Grant Allen, "The British Barbarians"

“The British Barbarians “, by Grant Allen, published by Marchetti, opens the” Dodo d’oro “series, consisting of works of literature in English which, for various reasons, have disappeared from cultural memory and never been translated, at least into Italian, before.

As the author himself states in the preface, “The British Barbarians” aims to “represent points of view (…) in romantic fiction rather than in thoughtful essays”. And the novel, in fact, is a mixture of three genres: bland science fiction, sentimental fiction and pamphlet. In reality, it leans towards the third way, the other two are just pretexts to make the subject more captivating.

Charles Grant Blairfindie Allen was born in Canada in 1848 and lived between the United States, France and Great Britain. Neighbor of Arthur Conan Doyle, agnostic and socialist, friend of Spencer, supporter of Darwin’s evolutionism and of Frazer’s anthropological theories, many of his works, starting with “The Woman Who Did” — which tells the scandalous and dramatic story of a single mother — are animated by an overbearing critical spirit towards British society, polluted by the cult of respectability at all costs and by the hypocritical moralism of the whitewashed bourgeois sepulchers.

In Victorian London, the charming and prim Bertram Ingledew falls out of nowhere, disrupting the lives of Philip Christy, his sister Frida and his brother-in-law. To avoid the “spoiling”, that is the anticipation of the ending, let’s just say that Herbert George Wells was inspired by this novel for his famous “The Time Machine”, released in the same year, 1895, and mentions Allen himself. The theme of the “lost world”, or time travel, was very popular at the time, we also remember “An American in King Arthur’s Court” by Mark Twain, from 1889.

Bertram Ingledew regards English customs as he would those of any primitive society. In reality, he behaves like an anthropologist, analyzing with scientific detachment (but also with a hint of disgust) the obsession with respectability, a miserable fetish, and with the rules of good society, oppressive taboo.

Allen focuses on the inconsistencies of a social class that bases everything on reputation, hiding the rotten under the rug. Victims of this ethical system are mainly women. On the one hand they are prohibited from free expression of their sensuality, of pure feelings, on the other hand they are exploited as prostitutes, forced into an abject life, poverty and disease, precisely by those same men who use them to keep them unharmed (and repressed) their future wives. Towards prostitution, and its use by bourgeois and nobles devoted to the cult of “morality”, Allen shows a real idiosyncrasy.

Both in “The Woman Who Did” and in “The British Barbarians” there is no happy ending, because the libertarian thrust — and the overturning of ethics in favor of crystalline emotions, of the fresh air that can be breathed only from the “top of the hill ”- has tragic consequences, similar, even if only unconsciously, to a punishment. Society is not ready to welcome a new concept of morality, to exchange the stale and unhealthy air of the salons with passions that are ethical only by virtue of their authenticity.

The novel, or rather the long story, is smooth and funny too. The way in which the English are described is enjoyable, with their feeling of being the undisputed center of the universe and not even conceiving of the existence of alternative places and cultures. However, there are flaws in the text that, perhaps, have made it not very famous, along with the fact that it is anti-British and proposes unconventional and transgressive ideas. It suffers from the fact that it is more an essay than a real narrative and has a lack of construction. The first part is presented as social satire, the second turns towards the drama, always imbued, however, with philosophical theories. The character of Philip Christy, for example, who serves to comically introduce, by contrast, the figure of Bertram Ingledew — embodying Victorian prejudices and English complacency to all intents and purposes — disappears almost from the middle of the book and is replaced by the hateful husband of Frida. In reality, the two brothers-in-law, obtuse and narrow-minded, counterbalance the figures of Bertram and Frida, he clear in his almost superhuman wisdom, she intelligent, alive, ready to accept new concepts, to develop intellectually and spiritually, rising above of the foolish respectable morality. What happens to Frida is exactly what the author would like to happen to all the young women after reading his work. “Above all”, he continues in the preface, “one should arouse their keen interest when they are still young and malleable, before they crystallize and harden into conventional puppets of good society. Make them think when they are still young, let them have feelings when they are still sensitive. “

A very enjoyable middle ground, in short, between reason and feeling, “sense and sensibility”, enlightenment and romanticism, pamphlet and romance.