Man-Woman - Or The Temple, The Hearth, The Street (1873) (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: I '., WV V;M . tf-t v.ri'. . t ., u . -- - nT EDITOR'S PREFACE. Alexandre Dumas (./?//) has just given to the French public and the world a very remarkable brochure, ?a book- pamphlet, ?entitled L'homme-femme; which I now offer to the American and English public, in translation, under the title of Man-woman. By this duplex word the author expresses that perfection of coupled humanity which is the result of a true union, soul and body, of two beings properly constituted for such a union, and in accord physically and mentally, in desire, in aim, in purpose, in act, in conscience, ?as man and wife. The occasion of the author's publishing this very remarkable work, ?which has been for the last few months the subject of lively conversation and discussion in literary and general circles in Paris, ?and of a great variety of criticism, some condemnatory, some highly laudatory, both by the French and English press, ?arose out of the affaire- Dubourg: the recent murder by one Dubourg of his wife taken in adultery, and his trial for the crime. The public cannot have forgotten the " a/aire-Duvouf.G." It was what lawyers call "a leading case" as regards certain sad topics. Everything made it complete as a picture of what marriage should not be; there was the hasty wooing, the rash betrothal, the miserable wedding de conve- nance, the swiftly-following discontent and disagreement, the infidelity of the husband, the consequent infidelity of the wife, the trap, the discovery, and that dreadful furious slaughter of the woman in her paramour's apartment, while he himself hurriedly escaped, the most wretched 6 EDITOR'S PREFACE. figure of all the terrible tragedy. Paris had a subject here which comprised nearly every conceivable point for disquisition upon the questio...