On the Manufacture of Good Little Boys (The D. H. Lawrence Birthday Post 2023)

Arthur Fleck as played by Joaquin Phoenix in Joker (2019) 

Click here for the relevant scene on YouTube.

 

In one of his late articles, D. H. Lawrence - who was born on this day in 1885 - complained of the manner in which modern men - himself included - have been enslaved by civilisation to the detriment of their own instinctive feelings and individuality:

 

"Little boys are trundled off to school at the age of five, and immediately the game begins, the game of enslaving the small chap." [a]

 

Mostly, Lawrence blames this on women; mothers and schoolma'ams and old maids, who know nothing about manhood and suspect that the latter is something "uncalled-for and unpleasant" [156]. 

 

On the very first day in class, young Johnny is told he must sit still "'like all the other good little boys'" [157], even though this is the last thing on earth that he wants to do: "At the bottom of his heart, he doesn't in the least want to be a good little boy ..." [157].       

 

The entire education system, says Lawrence is established to manufacture obedient little boys:

 

"School is a very elaborate railway-system where good little boys are taught to run upon good lines till they are shunted off into life, at the age of fourteen, sixteen or whatever it is. And by that age the running-on-lines habit is absolutely fixed. [...] And it is so easy, running on rails, he never realises that he is a slave to the rails he runs on. Good boy!" [157]  

 

"But to be a good little boy like all the other good little boys is to be at last a slave, or at least an automaton, running on wheels. It means that dear little Johnny is going to have all his own individual manhood nipped out of him, carefully plucked out, every time it shows a little peep." [157]

 

Some describe this as the civilising of the wild young boy. But Lawrence insists it's a "subtle, loving form of mutilation" [157] and bullying. And goodness ultimately just means conforming to a universal morality and being like everybody else without any feelings or ideas to call your own.

 

So what, then, is Lawrence suggesting here? 

 

He says that "nobody wants Johnny to be a bad little boy" [158]. But, having said that, I can't help suspecting that he would sympathise with someone like Arthur Fleck [b] who, after years and years, of being expected to sit and take endless bullshit from the po-faced finger-wagging moralists who have control over his life, finally snaps and starts to werewolf and go wild ... 

 

    

Notes

[a] D. H. Lawrence, 'Enslaved by Civilisation', in Late Essays and Articles, ed. James T. Boulton, (Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 156. Future page references to this work will be given directly in the text.

      What is remarkable about this short text is that it anticipates Freud's famous work of 1930 - Das Unbehagen in der Kultur - translated into English as Civilization and Its Discontents. 

      In this pessimistic work, Freud theorised the fundamental tension between civilisation and the individual; the latter desiring instinctive freedom, whilst the former requires conformity to the law and the repression of natural (often violent) instincts. 

      Unlike Lawrence, Freud thinks the non-satisfaction of man's most powerful instincts is not only necessary, but positively a good thing; that man is much better off tamed in the name of Love than allowed to give free expression to those primitive feelings and dangerous passions derived from and representative of the (so-called) death drive. The suffering and distress caused by this loss of instinctive freedom is ultimately a price worth paying as it secures the advance of civilisation. 

 

[b] Arthur Fleck is the aspiring stand-up comic and professional clown protagonist played by Joaquin Phoenix in the 2019 film Joker (dir. Todd Phillips). Fleck’s tale demonstrates what happens when negative thoughts and feelings are not tolerated. The individual, denied the opportunity to express suffering in a legitimate form, either self-harms or goes on a killing spree. In other words, psychic disturbances and psychotic behaviour can often be traced back to an excess of positivity.