Children's Act (novel)

Roman McEwan has an unusual composition . A kind of prologue , a voluminous exposition of the work are several harmoniously interconnected stories, small novels , each of which is a separate example of the judicial process and embodies a certain socio-ethical problem. Judicial cases are considered by the wise and experienced judge of the High Court of London - the main character of the novel - Fiona May, who specializes in family law matters. Family conflicts can accurately reflect the most acute problems of the whole society. It is the family law that the author finds most interesting for his artistic research, calling this branch of law “a treasure trove of personal drama”. It is known that McEwen himself is an atheist ^[2] by his convictions, but the questions of faith and the influence of religious dogmas on people's lives and destinies become especially significant for him, because in the novel in every case that judge Judge Fiona May takes, the bifurcation point in the family conflict are any ethical-religious differences. For example, a judge has to consider a case on the division of responsibilities for parenting after parents divorce. The root of the conflict lies in the fact that the father of two girls is an ultra-orthodox Hasid , and according to his traditional religious beliefs, a woman is supposed to raise children and keep a household. However, the girls' mother has long since moved away from these orthodox convictions and wants her children to receive a good secular education and in the future have the opportunity to become self-sufficient and happy people, free from the heavy edifying and constant pressure of religious dogma.

In his decisions, the judge should be guided by the basic legal principle laid down in the Children's Law of 1989 which suggests that the well-being of the child is of paramount importance. It is from this position that Fiona approaches the resolution of all matters that are assigned to her. However, every judge is free to understand the essence of well-being in his own way, based on the specific situation. In one of his decisions, Fiona notes that “well-being is a changeable concept, it should be assessed by the standards of rational men and women of its time, because what has been arranged in the past generation may not be enough today” ^[3] . Throughout the novel, McEwen tries to analyze this provision of the law as deeply as possible. The author even goes further and tries to understand what well-being means not only for the child, but for humanity as a whole.

The storyline framing Fiona May’s everyday court practice framing the storyline is replete with details, professional legal vocabulary, references to case law, revealing to the reader the mechanisms of the work of British state institutions. The narrative, which, according to L. Scholes, as if conducted from the face of a “passionless anthropologist” ^[4] , is immersed in a world of intense rationality, which in the main part of the novel will contrast with the spiritual drama of the main character. McEwen talks about the conflict in her own family, about her feelings and concerns. After several decades of marriage, the husband decides to leave Fiona, which causes her to doubt herself as a woman. Loneliness, shame, public condemnation, gossip scare Fiona. She spent most of her life dealing with the resolution of other people's family disputes, and now she herself finds herself in a situation of family breakup. The reputation, professionalism of a judge and her moral qualities as a person are threatened. And an important question arises: will not Fiona be prevented from taking care of her own professional and family well-being to make the right decision in a matter that will become the key not only in her career, but also in life?

The main ethical conflict in the novel “The Law on Children” is revealed through the description and artistic analysis of the court case, which falls to judge Fiona May and affects the fate of seventeen-year-old Adam Henry. The young man is sick with an acute form of leukemia , he urgently needs a blood transfusion, otherwise a painful death will occur. But the family of Adam belongs to the religious sect of Jehovah's Witnesses , the dogma of which does not allow blood transfusion , this is considered one of the most dangerous sins. The boy's parents resigned to the loss of a son, considering it God's will, Adam himself accepts his fate with humility. But the hospital is filing a lawsuit demanding to allow blood transfusions against the wishes of the parents and Adam himself, since he has not yet reached the age of majority, and this procedure will help save his life. Judge May approached this case with all seriousness. She decides to personally meet with Adam and see if he and his parents really are aware of all the consequences of their choice. Fiona understands that Adam is a talented, inquisitive, keen on music and poetry, a naive young man who must live, develop and be happy, and the cruel dogmas of his religion, invented by adults, should not prevent this. The judge notes that “to take up the violin, and indeed any instrument is a manifestation of hope, this suggests the future” ^[3] . But Fiona does not just resolve the legal dispute, she sincerely wants to help a talented young man to think rationally, to know the world outside of religion, to feel all the colors of life. The meeting between Adam and Fiona Mei becomes culminating in the novel. In it, the poetics of objective narrative is replaced by the conventionality of a parable, and the image of a young man appears, in the opinion of T. Hadley, as an emblematic character, personifying innocence ^[5] . In this fragment, a lyrical principle appears, connected with images of art, poetry, which are opposed to the dogmas of religion and which contribute to the emancipation of the feelings of Adam.

