INTRODUCTION
dubious profession,—neither the delusion of that sentimentalization of the prostitute which Dumas helped so much to effect and which Augier strove to combat, nor the delusion of the conservative, conventional horror before an institution for the perpetuation of which conservatism and conventionalism are much to blame. If Yekel and his wife (in Ash's play) are not so enlightened as Mrs. Warren in their views upon the traffic off which they live, they are in their own crude way equally sincere in beholding in it a business quite as legitimate as any other. With the same inconsistency with which Hindel implores Heaven for aid in achieving her nefarious aims, after which she promises to be a model wife and mother (See Act Two), Mrs. Warren at the end of Shaw's play swears by Heaven that henceforth she will lead a life of evil.
In the case of Yekel and his wife, as in Mrs. Warren's, another touch of inconsistency is added by the agreement that theirs is not the best of professions. Crofts, too, in the English play, discusses the business with all the matter-of-factness of Ash 's Shloyme, yet considers himself a gentleman none the less.
Rifkele, of course, is no Vivie. Ash's simple-minded Jewish girl is a victim, not a rebel. Yet in either case the daughter is lost to the parents, and the power of money is of no avail to win the child back. And just as Yekel, in his impotence, blasphemously thrusts the Holy Scroll from his household, so does Mrs. Warren, defeated in her attempt to win back her daughter, cry "From this
x
