Page:Marriage as a Trade.djvu/204

196 The commercial element has always been incompatible with effective expression in art; no stockbroker, however exultant, has burst into lyric rhapsody over a rise in Home Rails, no grocer lifted up a psalm of praise because his till was full. It is because her love has always been her livelihood that woman has never been inspired by it as man has been inspired. And it is just because it is so business-like that her interest in love is often so keen. For instance, her customary appreciation of a book or a work of art dealing with love, and nothing but love, is the outcome of something more than sentiment and overpowering consciousness of sex. To her a woman in love is not only a woman swayed by emotion, but a human being engaged in carving for herself a career or securing for herself a means of livelihood. Her interest in a love story is, therefore, much more complex than a man's interest therein, and the appreciation which she brings to it is of a very different quality.

Love and maternity, then, have failed because of their compulsory character to inspire woman to artistic achievement; and from other