After meeting with Fiona, Adam radically changed his attitude to life. He described this meeting in the following way: “It’s as if an adult entered a room where children spoil life for each other, and said:“ Stop, finish this nonsense, it's time to drink tea! ”You were this adult. You all understood it, but did not say. Only asked questions and listened. The religion of the parents was poison, and you are the antidote ^[3] .

Fiona saved the life of a young man, and at the same time she contributed to a serious change in the worldview of Adam, he withdrew from his religion, his relationship with his parents went wrong. In the inner world of Adam there appeared a vacuum that needed to be filled, filled with meaning. The young man is in dire need of a mentor, a man who would be able to help him learn about the multifaceted world around him. As such a mentor and interlocutor, Adam saw Fiona, because it was she who opened his eyes, taught him to think rationally, and helped get rid of illusions. Adam writes a touching letter to the judge, tries to meet her, but Fiona considers all this unacceptable, is afraid of condemnation of his colleagues. One day, Adam still manages to meet with Fiona during her business trip, but she pushes the boy away again because of the fear of condemnation. After this meeting, Adam finally got confused and, not finding the answers, he again returned to his faith. After some time, Fiona learned that the remission was over and Adam was in the hospital, but this time he was already an adult and decided to abandon the blood transfusion procedure himself. The disease overcame Adam. This news shocked Fiona, she suddenly clearly understood what a terrible mistake she made. The author vividly conveys in the novel the mental state of the heroine at this moment, using an improperly direct speech , combining the author's assessment and the narrative of the heroine, tormented by shame and repentance: “She would be honored to be. And respond. Instead, in a reckless and unforgivable rush, she kissed him and sent him away. And she disappeared. Did not respond to his letters. I did not see the warnings in his poems. How ashamed she was now to realize that she was moved by petty fear for her reputation. It is not the jurisdiction of any disciplinary commission. Adam sought her, but she offered nothing in return for religion, no help, although the law clearly states that her first priority should be his well-being. How many pages in how many decisions has she dedicated to this word? Well-being is a social concept. No child is an island. She thought her responsibility ended behind the walls of the court. But can it be so? He was looking for her, looking for what everyone is looking for, something that only free-thinking people can give, and not supernatural. Sense ” ^[3] .

I. McEwen notes that often the choice of a judge is limited to less damage than a great blessing. Judge Fiona May believed that her responsibility did not extend beyond the courtroom or her judgment. However, it turned out that by making a decision that saved the boy’s life, she could not go all the way and make the right moral choice that would save not only Adam’s health, but also his soul. In this regard, it would be unfair to limit the ideological message of the novel solely to aspects of opposition of faith and rational knowledge, religious tenets and institutions of the state, as D. Fridell ^[6] does (in the novel they do not play the most important role). The humanistic message of the writer, speaking about the fragility of human life and the vulnerability of the Other's inner world, the need to recognize a measure of responsibility for one’s neighbors and to maintain spiritual communication between people seems to be much more significant. ^[one]

The problem of family values ​​in the novel “Children's Law”

In the article entitled “Heartbreaking court cases that inspired me to write a new novel” ^[7] Ian McEwen rightly notes the parallels between the work of a judge and the writer's work. McEwen notes that many of the decisions of English judges are like short stories or short stories, where, against the background of a legal dilemma, images of realistically conceived characters fall into unusual and exciting twists and turns , and a legal dispute becomes a complex ethical conflict requiring its consideration from several positions. As a result, the narrator (judge) must make a moral choice that will affect human fates. Thus, the text of the court decision can be a strikingly clean, accurate, “tasty”, not devoid of humor or wit, prose . McEwen relates the work of a judge to the work of a novelist, and in his novel there is a synthesis of the actual artistic and legal discourses . McEwen accurately notes that it is in the area of ​​family law that important axiological problems are laid, which affect the interests of both society as a whole and its individual representatives and elements (for example, the family itself as a social unit). This is love and marriage, these are not only family interests, but also the individual interests of each spouse, these are the fates of children who are often broken due to differences of parents, these are issues of family violence and cruelty, these are religious and moral disputes that can complicate and even ruin a happy family life.

