Anthropophagite at Work

EXPLORING ENGLISH CHARACTER (483 pp.) --Geoffrey Gorer--Criterion ($8.50).

"Do you think English people fall in love in the way you see Americans doing it in the films?" "Do you believe in ghosts?" "If a husband finds his wife having an affair with another man, what should he do?" "If you were told that a small child, say between 3 and 8, had done something really bad, what would you think the child had done?" These are questions* from a jumbo questionnaire answered by 11,000 readers of People, British Sunday paper. The questioner was the well-known culture cannibal, Geoffrey Gorer, who has in recent years dissected and devoured the Lepchas of Sikkim (Himalayan Village), The American People and The People of Great Russia. Now, with his trusty pack of I.B.M. cards at his side, Social Anthropophagite Gorer hunts the pale-throated English Norm through trackless wastes of figures.

Distant Cordiality. It seems, according to Gorer, that all Englishmen are average, but some are more average than others. Half the population calls itself "working class," finished full-time schooling at 14, is married, has a family income of -L-8 a week (as of the time of the poll in January 1951). This median type practices something Gorer calls "distant cordiality" with his neighbors. In general, this means that it takes an Englishman at least ten years to get to know his neighbors well, and then he may dislike them, e.g., "nosy" and "no help" when in trouble. Every second Englishman calls himself "shy." Love at first sight is not for him, and English engagements usually last from six months to two years. Some 43% do admit to a real love affair outside marriage," either before or after. By contrast, the Kinsey sampling found 83% of American males and 50% of American females admitting to premarital sex relations and about 50% of married men and 26% of married women to extramarital relations. Half the men and two-thirds of the women in England disapprove of any sex experience before marriage, as against Kinsey's figures of one-third of American men and four-fifths of American women."

Cane, Thrash & Birch. British women say that what they value most in a man is "understanding"; men want a "good housewife." Men hate "nagging" most in a wife; the women complain of "selfishness" in a husband. Three men out of four believe women enjoy sex as much as or more than men; slightly more than half the women agree.

Children bring out a touch of the sergeant major in British papas. More than half are content to discipline by withdrawing privileges, but a sizable 21% are ready to cane, thrash or birch a boy. This is perhaps not too surprising in a country in which the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals was founded in 1824, sixty years before the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. British mothers apparently feel that discipline begins at the potty's edge, and 69% insist that toilet training should start at under six months.

Horoscopes & Offshoots. Three out of five Englishmen believe in neither hell nor the devil. Almost 25% profess no religious faith; of those who do, 80% are Protestants, 8% are Roman Catholics, and a smattering of sectarians belong to intriguingly titled religious offshoots, e.g. Peculiar Persons, Toc H, the Countess of Huntingdon's Persuasion. Scanning their collective horoscope (as four out of five regularly do their personal ones), the British regard their strong point as "understanding and consideration," their weakness as "temper." One out of four also cited "excess of good traits" as a serious fault.

Reaching gingerly for Significance, Gorer wonders what ever happened to the aggressive Englishmen of Elizabethan and 18th century cockfighting and bullbaiting days, and decides that lusty John Bull still exists, not cowed but merely caged. The high price of self-policing, Gorer thinks, is the gentle modern Englishman's lack of energy and loss of sexual drive. Exploring English Character does not exactly make hilarious reading, though it will bear browsing through for statistical confirmation of a lot of cliches about the English, and for some of the authentic voice-of-England quotes with which the text is peppered. Generally, in dealing with his countrymen, Author Gorer is far less sweeping than he was with Americans or Lepchas. Which suggests what can happen when one man's Margaret Mead takes another Englishman's poise on.

*The answers: 76% of Britons questioned do not think English people fall in love U.S.-movie-style; 17% do believe in ghosts; fewer than one-third of the men and one-sixth of the women would consider divorce the answer to an extramarital affair; four out of five named some aggressive act as a "really bad" deed in a child, e.g., "Pushed another child in the river."

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