The Making of a Bigot by Rose Macaulay (1914)
“How various is man! How multiplied his experience, his outlook, his conclusions!”—H. Belloc.
“And every single one of them is right.”—R. Kipling.
“The rational human faith must armour itself with prejudice in an age of prejudices.”—G. K. Chesterton.
Basics
- Genre: Fiction, satire
- Protagonist: Eddy
- Antagonist: Society (lol); the requirement to box yourself up with a series of imperfect labels in order to connect with a target group, avoid social conflicts among all your friend groups, get married, and generally be able to focus in a single area long enough to be effective
- Setting: Pre-WWI Southern England
- Theme: Bigotry, the truths and falsities that can be found on both sides of mutually exclusive belief systems
- Recommend?: No. It's an easy read but shallow. It is chuck-full of 1914 English culture, though!
"Arnold the cynical, the sceptical, the supercilious, the scornful; Arnold, who had believed in nothing, and had yet been murdered for believing in something, and saying so. Arnold had hated democratic tyranny, and his hatred had given his words and his blows a force that had recoiled on himself and killed him. Eddy’s blows on that chaotic, surprising evening had lacked this energy; his own consciousness of hating nothing had unnerved him; so he hadn’t died. He had merely been buffeted about and knocked out of the way like so much rubbish by both combatant sides in turn. He bore the scars of the strikers’ fists and boots, and of the heavy truncheon of the law. Both sides had struck him as an enemy, because he was not whole-heartedly for them. It was, surely, anironical epitome, a brief summing-up in terms of blows, of the story of his life. "
The book was okay, and I probably wouldn't read it again. I found it by clicking the random button on Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/search/?sort_order=random). The title is certainly evocative.
The central theme revolves around the tidbits of truth and well-meaning intentions sprinkled across various factions, contrasted by the bigotry and total rejection of other sides propagated by each group. Eddy, the protagonist, is open to the ideologies of every faction. In fact, his acceptance is so all-encompassing that he ends up affiliating with literally every faction, be it religious, political, or social.
However, he soon realizes that these different friend groups not only don't blend well together, but they harbor animosity towards each other. Consequently, Eddy is coerced into choosing a side to maintain his relationships. Despite the gravity of the subject matter, the tone of the book is inclined towards goofy lightheartedness.
Characters
Eddy's the opposite of a based centrist - he thinks any and all sides of an issue have truth and should be accepted. He has no free-time because he is signed up for just about any society or club or fellowship asks him. He's a wishy-washy journalist who can't hold down a job or launch a paper. He eventually loses all his friends and is seen as completely insane. He's really funny, honestly.
His friend Arthur is a (was he blond or is that my imagination?) rich jerk. He died in a fist fight after giving a rhetorical speech against Unions to a violent Union-loving mob.
Molly was a bigoted conservative who was not a stickman and was more reasonable than the main character. Honestly, that's pretty rare.
Eileen, a character the rest react strongly to
Mrs. Eileen Le Moine moves in with her dying love (another married adult) to spend his last few months together. She was a bright, vivacious, spirited violinist going into it and a completely broken and spent ghost coming out of it. She was in the lowest low and needed sympathy and a strong hand to help her out of it. When Molly's aunt, a lady, was visiting Jane Dawn with Eddy and Molly; and Eileen popped in, she hastily left her because 'we can't mix with those kinds of people.' She was really harsh. 'She made her decision to be outcasted.' 'Women can't be seen with her or risk losing face.' 'Lucky Jane declined to have lunch with me later because she must have known she isn't worthy, knowing she has people like that walking in and out of her apartment.'
Molly is less haughty about it, but she has such a deep sense of right and wrong that being around Eileen at all unnerves her and makes her embarrassingly uncomfortable. That eventually leads to her breaking off her engagement to Eddy, which is only put back together by Eileen's insistence that she'll never visit Eddy or be a close friend with him ever again.
Arthur indiscriminately invites everyone to events, seemingly unaware that no one wants to visit with people not like themselves
There's lots of little scenes like having Arthur and the high church guys at dinner together, having Eileen visit for Christmas at the Deanery, a lady insisting to go to Greece with Eileen and Hugh to break up the adulterous tone of that vacation, etc. Lots of different flavors of prejudice and different factions not jiving well together.
Is this book realistic or absurd?
By 2019, I had seen communities break into factions, like feminists vs. Gamergate, Hillary supporters vs. Trump supporters, BLM vs. Blue Lives Matter, the start of the media vs. Q people, no human is illegal vs. the Wall and efforts against MS-13, trust the science vs anti-vaxxers/anti-maskers, etc. Also, I've seen division within the church. At the time of reading, it seemed over-the-top and heavy-handed how no one would even deign to be in the present of someone from the other side.
But, coming back to this later, it really isn't an unfair depiction of our society, is it? Were people just as fiercely divided back then, in England before World War I?
When Arnold tried to explain why Eddy's paper that was sympathetic to all cases had failed so quickly, he explained no one wants to read a mix of stances at odds with their own. "A philosophy, according to him, is either good or bad, true or false. So, to most people, are all systems of thought and principles of conduct. Very naturally, therefore, they prefer that the papers they read should eschew evil as well as seeking good. And so, since one can’t (fortunately) read everything, they read those which seem to them to do so. I should myself, if I could find one which seemed to me to do so, only I never have.... Well, I imagine that’s the sort of reason Unity’s failing; it’s too comprehensive."
