William Golding: the beast beneath the skin

William Golding spent his literary career exploring the savagery of human nature and man’s eternal struggle with good and evil. But was he a bad poet? And, even more importantly, is there any truth in his self-declared monstrousness?

Though best known for his novel, Lord of the Flies, and winning the Booker Prize (1980) and the Nobel Prize for Literature (1983), William Golding wrote poems before turning his attention to novels and plays. His work is still in copyright, but to give you a taste of his poetry, here’s an extract from Song Of The Flowers At The Land’s End (published in his 1934 collection Poems).

Darkness sits beneath the sea,
The sun is worn, the earth is cold,
And we are wild with mystery,
So young we be, and oh! So old.

There have always been questions about Golding’s misogyny – after all he famously wrote a book only featuring boys. He defended this by saying he couldn’t include girls because he didn’t have the life experience (fair enough); but rather spoiled that by saying that little boys better represented society that a group of little girls. And then slam dunked it by saying that if he’d included girls the male characters would have been distracted by sex. (Read more about this here.)

Nevertheless, it’s easy to give Golding a pass because he’s such a literary Goliath and because he’s a creature of his age. His words – so slippery – could indicate a deep-seated misogyny or just a lack of care.

That is until John Carey uncovered something far darker while researching his biography of Golding. An article in The Sunday Times (Author William Golding tried to rape girl, 15. 16 August 2009) revealed some of the things Carey discovered while searching through Golding’s unpublished memoir.

This included using the boys at the school he was teaching at as research fodder for his book – pitching them against one another – something that is deeply unethical.

But it’s his attitude to women that’s most disturbing. Carey tells how when Golding was 16 he met 13-year-old Dora at music lessons. He wrote in his memoir that she was “depraved by nature” and at 13 was “beginning to burn”. By 14, he said, she was “already sexy as an ape”.

Two years later he “felt sure she wanted heavy sex, as this was visibly written on her pert, ripe and desirable mouth”. So, he took her for a walk and soon they were “wrestling like enemies” as he “tried unhandily to rape her”. She resisted. Golding tells how he shook her and shouted: “I’m not going to hurt you”. Dora ran off. He confessed to making “such a bad hand at rape”.

Undeterred, two years later he managed to consummate their relationship. With Golding recording how the 17-year-old asked: “Should I have all that rammed up my guts?”

Another girlfriend – Mollie – was also badly treated, with Golding breaking off their engagement and abandoning her. His son, David, born with a club foot was also mistreated as a child, according to Carey.

The question remains why Golding left the memoir behind – knowing what would be said about him as a result. Carey believes he almost seemed to enjoy the idea that he was something of a monster; it’s also not entirely irrelevant that his most famous novel Lord of the Flies is literally about the beast beneath the skin.

See: Author William Golding tried to rape girl, 15. The Sunday Times. (16 August 2009)

Carey, John. William Golding: The Man who Wrote Lord of the Flies. (Faber & Faber, 2010)