By DONALD DeMARCO
What’s Wrong With the World by G.K. Chesterton; Sophia Press, reprinted in 2021, 238 pages; paperback, $17.95. Call 1-800-888-9344 or visit www.sophiainstitute.com.
Chesterton’s classic is one of many outstanding works the Sophia Press has reprinted that are of particular value to Catholic readers. I have written “a very shapeless and inadequate book,” Chesterton confesses. “As far as literature goes, this book is what is wrong and no mistake” (p. xv).
We should not allow the author’s modesty to dull our enthusiasm for the book. Sohrab Ahmari, who writes the foreword, tells us differently:
“The book you hold is a classic in the art of the essay and a great masterpiece of social criticism that speaks urgently to our moment,” And this more than justifies Sophia Press’ decision to reprint a work that was originally published in 1910.
The fact that there are no fewer than 45 chapters in the book, most of them rather brief, creates a challenge for the reviewer. Because the work’s value is not in its development, but in the sharp, often humorous, comments about the folly of his times (and out times as well), this reviewer has decided to entice the reader with a few nuggets gleaned from its limitless supply. While the world in 1910 (as well as the world of 2022) eagerly pursued a better life, Chesterton remained unimpressed and stubbornly adhered to common sense.
“I have called this book What’s Wrong With the World? and the upshot of the title can be easily and clearly stated. What is wrong is that we do not ask what is right.” It is so much easier to criticize than to amend. The reader will discern and enjoy the contemporary relevance of the following excerpts:
“We must ask for new things because we are not allowed to ask for old things. The whole position is based on this idea that we have got all the good that can be got out of the ideas of the past. But we have not got all the good out of them, perhaps at this moment not any of the good out of them. And the need here is a need of complete freedom for restoration as well as revolution” (pp. 26-7).
“Men have not got tired of Christianity; they have never found enough Christianity to get tired of” (p. 36).
“In everything worth having, even in every pleasure, there is a point of pain or tedium that must be survived, so that the pleasure may revive and endure. The joy of battle comes after the fear of death; the joy of reading Virgil comes after the bore of learning him; the glow of the sea-bather comes after to icy shock of the sea bath; and the success of the marriage comes after the failure of the honeymoon. All human vows, laws, and contracts are so many ways of surviving with success this breaking point, this instant of potential surrender” (pp. 41-42).
“If Americans can be divorced for ‘incompatibility of temper’ I cannot conceive why they are not all divorced. I have known many happy marriages, but never a compatible one” (p. 42).
“The jokes about a mother-in-law are scarcely delicate, but the problem of a mother-in-law is extremely delicate. A mother-in-law is subtle because it is a thing like twilight. She is a mystical blend of two inconsistent things — law and mother” (p. 68).
“Women were not kept at home in order to keep them narrow; on the contrary, they were kept at home in order to keep them broad. The world outside the home was one mass of narrowness, a maze of cramped paths, a madhouse of monomaniacs” (p. 98).
“How can it be a large career to tell other people’s children about the Rule of Three, and a small career to tell one’s own children about the universe? How can it be broad to be the same thing to everyone, and narrow to be everything to someone? No; a woman’s function is laborious, but because it is gigantic, not because it is minute. I will pity Mrs. Jones for the hugeness of her task; I will never pity her for its smallness” (p. 101).
“When men wish to be safely impressive, as judges, priests or kings, they do wear skirts, the long, trailing robes of female dignity. The whole world is under petticoat government; for even men wear petticoats when they wish to govern” (p. 113).
“Boys play football, why shouldn’t girls play football . . . boys grow mustaches, why shouldn’t girls grow mustaches — that is the notion of the new idea. There is no brain work in the thing at all; no root query of what sex is, or whether it alters this or that, and why, any more than there is any imaginative grip of the humor and heart of the populace in the popular education” (p. 199).
Sophia Press should be commended for reprinting this classic. The reader will find in it much to enjoy and equally as much to debate.
Powered by WPtouch Mobile Suite for WordPress