Passion and criminality in France : a legal and literary study / by Louis Proal ; translated from the French by A. R. Allinsom [!].

  • Proal, Louis, 1843-
Date:
1901
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Passion and criminality in France : a legal and literary study / by Louis Proal ; translated from the French by A. R. Allinsom [!]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    shall never have another lover but you, writes a girl who has been jilted. I will wait for you at X , and ask you whether you wish me to conie back with you. If you say yes ! you will make me very happy ; if no ! I intend to die at your feet. Jealous wives who have run away or have been turned out again often come to put an end to themselves before their husband's house ; they wish to make him a witness of their death. Suicides from love are much less frequent in the country than in towns. Though the agricultural population is much more numerous than the industrial, two or three times more suicides are found among the latter than among the former. Thus in 1880, 23 cases of suicide resulting from disappointed love were noted committed by persons engaged in agriculture as against 66 by individuals belong- ing to the industrial classes, in 1890, 35 as against 88, in 1891, 44 as against 139. The reasons are obvious. Peasants, who read few novels, hardly ever go to the theatre or hear passionate music, develop their muscles rather than their nervous system by the manual labour they accomplish in the open air; they are calmer, more judicious, better balanced than the men of cities; the peace of the open country enters into their hearts and is an anodyne to their sorrows. In large towns on the contrary the feverish activity there prevalent, the sedentary life, the abuse of highly-spiced reading, the taste for erotic music and literature, the habit of theatre-going, the over refinements of civilization, all tend to develop sensuality and sensibility at the cost of quiet reasonableness. Then again in all large cities, Paris above all, the conditions under which women live are going from bad to worse, marriage becoming more and more difficult for them and longer and longer postponed, irregular liaisons growing more frequent and giving rise to constant ruptures. Paris has been called the hell of horses, the purgatory of husbands, and the paradise of women ; ^ but to judge ^ This was a proverbial saying as long ago as the seventeenth century. In his Sutie du Mentenr (Act ii. Sc. i), Corneille makes Lyse say :