"If one could only burn all the volumes; stop the publication of them. But it was all books, all the literature in the world, right back to Juvenal whatever happened, if it could all be avenged by somebody in some way, there was all that . . . the classics, the finest literature-unsurpassed.' Education would always mean coming into contact with all that. There was no getting away from the scientific facts . . inferior; mentally, morally, intellectually and physically physically . . . her ... her development arrested in the interest of her special functions . . . reverting later towards the male type . . . old women with deep voices and hair on their faces. . . . .. Woman is undeveloped man: if one could die of the loathsome visions . . if by one thought all the men in the world could be stopped, shaken, and slapped. There must, somewhere, be some power that could avenge it all. . . . It will go on as long as women are stupid enough to go on bringing men into the world. . . . There is no pardon possible for man. The only answer to them is suicide; all women ought to agree to commit suicide. . . . There was nothing to turn to. Books were poisoned. Art. All the achievements of men were poisoned at the root. . . . Religion was the only hope. .. But no future life could heal the degradation of having been a woman. .. Christ was a man. If it was true that He was God taking on humanity-He took on male humanity. . . . Life is poisoned, for women, at the very source." It becomes after scores of such pages rather pathetic: it is obviously her great obsession. It is pleasanter to leave this topic and turn again to her general style. The Spectator critic, confessedly an elderly male, finds an affinity with jazz-music and other modern diablerie in such thought-waves as this: "Last night's soapy water poured away and the fresh poured out ready standing there all night, everything ready. . . . I must not forget the extra piece of string . . . Je-rusa-lem the gol-den, with-milk-and-hun-ney-blest sh, not so much noise . . . beneath thy con, tem, pla, tion, sink, heart, and, voice, o, ppressed. I know not, oh, I, know, not. ... Sh . . sh .. hark, hark, my soul angelic songs are swelling O'er earth's green fields, and ocean's wave-beat shore . . . damn-blast, where are my bally knickers?-Sing us sweet fragments of the songs above. "The green world everywhere, inside and out . . all along the dim staircase, waiting in the dim cold kitchen. No blind, brighter. Cool grey light, a misty, windless morning. Shut the door. They STAND those HALLS of ZI-ON ALL JUBILANT with SONG." I, on the other hand, can follow every note of this: it is all exactly right, one's mind does work just in this strange, jerky, inconsequent sort of way. This is the work of an artist who not only thinks, but remembers what she thinks. The question, is if one discards incident, which thoughts are revelant and which put in because they happen to recur to the memory? For, after all, art is selection, not entirely observation. We are to see the development of the girl's mind. It is open to question whether this method of presentation always succeeds in showing us this development. We forgive her her frequent use of that odious word "serviette "; we forgive her her love of reproducing completely idiotic conversation, it is harder to forgive her diseased attitude to the male sex, hardest of all to forgive her for running away from life . . . and yet at the end of all, she does interest us. The Tunnel is no easy book to read. Quite nine-tenths of those who take it up will not have the patience to work out the rich ore contained in it, for there is rich ore, as I have tried to show, and concentration is certainly needed if we are to profit by the experience of ploughing through it. May Sinclair sees in Miss Richardson's novels an art and method and form carried to punctilious perfection. There is, it is true, no drama, no situation, no set scene. Nothing happens. It is just life going on and on. In identifying herself with this life, Miss Richardson, in May Sinclair's eyes, gets closer to reality than any other novelist. No other writers use their senses so purely or so intensely. This intensity is the effect of an extreme concentration on the thing seen or felt. So her novels are of an extraordinary compression, and of an extenuation more extraordinary still. One does not differ from May Sinclair lightly: what she says, she means . . and it is obvious that she regards Dorothy Richardson as a profoundly significant phenomenon. I would not deny that, but I withhold complete adoration on grounds that I have already tried to make plain. |