I will not put him in the same apartment with
reviewers who are arid, egoistic, or dull.
MRS. WHARTON'S "THE AGE OF INNOCENCE"
America is the land of cherished illusions. Americans prefer to
believe that they are innocent, innocent of immorality after
marriage, innocent of dishonesty in business, innocent of
incompatibility between husbands and wives. Americans do not
like to admit the existence (in the family) of passion, of
unscrupulousness, of temperament. They have made a code for what
is to be done, and what is not to be done, and whatever differs is
un-American. If their right hands offend them they cut them off
rather than admit possession. They believed in international
morality when none existed, and when they were made to face the
disagreeable fact of war, cast off the nations of the earth, and
continued to believe in national morality.
In America prostitution is tolerated in practice, but forbidden in
print. All homes are happy unless there is proof to the contrary,
and then they are un-American. In its wilful idealism America is
determined that at all costs we shall appear to be innocent. And a
novel which should begin with the leaders in social conformity,
who keep hard and clean the code, and should sweep through the
great middle classes that may escape its rigors themselves, but
exact them of others, might present the pageant, the social
history, the epic of America.
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