Moral Relativism in Fiction*

Russian edition of Anna Karenina 
(1873-1877)

Would Anna Karenina have killed herself in the 21st Century?

Moral values change with time. They also vary according to religion, culture, geography and political inclination. Your inability to relate to a plot, or to the ending of a novel, may be linked to your own views and beliefs. So before you throw that book against the wall, consider the context of the novel and its author. Romantic relationships are not treated the same way by writers of different eras and cultures, and the fate of “forbidden” loves are dependent on the social conventions of their place and time.

I could never understand why Edith Wharton had chosen to keep Newland and Ellen apart at the end of The Age of Innocence. Hadn’t they suffered enough? (I even complained about it here). This past week, I finally understood her reasons. And I owe it all to Ronald Tobias’ 20 Master Plots and How to Build Them. (Thanks Stephanie for recommending it!)

Set in 1870’s New York, Newland Archer is engaged to May Welland. When May’s cousin, Ellen Olenska, abandons her husband in Europe and moves to New York with the intention of divorcing him, May’s family is outraged. They recruit Newland to convince Ellen to go back to her husband and forget all about the divorce. Newland, however, becomes fascinated with Ellen and the two of them fall in love. But Newland is a man of honor and marries May nonetheless. Time doesn’t subdue his feelings for Ellen and he is determined to leave May for Ellen. That is, until May announces she’s pregnant. Ellen returns to Europe and Newland stays with May until she dies (twenty-six years later!) Already an old man, Newland and his son visit Paris, where Ellen now lives. Newland’s son insists they visit her, but Newland refuses to go to her apartment and walks away.

According to Tobias, forbidden loves never end up happily and the lovers must “pay their overdue bill to society” (most of the time with death). “Society, it seems, never loses.” (Tobias, pg.224)  Since divorce was condemned during Wharton’s lifetime, she couldn’t have given her protagonists a happy ending even though both were free to be together.

For a modern viewer, the notion that divorce would have been punished with unhappiness seems unconceivable (at least in the Western world). For us, the power of love should trample appearances and societal norms. “Love conquers all” has become the mantra of most works of fiction. Perhaps if a contemporary author had written The Age of Innocence, Newland and Ellen would have been together in the end.

The Unfaithful Wife

Historically, women have been punished harshly for being unfaithful. Literature has set an example with stern consequences for this transgression. Madame Bovary and Anna Karenina are the most common cases of study. In both instances, their punishment was death.

But there were other, more subtle, penalties for women who betrayed their marital vows in fiction. In Somerset Maugham’s novel The Painted Veil (1925), Kitty marries Doctor Walter Fane out of convenience. Walter is devoted to Kitty, but she is bored with him and has an affair with the charming Charles Townsend. When Walter finds out about the affair, he takes his wife to a cholera-infested village in China to punish her. With illness and death around her, Kitty goes through a transformation and realizes how altruistic her husband is. But she never falls in love with him. Walter dies and Kitty returns to Hong Kong, where once again she falls under Townsend’s charms. This encounter disgusts her (she had been welcomed by Townsend’s wife into their home). Kitty returns to England and devotes her life to her son and father. But she never knows real love and has lost her dignity and self-respect.

In the 2006 film version, starring Naomi Watts and Edward Norton, the director gives Kitty a second chance. During her time in the Chinese village, Kitty not only matures and helps the sick, but she also falls in love with Walter, who eventually forgives her. (He never does in the original novel.) Kitty and Walter have a few days of bliss and love, but like in the book, Walter succumbs to the disease. A redeemed Kitty returns to London where, years later, she runs into Townsend. She is courteous but indifferent, and when her son asks who that man is, she answers “no one important.” In this version, Kitty also loses Walter, but she gained his love, his forgiveness and her dignity.

In The Painted Veil,  Dr. Walter Fane has no pity for his unfaithful wife.

In Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates (1961), both spouses are unfaithful. But infidelity is not the central issue in this novel. The biggest problem for the couple is that April wants an abortion and Frank doesn’t. In the end, April dies after getting an abortion “home kit” and doing it herself. The reader is left to wonder if Yates was making a comment about illegal abortion or April’s death was a punishment for her actions.   

