Page:Emma Goldman - The Social Significance of the Modern Drama - 1914.djvu/136

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would like us to "go slow"; that they object to the use of violence and the forcible overthrow of the evils of society. And Maeterlinck answers in these significant words:

"We are too ready to forget that the headsmen of misery are less noisy, less theatrical, but infinitely more numerous, more cruel and active than those of the most terrible revolutions."

Maeterlinck realizes that there are certain grievances in society, iniquitous conditions which demand immediate solution, and that if we do not solve them with the readiest and quickest methods at our command, they will react upon society and upon life a great deal more terribly than even the most terrible revolutions. No wonder, then, that his works were put under the ban by the Catholic Church which forever sees danger in light and emancipation. Surely if Maeterlinck were not primarily the spokesman of truth, he would be embraced by the Catholic Church.

In "Monna Vanna" Maeterlinck gives a wonderful picture of the new woman—not the new woman as portrayed in the newspapers, but the new woman as a reborn, regenerated spirit; the woman who has emancipated herself from her narrow outlook upon life, and detached herself from the confines of the home; the woman, in short, who has become race-conscious andtherefore understands that she is a unit in the great