Introduction
fault of a society which pays for a poor and pretty woman’s prostitution in solid gold, and pays for her honesty with starvation, drudgery, and pious twaddle.”
It is surely not necessary to enlarge here on the consternation with which Mrs. Warren’s Profession was greeted well into the twentieth century. In some cases, the anxiety went to the length of expressing itself in police prosecution. Even William Winter, then dean of American dramatic critics, saw in this play and in others like it the overthrow of whatever was pure in the drama. And what was shocking in Winter’s time must, I should say, have been immensely more shocking in 1844, or else our ancestors were much more liberal than we have been taught to believe!
The case of Richard has a definite bearing also on the much-mooted matter of Dickens’s sentimentality. In Toby’s dream, Meg and Richard do finally marry, but they marry too late. As Mrs. Chickenstalker explains to Tugby: “He went on better for a short time; but his habits were too old and strong to be got rid of; he soon fell back a little; and was falling fast back, when his illness came so strong upon him.” And even as she speaks the word comes that Richard has passed away.
Now if there is anything characteristic of the sentimentalist, it is the belief that good resolutions can effect anything. It is notable, and it should be considered in the discussion of Dickens, that in this case at least good resolutions accomplish precisely nothing. As irrevocably as any determinist to-day, Dickensxxvii
