The Little Review, August 1915 (Vol. 2, No. 5)

The Little Review, August 1915 (Vol. 2, No. 5)

The dead fingers of spent passions, spent dreams, spent youth clutch at the throat of the rising generation and preserve the integrity of the American family. Not that there is a typical American family. There is only the typical struggle between the dead and the living, between the inert and hideous virtue of decayed souls and the rebellious desires of their doomed progeny. The ambitious and educated American mother is a forceful creature, a strong, powerful woman. As an individual she is dead. Once she knew and had the desire for beauty. Dead fingers reached into her heart and killed it. The force of which she was doomed to become a part crushed her. The conventions of the world are stronger than its natural destinies. Those conventionsthe conventions of the familyare not of the mans making. Woman attends to her own subjugation. She preserves the spirit of the family, struggles and labors to keep it a unit, to keep its members alike. Moaning with the tyrannical lust for possession she enfolds her daughter in her arms. There are certain things in her daughter which must be killed. There is a dawning of love for impossible things in her daughters heart. There is an awakened mental curiosity, a perceptible inclination to break from the oppressiveness of the surrounding dead. In the night the daughter wonders and doubts. She would like to get awayto go forth free of certain fiercely applied restrictions and meet a different kind of folk, a different kind of thought. She would like to beto feel the things she is capable of. It is all vague. Always revolt is vague and intangible for the daughters of women. Revolt is for souls still living, and the living are weaker than the dead. The living soul is a lone, individual force, its yearnings are ephemeral and undefined. The mother knows what they are. The dead always know what it is they have lost. And in this knowledge the mother is strong. But the living cannot say to itself what it wishes to gain, what it reaches to attain. Only in the stray geniuses of time has the individual soul fought desperately and triumphantly for its preservation. And there is no genius in the daughter. There is merely the divine and natural instinct for self-realization. Once the mother felt it and it was killed. Now the daughter has caught the dread diseasethe contamination which starts a cold sweat under the corset stays of society; the thing which brings down upon it for its destruction the phalanxes of fierce fatuitiesthe moribund mercenaries employed by the home for its defense and preservation. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 66336
Author: Various
Release Date: Sep 18, 2021
Format: eBook
Language: English
Publisher Country: United States

Contributors

Editor: Anderson, Margaret C., 1886-1973