Hermione and Her Little Group of Serious Thinkers/The Bourgeois Element and Background
THE BOURGEOIS ELEMENT AND BACKGROUND
ISN'T it simply wonderful about D'Annunzio enlisting as a common soldier and digging trenches along with the Duc D'Abruzzi and those other Italian poets? Or was it D'Abruzzi? Anyhow, it was one of those poets that were always talking about the Superman.
Although, I must say, one doesn't hear so much about the Superman these days, does one? The Superman is going out, you know.
One of my friends—she's quite an advanced thinker, too, and belongs to our little group—told me a year or so ago, "Hermione, I will never marry until I can find a Superman!"
"Of course, that is all right, my dear," I said to her, "but how about Genetics?"
Because, you know, the slogan of our little group—that is, one of the slogans—is "Genetics or Spinsterhood!"
It made her quite angry for some reason. She pursed her lips up and acted shocked.
"It is all very well, Hermione," she said, "to discuss Genetics in the abstract. But to connect the discussion with the marriage of a friend is not, to my mind, the proper thing at all!"
Did you ever hear of anything more utterly inconsistent?
Oh, Consistency! Consistency! Isn't Consistency perfectly wonderful!
But that is always the way when it comes to a discussion of Sex. The Bourgeois Element are never Fundamental and Thorough in their treatment of Sex, if you know what I mean.
And, as Fothergil Finch says, in this country we are nearly all Bourgeois.
We have not enough Background for one thing.
If all the little groups the country over would take up the matter of Background in a serious way, something might be done about it, don't you think?
We must organize—we who are the intellectual leaders, you know—and start an effective propaganda for the purpose of obtaining more Background.