THE PRESENTATION OP MORALITY IN THE NOVELS OF KINGSLEY AMIS Michael Laine BA

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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 i t.
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
i ii
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 i t.
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: I ts
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 i t. 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 f it 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 a ll 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 i t . ''
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 a ll were reduced to being judged
on our merits again. Which ought to be a ll 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 i t:
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.
The title speaks for his position, in which may be found
not only a trace of indifference bred by the post-war
complacency and financial security of his society, but a
frustration caused by his feeling that political action is
useless. Elsewhere he reiterates his position:
. .. I feel my security is not threatened —
perhaps it really is, but no matter, it doesn't
seem to be — or in other words I have no political
interests to defend, . . .. If I were shaken up I
should act, at least I hope I should, but not