Why Such a Strong Reaction? : Mary Jane Ward's Review of Fritz Peters' The World Next Door

TOP ROW: The World Next Door, New York : Farrar, Straus, 1949
with author, Fritz Peters. BOTTOM ROW: Author, Mary Jane Ward
and her novel, The Snake Pit, New York : Random House, 1946.

The World Next Door, Fritz Peters' freshman novel, was released on September 15, 1949 and was well received by the majority of reviewers. While some, particularly those from more conservative outlets, took issue with the gay aspect of the story, the consensus was that Fritz Peters had begun what could prove to be an extraordinary literary career.  In fact, the book's dustjacket highlighted advance praise from Jean Stafford, Eudora Welty and others.¹ When some of the country's top editors and columnists were asked in late 1949 about the best writers to have emerged in the post-war period, Fritz Peters was mentioned alongside other notables such as Norman Mailer, Carson McCullers, Tennessee Williams, Truman Capote, and John Horne Burns, to name a few.²

Reviews of The World Next Door often referenced and compared it to Mary Jane Ward's landmark The Snake Pit from 1946 due to its focus on the patient experience within a psychiatric hospital. While some reviewers suggested that it held its own against the standard-bearer of psychiatric novels, others thought that it was in fact superior. When The New York Times Book Review published its review of The World Next Door penned by Ms. Ward it became the talk of the literary world.^{3, 4} It was much discussed because it was so out of step with the consensus view of the work. In order to understand the source of this scathing review, one must first try to understand Mary Jane Ward's experience publishing her own novel based on her stay in a psychiatric hospital.

Excerpt from Nightmare Revisited, Mary Jane Ward's
review of Fritz Peters' The World Next Door.⁴

The Snake Pit, based on the author's own experience in psychiatric care, was quite successful after it was published, becoming a Book of the Month Club selection, and by 1948 being made into a successful film starring Olivia de Havilland. But it didn't find its way to being published easily. Ms. Ward struggled to publish for some time before the Snake Pit was picked up. Once published, her work was praised by Karl Menninger of The Menninger Clinic and she embarked on speaking tours—engaging psychiatric professionals with the aim of improving equity of conditions and treatment for patients of all races and classes. Ward had a platform and was affecting significant change. 

For all of the issues that Ward hoped to change in psychiatric care, she saw those doctors and staff providing treatment as generally good people trying to do good work. Peters' novel provides insight into the male experience, and the experience at a military hospital in the post World War II years in particular—a very different situation than the one Ward described.

Unlike, Ms. Ward, Fritz Peters appeared to become an overnight success—blurbed by major authors and also drawing attention to the shortcomings of psychiatric care at that time. The World Next Door, based on Peters' own experience, sees its protagonist, David Mitchell admit during the course of his treatment that he had a previous homosexual experience. Because patient records were available to staff of all levels on the ward, it became common knowledge. This knowledge was used against him by ward staff, culminating in a sexual assault. But because the word of a psychiatric patient can't be trusted, his accusation wasn't believed by the doctors.

Did Mary Jane Ward simply not find plausible the idea of staff behaving in this way? Or did Ward find Peters' characterization of hospital staff as not only unfeeling but as potentially sexually predatory a threat to all of the work that she had done in recent years to improve the patient experience? Was this simply a case of sour grapes for Peters' writing in a genre that she had dominated? Or was it more about the relative ease with which the literary establishment welcomed Peters' work after Ward had struggled for years to get published?  Was his relative ease of being published down to sexism? One thing is for sure, Peters certainly struck a nerve.

Note

This post is meant to highlight an anomalous review of Fritz Peters' The World Next Door, while giving the reader a sense of how the book was generally received and what Peters' literary future was perceived to hold. Mary Jane Ward's The Snake Pit is an extraordinary work and remains a favorite of early Cold War era psychiatric novels. Both authors and their novels, which offer different perspectives on a common theme, are well worth a read.

¹  Bixbi, G. (1980, Win.). Blurbs: Welty on Fritz Peters. Eudora Welty Newsletter, 4(1), p.2-6

²  Babcock, F. (1950, Jan. 1). Among the Authors. Chicago Daily Tribune, p.F6.

³  Kilgallen, D. (1949, Nov. 3). Voice of Broadway. Olean Times-Herald (Olean, NY), p.18.

