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WHY MEN ARE HANGED
not deny feeling the impulse. That much education would make him realise the difficulty of the tragic life to which his sister had just been condemned for no fault of hers.
So damnably callous is our social cruelty that fathers well past middle-age kecp on diligently at the marital duty totally oblivious that widowed daughters or daughters-in-law, still in the bloom of youth, are made also of flesh and blood, and consequently might find it extremely difficult to live up to the ideal of virtuous renunciation forcibly set to them. The traditional taboo on the frank admission of sex-impulse makes the unthinking herd unconscious of the cruelty they callously commit. Partially awakened from the moral coma, the young man saw that his sister was also young and as such could not help fecling the exigencies of youth, although she was compelled to pretend that she did not.
In such a tragic situation, it would be but natural for a brother, no longer quite an unquestioning conformist with all the stupidities of village life, to come to the aid of the distressed sister. In the town, he had seen young women going about more freely than in the village. He had seen them taking interest in things, forbidden, or unknown to, or beyond the reach of, the rural women-folk. He had seen that life, less restricted by old social customs and prejudices, made women more cheerful. He thought that some occupation
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