In the novel “Children's Law”, the author shows the paradigm of family values ​​rather through a systemic crisis of these very values. McEwen creates several very bright family conflicts that are so complicated that they require the intervention of a formidable and independent arbitrator in the person of the court. In describing these conflicts, McEwen shows how, because of selfishness, unwillingness to understand another, to realize the value of family, the happiness of children, the main family values ​​are destroyed: the ability to empathize, love, trust a partner, respect and understand each other, communicate, etc.

In one of the court cases described by McEwen, the heroine of the novel, a respected and experienced judge Fiona May, should decide who, after the parents divorce, should educate two girls. The judge is serious about resolving this family dispute, she ponders how in this case the well-being of children should be understood, because, as stated in the Children's Law of 1989, when considering any issue relating to raising a child, the child’s welfare should be the primary concern of the court. And Fiona concludes that “well-being cannot be understood in a purely financial sense or simply in terms of physical comfort. Welfare, happiness, well-being - all this should embrace the concept of a good life ... Economic and moral freedom, virtue, the ability to compassion and altruism, the solution of serious problems, bringing satisfaction, lively social circle, respect for others, the desire to give life high meaning and preserve the most important connections with a small number of people, which are determined primarily by love ” ^[3] . It is these categories that the heroine of the novel appeals to, and for McEwan, the fundamental family values ​​that are so often trampled today, and which the author urges to preserve in her novel.

The main ethical conflict in the novel “The Law on Children” is revealed through the description and artistic analysis of the court case, which falls to judge Fiona May and affects the fate of seventeen-year-old Adam Henry. The young man is sick with an acute form of leukemia , he urgently needs a blood transfusion , otherwise a painful death will occur. However, his family, guided by religious prejudice, refuses the blood transfusion procedure. McEwen creates a kind of existential paradox : is it really more important for parents to be the dogma of religion than the life of their own child. This is a clash of family and religious values. However, it is obvious to McEwen that it was the child’s life above all else, which was reflected in Judge May’s decision on this case, she proclaimed that the boy’s life is more precious than his faith, and allowed the hospital to carry out blood transfusions, even against the will of Adam and his parents. But as it turned out, the parents themselves secretly wanted to save their son, since after the medical procedure they did not fall into despair because of the violation of religious dogmas, but rejoiced at the recovery of their child. That is, family, child's life and family values ​​were more important.

The problem of religious values ​​in the novel “The Law on Children”

The literary columnist for The New York Times, D. Friedell, in his literary-critical article on the novel The Law on Children, draws an interesting parallel between McEwan and C. Darwin . Friedell writes that when Ann Darwin died on her tenth birthday in 1851, her father "lost his family happiness." Charles Darwin could no longer see, as he himself writes, “as clearly as the others, and, as I would like, proof of creation and good deeds of everything around. It seems to me that there is too much suffering in the world. ” So the faith of Charles Darwin disappeared, and he began to write "The Origin of Species." MacUean, answering an interviewer’s question about faith, said that “rather like Darwin when his beloved daughter died,” on September 11, 2001, he “felt more than ever,” that there is no god, and that “religion was clearly useless in making compassionate and intelligent decisions about people's lives, and the secular mind in this situation seems much more reasonable. ” In McUwan's early novels, intellectual and rational characters often only “slid along the axis of faith and disbelief,” like himself, but now McEwan was firmly established in adherence to atheism, when a real threat appeared to a secular state , and it must be protected ^[6] . In the novel “Children's Law”, the author tells the story of a High Court judge in London, whose list of cases is overwhelmed with disputes related to family tragedies, the causes of which are often religious differences. Here is a divorce in an orthodox Jewish family, where the father challenges the rights of his children to receive secular education ; Here are Catholic parents who refuse to accept the operation of children born as Siamese twins , even if it means that the children will die, but for believing parents it is “interference in God's purpose.”