⁴  Ward, M. J. (1949, Sept. 18). Nightmare Revisited. New York Times Book Review, p.6.

The World Next Door by Fritz Peters

New York ; Farrar Straus, 1949

David Mitchell was handcuffed and put in the back of the police car. His mother is distraught and his step-father, John, hoping to calm him down, accompanied him in the cruiser. David didn't know for sure where he was being taken—maybe to prison, possibly to his execution.

When he arrives, David doesn't know where he is and vacillates between believing he is an American spy being protected by the British and being a prisoner of war being held by the Nazis. It's possible both are true and he can't understand why he isn't being protected from the Nazis.

It's 1947 and it soon becomes clear to the reader, that David has been taken to a psychiatric ward. He doesn't understand why he's there and his agitation and inability to do as he is told lands him in the pack unit, where patients are wrapped tightly in wet sheets, a 'sheet pack', in an effort to calm them down.

Upon his arrival to the unit, he believes, no, he knows that he is Jesus Christ. He has the cigarette-burn stigmata to prove it. What he wants more than anything is for someone—anyone to believe him and to believe in him. When one of the night attendants attempts to rape him, he creates an unbelievable scene and manages to get the priest and the doctor to come to the ward. There he makes a convincing argument for a psychiatric patient's rights. Of course the doctors are going to believe the attendants—the patient is obviously crazy. What kind of power does that put into the hands of the staff? He lives in constant fear of saying the wrong thing. Will it make them angry with him? Will he be punished? There is a powerlessness that is all encompassing. Even as his mind begins to clear, David doesn't trust his own thoughts. David describes being in love with attendants, doctors or other patients who are nice him. He later realizes that it isn't love that he feels, but a sense of gratitude for the gentle way they treat him.

Mr. Newton suggests that David's accusation against the attendant might stem from his own homosexuality. There was also a similar claim in David's file from the army where a general "tried to get funny". David is clear that he had slept with another man in his 20s but is not a homosexual. "I was in love with him, that's all." David's mother had shared with Mr. Newton these earlier experiences "as a possible cause of [his] illness." What's truly at the heart of his illness is a spiritual and moral collapse brought on by an inability to reconcile his spiritual beliefs with the horrors he witnessed during World War II.

FROM LEFT TO RIGHT: [1] New York : Harper's Bazaar, July 1949 (excerpt)   [2] London : Victor Gollancz, 1950   [3] New York : Signet/NAL, 1950   [4] Le Monde à Côté, French translation by Amélie Audiberti, Paris : Éditions Denoël, 1953   [5] Die Welt Nebenan, German translation by Utta Seifert-Roy, Hamburg : P. Zsolnay, 1956   [6] London : Victor Gollancz, 1967

The World Next Door is a fictionalized version of the author's own experiences and shows the horrors of psychiatric treatment during the 1940s and 1950s, including the use of wet sheet packs, insulin shock and electro-shock therapies. It was very well received upon publication and shown a bright light on psychiatric hospitals and psychiatric practice broadly, and issues within Veteran's Administration hospitals in particular. Mary Jane Ward, the author of The Snake Pit (1946) wrote the single critical review for The New York Times. She called it 'sincere' and then proceeded to pick it apart. One wonders if this isn't a case of feeling like another author was muscling in on her turf. The book had a significant enough impact that you still find it in medical libraries across America, unusual for a novel. The World Next Door was excerpted in Harper's Bazaar, released in several English editions, translated into both French and German, and was performed in France as a radio play.

Bibliographies & Ratings: Cory (III); Garde (OTP, a***); Mattachine Review (III); Young (3021)

The Christmas Tree by Isabel Bolton (Mary Britton Miller)

New York : Charles Scribner's Sons, 1949

As Christmas approaches, we often think about past holidays. Our memories usually begin with the good times, certainly our memories are of that perfect Christmas. But as we continue down this rabbit hole, thoughts of our family in general appear, quickly followed by memories of the myriad family disagreements and complications. It's easy to think that this is a new phenomenon—that Christmases of the past were perfect and everyone got along. The characters in Isabel Bolton's novel, The Christmas Tree suggest that families have always been difficult and tensions run high at this time of the year.

