nocence "A
Glove" will seem a very shocking book, for it fearlessly discusses, and,
what is more, makes a young girl discuss--the standards of sexual purity
as applied to men and women. The sentiments which she utters are, to be
sure, elevated and of an almost Utopian idealism; and the author
obviously means to raise, not to lower, her in the eyes of the reader by
her passionate frankness.

The problem of the drama is briefly this: Society demands of women an
absolute chastity, and refuses to condone the least lapse, either before
or after marriage. But toward men it is indulgent. It readily overlooks
a plenteous seed of wild oats, and would regard it as the sheerest
Quixotism to judge the bridegroom by the same standard of purity as it
does the bride. It is easy enough, and perhaps also legitimate, to
exclaim with Bjoernson that this is all wrong, and that a man has no
right to ask any more than he gives. As a mere matter of equity a wife
owes her husband no more fidelity than he owes her, and may exact of
him, if she chooses, the same prematrimonial purity that he exacts of
her. But questions of this kind are never settled on the basis of
equity. The sentiments by which they are determined have long and
intricate roots in the prehistoric past; and we are yet very far from
the millennial condition of absolute equality between the sexes.
According to Herbert Spencer there is a hereditary transmission of
qualities which are confined exclusively to the male, and of others
which are confined to the female; and these are the results of the
primitive environments and conditions which were peculiar to each sex.
Even the best of us have a reminiscent sense of proprietorship in our
wives, dating from the time when she was obtained by purchase or capture
and could be disposed of like any other chattel. Wives, whose
prehistoric discipline has disposed them to humility and submission (I
am speaking of the European, not the American species, of course), have
not yet in the same degree acquired this sense of ownership in their
husbands, involving the same strict accountability for affectional
aberrations. And for this there is a very good reason, which is no less
valid now than it was in the hoariest antiquity. A husband's infidelity,
though morally as reprehensible as that of the wife, does not entail
quite such monstrous consequences. For if she deceives him, he may
ignorantly bring up another man's children, toil for them, bestow