Incorrect Values
Life and Law, by Maude Glasgow. [G. P. Putnam’s Sons, New York.]
A secondary title—“The Development of the Exercise of the Sex Function Together with a Study of the Effect of Certain Natural and Human Laws and a Consideration of the Hygiene of Sex”—is evidence per se that the book is inadequate and superficial. In less than two hundred pages no writer can more than hint at all these topics, and in trying to cover so much ground the author really covers nothing. She tells over old facts and frequently gives them what are now accepted as incorrect values. Her statements are as sweeping as the scare heads of the old quack medicine almanacs. She describes men as ignorant, intolerable, immoral monsters; and women as being universally down-trodden and the sexual victims of man’s unbridled appetite. The book is as full of “musts” and “shoulds” as the rules of an old-fashioned school master. The author tells nothing new; veers from science to sentimentality in a most disconcerting way; and adds nothing to the constantly-increasing library of valuable sex books.
Mary Adams Stearns.