As L. Scholes notes, McEwan's own atheism sounds loud and clear from the very beginning, and from the court cases described in the first chapter of the novel, it becomes obvious that the work of Judge Fiona Mey should be “the voice of reason in the face of religious myopia” ^[4] . Yet McUen's atheism is not reactionary, but quite tolerant, which emphasizes the high humanism and rationality of the writer himself, this can be confirmed by excerpts from court decisions made by the heroine of the novel: “Again it’s not a matter of a secular court to choose between religious beliefs, to resolve theological disputes . All religions deserve respect, provided that they are “socially acceptable from the point of view of legality,” as Lord Judge Perchez put it, and, in a more sombre formulation of Lord Judge Skarman, are not “moral and socially flawed” ” ^[3] . That is, we can conclude that McEwan is tolerant of religion to the extent that religion does not violate the limits of common sense and rationality.

In the work of McEwen, children are often heroes, and the most frequent motive is the absence of an organizing principle (parents, rational guardians), and then the writer begins to take up the question of how things are organized in the adult world. Does someone create all these bizarre life's vicissitudes, or is the world ruled by chance? And in answering this question, McEwen firmly takes the position of rationalism. The writer in one of the interviews notes that almost always in the novels the character wins who trusted his intuition, rather than cold rationalism, but the experience of life shows the inconsistency of such a decision. A lot of good things in life come from clear thinking and careful thinking. Many human values, such as justice, are certainly the product of a rational approach, so McEwen stands up for the protection of rationality ^[2] . It is these ideas that the writer implements in the novel “The Law on Children”.

The problem of professional ethics and social and moral orientations in the novel “The Law of Children”

According to D. Friedel's ironic remark, the judgments by the judge Fiona May in the novel are almost unreal: they clearly trace wisdom, intelligence, unshakable rationality, conscientiousness, compassion and justice. The work of a judge brings rationality even to the most hopeless situations ^[6] .

In the general characteristics of Fiona, the author often emphasizes her high professionalism and commitment to always strictly adhere to professional ethics. The judge repeatedly repeats that she studies the law out of deep respect for the rules. However, McEwen draws the attention of readers to the fact that the court can also be wrong, only these mistakes have very serious consequences for the fate of people. Fiona herself conveys a thought that for the attentive reader may be a hint of the author about the ending of the work: "... the law, no matter how Fiona loved him, was not a donkey in its worst manifestations, but a snake, a poisonous snake." No, of course, Fiona did not break the law, but her strict, even somewhat manic, commitment to unquestioning observance of the rules, including the rules of professional ethics, made her heart blind to the problems of the young man who was looking for answers from her, looking for meaning , which could not be given to him by his parents obsessed with faith. McEwen notes that often the choice of a judge is limited to less damage than a greater good. Judge Fiona May believed that her responsibility did not extend beyond the courtroom or her judgment. However, it turned out that by making a decision that saved the boy’s life, she could not go all the way and make the right moral choice that would save not only Adam’s health, but also his soul.

Here it is worth emphasizing that one of the main themes in the work of McEwen is the theme of “tragic inability to empathy ”, inability and unwillingness to understand the inner world, feelings, individuality, interests of the Other, which leads to tragedies both in the lives of individual, specific people, and in society at large. Examples of private tragedies, albeit created by the artist in the unreal, invented world of literature, but still basic to the events of real life, we can see including in the works of McEwan, and the terrible events of September 11, 2001 , which can be an example of a global social tragedy had a serious impact on the world view of millions of people. And the reason for the increase in this kind of tragedy in modern society is the erosion and disappearance of social and moral orientations, as McEwan often says in his works.

The screen version of the novel by I. McEwen was made by English film director Richard Eyre in 2017. Cast: Emma Thompson (Fiona May), Stanley Tucci (Jack May), Finn Whitehead (Adam Henry) and others.

• Suntsov E. A., Polyakov O. Yu. The ethical conflict in the novel of I. McIuen “The Law on Children” and the means of his artistic representation // Society. The science. Innovations (NPK-2018) [Electronic resource]: Coll.: XVIII All-Russian scientific-practical. Conf., 2-28 apr. 2018 in 3 tons. - Kirov: [Izd.vo VyatGU], 2018. - 3 tons. - S.655-661. (see https://elibrary.ru/item.asp?id=35151912 )
• McEwen I. Children's Act / Ian McEwen; [trans. from English V.P. Golyshev]. - Moscow: Eksmo Publishing House, 2016. - 288 p.
• McEwanI., The heartwrenching court cases that inspired my new novel // The New Republic. September 6, 2014. URL: https://newrepublic.com/article/119341/ian-mcewan-family-court-inspired-my-new-novel .