Why is it that all these years we have been content to accept
Marguerite as a type of innocence and virtue? The explanation is, I
suppose, that Goethe wrote at a time when it was the convention to
regard all women as good. Anything in petticoats was virtuous. If
she did wrong it was always somebody else's fault. Cherchez la femme
was a later notion. In the days of Goethe it was always Cherchez
l'homme. It was the man's fault. It was the devil's fault. It was
anybody's fault you liked, but not her's.

   The convention has not yet died out. I was reading the other day a
most interesting book by a brilliant American authoress. Seeing I
live far away from the lady's haunts, I venture to mention names. I
am speaking of "Patience Sparhawk," by Gertrude Atherton. I take
this book because it is typical of a large body of fiction. Miss
Sparhawk lives a troubled life:  it puzzles her. She asks herself
what is wrong. Her own idea is that it is civilisation.

   If it is not civilisation, then it is the American man or Nature—or
Democracy. Miss Sparhawk marries the wrong man. Later on she gets
engaged to another wrong man. In the end we are left to believe she
is about to be married to the right man. I should be better
satisfied if I could hear Miss Sparhawk talking six months after that
last marriage. But if a mistake has again been made I am confident
that, in Miss Sparhawk's opinion, the fault will not be Miss
Sparhawk's. The argument is always the same:  Miss Sparhawk, being a
lady, can do no wrong.

   If Miss Sparhawk cared to listen to me for five minutes, I feel I
could put her right on this point.

   "It is quite true, my dear girl," I should say to her, "something is
wrong—very wrong. But it is not the American man. Never you mind
the American man:  you leave him to worry out his own salvation. You
are not the girl to put him right, even where he is wrong. And it is
not civilisation. Civilisation has a deal to answer for, I admit:
don't you load it up with this additional trouble. The thing that is
wrong in this case of yours—if you will forgive my saying so—is
you. You make a fool of yourself; you marry a man who is a mere
animal because he appeals to your animal instincts. Then, like the

 Prev. P 22/50 next