Woman on Her Own, False Gods and The Red Robe Part 1

Woman on Her Own, False G.o.ds & The Red Robe.

by Eugene Brieux.

PREFACE

We are confronted at the present time by the woman who is anxious to lay by means for her own support irrespective of the protection of her husband. In this play I have indicated the tendency of this difficulty and the consequent troubles which the older civilizations will bring upon themselves when the woman's standing as a worker is generally acknowledged. My conclusion, namely, that all these complications and troubles are, at present at any rate, owing to the education of the man, points to the remedy, as far as I can see it.

I must inform my readers that the version of LA FEMME SEULE, a translation of which is now published in this volume, has, so far, not appeared in France and is unknown there; at least as regards the larger part of the third act. I might, did I think it advisable, reproduce in its entirety a text which certain timidities have led me to emasculate.

As between the man and the woman the ideal situation would, no doubt, be a rehabilitation of the old custom--the man at the workshop and the woman in the home; thus reserving for her the holiest and most important of all missions--the one which insures the future of the race by her enlightened care of the moral and physical health of her children.

Unfortunately it happens that the wages of the working-man are insufficient for the support of a family, and the poor woman is therefore compelled to go to the factory. The results are deplorable.

The child is either entirely abandoned, or given to the State, and the solidarity of the family suffers in consequence.

Then again a generation of women with new ideas has arisen, who think they should have, if they wish it, the right to live alone and by themselves, without a husband's protection. However much some of us may regret this att.i.tude, it is one which must be accepted, since I cannot believe that the worst tyrants would dare to make marriage obligatory.

These women have a right to live, and consequently a right to work. Also there are the widows and the abandoned women.

Women first took places which seemed best fit for them, and which the men turned over to them because the work appeared to be of a character suitable to the feminine s.e.x. But the modern woman has had enough of the meagre salary which is to be obtained by means of needle-work, and she has invaded the shop, the office, the desks of the banks and post office. In industry also she has taken her place by the side of the working-man, who has made room for her first with ironical grace, then with grumbling, and sometimes with anger. I believe that in Europe at least this kind of difficulty will have to be faced in the future.

As to the rich woman (and in LA FEMME SEULE I have treated this subject only slightly because it is one to which I expect to come back), they have been driven from the home where the progress of domestic science has left them very little to do. We have reached a kind of hypocritical form of State Socialism, or perhaps it would be better to say Collectivism, and this will profoundly change the moral outlook. All, or nearly all, of the work of the home seems to be done by people from the outside--from the cleaning of the windows to the education of the children. The modern home is but a fireside around which one hardly sees the family gathered for intimate talk.

It has thus happened that the woman who finds herself without work, and with several children, looks out of the windows of her home away from it for the employment of her activities. The future will tell us whether or no this is good. In my opinion I believe it will be good, and I believe that man will gain, through this new intelligence, in the direction of the larger life which has come to women from this necessity of theirs.

Unquestionably there will have to be a new education, and this will certainly come.

LA FOI.--This play is, without doubt, of all my plays the one which has cost me the most labor and the one upon which I have expended the most thought and time. The impulse to write it came to me at Lourdes in view of the excited, suffering, and praying crowds of people. When the thought of writing it came to me I hesitated, but during many years I added notes upon notes. And it was while on a trip to Egypt that I saw the possibility for discussing such questions in the theatre without giving offence to various consciences. My true and ill.u.s.trious friend, Camille Saint-Saens, has been kind enough to underline my prose with his admirable music. In this way LA FOI has been produced on the stage at Monte Carlo for the first time under the auspices of His Royal Highness the Prince of Monaco, whom I now beg to thank.

English readers of LA ROBE ROUGE would, I think, be somewhat misled, if they did not understand the difference between the procedure in criminal cases in France and in Great Britain. My purpose in this preface is to attempt to show that difference in a few words.

