contain little about women; they are chiefly novels or romances of
adventure. But the exceptions are very few. At the present time there are
produced almost every year in England about a thousand new novels, and all
of these or nearly all are love stories. To write a novel without a woman
in it would be a dangerous undertaking; in ninety-nine cases out of a
hundred the book would not sell.

Of course all this means that the English people throughout the world, as
readers, are chiefly interested in the subject under discussion. When you
find a whole race interested more in one thing than in anything else, you
may be sure that it is so because the subject is of paramount importance
in the life of the average person. You must try to imagine then, a society
in which every man must choose his wife, and every woman must choose her
husband, independent of all outside help, and not only choose but obtain
if possible. The great principle of Western society is that competition
rules here as it rules in everything else. The best man--that is to say,
the strongest and cleverest--is likely to get the best woman, in the sense
of the most beautiful person. The weak, the feeble, the poor, and the ugly
have little chance of being able to marry at all. Tens of thousands of men
and women can not possibly marry. I am speaking of the upper and middle
classes. The working people, the peasants, the labourers, these marry
young; but the competition there is just the same--just as difficult, and
only a little rougher. So it may be said that every man has a struggle of
some kind in order to marry, and that there is a kind of fight or contest
for the possession of every woman worth having. Taking this view of
Western society not only in England but throughout all Europe, you will
easily be able to see why the Western public have reason to be more
interested in literature which treats of love than in any other kind of
literature.