W. Boynton, and in its ranks march the lady critics of the
newspapers, with much shrill, falsetto clamour. Sherman is the only one
of them who shows any intelligible reasoning. Boynton, as always, is a
mere parroter of conventional phrases, and the objections of the ladies
fade imperceptibly into a pious indignation which is indistinguishable
from that of the professional suppressors of vice.
What, then, is Sherman's complaint? In brief, that Dreiser is a liar
when he calls himself a realist; that he is actually a naturalist, and
hence accursed. That "he has evaded the enterprise of representing human
conduct, and confined himself to a representation of animal behaviour."
That he "imposes his own naturalistic philosophy" upon his characters,
making them do what they ought not to do, and think what they ought not
to think. That "he has just two things to tell us about Frank
Cowperwood: that he has a rapacious appetite for money, and a rapacious
appetite for women." That this alleged "theory of animal behaviour" is
not only incorrect but downright immoral, and that "when one-half the
world attempts to assert it, the other half rises in battle.
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