Opening in the days leading up to Christmas 1945, Bolton presents the members of a family who are scattered across the country. Each person's inner dialogue is unique but all conclude that this Christmas will be challenging, particularly if everyone shows up.

Mrs. Danforth, or Hilly, is in New York with her 6-year-old grandson, Henry. She plans to give Henry that perfect Christmas that she remembers from her own childhood, including a tree with real candles.

Henry's mother, Anne is in Reno obtaining a divorce from Hilly's son, Larry. In support of the divorce, Hilly supplied a deposition confirming her son's behavior in the marriage. While still in Reno, Anne immediately marries Captain George Fletcher, a pilot during the war. Due to heavy snow, Anne and George are to arrive by train from Santa Fe.

Larry is also in the military but served stateside during the war. He lives in Washington DC and is gay. Christmas at his mother's house seems to be just the excuse he needs to end his current relationship with Jerry. Larry arrives by train, but not alone.

Novels from the 1940s and 50s typically have a Freudian slant in their explanations of relationships in general and gayness in particular—overly close relationship with the mother, absent father, etc. The Christmas Tree is no different. However, in this case it's not subtext. It is couched in the specificity of Anne's experience with analysis and her doctor's explanation of who's to blame for Larry's gayness. The explanation provided is the glue that holds the family together, for better or worse.

Bibliographies & Ratings: Cory (IV); Garde (P78**); Mattachine Review (IV); Young (345*)

The Barriers Between by Marc Brandel

New York : Dial Press, 1949

The Barriers Between is an intense Freudian novel focused on three Americans living and working in Mexico. Jordan Bushnel is a troubled artist providing art and illustration for magazines in the U.S. His love interest is Sylvia. The final member of the love triangle is fellow artist, Richard Slater, whom Sylvia attempted to bed in the past but is now just a friend (who also happens to be gay).

The novel opens with Jordan on the run and declares his culpability in the murder of Richard two days earlier. Told through flashback, what follows is a description of the events of those two days that reveals much about Jordan's state of mind. Why did he snap?

Both Richard and Sylvia think that Jordan might be gay. Jordan can't explain his attraction to Richard but doesn't interpret it as homosexual interest (although others do). Richard frequently launches subtle barbs suggesting something about Jordan's sexuality.

A significant amount of the dialogue is given over to Jordan's inner conversations in which we learn about his feelings of inadequacy as regards his role in the war. Unable to serve due to a medical condition, he sees his work as an artist-correspondent lacking in masculine credibility. Richard's service as a pilot during the war and his comfort with being gay is a challenge to Jordan's view of himself in the world. Jordan traces his feelings back to the events of his childhood including the stereotypical overbearing mother and emasculated father.

Marc Brandel (1919-1994)
Author of The Barriers Between

The first half ends when the tension between Richard and Jordan comes to a head.  Can Jordan use his internal dialogue or self-psychoanalysis to break the barriers between and reveal his true self?

"It wasn't safe to think any longer. His mind was too tired for evasion, too weary now to divert into conventional thought or fantasy the true cause of his turbulent feelings. He knew the truth about himself now. He was loathsome, utterly vile, without any qualification. But he didn't want sympathy or pity. They needn't be afraid that he was going to break down and ask for help. He was strong enough to take care of himself. He could live the rest of his life with himself, with the secret knowledge of his own vileness, carefully, deliberately, in silence, without ever showing by word or change of expression the hidden torment inside him . . . " (p.96-7)


Bibliographies & Ratings: Cory (III); Garde (OTP, a**); Mattachine Review (III); Young (426 *)

All Things Human by Stuart Benton (George Sylvester Viereck)

New York: Sheridan House, 1949

Viereck is probably more well known for his  autobiographical pulp, Men Into Beasts which detailed his imprisonment from 1942 to 1947 for his Nazi sympathies and his work as a correspondent for a Nazi publication.

All Things Human is the story of Stuart Kent, a banker in Midmetropolis, who ends up on the wrong side of a powerful politician. The day after he has sex with his secretary, he is arrested for her murder. His lawyer is more interested in Kent's wife than he is in defending him.

It's a bit sensational and trashy but at the same time shows the fluidity of sexuality, in and out of prison. It's about having everything, losing it all and finding yourself in the process.

Bibliographies & Ratings: Cory (III); Garde (OTP, a, **); Mattachine Review (III); Young (260)