More recent unfaithful wives in fiction are Connie in Unfaithful (2002) and Sheila in Elin Hilderbrand’s A Summer Affair (2008).

In the film Unfaithful, Connie (Diane Lane) has lost her passion for her husband and engages in an affair with a French bookseller she finds irresistible. When her husband, Edward (Richard Gere) discovers the betrayal, he accidentally kills Connie’s lover. In this case, it is not the wife who pays, but the husband and the lover because in the end, it is apparent that Edward is going to turn himself in to the police.

In A Summer Affair, another wife with an illicit relationship (Sheila) gets a pass. Not only is the lover portrayed in a favorable light (he is a generous millionaire who appreciates Sheila’s artistic talent more than her husband) but also, Sheila’s husband never finds out about the affair. Sheila regrets her indiscretion and goes back to her normal life.

These two modern versions of the contemporary cheating wife are diametrically opposite to the past anti-heroines who paid dearly for their betrayals.

Forbidden Loves

Nowadays, the subject of cousin marriage has become controversial in the United States (and this aversion seems to be expanding to other countries as well). But for centuries, inbreeding was a common practice in society (and in some cultures, it still is).

In the 80’s Colombian soap opera, Gallito Ramirez, the protagonist is a low-class boxer who falls in love with his spoiled and rich first cousin, La Niña Mencha, not knowing that they’re family. When the truth of Ramirez’s origins comes to light, the biggest obstacle for their marriage is still their social status, not their blood ties. If this story had been written by a contemporary American writer, would the couple have split at the end? In Colombia, the fact that they were cousins was not an obstacle for them to stay together.

Colombians have never been afraid of controversies. In 1988, they released Caballo Viejo (literally “Old Horse,” but the title comes from a popular Venezuelan song). The story explores not one, but two taboos. The protagonist, Epifanio del Cristo Martínez, is an old (and not very attractive) man who falls in love with Nora Márquez, a young, beautiful woman who happens to be his niece. The twist is that Nora, despite having the attention of better looking and younger men, also falls in love with her uncle.

With humor and a touch of magic realism, their relationship flourishes, but like most May-December romances in the last 30+ years, their love is doomed and one of the characters (usually the older one) perishes.

Uncle and niece fall in love in the Colombian telenovela, Caballo Viejo (1988)

What a contrast with the fiction of earlier centuries or even the first half of the twentieth century where  romances between younger women and older men were ideal. Just take a look at Little Women (1868), Daddy Long Legs (1912) or Pygmalion (1913).

Priests and nuns in love

Another taboo is that of Catholic priests who fall in love. Perhaps the most iconic case is Father Ralph de Bricassart in The Thorn Birds (1977). Not only was Ralph and Meggie’s love doomed from the start, but also Meggie ‘paid’ for her forbidden love by losing those she loved the most: her two most beloved brothers, her father, and worst yet, the son Ralph fathered. As if things couldn’t get any worse, the love of her life, Ralph, also dies.

But Colleen McCullough was kind to her priest in love. She built a very human and conflicted character. He loved Meggie and was kind and (somewhat) generous, but he was also ambitious and loved the power the cassock gave him.

A more negative (and more recent) portrayal of a priest in love was rendered in the 2002 Mexican film El Crimen del Padre Amaro, a film so controversial they almost banned it in Mexico. The young priest Amaro is initially a positive character who only wants to do the right thing in his new parish. He meets the beautiful Amelia, a catechism teacher who confesses she’s having fantasies about him. Amaro cannot fight the temptation and gives in to his desires, resulting in Amelia’s pregnancy and subsequent abortion. In the end, it is Amelia who pays for Amaro’s mistakes with death. Amaro becomes as corrupt as the rest of the clergy in town.

Whereas priests in love never have happy endings in fiction, nuns are a different story.

Sister Maria in The Sound of Music (1965) is not only encouraged by the Mother Superior to leave the order and marry Captain von Trapp, but the nuns even attend her wedding ceremony.

The same happens in the Mexican production Mundo de Juguete (1974-1977) where the nun Rosario falls in love with the father of one of her students and marries him.

