EJECUCION DEL PROYECTO DE EDUCACIÓN SOBRE EL CONSUMO DE ALIMENTOS SALUDABLES E HIGIENE A

,f being underestimated. In order to appreciate just how far ahead of his time Barrie f was let us look at what Walbrook has to say about Kate in 1922. He takes the same | y

attitude as Hàrry Sims: i

i

After alljhe (Harry Sims) was not a bad husband,as husbands go. At any rate he

made a handsome home for his wife, gave her all she could desire on the material "I side, and philandered with no other woimn. A wife able to put a little brain

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into her love could have made a good deal of such a partner.

Kate had wanted very much to make a success of her marriage and to believe in

her husband and stay with him and she expresses her regret that Harry was not a man: | They are something fine; and every woman is loath to admit to herself that her

husband is not one. When she marries, even though she has been a very trivial person, there is in her some vague stirring toward^ a worthy life, as well as a fear of her capacity for evil. She knows her chance lies in him. If there is something good in him, what is good in her finds it and they join forces against the baser parts. So I didn't give you up willingly, Harry. I invented all sorts of theories to explain you. Your hardness - I said it was a fine want of mawkishness. Your coarseness - I said it goes with strength. Your contempt for the weak - I called it virility. Your want of ideals was clear-sightedness. Youriigndble views of women - I tried to think them funny. Oh, I clung to you to save myself. But I had to let go; you had only the one quality, Harry, success;

all rht 2

you had it so strong that it swallowed^others.

3

Before studying this passage let us see what Lady Lilian, in Barrie's play Half an Hour (1913), has to say about marriage. In Half an Hour it is Lady Lilian's hus­ band, Gaiison the financier, who tells her that she is not a woman:

A woman! You useless thing, that is just what you are not,... Such a rare ex­ quisite creature, too, as you know yourself to be.^

Lady Lilian replies that she longs to be a better person and thinks she could have been if she had married a better man.

It seems to me that Barrie was right to blame himself for the failure of his own marriage,because he placed his wife in the intolerable position of being childless and yet having to suffer her husband's attentions to Sylvia Llewelyn Davies,whom he almost worshipped as the epitome of motherhood. However, I think that in the pas­ sages quoted above Barrie is going to extremes in implying that husbands generally are responsible for the success or failure of their marriages. To me it does not make sense to say that a woman who has been before marriage a very trivial person

1 H M WALBROOK : J M BARRIE AND THE THEATRE (LONDON : 1922) p 158

2 J M BARRIE : THE PLAYS OF J M BARRIE (LONDON : 1930) p 732

3 Lady Lilian is discussed in the chapter dealing with Ladies of Title. 4 J M BARRIE : THE PLAYS OF J M BARRIE (LONDON : 1930) pp 615 & 617

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is going to hope to change overnight as a result of being married. Barrie has been accused of being a romantic who expects too much of people and I think it is an example of this to say that men are "something fine", as he has Kate say here, without qualifying the statement. On the other hand, apart from this statement, Kate strikes me as being very down to earth, sensible and realistic. She has not

opted out of marriage without giving it a fair trial and she took a year to consider Ï

leaving Harry, while saving up money to support herself, before she did so. She also appears to have gone out of her way to make allowances for her husband's faults and she does not give the impression of being disillusioned because her husband did

not measure up to a vague ideal. I admire her for having the courage to make an 'I independent life for herself rather than choosing to remain the wife of a man for

whom she has lost love and respect and staying with him for security and the sake of appearances.

However, I think it is false to claim as Barrie appears to do here that marry­ ing a better man could have the effect of making you a better person. If it were the case that one person could have such an effect on another, by the same token it follows that a better wife could make her husband a better person. It seems to me

that Kate is a better person, in the moral sense, than Harry, but she seems to have 4 had no effect on him in that way. It is taking a very idealistic view of marriage

to think that one person is capable of changing the other's character in any essen- tial way and in the light of his own marriage Barrie knew this to be untrue. In his creation of the independent Kate, Barrie is making a statement about marriage and expressing a view that was by no means prevalent in his own time. For an intelligent woman capable of supporting herself, life without a husband is preferable to marri­ age if that marriage is no more than a framework, providing her with financial and social security. In conclusion, it is ironic that a woman like Kate does not opt for independence without a struggle and has higher hopes of what marriage at its best might be than many married women who never question their situation and remain with their husbands. Nor does Kate feel antagonism towards her husband; once she understands his success is just a "fatal gift" she feels amusement and ultimately pity for him.

The fourth independent woman whom Barrie describes is the unmarried mother known as the Painted Lady who appears, along with her daughter Grizel, in the novel Senti­ mental Tommy (1896). (Grizel is also the heroine of the sequel. Tommy and Grizel

(1900).) Her designation "the Painted Lady" and her trips to the Den to await the lover who never comes are melodramatic but I think this element in her portrayal is outweighed by the compassion and sensitivity which Barrie displays towards her.

What we must remember is that the novel is set in Thrums (alias Kirriemuir) circa 1840,where the moral climate was dictated by the self-righteousness of the Auld

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Lichts. Once again, in his understanding of the Painted Lady's character and his sympathy with her plight, Barrie is ahead of his time,because such an attitude towards an unmarried mother was rarely to be found in London in 1896,far less in Kirriemuir in 1840. This woman had her independence thrust upon her and her emo­ tional vulnerability could not stand the strain. When she was betrayed and deserted she lost her reason. The Painted Lady is a minor character in the novel Sentimental Tommy but her situation was to have a profound effect on her daughter Grizel,who is in my opinion the heroine into whose creation Barrie put most thought and feeling.

2

I shall deal with Grizel briefly here but she is discussed more fully elsewhere. This passage which gives details of the Painted Lady's appearance and manner show Barrie's powers of description at their best:

She was a little woman, brightly dressed, so fragile that a collie might have knocked her over with his tail, and she had a beautiful white-and-pink face^,,. As she tripped along with mincing gait, she was speaking^ confidentially to her­ self, but when she saw Dite (-th e molo oatcherQ-grinning, she seemed,first,

afraid, and then sorry for herself, and then she tried to carry it off with a giggle, cocking her head impudently at him. Even then she looked childish, and