Book Review : Fane on Females: May His Fame, if Any, Be Fleeting

Cautionary Tales for Women by Julian Fane (Hamish Hamilton and St. George’s Press/David & Charles Inc.: $19.95; 307 pages)

Speaking as a female, I can say unequivocally that reading “Cautionary Tales for Women” in one sitting is a little like slugging down a tea cup full of warm cod-liver oil in one gulp. The book is at once sickening in its own right in this present time, and nauseatingly familiar--a nightmare from childhood, when, at the mercy of your well-meaning parents, you were stuffed with a ghastly diet of old wives’ tales, half-truths and downright lies about womens’ roles in the relationships of the sexes.

The tone here is uniquely revolting. Julian Fane adopts that all-too-familiar voice of false cleverness, the form of the epigram. He is a professionally clever man, the kind you avoid at parties as if he had the plague. Here Fane is, addressing women, being clever: “Men are said to rule the world: Which is less than perfect in the eyes of feminists in consequence. But you women were closest to, and had the best chance to influence, us men in our formative years. Blame for our private and public misbehavior is attributable in large part to what you have done or omitted to do in our nurseries. And if we take after our brutish fathers, whose fault is it that our fathers were brutes?

“Your disillusionment with the love that produced us, and your discontent that turned you into a hateful mother and twisted the characters of your children, are not extenuating factors: You chose or permitted yourself to be chosen by a mate who disillusioned you, and disturbed the peace of any number of minds.”

An Old Message

In other words, if you’re raped, or marry a wife-beater, or a homosexual who hates women, it’s your fault. There’s nothing new in this message. I learned it at my own mother’s knee, and Sister Dominic (who I sincerely hope has gone on to a just reward in the after-life), teaching at an elementary school in Eagle Rock, had the same message for all her third-grade female students. Your misfortunes will be your own fault. So, shut up.

On the other hand, you can’t argue with Fane when he mentions all this: He’s not being serious, he would tell you. He’s being clever; to argue would simply mark the female reviewer/reader as a humorless clod, which has been his point all along. When Fane writes: “Not love of money but love of another is the root of all evil, being the father and mother of evil people,” he--if I read correctly--is not looking for the response, “Julian, you’re as wrong as a three dollar bill.” He does not want us to edge away, muttering, “Julian, I can’t discuss this anymore, I think I hear my mother calling.” On the contrary, he wants the reader to giggle and twitter and rap his knuckles with a metaphorical fan: “Julian, you’re so clever! However do you think of such amazing tidbits?”

Those of us who remember J. .M. Barrie’s 1918 play, “The Admirable Chrichton” (in which a morally irreproachable butler in an English family of morally lax noblemen becomes their natural leader on a desert island once they’re shipwrecked), will recall from that work a harmless, frivolous nitwit named Ernest, who, in England, torments his companions with such remarks as: “Life, Chrichton, is like a cup of tea. The more heartily we drink, the sooner we reach the dregs.” Within the hateful bonds of civilization, Chrichton must put up with this cleverness, but once on the island, Chrichton opines: “. . . Sayings which would be justly admired in England are not much use on an island. I would therefore most respectfully propose that henceforth every time Mr. Ernest favours us with an epigram his head should be immersed in a bucket of cold spring water.”

Product of Modern Times

Now, such treatment might be just a little harsh on Fane; and, after all, we still live in civilization and probably have to put up with such stuff: It is the by-product of how we live, like discarded rubber tires or used plastic cups.

Still, we certainly must be entitled, at some point, as Fane drones on (“The wounds of love she thinks she has received justify her instant remedies that wound. You could say she is retarded: It is her perennial innocence which is injured and injurious. She remains impressionable and malleable, or appears to, although the men who have loved her would argue in their turn that she never met them halfway. . . .”), I think the reader is justified in letting her own mind slip a few gears to tote up her grocery list or plan her upcoming schedule of good deeds.

And when Fane finishes his cautionary tales with this stern admonishment to women: “. . . endure your despair “ I think it’s correct to ease away from the writer with a civil nod, a neutral monosyllable or two, and only in the company of sensible men and women, allow yourself a rude laugh or two at this silly person’s expense. Let him endure his own despair, for heaven’s sake, and let the rest of us enjoy life together and see if we can make it fair and fun for everybody all around.