Page:Satire in the Victorian novel (IA satireinvictoria00russrich).pdf/319

 always held by the empiric knowledge of the insider over the deductive inference of the outsider.

In the social field the most notable alteration is in the satire of woman. From the time of the Greek Simonides and the Hebrew epigrammatists, feminine foibles have been alluring game for masculine-made arrows. The shrew, the gossip, the blue-stocking, the interfering stepmother, the intriguing wife, the extravagant daughter, the lady of fashion, have been detected with unerring clarity of vision and pursued with accomplished skill. They have also been taken for granted. It was not until the modern inquiry into cause and effect was instituted that the feminine failure was viewed as an effect of which society was largely the cause, by withholding opportunity on one hand, and on the other encouraging the very ignorance and inanity it affected to despise. This discovery led logically to the shifting of the satire from effect back to cause, and the addition of another item to the list wherein the concerted action of the social group is held accountable for any malign influence on its members.

This probing into causes is even more sweepingly operative in the larger society of mankind and the body politic. The study of economics and sociology inevitably has switched the old partisan antagonism into a new opposition based more consciously on theories of government,—still partisan, to be sure, but less on personal and more on philosophical grounds. The new element this brings into political satire is the effort to create a public sense of shame for official incompetence, since in a democracy (and such, in some form or other, is almost every modern State) the blame for this incompetence rests ultimately on the public. Modern critics may echo Isaiah's scornful complaint of state officialdom,—"The ancient and the honor