“THIS FREEDOM.”

Otago Witness, Issue 3594, 30 January 1923, Page 54

“THIS FREEDOM.”

Should a woman continue a business r.r professional career after marriage—can she do so without paving as a price the happiness of her husband and children? This is the -question propounded and answered in Mr A. S. 51. Hutchinson’s last novel, the title of which heads this article. “With a great sum obtained I this freedom,’’ said the Roman centurion of whom St Paul claimed the rights of a Roman citizen. Rosalie Aubvn claims the freedom of a man, freedom to live her own life, to pursue an independent career, and with this independence to unite love and marriage. A man is not called on to make the choice tie tween a career on one hand, and the hapoiness of love, family, and home on the other, and why should a woman be limited more than he? To Rosalie such limitation seemed absolutely unjust. She assumes the freedom enjoyed by man, and heavy is the price she pays. The novel has been very widely read and discussed, and estimates of the soundness of the author’s presentment of his case, and of the literary merits of his work are very diverse. I have seen it suggested that the great popularity of the novel, as gauged by its sale, testifies to a growing reaction against the extreme feminism so prevalent of late years. But I do not think there is much in this; the phenomenal success of Mr Hutchinson’s previous novel “If Winter Comes” was quite enough to ensure millions of readers for its successor. The vast majority of novel readers read and buy what they are told is the book of the season; imitation and curiosity are the main factors deciding their choice. And more serious readers, knowing that Mr Hutchinson is an author of weight, will

desire to read a book of his for its general interest as a novel, as well as for its presentment of the working of feministic assertions of equality. And these are quite as likely to read with condemnation as approval. Feminists are more likely to be irritated than influenced by Mr Hutchinson’s picture of the dire results of Rosalie’s arrogated freedom. They, and others like myself, who are far from being feminists in the ordinary acceptation of the term, will feel that Mr Hutchinson has overstated his case, and exceeded probability in his piling up of tragedies. The book must be read in full or at least, the opinions of differing critics compared in order to form an estimate of the author’s treatment of his problem, but it may be worth while for me to give readers who have not read the book an outline of the heroine’s life. Rosalie Aubyn is> the youngest child of a family comprising two sons and four daughters, separated by a gap of six years from the one next above her in age. Her father is a country clergyman, poor, disappointed, embittered. He has been a brilliant Cambridge whom great things were expected, but earl- in life he made a marriage, poor as regards fortune and prospects of advancement, and lie quite fails to surmount his disadvantages as some men of less ability would have done. Rosalie grows up in the huge, rambling old rectory, a quiet, observant child, placed apart from the general stream of family life by her difference in age. Her first apprehension was of a wonderful and mysterious world revolving about her father. Her brothers, too, partake of the wonder in which- he is involved. Males, she learns, have proprietary rights in the world and can do anything with it, while females own nothing and can do nothing. For her mother is a gentle, passive, woman of the old school, who brings up her daughters to accept man’s superiority as absolutely as she does. The pictures of family life in the rectory have abundant liveliness. Rosalie, sitting in her high chair, sees six females, intensely, and as if their lives depended on it, occupied with one male—the ten-year-old brother who has to be got off in time for school —darning his stockings, attending to his neglected toilet, coaching him in his history, working his sum for him. As ready subservience to the big brother, and to the father when they in turn appear on the scene. How Rosalie admires the thrice wonderful father whose commands are obeyed by those wonderful beings, her brothers ! Her father’s and brothers’ very rages are admirable to her; men can let themselves go, can do things, while women are always trivial and passive. When Rosalie is about twelve tragedy visits the Aubyn family. The eldest sister Anna, then twenty-four, finds herself thrust aside by her two younger and prettier sisters. With deep, instinctive cravings for love and motherhood, she sees herself doomed to live out her life aa unvalued spinster; more subservient to others than her mother and without her mother’s rewards. Perhaps she has given her affections without return. At any rate she has twenty-four years experience of her father’s selfishness, of a world con stituted, as it seems, in the interests of man. “It is hard for women,” Rosalie hears her praying, “0 God, thou knowest how hard it is for women.” Then to the puzzled and frightened little sister she says violently, ‘‘l hate men. I hate them I hate them.’’ Next day she is found drowned in a pond close to the rectory. Rosalie, after this, is sent by a rich aunt to a London boarding school. As she grows up the thought of the relative posi tion of men and women is ever with her Her own family life, masculine character revealed outside her home in her very objectionable Uncle Pyke and other me \ with whom she has come in contact, and the memory of her sister’s tragedy con! bine to give her an antipathy to me 1. They are no longer wonderful to her as in her childhood ; she recognises that they are in many ways superior to women, but she believes that this is because they have won and kept the upper place. In particu’ar it is they who have the money and all the freedom monev brings. She determines to be economically independent —not to make a hare living a.s governess or school teacher, but to work as a man. with hones of advancement and scone f • enterprise. She has a good head ■ figures, has been fascinated with Ba' hot’s “Lombard Street;” money maki • appeals to her as a romance. Girls ioffices were then a novelty, but soon aft* ■ leaving school Rosalie succeeds in obtain ing a post as secretary to a kindly and eccentric man of means who is amusing himself by playing at business. She makes herself valued, and her initiative leads to the business developing on more important lines. As years pass, her absorption in her business life lias a hardening effect on her character, and she thinks less of her mother, visits her home less frequently, and grows indifferent to the fate of poor Miss Keggs, the teacher who nad befriended her at boarding school, and who becomes a victim to drink. When Rosalie has won reputation as a talented business woman and is offered a new, and for those days, a very profitable position, the disturbing element of love enters her life. A brilliant young lawyer, who has for years been regarded as a promising match for her pretty cousin, suddenly reveals herself as passionately in love ♦ith Rosalie herself. Rosalie has despised him for his dalliance after her cousin, has thought she hated him, now she finds she loves him. But she has previously resolved that should she ever marry (a most improbable contingency) she will marry on terms of equal partnership. She will contribute to the upkeep of the household ; she will continue business. Her lover shows himself tolerant and accommodating both before and after marriage. Yet Rosalie speedily is led to add another to her generalisations about men—it is they, not women, who are bent on having a home. Rosalie, be it noted, is very far from being a feminite of the type that has since

