Taking refuge from the Eurovinski Song Concert (so many variations of heartfelt emotion, in a minor key, to a disco beat - who knew?) I came across a brilliant essay by Zadie Smith, on Middlemarch, in today's Guardian. It's well worth reading, not least for Ms Smith's persuasive defence of the novel's wide-range of narrative focus, in particular of the key role played by the character of Fred Vincy. This character is often dismissed as being of insufficient weight, a charge made by Henry James in his review of the book. I had felt something similar on my last re-reading, becoming somewhat disgruntled at time spent on consideration of Fred's feelings, when what I wanted to do was hurry on to the next stage of the disintegration of Dorethea's marriage to Casaubon. But Ms Smith's insight is that Fred's character is the one most required by the book, because he demonstrates that the path to a secular redemption - to live the life of a good man - requires the exercise of empathy. It is only when he considers the impact his deleterious actions have on the lives of the real people around him, that he feels true shame, and makes the changes required. As Ms Smith puts it "In Middlemarch love enables knowledge. Love is a kind of knowledge. If Fred didn't love Mary, he would have had no reason to exercise his imagination on her family. It's love that makes him realise that two women without their savings are a real thing in the world, and not merely incidental to his own sense of dishonour. It's love that enables him to feel another's pain as if it were his own."
Now I'm not going to try to draw too strong an analogy here - in the style of a 1980s Radio 1 DJ - between what Ms Smith reveals in this splendid essay about the characters of Middlemarch, and what we are learning about the characteristics of our own dear Prime Minister. But reading the essay, I was struck by the way Gordon Brown and David Cameron have discussed rising prices recently. When David Cameron relays his shock at the higher cost of filling his car at the Chipping Norton service station, we can imagine this scene, it is a clear image in our minds, and thus the experiential gap between ourselves and Mr Cameron becomes that much less. For the previously staunch Labour voter, the distance required to travel, from "never-Tory" to where Mr Cameron needs them to be, becomes that much smaller. Contrast this with Gordon Brown, blasting us with his dalek-ite statistics about world oil prices. I know about the oil prices, Gordon. But you don't know what my groceries cost. You don't give the impression that you are aware of the concept of "buying groceries". The gap between the voter's experience, and the account offered by Gordon Brown, remains vast and solid.
Why does empathy matter so much? Back to Ms Smith's essay: "It was [George Eliot's] contention that human experience is as powerful a force as theory or revealed fact. Experience transforms perspective, and transformations in perspective constitute real changes in the world". You cannot "Be The Change" unless you are willing to have your perspective changed, and to change your perspective you need to experience - I would argue - something of what it is to live the life of another, or at least, to understand the impact that your actions have on another. I think the attractions of an empathetic politician like David Cameron are much, much more important, and real, than any detailed listing of manifesto commitments. (I am not arguing for a policy-free zone, merely that I believe that an empathetic presentation and willingness to demonstrate a change in perspective is more important politically than commitment to any single policy.) It's not "style over substance" and a non-ideologic approach to politics is not a failure. Policy prescriptions which do not come from a determined effort to understand the emotional experience of other people lead to the machines of socialism. (I may here, I think, gently and mildly, be disagreeing with the some of the editorial stance of Conservative Home!)
By the way, I thought Zadie Smith's On Beauty, a reworking of Forster's Howard's End, one of the best books I've read as an adult. I might call it a necessary fiction, by which I mean that its subject matter goes to the core of the political narrative of our times, dealing, as it does, with the conflicts that arise between too-strongly held beliefs about identity (whether socioeconomic, ethnic or gender) and the failure to Only Connect which such an attitude engenders. Worth a read.
