American economic history betrays the pioneer
helping to kick down the ladder which he himself had raised toward
equal opportunity for all. American literary history--especially
contemporary literary history--reflects the result of all this for
the American mind. The sentimental in our literature is a direct
consequence.
The disease is easily acquired. Mr. Smith, a broker, finds himself
in an environment of "schemes" and "deals" in which the quality of
mercy is strained, and the wind is decidedly not tempered to the
shorn lamb. After all, business is business. He shrugs his
shoulders and takes his part. But his unexpended fund of native
idealism--if, as is most probable, he has his share--seeks its
due satisfaction. He cannot use it in business; so he takes it out
in a novel or a play where, quite contrary to his observed
experience, ordinary people like himself act nobly, with a success
that is all the more agreeable for being unexpected. His wife, a
woman with strange stirrings about her heart, with motions toward
beauty, and desires for a significant life and rich, satisfying
experience, exists in day-long pettiness, gossips, frivols,
scolds, with money enough to do what she pleases, and nothing
vital to do.
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