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BEMABKS ON VICTOR HUGO'S "l,ES MISSEL AB...
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
¦ « By Frances Power Cobbe. It Is Either...
the delirium old madhouses were driven , -wherein by wM tlie p and patients cell , to entering permanent in transient raging
insanity . , But lias not something very like this Toulon , practice been going on over all Europeover England as much as all the rest
even to this day ? Have we , not also been making wild beasts , out of men in our gaolsand , alas ! something worse than beasts
Jlends , out of women ? Let , any one read books like Col . Chesterton ' s , " Revelations of Prison Life , " or the far superior cc Experiences of
a Prison Matron , " and say what other process really goes on in those terrible piles which frown over our citiesand in whose
monotonous corridors we walk as in another world , from the one which God has made . It is true that the right treatment
of criminals is one of the most difficult of problems , only solved perhaps partially in the last few yearsby the efforts of Maconochie
and Crofton in Australia and Ireland , . But that our way is a wrong way , and turns out the majority of criminals worse than
they entered , either more hardened and ferocious , or more hypocritical and falseis clear as experience can make it . Especially
, with women do we fail ; for not only does the degradation hurt them more fatally , but we have , as it were , supplied them with a new
cause of crime . To all human beings monotony is irksome and injuriousbut to woman it is deadly . The very matron at
Park-, hurst admits that she and her fellow-officials felt their share of it , ( slight as it was , compared to that of the convicts , ) to be enough to
cause insane longings to " break ' out , " and scream , like their miserable wards . A woman can do a vast amount of labour in a dayso
, that it be but varied labour , and bear much hardship so that it change frequently ; but force her to absolute monotony of toil and
habit , and her whole nature revolts fiercely . Let our governors of penitentiaries and reformatoriesand every institution for woman ' s
, moral benefit , bear this law of nature in mind , and judge whether many of our grievous failures do not arise from this source . We
have caught the wild creature of unregulated impulse , and caged it € o as not even the tamest could bear patiently . Then we marvel
that it grows restless , and cunning , and savage , and when its prison bars give way , flies out to fresh outrage .
But again , Victor Hugo ' s convict goes forth from his long torture , not aided in any way to commence a better lifebut actually
hindered from entering one . His " yellow passport , , " " his ticket-ofleave , " given after his full sentence has expired , must be exhibited
in every town and village he enters . Everywhere , therefore , is he an outcastrefused employmentand driven even from the places
where he would , buy food with the , hard-earned wages of his convict tasks . Well , indeed , does Victor Hugo to hold up to public horror
such cruelty as that involved in such a system . The description of poor Jean Valjean _' s night , when he seeks shelter even in a dog's
crib affecting , after than being any everywhere thing we ever expelled read with since taunts the long and past abuse days , is when more
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Bemabks On Victor Hugo's "L,Es Missel Ab...
BEMABKS ON VICTOR HUGO ' S " l _, ES _MISSEL ABLE S . " 219
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Citation
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English Woman’s Journal (1858-1864), Dec. 1, 1862, page 219, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/ewj/issues/ewj_01121862/page/3/
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