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The Angel Isafrel: A Story of Prohibition in New Zealand
The Angel Isafrel: Melodrama, Prohibition Novel, Utopia
The Angel Isafrel: Melodrama, Prohibition Novel, Utopia
The novel’s melodramatic tone is tied to the prohibition lobby; jingoisms and highly emotive language were common elements in the movement, earning them the label of extremist fanatics (although in The Angel Isafrel the title is reclaimed as a badge of honour). The “demon drink”, a name clearly associating alcoholic substances with the devil, made drinking into a sinful indulgence, although from the perspective of the heavily Christian prohibition groups the term was apt for a substance that was linked to so many tragedies and miseries. At the height of the prohibition movement, didactic plays were performed depicting reforming alcoholics; alcohol depicted as a “rum bottle... usually an outsize stage prop with a stuffed snake inside it” (Bollinger 40)34 to underscore the point. The melodrama content was such that in the 1960s what had been an earnest American temperance play, The Drunkard, was re-played successfully in Wellington as a farce (Bollinger 21)35. At the time, prohibition conventions (much like those outlined by Reed in the build up to the National Referendum) were designed to incite their audiences into a kind of mass hysteria, combining Christian hymns with sentimental melodramas and the presentation of recovering alcoholics so that participants would “then rush out into the streets to fight the good fight with renewed zeal.” Bollinger adds that “We New Zealanders regard ourselves as a stolid and essentially unemotional people. But this movement bowled us over like nine-pins.” (Bollinger 41)36.
Accordingly, Isafrel’s grand statements, that “I have never encountered a case of domestic misery but I was able to trace it to drink as the cause” (Reed 25)37, and Isafrel’s claim that alcohol represents “a slavery that is more cruel, more tearful, more heartbreaking than negro slavery ever was” (Reed 33)38 are, I think, astonishing ones, but not claims that were made in isolation (Fielding Star 29 April 1896)39. Alison Parker’s article on the American WCTU’s literature programme says that “If melodramatic tragedies could mobilize readers to moral action and reform... WCTU editors... were willing to expose... the negative aspects of cities and alcoholism, such as saloons, poverty, and death.” (Parker 140)40); a similar statement might easily be applied to the New Zealand prohibition movement and its supporters. Parker relates a typical story (“The Little Captain”) published in 1911 in the Young Crusader, the American prohibition youth magazine, of an episode of drunken violence at home: James returned home to find that Margaret had sold the clock... to feed her starving children. Ignoring their plight, James demanded the money. When his wife refused, he violently threatened her... Mrs. Grey stood fearlessly before him; the brutal arm was raised; but Jamie, with a wild cry, threw himself between, and the ill-directed blow fell heavily upon his upturned head. The child dropped as if he had been shot, and there was a moment of death-like silence. (Parker 140)41.
Compare this scene with the intervention in The Angel Isafrel that costs Isafrel her life:“Her father had come home under the influence of drink, and in a wilder mood than any time before. The children, frightened and crying, ran to her, but thrusting them aside she hastened into the dining room, where her father and mother were. As Isafrel entered the room her mother was rushing towards the door to escape from his violence, and Isafrel hastening forward threw her arms around her father to restrain him. “Off, you wretch,” he cried out, as he flung her violently from him, and staggering back she fell heavily, striking her side on the corner of the couch, and rolled to the floor in a faint.” (Reed 54)42.
In both cases the authors aim clearly to illustrate the disastrous effect alcohol might have on the home environment, with violence and murderous action taking their most tragic effect on the purest members of the house - “Little Captain” Jamie and Isafrel respectively. Indeed, much of The Angel Isafrel reads like a catalogue of sad stories caused by alcohol, listing suicide, domestic violence, parental abandonment, sailing accidents. Reed’s novel works on the same assumption as the American WCTU stance, hoping to inspire action through melodramatic tragedy. However this is not to say that the extremism was limited to the fanatics; a letter to the Ashburton Guardian in 1896 claims that prohibitionists would have the people do away with potatoes, barley and other vegetable products, on the grounds that they are used in the creation of alcohol; and this is taken as a proof “that abstention from alcohol is an impossibility, if mankind are to continue using the vital food stuffs they now exist upon.” (Ashburton Guardian 23 April 1896)43. In fact, the intensity of feeling regarding the prohibition issue can make the conduct of characters in The Angel Isafrel look positively restrained: Bollinger relates the history of Opotiki in the 1880s as a typical example, and his account includes assault, libel and slander, legal proceedings, rioting, the burning of effigies, and a potential assassination attempt (Bollinger 34-5)44. Understanding the frenzied context in which The Angel Isafrel was published is, I think, helpful in reconciling the melodramatic tone of the book with its serious political purpose.
