No subject of equal social import has received such thoughtful
consideration in recent years as the question of Crime and Punishment.
A number of books by able writers, both in Europe and this country--preeminently
among them "Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist," by Alexander
Berkman--discuss this topic from the historic, psychologic, and
social standpoint, the consensus of opinion being that present
penal institutions and our methods of coping with crime have
in every respect proved inadequate as well as wasteful. This
new attitude toward one of the gravest social wrongs has now
also found dramatic interpretation in Galsworthy's "Justice."
The play opens in the office of James How & Sons, solicitors.
The senior clerk, Robert Cokeson, discovers that a check he had
issued for nine pounds has been forged to ninety. By elimination,
suspicion falls upon William Falder, the junior office clerk.
The latter is in love with a married woman, the abused and ill-treated
wife of a brutal drunkard. Pressed by his employer, a severe
yet not unkindly man, Falder confesses the forgery, pleading
the dire necessity of his sweetheart, Ruth Honeywill, with whom
he had planned to escape to save her from the unbearable brutality
of her husband.
Falder: Oh! sir, look over it! I'll pay the money back--I
will, I promise.
Notwithstanding the entreaties of young Walter How, who holds
modern ideas, his father, a moral and law-respecting citizen,
turns Falder over to the police.
The second act, in the court room, shows Justice in the very
process of manufacture. The scene equals in dramatic power and
psychologic verity the great court scene in "Resurrection."
Young Falder, a nervous and rather weakly youth of twenty-three,
stands before the bar. Ruth, his faithful sweetheart, full of
love and devotion, burns with anxiety to save the young man,
whose affection for her has brought about his present predicament.
Falder is defended by Lawyer Frome, whose speech to the jury
is a masterpiece of social philosophy. He does not attempt to
dispute the mere fact that his client had altered the check;
and though he pleads temporary aberration in his defense, the
argument is based on a social consciousness as fundamental and
all-embracing as the roots of our social ills--"the background
of life, that palpitating life which always lies behind the commission
of a crime." He shows Falder to have faced the alternative
of seeing the beloved woman murdered by her brutal husband, whom
she cannot divorce, or of taking the law into his own hands.
He pleads with the jury not to turn the weak young man into a
criminal by condemning him to prison.
Frome: Men like the prisoner are destroyed daily under our
law for want of that human insight which sees them as they are,
patients, and not criminals. . . . Justice is a machine that,
when someone has given it a starting push, rolls on of itself.
. . . Is this young man to be ground to pieces under this machine
for an act which, at the worst, was one of weakness ? Is he to
become a member of the luckless crews that man those dark, ill-starred
ships called prisons? . . . I urge you, gentlemen, do not ruin
this young man. For as a result of those four minutes, ruin,
utter and irretrievable, stares him in the face . . . The rolling
of the chariot wheels of Justice over this boy began when it
was decided to prosecute him.
But the chariot of Justice rolls mercilessly on, for--as the
learned Judge says--
Judge: Your counsel has made an attempt to trace your offense
back to what he seems to suggest is a defect in the marriage
law; he has made an attempt also to show that to punish you with
further imprisonment would be unjust. I do not follow him in
these flights. The Law what it is--a majestic edifice, sheltering
all of us, each stone of which rests on another. I am concerned
only with its administration. The crime you have committed is
a very serious one. I cannot feel it in accordance with my duty
to Society to exercise the powers I have in your favor. You will
go to penal servitude for three years.
In prison the young, inexperienced convict soon finds himself
the victim of the terrible "system." The authorities
admit that young Falder is mentally and physically "in bad
shape," but nothing can be done in the matter: many others
are in a similar position, and "the quarters are inadequate."
The third scene of the third act is heart-gripping in its
silent force. The whole scene is a pantomime, taking place in
Falder's prison cell.
In fast-falling daylight, Falder, in his stockings, is seen
standing motionless, with his head inclined towards the door,
listening. He moves a little closer to the door, his stockinged
feet making no noise. He stops at the door. He is trying harder
and harder to hear something, any little thing that is going
on outside. He springs suddenly upright--as if at a sound--and
remains perfectly motionless. Then, with a heavy sigh, he moves
to his work, and stands looking at it, with his head down; he
does a stitch or two, having the air of a man so lost in sadness
that each stitch is, as it were, a coming to life. Then, turning
abruptly, he begins pacing his cell, moving his head, like an
animal pacing its cage. He stops again at the door, listens,
and, placing the palms of his hands against it, with his fingers
spread out, leans his forehead against the iron. Turning from
it, presently, he moves slowly back towards the window, tracing
his way with his finger along the top line of the distemper that
runs round the wall. He stops under the window, and, picking
up the lid of one of the tins, peers into it. It has grown very
nearly dark. Suddenly the lid falls out of his hand with a clatter--the
only sound that has broken the silence--and he stands staring
intently at the wall where the stuff of the shirt is hanging
rather white in the darkness-he seems to be seeing somebody or
something there. There is a sharp tap and click; the cell light
behind the glass screen has been turned up. The cell is brightly
lighted. Falder is seen gasping for breath.
A sound from far away, as of distant, dull beating on thick
metal, is suddenly audible. Falder shrinks back, not able to
bear this sudden clamor. But the sounds grows, as though some
great tumbril were rolling towards the cell. And gradually it
seems to hypnotize him. He begins creeping inch by inch nearer
to the door. The banging sound, traveling from cell to cell,
draws closer and closer; Falder's hands are seen moving as if
his spirit had already joined in this beating; and the sound
swells until it seems to have entered the very cell. He suddenly
raises his clenched fists.
Panting violently, he flings himself at his door, and beats
on it.
Falder leaves the prison, a broken ticket-of-leave man, the
stamp of the convict upon his brow, the iron of misery in his
soul.
Falder: I seem to be struggling against a thing that's all
round me. I can't explain it: it's as if I was in a net; as fast
as I cut it here, it grows up there. I didn't act as I ought
to have, about references; but what are you to do? You must have
them. And that made me afraid, and I left. In fact, I'm--I'm
afraid all the time now.
Thanks to Ruth's pleading, the firm of James How & Son
is willing to take Falder back in their employ, on condition
that he give up Ruth. Falder resents this:
Falder: I couldn't give her up. I couldn't! Oh, sir! I'm all
she's got to look to. And I'm sure she's all I've got.
It is then that Falder learns the awful news that the woman
he loves had been driven by the chariot wheel of Justice to sell
herself.
Ruth: I tried making skirts. . . cheap things. It was the
best I could get, but I never made more than ten shillings a
week, buying my own cotton and working all day; I hardly ever
got to bed till past twelve. I kept at it for nine months....
It was starvation for the children.... And then ... my employer
happened--he's happened ever since.
At this terrible psychologic moment the police appear to drag
Falder back to prison for failing to report to the authorities
as ticket-of-leave man. Completely overcome by the inexorability
of his fate, Falder throws himself down the stairs, breaking
his neck.
The socio-revolutionary significance of "Justice"
consists not only in the portrayal of the in-human system which
grinds the Falders and Honeywills, but even more so in the utter
helplessness of society as expressed in the words of the Senior
Clerk, Cokeson, "No one'll touch him now! Never again! He's
safe with gentle Jesus!"
This article by Emma Goldman was originally
published in The Social Significance of the Modern Drama.
Boston: The Gorham Press, 1914.
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