The Birmingham age-herald., 1922-10-15
BROWSING AROUND AMONG TEE "BEST SELLERS"

writing, was awaited with tremen- dous interest.
 Scarcely any two people agree on This Freedom; either they will tell you that they like it very much or else they will tell you that they don't like 1t at all; which speaks well for the story, since adverse criticism
 is better than no criticism at all and stirs up a desire in the minds of peo- pie to read and judge for themselves.
 This Freedom" is a problem novel; the problem being whether or not woman can manage a home and nave a business career at the same time although why under the shining heavens any woman would want to do both Is a mystery to me person. ally and I believe it is to all right thinking rational minded women.
 The staging of this situation which MT. Hutchinson has done so admir- ably, makes the question even more vital than it really is-and the Lord knows it is vital enough, because there are scores of women who want to do the very thing that MT. Hutchin- son talks about and which personally, as I said before, I can't understand.
 The excitement in This Freedom" begins just about half way the story. which happened also if you remem- Der, in the previous novel "If Wonter Comes':
 Gan a married woman have q business career and still do her duty by her husband and her children" that is the question.
 It is impossible not to be inter- ested in any serious discussion of 4x .s.,1. fY1- terested in MT Hutchinson's. He is a special pleader; he has a parti pris, But who that is convinced. is not a special pleader? Who has not q partl prise As Walt Whitman said: "The perfect judge could go face to face before God" Of course he could if he existed. Mir. Hutchinson, l think, plays as fair as he can: he plays much fairer than you would have expected. He makes his nero inc a decent person; he makes her husband a decent person; he really lifts the conflict to the plane of prin ciple, which is a great service to the reader. It would have been so easy to make the book a study in selfish ness-selfishness of either sex. That, he does not do. Neither Rosalie nor Harry is selfish. in the ordinary, vulgar sense.
 The man is not a pig. but neither is the woman cat. The author brings in no vagaries of passion to cloud the issue; the sex-relatiou is perfectly satisfactory and perfectly normal. He has had the wit to see that his discussion would lack point if the people in question were not thoroughly in love with each other and perfectly well mated: that only granted a successful marriage, can you probe to the real problem of marriage of such? Otherwise the ac= cidental obscures the essential Take the best and luekiest instance con eeivable, and what is the result2 If, under the happiest conditions pos sible. the theory does not work. then there is something wrong with the theory itself That is his generous attitude and his honest conclusion. If you agree with him you agree with him on principle; if you dis agree, you disagree. equally, on prin- ciple. And that is high ground e take, Intellectually speaking; ground that is not taken very often, l think. in the field of fiction.
 Has he, then, proved his point. and must the discomfited feminist retire In SlleUC69 litil lH dH01lANA htt@eNN'. For no instance can be taken as sym bolizing all instances and you can never prove a general proposition from the special case.
 Even his own partisans might pro test that Harry's arguments are based on the wrong premises; that the real basis of Harry's contention is not the idea of "home' but the sex inferlorlty of woman, and he will always be re- membered by his Mice and Mumps' which he employed in place of swear words like damn and other eS- pletives.
 Harry and Mir Hutchinson hold that the children need their mother at home. but they never really an swer her query as to why her, more than their father. Just there Mr.. Hutchinson has given way to hls an- cient enemy, sentimentality.
 Even at the last, you are left un- certain as to whether an ultimate
 proposition has been proved; wheth- CT the conclusion is necessary be- cause society is what 1t happens to be. or because biology is what it is.
 After all, it does not so much mat ter whether MT. Hutchinson has em- ployed logic to the end. He has done a great service in utilizing his immense popularity to stimulate re- flection on an important subject. Agreeing with him or not agreeing with him is quite beside the point. The book is more significant than If Winter Comes," say the critics,