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FRAGMENTS OF A PRISONER » DIARY
psychologically, thus transforming the coerced into voluntary, convinced, even enthusiastic conformists. Moral cant is absent among the lower classes, because they lack the cultural attainment which is the condition for that virtue.
Such was the social and moral atmosphere in which this particular woman lived. As long as she gave her keepers sufficient satisfaction as a beast of burden, they were not any too watchful about what she might do as a woman. Incest being a taboy by common consent-unless performed sub rosa, as is done not infrequently, only without love, young widows are possessed rather as beasts of burden than as women. Indecd, with the backward peasant masses, women generally are bcasts of burden in the first place, performing the scxual function only incidentally. So, the woman of this story, like others in her position, must have had a certain amount of freedoin regarding the satisfaction of scx-impulse.
Those of her kind are not handicapped by psychological inhibitions cultivated among the upper classes. Nor are restrictions on movement so very strictly observed that they could not be broken through on the sly. Young widows perform labour for the mcrest keep. Consideration for the valuc of their labour does not permit their keepers to be too exacting about their conduct when they are not gainfully cinployed. One does not turn out such a valuable asset simply because she 202