The Angel Isafrel shares several features with other works of prohibition literature of the period as outlined by Kirstine Moffat in her article ‘The Demon Drink’; Reed’s novel was his only published work of fiction, obviously issued in New Zealand “for didactic reasons rather than for possible fame and wealth.” (Moffat 140)45. One reviewer observed that “The book will rest for its success less on its plot than its purpose, less on its interest as a romance than on the ability with which Mr Reed argues the case he champions.” (Hawera and Normanby Star 1 December 1896)46, and it is clear that above all else the novel is an attempt to stir its readers into support for the prohibition movement. But while in the latter part of the novel the narrative gives way to explicitly political speeches at public gatherings (not unlike what might be read in newspaper articles of the period), Isafrel’s efforts are targeted at bringing relief to those suffering through the effects of alcohol; her championing of the political movement becomes an extension of her charitable efforts to help people, mitigating one of the chief criticisms of the prohibition movement, that is that people are “endowed with inherent rights of personal liberty and with civil rights... and you cannot take away these rights by force.” (Reed 33)47. But from the prohibitionist perspective, as Isafrel explains to Dr Wilmott, “The fanatics don't want anything for themselves... they are fighting to do good for other people,” (Reed 39)48. Nevertheless, in the end the interest in reform dominates the novel, with the titular heroine almost disappearing during the second half, retired to her sickbed to watch and wait for the results of the referendum.
As a further example of Reed’s reforming purposes, we might consider the uncomfortable misadventures of Isafrel’s father as he attempts to find a doctor for his daughter’s injuries. Caught between the seriousness of the assault, and the doctor’s dire diagnosis, Mr Chalmer’s drunken bumblings are innocuously described, but have tragic consequences for the heroine. With the narrative focalised through his perspective, his seemingly innocent series of events - “Sitting down for a moment to rest and sip his liquor, he felt so much bettered by it that he thought he would take another,” (Reed 55)49 leads to his passing out and delaying medical attention for his daughter until the next morning. Here it seems that Reed’s purpose is “awakening the national conscience to the evil side of the drink traffic” (Otago Witness 19 November 1896)50, by emphasising how innocently Mr Chalmer’s actions appeared to him, and yet showing what severe consequences they yield.
As a contrast to the negative effects of alcohol, in the final chapter of The Angel Isafrel Reed creates a prohibition utopia, free of illness, corruption and cruelty. Notably Reed’s vision includes many social and egalitarian points - the punishment for possession of liquor in the colony is hard labour without option of a fine, “in order to make it equal to rich and poor” (Reed 93)51, and as a consequence of the money no longer being spent on alcohol, many men are able to take up shares in “co-operative institutions” (Reed 97)52 and even having the chance of “being his own employer” (Reed 97)53. Reed’s utopia is one in which crime has been greatly reduced by the absence of alcohol; this contradicts the evidence from prohibition test cases like Boston in the United States and the Clutha district in New Zealand, but perhaps might be explicated by the greater difficulty in supplying an (almost) entirely “dry” island nation. Surprisingly, provision is made for the medicinal use of alcohol, which suggests that Isafrel’s decision to refuse the whisky offered her by the doctor is perhaps more for sensational effect than out of a hard conviction of the author. The chapter serves to answer all the worries and criticisms of a prohibition law, and simultaneously express the hopes of the movement; Reed gives the comforting message that with “these social, moral, and physical blessings.... there was not an interest in the country—social, moral, religious, commercial, or political—that did not feel” (Reed 98)54 the benefit of the final defeat of liquor.
In ‘The Demon Drink’, Moffat claims that while Reed presents an alternative point of view to the drinking question (that of “the trade”), he does so only to satirise it. While certainly not disputing the astute judgements Moffat makes about the general arguments put forward by “the trade” and its supporters in The Angel Isafrel, I would draw attention to the interview between Isafrel and Dr. Wilmott. While his conversion to the cause (or at least the silencing of his pen) reads like a foregone conclusion, in the course of the debate are put forward some of the more reasoned arguments against the prohibition movement. Dr Wilmott argues that “each of us endowed with inherent rights of personal liberty and with civil rights that we are entitled to preserve” (Reed 33)55 and that “the drunkards are really few compared with the multitude of people who drink in moderation, and who feel that it is at once a comfort and a benefit to them.” (Reed 36)56. These are not the ludicrous claims of ‘the trade’ in the build up to the referendum (“What had made the name of a British citizen respected and feared in every land... It was beer.” (Reed 62-3)57) but the arguments of moderate men - like William Collins - who might not even be opposed to temperance, but draw the line at an outright prohibition (Wanganui Herald 29 September 1896)58. Isafrel’s argument with the doctor covers religion and politics; they argue the rights of the individual against the rights of the community. This chapter is the novel’s greatest acknowledgement of the alternative views on prohibition, and yet while Isafrel is successful in converting Dr Wilmott, her passionate responses put her, I think, at a disadvantage when compared with her opponent’s rationality; Isafrel appears unfavourably as a fanatic herself.