And yet subject the American concept of chivalry to a little scrutiny and the taunt, at least of hypocrisy, will miss the mark. For the concept is, both actually and historically, a part of the already noted classification of women as more or less sequestered, on the one hand, and unsequestered or loose on the other, as inexperienced and over-experienced or, more accurately, partially over-experienced. In this classification the claims of both classes of women are settled by men on an economic basis, with a few sentimentalities about womanhood, pure or impure, thrown in for good measure. The personality of the woman a man feels that he is supporting, whether as wife or prostitute, may, theoretically, be disregarded and, along with her personality, her capacity for sexual response. Whether as a creature of sin or as an object of chivalry, a woman becomes a depersonalized, and, sexually, an unresponsive being. People sometimes forget this when they discuss the relations between men and women in this country, and especially the sexlessness or coldness of American women. They forget it in arguing against the feminizing of education, the theatre, literature, etc., meaning, not that women run the schools or are market for the arts, but that immature, sexless women are in these ways too much to the fore. In part at least it is thanks to chivalry or to her “good and considerate husband” that the American woman, the non-wage earner at least, does not grow up, and that it is possible for so many women to marry without having any but the social consequences of marriage in mind. One surmises that there are numbers, very large numbers, of American women, married as well as unmarried, who have felt either no stirring of sex at all or at most only the generalized sex stir of pre-adolescence. What proportion of women marry “for a home” or to escape from a home, or a job, and what proportion marry for love? After marriage, with the advent of children, what of these proportions? Marriage for a home or for the sake of children, chivalry, “consideration” for the wife, all these attitudes are matters of status, not of personality, and to personality, not to status, love must look, since love is an art, not a formula. It often seems that in American culture, whether in marriage or out, little or no place is open to this patient, ardent, and discerning art, and that lovers are invariably put to flight. Even if they make good their escape, their adventure is without social significance, since it is perforce surreptitious. Only when adventurers and artists in love are tolerated enough to be able to come out from under cover, and to be at least allowed to live, if only as variants from the commonplace, may they contribute of their spirit or art to the general culture. ELSIE CLEWS PARSONS THE FAMILY