DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE. 



373 



DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE. 



THE BIRTH RATE IN FICTION. 



As the question of the size of family 

 appears to be much discussed just now, 

 I should like to call attention to the 

 low birth rate in novels and plays, 

 which, united as it is with a high 

 death rate, will inevitably lead to the 

 rapid extermination of the hero and 

 heroine. I am under the impression 

 also that the birth rate is decreasing, 

 and while families of a respectable size 

 may be found occasionally in Thack- 

 eray and Dickens, they scarcely exist 

 in Meredith, Hardy and James. Al- 

 though, so far as I am aware, atten- 

 tion has never been called to the 

 alarming conditions, their existence 

 will be recognized readily by readers 

 of novels and play-goers. It will 

 suffice to refer to two novels, which I 

 think are fairly typical — ' Vanity 

 Fair ' and ' Beauchamp's Career.' 



Becky Sharp was an only child, nor 

 do we hear of uncles or aunts. ' Vanity 

 Fair ' is a novel without a hero. Sir 

 Pitt Crawley, twice married, has four 

 children, his brother five and his sister 

 none; so there is an average family of 

 three, just sufficient to maintain that 

 questionable line. Osborne and Dob- 

 bin each have two sisters, and we have 

 again the family required for a sta- 

 tionary population. The Sedley family 

 consists of brother and sister. In the 

 next generation, however, things are 

 worse. Amelia has two husbands and 

 two children, Becky one child, Sir Pitt 

 one and Josh none. This is appar- 

 ently an average family of 1.83, which 



is almost exactly that of the Harvard 

 graduates, according to President 

 Eliot. 



In ' Beauchamp's Career ' Nevil is 

 an only child and leaves a child to 

 survive him; Everard Romfrey, marry- 

 ing childless Mrs. Culling, has one 

 child who dies in infancy; his brother 

 has none; old Mrs. Beauchamp has 

 none. Austin, Baskelett, Lydiard and 

 Dr. Shrapnel leave no posterity. Of 

 the three heroines, Jenny and Cecilia 

 are only children; Renee is of the 

 typical French family of two, but has 

 herself no children. This is obviously 

 a very bad state of afi'airs — an aver- 

 age family of one half child and a net 

 fertility of only 0.43. As these sta- 

 tistics have been collected in large 

 measure from a fallible memory, they 

 may not be exactly correct, and they 

 may not be entirely representative, 

 "but I am confident that they would be 

 substantially confirmed by more ac- 

 curate and extensive data. They cer- 

 tainly foretell the rapid extermination 

 of the population of the novel. 



The conditions appear to be still 

 worse in the drama. It is true that 

 here the marriage rate is high, and 

 something may be left to the imagina- 

 tion. But Hamlet, Macbeth, Othello 

 and Romeo have no lines of descent, 

 nor does Lear, though he has three 

 daughters. In the current play the 

 woman with a past may occasionally 

 have a child; she certainly never has 

 the average family of four to five; but 

 her extermination is not so deplorable. 



C. 