It's true that when people want to sit down and read the paper (read Pocket articles, watch indie journalists, browse the current events tab on social media?), they are less interested in reading issues idiosyncratic to the other side. "Liberals don’t like, while reading a paper, to be hit in the eye by long articles headed ‘Toryism as the only Basis.’ Unionists don’t care to open at a page inscribed ‘The Need for Home Rule.’ Socialists object to being confronted by articles on ‘Liberty as an Ideal.’" This self-imposed bubble is natural, and I suppose timeless. Maybe nothing's new under the sun?
The characters, like people I see in our society, are unwilling to listen and learn from the other side at all. I definitely see this, like when fake posts seemingly written by the other faction but using their own slang are shared on social media, everyone makes fun of how dumb the other side is, and no one even realizes that it obviously fake. Like MTF people calling themselves trannies or something, when that is a pejorative. People don't understand each other or the basis of their ideas or even their vocabulary.
The book's solution to our divided society
The book doesn't really offer a broad solution for societal differences, and I don't have one either. When Eddy wanted to get married and settle into one particular life, he had to move away from all the noise and choose just a couple of stances and hate the others:
“Very good,” he commented, writing it down. “A bigoted Socialist. That will have the advantage that Traherne will let me help with the clubs. Now for the Church.”
The Church question also he decided without recourse to chance. As he meant to continue to belong to the Church of England, he crossed off from the list the Free Thought League and the Theosophist Society. It remained that he should choose between the various Church societies he belonged to, such as the Church Progress Society (High and Modernist), the E. C. U. (High and not Modernist), the Liberal Churchmen’s League (Broad), and the Evangelical Affiance (Low). Of these he selected that system of thought that seemed to him to go most suitably with the Socialism he was already pledged to; he would be a bigoted High Church Modernist, and hate Broad Churchmen, Evangelicals, Anglican Individualists, Ultramontane Romans, Atheists, and (particularly) German Liberal Protestants.
“Father will be disappointed in me, I’m afraid,” he reflected.
Then he could become a Complete Bigot, a necessary step for making consistent progress within society:
Using them, he would get accustomed to them; gradually he would become the Complete Bigot, as to the manner born, such a power has doing to react on the vision of those who do. Then and only then, when, for him, many-faced Truth had resolved itself into one, when he should see but little here below but see that little clear, when he could say from the heart, “I believe Tariff Reformers, Unionists, Liberals, Individualists, Roman Catholics, Protestants, Dissenters, Vegetarians, and all others with whom I disagree, to be absolutely in the wrong; I believe that I and those who think like me possess not merely truth but the truth”—then, and only then would he be able to set to work and get something done....
A similar theme in C. S. Lewis's Mere Christianity
Macaulay has a kinda overbearing and comical way of expressing it, but it reminds me of what C. S. Lewis said in Mere Christianity, that you must choose a denomination within Christianity to have meaningful discussion, though all the rooms exist within the same house. His version is a lot kinder to enemies, but it acknowledges the inevitable factions and rivalries nonetheless:
"I hope no reader will suppose that "mere" Christianity is here put forward as an alternative to the creeds of the existing communions — as if a man could adopt it in preference to Congregationalism or Greek Orthodoxy or anything else.
It is more like a hall out of which doors open into several rooms. If I can bring anyone into that hall, I have done what I attempted. But it is in the rooms, not the hall, that there are fires and chairs and meals. The hall is a place to wait in, a place from which to try the various doors, not a place to live in. For that purpose the worst of the rooms (whichever that may be) is, I think preferable. It is true that some people may find they have to wait in the hall for a considerable time, while others feel certain almost at once which door they must knock at. I do not know why there is this difference, but I am sure God keeps no one waiting unless He sees that it is good for him to wait. When you do get into the room you will find that the long wait has done some kind of good which you would not have had otherwise. But you must regard it as waiting, not as camping. You must keep on praying for light: and, of course, even in the hall, you must begin trying to obey the rules which are common to the whole house. And above all you must be asking which door is the true one; not which pleases you best by its paint and paneling.
In plain language, the question should never be: "Do I like that kind of service?" but "Are these doctrines true: Is holiness here? Does my conscience move me towards this? Is my reluctance to knock at this door due to my pride, or my mere taste, or my personal dislike of this particular door-keeper?"
When you have reached your own room, be kind to those who have chosen different doors and to those who are still in the hall. If they are wrong they need your prayers all the more; and if they are your enemies, then you are under orders to pray for them. This is one of the rules common to the whole house."
Cultural Snapshot of 1914
The book was rich in French vocabulary. It also referenced lots of English 1910s societies and clubs. I took note of all the factions referenced and will have to remember to transcribe them all here. Really cool time capsule of English society in the early 1900s.
Societies
- Back to the Land League
- Charity Organisation Society
- Coal Smoke Abatement Society
- Factory Increase League
- League for the Encouragement and Better Appreciation of Post Impressionism
- League of Young Liberals
- Maintenance of Cordial Trans-Atlantic Relations
- Maintenance of the Principles of Classical Art
- National Arts Collections Fund
- Poetry Society (against post impressionism)
- Primrose League
- Salvation Army Shelters Fund
- Society for Encouraging the Realistic School of Modern Verse
- Society for the Preservation of Objects of Historic Interest in the Countryside
- Anglican Individualists
- Atheists
- Church Defence Society
- Church of England
- Church Progress Society (High and Modernist)
- Disestablishment
- E.C.U (High and not Modernist)
- Evangelical Affiance (Low)
- Evangelicals
- Free Thought League
- German Liberal Protestants
- Liberal Churchmen's League (Broad)
- Lord’s Day Observance Society
- Society for the Liberation of Religion from State Patronage and Control
- Sunday Society (for the opening of museums, etc., on that day)
- Theosophist Society
- Ultramontane Romans
(The Making of a Bigot - https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/50953/pg50953-images.html)