Helen Gardener - Facts and Fictions of Life

Would women accept this sort of respect and adoration if they were not dependents? Does literature throw a true or a fictitious light on such questions as these?

To whose advantage is it to sustain such fictitious standard of morals, of justice, of love, of right, of manliness, of honor, of womanly dignity and worth? To whose advantage is it to teach by all the arts of fiction that contentment with one's lot – whatever the lot may be – is a virtue? Yet it is one of the fictions of fiction that the contented man or woman is the admirable person. All progress proves the contrary. To whose advantage is it to insist that virtue is always rewarded – vice punished? We know it is not true. Is it not bad enough to have been virtuous and still have failed, without having also the stigma which this failure implies under such a code? We all know that vicious success is common – that often vice and success are partners for life and that in death they are not divided; that the wicked flourish like a green bay-tree – why blink it in fiction? Why add suspicion to failure and misfortune, and gloss success with the added glory that it is necessarily the result of virtue? To those who know how false the theory is, it is a bad lesson – to those who do not know it, it is a disarmament against imposition.

Some of the fictions of fiction have their droll side in their nâive contradictions of each other. These examples occur to me:

"Women are timid and secretive." "They can't keep a secret." "They are the custodians of virtue." "They are the 'frailer' sex." "Frailty, thy name is woman." "With the passionate purity of woman."

"Abstract justice is an attribute of the masculine mind." "Man's inhumanity to man makes countless thousands mourn."

"No class was ever able to be just to – to do justly by another class – hence the need of popular representation." "Women should take no part in politics."

"Women are harder upon women than men are." "He disgraced his honored name by actually marrying his paramour."

"We are happy if we are good."

"He was one of the best and therefore one of the saddest of men."

But why multiply examples. Many – and different ones – will occur to every thinking mind, while illustrations of the particular fictions of fiction, which have gone farthest to cripple you or your neighbor, will present themselves without more suggestions.

To those accustomed to the atmosphere and tone of a court room, it is doubtful if its message is impressive. To one who spends a day in a criminal court for the first time after reaching an age of thoughtfulness, it is more than impressive; it is a revelation not easily forgotten. The message conveyed to such an observer arouses questions, and suggests thoughts which may be of interest to thousands to whom a criminal court room is merely a name. I went early. I was told by the officer at the door that it was the summing up of a homicide case. "Are you a witness?" he asked when I inquired if I was at liberty to enter. "Were you subpoenaed?"

"No," I replied, "I simply wish to listen, if I may, to the court proceedings. I am told that I am at liberty to do so."

He eyed me closely, but opened the door. Just as I was about to pass in he bent forward and asked quickly:

"Friend of the prisoner?"

"No."

He said something to another officer and I was taken to an enclosed space (around which was a low railing) and given a chair. I afterward learned that it was in this place the witnesses were seated. He had evidently not believed what I said.

There was a hum of quiet talk in the room, which was ill-ventilated and filled with men and boys and a few women. Of the latter there were but two who were not of the lower grades of life. But there were all grades of men and boys. The boys appeared to look upon it as a sort of matinee to which they had gained free admission.

The trial was one of unusual interest. It had been going on for several days. The man on trial (who was twenty-four years of age and of a well-to-do laboring class,) had shot and killed his rival in the affections of a girl of fourteen. Some months previous, he had been cut in the face, and one eye destroyed, by the man he afterward killed, who was at the time of the killing out on bail for this offense. I had learned these points from the scraps of conversation outside the court room, and from the court officer. This was the last day of the trial. There was to be the summing up of the defense, the speech of the prosecutor, the charge of the judge, and the verdict of the jury.

The prisoner sat near the jury box, pale and stolid looking. The spectators laughed and joked. Court officers and lawyers moved about and chaffed one another. There was nothing solemn, nothing dignified, nothing to suggest the awful fact that here was a man on trial for his life, who, if found guilty, was to be deliberately killed by the State after days of inquiry, even as his victim had been killed, in the heat of passion and jealousy, by him.

The State was proposing to take this man's life to teach other men not to commit murder.

"Hats off!"

The door near the Judge's dais had been opened by an officer, who had shouted the command as a rotund and pleasant-faced gentleman, with decidedly Hibernian features, entered.

He took his seat on the raised platform beneath a red canopy. The buzz of voices had ceased when the order to remove hats was given. It now began again in more subdued tones. In a few moments the prisoner's lawyer – one of the prominent men of the bar – began his review of the case. He pointed out the provocation, the jealousy, the previous assault – the results of which were the ghastly marks and the sightless eye of the face before them. He plead self defense and said over and over again, "If I had been tried as he was, if I had been disfigured for life, if I had had the girl I loved taken from me, I'd have killed the man who did it, long ago! We can only wonder at this man's forbearance!"

I think from a study of the faces that there was not a boy in the room who did not agree with that sentiment – and there were boys present who were not over thirteen years of age.

The lawyer dwelt, too, upon the fact that the prosecutor would say this or that against his client. "He will try to befog this case. He will tell you this and he will try to make you think that; but every man on this jury knows full well that he would have done what my client did under the same conditions." "The prosecutor told you the other day so and so. He lied and he knew it." The defender warmed to his work and shook his finger threateningly at the prosecutor. Every one in the room appeared to think it an excellent bit of acting and a thoroughly good joke. No one seemed to think it at all serious, and when he closed and the State's attorney arose to reply there was a smile and rustle of quiet satisfaction as if the audience had said:

"Now the fur will fly. Look out! It is going to be pretty lively for he has to pay off several hard thrusts."

There was a life at stake; but to all appearances no one was controlled by a trifle like that when so much more important a thing was risked also – the professional pride of two gentlemen of the bar. In the speech which followed, it did not dawn upon the State's attorney – if one may judge from his words – that he was "attorney for the people," and that the prisoner was one of "the people." It did not appear in his attitude if he realized that the State does not elect him to convict its citizens, but to see that they are properly protected and represented.

Surely the State is not desirous of convicting its citizens of crime. It does not employ an attorney upon that theory; but is this not the theory upon which the prosecutor invariably conducts his cases? Does he not labor first of all to secure every scrap of evidence against the accused and to make light of or cover up anything in his favor? Is not the State quite as anxious that he – its representative – find citizens guiltless, if they are so, as that he convict them if they are offenders against the law? Is not the prosecutor offending against the law of the land as well as against that of ordinary humanity when he bends all the vast machinery of his office to collect evidence against and refuses to admit – tries to rule out – evidence in favor of one of "the people" whose employee he is?