Why do you think this double-standard exists in fiction?

From all these examples we can conclude two things:

1. The consequences of a behavior considered immoral or reprehensible vary from one culture/country/era to another.
2. The perception of what constitutes a forbidden relationship also depends on the variables mentioned above.

As authors we have a lot of power. Not only are we the puppeteers of our fictitious worlds, we’re also judges and representatives of the viewpoints of our era. Isn’t that something.

Here comes the big question for writers (especially of historical fiction): Do we honor the cultural and social reality of the times we’re portraying or do we become anachronistic in order to appeal to a modern audience? Do you think it’s possible for an author to remain impartial about a moral issue? Can you think of novels or films you couldn’t relate to because of your incongruent views?

*This article contains spoilers for the following novels/films: The Age of Innocence, The Painted Veil, Anna Karenina, Madame Bovary, Revolutionary Road, Unfaithful, A Secret Affair, The Thorn Birds, El Crimen del Padre Amaro, The Sound of Music and the telenovelas: Mundo de Juguete, Gallito Ramirez and Caballo Viejo.

If you enjoyed this post, you might like: Age and blood-ties: Do readers impose their taboos on the industry?, In Love with the Past and Understanding Theme.

Understanding Theme

When I took a screenwriting class in college, one of the first questions the teacher asked us was:

“What is the moral of your story?”

Somewhat baffled, we exchanged glances and smirks. He surely didn’t mean one of those corny lines they tell you at the end of a fable, did he? He must mean something else.

Faced with a silent class, the teacher blatantly expanded. “You know, like ‘there’s no place like home’ or ‘love conquers all’?”

Most of us rolled our eyes. Yeah, why don’t we talk about something interesting like how do we format our scripts and sell them to start making millions. But the teacher pressed on. “Every story has a theme. Even the most banal ones are trying to tell us something.” He continued with a painful (and nausea-provoking) exposé of the theme of several beloved films.

Appalled, I ignored the guy and drove home.

Years later, after I’d explored novel writing with four drafts of a first novel and two of a second, I came to realize my teacher was on to something. As many of you know, the resolution of both of my novels has been a struggle and I had to rewrite the endings several times. In a desperate search for answers and knowledge (after producing a questionable ending for my latest novel) I embarked on a research odyssey where I read everything and anything with the word “ending” on it. I even wrote this post (shameless advertisement alert!)

Finally, I came across this line:

"You must resolve the core conflict, otherwise your premise will remain unproved.” (Donna Levin, Get That Novel Written.)

(Core conflict being the conflict implied by the premise.)

Ms. Levin cites Cinderella as an example. “The premise for Cinderella is beauty and goodness triumph over evil and ugliness… If the story of Cinderella ended before the messenger demanded to see the third sister, we'd be left with, beauty and goodness do something with evil and ugliness, but it's your guess what.” (Levin, Pg. 83)

Eureka! I’d found the source of my problem. My novel’s final scene had NOTHING to do with the original premise. I had simply written a scene about how I envisioned my main character to resolve her (physical) problem and live happily-ever-after. But it didn’t say anything about the human condition or her inner growth or her understanding of well, anything.

I reexamined my moral premise (because I did have one—I promise!)

Selfishness leads to destruction and pain,
but generosity leads to life and happiness 

So what’s wrong with it? You ask. Well, it sounds very nice on paper, except that it’s a very abstract concept. How could I execute it in a way that was clear and touched my audience in an emotional way? Sure, I could have the protagonist engage in an ultimate, heartbreaking sacrifice in the last scene, but given that sacrifice often leads to suffering, how was my premise going to be proven? After all, my thesis stated that the protagonist had to have a happy ending as a result of her selflessness? And that was when my epiphany came: the problem wasn’t that my novel’s ending was predictable and it belonged to a different genre, the problem was that it had absolutely nothing to do with the premise because the theme was all wrong! There was no way to prove my thesis because I’m not sure that in practice ALL selfishness leads to destruction and ALL sacrifices lead to happiness.

