New-York tribune., 1922-09-10
"This Freedomo

maternal dutiesAI read with avidity
| the new book of MIR. Hutchinsons s.
| "This Freedom" in which he gives
vivid picture of one womsn's reaction
to it, and, as usually do, sent home
to my son an outline and review.
| Already, here in England, the femi-
| mist has shot her poisoned arrow of
scorn and contumely at the man who
has dared to tell her--and the world
the truth. Already mere man has an
| swered her, and the pages of "The
Times" and "The Graphic" have given
US letters arguing the pros and cons
of this vital question.
You may shout it from the market
place" as coming from one late Vic
torian woman who, in meeting this
problem in her own lift, has answered
it in her own way, that mother must
run her home--with all that the word
Home implies-as the first and great
est interest in her life. When she is
not willing to do this she is not full
filling her primary work in life, the
work for which she was especially
equipped-bodily, mentally and spirit
TALLY equipped-the work of carrying
on the race.
Mr.. Hutchinson has done something
more than write another "best seller;
tanning ammunition for mighty bat
Gle: battle between the feminists cry
ing out for their place in the sun
what care they for "a few scorched
feathers ?--and all the hundreds and
thousands and millions of home-loving,
chldren-loving men and women who
resent the new movement for standard
lied, servant-reared babies.
1t is more a study of life than a
novel. Hutchinson takes child of the
late Victorian generation-there are
still many of us--and analyses her
mental and spiritual growth and her
reactions to the fluctuations and
changes in the conditions surrounding
the lives of girls in the nineties.
Rosalie spends the opening years of
her life in country rectory, the
youngest child of disappointed and
unhappy clergyman, who has made a
failure Of an unusually promising life
just once the poignant. cry of Cam
God, my God, my my youtlhlS ' is wruns
from the depths of his soul
and worn, harassed mother, nerve
racked by her struggle with poverty,
After years of futile effort to stretch
both ends to meet the ever increasing
needs of much too largo rectory and
family, the father puts aside his pride
and appeals to his people for help with
the education of his children. So
Rosalie becomes "poor relation
with all that term implies, cast-off
clothes, patronage and obligation-in
a large school in London.
With the end Of her education and
the need arising for self-support
Rosalie rejects the profession of
teaching which has been chosen for
her by her patron, and chooses instead
commercial life, having become OBJ
sessed by the magic Of money with its
powers and wonders. She starts as q
secretary to a ata-collecting faddist
and in q short time works up a new
business which brings her into con-
tact with the world of insurance and
a clever organizer as we'll as executive
"a unique position among women in
the business life of London.
Into Rosalie's scheme Of life men
do not enter at all. With one sweeping
generalization, she classes them
all as beasts, saying, in one Of her
rare outbursts: "They are very fond
of saying that women are cats. It's
the men that are the cat tribe: tame
cats, tabby cats, wild cats, Cheshire
cats, tomcats, and stray cats. And
look at them e. tame cats are
miserable creatures, tabby cats the
sloppy creatures, wild cats the fero-
cious creatures, Cheshire cats fool
creatures, tomcats disgusting crea-
lures, stray cats on the whole,
able, they are bearable--at the right
rH Oh
true feminist, you see, of the most
modern type, but with the consistency
Of all women-and feminists of all
ages-when one of the last variety
strayed in her direction she became
primitive woman, and desired her mate
as ardently as any cave dweller.
"All she had been, all she'd designed.
all she had built within herself and
walled about herself, all she had
scorned, all that with q violent antip-
athy she had shuddered from or with
curled lip spurned away all,
all betrayed, preached, mined, calamit-
ously riven, tumultuously sundered,
burst away 1t was very terrible for
Terrible indeed, but, with Gall is
lost save-freedom" Rosalie marries
Harry; but, as the advance guard Of
the Edwardian and neo- Georgian
woman, she makes her marriage con-
ditional upon being partnership on
strictly business basis" For the
first ten years it works out admirably.
He becomes most successful bar
rister, while Rosalie continues to oc-
cupy her unique position" in the
world of finance. Her house runs it,
self on we'll oiled wheels, and, as Ro-
sale says herself, at all works splen-
didly."
OF course it worked out "splendidly."
Given complete freedom and money,
life work out splendidly-for herself
and her husband. Rosalie and Harry
were entirely happy in their separate
professions and in their evenings to-
gether in their big, comfortable house,
The children were scientifically nursed
and taught, and surrounded by all that
money could give them in luxuries and
amusements, but-and here is the
whole crux of the story-they saw
their parents only as casual visitors.
The children go away to school, the
best schools. They come back for the
holidays as most welcome guests,
lavishly entertained--in the few free
hours of their successful parents--and
find it bit dull after the full and
varied school life. They make new
friends, friends with homes, which
they find gayer to visit during the
holidays, than their own can possibly
be, with no father or mother to amuse
them during the long days-and so,
gradually, their holidays, as we'll as
their school lives, are passed away