Tell me something I already know, and say it in the same old way.

[L.P. Hartley] understood...the sense of treachery that can be felt by an outsider in a group, but he also began to work with something more mysterious and powerful -- a treachery within the self, a treachery conjured into existence by the power of the flesh, by a seductive strength that cannot be resisted, and that stands at the root of life itself. This was a subject that would preoccupy many English novelists of Hartley's generation, including D.H. Lawrence and E.M. Forster, the idea that the senses, in all their heat and spontaneity, were the only useful weapons to withstand the strict, dull, deathly English duty.

--from Colm Toibin's introduction to L.P. Hartley's The Go-Between

I've seen Hartley classed in style and focus alongside Evelyn Waugh, and this seems appropriate enough. The Go-Between purports to be a moral novel, and is problematic in that way similar to Brideshead Revisited. It's a twofold problem, the first being were this moral breakdown supposedly occurs (see above) and the second is with how this troublesome "treachery" is to be expiated (see below).

Of The Go-Between Hartley wrote,

I originally meant The Go-Between to be a story of innocence betrayed, and not only betrayed but corrupted. I was and still am irritated by the way bad boys and girls of modern fiction are allowed to get away with the most deplorable behavior receiving not reproof, but compassion, almost congratulation, from the author.

By Hartley's estimation he failed to allay his own irritation insofar as even he softened towards the sins of his corrupting characters. But on the whole the book strikes an off key for a very different reason. If the above introduction strikes you as priggish, you should see how a whole novel of it hits you. The jejune desire to see bad behavior punished usually isn't just sour grapes over the author himself having been caught and punished for similar misdeeds but rather because the author never had the opportunity to behave badly in the first place. That's rather a precarious position from which to make moral judgments, and it's a far cry from the higher-minded Socratic view that behaving in an ill-mannered way is to be avoided because no one wants to be around someone who is ill, least of all one's self.

The desire to see sins expiated is, however, the latter point, and we've yet to touch upon what brings about this sin in the first place. Let us return to "...the idea that the senses, in all their heat and spontaneity, were the only useful weapons to withstand the strict, dull, deathly English duty." Hmm. Chance would be a fine thing. It seems to me that putting down our misdeeds to the heat and spontaneity of our senses is rather to overestimate the ability and originality of our senses. A case in point:

I retreated to a far corner of the room to avoid a group a young children, and thus ended up sitting next to a young lady of slight acquaintance. She huffed and puffed and furrowed her brow, so I set down my paper in order to let her vent troubles.

"I might as well tell you since everyone is going to find out eventually," she started.
Oh dear, I thought to myself, she's going to tell me that she's pregnant.
"I'm pregnant," she admitted in the same breath.
Don't let it be said that no one saw that one coming...

I must admit that my first reaction was an anachronistic thrill. Just when you thought that medical science and ingenuity had advanced far enough so that no girl need have an out-of-wedlock baby who doesn't want one, you find that the modern drama has fallen back on a tried and true plot device that you worried might never be seen again. Thank god some things never change.

But then there is the horror of embarrassment that sets in, at least if you are at all empathetic, which even I have my moments. The concept of virtue may be laughable and irrelevant, but it hasn't been forgotten and to have been found to be lacking in it still carries the sting of shame however liberal the surroundings.

"I despise children, so I'm very sorry for you," I told her with a smile.

And indeed I am sorry, for I don't see it as Hartley sometimes did that the heat and spontaneity of the senses were to be a saving grace. In the case of my young friend, I only see an ill-used girl acting out of boredom and convention and far from an escape of dull and deathly duty I see a severe neglect of it. When it comes right down to it, I very much doubt that most people are so fettered by duty that they really need to be released from what little of it already hampers them. Calling out sensual heat and spontaneity would seem to be a bit presumptuous, but there it is. The cart falls before the horse, just as the sensual heat and spontaneity boils off the puddles before duty ever even calls for a rain.