THE DUCHESS' RED SHOES
57
a myth essentially, could it be about manners superficially? Perhaps.
But how about Shakespeare? What was the myth in
Othello?
What
were the manners? Of course we might maintain that lago was no
gentleman, morally speaking, but he did seem to have good manners.
And we might suppose that lago created the myth of Desdemona's
infidelity in Othello's mind, thus causing the sad tragedy.
Macbeth
also
might be said to be about how rude a host and his wife can be
to a guest, which was clearly bad manners again. These speculations
were enough to make me wonder whether I had lost my mind.
II
I was sure that I would not suffer such alarms when I re–
read Lionel Trilling's essay, "Manners, Morals and Fiction," in his
book,
The Liberal Imagination.
For Mr. Trilling writes with much
care, lucidity and solicitude for all sides of every question. His style
is
one of extreme tact and judiciousness. But beneath the surface of
Mr. Trilling's style, a powerful point of view asserts itself.
In "Manners, Morals and Fiction," as elsewhere, Mr. Trilling
pleads for moral realism.
It
is mere carping to observe that no one
in
his
right mind will admit that he is against moral realism and in
favor of moral unrealism. For by moral realism Mr. Trilling means
a view of life which is critical of moral idealism, and its twin, social
idealism. Of course no moral idealist and no social idealist will admit
for a split second that he is not also a moral realist: he would claim
of course that he is morally more realistic than most. Nevertheless I
think Mr. Trilling's basic point is that we have too much moral and
social idealism or have been too uncritical, particularly as social ideal–
ists
and liberals, so that moral realism is now necessary to right the
balance.
The novel, Mr. Trilling says, is one of the best ways in which
we can achieve moral realism, for "the characteristic work of the
novel is to record the illusion that snobbery generates and to try to
penetrate to the truth which, as the novel assumes, lies hidden be–
hind all false appearances. . . . " But to get to the truth beneath
false appearances, one must concentrate upon or possess a knowledge
of false appearances, and here the novel excells and the observation
of manners becomes very important: "The novel then, is a perpetual
quest for reality, the field of its research being always the social
