[Giovanna Clairval]

In Fiction – Violence as the expression of a writer’s suffering

First, I would like to recall that XVIIIth literature was complacent towards torture. I will only quote Voltaire’s, whichcomprises at least two scenes of corporal punishment. I have never seen any disapproval in the author’s rendering of these scenes.

This disappeared (in the same, realistic and complacent form) with the IXth century, although Edmond Dantès and Jean Valjean were not treated very well either.

The expression of violence in literature depends on the amount of liberty--or libertinage--a particular society allows to the authors of Adult fiction.

If the genre is filled with violence, if blurbs mention grit and blood to incite the buyer to buy, it is because western modern society is much more permissive towards anything that is sensual. They even coined a word to depict this social trend: Sensualism (my 1945 Pocket Oxf. Dic. has only “sensualist”, which is something else).

Well, I didn’t need to bother writing a short essay to tell you that sex sells. And a return to sensations as opposed to pure intellect is not that bad. But why does violence sell? And, at the same time, does this recrudescence of grittiness and violence in F novels amount to a general disillusion and decadence of our society?

It is certainly true that society is traversing a phase of disillusionment that began in the seventies. The values of Illuminism—especially the Goddess Reason, and the inevitability of Progress—are questioned by the way the world is going.

But my point here is that violence in fiction is linked to the Author’s and the Reader's suffering. This suffering has always existed.

Today, violence expresses itself in writing because:

1) it can—society gives the Author some slack;

2) is routed in the Author’s secret grief—a child who suffers growing into a psychologically ailing adult.

Fiction unveils psychological truths by wording the souls' pains.
Writing may, in this way, help exorcise what is intolerable in suffering and anguish.

Kafka wrote The Judgement in a single night.

Parental characters (not necessarily parents, but reminiscent of parents) can show up in any novel and torture the protagonists by the sheer, terrible power of words.

Love and hate intertwined may thus, under cover of duty and virtue, borrow the language of altruism: “It's for your own good”… I am thinking here of Poil de Carotte by Jules Renard, a tale of daily humiliation and abuse.


In conclusion

Authors, who are human beings, have always suffered, only they can let it out it now, and readers can buy their books and identify with victims and aggressors.

Indefinitely.

Without something happening in one’s life: professional help, personal growth of any sort…
it is an endless circle, and history repeats itself.