. When a man can take a hall, and openly
advertise that he intends to speak therein 'to men only,' he is
reasonably allowed a certain latitude. If he pitches his cart on
the village green, and talks with the village lads and lasses within
hearing, he will, if he be a decent fellow, avoid the treatment of
certain themes.

To take the most striking example:--In 'Jude the Obscure' Mr. Hardy
deals very largely with the emotions and reasons which animate a young
woman when she decides not to sleep with her husband, when she decides
that she will sleep with her husband, when she decides to sleep with a
man who is not her husband, and when she decides not to sleep with
the man who is not her husband. Now, all this does not matter to the
mentally solid and well-balanced reader. It is not very interesting, for
one thing, and apart from the fact that it is, from a workman's point of
view, astonishingly well done, it would not be interesting at all.
Mr. Hardy offers it as the study of a temperament. Very well. It is an
excellent study of a temperament, but it bores. The theme is not big
enough to be worth the effort expended upon it. Here is an hysterical,
wrong-headed, and confused-hearted little hussy who can't make up her
mind as to what is right and what is wrong, and who is a prey to the
impulse of the moment, psychical or physical. I don't think there are
many people like her. I don't think that from the broad human-natural
point of view it matters a great deal how she decides. But I am sure of
this--that the more that kind of small monstrosity is publicly analysed
and anatomised and made much of, the more her morbidities will increase
in her, and the more unbearable in real life she is likely to become.
Mr. Hardy's labour in this particular is a direct incentive to the study
of hysteria as a fine art amongst such women as are natively prone to
it. One of the gravest dangers which beset women is that of hysterical
self-deception. The common-sense fashion of dealing with them when they
suffer in that way is kindly and gently to ignore their symptoms until
the reign of common-sense returns. To make them believe that their
emotions are worthy of the scrutiny of a great analyst of the human
heart is to increase their morbid temptations, and in the end to render
those temptations irresistible. The one kind of person to whom 'Jude the
Obscure' must necessarily appeal with the greatest power is the kind
of person depicted in its pa