A Son at the Front (1923) by Edith Wharton

 

A Son at the Front was one of four novels written by Edith Wharton in the 1920’s after she had won the Pulitzer Prize in 1921 for her book Age of Innocence. These novels focussed on the growing sense that World War I had brought about irreparable damage and had left an indelible mark on society.
A Son at the Front, as its title implies was set during WWI, and opens in Paris in 1914 just before war was announced. Edith Wharton was involved in relief work in France and this novel was inspired by a young man she met during that time.

American artist, John Campton, resided in Paris and was looking forward to his holiday with his son George who had finished his studies in America and was returning to France to visit before taking up work in a bank in New York.
By a twist of fate, George had been born in Paris and not in America. His parents divorced early in his life and his mother, Julia, had remarried.

It was almost impossible to Campton to picture what it would be like to have the boy with him. For so long he had seen his son only in snatches, hurriedly, incompletely, uncomprehendingly: it was only in the last three years that their intimacy had had a chance to develop. And they had never travelled together, except for hasty dashes, two or three times, to seashore or mountains; had never gone off on a long solitary journey such as this. Campton, tired, disenchanted, and nearing sixty, found himself looking forward to the adventure with an eagerness as great as the different sort of ardour with which, in his youth, he had imagined flights of another kind with the woman who was to fulfill every dream.

Life had perpetually knocked him down just as he had his hand on her gifts; nothing had ever succeeded with him but his work. But he was as sure as ever that peace of mind and contentment of heart were waiting for him round the next corner; and this time, it was clear, they were to come to him through his wonderful son.

Before father and son could begin their holiday together, George was called up to join the French army and the trip could not take place.
All three parents were desperate for George not to go to the front and used every means they could to prevent it happening.
As the war progressed it touched the lives of everyone around them. More and more families they knew received the news that their sons had died, gone missing or had been severely wounded in action and Campton struggled with the morality of pulling strings to have his son relegated to an office job.
George had seemed ambivalent about war service and this gave a false sense of security to his father, although subconsciously he wished his son to do the honourable thing.

This novel is more about the families left behind than the sons at the front. When Julia had remarried, George’s rich stepfather and millionaire banker, Anderson Brand, provided for George and brought him up and loved him dearly. There is much tension between the three parents and Campton had a huge chip on his shoulder because of his lack of success in life, generally.
I thought Wharton had good insight into the relationships involved and her treatment of the effects of the war on the different characters throughout the novel were brilliant.
I’ve been reading the author’s lesser-known novels and short stories and I’m surprised that they aren’t as popular as her longer works. She had a profound insight into human nature, her writing is just beautiful and her vocabulary is rich. I occasionally come across words I’ve never seen before and often can’t find them in my Oxford dictionary. I think they must be peculiar to America, although not necessarily words in regular use.
That she wrote from personal experience is obvious and her work is realistic, portraying some of the senseless crimes the war had perpetrated- describing it as a monster whose daily meal was made up of ‘an incalculable sum of gifts and virtues.’

I loved this reflection by Campton when he discovered his son’s ardour for literature:

Campton perceived that the millionaire’s taste for owning books had awakened in his stepson a taste for reading them. “I couldn’t have done that for him,” the father had reflected with secret bitterness. It was not that a bibliophile’s library was necessary to develop a taste for letters; but that Campton himself, being a small reader, had few books about him, and usually borrowed those few. If George had lived with him he might never have guessed the boy’s latent hunger, for the need of books as part of one’s daily food would scarcely have presented itself to him.

Initiation had come to them in different ways, but their ardour for beauty had the same root…
Campton, with a passionate interest, watched his son absorbing through books what had mysteriously reached him through his paintbrush.

The Library of America has published the four novels of the 1920’s in a hardback edition that is very nicely done. ISBN: 9781598534535

The Place of Fiction and the Moral Imagination

Recently I've been re-reading a few books I first read years ago, one of them being, 'Children of a Greater God' by Terry W. Glaspey which was written in 1995.

The book speaks about awakening your child's moral imagination, creating a clear understanding in their hearts and minds of the beauty and importance of moral living, and imparting the ability to perceive the truth in literature, the arts, and the natural world.

'Moral imagination is the ability to think clearly and creatively in the realm of moral values, especially when faced with a situation where rules do not suffice.'

He looks at virtues and the place of habits, the importance of the arts and instilling the art of reading - things that many of us have thought about, believe to be important and have already begun to put into practice - but he gives compelling reasons why these things are important. A common occurrence in families, especially with highschool age children, is that the 'optional extras' eg. the study of art, poetry, and music, gives way under the weight of the 'more necessary or expedient' subjects or time constraints. This book helps to give a vision for their inclusion and their appreciation.

The dangers of theological ignorance, the marks of a Christian mind and suggestions for building a Christian worldview are other areas he covers in this book. The book is very readable and practical and a good introduction to this area.

Now to some other authors:

An article I read last week, Why Christians Should Read Fiction led me to look into another article in which Russell Kirk wrote about the 'expression of the moral imagination.' The writing is quite scholarly and some of it was lost on me but it reminded me of the book above and I thought about some of the fiction I've read and how it contributed to my understanding of human nature.

'.... the end of great books is ethical—to teach us what it means to be genuinely human......

Until very recent years, men took it for granted that literature exists to form the normative consciousness—that is, to teach human beings their true nature, their dignity, and their place in the scheme of things.'   

I've just finished reading Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton, a stark, bitter novel written in 1911 and barely a hundred pages in length. Ethan, a young man in an unhappy relationship with a sickly, suspicious wife, dreams of a new life with his wife's cousin who has been living with them. When their desires are thwarted and they have to part, the two of them take a course of action which condemns all three to a wretched and pitiful existence together.

Ethan Frome really did have a tragic life that he sort of fell into in many ways. Throughout the story I found myself sympathising with his situation, wishing for him to find a way out of his misery and to have an opportunity to start afresh. I understood his behaviour was morally wrong and why, but it wasn't until the tragic consequences of his actions were culminated that I felt a moral awakening.

In contrast to Ethan Frome the situation of Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre revealed a very different response to circumstances which were just as painful although somewhat different. Jane finds love, appreciation and happiness for the first time in her difficult life and is about to be married. Standing at the altar with Mr. Rochester, the man she loves, their wedding is suddenly interrupted by the appearance of a third party who reveals that Rochester is already married, albeit to a mad woman. Jane resolves to tear herself away and as Rochester passionately pleads with her and her emotions battle for supremacy she declares:

‘I will hold to the principles received by me when I was sane, and not mad- as I am now. Laws and principles are not for the times when there is no temptation: they are for such moments as this, when body and soul rise in mutiny against their rigour; stringent are they; inviolate they shall be. If at my individual convenience I might break them, what would be their worth?’

Contrasting these two stories, the emotions they evoke and the ultimate resolution of their individual moral dilemmas revealed to me the power of fiction to help awaken the moral imagination. To have a moral foundation already in place is only the beginning. We need to know that this foundation is going to be solid in times when our emotions are trying to lead us, and the power of a story can help us look at life from different aspects, not in just black and white. As author Flannery O'Connor stated, 'A story is a way to say something that can't be said any other way.'

 'If a public will not have the moral imagination, I have been saying, then it will fall first to the idyllic imagination; and presently into the diabolic imagination—this last becoming a state of narcosis, figuratively and literally.'  (Russell Kirk)