They Stooped to Folly: A Comedy of Morals was published by Doubleday, Doran in 1929, the second of Glasgow’s three Queenborough comedies. The title is from Goldsmith’s “When lovely woman stoops to folly,” and Glasgow’s ironic use of it sets the tone: the novel examines how three women from three different generations were treated after “stooping to folly” — that is, having sexual affairs outside marriage.
Aunt Agatha, the oldest, was “ruined” in the 1870s and spent the rest of her life in penance — confined to the house, dressed in black, treated as a living cautionary tale. Mrs. Dalrymple, of the next generation, was “ruined” in the 1890s but refused to be penitent — she went abroad, lived well, and returned as a woman of the world. Milly Burden, the youngest, was “ruined” in the 1920s and has no intention of being either penitent or worldly — she considers the whole concept of “ruin” absurd.
The comedy arises from the collision of these three attitudes within a single social world. Virginius Curle Littlepage, the novel’s male consciousness, is a decent, conventional man who has accommodated himself to each generation’s standards and is bewildered by the speed of change. He can understand Aunt Agatha’s shame (it was the proper response in her time) and Mrs. Dalrymple’s defiance (it was the modern response in hers), but Milly Burden’s indifference leaves him speechless — she does not merely reject the old morality; she does not recognize its existence.
Glasgow’s satire is directed at the double standard itself — the assumption that female sexuality is a form of moral failure — rather than at any individual character. She shows that the punishment of “fallen women” is not a fixed moral law but a social convention that changes with the times, and that the morality of each generation looks absurd from the perspective of the next.
Collecting They Stooped to Folly
First edition (Doubleday, Doran, New York, 1929): Blue cloth, dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition in dust jacket: $30–$80
- Without jacket: $8–$20
- Later editions: $5–$10