minable; yet the married woman is, on the whole, less pitiable than
her unmarried sisters." In order to prove this thesis in due form, we
begin at the beginning, and show how the marriage of Antonin Mairaut and
Julie Dupont is brought about by the dishonest cupidity of the parents
on both sides. The Duponts flatter themselves that they have cheated the
Mairauts, the Mairauts that they have swindled the Duponts; while
Antonin deliberately simulates artistic tastes to deceive Julie, and
Julie as deliberately makes a show of business capacity in order to take
in Antonin. Every scene between father and daughter is balanced by a
corresponding scene between mother and son. Every touch of hypocrisy on
the one side is scrupulously set off against a trait of dishonesty on
the other. Julie's passion for children is emphasized, Antonin's
aversion from them is underlined. But lest he should be accused of
seeing everything in black, M. Brieux will not make the parents
altogether detestable. Still holding the balance true, he lets M.
Mairaut on the one side, and Madame Dupont on the other, develop amiable
impulses, and protest, at a given moment, against the infamies committed
and countenanced by their respective spouses. And in the second and
third acts, the edifice of deception symmetrically built up in the first
act is no less symmetrically demolished. The parents expose and denounce
each other's villainies; Julie and Antonin, in a great scene of conjugal
recrimination, lay bare the hypocrisies of allurement that have brought
them together. Julie then determines to escape from the loathsome
prison-house of her marriage; and this brings us to the second part of
the theorem. The title shows that Julie has two sisters; but hitherto
they have remained in the background. Why do they exist at all? Why has
Providence blessed M. Dupont with "three fair daughters and no more"?
Because Providence foresaw exactly the number M. Brieux would require
for his demonstration. Are there not three courses open to a penniless
woman in our social system--marriage, wage-earning industry, and
wage-earning profligacy? Well, M. Dupont must have one daughter to
represent each of these contingencies. Julie has illustrated the
miseries of marriage; Caroline and Angele shall illustrate respectively
the still greater miseries of unmarried virtue and unmarried vice. When
Julie declares her intention of breaking away from the house of bondage,
her sisters rise up