Clarksville weekly chronicle. (Clarksville, Tenn.) 1873-1890, 1879-09-06

before the work commences, and
has been arranged by the parents of
the parties, and the romance COM
mences when the lady begins to
discover that some one else has
monopclized those affections which
she plighted to her husband, or pos
sibly the husband himself discovers
that this thing had already taken
place before marriage. Now, ac-
cOrding to the ethics of the French
novelists and dramatists, the hus-
band is a very unreasonable man if
he objects to this so long as no scan
dalous exposure shocks society, and
if the husband, by taking steps to
cut short an intimacy which threat
ems to encroach upon his marital
rights, brings about a scene which
gives a sensational sh0cI to society,
no one is blamed but the refractory
husband himself, who has rebelled
against a state of affairs which is
the normal condition of French So
ciety. If indeed indescretion has
carried the parties interested beyond
the bounds of propriety or even of
morality, and especially if the fact
is allowed to transpire; in other
words, if a scandalous exposure
occurs, against which society, how
ever indulgently disposed, cannot
shut her eyes, then all the parties
concerned are condemned and shut
out from recognition, for society
must not be scandalized. So long,
however, as matters stop short of
this it is assumed that whatever
there is of romance and sentiment
in social life, it has commenced
after matrimony; and while in Eng
lish and American circles the never
failing topic of conversation is the
conjecture of attachment between
this and that young man and young
lady, in the French salons piquant
suggestions are thrown out as to
what fashionable cavalier is become
interesting to Madame -, eXclud-
ing, of course, the absurd SUPPOSE
ton that such an interest can have
been excited by the lady's husband.
Now, we freely grant that fiction
is not reality and that allowance
must be made in reading the fiction
of any people for Over-coloring and
sensation; but writer's of creation do
not create; they may exaggerate
and even distort, but in the main
the life they paint is the life they
have seen, and if ante-nuptial rO-
nance is never found in their pages
except as an occasional enOrmity or
transgression, and if the play of
sentiment or tenderness is always
reserved for pOst-nuptial life, and
then takes place, not between the
parties united in matrimOny, but
between one of them and an outside
person, then we are forced to the
conclusion that what never appears
in French fiction has no existence in
French reality, and that what
always forms the staple Of romantic
interest there must be the chiefly
interesting feature in real society,
and if so, what can we infer but
that the interest of social circles is
there concentrated upon certain
fiuttering about the confines which
separate, or ought to separate, mat
rimOnial loyalty from matrimonial
infidelity; or, in palmer words, an
incesSant tampering and trifling
with the seventh commandment =?
Now it is admitted that this inn
preston derived from a first ac-
quaintance with French literature
demands some abatement and mod
ificatiOn before it can be received as
a statement of fact. A great num-
Der of popular writers have of late
made the effort to depict French
society from actual observation, and
most of their works have assumed
the form of a vindication of the
French from injurious differences
such as we have detailed. We are
informed that the writers of such
literature describe only a vicious
state of society, such as is restricted
to Paris and other large cities, and
that the life of the great majority
even there is different, and that in
the rural districts women love their
husbands and children as they do
the world over, and give their atten-
ton much more assiduously than
elsewhere not only to the care of
the household but to many business
occupations by which the wife con-
tributes as well as the husband to
the support of the family. Then, if
it be asked why this purer form of
society has never entered into the
great mass of French fiction and
poetry as the English domestic life
has so largely done into that of
England, the answer is that the de-
tails are too prosaic to be made
interesting to the readers of fiction,
who are chiefly Parisians or the in
habitants of large cities, and whose
literary appetites require more slim
ulating food.
We fear that this vindicatiOn
leaves us pretty nearly where we
were before, and confirms our posi-
ton that the romance and emotional
activity of woman's life in France
comes after marriage or comes not
at all. This is confirmed by the
accounts we get from these very
Vindications of French morals when
they describe the ante-nuptial life
of the Frer ch girl. She in fact is
not in society at all, but is carefully
secluded in the pension or boarding
school (the discipline of which is
that of a nunnery rather than of
anything we are familiar with) until
the time comes when her parents
think it proper to contract an adj
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