With you, a criminal trial is conducted publicly and before a jury; with us in France it is carried on in the Chambers of the Judge with only the lawyer present. There sometimes result from this latter method dramas of the kind of which my play LA ROBE ROUGE is one. The judge, too directly interested and free of the criticism which might fall on him from the general public, is liable to the danger of forming for himself an opinion as to the guilt of the accused. He may do this in perfect good faith, but sometimes runs the risk of falling into grave error. It thus occasionally happens that he is anxious not so much to know the truth as to prove that he was right in his own, often rash, opinion.

LA ROBE ROUGE is a criticism of certain judicial proceedings which obtain in France; but it is also a study of an individual case of professional crookedness. We should be greatly mistaken were we to draw the dangerous conclusion that all French judges resemble Mouzon, and we should be equally wrong were we to condemn too hastily the French code relating to criminal trials.

In the struggle of society with the criminal it is very difficult, perhaps impossible, for the legislator to hold in equal balance the rights of the individual as against the interests of society. The balance sometimes leans one way and sometimes the other; and had I been an English citizen, instead of writing a play against the abuse of justice by a judge, I might have had to ill.u.s.trate the same abuse by the lawyer.

I wish most sincerely that these three plays may interest the people of England and America. The problems which I have studied I am sure I have not brought to their final solutions. My ambition was to draw and keep the attention of honest people on them by means of the theatre.

BRIEUX.

WOMAN ON HER OWN

ACT I

SCENE:--_A Louis XV sitting-room. To the right a large recessed window with small panes of gla.s.s which forms a part.i.tion dividing the sitting-room from an inner room. A heavy curtain on the further side shuts out this other room.

There are a table and piano and doors to the right and at the back. The place is in disorder. One of the panes in the large window has been taken out and replaced by a movable panel. It is October._

_Madame Gueret is sitting at a table. She is a woman of forty-five, dressed for the afternoon, cold and distinguished looking. Monsieur Gueret, who is with her, is about fifty-five and is wearing a frock coat. He is standing beside his wife._

GUeRET. Then you really don't want me to go and hear the third act?

MADAME GUeRET [_dryly_] I think as I've been let in for these theatricals solely to please your G.o.ddaughter you may very well keep me company. Besides, my brother is coming back and he has something to say to you.

GUeRET [_resignedly_] Very well, my dear.

_A pause._

MADAME GUeRET. I can't get over it.

GUeRET. Over what?

MADAME GUeRET. What we're doing. What _are_ we doing?

GUeRET. We're giving a performance of _Barberine_ for the amus.e.m.e.nt of our friends. There's nothing very extraordinary in that.

MADAME GUeRET. Don't make fun of me, please. What we are doing is simply madness. Madness, do you hear? And it was the day before yesterday--only the day before yesterday--we heard the news.

GUeRET. We--

MADAME GUeRET [_Who has seen Lucienne come in_] Hush!

_Lucienne comes in, a girl of twenty, dressed as Barberine from Musset's play; then Maud, Nadia, and Antoinette [eighteen to twenty-two], dressed as followers of the queen. Lucienne goes to the piano, takes a piece of music, and comes to Madame Gueret._

LUCIENNE. You'll help me along, won't you, dear Madame Gueret? You'll give me my note when it comes to "Voyez vous pas que la nuit est profonde"?

MADAME GUeRET. Now don't be nervous.

MAUD [_coming in_] We're ready.

ANTOINETTE. If the third act only goes as well as the first two--

MAUD. We'll listen until we have to go on.

ANTOINETTE. Won't you come with us, Madame?

MADAME GUeRET. No, I can't. I've had to undertake the noises behind the scenes. _That_ job might have been given to someone else, I think.

LUCIENNE. Oh, Madame, please don't be angry with us. Madame Chain let us know too late. And you're helping us so much.

MADAME GUeRET. Well, I've invited the people, and I suppose I must entertain them. As I gave in to Therese about getting up this play, I don't want to do anything to spoil the evening.

LUCIENNE. How pretty she is as Kalekairi.

MADAME GUeRET. You don't think people are shocked by her frock?