Art and Morality

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ART AND MORALITY Eleanor Cameron To begin with, let us consider two completely opposing points of view regarding art and morality in the world of criticism of adult literature. For, if we really believe that children's literature is a branch of the tree of all literature, then we, in our field, should understand these two points of view and think about them in relation to children's fiction. In our time, any statements in novels for adults that smack of being moral, or of expressing or evoking a moral point of view, are suspect among such elitists as the critic Susan Sontag, for instance. For them, moral implications destroy the aesthetic impact of a piece of art. Indeed, John Gardner's book of essays, On Moral Fiction, in which the artist's need to be faithful in expressing his profound though not necessarily conventional morality is vigorously defended, got mixed reviews among the professional critical fraternity. For though Gardner has some true and needful things to say in criticism of contemporary adult fiction, his is a confused presentation , with good points scattered among some extremely questionable ones. In any case, a number of respected novelists and reviewers are not working under the art-divorced-from-morality tradition, for I note in The New York Review of Books that Helen Muchnic lists, as well as style, three other qualities by which artistic greatness can be measured: depth and range of understanding, human sympathy, and moral vision. In The New York Times Book Review I find Benjamin DeMott writing of V. S. Pritchett, the English novelist and critic, that moral intelligence lies close to the core of his creative vision. And Alfred Kazin, in his introduction to the third series of Writers at Work: The Paris Review Interviews , speaks of moral clarity as being tantamount to literary power. But I imagine that Susan Sontag wouldn't so much as consider Gardner's book for discussion. For she says in her own collection of essays entitled Against Interpretation that there has always been a confusion in the West concerning the relation between art and morality, aesthetics and ethics, and maintains that ethics simply do not come into question in considering a work of art. When we examine such a work, she believes, it is only the aesthetic response that should be considered. One should not be choosing "between responsible and humane conduct, on the one hand, and the pleasurable stimulation of consciousness on the other .... But neither would it be appropriate," she says, "for us to make a moral response to something in a work of art in the same sense that we do to an act of real life. I would undoubtedly be indignant" she points out, "if someone I knew murdered his wife and got away with it (psychologically, legally) but I can hardly become indignant, as many critics seem to be, when the herp of Norman Mailer's An American Dream murders his wife and goes unpunished." And elsewhere she says that "Approving or disapproving morally of what a work of art 'says' is just as extraneous as becoming sexually excited by a work of art." I myself was faced with this compulsion to moral judgment when first one friend, then another, then still another phoned on receiving copies of To the Green Mountains to discuss three of the protagonists because of what was felt to be their irresponsible or immoral actions when I had presented them as sympathetic characters. My freinds seemed to feel strongly about Elizabeth Rule who, without thinking of the possible consequences or discussing the matter with the Black man Grant and his wife Tissie, brings Grant a set of law books , in view of the fact that he wants to become a lawyer and cannot afford them for himself, and by so doing indirectly causes the death of Tissie. The second criticism was directed against Tissie who, being deprived of her husband's attentions when he becomes completely absorbed in his study of law and, therefore, deprived also of the happiness they've had together, goes off with another man. The third criticism was directed against Grant for being an Uncle Tom, a quiet...

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