become pronounced. She dislikes all aping of men s ways. Marriage is for her the proper preliminary to motherhood ; she believes in the family, ami sincerely means to do what seems to fier her due part as -wife and mother. She thinks she can do this while enjoying the freedom “to live her own life’’ that seems to her only justice. And for a few years events seem to bear out her claims. She organises her household well. Children come; she engages an accredited nurse, tnd laker a highly certificated governess, who teaches the children “howto play in the right way, how to learn in the right way, and above all, how, m every way, and at every turn to reason.” Everything seems to work perfectly. But as the children advance towards school age their father observes to Rosalie that they seem different from other children, less childlike, unresponsive to affection. There comes a time when her husband says to her, “I have a right to a home. The children have a right to a home..” But Rosalie maintains her right to freedom, and even contemplates a business visit to Singapore of a year’s duration Before she lias made arrangements to leave she receives a shock in hearing her eleven-year-old son stigmatise his school Scripture lesrons as “all rot.’’ What was the use of hearing about the flood, about the Israelites crossing the Red Sea, and all that stuff She decides that something is seriously wrong with the children’s upbringing, impulsively gives up her work and devotes herself to her home. But too late for the two elder children. It has been said that the first seven years of life are the most important' of all, and Rosalie has let these and more pass by. It seems scarcely consistent that a woman of her intelligence and real love for her children should, during these years have left their mental and spiritual nurture go completely in the hands of a governess, but Rosalie has had a theory that children should be with their parents only to enjoy themselves and be enjoyed. The two elder continue to show themselves wanting in affection for their parents and each other; the youngest boy, gentle and sensitive, idolises his sister, but she is quite indifferent to him. The eldest hoy, Hugh, does badly at his public school and has to leave; later he falls into some disgrace. Then comes the war, with all the unsettlement and licence it brings in its train. Rosalie, after a year or two at home feels her renunciation vain, and goes back to her work. The daughter, Doda, on leaving school at seventeen, goes to work in one of the Government departments, and rules her life as she pleases. Before this her mother has discovered that she is carrying on correspondence with several “lonely soldiers'" at the front. When Rosalie very gently remonstrates, and uses the word “duty,” Doda replies, “I won’t have a duty ! Why should I. I didn’t ask to be born, did I?” Hugh returning from the war, makes a foolish marriage and speedily deserts his young wife. Then he becomes a member of a fraudulent company, and when this is brought to book, receives a term of six months’ imprisonment. Doda dies ; her death one of those sadly common tragedies revealed to the world by coroner’s inquests and court cases. Benjamin, her youngest brother, in grief and rage at his sister’s fate flings himself under a train and is instantly killed. Nov*' I think even those fully convinced, that Rosalie’s claim to equal and similar freedom with her husband was untenable, will commonly feel that the bad results of her claim are exaggerated out of all probability. Rosalie neglected her children less than do thousands of society women, yet we do not hear such tragical results attributed to their neglect. Moreover, children of the most domestic and careful mothers often go strangely wrong. Tho two older children glow up hard, selfish, common-minded, wbthout sense of duty or honour. Their father seemingly gives them as much love and thought as do most fathers, hut they care for him no more than for their mother. One feels that much must be put down to defects of nature as well as to defects of environ ment. Then one thinks of the tragedy of Rosalie’s sister Anna, who had a loving mother of the old school, hut who flung aw r ay a life which she felt to he without hope. One may see something neurotic, 'tightly abnormal, in Rosalie’s family, bowing itself in her father’s instability nd viol ence, in Anna's melancholia, in nor own early hatred of men, in Benjie’s : rrou’sive suicide. T h-.ve heard “This Freedom’’ praised as Hutchinson’s best work, and I have heard it stigmatised as a “pot-boiler.” To me it is a novel well worth reading, but very defective as a presentment of the case against feminism; defective, too, in construction and in style. Mr Hutchinson’s mannerisms are more obtrusive here than in any of his other novels that I have read. Inverted sentences and other eccentricities of phraseology may give individuality but sometimes interfere with clearness of meaning, while breaches of grammatical rules are frequent. On the whole, I regard the book as disappointing in view of Mr Hutchinson’s previous record.