The Conquest: The Story of a Negro PioneerMicheaux, Oscar
General
The Conquest: The Story of a Negro Pioneer
Micheaux, Oscar
African American pioneers -- Fiction; Autobiographical fiction; South Dakota -- Fiction; Western stories
Orlean and I attended a few shows at the downtown theatres during the
week, the first being a pathetic drama which our friends advised us to
see entitled "Madam X". I did not like it at all. The leading character
is the wife of a business man who has left her husband and remains away
from him two years, presumably discouraged over his lack of affection;
is very young and wants to be loved, as the "old story" goes, and the
husband is too busy to know that she is unhappy. She returns after two
years and asks forgiveness and love, but is turned away by the husband.
Twenty years later, in the closing act, a court scene decorates the
stage; a woman is on trial for killing the man she has lived with
unlawfully. She had been a woman of the street and lived with many
others before living with the one murdered. The young lawyer who has her
case, is her son, although he is not aware of this fact. He has just
been admitted to the bar and this is his first case, having been
appointed to the defense by the court. He takes the stand and delivers
an eloquent address on behalf of the woman, who appears to be so
saturated with liquor and cocaine as to be quite oblivious of her
surroundings. She expires from the effect of her dissipations, but just
before death she looks up and recognizes her son, she having been the
young wife who left her home twenty-two years before. The unhappy
father, who had suffered as only a deserted husband can and who had
prayed for many years for the return of the wife, is present in the
court room and together with the son, are at her side in death. As the
climax of the play is reached, suppressed sobs became audible in the
balcony, where we had seats. The scene was pathetic, indeed, and I had
hard work keeping back the tears while my betrothed was using her
handkerchief freely.
What I did not like about the play was the fact of her going away and
taking up an immoral life instead of remaining pure and returning later
to her husband. The husband, as the play goes, had not been a bad man
and was unhappy throughout the play, and I argued this with Orlean all
the way home. Why did she not remain good and when she returned he could
have gathered her into his arms and "lived happy ever after." Not only
my fiancee but most other women I have talked with about the play
contend that he could have taken her back when she returned and been
good to her. The man who wrote the play may have been a tragedian but
the management that put it on the road knew a money-maker and kept it
there as long as the people patronized the box office.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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