop, in his critical survey, protests that he can see no value in the term "Angry Young Man." No one is more adamant than Kingsley Amis in dis• sociating himself from a movement and insisting upon his right to be regarded as an individual novelist with an individual point of view, and upon his right to be judged upon his literary performance. He refused to be included in Declaration, saying: 'I hate all this pharasaical twittering about the "state of our civilization" and I suspect anyone who wants to buttonhole me about my "role in society". This book is likely to prove a valuable addition to the cult of the Solemn Young Man; I predict a great success for it.'' And writing in Encounter, he says: Even that business about the Angry Young Men, which is going to sound so wonderful if anyone remembers it in a few years time, had its appealing side. It is difficult to sound sincere in repudiating free publicity, so I was lucky in never having to. In my case the simplifications and distortions inevitable in gossipy, booksy journalism fell short of tempting me to break the writer's first rule and start explaining what I "really meant" by my books. Sometimes I would meditate on how nice it would be if one's novels were read as novels instead of sociological tracts, but then one morning the whole shooting-match just softly and silently vanished away, and there we all were reduced to being judged on our merits again. Which ought to be all right if the merits hold up.° 4 Despite his irritation at being included in an alleged movement, Amis displays a great deal of interest in the contemporary scene and shows concern for the social, economic and political aspects of man's relation to the world in which he lives. Such interests do not make Amis engage*, however, and about this he is quite clear, stating his position and his duty as he sees it: Any decent writer sees his first concern as the rendering of what he takes to be permanent in human nature, and this holds true no matter how "contemporary" his material. Now and again he may feel — we should perhaps think less of him if he did not ever feel — that there are some political causes too vast or urgent to be subordinated to mere literature, and will allow one or other such to determine the shape of what he writes. But by doing so he will be guilty of betrayal. He will have accelerated the arrival of the day on which it is generally agreed that a novel or a play is no more than a system of generalisations orchestrated in terms of plot and diction and situation and the rest; the day, in other words, on which the novel, the poem, and the play cease to exist. .9 Speaking specifically of "political causes" in his article "Slightly More of a Plague on One of Your Houses, Amis shows his attitude to be anti-Tory but not pro-Labour.