To my surprise and delight, the theme of my novel had always been there. I just had to understand what I had been trying to say all along (I know it sounds crazy, but if you’re a writer you’ll understand what I mean.) Once I recognized the real moral premise, I knew how my novel had to end.

This experience taught me the importance of having a good theme from the beginning—as irrelevant as it may seem. It really does guide the development of your novel and eventually, its resolution.

In The Moral Premise (a book that, in my opinion, every writer should read), Stanley D. Williams states that in every film/novel there are two stories happening simultaneously. One is the physical one (plot) which consist of the actions the hero has to take in order to achieve his goal. The second story (theme) is the emotional arc the hero goes through during his journey, which is actually the “unknown goal” that changes him in an uplifting, touching, irreversible way. What I find interesting is that the emotional storyline may be in direct conflict with the hero’s physical goal—and he may not know it until the end. (In other words, what the hero wants is not always what he needs.)

The success of a work of fiction, according to Williams, is directly proportional to how much the audience agrees/identifies with the premise. If the premise is not considered valid by general consensus, a disconnect may happen between the audience and the story. This is why sometimes we leave a movie theater thoroughly disappointed and may not know the reason. The answer is simple: the message may not have been in tune with our own principles and values. Williams goes as far as assuring us that this disconnect with the audience often leads to box office failure.

I don’t know how true this last statement is, but I recently experienced a disconnect with a film that had a very interesting hook. (SPOILER ALERT!) In "Limitless", a man takes a pill that gives him 100% access to his brain. Assuming it's true that we only use 20% of this organ, the premise is absolutely gripping. Think of all the possibilities! From a starving writer with zero inspiration, he goes on to becoming a bestseller author. (Let’s set aside the fantasy that he has a publishing contract, an editor and an agent without having written a single word of his novel and let’s focus on theme.) As it turns out, literary greatness is not his objective anymore once his mental capacities are heightened. He realizes that his fantastic brain power can make him a lot more money that he ever dreamed possible, and through stock-buying and orchestrating big merges, he becomes a business success in a matter of weeks. Women fall like flies on his lap and he masters several cryptic languages at once. With this much power, you’d think he does something good for humanity, like find the cure for cancer or something worthwhile. But no, he spends his time making his personal fortune grow and escaping some dubious characters who want to steal his drug stack. As a viewer, I can tolerate most excesses in a character with the hopes that in the end, he’ll redeem himself. So I patiently waited for the moment where the self-centered hero would humble himself and change. Not the case of "Limitless." The protagonist eventually comes up with an endless supply of the coveted pill, gets his girlfriend back (plus more money that he could ever need) and crushes/betrays his former mentor. What was the moral premise here? Selfishness and greed lead to success?

"Limitless" had a riveting hook, but what did it say about humans in the end?

In contrast, let’s look at "Pride and Prejudice," a simple story about a man who's quick to judge a woman on her looks and lower social status. As the story progresses, Mr. Darcy realizes there’s more to Elizabeth Bennet than meets the eye and falls in love with her. When he reveals his feelings toward her, she’s too proud to accept his marriage proposal. (Click here to watch the scene.)

In the end, both of them realize how destructive “pride” and “prejudice” are, and “reject these vices” (to use Williams’ terminology). By apologizing and making amends, both of them “choose virtue” and have a happy ending. This premise is identifiable and true. How many of us haven’t, at some point in our lives, been guilty of excessive pride and prejudice?

The proud Mr. Darcy at the ball where he met Elizabeth.

Jane Austen sure understood the importance of a good premise. Two hundred years later, her books are still being read and translated to film, television and plays.

In conclusion:

• Every story must have a moral premise that rings true to the majority of readers/viewers.
• Said premise shouldn't be an abstract concept of what the world should be like, but something concrete most people can relate to.
• The premise must be proven through consequences (good or bad) for our characters at the end of the novel.
• A moral premise will give the writer a blueprint of where to go with the story, rather than just concentrating on the physical action and “what happens next.”

Can you think of other films/novels where you've disagreed/felt a disconnect with the theme? Can you think of the moral premise of your own novel and put it in one sentence? Do you come up with your premise first and then write your novel or do you realize what it is after you've finished writing (guilty!)?